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More than £494bn subsidies a year are harmful to the climate, says report

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Wednesday, September 18, 2024

More than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid.Developed countries are also actively subsidising such harmful activities. The UK, for instance, devotes about $7.3bn a year to effective subsidies for fossil fuels.Taken altogether, the sums involved in the developing world would be enough to pay for the education of all children in sub-Saharan Africa three and a half times over, each year.By contrast, developing countries are receiving only a fraction of those sums in climate finance, which would help them to move away from dirty and polluting industries towards a clean and low-carbon economy. Renewable energy projects in the developing world are receiving 40 times less than the fossil fuel sector, the analysis found.Subsidies for dirty industries and intensive agriculture have for decades been one of the most intractable obstacles to shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing. The International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and other institutions have repeatedly called for a reduction in these subsidies.However, some of them are used to benefit the poor or to soften the blow of price rises or other shocks. That was the case in recent years in the UK when energy prices rose, prompting the government to help households with an energy price guarantee. Other countries made similar moves, which, ironically, along with the soaring prices helped fossil fuel companies to an unprecedented bonanza, much of which is being re-invested in new oil and gas exploration instead of clean and renewable energy.But in many countries, subsidies are directed towards industries regarded as politically important, or which have powerful lobbies.ActionAid analysts, describing their findings in a report entitled How the Finance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the global south, published on Wednesday, said many of the subsidies were owing to “corporate capture” of the government and public institutions.“This report exposes wealthy corporations’ parasitic behaviour,” said Arthur Larok, the secretary general of ActionAid International. “They are draining the life out of the global south by siphoning public funds and fuelling the climate crisis.”But he blamed governments in rich countries too. “Sadly the promises of climate finance by the global north are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades,” he said. “It is time for this circus to end. We need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis.”ActionAid also found it was not necessary for developing countries to adopt the high-carbon and intensive agricultural practices that have destroyed nature and created the climate crisis, as developing countries could move swiftly to a low-carbon model that would still enable them to grow and prosper.The authors called for an end to destructive subsidies, more public finance from rich countries to be directed towards low-carbon efforts in the developing world, and for more stringent regulation of the banking sector that would require minimum standards for human rights, and social and environmental considerations, before finance is directed towards destructive industries.

ActionAid says ‘parasitic behaviour’ is fuelling the climate crisis and represents ‘corporate capture’ of public financeMore than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid. Continue reading...

More than $650bn (£494bn) a year in public subsidies goes to fossil fuel companies, intensive agriculture and other harmful industries in the developing world, new data has shown.

The subsidies entrench high greenhouse gas emissions and are fuelling the destruction of the natural world, according to a report from the charity ActionAid.

Developed countries are also actively subsidising such harmful activities. The UK, for instance, devotes about $7.3bn a year to effective subsidies for fossil fuels.

Taken altogether, the sums involved in the developing world would be enough to pay for the education of all children in sub-Saharan Africa three and a half times over, each year.

By contrast, developing countries are receiving only a fraction of those sums in climate finance, which would help them to move away from dirty and polluting industries towards a clean and low-carbon economy. Renewable energy projects in the developing world are receiving 40 times less than the fossil fuel sector, the analysis found.

Subsidies for dirty industries and intensive agriculture have for decades been one of the most intractable obstacles to shifting the global economy to a low-carbon footing. The International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and other institutions have repeatedly called for a reduction in these subsidies.

However, some of them are used to benefit the poor or to soften the blow of price rises or other shocks. That was the case in recent years in the UK when energy prices rose, prompting the government to help households with an energy price guarantee. Other countries made similar moves, which, ironically, along with the soaring prices helped fossil fuel companies to an unprecedented bonanza, much of which is being re-invested in new oil and gas exploration instead of clean and renewable energy.

But in many countries, subsidies are directed towards industries regarded as politically important, or which have powerful lobbies.

ActionAid analysts, describing their findings in a report entitled How the Finance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the global south, published on Wednesday, said many of the subsidies were owing to “corporate capture” of the government and public institutions.

“This report exposes wealthy corporations’ parasitic behaviour,” said Arthur Larok, the secretary general of ActionAid International. “They are draining the life out of the global south by siphoning public funds and fuelling the climate crisis.”

