Saturday 31 August 2019

Hydrogen cars could be green vehicle of choice over battery electric cars by 2025

Updated yesterday at 9:37am


Similar to the VHS versus Beta debate in the 80s, the battle between different types of green motoring could see hydrogen-fuelled cars come out on top over conventional battery-powered electric vehicles in the next five years.

Key points

  • Hydrogen fuelled cars could be on the road commercially by 2025
  • Hydrogen cars are quicker to recharge than conventional electric cars
  • Car companies and state governments are investing millions of dollars into the future of hydrogen-powered cars

Hydrogen cars have been proven to refuel quicker and have a longer driving range — which some say makes them the future of green motoring.
"The advantage of hydrogen cars is that it takes the same time to charge them as it takes to fill your car with fossil fuels — no more than about three minutes," Motor Trades Association of Queensland's chief executive Brett Dale said.
"With hydrogen you're more likely to use the same behaviour as you would to go into a fuel station and refuel your car.
"Although we use the language recharge, with hydrogen it's more like refuelling."

Hydrogen cars work as the gas passes through a fuel stack where it interacts with oxygen to generate electricity.

"The only emission produced by hydrogen is water, the by-product is water and a little heat," Mr Dale told ABC Radio Brisbane's Craig Zonca and Loretta Ryan.
"Electric vehicles are generated using coal-powered grids, power that's been generated by coal, so this [hydrogen] is a cleaner option if we get it right.
"We could be seeing hydrogen-fuelled cars on our roads commercially by 2025."
He said the beauty of hydrogen cars over conventional electric cars was the distance they could travel and the quicker refuelling or charging time.
"You get 1,000 kilometres per tank, which is great for [long distance] road travellers," Mr Dale said.
"This technology counters the range anxiety many people have with existing electric vehicles.
"It's very convenient and there are really positive signs with the work being done to bring it to market."

Making hydrogen transportable for a new kind of fuel station

Twelve months ago, CSIRO researchers in Brisbane produced two cars powered by hydrogen derived from ammonia.
In a world first, the cars were fuelled with carbon-free fuel, showing that hydrogen could be shipped safely to other markets.

"The work that the CSIRO has done to make it capable using ammonia to transport hydrogen is similar to what they do with new fossil fuels," Mr Dale explained.
"We now hope that old fuel stations transition to new fuel technologies, making it easier for consumers to make the switch."
He said hydrogen-fuelled cars would complement electric cars in the commercial market, but not replace them.
"It's an alternative for consumers and if it can be cost-effective, there's certainly space for it in the future," Mr Dale said.
"It's very expensive in its current process but the reality is that if we get this right it promises a lot."

Expanding the future of hydrogen

Recently in Queensland, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) would be integrated into the government's vehicle fleet as part of the $19 million Queensland Hydrogen Industry Strategy 2019–2024.
"Governments like Queensland are looking at the storage and transportation strategies needed for the hydrogen technology," Mr Dale said.

"They're investing in the back-to-base infrastructure that's needed for the very expensive hydrogen storage system."
QUT currently hosts the state's only hydrogen refuelling station and recently took part in the first production and export of "green" hydrogen derived from water from Australia to Japan.
"The challenge really is storage and transportation," Mr Dale said.
"The current focus is around this and when that's right we will be able to do it like we do for fossil fuels."

Trouble in paradise: Trump attacks Fox News – and Fox News hits back

Neil Cavuto becomes the latest network host to reject Trump’s criticism, saying: ‘My job is to cover you, not fawn over you’
Trump with Fox News host Sean Hannity at a rally in Las Vegas last September. In Thursday’s segment, Cavuto catalogued a series of Trump’s lies.
Trump with Fox News host Sean Hannity at a rally in Las Vegas last September. In Thursday’s segment, Hannity’s colleague Cavuto catalogued a series of Trump’s lies. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The honeymoon between Donald Trump and his TV network of choice is showing signs of strain. Following a series of swipes at Fox News from the White House this summer, Neil Cavuto has become the latest network personality to push back against the president’s expectations of uninterrupted praise.
Cavuto said on Thursday: “First of all, Mr President, we don’t work for you. I don’t work for you. My job is to cover you, not fawn over you or rip you. Just report on you – call balls and strikes on you.”
Cavuto was responding to a Wednesday tweet in which Trump suggested his supporters look for another channel.
The president tweeted: “Just watched Fox News heavily promoting the Democrats through their DNC Communications Director, spewing out whatever she wanted with zero pushback by anchor, Sandra Smith. The New Fox News is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us any more!”
Last month Trump took aim at Fox News with a host of grievances, including a suggestion that their polling is treating him unfairly.
“Fox has not changed,” political anchor Bret Baier said on his program in response. “We have a news side and an opinion side. Opinion folks express their opinions. We do polls.”
In Thursday’s segment, Cavuto catalogued a series of Trump’s lies, dismissing the president’s “fake news” motif – something he has begun to wield against the traditionally uncritical network.



