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Post by Admin on Sept 23, 2021 3:44:29 GMT
The MEER:ReflEction Rebalancing Earth's energy flows and restoring her biogeochemical cycles by achieving carbon neutrality through engineering that renewed human values have informed Framework www.meerreflection.com/
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Post by Admin on Sept 23, 2021 19:00:51 GMT
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Post by Admin on Sept 24, 2021 17:57:28 GMT
The climate crisis requires a socialist response Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) and IYSSE 18 hours ago On Friday, hundreds of thousands around the world are once again participating in the Global Climate Strike protest. In Germany alone, Fridays for Future has called for demonstrations in more than 400 cities. The largest will take place in front of the Bundestag (federal parliament) in Berlin. www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/23/clim-s23.htmlYoung people in particular have realized that the world is hurtling toward disaster. Devastating hurricanes; deadly floods in China, Germany, Turkey and the US; blistering heat and widespread forest fires in the Mediterranean, Siberia, North and South America have underscored the dramatic nature of the situation in recent months. And that is just the beginning. Scientific studies warn that rising sea levels and changing climate patterns will make the Earth uninhabitable for hundreds of millions of people unless drastic countermeasures are taken now. In addition, global warming is taking on a life of its own and will be almost impossible to stop if the thawing of permafrost releases large quantities of environmentally harmful methane. Immediate action is therefore imperative. But how can it be achieved? The organizers of the Global Climate Strike demonstrations want to put pressure on politicians. They have deliberately timed the protest, which they have been preparing for weeks, for the Friday before Germany’s federal election. “We are certain: when the Bundestag is elected this year, it will decide the future of all of us,” the strike call states. “There must not be another election period marked by corruption, climate killers and failing politicians.” But does anyone seriously believe that the parties that govern in the federal and state governments will behave any differently after the election than they did before? The measures they promise in their election programmes do not even achieve the completely inadequate climate targets they themselves have decided on, as the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) has calculated. Yet everyone knows that election promises and government policy are two completely different things. The Greens, who co-govern eleven German states, have repeatedly sacrificed environmental protection to corporate interests. Winfried Kretschmann, the first Green state premier, has become the darling of the auto industry. On their election posters, the Greens promise to reconcile the environment and the economy, climate protection and profit interests. But that is impossible. The climate issue, like all major social issues—social inequality, the coronavirus pandemic, right-wing extremism, refugee policy and war—is a class issue. It requires an international, social response. Such an answer is not compatible with capitalism, which is based on profit maximization and competition between nation states. The federal election—completely independent of its outcome—will not open a new phase of climate protection, but a new stage of class struggle. Social inequality is greater than ever. In the pandemic year 2020, the global number of billionaires rose to more than 3,000, with their wealth amounting to $10 trillion, 5.7 percent more than the previous year. On the other hand, 255 million full-time jobs were lost and workers suffered $3.7 trillion in lost income. Yet all the major parties are determined to recoup the vast sums they have thrown down the throats of the rich at the expense of working people. Not one proposes to touch the obscene wealth at the top of society. Global arms spending is exploding. The US alone spent $778 billion on the military last year, a sizeable portion of it on nuclear warhead modernization. After thirty years of bombing Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and other countries, it is now preparing for a great power conflict with nuclear power China. Europe and Germany are also frenetically rearming, with the Greens at the forefront of this. They support the rearmament of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces), demand more war missions and agitate against Russia and China. Yet even a “limited” nuclear war—to the extent that such a conflict is even possible—would mean hundreds of Chernobyls and Fukushimas in one day and irrevocably destroy the global environment—not to mention the millions of deaths. Social inequality and militarism are meeting widespread resistance. In Germany, train drivers, Berlin hospital nurses, Gorillas delivery riders and many others have gone on strike in recent days against intolerable working conditions. Siemens workers have protested against lay-offs. The class struggle is also intensifying in the US and numerous other countries around the world. Participants in the climate strike must see themselves as part of this global class movement. They must be oriented toward the international working class and not toward the capitalist governments and parties. The destruction of the planet cannot be stopped by appealing to the ruling class. The working class, which comprises the vast majority of humanity, is the most powerful social force. It is an international class and stands in irreconcilable opposition to the corporations, banks and speculators that are plundering the globe and destroying the environment. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) fights to organize and unite the working class internationally, independent of the bourgeois parties and the corporatist unions. We stand on the position that not a single social problem can be resolved without expropriating the banks and corporations and placing them under the democratic control of the working class. Confiscating their profits and assets and reorganizing the world economy on the basis of a scientific and rational plan will create the conditions for solving the climate crisis. On the other hand, if capitalist property relations remain untouched, the ruling classes everywhere will destroy the basis of humanity's existence rather than renounce their profits. That they are willing and able to do so has been demonstrated in two world wars in the past century and currently in the coronavirus pandemic. Although scientists warned early on that only a consistent, internationally coordinated lockdown, combined with other measures, could prevent millions of coronavirus victims, the capitalist ruling elite placed their profits ahead of saving human lives. As a result, 230 million people have been infected worldwide, and nearly five million have died, with no end to the pandemic in sight. All the major parties in Germany—from the Left Party to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)—have supported this inhumane policy. They are displaying the same ruthlessness in climate policy. We call on all participants of the climate strike: Do not waste a vote on Sunday! Vote for a socialist programme and vote for the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP), the German section of the Fourth International. Study our election programme and read the World Socialist Web Site, the daily online publication of the International Committee of the Fourth International, which appears in twenty languages. Become a member of the SGP and its youth organization, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2021 13:23:36 GMT
Bill Gates Backs Climate News Outlet 'Cipher' The new online publication will focus on solutions to reach zero emissions by 2050. By Michael d'Estries Fact checked by Haley Mast on September 22, 2021 01:36PM EDT www.treehugger.com/bill-gates-climate-news-outlet-cipher-5202294In his review of Bill Gates’ February 2021 book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” environmental activist Bill McKibben praised the billionaire and Microsoft co-founder for his “affection for his home planet,” but poor interpretation of “the deeper and more critical aspects of the global warming dilemma.” “Power comes in many forms, from geothermal and nuclear to congressional and economic; it’s wonderful that Gates has decided to work hard on climate questions, but to be truly helpful he needs to resolve to be a better geek—he needs to really get down on his hands and knees and examine how that power works in all its messiness,” McKibben wrote for the NY Times. “Politics very much included.” Whether or not Gates took McKibben’s words to heart is up for debate, but it’s clear he’s working on continuing to build on the mission of his book’s title. Later this month, Gates’ climate advocacy coalition Breakthrough Energy will launch Cipher, an online publication focused on the technology needed to eliminate greenhouse emissions by the middle of this century. “Cipher means zero," the site CipherNews states, “which we at Breakthrough find intriguing because our goal is simple, but hard—going from the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases we emit a year today to zero by 2050. Cipher also means code. We aim to decode complex topics and make them clear to people at all levels working to solve the climate crisis—and anyone who wants to be an informed, concerned citizen.” Countries Are Failing to Tackle Climate Change, UN says Emissions cut commitments by major economies won’t be enough to prevent rampant climate change. By Eduardo Garcia Fact checked by Haley Mast on September 21, 2021 07:26PM EDT www.treehugger.com/countries-failing-to-tackle-climate-change-un-report-5202188A Vegan Diet Is Not Automatically the Most Sustainable Choice This gardener prefers to think of herself as a "sustainavore." By Elizabeth Waddington Fact checked by Haley Mast on September 23, 2021 08:18PM EDT www.treehugger.com/why-vegan-growing-eating-is-not-always-sustainable-5202315
