The United Nations' Human Rights Committee (HRC) ruled January 21 that "countries cannot deport people who have sought asylum due to climate-related threats." The ruling came in a case brought in 2015 by a Ioane Teitota, who sought asylum in New Zealand as a "climate refugee." The HRC didn't rule that New Zealand's refusal to admit Teitota as a refugee violated his "right to life," but it did rule that "people seeking asylum are not required to prove that they would face immediate … [Read more...]
Obama in Alaska: He Didn’t Let Kivalina’s Crisis Go to Waste
The Arctic, like the rest of the world, experiences natural cycles, and some of them can be pretty radical. While most of the world enjoys a pretty stable 24-hour cycle of sunrise and sunset, with the sun visible roughly half of each day, a little longer in summer, a little shorter in winter, the Arctic (like the Antarctic) goes from 24-hour sunlight in mid-summer to 24-hour darkness in mid-winter. Long-term geologic records indicate that it also experiences larger swings from warmer to colder … [Read more...]