Cavuto said: “I’m not the one who said tariffs are a wonderful thing. You are. Just like I’m not the one who said Mexico would pay for the wall. You did. Just like I’m not the one who claimed that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election. You did. I’m sorry if you don’t like these facts being brought up, but they are not fake because I did. What would be fake is if I never did.”
He went on: “Hard as it is to fathom, Mr President, just because you’re the leader of the free world doesn’t entitle you to a free pass. Unfortunately, just a free press.”
Earlier in the week, Fox News’ Brit Hume jabbed back at Trump, reminding him that although it may often seem the network is an extension of the administration, that is not actually the case.

Other Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Laura Ingraham remain devoted to the president.

Google says hackers have put ‘monitoring implants’ in iPhones for years

Visiting hacked sites was enough for server to gather users’ images and contacts
Apple iPhone XS
Operating systems from iOS 10 to iOS 12 were targeted in the hack. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

An unprecedented iPhone hacking operation, which attacked “thousands of users a week” until it was disrupted in January, has been revealed by researchers at Google’s external security team.
The operation, which lasted two and a half years, used a small collection of hacked websites to deliver malware on to the iPhones of visitors. Users were compromised simply by visiting the sites: no interaction was necessary, and some of the methods used by the hackers affected even fully up-to-date phones.
Once hacked, the user’s deepest secrets were exposed to the attackers. Their location was uploaded every minute; their device’s keychain, containing all their passwords, was uploaded, as were their chat histories on popular apps including WhatsApp, Telegram and iMessage, their address book, and their Gmail database.
The one silver lining is that the implant was not persistent: when the phone was restarted, it was cleared from memory unless the user revisited a compromised site. However, according to Ian Beer, a security researcher at Google: “Given the breadth of information stolen, the attackers may nevertheless be able to maintain persistent access to various accounts and services by using the stolen authentication tokens from the keychain, even after they lose access to the device.”
Beer is a member of Project Zero, a team of white-hat hackers inside Google who work to find security vulnerabilities in popular tech, no matter who it is produced by. The team has become controversial for its hardline approach to disclosure: 90 days after it reports a bug to the victim, it will publish the details publicly, whether or not the bug has been fixed in that time.
In total, 14 bugs were exploited for the iOS attack across five different “exploit chains” – strings of flaws linked together in such a way that a hacker can hop from bug to bug, increasing the severity of their attack each time.
“This was a failure case for the attacker,” Beer noted, since even though the campaign was dangerous, it was also discovered and disrupted. “For this one campaign that we’ve seen, there are almost certainly others that are yet to be seen.
“All that users can do is be conscious of the fact that mass exploitation still exists and behave accordingly; treating their mobile devices as both integral to their modern lives, yet also as devices which when compromised, can upload their every action into a database to potentially be used against them.”

Google said it had reported the security issues to Apple on 1 February. Apple then released an operating system update which fixed the flaws on 7 February.

Who are the Tamil family from Biloela and why are they being deported?

Updated yesterday at 3:15pm


Last-minute injunctions have stalled the deportation of a Tamil family who have spent years fighting to stay in Australia.
The plane carrying the Sri Lankan couple and their Australian-born daughters had already left the tarmac at Melbourne Airport when a judge granted a reprieve over the phone.
Here's what we know about the family's case:

Who are they?


Priya and Nadesalingam, also known as Nades, came to Australia separately by boat in 2012 and 2013.
Friends and support groups say the pair fled Sri Lanka because of the persecution of the Tamil people.
The couple married and settled in the Central Queensland town of Biloela, where they lived and worked for about three years.
Their two daughters, Kopika and Tharunicaa, were born in Australia and are now aged 4 and 2.

Why are they being deported?