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2021 19:16:26 GMT
COP26: How the UK started the climate crisis Boris Johnson will soon take on the role of the bombastic host at the UN's climate conference in Glasgow. Don't let him pretend we’re the good guys www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/ignore-world-leaders-spin-at-cop26-heres-whats-really-at-stake/Occasionally, when I’m walking the dog on the beach, I find a lump of coal, black against the yellow sand. The Firth of Forth, the fjord that washes the north of Edinburgh, cuts deep into the seam that Scotland’s central belt is built on. Sometimes, the waves dislodge a chunk of the bed, and wash up a 350-million-year-old piece of driftwood from the mighty forests of the Carboniferous Period. In many ways, the story of man-made climate change was first written with these stones. Across the water from Portobello beach where I walk the dog is Fife, where a young Adam Smith observed the birth of industrial capitalism, powered by that same bed of rock. On the Firth of Clyde to the west is Greenock, the home town of James Watt, whose improvements to the steam engine drove the Industrial Revolution and powered the expansion of the British Empire. With the engineers and philosophers produced by the Enlightenment, it’s often claimed – somewhat arrogantly – that Scotland invented the modern world. In a few weeks' time, at COP26, international delegates will gather on the south bank of the River Clyde, just a few miles inshore from Watt’s childhood home, to discuss what to do about the fact that the modern world is burning. Their task is clear. They must reinvent it.
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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2021 17:50:39 GMT
AI Analysis of 100,000 Climate Studies Reveals How Massive The Crisis Already Is PETER DOCKRILL11 OCTOBER 2021 Some problems are so big, you can't really see them. Climate change is the perfect example. The basics are simple: the climate is heating up due to fossil fuel use. But the nitty gritty is so vast and complicated that our understanding of it is always evolving. Evolving so rapidly, in fact, that it's basically impossible for humans to keep up. "Since the first assessment report (AR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990, we estimate that the number of studies relevant to observed climate impacts published per year has increased by more than two orders of magnitude," scientists explain in a new paper, led by first author and quantitative data researcher Max Callaghan from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Germany. "This exponential growth in peer-reviewed scientific publications on climate change is already pushing manual expert assessments to their limits." This struggle is its own problem, of course, because how can humans ever grasp the problem of climate change, if the size of the problem defies our ability to objectively analyze it, measure it, and understand it? Even conventional meta-analysis studies performed by human scientists are limited to considering just "dozens to hundreds of studies". One solution to this 'big literature' dilemma calls for a very different kind of entity doing the reading – using artificial intelligence (AI), rather than humans, to sift through the almost limitless and ever-expanding mountain of published climate science. In their new study – yes, another one to add to the list – Callaghan and co. did just that, using a deep-learning language analysis AI tool called BERT to identify and classify over 100,000 scientific studies detailing the impacts of climate change. While the researchers acknowledge that automated analyses like this are no substitute for the careful assessments of human experts, at the same time, their method can do things human's simply can't. In this case, that meant crunching vast amounts of data, identifying a huge range of different kinds of climate impacts, mapping them out across every continent, and interpreting them in the context of anthropogenic contributions to historical temperature and precipitation trends. We need to be careful with it, though, because machine-learning analyses like this – especially at such staggering scale – can contain false positives and other kinds of uncertainties, the researchers say. "While traditional assessments can offer relatively precise but incomplete pictures of the evidence, our machine-learning-assisted approach generates an expansive preliminary but quantifiably uncertain map," the researchers write. Before that, however, the AI analysis has already generated some troubling statistics. According to the study, 80 percent of global land area (excluding Antarctica), already shows trends in temperature and/or precipitation that can be attributed at least in part to human influence on the climate – and these climate impacts already touch an estimated 85 percent of the world's population. Of course, we didn't need any artificial superbrain to tell us that climate change was a giant problem, but what's telling is where climate impacts can and can't be clearly discerned – based on where studies have been geographically focused. For around half (48 percent) of the world's land – hosting three quarters (74 percent) of the global population – high levels of evidence of impacts on human and natural systems were co-located with attributable temperature or precipitation trends. In other words, in places like western Europe, North America, and South and East Asia, there's a lot of overlap between impacts on the natural world and research into human-caused contributions to climate change. In other places, however, the links aren't as strong – but maybe only because, ironically enough, there's not enough climate science yet looking into those specific regions. "The lack of evidence in individual studies is because these locations are less intensively studied, rather than because there is an absence of impacts in these areas," the researchers suggest, noting this "attribution gap" is due to both geographic characteristics (inhospitable or sparsely populated areas) and economic considerations (low-income countries are significantly less studied). "Ultimately, we hope that our global, living, automated and multi-scale database will help to jump start a host of reviews of climate impacts on particular topics or particular geographic regions," the team concludes. "If science advances by standing on the shoulders of giants, in times of ever-expanding scientific literature, giants' shoulders become harder to reach. Our computer-assisted evidence mapping approach can offer a leg up." The findings are reported in Nature Climate Change. www.sciencealert.com/giant-ai-analysis-of-100-000-climate-studies-reveals-how-huge-the-crisis-already-is
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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2021 17:59:21 GMT
