The Climate Thread

[janea4old]

January 2025: Fearing raids, barred from aid: Los Angeles immigrants doubly vulnerable amid wildfires.
Non-profits rush to assist undocumented immigrants who face deportation threat on top of displacement and job loss.
In recent years, mega-fires – as well as other extreme weather catastrophes, including atmospheric river storms and intense heatwaves – have repeatedly upended the lives of immigrant workers across the state. In the wake of disasters, undocumented immigrants are especially vulnerable, and largely ineligible for federal disaster aid. Many have lost work as well as their homes – and they are increasingly afraid that seeking help will attract the scrutiny of immigration authorities.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/17/la-fires-immigrants-undocumented-aid

Edited January 19 by janea4old

[janea4old]

video, January 2025
https://www.instagram.com/p/DEnTaF3RVhq/

[janea4old]

https://bsky.app/profile/hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social/post/3lfzt2dvank2e

[Maxim]

OMG. Yes. This is the video. Oh, I'm going to show it to my husband. Thank you for linking it to me. 

[janea4old]

There was a huge situation with animals for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.
So many humans were told they'd be evacuating for only a couple of hours, and left their pets behind with food and water -- the people had the best intentions, they just had no idea what was to come. 
Not intentional, the people just had no idea how huge this would be.
And then the flooding was enormous, and nobody was allowed to return home for weeks!

In some cases, the police were untrained in procedures for a disaster of this magnitude, and FORCED people (at the police gunpoint!)  to evacuate immediately and leave their pets behind.

For those who were able to evacuate with pets, there were no shelters that would take humans with pets.  People had nowhere to go if they had pets with them.

The city was flooded and unreachable for weeks.
There was a ENORMOUS effort to find lost pets, and the New Orleans newspaper
(The "Times-Picayune") -- their website (nola.com) had an online messageboard back then,
to help with the animals.
People posted their addresses, please find my dog or cat -- but the rescue workers could not even find the addresses -- the street signs had been destroyed in the flooding.

In addition to all of that... many people had been low-income and unable to spay/neuter their pets BEFORE the hurricane came, and by the time these animals were found, many had given birth.
So many homeless animals, it was heartbreaking.   

When rescue workers finally found the lost animals (or newly-born animals) there were so many, who had become feral, just trying to survive as the weeks passed.  Many animals had no ID tags, so it was impossible to reunite them with their humans, unless someone had posted something very specific on a messageboard and a rescue worker happened to read it, and there was just too much overwhelm and not enough people able to help.  It was enormous.  When the animals were finally found, if they were not reunited with their humans, then they were shipped to animal rescue agencies in other parts of the USA.  Meanwhile many of the humans had been relocated to other cities.  All so sad.
 

Nowadays, most emergency personnel are trained about helping people to evacuate with their pets -- and most cities are prepared for emergencies so that shelters will take pets and animals of all sizes.  But that wasn't available in 2005 in New Orleans -- nobody knew how to organize that back then, and again, nobody had any idea how huge the hurricane damage would be.

--------------

Through the years, in other cites/states, in more rural areas,  during other hurricanes and wildfires -- farm animals and wild animals have been caught in disastrous situations beyond anyone's control.

These disasters will increase as the climate warms.

Edited January 19 by janea4old

[Maxim]

Horrifying. All this is making me tear up once again. 

[janea4old]

Climate disasters often have more impact on lower-income people.
This certainly was the case with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.
The Ninth Ward flooded faster and well there are a zillion articles about this.


I was just reading about the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles --
The news is saying that 

• A) gofundme campaigns for anyone, must be carefully worded,
  or you might inadvertently disqualify yourself 
  from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) assistance in the USA
  https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/los-angeles-eaton-palisades-wildfire-aid-fema-gofundme
  .
• B ) gofundme campaigns are usually better publicized amongst the wealthy who have their own fame and social media networks.
  In contrast, low-income or middle-income people who have no "connections" receive relatively little via gofundme.
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/17/la-fires-gofundme-mandy-moore

Wealthy people can afford their own private firefighters, who may or may not be properly trained, but will arrive quicker:
https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/private-firefighters-are-increasingly-popular-with-insurers-but-do-they-pose-a-risk

Globally, the affects of Climate change will be affecting areas of continents that have less financial resources.