It's understood Priya and Nades's visas expired between January and February 2018.
The Department of Home Affairs has repeatedly said that the family's case has been comprehensively assessed over many years, and they have consistently been found not to meet Australia's protection obligations.
The family also had their appeal rejected by the Federal Circuit Court in June last year.
In that judgment, the judge noted that Nades had returned to Sri Lanka on three occasions during the civil war and there was no evidence to suggest his family still living in Sri Lanka was at risk from authorities.
She also noted the passage of time since the Sri Lankan civil war, which ended in May 2009.

Where have they been?

After their visas expired, the family were removed from their home by Border Force officials in March 2018.
They were flown to a detention centre in Melbourne, where they remained until Thursday night.
The Biloela community and various humanitarian and social justice groups have fought to free the family.

The High Court dismissed an application to review the case in May 2019.

What happened on Thursday night?


Just after 8:00pm on Thursday, advocacy group Home to Bilo tweeted the family were being deported.
A friend of the family said they were taken to Melbourne Airport without warning.
The friend said Priya was put in one van and the girls were put in a different van.

Dozens of people responded to Home to Bilo's call to go to the airport in a bid to stop the deportation.
As the plane departed just before 11:00pm, an interim injunction was granted over the phone by a judge to prevent them from leaving the country.
The plane landed in Darwin shortly before 3:00am Friday and the family was taken from the aircraft.
On Friday morning, the family was being held at a hotel at Darwin Airport.

What happens now?



On Friday morning the Federal Court ruled that the youngest daughter, Tharunicaa, not be deported from Australia until 4:00pm Wednesday.
According to the family's lawyer Carina Ford, it's now up to the Government to decide if it will proceed with the removal of the other family members.
"It would be pretty inhumane to separate the family at this time," she said.
Friday on Channel Nine's The Today Show, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said he wanted the family to accept they weren't refugees and wouldn't be able to stay in Australia.

Friday 30 August 2019

Severe hunger threatens millions in Somalia as climate emergency deepens

Aid efforts to help communities struggling to recover from drought compounded by continuing conflict, aggravated by al-Shabaab
Somalia faces a new humanitarian crisis with more than 2 million people now threatened by severe hunger, aid agencies say.
A further 3 million people are uncertain of their next meal, latest assessments suggest.
The new emergency comes two years after the threat of a major disaster in the unstable east African state was averted by timely aid from the international community.
Experts describe the crisis as a “climate emergency” and say communities are still struggling to recover from the lengthy drought that ended in 2017.
So far donors have promised less than half of the $1bn (£0.8bn) the UN and other agencies say is required.
The average number of people reached with food assistance from January to May this year was only slightly more than half the total over the preceding six months, aid officials say, with many agencies forced to cut back in some areas because the humanitarian appeal for Somalia was so poorly funded.
Richard Crothers, Somalia Country Director at the International Rescue Committee, said, “The international community must scale up its response … now, or many in Somalia, especially children under five, will die from starvation.”
The crisis has been aggravated by continuing conflict between al-Shabaab, the Islamic extremist movement that has been fighting for more than a decade to impose strict religious rule on Somalia, and government troops, which are backed by regional forces and US air assets.
Sharifo Ali Mohamud, 30, fled her home town in Middle Shabelle, one of the agricultural regions in Somalia worst hit by the drought, in February.
“The drought hit our village. We used to grow maize in the farm but it became dry. We did not have anything to eat. Then the fighting started,” said Mohamud, who travelled for three days with her seven children to reach Mogadishu, the capital.
“Life is very difficult here. We don’t get enough water and food and [if] I return to my village, I am afraid the harsh drought condition will be bitter.”

View of a settlement for people displaced by drought in Galkayo, Somalia in 2018.
Many rural people have been forced to leave home, unable to grow crops or raise livestock. Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