In Brazilian Amazon, savannization and climate change will expose 12 million to lethal heat stress by Fiocruz Piauí phys.org/news/2021-10-brazilian-amazon-savannization-climate-expose.htmlLarge-scale deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, combined with climate change, will increase the number of people in northern Brazil who are exposed to extreme heat—with potentially deadly results and devastating economic impacts, according to a groundbreaking study released today by Brazilian researchers in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Extreme heat levels, which are physiologically intolerable to the human body, will profoundly affect regions where highly vulnerable populations, including Indigenous Peoples, reside. This is the first study to quantify the combined impacts of rampant forest loss—which would eventually transform the Amazon into a savanna—and climate change on human health and productivity. According to the study, Deforestation and climate change project increased risk of heat stress in the Brazilian Amazon, there is a deforestation threshold in the Amazon, beyond which human survival is threatened. Crossing this threshold causes an "extreme health effect," which by 2100 could expose approximately 12 million people living in the northern states of Pará and Amazonas in Brazil to extreme risk of heat stress. "Extreme heat conditions induced by deforestation may have significant and long-lasting adverse effects on human health. If deforestation continues at its current rate, the effects for our civilization will be dramatic," said report co-author Paulo Nobre, senior researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). "In addition to impacts on human health and survival, these findings have serious economic implications far beyond crop damage." Paulo Nobre wrote the report with Beatriz Alves de Oliveira, Marcus Bottino, and Carlos Nobre. High temperatures and humidity weaken the body's cooling capabilities, resulting in increased body temperature. Sustained exposure to such conditions results in dehydration and exhaustion, and, in more severe cases, tension and collapse of vital functions, which can lead to death. In addition, heat stress affects mood and mental illness, and reduces physical and psychological performance. Scientists already have a well-established understanding of how tropical deforestation contributes to global climate change through emitting carbon and reducing the ability of the world's forests to take more carbon out of the atmosphere. A new body of research is emerging, showing how tropical deforestation has climate impacts beyond carbon: Deforestation immediately increases extreme heat locally and decreases regional and local rainfall. In Brazil, this phenomenon is already apparent. Recent research has shown the combined effects of deforestation and climate change are being felt in the Amazon region, with the most extreme heat increases reported in large, deforested areas between 2003 and 2018. The agriculture industry is already feeling the impacts of this extreme heat and low rainfall. The new study released today is the first to closely examine how increases in extreme heat will impact people. The study researchers found that the combination of deforestation and global warming could increase heat risks outdoor workers, who are already exposed to increased temperatures. Added to that, the study found that human activities responsible for large-scale forest loss in the Amazon, which include forest fires and the expansion of agricultural and mining lead to unplanned urbanization, lack of basic sanitary infrastructure, and more frequent informal work—all of which further impact vulnerable people When all these factors are combined, deforestation and its impacts lead to increased inequality and vulnerability, which interact with climate change to increase the urgent need for health and social protection services in the Brazilian Amazon region. The study shows that effects play out regionally, and the most severe direct impacts likely will take place in northern Brazil. Of Brazil's 5,565 municipalities, 16% of them (equivalent to 30 million inhabitants) might be impacted by thermal stress due to the savannization of the Amazon. Of the impacted population, 42% reside in municipalities in Brazil's northern region, which includes areas with high social vulnerability. In this region, approximately 12 million people could be exposed to extreme risk of heat stress by 2100. The authors claim that, with the savannization of the Amazon and limited adaptation capabilities in northern Brazil, residents could face precarious survival conditions, intensifying such effects as mass migration. Additionally, increased exposure to thermal stress could reduce labor productivity in several areas of the economy, if workers are exposed to fatal heat conditions. In Brazil, outdoor workers are already exposed to heat stress, and projections indicate increasingly high-risk exposure over the next decades. By 2030, a projected 1.5 °C increase in global average temperatures could reduce working hours in Brazil by the equivalent of 850,000 full-time jobs, especially in the agricultural and construction sectors. In agriculture, high risk associated with intense work and heat overload has already been observed among sugarcane cutters. The researchers emphasize the urgent need for coordinated measures to avoid harmful effects on vulnerable populations. "The local effects of land use changes are directly linked to forest sustainability policies and strategies, but changes are within society's reach. For example, the health sector could be an important source of policy solutions to mitigate risk and vulnerability," argues Beatriz Oliveira, researcher at the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz). The researchers' estimates did not consider population growth or changes in demographic structure or life expectancy. Thus, the results shown in the study reflect the isolated effects of climate change and savannization, and maybe interpreted to represent the effects observed if the current population were exposed to projected heat stress distributions.
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Post by Admin on Oct 13, 2021 17:09:25 GMT
OCTOBER 13, 2021 Climate denial and scientific discoveries 'emerged simultaneously' by University of Exeter phys.org/news/2021-10-climate-denial-scientific-discoveries-emerged.htmlDenial of climate science emerged simultaneously with key scientific discoveries about humanity's impact on our planet, according to a new book. Professor Peter Stott—author of "Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial"—began 25 years ago in the then-obscure field of the detection and attribution of climate change. As scientists saw increasing evidence of global warming—and detected the "fingerprints of humans" as the cause—organized climate-change denial rapidly became a powerful force. Examining how and why this happened, the book says so-called "climate skeptics" have "weaponised doubt in the service of the fossil fuel industry." "In the face of increasing evidence that humans were causing climate change, we saw increasing determination from a whole range of lobby groups to deny it," said Professor Stott, of the University of Exeter and the Met Office. "There was a small group of scientifically trained people who cherry-picked data and produced arguments that sounded scientific." The book includes some of Professor Stott's experiences during the fierce debate of recent decades. He attended a 2004 meeting in Moscow that became a "show trial" of climate science, where the "climate denier community" gathered to prevent Russia ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. On the flight home from Russia, he saw someone reading a UK newspaper that described global warming as a "load of poppycock." "It seems odd now, but back then certain aspects of climate science were still fairly obscure, even in academia," said Professor Stott, who will lead the Science Pavilion for the Met Office at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow next month. "However, things were beginning to change. "I vividly remember attending a press conference in Paris in 2007, and it really seemed that people were listening. "The BBC broadcast the evening news live from the conference. We felt we had some momentum." But in 2009, the Copenhagen climate summit ended in failure—following what the book calls a "vicious attack on science by the climate deniers" in the wake of the Climategate scandal. "We were on trial," said Professor Stott, and member of Exeter's Global Systems Institute. "However, despite the negative consequences, this scandal led to far greater interest in scientific details—and that focus helped the media, the public and policymakers understand what the evidence was saying. "It took time—time we didn't have to waste—but in 2015 we reached the Paris talks, in which the targets under discussion were based on scientific evidence." And this month, two climate scientists, Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. It is recognition that climate science and the detection and attribution of climate change is no longer an obscure field of research like it was 25 years ago. Professor Stott's work focusses on extreme weather events, and he believes recent storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have led to a growing acceptance that climate change "really is here." "These extreme events have shown us again and again how vulnerable we are, all around the world," he said. "This may be the end of straightforward climate-change denial. "However, we need urgent international action, and there are still plenty of attempts to delay that." Professor Stott is hopeful that agreements can be reached at COP26 to dramatically cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. "This is feasible and achievable, and the benefits range from protecting the climate to improving human health and economies," he said. Hot Air is out now in hardback, published by Atlantic Books.
