The teenagers of today are (in my opinion) going to be the ones who change our future for the better. I'm happy to read this one about a group who is working on protecting our oceans!
The Venice council chambers flooded, just two minutes after scrapping climate crisis plan. Instant karma!
Also, the date of the US leaving the Paris Climate agreement is the day after the 2020 presidential election. The climate is truly on the ballot.
This is an interesting article in the Huffington Post, about holding the death merchants of our entire ecosystem responsible for their actions. Odd, how there seems to be laws against every other thing under the sun...
"...fighting for “ecocide” to be recognized as an international crime against peace. Defined as the mass damage or destruction of natural living systems, the crime would impose a duty of care on individuals not to destroy the environment and would hold government ministers and corporate CEOs criminally responsible for the environmental damage they caused.
The aim: to close a gap in the law, which allows the perpetrators of large-scale environmental crimes to avoid accountability. The method: to add ecocide to the list of crimes prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (the ICC) in The Hague. "
@unk-p Your article (thank you for posting!) reminds me that the single biggest solution to climate change might be planting a LOT of trees. Trees, trees, trees. I love trees. They speak to me when I walk in the forest and I can hear them whisper back when I sit in my house and ask them questions. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/trees-are-healing-the-planet/
One restaurant in NYC is starting a magnificent trend! Nothing sent to landfills!
Here's a look at 5 important climate and environmental news stories set to define the new year according to the Huffington Post.
Soooo, in the clown theme, we rented Joker last night and at the very end... "Send in the Clowns"
I have felt that the ocean will strike back tsunami style... and just flooding. "What has been thrown in will be thrown back" is pretty much the message that I got.
Yesterday I met a nice man who is an environmental lawyer and also business person for environmental systems (such as purifying water, solar systems). It is not just the US that is retrograde (at this point in time) to clean environmental issues. He worked for years in India for clean water and it seemed the government did not want to "waste" money on it as allowing the rivers to be polluted was the cheapest option. Anyhow he works more as a consultant now helping people, companies and communities find funding and systems that are environment friendly. So he was speaking about how technology is now being sought to harness natural processes of energy such as photosynthesis, tidal motion etc. I asked him about the impact of this administration and while he said his policies are a setback (discussion in particular of a rule that is being rescinded to look at the potential environmental impacts of large construction projects) that the pendulum will swing the other way as we will have no choice. I joked that there is always the choice. We can just decide to this age's Atlantis (or some other lost ancient civilization that the earth ate because of our abuse to it).
I read this article and thought it was interesting.
To celebrate Earth day and tackle the important topic of Climate Change, Michael Moore just released a documentary/movie entitled: "Planet of the Humans" that was supposed to be in theaters, but he is releasing it for free on Ytube:
I haven't seen Moore's film, but it has been widely panned by environmentalists and other media critics for false/misleading information, including maligning Bill McKibben, who is widely respected. Apparently, the film trashes all efforts to move off a carbon-based energy system and offers nothing in terms of practical, hopeful solutions. This kind of rhetoric actually helps the fossil fuel industry, i.e. all our options are problematic, so no use transitioning away from the current system. Sure, solar and wind aren't ideal, and we certainly need to consume FAR less, but how else do we transition? One review I read said the strongest part of the film is the critique of biomass, a position which many environmentalists agree with (including McKibben, who changed his mind after he learned more).
Here's a response from McKibben: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/bill-mckibben-climate-movement-michael-moore-993073/
@herondreams Thanks for letting us know. I know Bill McKibben to be dedicated and a true environmentalist who wrote the seminal book about climate change over four decades ago. I started watching Moore's film right after it was posted and although I hadn't heard about the maligning of McKibben, I found myself shutting it off after about five minutes.
Well, in order to solve the Climate Crisis, you must first be educated that there is an issue to begin with. This article discusses how much information about climate crisis is contained in student science textbooks.
Almost none in many cases.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/textbook-investigation-climate_n_5ec6d26dc5b69106a7355661
For me, the path to resolution and adaptation to climate change lies in the education and opening of learning opportunities for women, in particular in the third, developing, and aboriginal communities. There is no single nexus where we as a species are involved that can impact in breadth and depth.
In another post, someone talked about Senegal, funny it was in Senegal I saw the effect of targeting education at women, and it has had a profound impact on what I see as my life's work now. In many ways, it's a Faustian bargain worth making.
I'm going to post this link in a couple of threads here, because it is a very gestalt picture of the coming climate disaster, but from a human perspective, and much of what this ProPublica article reports is stuff many on here have seen for years.
@laura-f Thank you for posting this well done Propublica article about climate change and migration. ProPublica consists of top journalists who you can subscribe to for free/donation. When you click on any of their article, a subscription request pops up. They never send spam, just daily articles worth reading.
Migration will escalate as the climate continues to devastate crops. People will migrate to survive. In Central America, the pressure on the U.S. borders will escalate.
They showed that when crop failures abound, people first move to the cities for food. But urban crime then escalates so people move again and head for the U.S.
They explained that we need a system for migrants to flow throughout the U.S. and Canada where they can help alleviate the labor problems of our aging population. If we lock them out, then a great humanitarian crisis will ensue as people begin suffering and dying in Central America at unimaginable rates.
Great article about how Costa Rica has restored their forests:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/costa-rica-slows-stops-and-reverses-deforestation/
A great example of how art, science, and business can come together to combat climate change:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/artists-erect-mural-in-warsaw-that-eats-smog/
Restoring 30% of the world's ecosystems in priority areas could stave off extinctions and absorb CO2
Interesting and hopeful.
Returning specific ecosystems that have been replaced by farming to their natural state in all continents worldwide would rescue the majority of land-based species of mammals, amphibians and birds under threat of extinction. Such measures would also soak up more than 465 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to a new report released today. Protecting 30% of the priority areas identified in the study, together with protecting ecosystems still in their natural form, would reduce carbon emissions equivalent to 49% of all the carbon that has built up in our atmosphere over the last two centuries. Some 27 researchers from 12 countries contributed to the report, which assesses forests, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands and arid ecosystems.
"Pushing forward on plans to return significant sweeps of nature to a natural state is critical to preventing ongoing biodiversity and climate crises from spinning out of control," said Bernardo B. N. Strassburg, the lead author of "Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration," published in Naturetoday. "We show that if we're smarter about where we restore nature, we can tick the climate, biodiversity and budget boxes on the world's urgent to-do list."
In a first, the study focuses on the potential benefits of restoring both forest and non-forest ecosystems on a global scale. "Previous research has emphasized forests and tree planting, sometimes at the expense of native grasslands or other ecosystems, the destruction of which would be very detrimental for biodiversity and should be avoided. Our research shows that while reviving forests is critical for mitigating global warming and protecting biodiversity, other ecosystems also have a massive role to play," said Strassburg.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-world-ecosystems-priority-areas-stave.html
This is aptly described in a documentary by David Attenborough: "A Life On Our Planet" on Netflix. It provides an excellent analysis of the issues. He concluded that we must embrace nature and regrow the wilderness areas of the planet.