The April to June period, initially forecast as an average rainy season, is now thought to be one of the driest on record in more than 35 years.
In recent years, the frequency and duration of these dry spells has increased.
The failed rainy season followed abnormally hot and dry conditions since October last year and was partly caused by cyclones in the southern Indian Ocean.
Two-thirds of the country’s population live in rural areas and are completely dependent on the rains for their crops and livestock.
Nur Ali Ibrahim, a 53-year-old farmer and a father of 11 from the Middle Shabelle region, said he had travelled to a displaced camp in Mogadishu’s Abdiaziz neighbourhood because his family could no longer survive when his farm “went dry and no crops grew”.
The area around Ibrahim’s village, about 40km (25 miles) north of Mogadishu, was controlled by al-Shabaab, making it difficult for humanitarian organisations to deliver aid there.
Kenya is urging the UN to list al-Shabaab under the same sanctions as al-Qaida and Islamic State, but foreign donors say the move could stop aid reaching millions.
The proposed listing could take effect as soon as Thursday and could mean organisations that have any interaction with the extremists will face serious penalties.
“A measure like this will have the effect of criminalising humanitarian aid,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International. “Any measure that would impact the current provision of aid would have extremely serious and substantial implications.”
Al-Shabaab is already targeted under broader sanctions imposed by the UN on Somalia, which is heavily aid-dependent after three decades of conflict and economic ruin.
Currently UN agencies and humanitarian organisations are exempt from these sanctions, which enables them to deliver urgent aid without prosecution when they venture into territory controlled by al-Shabaab.
The Islamist insurgency group, which is affiliated with al-Qaida, has long tried to regulate the distribution of humanitarian aid in the areas it controls, often seeking to levy taxes on NGOs.
Ibrahim said food aid did not reach his village because al-Shabaab demanded money from the organisations who wanted to deliver it.
“Some of the NGO workers were arrested by al-Shabaab. People told us if you stay here then no food aid will come because of al-Shabaab,” he said.

Internally Displaced Persons at the ‘KM-13’ camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu.
Aid organisations warn UN sanctions on al-Shabaab could hamper food deliveries. Photograph: Giles Clarke/Getty Images

More than half a million displaced people are now estimated to be in Mogadishu, according to Somalia’s National Commission for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (NCRI).
“We are worried the situation will be much worse if the coordination between the local governments and the aid organisations is not scaled up in the coming few months,” said Nuro Ismail, aid coordination officer at NCRI.
Muhubo Aden, 41, left Wanlaweyn, 90km from the capital, when all her livestock died.
“After all our animals perished, we had nothing to eat and we ran out of money. Then our neighbour told us [to] go to Mogadishu to get food aid. My sister was very sick and weak due to malnutrition. We left Wanlaweyn in the morning but her ailment worsened and she died,” Aden said.

“If I could get my cows back, I would not have stayed here in the camp. I wish I could earn my life as a herder instead of staying in the IDP camp hopelessly and getting nothing.”

Trump administration to roll back Obama-era pollution regulations

EPA will reverse standards to install controls to curb leaks of methane, a potent pollutant contributing to the climate crisis
The Trump administration is rolling back requirements that oil and gas drillers correct leaks of methane – a potent heat-trapping pollutant contributing to the climate crisis.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced the proposal on Thursday, against the wishes of some major oil companies.
Trump will reverse standards issued by Barack Obama that forced companies to install controls to curb methane releases from drilling operations, pipelines and storage facilities. The EPA is claiming the changes would save the oil and gas industry $17m to $19m a year, or up to $123m by 2025.
Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist, said methane is valuable so industry already has an incentive to minimize leaks. He called existing rules “unnecessary and duplicative”.
The Trump administration has moved to erase all of Obama’s climate policies and to ease other pollution controls for oil, gas and coal companies. Not all of industry has supported those changes. For example, car companies are currently pushing back against a weakening of mileage standards.
The advocacy group the Clean Air Task Force said the EPA is ignoring decades of its own precedent and mountains of evidence that cutting methane is easy and extremely important.
“If the EPA manages to finalize and implement this illegal proposal, it will have devastating impacts on our climate for years to come,” said the group’s attorney Darin Schroeder.
He said the EPA’s methane rollbacks will lead to industry “dumping an additional 1.2m tons of methane into the air in 2025 – which will warm the planet as much as the pollution from 22m cars.”
Janet McCabe, a top air official under Obama, noted that methane has about 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Its impacts could be even larger. And methane makes up about 10% of warming pollutants in the US.
A study by the advocacy group the Environmental Defense Fund also argues the oil and gas industry is releasing more methane than is reported.
McCabe said the rule changes are a “rejection of the vast – the increasing – body of science that shows that climate change is affecting humans around the globe”. She said the rule changes would make regulations more uncertain for companies.
Some of the companies that have already made investments in eliminating their methane leaks agreed.
The oil trade group the American Petroleum Institute supports the rollback, but Exxon, Shell and BP have spoken in favor of restrictions. Smaller oil producers say the Obama standards would be too expensive and would make it hard for them to compete with the majors.
The API argues that nixing the rules will “strengthen emissions standards” by reducing duplication with existing state programs, providing clarity for industry and making it easier for operators to use “new, innovative technologies”.
Congressman Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, said it should be telling that the industry itself is split over the changes.