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Post by Admin on Oct 14, 2021 21:07:53 GMT
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Post by Admin on Oct 19, 2021 17:39:00 GMT
OCTOBER 18, 2021 Stop the Deforestation Madness BY STEVE KELLY www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/18/stop-the-deforestation-madness/Since the late 1970s I’ve been actively involved in issues that relate directly to protecting forest ecosystems in the Northern Rockies bioregion. I still marvel at the beauty and God-given miracles that can be found everywhere among the trees and animals that live there. Everyone can experience this same forest magic without paying a fee. Forests can heal us if we could just slow down enough to accept her many gifts. In that time, over four decades now, the propaganda produced by the private-public partnership that created modern industrial logging after the end of WWII, has kept pace with the expanded use of heavy machinery to extract and process logs. There’s plenty of blaming others for causing “illegally deforested land around world,” and finger-pointing directed at domestic forest activists, but never constructive self-criticism or reflection that might lead to change in forest practices causing deforestation here at home. Industry propaganda is repeated ad nauseam by industry flacks, active and retired U.S. Forest Service (USFS-USDA) agents and like-minded congressional members, who all sing in perfect unison from the same hymnal. Where we (most of us) see, experience and feel a forest, the timber industry and its partners in crimes against nature, see only “natural capital” as an engine to generate corporate profit. The more acres of nature converted to profit, the greater their bottom line. Measuring a forest’s value only in dollars is ceremonial cult worship. Propaganda (false narratives to divert our gaze away from clearcutting) manipulates public perception by distorting what’s really happening to public forests and the deadly effects on all local lifeforms. Let me share a few doctrinal whoppers this death cult uses frequently: False statement (propaganda) #1) “Preservation is not conservation.” This misstatement is decades old boilerplate. From Webster’s (1828): “Conservation, noun [Latin See Conserve.] The act of preserving, guarding or protecting; preservation from loss, decay, injury, or violation; the keeping of a thing in a safe or entire state; as the conservation of bodies from perishing; the conservation of the peace of society; the conservation of privileges.” Modern Webster’s says it this way: “Conservation 1: a careful preservation and protection of something especially: planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect water conservation wildlife conservation 2: the preservation of a physical quantity during transformations or reactions” Conservation is preservation. Converting so-called “natural capital” into profit using big machines – bulldozers, excavators, feller-bunchers, limbers, skidders, log trucks, etc. – and mountains of propaganda, is not conservation. False statement (propaganda) #2) “Logging is forest restoration, which in turn benefits elk.” The truth is: clearcuts eliminate elk hiding cover, susceptible to poachers and hunters wanting to kill them. Clearcutting eliminates thermal cover that cools elk and other animals in summer and keeps them alive in the coldest nights of winter. A logging road leads to every clearcut, enabling drive-by shootings and road-hunters. Logging is neither restoration, nor a benefit to elk. In direct response to the fallacious op-ed that ran in the Helena IR recently, written by an R-Y Lumber Co. manager/spokesman, on behalf of out-of-state billionaire mill owners: The court stopped the Forest Service from logging the roadless areas of Tenmile drainage West of Helena because the USFS-USDA broke the law. If the USFS-USDA simply followed the laws governing management of national (public) forests, plaintiffs would never win. Like a dog returns to its vomit, the USFS-USDA is a repeat offender that can’t help itself. We witness the destruction caused by clear-cut logging and roadbuilding. Machines turn forest magic and wonderment into mass psychotic nightmares. Won’t you help stop this deforestation madness? Steve Kelly is a an artist and serves as a member of the board of directors of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.
