What does it mean to be undocumented in the United States, to live in fear of loved ones being deported, to feel the formalized language of being ‘alien’ knowing it is a tactic to dehumanize us? When asked to share our stories, which ones do we tell?
I’ve learned over time how to decipher which version to share and which aspects to keep. For me, it depends on the community in which I tell it and the sense of ‘belonging’ I perceive from the places I share it.
Understanding climate change has meant digging into history, my ancestral knowledge, why my parents moved from Zacatecas, Mexico, to Minnesota, and embracing what makes a place ‘home.’ I learned that Zacatecas was a hot spot for mining, silver, copper, and gold as exports to Canada and the United States. My family held these jobs, which meant handling the TNT for land blasting and other unimaginable work. My dad was a worker in an open mine just a few miles from our home, a profession that left him with the scars to prove the physical demand. When I was born in 1992, both of my parents were already sick, and I was born with a lot of health complications. Doctors told my parents that if we remained in the community, it would be challenging to keep me healthy. I am not sure that my parents made the connection between heavy industry and our sickness. Still, my parents desperately wanted me to be healthy, so we migrated to the U.S. Now, I see the interconnections with corporations who positioned jobs that poisoned us as viable opportunities to make a living and that my parents had to choose between staying and remaining sick or migrating for the promise of health and a better life. I see the sacrifice that they made for me.
I know how people think and talk about immigrants, and I know the importance of what it means to share my story as part of this collective narrative. I know that it will resonate with so many others. I am holding the fear of wanting to protect my people while learning the importance of being more open so that we can be visible and represented in the climate conversation, too.
Moving to Minneapolis, we rented a room, and my school was near the HERC (Hennepin Energy Recovery Center), the state’s largest trash incinerator. We did not know the HERC was burning 1,000 tons of trash per day, with it emitting mercury, lead, carbon monoxide, and dioxins into the air. We did not know that the surrounding community had asthma rates in children five times the national average. I spent childhood years playing in the neighborhood, but I only learned about the dangers of the HERC a year ago. I now recall when we moved to the suburb of Richfield, that my sickness had gotten better. The HERC was built 34 years ago, and for a long time was positioned as “green energy.” I wonder how might things have been different if this information had been more openly available? I am grateful for the work of community groups, environmental justice activists and organizers who are dedicated to telling these truths. Yet, there is more work to do to make this environmental injustice and its importance known in the Latinx community. In my role, as Associate Executive Director of COPAL (Communities Organizing Latinx Power and Action), I have the power and privilege to do something about it.
This begins with recognizing the known patterns: who are the culprits in Minnesota and our homelands? When I was 9 years old, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I began to unpack the layered and cumulative impacts of environmental injustice following our family from one community to the next. The commonalities are powerful corporations that share a greed that puts people last, extraction of land and labor, and monies made for profit first. Thinking about my origin story in Mexico, I now understand that there were policies in place to lessen harm to the health and viability of the community that could have made it possible for my family to stay, but they were not followed. Here in Minnesota, the Cumulative Impacts Environmental Justice Bill passed in the 2023 Legislative Session, yet there are still loopholes for industries to pollute without facing penalties. So, we must keep asking questions and showing up to hold those accountable. To implement laws that protect our people and put the community first. The journey of learning about who I am, the connections of environmental justice in my own story, and knowing what we have been through to be here fills me with mixed feelings about how people talk or think about immigrants as less than. In reality, climate change and the corporations responsible have played a significant role in migrant stories, and that connection is often overlooked.
In 2016, the hateful rhetoric coming from the President of the United States left an impact on me. I remember doing homework at the dining table after school, and my mom was in the kitchen. We listened as he talked on the news, saying that illegal immigrants were not people but animals. Something deeply stirred in me as I heard threats to make our existence here less visible. As a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient, which granted me temporary protection, otherwise known as a “Dreamer.” This status and more were at stake, and it was deeply personal. I started teaching citizenship classes so that my community members in Minnesota could become eligible to vote and change the narrative to reflect more accurately seeing people as human beings worthy of that dignity.
With a group of friends, we started teaching courses in Spanish to address the language barrier for a test only offered in English. The first class had thirty participants, and it became an incredibly successful program. In 2018, I met Francisco Segovia, the Executive Director at COPAL. That began our work together at COPAL to address the immediate needs of the Latinx community through policy change. In my role, I work at the intersection of environmental justice, health, wellness, and communications. My pull into this work directly relates to my lived experiences, but making the climate connection to the migrant story is not always accessible to people. It requires deeper awareness and learning for people to unpack their own stories. A big part of this work is listening to people and asking curious questions: where is home? Where are our families from? What cultural aspects, favorite foods, and celebrations make us who we are? What represents home, and how can Minnesota be part of that?
Working on the cumulative impacts of environmental justice and with community members to pass legislation has shown me the importance of sharing our dreams and stories. Crafting stories to share in community are the powerful testimonies that will be essential in public commenting to impact rulemaking where the details and accountability matter and must reflect our lived realities and experiences. Unfortunately, I am not alone in deciphering which version of the story I can tell based on the audience. But I want to get better at leaning into the fullness of what I want to share, despite the reception level I receive or the willingness of mainstream audiences to hear my words. Mostly, I want to share my story in the presence of my beloved community to help others see themselves in my migrant story.
Written by Carolina Oritz, with story coaching support from Change Narrative LLC.
Carolina Ortiz has been with COPAL since its founding in 2018. She led the communications team for two years and is now the associate executive director. Carolina was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and is currently studying communications at the University of Minnesota. A DREAMer herself, her passion for social justice stems from her own experiences and those of her community.
Carolina is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
The post The Universal Right to a Healthy Environment appeared first on Climate Generation.
Climate Change
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Pygmy Blue Whale Management Plan
To secure their approvals, Woodside had to develop a plan for how they would manage the significant risks to threatened green turtles if the project proceeds. We’ve had two independent scientists provide a technical assessment of Woodside’s management plan for whales and turtles and their findings are gobsmacking.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Turtle Management Plan
Jackie Chesnutt, who lives outside San Angelo, is tired of pollution from wells she says should have been plugged years ago. Experts say Texas rules allow companies to defer plugging wells for far too long.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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