But he blamed governments in rich countries too. “Sadly the promises of climate finance by the global north are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades,” he said. “It is time for this circus to end. We need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis.”

ActionAid also found it was not necessary for developing countries to adopt the high-carbon and intensive agricultural practices that have destroyed nature and created the climate crisis, as developing countries could move swiftly to a low-carbon model that would still enable them to grow and prosper.

The authors called for an end to destructive subsidies, more public finance from rich countries to be directed towards low-carbon efforts in the developing world, and for more stringent regulation of the banking sector that would require minimum standards for human rights, and social and environmental considerations, before finance is directed towards destructive industries.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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This Invasive Disease-Carrier Is Showing Up in Places It Really Shouldn’t Be

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It can carry life-threatening diseases. It’s difficult to find and hard to kill. And it’s obsessed with human blood.  Aedes aegypti is a species of mosquito that people like Tim Moore, district manager of a mosquito control district […]

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It can carry life-threatening diseases. It’s difficult to find and hard to kill. And it’s obsessed with human blood.  Aedes aegypti is a species of mosquito that people like Tim Moore, district manager of a mosquito control district on the Western Slope of Colorado, really don’t want to see. “Boy, they are locked into humans,” Moore said. “That’s their blood meal.”  This mosquito species is native to tropical and subtropical climates, but as climate change pushes up temperatures and warps precipitation patterns, Aedes aegypti—which can spread Zika, dengue, chikungunya and other potentially deadly viruses—is on the move.  It’s popping up all over the Mountain West, where conditions have historically been far too harsh for it to survive. In the last decade, towns in New Mexico and Utah have begun catching Aedes aegypti in their traps year after year, and just this summer, one was found for the first time in Idaho.  Now, an old residential neighborhood in Grand Junction, Colorado, has emerged as one of the latest frontiers for this troublesome mosquito. The city, with a population of about 70,000, is the largest in Colorado west of the Continental Divide. In 2019, the local mosquito control district spotted one wayward Aedes aegypti in a trap. It was odd, but the mosquitoes had already been found in Moab, Utah, about 100 miles to the southwest. Moore, the district manager, figured they’d caught a hitchhiker and that the harsh Colorado climate would quickly eliminate the species. “I concluded it was a one-off, and we don’t have to worry too much about this,” Moore said.  Tim Moore, district manager of Grand River Mosquito Control District, explains that managing a new invasive species of mosquito in Grand Junction has required the district to increase spending on new mosquito traps and staff.Isabella Escobedo/Inside Climate News But then, a few years later, it happened again. They found two more of the invasive mosquito species in traps in 2023. “Coincidence is not a word you use much in science,” said Hannah Livesay, biologist at the Grand River Mosquito Control District, which is based in Grand Junction.  The team bought different traps and adjusted their techniques to hunt for the mosquito. Scientific literature and mosquito researchers told them the effort was bound to be pointless. It was unlikely the mosquito would make it through the winter.  Then, the results started coming in. In 2024, the first year of the Aedes aegypti surveillance program, the district caught 796 adults and found 446 eggs.  These mosquitoes weren’t just surviving in Colorado—they were thriving. Mosquitoes are often called the most dangerous creatures on the planet for their ability to spread life-threatening diseases to humans. Of those, malaria, carried by female Anopheles mosquitoes, has long been one of the most devastating.  However, as climate change allows Aedes aegypti to move northward, survive at higher elevations and stay active for longer into the fall, the dengue virus is fast emerging as one of the most dangerous of the world’s diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and ticks, researchers say. Between 2000 and 2024, dengue cases reported to the World Health Organization increased more than twentyfold, as climate change, urbanization and global travel and trade pushed the mosquito vector for the disease into new areas. Climate change has also lengthened the season during which the insect can breed and thrive in areas where it’s endemic. About half the world’s population is now at risk of dengue, according to the WHO, and between 100 and 400 million infections occur each year.  The virus is often mild or asymptomatic, but for some people, it can become severe, so painful that it’s nicknamed “breakbone fever.” It can even be deadly. More than 2,500 dengue-related deaths have been reported globally in 2025, with outbreaks in Brazil, India, Australia and other countries. In the US, dengue is most common in Florida, where the Aedes aegypti mosquito has thrived for centuries in the subtropical and tropical climates.  In Colorado, state medical entomologist Chris Roundy said that while the mosquito is in Grand Junction, the state’s public health officials are not too worried about disease spread—yet. “The presence of those mosquitoes does not mean that dengue is going to be there,” Roundy said.  For the mosquitoes to spread disease, they need to feed on a human who is already sick: Someone who traveled to Florida, contracted dengue and then returned to Grand Junction while they’re still infected, for example.  In other words, the chances of an outbreak of dengue or another of the diseases Aedes aegypti carries in western Colorado remain pretty slim. Still, he said, “we are keeping a very close eye on [the mosquitoes] to see if they expand their area in Grand Junction, or if we start seeing them in other counties.” Containers, labeled by year, display the mosquitoes caught by the Grand River Mosquito Control District.Isabella Escobedo/Inside Climate News On a warm and sunny October morning in Grand Junction, David Garrett, team lead for the Grand River Mosquito Control District’s Aedes aegypti program, parked his white truck on what the team calls their “epicenter street” in the old residential neighborhood of Orchard Mesa, where Aedes aegypti found a foothold in Colorado.  