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Post by Admin on Oct 20, 2021 1:06:32 GMT
NEWS RELEASE 19-OCT-2021 More than 99.9% of studies agree: Humans caused climate change Peer-Reviewed Publication CORNELL UNIVERSITY ITHACA, N.Y. - More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies. The research updates a similar 2013 paper revealing that 97% of studies published between 1991 and 2012 supported the idea that human activities are altering Earth’s climate. The current survey examines the literature published from 2012 to November 2020 to explore whether the consensus has changed. “We are virtually certain that the consensus is well over 99% now and that it’s pretty much case closed for any meaningful public conversation about the reality of human-caused climate change,” said Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science at Cornell University and the paper’s first author. “It's critical to acknowledge the principal role of greenhouse gas emissions so that we can rapidly mobilize new solutions, since we are already witnessing in real time the devastating impacts of climate related disasters on businesses, people and the economy,” said Benjamin Houlton, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell and a co-author of the study, “Greater than 99% Consensus on Human Caused Climate Change in the Peer-Reviewed Scientific Literature,” which published Oct. 19 in the journal Environmental Research Letters. In spite of such results, public opinion polls as well as opinions of politicians and public representatives point to false beliefs and claims that a significant debate still exists among scientists over the true cause of climate change. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that only 27% of U.S. adults believe that “almost all” scientists agreed that climate change is due to human activity, according to the paper. A 2021 Gallup poll pointed to a deepening partisan divide in American politics on whether Earth’s rising observed temperatures since the Industrial Revolution were primarily caused by humans. “To understand where a consensus exists, you have to be able to quantify it,” Lynas said. “That means surveying the literature in a coherent and non-arbitrary way in order to avoid trading cherry-picked papers, which is often how these arguments are carried out in the public sphere.” In the study, the researchers began by examining a random sample of 3,000 studies from the dataset of 88,125 English-language climate papers published between 2012 and 2020. They found only four out of the 3,000 papers were skeptical of human-caused climate change. “We knew that [climate skeptical papers] were vanishingly small in terms of their occurrence, but we thought there still must be more in the 88,000,” Lynas said. Co-author Simon Perry, a United Kingdom-based software engineer and volunteer at the Alliance for Science, created an algorithm that searched out keywords from papers the team knew were skeptical, such as “solar,” “cosmic rays” and “natural cycles.” The algorithm was applied to all 88,000-plus papers, and the program ordered them so the skeptical ones came higher in the order. They found many of these dissenting papers near the top, as expected, with diminishing returns further down the list. Overall, the search yielded 28 papers that were implicitly or explicitly skeptical, all published in minor journals. If the 97% result from the 2013 study still left some doubt on scientific consensus on the human influence on climate, the current findings go even further to allay any uncertainty, Lynas said. “This pretty much should be the last word,” he said. www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/931811
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2021 19:06:35 GMT
Public health experts issue grim prognosis on climate impacts The Lancet’s annual report warns climate change is compounding heatwaves, food insecurity, mental health problems. grist.org/health/public-health-experts-issue-grim-prognosis-on-climate-impacts/As global leaders gear up for a major climate change summit in Scotland next month, researchers from 43 academic institutions and United Nations agencies warn that the world is missing its shot to address the public health impacts of the climate crisis and prepare for future warming. For the past six years, the medical journal the Lancet has published its annual Countdown report, a comprehensive analysis of the preceding year’s scientific literature on climate change and public health. Last year, the journal’s report said that rising temperatures and emissions threaten to undo 50 years of public health gains from interventions like banning trans fats and restricting cigarette smoking. This year’s major takeaways are no less grim. The Lancet tracked 44 health indicators that are directly linked to climate change for this year’s report. Three of those indicators — mental wellbeing, the influence of heat on safe physical activity, and pollution related to the consumption of goods and services — are new this year. The report found that the world’s senior citizens collectively experienced 3.1 billion more days of heatwave exposure in 2020 than average, particularly in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. (The annual averages used in the report are based on data collected between 1986 and 2005.) Children under 1 year old experienced 626 million more heatwave days than average. The report notes that, in addition to physical risks, heat exposure poses diverse risks to mental health globally. But the way mental health conditions are diagnosed, tracked, and treated varies wildly from country to country, so the authors aim to figure out how to better quantify and document this indicator in future reports. One of the Countdown report’s starkest takeaways is that during any given month in 2020, 19 percent of the land surface of the entire planet was affected by extreme drought. Drought and heat combined are putting the world’s major staple crops — corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice — at risk, which means food insecurity will continue to rise in the absence of global leadership on climate change. The report’s authors note that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic was a golden opportunity for nations to invest in public health by using recovery dollars to transition away from fossil fuels and create new climate, health, and equity programs. But world leaders in most countries didn’t take advantage of it. “Less than one dollar in five being spent on the COVID recovery is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Marina Romanello, lead author of the report, said in a statement. “We are recovering from a health crisis in a way that is putting our health at risk.” Ruth McDermott Levy, co-director of Villanova University’s Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, who was not involved in the Lancet report, told Grist that she was struck by the tone of this year’s report. “The Lancet Countdown’s assertions and pleas for action to protect life are much stronger than past Countdown reports,” Levy said. In a brief for U.S. policymakers, public health experts involved in the Lancet report along with some independent doctors and researchers highlighted the way the health impacts tracked in the Countdown report are playing out in America. They specifically focused on heatwaves, drought, and wildfires, three interrelated issues that are undermining public health across the nation. U.S. seniors experienced nearly 300 million more days of heatwave exposure compared to the 1986 to 2005 baseline average, and babies under 1 year old experienced roughly 22 million more heatwave days. The brief notes that particulate matter, tiny particles that infiltrate the lungs and bloodstream and can cause extensive health problems in humans, is up to 10 times more harmful when it comes from wildfire smoke as opposed to other sources. The researchers also pointed to early evidence that wildfire smoke becomes more toxic as it moves further away from its source and interacts with oxygen. And drought compounds all of these issues by worsening water quality, the effects of heat, and even mental health issues in rural areas. “The data in this report are more than just alarming statistics and trends,” Renee N. Salas, a practicing emergency medicine doctor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the policy brief, said in a statement. “I took an oath to protect health and prevent harm, and I can’t do that unless we address climate change.” The Lancet Countdown points out that there are solutions to the myriad health impacts caused by climate change, and nearly all of them require significantly reducing global reliance on fossil fuels. Sixty-five of the 84 most polluting countries in the world reviewed by the report’s authors continue to subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of $1 billion per year on average. Redirecting those subsidies to national health budgets would be a win-win for the planet and public health, the report says. And while world leaders have been slow to understand the negative health consequences of a warming planet, they have been equally slow to grasp the potential health benefits of keeping warming in check. Using COVID-19 recovery funds in a way that helps countries meet the goals of the Paris Agreement — by protecting natural ecosystems, transitioning to renewable energy, and investing in climate-resilient infrastructure — could prevent millions of deaths every year. “This pivotal moment of economic stimulus represents a historical opportunity to secure the health of present and future generations,” the report says. If the world lets this moment slip, however, “climate change will become the defining narrative of human health.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2021 9:44:57 GMT
