Day: July 2, 2024

One of the most important parts of being human is feeling empathy and practising respect. We deny ourselves that if we deny the rights of others

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When I began my term as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission seven years ago, the marriage equality plebiscite was engulfing our nation, in much the same way as the recent voice referendum did.

Although the outcomes were different, the focus on human rights which framed the respective debates serves to remind us that the application and experience of human rights are elemental to the way we function as a society.

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This week, Hurricane Beryl became the earliest hurricane in history to reach the Category 5 level in the Atlantic Ocean, battering the Caribbean and killing at least six—and experts say that climate change is making it much more likely for extreme weather events like this to occur.

The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday that Beryl is “expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands Wednesday night and Thursday.” The hurricane isn’t the only extreme weather event that has occurred around the world over the past few days—fierce storms led to flooding in Switzerland and Italy; and wildfires raged in Greece and Arizona. While research hasn’t proven that climate change is the direct cause of each specific extreme weather event, it has shown that climate change can make some of these disasters more intense and more frequent.

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“It’s important to remember there was extreme weather before climate change,” Alex Hall—a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)—tells TIME. “The climate is variable, the weather is variable; we expect there to be extremes. But it’s just that the likelihood of extremes has changed, and the likelihood of these types of events occurring is greater.”

Hurricanes rely on a warm ocean to form. Because of that, hurricane season usually runs from  June through November, when oceans are warm enough for a hurricane to develop, says Marcus C. Sarofim, a physical scientist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Climate Science & Impacts Branch. But Beryl is “unusual” and “unprecedented,” Hall adds, because it’s happening so early in the hurricane season, before the warmest ocean temperatures are usually seen.

“Climate change is stacking the dice in favor of events like that,” Hall says. “The fact that we’re seeing this event, that is unprecedented, occurring is entirely consistent with climate change.”

Read More: How Hurricane Beryl Is Shattering Storm Records

Current research indicates that while the warming climate will likely lead to less frequent Category 1 and 2 storms, it will lead to more frequent intense storms, like Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, Sarofim says.

Warmer temperatures also allow the Earth’s atmosphere to hold more water in it, which can lead to heavy rainfall, says Steve Vavrus, director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. Intense rainfall often leads to flooding, which can overwhelm existing stormwater systems, he adds.

“A lot of our infrastructure was built for a different climate than we’ve seen today,” Vavrus says. “We really need to take stock of how to prepare for the changing climate as we face it in the future.”

On the other hand, because the atmosphere can hold more moisture, that can demand more evaporation, which can lead to drier conditions on land, according to Vavrus. Along with record-breaking heat, these dry conditions can bring an increased risk of wildfires. According to a new EPA report released Tuesday, the extent of the area that wildfires have burned in the U.S. has risen since the 1980s. The report found that the 10 years with the largest acreage burned by wildfires all occurred since 2004—coinciding with some of the warmest years recorded.

Some extreme weather events can also have “cascading effects,” Hall says. In 2023, smoke from wildfires burning in Canada traveled to New York City, transforming the sky into an orange haze and affecting the air quality.

Extreme weather events often affect human health, Vavrus says. Beryl has caused power outages on several Caribbean islands. The storms in Switzerland and northern Italy have left at least four people dead.

In addition to the toll on human health, there are financial consequences of climate change, such as rebuilding or repairing the damage caused by flooding or wildfires, Vavrus says.

Sarofim says there are many ways people can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, including using more efficient appliances, turning off lights when they leave a room, and taking public transit or driving more efficient cars. In the U.S., greenhouse gas emissions decreased by about 1.9% in 2023, according to estimates released in January by the independent research firm the Rhodium Group.

“The best strategy to reduce the likelihood of these types of extremes is to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases,” Hall says. “We need to slow climate change down and ultimately reverse it.”

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Madison, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided Tuesday to consider two challenges to a 175-year-old law that conservatives maintain bans abortion without letting the cases wind through lower courts.

Abortion advocates stand an excellent chance of prevailing in both cases given the high court’s liberal tilt and remarks a liberal justice made on the campaign trail about how she supports abortion rights.

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Wisconsin lawmakers enacted statutes in 1849 that had been widely interpreted as outlawing abortion in all cases except to save the mother’s life. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nullified the statutes, but legislators never repealed them. The high court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade reactivated them.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit challenging the statutes in 2022, arguing they were too old to enforce and a 1985 law that permits abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb supersedes them. A Dane County judge ruled last year that the statutes outlaw attacking a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn baby but doesn’t ban abortions. The decision emboldened Planned Parenthood to resume offering abortions in Wisconsin after halting procedures when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, a Republican, asked the state Supreme Court in February to overturn the ruling without letting an appeal move through the state’s lower appellate courts. He argued the ruling will have a statewide impact and guide lawmakers and the case will ultimately end at the Supreme Court anyway.

Days after Urmanski filed his request, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin sued Urmanski and asked the Supreme Court to take it directly. The organization is seeking a ruling that the 1849 statutes are unconstitutional, arguing that the state constitution’s declaration that people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness means women have a right to control their own bodies — essentially asking the court to declare a constitutional right to abortion.

The court released orders indicating the justices voted unanimously to take Urmanski’s appeal and voted 4-3 to take the Planned Parenthood case. The court’s four liberal justices voted to take that case, and the three conservative justices voted against taking it.

Urmanski’s attorneys, Andrew Phillips and Matthew Thome, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Persuading the court’s liberal majority to uphold the statutes looks next to impossible. Liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz even went so far as stating openly during her campaign that she supports abortion rights, a major departure for a judicial candidate. Typically such candidates refrain from speaking about their personal views out of concerns they could appear biased on the bench.

The conservative justices accused the liberal majority in their Planned Parenthood dissents of playing politics.

“The signal to a watching public is that, when certain policy issues touch the right nerve, this court will follow the party line, not the law,” Hagedorn wrote.

Liberal Justice Jill Karofsky countered in a concurrence that the state Supreme Court is supposed to decide important state constitutional questions.

“Regardless of one’s views on the morality, legality, or constitutionality of abortion, it is undeniable that abortion regulation is an issue with immense personal and practical significance to many Wisconsinites,” Karofsky wrote.

Michelle Velasquez, chief strategy officer for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said in a statement that the organization was grateful the court agreed to take its case and Wisconsin residents need to know whether abortion is legal in the state.

Wisconsin Watch, a media outlet, obtained a leaked draft of the order accepting the case last week, prompting Chief Justice Annette Ziegler to call for an investigation.

Anti-abortion groups decried the Supreme Court’s decision to take the Planned Parenthood case.

“Every Wisconsinite should be troubled by this blatant weaponization of the court system to enshrine death on demand,” Heather Weininger, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, said in a statement.