“Last month the planet experienced its hottest month in recorded history. The threat of climate change to human life and livelihoods has never been clearer, and yet the Trump administration is acting to allow an increase in the dangerous emissions which cause it,” Beyer said.

Amazon's indigenous warriors take on invading loggers and ranchers

Under threat from fire, deforestation and Bolsonaro, Xikrin people take matters into own hands
Threatened by fire, deforestation and invasion, the Xikrin people of the northern Amazon are fighting back.
While the authorities stand idle and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, tries to undermine their territorial rights, the indigenous community have taken matters into their own hands by expelling the loggers and ranchers who illegally occupied their land and set fire to the forest.
Armed with rifles and wooden batons, groups of Xikrin warriors have swept through their extensive territory in the state of Pará over the past week. Whenever they encountered fire-scarred land, illegal clearances and habitations, they went from hut to hut, ejecting the invaders and confiscating chainsaws and other tools.
At the end of the 40km expedition, the warriors felt empowered. In a war ritual, they marched back to their homes in Rapkô village. As their families gathered round, they showed mobile phone clips of the raid they had conducted on the intruders’ huts.
“Why are we protecting our land? So we can hunt. So our sons and grandsons can live well on this land,” said Tikiri Xikrin, one of the oldest warriors, during a ceremony to mark the group’s safe return. “Only if I die will the kuben [white people] occupy the land.”
By law, this ought to be the task of the federal police. The 1,651,000-hectare Trincheira Bacajá indigenous territory was officially recognised by the government in 2000. Nobody but the 1,100 members of the Xikrin community has the right to live on it.
But the elders know there is scant hope that the government will enforce their rights. The land-grabbers first started to creep into the area in June last year, using a rough road that had been cut into the forest by illegal loggers. The Xikrin filed complaints to official agencies several times, but to no avail.

A Xikrin warrior observes a demarcation sign
A Xikrin warrior observes a demarcation sign. Photograph: Lalo de Almeida

Last month, the slow trickle of deforestation became a flood across the Amazon, with a 278% increase over the same time last year. One of the worst-affected areas was the supposedly protected land of the Xikrin. In July, land-grabbers razed an area of pristine forest the size of 1,500 football pitches in their territory, according to the independent monitoring group Imazon.
The problems have a long history, but Bolsonaro has made things worse. Instead of defending the territories from crime, critics say he repeatedly undermines indigenous residents in his speeches and through his policies. During a meeting with Amazon region state governors on 27 August, the nationalist president alleged native communities have been used by foreign interests to limit Brazil’s growth.
“[Indigenous peoples] don’t speak our language, but they have somehow managed to get 14% of our national territory,” Bolsonaro said recently, adding: “One of the purposes of this is to impair us.”
Bekara Xikrin, the chief of Rapkô village, said the land-grabbers had been encouraged by the president. “One guy [among the invaders] told us the land is freely accessible, that Bolsonaro granted access to it, that this is not indigenous land.”
The invader claimed he wanted to help the indigenous community to work their land. Bekara gave him short shrift. “I told him: this indigenous person doesn’t want help, the old warriors don’t want help. Deforestation is not allowed here,” he said.
The Xikrin’s self-defence actions have not scared off the land-grabbers. In an audio message circulated by WhatsApp, one of them warned that close to 300 people were preparing an attack against a nearby indigenous village.
To prevent violence, the federal prosecutor for the region, Thais Santi, formally requested action by the police on 26 August. She said an operation should be carried out within 24 hours, but two days later nothing had happened.
“The Trincheira Bacajá case involves widescale negligence by the government,” Santi said. “The Xikrin registered a complaint against the occupation of their land. Because the police failed to act in time, the invasion spread.”