It was collection day. Across the rest of Colorado, mosquito control operations aimed at preventing the spread of West Nile virus are winding down. Populations of the native Culex tarsalis mosquitoes, the primary vector for the virus, were declining rapidly in the autumn chill.  But in Grand Junction, Garrett is still in the field looking for the invasive mosquito species that seems to get active in the fall. The traps need to be close to humans—the food source—and an inviting place for the mosquitoes to lay eggs. Unlike the mosquitoes that are native to the Western Slope, which breed in standing water like ditches and ponds, Aedes aegypti mosquitos prefer to breed in containers like potted plant saucers, watering cans, and decorative yard fixtures. The traps for them look like unassuming black plastic buckets with an oddly shaped funnel attached to their tops. The district has snuck them into corners of front yards, between bushes and along fences throughout the neighborhood.  Garrett plucks out the sticky papers that have been inside the traps for the previous week, replaces them with clean sticky papers and adds a bit of fresh water. He’ll take the samples back to the lab to count how many Aedes aegypti they snagged. Various bugs collected from the Grand River Mosquito Control District’s trap, including an Aedes aegypti mosquito. Every trap is examined, and each invasive mosquito is counted.Isabella Escobedo/Inside Climate News But before doing that, he pauses to peel one of the sticky papers apart and counts four invasive mosquitoes stuck to it. Their jet black bodies with reflective white markings are easy to differentiate from the dusty brown of the native desert mosquitoes. As of mid-October, the district had caught 526 adult Aedes aegypti in 2025, all in the Orchard Mesa area. The mosquitoes don’t lay all their eggs in one basket. They skip from container to container, laying a few eggs in each. “You don’t find one and find them all,” said Livesay, the district’s biologist. “So, it’s really difficult to track them down.”  Back in the car, control district staff wound through the neighborhood. From the passenger seat, Livesay pointed with a frustrated sigh at an old tire lying in a yard. “Tires are one of the most common places you find them,” she said.  As the climate warms, “Aedes aegypti is performing at an extraordinarily high level.” The species’ preference for backyards and gardens makes it incredibly difficult to control, Livesay said. The district had to get permission from dozens of homeowners in the Orchard Mesa area to set up and maintain traps on private property, and only a handful of homeowners have allowed them to spray insecticides in their yards.  Public awareness of the mosquito’s presence, and the potential health risk it could pose, has been gradual; the district has passed out fliers and chatted with residents, but the campaign doesn’t appear to have quite taken root. On the day the team checked its traps, several residents said that they weren’t aware that an invasive mosquito was present in their neighborhood.  The new species is also expensive to control: It has cost the district about $15,000 this year in new traps, additional staff who must stay later into the season and different insecticides after learning that the mosquitoes had a resistance to the one they use for the native mosquitoes—permethrin. Given how costly it is to control them, further expansion of their range on the Western Slope is Moore’s biggest concern. Right now, Aedes aegypti occupies about 100 acres of the Orchard Mesa neighborhood. He doesn’t want it to gain any more ground. “If we can’t get rid of them, or at least confine them,” Moore says, “that’s a huge game-changer for us.”  While it’s virtually impossible to know how the mosquitoes got into Colorado, experts said, the pathway could’ve been as benign as a Grand Junction resident bringing home a potted plant from out of state. Robert Hancock, a mosquito researcher and biology professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said that, since the mosquito follows humans and is easily transported by the containers it breeds in, he’s not surprised when it pops up in Colorado and other high and cold locations. What does surprise him is when the mosquito can survive winters in those areas.  Hancock noted it’s recently been found to endure the winters in California, Oregon, and Utah—and now in Colorado.  “That’s the scary part, because it made it to the next summer in Grand Junction,” Hancock said, speaking in his Denver lab while feeding his own colony of Aedes aegypti, reared for research. (He allows the mosquitoes, which are completely free of disease, to feed on his own arm.)  Hannah Livesay, biologist at the Grand River Mosquito Control District, explains at her lab in Grand Junction how warmer winters likely make it easier for an invasive species of mosquito to survive in Colorado. Isabella Escobedo/Inside Climate News As the climate warms, Hancock said, “Aedes aegypti is performing at an extraordinarily high level.” More than half of pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change, a 2022 article in the journal Nature Climate Change found. Livesay, the biologist, suspects the newcomer mosquitoes are wiggling their way into basements and greenhouses to weather the Colorado winter, which doesn’t have as many freezing nights as it used to.  Grand Junction had only 17 days of below-freezing temperatures in 2024, the fewest on record, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Typically, the area gets more than two months’ worth of freezing weather. Winters there have, on average, warmed 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970.  “We need a cold winter for the mosquitoes to not make it through,” Livesay said. “Things are hovering just above freezing, and they’re able to last.”  This story was produced with support from the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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Business Groups Ask Supreme Court to Pause California Climate Reporting Laws in Emergency Appeal