Edited January 19 by janea4old

[janea4old]

 

Eric Braeden saw this on nextdoor.com, and amplified it on his social media
bluesky (Link), facebook (Link) , and instagram (Link) 
A post from the handyman section of a nextdoor neighborhood

Please register in order to view this content

Edited January 20 by janea4old

[janea4old]

excerpt from Trump's inaugural speech pledge to ... speed up the destruction of the planet:

"the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth. And we are going to use it. Let me use it. We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world. We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it with my actions. Today, we will end the Green New Deal, and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate"

Yeah yeah I know he's bragging about jobs and the economy; but the entire economy will collapse if the planet dies.

And other leaders in other countries... are making similar statements about their own countries - pledging to stop protecting the planet.

It's a worldwide problem of greed and arrogance, where people who want  power will do/say whatever, and don't care about the future of the world.

/end rant

Edited January 20 by janea4old

[janea4old]

January 20, 2025
Donald Trump’s new administration confirmed on Monday on his first day in office that he will repeat his first-term move and pull the world’s second biggest emitter of planet-heating pollution out of the 2015 Paris agreement, the global treaty seeking to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

The confirmation was in a White House document entitled President Trump’s America First Priorities, in a package of measures under the headline “Make America affordable and energy dominant again”.

When enacted, the US will join Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the global agreement, which Joe Biden had rejoined in 2021

[Maxim]

https://edition.cnn.com/climate/what-is-the-paris-agreement/index.html

What is the Paris Agreement?

In 2015, more than 190 countries gathered at a United Nations climate summit in Paris and approved what became known as the Paris Agreement, or the Paris Climate Accord, to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, but preferably to 1.5 degrees.

Consensus was split between countries on whether to make the goal 1.5 or 2 degrees. The lower threshold was the one urged by climate scientists, and was ultimately added to the text as an ideal rather than the agreement’s formal goal.

A “Project 2025” document from the Heritage Foundation recommends Trump should fully exit the overarching United Nations treaty that governs the agreement — a decision that would rock international climate negotiations and make it harder for a future administration to re-enter.

[janea4old]

The evil creep saying stupid stuff to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lgjpzmgiep2q

[Contessa Donatella]

Perhaps someone should suggest that he is in fact a walking talking example of a waste that is hazardous!!

[janea4old]

January 24, 2025
More nonsense about wildfires from Trump
(I'll spare you the mini-videos of the creep)

Updates via
 https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com

Trump: "I'll be signing an EO to begin process of fundamentally reforming & overhauling or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA is not good. When you have a problem like this, you want to use your state to fix it & not waste time calling FEMA..I think we're gonna recommend FEMA go away"

Trump on abolishing FEMA: "When there is a problem with a state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. That's what we have states for. They take care of problems."

 

REPORTER: Any talk on having money instead of doing through FEMA, to go local groups?

TRUMP: Yeah. That's what I want to do. We want to bring it locally, so that a state takes care of its problem, and then they can bring it down to a local level like Samaritan's Purse and Franklin Graham


Commentary on the above via Helen Kennedy
https://bsky.app/profile/helenkennedy.bsky.social/post/3lgjsyaxlkk2l
Giving federal disaster money to local religious charlatans to dole out as they see fit (if they see fit) sounds like a great idea. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.

 

Now he's just making up random sh!t for his executive orders
(There are no such water pipelines in existence)

Trump: "I'm signing an executive order to open up the pumps and valves in the north. We want to get that water pouring down here as quickly as possible ... you're talking about unlimited water coming up from the Pacific Northwest, even coming from parts of Canada."

The bottom line is that Trump denies climate issues, and blames the wildfires on California officials being unaware that you need to put water on fires.
Oh and he restated the nonsense from several years ago that forests should be raked.
He just doesn't want to send federal funds to California so he's stating nonsense.

 

Trump will not agree to aid for California wildfire damage -- unless California adopts mandatory voter ID, which would essentially end mail-in voting for that state.

Edited January 25 by janea4old

[janea4old]

January 2025:  Trump freezes funding for EV (electronic vehicle) charging stations in Illinois
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/27/trump-executive-order-energy-illinois/

(Putting this in the Climate thread because seems to fit best here)