For generations, those of us in the Global North have benefited from lives of great privilege. Some of this was inherited by chance. Much of it was taken by force.
We, the lucky few, have hoarded and exploited Earth’s natural resources, taken cruel advantage of cheap labor from the Global South, gleefully wallowed in excess and luxury while believing our privilege was the blessing of a just God.
Now is the time to reverse this wrong. Not only is it, by any measure, the right and moral thing to do — it also is required to have any hope of avoiding the most dreadful outcomes imaginable.
If the Global North does not radically and rapidly scale down, ending our destructive imperialist and consumerist ways while also supporting the Global South in both decarbonizing and reducing poverty, then in time, likely within a few decades, our entire modern civilization will collapse.
Suffering, death, calamity after calamity — possibly even nuclear war — this is the horrifying future our children and grandchildren face. No wonder suicide is on the rise among the young.
The only way to prevent such an awful tomorrow is to change our ways today.
:xr: Can we please get back to our pre-pandemic conversations about the overwhelming amount of CO2 generated by the massive number of in-person #OpenSource events?
🌍 And more importantly, how to stop?
💡 Perhaps someone can work on a tracker of estimated carbon emissions for each major conference.
Here's how the story goes: Capitalism removes the forests in search of profits, drills into the earth in search of profits, pollutes the air and water in search of profits... and now, what's left?
Oh, wait, say the capitalists, we haven't dug into the deep sea yet in search of profits, er, um, minerals. And guess what, we can pretend we're doing that for the sake of the climate and the environment!
Yeah, that's the idea. We need those minerals to make electric cars. So it's a win-win. We'll make billions more in profits, AND we'll make ourselves look good by promoting Green Growth! 😃
Monoculture tree plantations are not forests. They do not harbor biodiversity, and they are far more susceptible to drought, fire, and pest infestation than are actual, natural forests.
So when advocates for “Green Growth” promise we can keep the economy going by planting trees to capture carbon and maintain a healthy biosphere, do not believe them. It’s a lie. It’s a perpetuation of business as usual.
The best way of using trees to capture carbon is — don’t cut down forests!!
And the best way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere is — stop burning fossil fuels!!
"Low-lying areas with poorly planned development, lack of investment in protective #infrastructure and the lingering effects of historic disinvestment and discrimination are often at higher risk.
The estimable Umair Haque, with one of his strongest and most devastating pieces...
“We Should Stop Calling It Climate Change — And Start Calling It Extinction"
Climate change? The climate isn’t changing. It’s heating. Rapidly. Faster than at any point in hundreds of millions of years. It’s heating so fast that this is the stuff entire geotemporal boundaries are made of — “ages” in geological history. So fast that it’s shattering scientists’ worst predictions — and making reality look like a sci-fi movie.
Do you know who invented the term “climate change”? Frank Luntz. The Republican “strategist.” Why?
In the early 2000s, Luntz rebranded global warming as “climate change” because it sounds far, far less dangerous, problematic, severe, worrisome. The usual network of right-wing think tanks and media outlets immediately — as if by design — began to use it. And the rest is history. By now, all of us use a term that a Republican strategist came up with to make global warming sound less dangerous, and wonder why we can’t fix the planet.
Too many of us have fallen for a branding campaign. One designed to pull the wool over eyes about, oh, only the most urgent issue on Earth, on which your life and prosperity very much depend, too. Just ask the 5 million people a year dying of climate cha — global warming. Oh wait, you can’t, because they’re dead.
Sorry to be harsh — but I feel we have to speak honestly about such matters. Because, of course, there is no doubt about what’s happening to the planet. It’s not cooling, it’s warming, it’s not natural, it’s profoundly unnatural, as in human-made, and even at that, made by a certain lifestyle of rampant overconsumption, sprawl, greed, and materialism.
And here we are, just two short decades later. The planet has heated dramatically. People are dying from killer heat. We need a whole new vocabulary to describe how rapidly and badly the temperature’s rising. “Summer” doesn’t quite mean what it used to. It’s now a time of mortal danger for people, whether from “heat domes” or “megafires” or “megafloods” or “megafires” and so on.
And yet we’re still using the vocabulary of global-warming deniers to describe all this: “climate change.”
It’s not “climate change.” It never was. It’s “global warming,” yes. But even more than that, it’s Extinction.
Extinction doesn’t mean “all the life on planet Earth dies,” it means that mass extinction happens on a scale we have yet to comprehend — across the planet, to all life, millions of species, in every biome and ecology. It means ecosystems collapse, and with them everything we rely on, from the bees that pollinate the plants that provide us with the resources we need and the air we breathe, to our supply chains being destroyed by mega-weather. It means millions and millions of people die from the resulting chaos and collapse that ensues. And our civilization, and everything it entails — economy, society, democracy, culture — is hardly likely to survive an event like that intact.
Over the past 15 years, the Earth has accumulated almost as much heat as it did in the previous 45 years, with most of the extra energy going into the oceans.
This month, the global sea surface hit a new record high temperature. It has never warmed this much this quickly.
Scientists don't fully understand why this has happened.
🚨 From the Guardian...
Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.
The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain.
Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey said: “This has got scientists scratching their heads. The fact that it is warming as much as it has been is a real surprise, and very concerning. It could be a short-lived extreme high, or it could be the start of something much more serious.”
Some scientists fear that the rapid warming could be a sign of the climate crisis progressing at a faster rate than predicted.