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is asking the Supreme Court to pause new California laws expected to require thousands of companies to report emissions and climate-risk information

The laws are the most sweeping of their kind in the nation, and a collection of business groups argued in an emergency appeal that they violate free-speech rights. The measures were signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and reporting requirements are expected to start early next year. Lower courts have so far refused to block the laws, which the state says will increase transparency and encourage companies to assess how they can cut their emissions. The Chamber of Commerce asked the justices to put the laws on hold while lawsuits continue to play out. One requires businesses that make more than $1 billion a year and operate in California to annually report their direct and indirect carbon emissions, beginning in 2026 and 2027, respectively. That includes planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels directly, as well as releases from activities such as delivering products from warehouses to stores and employee business travel. The Chamber of Commerce estimates it will affect about 5,000 companies, though state air regulators say it will apply to roughly 2,600.The other law requires companies that make more than $500,000 a year to biennially disclose how climate change could hurt them financially. The state Air Resources Board estimates more than 4,100 companies will have to comply.“Without this Court’s immediate intervention, California’s unconstitutional efforts to slant public debate through compelled speech will take effect and inflict irreparable harm on thousands of companies across the country,” the companies argued.Companies that fail to publish could be subject to civil penalties. ExxonMobil also challenged the laws in a lawsuit filed last month. The state has argued that the laws don’t violate the First Amendment because commercial speech isn’t protected the same way under the Constitution. In 2023, Newsom called the emissions-disclosure law an important policy and of the state's “bold responses to the climate crisis, turning information transparency into climate action.” The environmental group Ceres has said the information will help people decide whether to support the businesses. The conservative-majority Supreme Court has cast a skeptical eye on some environmental regulations in recent years, including a landmark decision that limited the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in 2022, and another that halted the agency’s air-pollution-fighting “good neighbor” rule.Austin reported from Sacramento. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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Indigenous groups demand attention at UN climate talks in Brazil

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Brazil set out to host this year's United Nations climate talks with a promise to spotlight Indigenous peoples whose way of life depends on the Amazon rainforest. Those groups are seizing the chance. For the second time this week, Indigenous protesters on Friday disrupted entry to the main venue for COP30...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Brazil set out to host this year’s United Nations climate talks with a promise to spotlight Indigenous peoples whose way of life depends on the Amazon rainforest. Those groups are seizing the chance. For the second time this week, Indigenous protesters on Friday disrupted entry to the main venue for COP30 to demand progress on climate change and other issues. Though their march was peaceful — it required conference participants to detour through a side door, leading to long lines to get in for the day’s events — one protester likened it to “a scream” over rights violated and decisions made without consulting the Indigenous. “I wish that warmth would melt the coldness of people,” Cris Julião Pankararu, of the Pankararu people in the Caatinga biome of Brazil, said. Brazilian military personnel kept demonstrators from entering the site. The protesters, most in traditional Indigenous garb, formed a human chain around the entrance to keep people from getting in. Other groups of activists formed a secondary chain around them. Paolo Destilo, with the environmental group Debt for Climate, joined the human chain encircling the protesters, saying he wanted to give Indigenous communities a chance to have their voices heard. “This is worth any delays to the conference,” he said, adding: “If this is really to be Indigenous peoples’ COP, like officials keep saying, these types of demonstrations should be welcomed at COP30.” The two-week conference began Monday with countries offering updated national plans to fight climate change. Scientists say it appears likely the world will blow past a goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to hold Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. What protesters asked for Members of the Munduruku Indigenous group led the demonstration that blocked the main entrance, demanding a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “President Lula, we are here in front of COP because we want you to listen to us. We refuse to be sacrificed for agribusiness,” protesters said in a written statement in Portuguese released by the Munduruku Ipereg Ayu Movement. “Our forest is not for sale. We are the ones who protect the climate, and the Amazon cannot continue to be destroyed to enrich large corporations.” Munduruku leaders had a series of demands for Brazil. They included revoking plans for commercial development of rivers, canceling a grain railway project that has raised fears of deforestation and clearer demarcations of Indigenous territories. They also want a rejection of deforestation carbon credits. Conference president André Corrêa do Lago, a veteran Brazilian diplomat, met with the group as they blocked the entrance. He cradled a protester’s baby in his arms as he talked, smiling and nodding. After a prolonged discussion, do Lago and the protesters moved away from the entrance together. The entrance opened at 9:37 a.m. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change told conference participants “there is no danger” from what they called a peaceful demonstration. ‘We are listening’ Conference CEO Ana Toni said at a news conference that Belem is the most inclusive COP for Indigenous people with more than 900 Indigenous people registered, far exceeding the old record of 30. And she said they are being heard. “We are listening to their voices,” she said. “The reason for having a COP in the Amazon is for us to listen to the very people that are the most vulnerable.” Harjeet Singh, a veteran activist against the fossil fuels that are driving Earth’s dangerous warming, said the protest reflects frustration that past COPs “have not delivered.” “We should look at this as a message and signal from Indigenous people, who have not seen any progress over the past 33 years of COP, that all these conversations have not led to actions,” Singh said. “They are the custodians of biodiversity and climate and clearly, they are not satisfied with how this process is doing.” Warnings about ‘tipping point’ from extraction in Amazon Separately, Indigenous leaders from across the Ecuadorian Amazon used a COP30 side event in Belem to warn that oil drilling, mining and agribusiness expansion are pushing the rainforest closer to an irreversible tipping point. The session, hosted by Amazon Watch and Indigenous leaders from Kichwa and other nations, focused on the rollback of environmental and Indigenous protections, fossil-fuel contamination along the Napo and Amazon rivers, and demands for direct climate finance for Indigenous communities. Speakers also raised alarm about political decisions in Ecuador, including an upcoming referendum that Indigenous groups fear could weaken constitutional “rights of nature” and collective Indigenous rights. Leonardo Cerda, a Kichwa leader from Napo, said Indigenous leaders traveled more than 3,000 kilometers along the Napo and Amazon rivers to reach COP30. “It is very important for us that the rights of Indigenous peoples are recognized at the COP30 negotiating tables, because many times decisions made here directly affect our territory,” he said. “During our journey along the Napo and Amazon rivers, we were able to see how the fossil fuel industry has threatened an ecosystem as fragile as the Amazon and the peoples who live in it.” ___ Associated Press writer Steven Grattan contributed from Bogota, Colombia. ___ The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. ___ This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Climate
Indigenous

Kids most affected by climate change explore jobs to fix it at the Future Green Leaders Summit

A career fair for middle school students mixes learning and entertainment to get them excited about working in the green economy.

