Doctors know banning fossil fuel ads is a matter of life or death Melissa Lem & Samantha Green | Opinion | March 13th 2024 When health-care professionals joined MP Charlie Angus on stage to announce his private member’s bill to ban advertising for fossil fuels, it came as no surprise. Physicians and health-care workers lead the movement for a tobacco-style ban on fossil fuel advertising. In fact, over 35 health organizations in Canada — representing over 700,000 health-care professionals — called on the federal government to ban fossil fuel advertising nearly two years ago. This is because we see the harm fossil fuel pollution inflicts on our patients’ health first-hand. Countless studies link burning oil and gas to increases in childhood asthma, cancers, worse mental health, adverse pregnancy outcomes and premature death. To us, these statistics are people with names and faces who walk into our clinics each week. Outside the health-care community, Angus’s Bill C-372has drummed up some controversy. This is also no great surprise. We saw resistance from the tobacco industry when the health-care community first proposed banning cigarette advertising. In fact, the parallels with the tobacco fight are uncanny. Like tobacco, fossil fuels are a leading cause of death. Fossil fuel air pollution is responsible forone in seven premature deathsin Canada. These toxic emissions drive higher rates of disease that increase costs in an already overburdened health-care system. Canada now has the world’s highest rate of new childhood asthma cases after Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. When we also take into account fossil fuels’ lead role in driving the climate crisis, their health impacts balloon. In the past few years, Canada has experienced deadly heat waves, wildfire smoke, storms, floods and droughts. As global temperatures continue to rise, people in Canada will experience escalating harm and risks from extreme weather, increased vector-borne disease and other effects of the heating climate. Those at highest risk are children and babies, elderly, disabled, Indigenous and racialized people and those living in poverty.  But like the tobacco industry, oil and gas giants have fought hard to undermine the science linking their products to these deadly effects. Oil and gas companies generated cutting-edge research linking their products to climate change as far back as 1954.....NOW AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH!.....read on   https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/03/13/opinion/doctors-know-banning-fossil-fuel-ads-matter-life-death                                                                                                             

With nearly 75% of Bangladesh underwater, is the country facing a humanitarian crisis?Jul 21, 2021 | By: Olivia Giovetti* Nearly 75% of Bangladesh is below sea level so thousands in Bangladesh, recovery is a constant cycle, because the effects of climate change are a constant reality. Nearly 75% of Bangladesh is underwater. Or, to be more accurate and less clickbait-y, nearly 75% of the country sits below sea level. Nearly 80% of the land is classified as floodplain. Constant flooding leads to many families taking drastic measures for survival. The country was hit one year earlier by Cyclone Roanu.and drnking water facilities were contaminated in the flooding, and over 80% of the sanitation system was damaged by Cyclone Roanu. The saltwater poisons the rice paddies, and girls as young as 10 are married off by families who can no longer afford to provide for them . “Ground zero for climate change”......An example of climate injustice: The United States produces 33 times the amount of carbon emissions as Bangladesh. Yet countries that are already most vulnerable to climate change feel the effects of those greenhouse gasses much more acutely. Bangladesh is consistently referred to as “ground zero for climate change” or a “disaster laboratory,” with the next flood always just around the corner. One-third of the country’s calendar is designated as the monsoon season, which means that the country (just seven feet above sea level) is vulnerable to floods — especially as rains and other extreme weather patterns continue as a result of climate change.                                                                                                                                                                                                          The NRDC estimates that 50,000–200,000 Bangladeshis are displaced each year due to riverbank erosion alone, and a 2007 World Bank report estimates 300,000–400,000 citizens resettled as climate refugees in the capital city, Dhaka. They often end up living in the most vulnerable and poorest areas of the city, living as pavement dwellers and bathing in the contaminated water of the Buriganga River. The NRDC also quotes a climate expert prediction that, by 2050, the rising sea level will submerge an additional 17% of the country and uproot another 20 million people. This is in addition to the nearly 75% of the country already underwater, which in 2004 had already impacted 25.9 million people out of  its then population of 141.3 million. Dhaka is drowning.......While Dhaka is seen as an option for many who are displaced by climate events, it is also faced with flooding. 40% of the city was submerged in 2004, which created havoc in a city of 14 million.Such flooding has a ripple effect, affecting everything from public health, sanitation and sewage, food supplies, and the safety of marginalized populations (including women and children). 2004’s floods killed more than 285 people. Roads, train lines and embankments were washed away in 43 of the country’s 64 administrative districts, and that year’s floods were the most severe in 15 years,,,,,read on            https://concernusa.org/news/bangladesh-underwater-humanitarian-crisis/

Protecting Borneo’s rainforests and empowering Indigenous people. Resisting the destruction of the ancient forest giants has made true fighters out of the activists of Save Our Borneo (SOB). Their mission is to stand in the way of palm oil companies and help Indigenous people secure urgently needed land rights.    The rainforest at the sacred mountain Bukit Sebayan on the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo is lush, healthy and beautiful. The jungle is home to critically endangered orangutans. The Dayak Tomun people, who have lived in the forest for many generations, use fruits, medicinal plants and wood from the forest sparingly and knowledgeably – just as their ancestors did. No wonder, then, that environmental activist Nordin founded the organization Save our Borneo (SOB) here in 2006. In the mountains, ancient trees still reach for the sky. In the lowlands, however, they have been felled and millions of oil palms have taken their place. The palm oil tragedy unfolding in his homeland turned Nordin into a fighter. Nordin passed away in 2017, but his spirit lives on and continues to drive the activists of SOB today. They have internalized the idea that inspired him to found the organization:“The forest and the land are for people and wildlife, not for plantation companies. With our traditional way of life, we can maintain the rainforest, use it sparingly and protect it.” Indigenous and forest rights preserve the rainforest......Like many Indigenous peoples around the world, the Dayak Tomun have been living in and with the rainforest since time immemorial. Studies have shown that wherever Indigenous people live and work to preserve nature, forests are healthier than elsewhere. Indigenous forest rights are thus a crucial factor to conserving rainforests. Every clear cut means a loss of biodiversity, so both the local environment and the planet as a whole suffer whenever a tropical forest is destroyed. The founding of SOB was a call for help to the international community. Despite its English name, Save our Borneo is a local organization working at the grassroots level. Small, nimble and well-connected, it responds quickly to local people’s reports of environmental crimes. The activists often spend days at a time on the road to bring vital information to the remotest villages. SOB has been one of our closest partners since 2007. The activists organize resistance against land grabbing and deforestation with spectacular campaigns and actions. They do not shy away from confronting powerful corporations or stonewalling officials when exposing crimes against nature and corruption and taking them to court. SOB and the Indigenous Dayak Tomun people are committed to protecting the Kinipan forest in the mountains of Borneo and resisting a palm oil company that is clearing forest on their ancestral land. The small village of Kinipan, which in Indonesia has become synonymous for the fight for forest rights and for resistance against deforestation, has risen to international fame – thanks in part to the work of SOB and Rainforest Rescue. The case was publicized in videos and the feature-length documentary Kinipan, and nearly 250,000 people from all over the world have signed our petition “Please help us save Kinipan forest”.The most important goal: stopping deforestation......Another focus for SOB has long been the restoration of cleared peat forests. When intact, they are waterlogged and swampy.Considering the vast amounts of carbon they store, all peat soils and peat swamp forests on the planet urgently need protection for climate reasons alone. Scientists warn that without them, the world will never meet its climate targets. Yet every year, peat bogs on Borneo go up in smoke. The main causes of this disaster are man-made: slash-and-burn clearing for yet more plantations, mining, and drainage canals to dry out the peat soils.In 2020, the Indonesian government decided to convert these sensitive peat areas into industrially cultivated rice fields as part of its “Food Estate” program     https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/projects/10590/protecting-borneos-rainforests-and-empowering-indigenous-people

The top 10 crises the world can’t ignore in 2024. Learn about the world’s worst crises and what can be done to help.December 13, 2023 Each year, the  committee analyzes 190 countries and territories to identify the countries at greatest risk of experiencing a new or worsening humanitarian crisis in the coming year. We identify and rank the 20 countries most at risk in our Emergency Watchlist. To compile the list, we use a multistage process of quantitative and qualitative analysis, including consulting our staff on the front lines of crises. In recent years, this report has predicted 85-95% of the countries facing the worst deerioration and influenced the way the IRC responds to the world’s most pressing crises. Watchlist countries are home to just 10% of the world’s population but account for approximately 86 percent of all people in humanitarian need globally, 75% of displaced persons, 70% of people suffering from crisis (IPC 3) or worse levels of food insecurity—and a growing share of global extreme poverty. Below, we break down what you need to know about the 10 countries likely to face the worst humanitarian crises next year. Read the full 2024 Emergency Watchlist for a detailed account of our analysis and full profiles of all 20 countries. 10. Democratic Republic of the Congo....Intense fighting broke out in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2023, following the collapse of a truce between the government and the armed group M23. This exacerbated a protracted crisis that had already exposed millions of Congolese to conflict, political tensions, economic pressures, climate shocks and persistent disease outbreaks. The country enters 2024 with 25.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance—more than any other country on earth. The magnitude of the crisis has strained services, creating high levels of food insecurity and fueling the spread of disease. Meanwhile, shortfalls in humanitarian funding and rampant insecurity have limited the ability of humanitarians to reach communities in need. 9. Ethiopia.......Across Ethiopia, livelihoods have been decimated by three consecutive years of drought alongside multiple conflicts and, now, there is a risk of El Niño-induced flooding.  The November 2022 ceasefire between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) continues to hold in northern Ethiopia, but other conflicts, particularly in the central Oromia region and in Amhara in the northwest, are fueling humanitarian needs and raising the risk of a return to large-scale fighting. Persistent inflation is further deepening the crisis.....read on and there's 8 more countries suffering through crises     https://www.rescue.org/article/top-10-crises-world-cant-ignore-2024