Vietnam is in record heat again

by Hong Hoang, 350.org Vietnam

The year 2010 was the world’s warmest year on record, when the temperature in Vietnam also reached a record level. In the capital city of Hanoi, the outside temperature in June 2010 sometimes went up to 44-45oC (111-113oF).

And in April and early May this year, the Vietnamese people experienced the record heat again. People in many cities and provinces coped with the worst heat, totally unusual for early summer. Highest temperatures were recorded in many provinces in North and Central Vietnam (Lao Cai, Cao Bang, Hoa Binh, Bac Kan, Nghe An…), which broke all the previous records made in these provinces for the last 30-60 years. Although the announced temperatures were around 40-41oC (104-105.8oF), the actual outside temperatures usually went up to 45-46oC (113-114.8oF), because the heat was added up by the blazing sun rays, the gas emission, an other factors related to urban heat island.

 The fierce heat could be the main reason that caused dozens of forest fires throughout Vietnam in the past month. The worst one was the fire in Hai Van Special Use Forest in Central Vietnam on 2 May, that burned down 100 hectares of primitive forests and plantation forests. With more similar heat waves expected to come from now until July, many forests are in high risk to catch fire.

Fighting hard with the horrible heat, volunteers of 350.org in Ho Chi Minh City decided to do anything to cool the city down. As part of Connect the Dots campaign, they took on the mission to plant 1.000 trees in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City, where people do not only suffer from the heat, but also from the frequent inundations caused by high tides, that have constantly made new height records for the past 4 years, which was determined by the local meteorologists to be the consequence of the sea level rise. In addition to that, the volunteers will also help the local residents to reinforce the dykes that were broken during the recent floods, and clear up water hyacinth along the river branches that go around the villages, which will help to ensure easier water flows and therefore prevent the water from overflowing into the houses.

“I was born and grew up in this city and I love it,” said Mai Khanh Vo, volunteer  leader of Connect the Dots HCMC. “We are all aware that global climate change has something to do with the recent weather extremes. For the first time in my life, I experience a bad storm that attacked HCMC in early April, which according to scientists was a very unusual for this season and for this region. I have friends from various provinces, and they all tell me about the unusual weather events that recently caused damages to their families. And even in HCMC, the most developed city of Vietnam, we have to live with tide-caused inundations every month. While we cannot do anything to immediately stop the floods, we can do something to reduce the impacts, and to prevent the water from going up even higher in the future.”

For more information please contact Hong Hoang hong@350.org

Dear friends,

A week ago we launched a hard-hitting new campaign at 350.org: an all-out push to end fossil fuel subsidies in the United States. 

Well, that campaign has caught fire. Thousands of people are signing on every day -- take a minute to add your name: www.350.org/subsidies

Instead of telling you all the details about fossil fuel subsidies, I thought I’d share a few numbers that really make the case:

Watching that bottom number tick up with every passing second is pretty outrageous, but there’s good news: we now have an opening to end these taxpayer handouts to corporate polluters. A new poll revealed that 70% of Americans — including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — support ending fossil fuel subsidies.

If you think it’s time we stopped giving billions of dollars to the companies that are polluting our air, super-heating our planet, and distorting our democracy, the most important thing you can do is sign on today and spread the word.

More soon,

Jamie Henn for the 350.org Team

P.S. To help this campaign keep growing, can you forward on this email and share the campaign on Facebook?

MORE LINKS AND INFO

Do Americans support or oppose subsidies for fossil fuels? |  Yale Project on Climate Change Communication go.350.org/KqKbfH

We asked our organizers in Salvador, Brazil, to tell us more about the story behind one of the most iconic images of Climate Impacts Day. Below you can read the whole story: 

The picture above is part of an action carried out by 350.org volunteers from the city of Salvador, Brazil, during Climate Impacts Day (5/5). It may even seem an exaggerated situation, but it highlights what is going to happen – in fact, already happening – in the lives of people living in coastal areas. It is estimated that over 600 million of people live in areas at risk with sea level rise.  Only in Brazil, they are 42 million – a quarter of the entire population!

During a 350.org workshop, the group came out with the idea of organizing an action that could draw people’s attention to the danger we are facing as extreme weather get more frequent and extreme. However, for one person in special, what happened in that scene was not something new. This person was Raphael Gomes, the volunteers’ coordinator of Salvador group.

Raphael and his family lived in a city in the countryside of Bahia where they struggled during the droughts season year after year. When he moved to the capital, Salvador, his family faced floods. Thus, when he stood there watching the little Naira Cerqueira, 7, in the scene in which the sea water floods her residence, Raphael was reliving his own childhood. “Those were tough times, because for a kid to wake up and witness all of his possessions being damaged by the rain is something that takes time to be overcome – although we never forget it.”, he says.

Fortunately, the life’s difficulties would not dishearten him. On the contrary, they served as an incentive for Raphael to move towards a path of solidarity and much engagement and commitment to causes related to environment protection. “I believe that everything that happened in my life brought me closer to environmental issues. Not in a passive way, but it has created in me a truly need to motivate and mobilize people to comprehend the causes and consequences of climate change. In fact, it is more than that: it is also about showing them what the solutions are and who are the responsible for making them true”, he says.

Today, it has been three years since Raphael is leading the group and, despite the young age, 21, he is sure about what he wants: “We want to build a movement in which people can be empowered to make a difference. The picture we took at the beach is a small sample of this – but we want and need to do much more. We are very pleased with the photo’s repercussion, and we want more and more to engage the media and the society”, he states.

Text and Featured Image: Diêgo Lôbo

Check out this media coverage of 350.org and Connect the Dots from Yakutsk, Russia. You might not be able to speak Russian, but you can probably recognize the numbers in the article!