At the 2025 Future Green Leaders Summit, middle school students designed fire-resistant homes using AI, learned about jobs that support the climate and environment, and cheered on superheroes dressed as “Wind,” “Solar,” “Ethanol” and other energy sources as they squared off in a rap and dance battle.The day-long event, held at San Bernardino’s Historic Enterprise Building on Wednesday, was organized by the Southern California Regional Energy Network, which is administered by Los Angeles County and paid for by California Public Utility ratepayers.The approximately 500 students in attendance came from the San Bernardino and neighboring Rialto school districts that have Title 1 status, meaning the schools receive supplemental federal funding because they enroll a high percentage of pupils living in low-income households. In both districts, Latino, Black and Asian residents represent more than 80% of the population, according to the U.S. Census.Organizers said the event was in part intended to confront a disconnect in the green economy. Although students from poor households and families of color are more vulnerable to the effects of rising global temperatures, pollution, and food and energy scarcity, people from their communities are less likely to be employed in green industries. Women are underrepresented too. AY Young, right, a musician, founder and CEO of the Battery Tour and former U.N. youth ambassador, powers his live shows with solar batteries while talking to middle school students at the Future Green Leaders Summit in San Bernardino on Wednesday. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times) For instance, the U.S. solar workforce is 73% white and 70% male. The workforce overall is about 60% white and more than 50% female, according to the International Renewable Energy Council’s Solar Jobs Census.It’s hard for children to envision themselves in green careers when they don’t see people who look like them in those jobs, organizers said.“Kids, once they entered into high school, they have already made up their minds career-wise, and a lot of them are not going into STEM, especially females,” said Wendy Angel, referring to fields built on science, technology, engineering and math. Angel is the Southern California regional director for Emerald Cities, a nonprofit that works to bring diversity to the green economy. These imbalances were front of mind when Lujuanna Medina, the environmental initiatives division manager for L.A. County, came up with the idea to host a summit for middle school students four years ago.“We were like, ‘How do we reach them early on, before they reach high school? Let’s expose them to different parts of the green economy,’ ” Medina said. Golden Valley Middle School student Matthew Quintero looks through cards while learning about climate solutions and concepts of a game at the Future Green Leaders Summit in San Bernardino on Wednesday. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times) The fair, with its mix of live entertainment, hands-on workshops and a career expo, was designed to make the green industry and the idea of sustainability more relatable, said Ben Stapleton, executive director of U.S. Green Building Council, an advocacy and workforce development group based in L.A.That’s especially important given a host of recent research showing that a fear for the future of the planet is taking a toll on young people’s mental health and making them feel powerless.One solution, said Stapleton, is to break big concepts like “climate change” down into more accessible components. “This is what it means in terms of air quality. This is what it means in terms of biodiversity, and access to plants and greenspace,” said Stapleton. “When you give kids those tools, they create the change and they understand that ‘I can be a part of this.’ ”During one workshop, Marcela Oliva, a professor at the Los Angeles Trade-Tech College, showed students how to use the latest digital visualization and 3-D simulation tools to design homes and landscaping that incorporate wildfire-resilient building materials and plantings. Students react as the energy superhero character “Ethanol” educates middle-school students in a rap-style “Energy Battle Royale” performance at the Future Green Leaders Summit on Wednesday. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times) Elsewhere, students learned about energy-saving appliances, brainstormed solutions to problems such as the proliferation of plastic waste and deforestation and explored internship and professional job opportunities.Maximilian Valdovinos, 12, from San Bernardino, said that coming into the career fair, he was considering becoming a mechanic, but the event inspired him to consider possible careers in waste management.Thirteen-year-old Emily Zamora was a “maybe” on the idea of going into a green industry before the event’s end. But the activities she participated in made her reflect on the lack of tree cover and shade in the San Bernardino neighborhood where she lives and its potential effect on her health.“There’s very few trees where I live,” said Zamora, “and some of them are dead.”The organizers and workshop facilitators said they realize that not every student will leave the event wanting to pursue a green career. The idea is to plant a seed.

Climate
Energy
Forests

A Cartoonist Finds Hope Amid the Apocalypse(s)

In two powerful new graphic novels, Peter Kuper tackles climate change, disappearing insects, and other tough environmental topics — but gives us reasons to avoid despair. The post A Cartoonist Finds Hope Amid the Apocalypse(s) appeared first on The Revelator.

Peter Kuper has been publishing political cartoons and graphic novels since the 1980s, but his obsession with insects goes back even further, to when he was four years old and the cicadas emerged around his childhood home in Summit, New Jersey. “I keep this by my table,” says the cartoonist, holding a well-loved paperback copy of the classic Insects: A Guide to Familiar North American Insects up to his webcam. “This is my first insect book. All the pages are falling out.” Photo: The Revelator This year Kuper’s political cartooning and love of entomology intersected with the publication of two new environmental books — or maybe four, depending on how you count them. The first, Insectopolis: A Natural History (W.W. Norton, $35), is a graphic novel — five years in the making — about insects and the scientists who helped uncover their stories. Set after an apocalypse has wiped out all humans, the story follows the insects themselves as they travel through the New York Public Library, uncovering facts about their evolution, cultural importance, ecological roles, and more. It’s a fun, creative, colorful book that conveys Kuper’s fascination with insects and imparts more than a few lessons. Then comes Wish We Weren’t Here: Postcards From the Apocalypse (Fantagraphics, $19.99), a collection of wordless cartoons about climate change, plastic pollution, and other environmental issues originally published in the French satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Each one-page, four-panel strip starts with an image that slowly morphs into something more sinister and revelatory — like a drawing of an oil rig that becomes a dying junkie’s used needle. If that sounds confrontational and bleak, it is, but the book also turns the table a few times, transforming images of destruction into reasons for hope.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Peter Kuper (@kuperart) Kuper has also published two insect-themed coloring books this year, one based on Insectopolis, and another, Monarch’s Journey, adapting segments of his 2015 graphic novel, Ruins. The Revelator spoke with Kuper about these new books, the state of political cartooning, his new role as an insect conservation advocate, and what people can do to help insects and avoid despair. (This conversation has been edited lightly for brevity and style.) What’s it been like taking this insect conservation message on the road? You’re doing some book signings, some speaking tours. How are people reacting to it? It’s fulfilling the intent I had for the book, I believe, which is to get people who don’t know about insects or are afraid of insects, who generally will kill them first and ask questions later, to recognize that grocery stores would be empty of produce without insects. No chocolate, no coffee, no honey. I can tell every time I give a talk — I’ve seen the expression on people’s faces that something’s moved a little bit. In general, I try not to make my work a “scold.” I wanted to be easing people toward the correct door so that they choose the winning prize of survival. And you’re taking it to these new audiences with a Society of Illustrators show, and the bookstore audience, and the comics audience. Those aren’t necessarily always audiences who would get that conservation message. Right. And the form that it’s taking, I think, is making it a very easy pill to swallow. It’s sugar coated. I’m trying — even with Wish We Weren’t Here — to inject it with humor and have it take those kinds of mental leaps and connections that people can make in seeing something and recognizing it and maybe reconsidering something in a positive way.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Peter Kuper (@kuperart) After a lifetime of caring about insects, what did you take away from the five-year process of developing this book? My understanding of history and just coming to understand about the various extinction events that went on in the past, the essence of time and how little we humans can comprehend time. Also, just the miracle of evolution that has made the insects survive the way they have. Even something like the monarch butterfly, which I had learned about while working on Ruins — it goes through these three generations to travel 3,000 miles. The first generation’s one week, the next generation is two, and the last generation is six months. And they still don’t know how all the monarchs know how to get to this one forest in Mexico, which I also got to visit when I lived there. And there’s so many pieces of this history. I had no idea that dung beetles were the first animals — including humans — to navigate by the stars. And that they can follow the Milky Way at night to go in a straight line. And there’s so many fascinating aspects. The shine on apples