SteveKLord

About 23,500 of the 1.5 million customers that lost power in western North Carolina still lacked electricity on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can’t recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid.

The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.

With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as “Dragon Wings.”

On Tuesday, service workers rallied at major airports in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Phoenix. They called for immediate action from employers to ensure their safety in the workplace, including adequate breaks and access to drinking water during periods of extreme heat.

In Phoenix, where earlier this year local officials enacted a heat ordinance mandating many of these protections, workers and legislators sounded the alarm that the ordinance has led to inadequate improvements, and questioned how the protections are being enforced. “Why is it after passing an ordinance we’re still asking for the basics? Water. Breaks. These are humans rights,” said City of Phoenix Councilwoman Betty Guardado at the rally. Later this week, laborers across the country will be taking a coordinated water break to signify the need for access to drinking water at work.

As human-caused climate change continues to make the planet hotter, extreme heat in the workplace is increasingly becoming a lethal threat. Organizers say “Heat Week” is also spurred by the recent sudden deaths of Wednesday “Wendy” Johnson, a postal worker in North Carolina, and Ronald Silver II, a sanitation worker in Maryland. Both Johnson and Silver are believed to have died, in part, because of on-the-job heat exposure, which kills dozens of workers every year.

AnarSec is a resource designed to help anarchists navigate the hostile terrain of technology — defensive guides for digital security and anonymity, as well as offensive guides for hacking. All guides are available in booklet format for printing and will be kept up to date.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

They argue that “recyclable” should apply to anything that’s capable of being recycled. And they point to newer technologies that have been able to remake plastic bags into new products.

I spent months investigating one of those technologies, a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis, only to find that it is largely a mirage. It’s inefficient, dirty and so limited in capacity that no one expects it to process meaningful amounts of plastic waste any time soon.

Clayton Page Aldern is a former neuroscientist turned environmental journalist. He is currently a senior data reporter at the climate magazine Grist. His work focuses on the intersection of climate change and human health, particularly the neurological impacts of environmental factors.

Below, Clayton shares five key insights from his new book, The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.

When looking at the majority of comments going on certain online forums you can end up thinking that the vast majority of solarpunks all think the same way on certain issues.

Whether it’s plant-based diets, or the role of traditional media it can seem like 80%+ of the people are in agreement, sometimes very strong agreement and denounce alternative interpretations as not solarpunk at all.

This is why the pioneering research by Benjamin Maldonado Fernandez is so interesting. As part of his studies at the university of Leiden he conducted a survey of people in the solarpunk scene which gained 571 respondents, making it one of the largest, if not the largest so far. It had a wide range of questions which you can see all of in the published results here.

We interviewed Benjamin to unpack some of the findings of the survey.

Scientists from across academic disciplines are extremely concerned about climate change. Many of them have already changed their own lifestyles or engaged in advocacy and protest, with even more being willing to do so in future.

This is evident from a large-scale survey of scientists from all over the world, conducted by an international research team led by the University of Amsterdam. The researchers not only looked at the views of scientists and the extent to which they are engaged in climate action, but also at how the involvement of scientists with climate change can be increased.

A new climate change map shows predictions for just how devastated the future climate will be in various places around the world. The map, which is called The Future Urban Climates, allows interested users to explore how their home area’s climate might change going forward.

The data used to create the map comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it was created by University of Maryland spatial ecologist Matthew Fitzpatrick to showcase the future of climate change up to 2080.

Of course, all of the changes showcased on the climate change map are just predictions based on current trends of extreme storms, fires, floods, droughts, heat waves, and cold snaps—all of which continue to hit us harder each year.

Scientists have long worried Earth’s rising temperatures could make fungi more dangerous to humans. Now, researchers in China may have stumbled on evidence to support that idea.

Dual Power, sometimes referred to as counter-power, is a stage in a revolutionary movement where two competing political frameworks occupy the same space. For anti-state revolutionaries this implies a significant mobilization of people organizing autonomously and outside of and against existing power structures and institutions.

In this episode of A is for Anarchy, we examine the historical origins of dual power and analyze current examples and those throughout history.

The Byron Bay Railroad Company runs the world's first 100% solar-powered train. It wouldn't work everywhere - but in the bright sunshine of Australia, it might just be the right tool for the job.

More about the railroad: https://byronbaytrain.com.au/

April 17 marks Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, established by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 as a day to honor the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli occupation prisons and to support their legitimate right to freedom. The date was chosen because it commemorates the release of prisoner Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi in the first prisoner exchange between the Palestinians and Israel. Accordingly, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day considers all those who have served time in prison as “icons of resistance,” thereby representing all Palestinians who have been under brutal occupation for the past 76 years.

In an interview with the New Arab, Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s coordinator, confirmed that “Palestinians deeply value and honour the tremendous sacrifices that political prisoners have made for the liberation of their land. Each of their lives is precious to them.” She added that Palestinian prisoners are leaders of the resistance who have been detained because Israel understands that they are a threat to the settler colonial system and therefore wants to isolate them away from the world.

“From the earliest days of the Palestinian national liberation movement, imprisonment has always been a weapon used by the colonizer,” Kates confirmed, “and it has always been an inspiration for Palestinian resistance.” More than just the colonizer’s victims, she explained that prisoners are also “leaders, organizers and fighters. They organize behind bars and turn prisons into ‘revolutionary schools’ of the oppressed.” Because they are “central to the liberation movement,” their right to freedom must be part of the liberation struggle along with the isolation of Israel.