If COP Wants to Save the Planet, It Has to Challenge Capitalism By Ben Davies Next week sees the start of Glasgow's COP26. It could be an opportunity to tackle capitalism's destruction of the planet – if world leaders choose to take it. tribunemag.co.uk/2021/10/cop-26-glasgow-climate-green-new-dealIam often struck by the popularity of cli-fi (climate fiction), a booming literary genre of contrasting visions of the impact of climate change on humanity. As a consciousness-raising device, these stories have some utility, but what about the reality of the crisis we face? Alongside these sometimes terrifying scenarios, I want to envision one that wouldn’t require us to look particularly far into the future, but instead to COP26 in Glasgow, kicking off, in timely fashion, on Halloween. The most implausible plot that I can imagine is one in which world leaders from Brasilia to Beijing and Washington to Wellington come together in good faith and commit to concrete, radical solutions to tackle the climate crisis and build a more equitable, zero-carbon world in their wake. What would COP26 look like if world leaders were resolutely committed to a transformative Green New Deal? Global Justice To begin with, we must remind ourselves that the logistics behind the conference itself present a nightmare scenario for many delegates from the Global South. Take the example of many African delegates, unprotected against Covid due to vaccine apartheid, yet required to travel in person to the UK, the world’s worst hotspot for infections. The voices of those on the frontline of climate breakdown are being silenced by the chauvinism of the worst polluters who insist that COP26 ploughs ahead, rather than another delay (as requested by many delegates). One third of Pacific nations aren’t even able to send a single delegate, despite their high risk of disappearing entirely due to flooding exacerbated by climate change. The UK government has pledged to vaccinate and accommodate a small number of delegates from the Global South, but has ruled out a ‘blank check’, setting an alarming tone for the rest of COP26: if the organisers aren’t willing to address the inequality of access to vaccinations and access to the conference itself, how can they be trusted to seriously reckon with the inevitably high cost of a global green transition? A COP26 committed to equality and climate justice would, as a bare minimum, ensure that every delegate was able to attend in person, and then put an end to vaccine apartheid, with Northern countries urgently delivering billions of vaccines to the South. COP26 could be an unprecedented debt jubilee, too, with unconditional debt cancellation and the end of structural adjustment programmes which imposed neoliberal reforms and austerity on Southern nations. This would allow those countries to properly invest in their public services and in climate adaptation without spiralling into further debt. To offer truly reparative justice, land, utilities, industry, and resources must be returned to public ownership and managed as a common good for the benefit of all, not the profit of a few. Our dream COP26 would also serve as a platform for agreement towards multilateral demilitarisation and a recognition that our future peace and prosperity is tied to the fight against climate change, or else we face devastating wars for scarce resources in the future. Imperialist militaries leave an enormous carbon footprint, with the US military producing more emissions than 140 nations put together. A radical COP26 would commit to disarmament and détente, and guarantee political and economic sovereignty for nations as integral to climate justice. That means no resource-grabbing coups or liberal military interventions, and an end to illegal occupations and embargos, like those endured by Palestine, West Papua, Yemen, and Cuba, claiming thousands of lives each year and hampering decarbonisation efforts. Fighting Capitalism Aradical COP26 would come to the realisation that the fossil fuel industry is incompatible with decarbonisation efforts and must be dismantled. In practice, that means unshackling governments from the industry by immediately cancelling fossil fuel company subsidies and financing, and coming to a mutual agreement to end all new fossil fuel exploration as well as abolishing unfair carbon markets that allow wealthier countries to pay poorer ones to make emission reductions on their behalf. If the international community were able to come together to agree to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War (albeit with some skullduggery and several states dodging the treaty entirely), we need a similar consensus on the non-proliferation of fossil fuel extraction. Another nail in the coffin for fossil capital will come when world leaders (especially Northern polluters) commit to collectively set up democratic tax-funded public insurance systems to cover climate devastation as a basic right, untethering it from the profit motive. After committing to phase out fossil fuels, what next? The world needs enormous levels of investment in existing renewable energy technologies today, as well as investment in future tech for later down the line. What that can’t mean is green tech contributing to new systems of extraction that reproduce the worst harms of the fossil fuel industry. Instead, let’s see support for locally-owned, community-generated renewable energy projects, especially in the South, to ensure their autonomy over their own energy. A radical COP would also set up a commission to support those in polluting industries during a worker-led just transition to ensure that they don’t suffer from Eco-Thatcherite managed decline. Imagine an international green jobs guarantee ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to access well-paid, non-polluting work in an industry of their choice. A radical COP would recognise that the vampiric neoliberal status quo must end, that private profit-chasers and free markets won’t take the necessary steps and that only activist state planning can decarbonise rapidly. To reckon with the staggering inequalities that have become further entrenched during the Covid crisis, countries could agree to a windfall tax on the super-rich to redistribute the wealth they hold hostage. In tandem, the power of corporations should be tempered by pledges to delist and impose sanctions on companies which break climate agreements. Our fantasy COP could draft progressive public procurement frameworks which target spending towards low-carbon suppliers and work to divest polluters from global supply chain networks. Any transformative global Green New Deal would have to centre the creation of green jobs and announce an end to exploitative employment practices, so for our radical COP that means concrete commitments to allow trade unions to direct any just transition and commit to repeal all anti-union legislation. Public ownership should be rapidly expanded across economies, with the decommodification of housing, energy, transport, health, and social care as vital in the shift to a more caring, green political economy. States should agree to finance the expansion and electrification of domestic and international rail travel to reduce our reliance on aviation and connect communities previously reliant on polluting cars. Leaders should also commit to breaking up large-scale industrial farming and to support a global transition to sustainable agroecology and rewilding, the redistribution of large landholdings, an end to