comes from the lac bug, and 78 RPM records come from that same insect’s excretion. And one of the huge, fabulous aspects was reaching out to the entomologists. If I read a book, I would just look up the author online, reach out and say, “Hey, I’m working on this chapter on bees. Could you talk to me?” And every single one of them was wide open to it. In fact, slipped into Insectopolis are QR codes linking to interviews with four entomologists and the poet laureate from Mexico reading his poem about monarchs. With those interviews, I discovered that entomologists are like comic fans. The same way that comics were always considered low art, entomology was always considered low science. They were sort of put down by the people who were “all lab,” discovering DNA and poo-pooing E.O. Wilson, the ant expert at Harvard, because he was doing this dopey field work. Also, while I was at it, I was digging up entomologists and naturalists who were less known. It’s shocking how many of these people that made huge discoveries are essentially unknown. Margaret Collins, for example, was the first Black entomologist to get her Ph.D. She entered college at age 14. And she had to struggle with civil rights issues and racism and sexism to become the leading scientist on termites. I’m sure some people will be like, “Oh goody, termites.” But still, these are major areas. Architects have learned from the building structures that termites make. There are so many insects that we’ve learned from. The dragonfly has a nearly detachable head, and that’s how they figured out Velcro. Let’s shift and talk about Wish We Weren’t Here — which is a tough title to say. It twists the usual expression, “wish you were here,” and the brain does not want to go there. And I think that’s an interesting aspect of the book itself. You start with one image and twist it to another. How do you approach creating cartoons like that? My enthusiasm for wordless comics goes back to [Mad Magazine’s] “Spy vs. Spy,” which, I ironically ended up doing for 30 years. That and Sergio Aragonés’s wordless cartooning marginals and the books that he did. I get these images when I read an article. They sometimes form almost instantaneously. There’ll be a word in the article, something about “we’re gambling with climate change.” I start seeing the one-armed bandit. They just tend to form these flash images in my brain.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Peter Kuper (@kuperart) I just have to do these drawings. I read something in the paper, and I just feel like I need to have a response. And the way I can respond — aside from marching in the streets and knocking on doors, which I also do — is to do a drawing about it and share it. I was anxious to do Wish We Weren’t Here, because we’re right in the midst of even the term “climate change” being erased. So to do a whole book on climate change, it seemed like a rather vital time to do it. And though the comics in there are wordless, each page has the article that I referenced so that somebody could go and look more deeply into the subject. How does political cartooning like this compare to 10 or 20 years ago? Political cartooning has gone through such a contraction, but it’s still so powerful. Is there an audience for it? Is there an appetite for it? There’s a huge appetite for it. It’s just the delivery systems that have altered radically. You can use Instagram and social media to deliver things. I’ll post something, and, depending on the venue, it will get 100,000 likes. Or two. Do you have any advice for other people trying to use the arts or expression or protest as a way to get something out of themselves and to put some good into the world? Well, in every march I’ve been to, you get to see some of the most creative signs. They’re just people, clearly, they’re not professionals. They’re just coming up with a slogan, an image, sometimes a collage of a photo. It’s so powerful to go to a march with a sign that speaks your mind, especially if it’s with humor. Any given march is just loaded with that creative intervention, and I recommend that to everybody.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Peter Kuper (@kuperart) And please don’t stomp on insects every time you see them. Just help them out the door.  If you have a lawn, you can un-mow some of it. Don’t mow, and maybe plant the occasional pollinator — just make sure that they’re appropriate pollinators and not some kind of foreign specialty plant that actually is invasive or problematic. There’s just a lot of little actions that one can take all the time — and especially right now, not falling on fear to the point where you don’t get out and protest. That’s really important, because I really feel like what we’re being pushed toward is being scared enough just to stay home and disconnect. Previously in The Revelator: Comics for Earth: Eight New Graphic Novels About Saving the Planet and Celebrating Wildlife The post A Cartoonist Finds Hope Amid the Apocalypse(s) appeared first on The Revelator.

Climate
Animals
Extinction

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