| An image grab from a video released by the Just Stop Oil climate campaign group shows activists spraying Stonehenge with an orange substance Wednesday. (Just Stop Oil/AFP/Getty Images) | | Welcome. This week, "haboobs" and the return of the Iberian lynx. But first, does attacking art for the climate make sense? |  | | Last week, two climate protesters walked up to Stonehenge dousing the 5,000-year-old stone monument in a cloud of orange dye. Police eventually arrested a 73-year-old man and 21-year-old woman, members of the group Just Stop Oil, a self-described nonviolent civil resistance group. Workers were able to clean the stones, but defacing the cultural treasure, even if temporarily, has drawn near universal condemnation on both sides of the Atlantic — and, as intended, plenty of attention. Britain's conservative and liberal parties united to call the latest act "disgraceful" and "pathetic," respectively, while an American climate advocate labeled the protest criminal. "Self-aggrandizing vandals who attack our shared cultural treasures deserve prison time, not support," Jonathan Foley, a climate scientist and executive director of Project Drawdown, wrote on X. Foley, it's safe to say, is in the majority. But the real question is: Will Just Stop Oil's tactics curb fossil fuel pollution? If not, what would? To find out, I called Eric Shuman, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University and Harvard Business School who researches nonviolent collective action. First, protests must be disruptive, creating pressure and urgency to do something. Second, the public must believe the protesters have constructive intentions with clear positive goals, not just animus toward those who disagree with them. Finally — though Shuman says this is more anecdotal — it helps to be relevant: Protests carry more power when the target relates to the perceived injustice. To learn more, click the button below. Write me with your questions at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. |  | Field Sample A "haboob" swept across New Mexico last week. These dust storms form when cold, dense downdrafts move ahead of severe thunderstorms. Scientists were astonished by the size and strength of the 200-mile-long dust storm, shown in the video below. | | A massive haboob moves across southern New Mexico on Thursday. (NWS El Paso) | | Last week brought many kinds of extreme weather to New Mexico. Numerous thunderstorms unleashed flash flooding, damaging winds, mudslides and hail that piled into drifts as high as six inches, writes The Washington Post's Dan Stillman. | Snapshot In 2002, just 60 or so adult Iberian lynx roamed in Portugal and Spain. Today, the Iberian Peninsula boasts more than 2,000, including young ones, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced. That's enough to declare the species no longer endangered with one group calling it the "greatest recovery of a cat species ever achieved through conservation." | | An Iberian lynx walks with a rabbit it captured in the surroundings of the Doñana National Park, in Aznalcazar, Spain, in 2019. (Antonio Pizarro/AP) | | The lynx rebounded when conservationists protected the cat's habitat, mostly Mediterranean scrubland and forests, as well as that of their favored prey — European rabbits. Iberian lynx join a small club of species making a comeback in recent years including tigers, humpback whales and mountain gorillas. Read more here. |  | The Second Degree Many of you loved, or hated, the idea of "boommates," or baby-boomer roommates, in my last column. The difficulty of finding the right housemate persuaded many of you to advise against it: "It takes an intense amount of work, planning, patience, deliberateness, agreement-making-and-sustaining, legal stuff, and sanity to live with other humans," wrote Jody. "Not everyone gets to be the Golden Girls. It sounds great if you're lucky … but it can be a horror show if you're not." Others thought the benefits still outweighed the risks. Jenny Nelson lives in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains with her son, daughter-in-law and their child. So she converted a small studio upstairs into her unit, while offering the rest to her son's family. "I am so happy!" writes Nelson. "We share laundry, utility, and storage space (and occasionally bicker about storage). Win-win, though, in every aspect." Another described how her mother began renting out rooms to students from California's Humboldt State (now Cal Poly Humboldt) in the spring of 1956, and never stopped: "She had college kids living with her through the year of her death. Some of those 'kids' became lifelong friends/family. Two helped me learn how to drive. Those kids kept my mom's life a lot more interesting than it might otherwise have been. I'm grateful she took on that adventure." |  |  | | The wheat harvest is almost ready! Earlier this year, I sent seeds of special, climate resilient wheat to more than a dozen Climate Coach readers. Several of you wrote in with stories and photos about the grain ripening on the stalk. A few others related the harsh realities of farming after rats and gophers consumed your hard work. Grow on, friends. We'll collect everyone's stories, and report back on the best ways to grow grains that are better for the climate. What's growing in your garden? Send photos to climatecoach@washpost.com | | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Climate Coach in your inbox every Tuesday. See you next Tuesday, Michael Coren, Climate Coach | | |
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