🚨 From Grist...
Oceans have absorbed a massive amount of the carbon dioxide that humans have generated since the Industrial Revolution. In total, oceans have absorbed some 90% of the heat caused by human-induced climate change. But that benefit comes with a devastating cost.
The globe’s oceans have become warmer and more acidic over time, which has wide-ranging repercussions for marine life and human well-being. Rising ocean temperatures lead to changing circulation patterns, coral bleaching, sea-level rise, changes in fish migration and marine food webs, and ocean deoxygenation — when oceanic “dead zones” form.
Scientists have cautioned that the ocean cannot absorb emissions forever — there will come a time when the water bodies grow so warm they begin to emit carbon dioxide instead of absorbing it. The recent, sustained spike in sea surface temperatures throws the long-term viability of the world’s oceans into sharp relief.
“This is heading in an unprecedented direction, and could be taking us into uncharted territory,” said Ben Webber, professor of climate science at the University of East Anglia.
🚨 All signs point to a climate emergency, not in the future, but right now.
So much bad news, everyday, everywhere... does it lead you to despair? Or does it does it make you ANGRY? 🤬
I hope it's the latter, because anger might just be our best hope.
That's the message of this stirring opinion piece by Alec Connon...
In the last twelve months, one-third of Pakistan has been submerged in flooding that killed thousands and displaced millions. Prolonged heat waves and drought have exacerbated a global food shortage that has raised the number of people living with food insecurity from 440 million to 1.6 billion. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a desperate warning of approaching climate cliffs, and fears have emerged of the impending collapse of oceanic currents critical to Earth’s climate system.
Given this context, the fact that fewer investors now support ending fossil fuel expansion should appall anyone paying attention. It’s a sign that our current economic system is fundamentally flawed, that it’s incapable of adapting to the demands of a heating planet, and that investors, the people and institutions at the very heart of our economic system, are incapable of thinking about anything other than the most short-term of profits.
I know this is the part of the article where I’m supposed to pivot to hope, to leave the reader feeling that there’s something they can do, an action they can take that will make a difference. But today, I’m finding solace not in hope, but in anger.
Anger is the rawest of emotions, an emotion uniquely capable of destruction ― destruction of both the self and broader society. But anger, properly channeled, is also one of the great motivating forces of social movements. In the face of injustice, we can and we must be angry. Not only is it okay to be angry at the institutions and people pushing us toward irreparable ecological breakdown, it’s essential.
Anger at the institutions hurtling us toward climate breakdown is not only okay and understandable. In the fight to rein in the climate crisis, it might just be our best hope.
I've just read a very interesting — but disturbing — essay about the direct connection of historical colonialism to deforestation, desertification, pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Ugh.
My first reaction is to be appalled and disgusted (once again) with the incredibly poor "stewardship" shown by European conquerors of indigenous peoples. Time and time again, these "civilized" invaders proved far less capable of effectively managing precious natural environments and resources than had the original inhabitants. Damn them!
And my second reaction is to be fascinated by the suggestion that "Anthropocene" may not in fact be a suitable name for the geological epoch we entered at some point in the past few hundred years. This is because the prefix "anthro" suggests that ALL humans are responsible for the changes wrought by global industrialization, when in truth it was, and is, only a mere sliver of the population, that good old 1%, who are behind the drive to dominate nature and exploit the environment at whatever cost, so long as they can profit from it and solidify their positions at the top.
Here's a short excerpt which amplifies this point...
While the scientific community has been debating over which year the Anthropocene Epoch began, several Indigenous and Black scholars have shot back against the term.
The problem, some scholars say, is that the term assumes the climate crisis is caused by universal human nature, rather than the actions of a minority of colonialists, capitalists, and patriarchs. And the implication that the Earth was stable until around 1950, when the ‘Anthropocene’ supposedly began, denies the history of people who have been exploited by those systems for centuries.
Indigenous scholars have further addressed how the term stands for colonialist ideologies that sever the deep ties and interconnections between humans, plants, animals, and the soil.
“Instead of treating the Earth like a precious entity that gives us life, Western colonial legacies operate within a paradigm that assumes they can extract its natural resources as much as they want, and the Earth will regenerate itself,” said Hadeel Assali, a lecturer and postdoctoral scholar.
I hope you'll read the full essay, and then let me know what you think about its message.
Yes, the climate crisis is raising your grocery bills
Climate-driven extreme weather and disasters are now more frequently responsible for production shortages, supply chain disruptions, and labor issues that lead to higher costs of living
‘Green colonialism’: Indigenous world leaders warn over west’s climate strategy
"World Indigenous leaders meeting this week at an annual #UN summit have warned that the west’s climate strategy risks the exploitation of #Indigenous territories, resources and people.
New and emerging threats about the transition to a greener economy, including mineral mining, were at the forefront of debate as hundreds of Indigenous chiefs, presidents, chairmen and delegates gathered at the 22nd United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues."
Cattle farmers worried about climate change take matters into their own hands
"My granddaughter, when she was seven, said to me, 'Pa, I don't want to be one of the ones that have to sort out the mess you made about climate change,'" he said
"Now, if that's not enough to push your grandad into doing something, I don't think anything would."
One of the planet’s most important carbon sinks is revealing its secrets
5–7 minutes
The Southern Ocean plays a central role in moderating the rate of climate change, absorbing an estimated 40% of the total amount of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions and 60-90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere