Warming Trends: A Famed Mountain Hut Falls Victim to Warming, Climate Concerns Brazil’s Voters and an Author Explores the Intersection of Environmentalism and Social Justice

CULTURE

Historic Hut Hits by Heat

Canada’s 100-year-old cultural heritage site will be demolished in the coming year as it is a safety concern for mountaineers. The culprit? Climate change.

Abbot Pass Hut is a rustic cabin located nearly 10,000 feet above sea level on the border of Alberta and British Columbia in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. The hut was built by Swiss mountaineers in 1922. It was used for almost a century by mountain climbers who were trying to scale the difficult peaks around it. The stone structure is Canada’s second-highest standing permanent structure and was designated a National Historic Site in 1992. 

Parks Canada, the agency responsible for managing the site, received reports in 2016 indicating that the slope supporting the building was being eroded by melting snow and ice. Parks Canada closed the hut to visitors. A team of geotechnical engineers was brought in to stabilize the slope. However, the extreme conditions proved to be difficult. 

“The snow-free period up there is weeks, not months,” said Alex Kolesch, a senior advisor with Parks Canada.

In 2018, engineers spent hundreds of millions of dollars stabilizing the hut. But the 2019 summer was too brief to accomplish any of that. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 caused another year of delays. Kolesch explained that the erosion was too much by the summer of 2021. This was likely due to the Extreme heat experienced in western Canada during summer. The hut poses a safety risk for hikers below, and can’t be moved, he stated. It must be removed. 

Kolesch confirmed that the hut would be removed this summer. However Parks Canada was still able to capture 3D photos of the shelter in the summer 2021, which will be used to digitally preserve the shelter in the future. He stated that Parks Canada plans to work with Indigenous groups to determine the best way to do this. 

“We’re definitely saddened by the loss of this Alpine refuge due to the effects of climate change,” Kolesch said. “We look forward to exploring ways to continue to commemorate this important part of Canada’s heritage and this national historic site.”

POLITICS

Brazil’s Political Climate is Warming to Environmental Issues

New survey data has revealed that Brazil’s majority believe climate change is real and is being caused by humans, just months before the country holds its presidential election. This could spell doom for President Jair Bolsonaro who is up for reelection this October.

Bolsonaro, a former military captain of the right-wing, has oversaw a number of events. Sharp increaseDuring his presidency, which began on 2019, he deforested the Amazon rainforest. Critics also have Accused Bolsonaro is accused of crimes against nature and Indigenous peoples. Bolsonaro is challenged in this case by Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, a former president of Brazil’s left-wing Left. He supports more environmentally progressive policies. 

A new survey of 2,600 Brazilians conducted by the Institute for Technology & Society of Rio, the Brazilian survey research firm IPEC and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 96 percent of respondents believe global warming is happening, and 77 percent believe it is mainly caused by human activity. Forty-five percent of respondents said they had voted for politicians in the past based on their policies defending the environment, and 81 percent said the issue of climate change was “very important” to them.

Nearly all respondents said that they had heard about the fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. Most respondents believe that the fires have become worse, with 75 percent saying that they are caused by human activities. Some Farmers and ranchers illegally torch rainforest patches Clear land for agriculture, mostly cattle raising. AndClimate change is driving worsening droughts More fires are likely. 

37% of respondents believed that governments should be responsible in solving climate change. Five percent believed that governments should address the Amazon fires.

Although experts expect that economic issues will likely be top of mind for the nation’s voters, who are facing unprecedented unemployment and inflation as the country struggles to recover from the pandemic, Brazilian sociologist and political commentator Sérgio Abranches said during a press conference that environmental issues will be a factor at the polls.

These questions are similar to those that the Yale program has asked Americans for many years. Anthony Leiserowitz from Yale, the Yale program director, pointed out that climate change is less polarizing in Brazil than it is in the U.S.

“[Brazil]In just seven short months, the world’s largest and most important elections will be held. It will literally determine the future of Brazil, it will almost certainly determine the future of much of the natural environment, including the future of the Amazon,” Leiserowitz said. “Brazilians will be going to the polls and making truly historic decisions in just a few months. And climate change will be at least one of the issues that will be on their mind.”

