23 September 2021 - NPWJ News Digest on Environmental Justice & Human Rights

Victoria’s environment regulator sued by advocates over alleged failure to limit emissions
The Guardian, 23 Sep 2021

Environmental advocates are suing Victoria’s environment regulator in the supreme court for allegedly failing to limit carbon and toxic air pollution. The non-profit group Environment Victoria lodged the case – which also names energy companies AGL, Energy Australia and Alinta as defendants – on Thursday morning and said it would be the first test of climate laws passed in the state in 2017.

Northern Hemisphere summer wildfires emit record amount of CO2
Al Jazeera, 22 Sep 2021

Wildfires in Siberia, North America and around the Mediterranean caused record levels of planet-warming CO2 emissions this summer, the EU’s Earth monitoring service says. Globally, forests going up in flames emitted more than 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to India’s annual emissions from all sources – in July and August alone, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported on Tuesday.

Nitrogen: The environmental crisis you haven’t heard of yet
Mongabay, 22 Sep 2021

On a sunny day, Guatemala’s Lake Atitlán is normally a sweeping vista of turquoise and sapphire, with the lake drinking the color of the sky until the two are nearly indistinguishable from each other. Ringed by mountains and towering volcanos, below Atitlán’s waves lie sunken ruins that were once used for worship and ceremony by the Mayan communities that have thrived here for thousands of years. But in 2009, those communities awoke one morning to an unsettling sight. Vast swaths of the azure lake had instead turned sickly green.