Xikrin warriors
Xikrin warriors gather in Rapko village. Photograph: Lalo de Almeida

Many other indigenous lands in the Xingu river region are under similar pressure. This basin – one of the biggest in the Amazon – has been opened up by the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which brought an influx of business people and labourers. The municipality around the main city of Altamira now ranks first in Brazil for fire outbreaks.
From 1 January to 26 August, the municipality experienced 2,566 blazes, an increase of 459% over the same period last year, according to Brazil’s national space research institute, Inpe.
Neighbouring the Trincheira is the Apyterewa indigenous territory of the Parakaṇ people, which has suffered a huge invasion by cattle ranchers. In July, 28 sq km were deforested in this area Рthe largest inside a Brazilian indigenous territory that month, according to Imazon.
Apyterewa illustrates how the federal government’s inaction predates Bolsonaro. In 2015, the federal supreme court (STF) ordered the eviction of hundreds of invaders but, four years later, the ruling has not been enforced. In fact, the number of land-grabbers has increased.
In the same region, Ituna/Itatá indigenous territory lost 9 sq km of forest last month. These three indigenous lands are the worst affected in Brazil in recent weeks, according to Imazon.

A deforested area inside the Trincheira territory
A deforested area inside the Trincheira territory. Photograph: Lalo de Almeida

Pressure against the Xikrin comes mostly from livestock farming. The cattle ranching industry is staunchly in support of Bolsonaro. Not far from their territory is São Félix do Xingu, the municipality with the largest cattle herd in the country, numbering 2.24 million in 2017. There is nowhere in the Amazon with more degraded pasture – 286,000 hectares, according to 2014 figures from the agricultural and livestock research agency. “This indicates that a large area has been deforested and is now misused,” says researcher Paulo Barreto of Imazon.
The Xikrin are now fighting to prevent their territory from suffering the same fate. The warriors say they are proud of what they have done to defend it, though the initial sense of jubilation has been replaced by a sombre realisation that they may now face a counter-attack.

Holding a sickle in his hands, Tikiri Xikrin was defiant: “I am not afraid of the white invaders. I have courage. We have courage. If the kuben start a conflict, we will fight.”

Welcome to the US, Greta. With your help we can save the planet and ourselves

Even in such a divided and troubled country, there is hope. Between us we can beat the climate destroyers

Dear Greta,

Thank you for travelling across the Atlantic to north America to help us do the most important work in the world. There are those of us who welcome you and those who do not because you have landed in two places, a place being born and a place dying, noisily, violently, with as much damage as possible.
It has always been two places, since the earliest Europeans arrived in places where Native people already lived, and pretended they were new and gave them the wrong names. You can tell the history of the United States – which are not very united now – as the history of Sojourner Truth, the heroine who helped liberate the enslaved, as that of the slaveowners and defenders of slavery, as a place of visionary environmental voices such as Rachel Carson and the corporate powers and profiteers she fought and exposed.
Right now the US is the country of Donald Trump and of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of climate destroyers and climate protectors. Sometimes the Truths and the Carsons have won. I believe it is more than possible for Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal to win, for the spirit of generosity and inclusion and the protection of nature to win – but that depends on what we do now. Which is why I’m so grateful that you have arrived to galvanize us with your clarity of vision and passionate commitment.

"To be a climate activist anywhere on Earth now is to stand at a crossroads: heaven on one side and hell on the other"

