South African environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was assassinated by four gunmen in her own home on 22 October 2020. “Mama” Ntshangase was a leading member of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation, which is taking legal action against the proposed expansion of an open-cast coal mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele, situated near Hluhluwe–Imfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa. Photo: Rob Symons / All Rise

Record number of environmental activists murdered in 2020 – “Fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers, and biospheres”

By Claire Marshall 13 September 2021 (BBC) – A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group. 227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global […]

In a grim commentary on climate change, in 2009, British artist Banksy creatively vandalized this 1890 painting by Hudson River School painter Albert Bierstadt. The artwork, now titled Subject to Availability, has a surprise for Northwest locals — Mount Rainier. It sold at auction Wednesday, 28 June 2021, for 4,582,500 pounds, or $6,342,180. Photo: Christie’s Images Limited 2021

Artist Banksy’s “hijacked” painting of Mount Rainier sells for more than $6 million as global warming roasts the Pacific Northwest

By Megan Burbank 30 June 2021 (The Seattle Times) – As the Puget Sound region coped this week with extreme heat caused by climate change, one of the art world’s most audacious commentaries on the issue reemerged across the Atlantic. A 2009 work of creative vandalism from British artist and agitator Banksy, Subject to Availability, was sold […]

Screenshot from a video showing Greta Thunberg commenting on the world’s climate progress nearly five years after the Paris agreement, 10 December 2020. The world is in a ‘state of complete denial’. Photo: Guardian News

Greta Thunberg: We are still in denial despite Paris climate deal – “We are still speeding in the wrong direction”

11 December 2020 (AFP) – The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has condemned the “empty words” of world leaders in a video message released ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord on Saturday. Since world leaders pledged to limit global temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius in 2015, “a lot has happened, […]

Dame Jane Goodall is known for her work with primates, but she’s also an avid animal rights and environmental activist. In a CNET interviews, she says, “It’s because of our lack of respect for the environment that this terrible COVID-19 virus has shut down the world”. Photo: National Geographic

Dame Jane Goodall: “It’s because of our lack of respect for the environment that this terrible COVID-19 virus has shut down the world”

By Bonnie Burton 23 April 2020 (CNET) – Jane Goodall has a lot to say about how human disregard for animals and the environment brought on the coronavirus pandemic. But the famed British primatologist believes there’s still a chance we can repair our relationship with the natural world, a point she stresses in the new National Geographic […]

Number of women murdered in Mexico, 2016-2019. In 2019, 1,006 women were victims of femicide – 580 more than in 2015. Data: Executive Secretariat of the National System of Public Safety (SESNSP). Graphic: The Guardian

Thousands of Mexican women strike to protest femicide – “Every day we have more evidence that they are killing us specifically for being women”

By Maya Averbuch 9 March 2020 MEXICO CITY (The Guardian) – As rush-hour began on Monday morning, there were no ticket-sellers in Mexico City subway stations. Nor were there female tellers at many of the banks. Nail salons, massage parlors, and hairdressers closed. And in cities across the country, far fewer women were on the […]

Map showing climate risk by country, 2017. The climate risk of each country is based on its ND-GAIN Index score for 2017. The ND-GAIN Index is a composite measure, with a range of 0-100, of a country’s vulnerability to climate change and its readiness to improve resilience. Vulnerability is quantified by the level of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of six life-supporting sectors (food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat and infrastructure). Readiness measures a country’s ability to realize adaptive actions in the economic, governance and social spheres. Data: University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative Index (available at https://gain.nd.edu/). Graphic: UNDESA

U.N. warns that runaway inequality is destabilizing the world’s democracies – “Efforts to reduce inequality will inevitably challenge the interests of certain individuals and groups. At their core, they affect the balance of power.”

By Christopher Ingraham 11 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – Runaway inequality is eroding trust in democratic societies and paving the way for authoritarian and nativist regimes to take root, according to a dire new report from the United Nations. The findings note that solutions — including robust social safety nets, an active redistribution of wealth and […]

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg listens to a speech by President Trump during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, 21 January 2020. Photo: Gian Ehrenzeller / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

As Trump lashes out at “prophets of doom” in Davos, Greta Thunberg calls for climate action – “I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

By Rick Noack 21 January 2020 (The Washington Post) – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and President Trump offered two opposing visions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, with Trump lashing out at what he said were “perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse” as Thunberg inveighed against […]

Youths pull out an ox stuck in muddy waters in the drying Mabwematema dam in Zimbabwe on 25 December 2019. Photo: Zinyange Auntony / AFP / Getty Images

The 2010s were a lost decade for climate. We can’t afford a repeat, scientists warn.

By Sarah Kaplan 31 December 2019 (The Washington Post) – At the start of the last decade, Kallan Benson was 5 years old, her favorite story was “The Secret Garden,” and Earth was in the midst of its warmest year on record. Benson had heard about climate change (her mother is an environmental scientist), but she […]

Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. When asked about abrupt clikmate change, she says that we’re witnessing an exciting “feminist climate renaissance”. Photo: Violetta Markelou / Huffington Post

We spoke to five climate experts about what gives them hope – “I have a tenuous relationship with hope these days, but I am certainly bolstered by the fact that we already have all the solutions we need”

By Kyla Mandel 26 December 2019 (Huffington Post) – This year comes to a close after an onslaught of bleak and terrifying revelations about the state of our planet. Glaciers are melting, species are dying, forests are burning and climate tipping points ― thresholds which, if breached, will usher in uncontrollable warming ― are about […]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, Spain on 11 December 2019. Photo: Cristina Quicler

Five reasons the COP25 climate talks failed – “The world is screaming out for climate action but this summit has responded with a whisper”

25 December 2019 (AFP) – The climate summit in Madrid earlier this month did not collapse — but by almost any measure it certainly failed. Five years after the fragile UN process yielded the world’s first universal climate treaty, COP25 was billed as a mopping-up session to finish guidelines for carbon markets, thus completing the […]

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