deforestation, and the guaranteed right to food for all. We produce more than enough to feed the entire planet, but ours is a broken system where Southern countries have to export their food to richer countries, while their own populations starve, yet countries in the North waste billions of tonnes of edible food each year. Food sovereignty will massively reduce the carbon footprint of each plateful of food and will democratise and localise what is currently a globalised system held hostage by corporate profit. Human rights must be enshrined as central to decarbonisation efforts. From our radical COP leaders, that means free movement for all and the creation of an international definition for climate refugees, granting them the right to settle where they desire. World leaders could demonstrate their unconditional support for social justice as the end goal of climate justice, protecting LGBTQ+ rights and committing to end gendered and racialised oppression at home and in the workplace. Building robust publicly-owned care services and good wages for all care work (often carried out unpaid by millions of women) would revolutionise unequal power dynamics and elevate the status of caring labour. To finally consign colonialism to history, too, our COP could grant full sovereignty to indigenous peoples over their own territory, granting them their land back and giving them autonomy to steward their environment, utilise their own resources and develop as they see fit. As a form of reparation, we could see massive unconditional investment from the North to the South in adaptive measures including flood defences and international and domestic fire and rescue services. The Reality If that’s the outline of our fantasy radical COP, the reality will likely be a site of rhetorical flourishes and impassioned calls for a Green New Deal from delegates and leaders of the world’s worst polluters and their corporate sponsors. Unfortunately it’s almost certain that those same people will be unwilling to address capitalism as the root cause of the crisis. Those in power are not committed to the underlying radicalism necessary to tackle the climate crisis: that much is abundantly clear. In order to steer a course away from the deadly trajectory plotted by late-stage capitalism, transformative climate policies must form the headline demand of progressive and socialist movements around the world, acting in solidarity and sharing knowledge with each other. You can never trust a COP to act in your interests, so we on the left have to continue the struggle from the grassroots upwards for climate justice, fighting for a zero-carbon future and a transformed relationship to the natural world. This isn’t only a moral imperative but an instrumental necessity for global decarbonisation and avoiding catastrophe for all of us. About the Author Ben Davies is a Labour for a Green New Deal activist.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2021 18:43:57 GMT
OCTOBER 22, 2021 Deconstructing Electric Vehicles on the eve of Glasgow COP26 BY JUDITH DEUTSCH www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/22/deconstructing-electric-vehicles-on-the-eve-of-glasgow-cop26/A lead human-interest story in the weekend Wheels section of a major Canadian newspaper is about a 2-car family’s transitioning from a hybrid to an EV as they “try to be more sustainable”. They upgrade their daily car every few years to seek “improvements in fuel efficiency, reliability and technology”. Electric vehicles (EVs) are feted by the automobile and ecojustice sectors as part of the “just transition” to a future “carbon-neutral”, happy, dignified quality of life. Another news item from the Wheels section was about the costs of home EV battery chargers costing about $2000; the chargers are plugged into electric outlets (electricity commonly supplied from fossil fuels or nuclear reactors), while the costs will be “quickly re-couped in government rebates” as public transportation subsidies continue their decline. So much for the climate emergency and for human justice, for morality and taking responsibility for mounting climate-caused human deaths and mass migration. Nothing in the newspaper about the indignation of ordinary, common people worldwide, especially among the young. Since the 1988 Congressional definitive testimony of James Hansen and other climate scientists, there is no discourse about “Stop”: elimination of fossil fuel emissions quickly morphed into adaptation and mitigation which is now replaced by “transition”. EVs is a representative example of focusing on one small part, conveniently deleting the whole. The whole EV picture must include externalities, life cycle analysis, consideration of non-essential production, impacts of its production on basic human needs, the urgent timeline due to non-linear climate processes, regional climate and sociopolitical processes and who EVs actually serve, EV’s effects on carbon sinks, pertinent facts about human and climate history, loss and damage obligations and debt to people totally impacted and totally innocent regarding the climate emergency, alternatives, elucidating who is served in a “just transition”. The carbon footprint of the automobile whole picture includes asphalt roads, the amount of cement used in parking garages and driveways, building codes that allow heated driveways. Past research from the Earth Policy Institute reported that there were 214 million cars and 3 million km of roads, consuming 1 million hectares of land, enough cropland to feed 9 million people in the U.S. Highway systems lead to deforestation and soil depletion, eroding these crucial carbon sinks. Water campaigner Maude Barlow [1] reported that water was often given by governments to private industries in the automobile, computer, and bottled water sectors, and that it took 400,000 liters to construct one car. Water shortages for people’s basic needs is glaringly one consequence of climate change-caused drought. From the Earth Policy Institute in 2008, Lester Brown wrote that food production suffers because farmers earn much more by selling water to the steel industry than by using water on their land to grow wheat. These are all climate-linked externalities related to all cars. The carbon footprint of EVs includes the emissions of mining for metals in batteries and emissions for constructing the car’s body. “The International Energy Agency predicts that in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of [electric] vehicles will hit the roads, carrying massive batteries inside them. And each of those batteries will contain tens of kilograms of materials that have yet to be mined. Electrifying vehicles adds yet more weight. Combustible, energy-dense petroleum is replaced by bulky batteries. And the rest of the vehicle must get heavier to provide the necessary structural support.” Steel and cement are the two most fossil-fuel dependent products to manufacture. Steel is the primary metal used to make most cars. The EPA suggests that almost 65 percent of the materials used to build the average car are a steel product. Most parts of the car that have to do with steering and suspension are made from steel. Parts of the body, wheels, chassis and frame are also made from steel. Stainless steel is used for bolts, brackets and exhaust parts primarily because of its resistance to rust. Also, the auto industry relies on oil and petroleum products for the synthesis of plastics and other synthetic materials. Robin McKie’s September 2021 article on mining metals for renewable energy plants and electric vehicles is key to understanding the enormity, depravity, of “green” deception. Mining corporations are seeking a quick go-ahead from the UN International Seabed Authority to dredge the deepest layer of ocean floor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean, more than 4m sq. miles of seabed to mine lithium, copper, manganese, nickel, cobalt. This would require sucking up nodules and pumping them 5 km to the ocean surface for the next 25 to 30 years. The technology involves pipelines attached to robot bulldozers that would “be able to gather about 400 tonnes of nodules in an hour and pump them aloft. Over two weeks’ operation, more than 100,000 tonnes could be removed …. About 10,000 sq km of the seabed could be strip-mined.” How much energy would all of this require to manufacture batteries for hundreds of millions of EVs. There are well-known horrific human impacts of mining lithium, cobalt, nickel in Bolivia, Ecuador, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, and “in Xinjiang [where] members of the persecuted Uyghur ethnic minority make up most of the labor force in the hazardous quartz mining and