Not long ago I talked to a powerful climate organizer who began her work when she was only a little older than you, and she told me that her hope right now is that people recognize that this is a moment of great possibility, of openings and momentum, and a growing alarm and commitment to what the changing climate requires of us. Something has changed, thanks to you and to the young people who have brought new urgency and vision to the climate movement. Many people have become concerned and awake for the first time, and the conversation we need to have is opening up. People are ready for change, or some of us are. This is what’s being born in the US and around the world: not only new energy systems, but new social systems with more room for the voices of those who are not white or male or straight or neurotypical.
The old energy system was about centralized control and the malevolent power of Gazprom and BP, Shell and Chevron, and the governments warped into serving them rather than humanity. The new system must not only be about localized energy, but democratized decision-making, about the rights of nature and the rights of the vulnerable and the future, over profit.
Some of this is already here: not only the larger groups you’re surely heard of – the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network – but countless local and tribal groups that have arisen to stop this pipeline or that coal port or these fracking projects, to protect this forest or this mountain or these waters. They are not visible the way the United Nations or the US Congress or European Union is, but their work matters, and perhaps we will build a lot of this transition out from below – but we need the big policy agendas set from above as well.
Everywhere I see remarkable things happening. No matter how much you see of this big country, this huge continent, there is more than you can see. I hope you have a chance to see some of the beauty of the American landscapes, from rainforests to deserts; there is also beauty in the passionate commitment around the country. Coalminers in Kentucky have been blocking a coal train track for a month, because their bankrupt company stiffed them on wages, and coalminers elsewhere recently spoke to this newspaper about their clarity that coal is over and that the Green New Deal and its jobs are welcome. The gigantic coal-burning, sky-polluting Navajo Generating Station in Arizona will shut down later this year, and, Scientific American reported, “Its average annual emissions over that period are roughly equivalent to what 3.3 million passenger cars would pump into the atmosphere in a single year. The Navajo Generating Station isn’t alone. It’s among a new wave of super-polluters headed for the scrap heap,” including giant plants in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.” Last year, US coal plants with annual emissions of 83 million tonnes of carbon were shut down.
Several states – California, New York, Hawaii, New Mexico – have made commitments to 100% renewable electricity in the near future, and while the federal government tries to push us backward, many states lean forward. This summer Texas began to get more energy from wind than from coal. Iowa in the midwest now gets 37% of its electricity from wind, not because of idealism alone, but pragmatism: wind is cheaper. Science magazine reported last month, “Solar plus batteries is now cheaper than fossil power,” and a Connecticut newspaper recently announced that Chubb, the largest commercial insurer in the USA, will stop insuring coal plants and coal mining.
Worldwide, we are in the midst of an energy revolution that dwarfs the industrial revolution: human beings will for the first time not use fire, will not release carbon into the sky, to get most of our energy. We will inevitably transition away from fossil fuels as a primary energy source, and the question is only when. If we do it swiftly, we minimize damage to the climate; if we wait, we maximize it. The damage is here, and it’s not only destroying nature, it’s killing us. When the California town of Paradise burned down last November, at least 86 people burned to death or choked on smoke; millions suffered from the smoke that spread across the region. Heat deaths are up in the south-west, where 235 people died in Arizona alone from this cause during 2017.
But we also know that there are so many uncounted deaths from poisonous fossil fuels. We know that many of the refugees on the USA’s southern border are climate refugees, driven out of their homes in Central America by the failure of agriculture from unpredictable and violent weather, heat, and drought. We know that Alaska was this month for the first time ice-free all along its coast, and the hot dry weather inland led to horrific wildfires. “Starting on the fourth of July and lasting multiple days, temperatures across Alaska were 20 to 30 degrees above average in some locations,” reported National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
To be a climate activist anywhere on Earth now is to stand at a crossroads: heaven on one side and hell on the other. Heaven because the transition we need to make and are making – just not big enough or fast enough – is not only an power-generation revolution, but a decentralization of political power, a shift away from the big energy companies who used governments to make wars and make profits for them, a shift away from the poisonousness of fossil fuel. Hell because the destruction of what it took nature millions of years to create – the exquisite balance of ecosystems, of bird migration in harmony with seasons, of symbioses between species, of the great Himalayan and Andean glaciers whose waters feed so many people, of rainforests and temperate forests – is hideous as well as terrifying. The Amazon is burning because of one rightwing leader and a system that rewards agricultural products but not forest protection, even though we need rainforests more than we need the soybeans and beef raised on the land stolen from the rainforest and its indigenous inhabitants.
I’ve mentioned a bit of what is going on in my troubled, complicated country, the US, but of course these are global conflicts and global situations, and the solutions are advancing almost everywhere, because they are good solutions to terrible problems.
You have come to help us choose the former over the latter, and more of us thank you than you will ever be able to see or hear. More than that, we’re with you, trying to realize the goals that the climate demands of us, to make a sustainable world for those who are young now, those yet to come, and for the beauty of the world that is still with us.

Rebecca Solnit is a journalist and author.hough we need rainforests more than we need the soybeans and beef raised on the land stolen from the rainforest and its indigenous inhabitants.
I’ve mentioned a bit of what is going on in my troubled, complicated country, the US, but of course these are global conflicts and global situations, and the solutions are advancing almost everywhere, because they are good solutions to terrible problems.
You have come to help us choose the former over the latter, and more of us thank you than you will ever be able to see or hear. More than that, we’re with you, trying to realize the goals that the climate demands of us, to make a sustainable world for those who are young now, those yet to come, and for the beauty of the world that is still with us.

