The Climate Reality Project and Cool Globes launched KNOW TOMORROW, an effort that unites and amplifies thousands of students, activists, politicians and celebrities across the country demanding climate action. A key component is a National Campus Day of Action on Oct. 2, which will help focus and leverage existing millennial support for climate action at the state level with the Clean Power Plan and internationally in the lead up to the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris.
“We want the world to hear the voices of students demanding action on climate change,” said Tulane University student Lauren Curry. “This isn’t an issue about our children or grandchildren, this is about OUR generation—and we want to ensure a better tomorrow.”
KNOW TOMORROW focuses existing student efforts and synchronize the millennials’ voices already demanding action on climate change. This effort helps students recruit their peers and add their voices to the hundreds of thousands worldwide demanding strong emissions reductions commitments from their leaders at the Paris climate negotiations.
Student leaders are organizing on more than 50 campuses across the country that are critical for the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, including states that will hold political significance leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
Campus events include:
- Former Vice President & Climate Reality Chairman Al Gore will speak to students at Stanford University
- An afternoon of live music and speakers in the Boston Common
- All-day programming at Pomona College, including an eco-fair showcasing dozens of environmental groups and speakers on the subject of climate change
- A second-line jazz procession in New Orleans, hosted by students at Tulane University
- A 5k “Run Like There’s No Tomorrow” race in Washington, DC, with students from Georgetown University and George Washington University
- A “Don’t Let It Melt!”-themed Ice Cream Social at University of Dayton
KNOW TOMORROW not only has the support of students, professors, faculty and activists, but celebrities have weighed in to lend their support as well. Shepard Fairey is designing campus posters and musical artists—including Common, My Morning Jacket and Train, who appeared in the video below to promote the campaign. Environmental leaders such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will speak on campuses, and dozens of other celebrities will lend their help via social media.
“Support for climate action is building around the world – but we can do very little without the millennial generation,” said Climate Reality President & CEO Ken Berlin. “Young people, and especially students, bring an unmatched enthusiasm to their activism—they want a say in the future of the world they will inherit. Through this new effort, we hope to empower passionate millennials with the tools they need to help solve the climate crisis.”
“It’s inspiring to see so many young people champion this cause and take ownership over the future of our planet,” said Founder of Cool Globes and KNOW TOMORROW Wendy Abrams. “A lot has changed over the past decade and I think we’re finally hitting a tipping point with the movement. Our kids know what climate change means and they know what tomorrow holds if they don’t take action now.”
Climate Reality and Cool Globes’ partners in this effort include Defend Our Future, Earth Guardians, Farm-Aid, 350.org, Sierra Club, NRDC, Generation Progress, Live Earth, Next Gen Climate, OurTime.org, Grammy Museum, Climate Central, Participant Media, Ian Somerhalder Foundation, Ben and Jerry’s, Vita Coco, Kind Bars, Solar City, Climate Action Campaign, White House Council on Environmental Quality, Goldman Sachs and Waterkeeper Alliance.
KNOW TOMORROW will also help millennials add their voices to a number of other Climate Reality campaigns: student leaders will play key roles in the U.S. effort for the Road to Paris campaign, Climate Reality Leadership Corps trainings and 24 Hours of Reality: the World is Watching.
Universities with a KNOW TOMORROW presence include: Amherst College, Bates College, Boston College, Boston University, Brown University, Claremont Consortium of Colleges, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, Pomona College, Scripps College, Colorado State University, Dartmouth College, DePaul University, Duquesne University, Florida International University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Iowa State University, Kansas State, Loyola University Chicago, Michigan State University, Middlebury College, Morgan State University, New York University, North Carolina State University, Northwestern University, Ohio University, Pennsylvania State University, Plymouth University, Purdue University, Stanford University, Texas A&M University, Tufts University, Tulane University, University of California-Los Angeles, University of California-Irvine, University of Chicago, University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Georgia, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Miami, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of South Carolina, University of Texas-Austin, University of Texas-San Antonio, University of Vermont, University of Virginia, University of Washington, Vanderbilt University and Yale University.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.