polysilicon manufacturing industries. And most of the Uyghurs are employed through the government’s so-called “surplus labor” and ‘labor transfer’ programs.” Humans are not hard-wired to consume; advertising is a huge, fossil-fuel intensive business. The vast expansion of car sales after WWII came when car dealers saw a big market opportunity in selling to women who were taking jobs outside the home the promotion of urban sprawl requiring cars, the two-car suburban family [2]], the simultaneous depiction of modern woman “freed” from slavish childcare and housework with the marketing of labor-saving and lucrative child, fast food (agro-industry), and cleaning products. [3] Regarding this emergency there is a fundamental elision of facts, categories, dynamic complexity: 1) Climate change is a non-linear process and the primary factor is amplifying feedbacks [4]; the “carbon budget” and all the projected targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions based on linear process are wrong. Here is a simplified explanation of what non-linear means: adding “a” amount of greenhouse gases from human activity is amplified by feedbacks. For example, “a” amount has caused the temperature to increase which then causes forest fires – the burning trees expel its stored carbon and adds more emissions (a+b); the soot blackens ice which adds more emissions (a+b+c); the burnt forest is no longer a carbon sink, thus adding more emissions (a+b+c+d); some feedbacks due to increasing temperature, such as water vapor due to evaporation, or methane from melting permafrost, trap far more heat than CO2 (a+b+c+d+E). The trigger for this process is the CO2 used in manufacturing and the immense amount of CO2 emitted by the agro-industrial complex. However, with feedbacks, the heat-trapping process becomes self-generating and even zero human emissions will not stop this process until some undetermined time. The carbon budget, the postponement of setting caps, assumes that there is no amplification as if “a” remains “a”. The fact of amplification means that the most substantial reductions should have occurred immediately. 2) Paleoclimate evidence shows that 350 parts per million of CO2 is the level at which ice disappears from the planet. [4] The World Meteorological Organization reported 410ppm in 2019 and a rapidly increasing rate of increase; 3) Not only are species becoming extinct but crucial ecosystems are unrecoverable because of current damage, such as parts of the boreal and Amazon forests. Permanently altered are ocean and atmospheric circulation, sea ice and glaciers; 4) humans cannot survive when a combination of temperature and humidity (“wet bulb temperature”) is approximately 35C; 5) The cynical and/or ignorant modus operandi of business-as-usual until and unless energy is replaced by non-fossil fuel based energy; ignored is the Jevons paradox that increases in efficiency do not reduce but add to energy use 6) Utter abnegation of regulatory responsibility: since the 2015 and 2018 IPCC warnings about the dire impacts of temperature rises above 1.5C, there has not been one mandatory and immediate cap on emissions After 1988 warning to Congress, legislators actually began the process of dismantling environmental regulations, [5]. Since the IPCC emergency warnings of 2015 and 2018, the IEA estimates that state support of the fossil fuel sector increased by 28% between 2017 and 2019 through corporate income tax allowances, through finance and profit by banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship SN15 released 358 tonnes of CO2 in a short 6 minute high-altitude test flight on 5 May. The carbon footprint of his 6-hour space flight worked out to around 4.5 tons/passenger; his annual footprint is estimated to be 7,493 metric tons, mostly from flying. By comparison, the annual per capita footprint (in metric tons) in the major lithium-producing countries are Bolivia 1.58, the Democratic Republic of the Congo .05, Australia 16.75. The poorest 50% of humanity is losing $4.4b per day, while Musk became $3.8b richer in one day. The pressing question is how to very rapidly reduce and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in the political abyss. There are innumerable little and big measures that in reality can be easily and quickly implemented without requiring any new technology, financing, or laws. The 1970s oil embargo led to reducing the speed limit and carpooling. In the 1990s Bogota initiated car-free days and Paris halved car traffic by alternating license plates. In WWII there was a 3-year moratorium on manufacturing cars and petroleum-based products and necessities were rationed. In Cuba the fossil-fuel dependent manufacturing and agriculture sectors were transformed by agroecological traditional practices of zero-tillage multi-crop agriculture. During Covid, there was a moratorium on non-essential aviation and shipping. “Stop” can be implemented as a public health necessity for Kyoto-exempt, high-emitting international shipping, aviation, the military and for other non-essential high-emitting practices that are deadly to people and their environment. Single technological fixes like electric vehicles and batteries delay effective action. Preserving auto jobs by switching to EVs helps a small fraction of workers but is myopic about climate impact. There are essential jobs in providing neighborhood access to basic goods and services (such as community responses to disasters), and essential jobs in switching from industrial to agroecological farming. “The farm labour required per hectare would probably increase from eleven hours to between thirty and forty hours per hectare using draft animal power… a decrease in fuel-powered machinery is necessary to decrease fossil fuel use ….” [6]. “Just” solutions are urgent. Open borders and entitlement to food, water, shelter, and healthcare cannot be postponed, while high-priced technological fixes deflect awareness of the human emergency. [1] Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: the fight to stop the corporate theft of the world’s water, The New Press, New York, 2002. p. 8 [2] Ian Angus, Too Many People: population, immigration, and the Environmental Crisis, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2011. P. 38-9. [3] Selma Fraiberg, Every Child’s Birthright: in defense of mothering, Bantam Books, Toronto, 1977. [4] James Hansen, Storms of my Grandchildren: the truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity, Bloomsbury, New York 2009. [5] James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the End of the World: capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008. P xx-xxi. The graphs include water use, transport, fertilizer consumption, ocean ecosystems, global biodiversity, ozone depletion, CO2 concentration, loss of tropical rain forest and woodland damming of rivers, floods. [6] David Pimentel, “Reducing Energy Inputs in the Agricultural Production System” in Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar, Agriculture and Food in Crisis: conflict, resistance, and renewal, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010. P. 251-2. Judith Deutsch is a member of the Socialist Project, Independent Jewish Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at: judithdeutsch0@gmail.com.
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Post by Admin on Oct 27, 2021 18:31:14 GMT
The dirty dozen: meet America’s top climate villains www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/27/climate-crisis-villains-americas-dirty-dozenFew are household names, yet these 12 enablers and profiteers have an unimaginable sway over the fate of humanity Supported by guardian.org About this content Georgia Wright, Liat Olenick and Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt Wed 27 Oct 2021 11.00 BST For too long, Americans were fed a false narrative that they should feel individually guilty about the climate crisis. The reality is that only a handful of powerful individuals bear the personal responsibility. The nation’s worst polluters managed to evade accountability and scrutiny for decades as they helped the fossil fuel industry destroy our planet. The actions of these climate supervillains have affected millions of people, disproportionately hurting the vulnerable who have done the least to contribute to global emissions. Working- and middle-class people must stop blaming themselves for the climate crisis. Instead, it’s time to band together to seek justice and hold these profiteers accountable. Only in calling out their power and culpability is it possible to reclaim the world that belongs to all of us, together.
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