Rebecca Solnit is a journalist and author.

'Like mopping up a flood': throwing in the towel over beach plastic pollution


A father of three who has led volunteer beach cleans for the last four years in west Wales is quitting because of the insurmountable plastic problem around Britain’s coastlines.
When Alan Cookson, 46, started cleaning Aberystwyth’s beaches he says there were 5.5tn pieces of plastic in the sea. Now there are at least 51tn.
“It’s like you’re trying to mop up a flood but the tap’s still running.” Cookson feels like he’s spent the last four years on the losing team: “If it was a football match you would have changed tactics by now.”
He first noticed the sheer amount of plastic littering west Wales’ beaches when he started collecting driftwood to make Christmas trees. It quickly turned him into an anti-plastic activist.
Four years on and his house is like a marine plastic museum. In the garage he has 1,731 cigarette butts collected in an hour and half from the town’s north beach. Each are made of tiny particles of plastic which take at least 15 years to biodegrade.
Inside he shows us a piece of lego that traces back to a ship spill that dumped millions of pieces off the Cornish coast in 1997. And there are toy soldiers – apparently a valued find for beach cleaners.
He also has a huge map on his kitchen wall with Wales’ main watercourses marked out. The main road into Aberystwyth, the A44, crosses the Rheidol river multiple times and there’s a very good chance that the plastic that litters the lay-by will end up in the sea.
Cookson, a former Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) volunteer, is deeply critical of the charity sector. When it comes to the anti-plastic fight “they are not even in the ring”.
He also says that initiatives like SAS’s “plastic-free communities”, and charity campaign “keep Wales tidy” are not working.
He’d like to see charities challenge “corporate consumer capitalism”, by which he means companies like Coca-Cola, who are producing 3m tonnes of plastic packaging ever year – equivalent to 200,000 bottles every single minute.
A Coca-Cola spokesperson said: “We don’t want to see any of our packaging end up as litter. We are supportive of reforms, including the introduction of a deposit return scheme here in Great Britain, to help us get more packaging back. In Great Britain, all our bottles and cans are already 100% recyclable. When disposed of properly, our bottles can be recycled into new bottles over and over again.”
For his final beach clean Cookson has enlisted the help of his friend Gilly Thomas who, when she started paddle-boarding three years ago, found two balloons stuck in a tree and the top of a cleaning bottle.
She now devotes her spare time to fishing plastic out of rivers.
The pair are also working with the National Citizen Service, who have assembled 40 teenagers on a summer course at the University of Aberystwyth. Cookson calls them “generation plastic” and tells one boy that the bottle he is drinking Coke from will take at least 400 years to biodegrade.
It comes as 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg arrives in New York after a zero-carbon yacht trip across the Atlantic to speak at UN climate conference, and in a year in which she has inspired thousands of kids to walk out of school demanding urgent action to fix the climate crisis.
On the beach, volunteer James Philpin, 16, says he is scared about what comes next. “Obviously I can’t vote yet, but people need to change things for the better in terms of the climate.” He thinks there is too much focus “on the older generations. It’s not their world any more.”
As the other teenagers find pens, beauty wrappers and tampon applicators, Cookson explains that “plastic pebbles” are a feature of the summer. These are created when people burn plastic rubbish in beach fires, which gets washed into the sea and forms small, round balls.
Last year Aberystwyth was named a “plastic-free town” by Surfers Against Sewage. Yet under the “plastic-free Aberystwyth” flag, holidaymakers drink out of single-use plastic bottles and eat ice creams with plastic spoons.
Around town there isn’t much evidence of it being enforced either. One of the few cafes with a visible “plastic-free” sign sells single use plastic bottles and gives out plastic cutlery. Both Thomas and Cookson are sceptical that the label has helped the broader battle against plastic.
Back at the beach, Cookson’s last clean-up is over. He refuses to get emotional and says he’d happily return to it: tomorrow, or in five years’ time – but only if can be sure that “the action I’m taking, the energy that I’m putting in, will actually clean the sea”.
Surfers Against Sewage said in a statement: “We are very proud of our Plastic Free Communities movement, which starts communities on their journey to ridding their local environment of avoidable plastics … To tackle environmental issues such as plastic pollution it’s critical that action is taken by grassroots initiatives such as this, as well as through positive environmental policy at government level.”