CULTURE

A young Black woman was named after the police shootings of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, and Tamir Rice. Leah Thomas was troubled that her environmental science classes and the wider environmental community didn’t seem to acknowledge the growing Black Lives Matter movement. 

Her intuition was clear about the connections between environmentalism, racial justice, and environmentalism. She reached her tipping point when George Floyd was shot and killed by police in May 2020. In a Instagram: Post, she wrote, “Social justice cannot wait. It is not an optional ‘add-on’ to environmentalism.” The post went viral and sparked a new organization: Intersectional EnvironmentalistThe website aims at educating on identity and environmentalism. 

Thomas’s new book, The Intersectional EnvironmentalistShe dives deeper into her mission. Thomas was interviewed by Inside Climate News. This conversation was lightly edited for clarity and length.

What is the definition of intersectional environmentalism?

I would call intersectional environmentalism a type of environmentalism that advocates for protection of both peoples and the planet. This goes beyond just arguing that the exploitations of the Earth are linked. It is possible to see how a society may prioritize its people by the way it degrades the Earth. Sometimes it’s similar. 

It also suggests that you should amplify the voices of people who have been sort of left out of mainstream conservation or environmental history because their stories, and solutions, are also very important. 

Please tell me about the disconnect between environmental movements and those that surround other identities. How can these movements come together?

It is so obvious that you should protect the planet and people, just as if they were your own inhabitants. I don’t know what went wrong in conservation. It’s probably like a human superiority thing. But we are still animals. Humans are also animals. So when we’re talking about conservation, it should include people, but for such a long time, that hasn’t really been the case.

So it’s kind of this push and pull in the environmental space of, do we include humans now? Are we missing something? We must include humans as we are all responsible for the current climate crisis. The civil rights movement has been somewhat separated from the environment movement throughout history. That’s a lot of people power. That’s a lot of momentum. And I’m trying to make the argument, we’re fighting for a lot of similar things. These movements should unify where there is overlap or intersectionality.

Social media has played a huge role in your reach and influence. What have your experiences with social media in spreading information about climate and justice issues?

I’ve seen a lot of success using social media because it reaches people where they’re at. If they’re on social media, and they’re more likely to read an infographic or listen to a Tik Tok with the same data than they are to go read a scientific article. I, along with other scientists who are familiar can simplify the science in a way that is understandable by most people. And to me as an eco-communicator, as I call it, I think that’s what climate information should be moving forward. I think every environmentalist, if you’re studying it formally, should learn how to break down that information so you can become an advocate to save the planet. Because if you have all this information but no one understands, then what’s the use?

SCIENCE

Sea Salt: Learn about Water on Land

Climate change is driving an intensification of global water cycles—dry places are facing longer and hotter droughts, and wet places are facing deluges that can cause dangerous and destructive floods.  

Although this much is known it has been difficult for scientists to study the global freshwater cycle. That’s because the vast majority of rainfall and evaporation of water into the atmosphere occurs over the oceans, where there are no permanent weather stations to provide long term data on precipitation and evaporation. 

But a new studyThis data gap was closed by finding a solution. Researchers from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, measured the saltiness of ocean water instead of measuring how much water was entering and leaving the oceans. Saltier water has had to experience more evaporation which left behind a higher concentration salt. However, less salty water has had to endure more rainfall which has diluted the salt content. 

“The water cycle ends up leaving a signature or a fingerprint on the ocean’s patterns of salinity,” said lead author Taimoor Sohail, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New South Wales.

Sohail and colleagues discovered that freshwater cycles have increased two to four-fold since 1970 than climate models suggest. The journal Nature published their findings last month. 

Sohail hopes the study’s findings help scientists build more accurate climate models and provide policymakers reliable information on how freshwater resources will change in their communities. 

“Society will need to adapt by creating more climate resilient and extreme weather resilient infrastructure, and also creating workarounds so that they can continue to irrigate crops, navigate freshwater channels and lakes, and have an adequate source of drinking water,” Sohail said. “What this study is saying is that these changes are coming faster than we thought. And so the adaptation and mitigation measures that are well documented need to come faster.”