July 31, 2010
George Lakoff
Author, The Political Mind, Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!

Posted: July 15, 2010 09:08 AM
Huffington Post

Saving nature is the central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming increases hurricanes and floods, destroys habitats for plants, fish, birds, and ground animals, spreads deserts, causes deadly waves, and destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.

Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes, and introduced by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME). It is simple, it works, and it pays you!

The principle behind it is this: We US citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison, and destroy, and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels. Read the complete Post.

Studies predict major extinctions and collapse of Greenland ice sheet with temperatures rising well above UN targets

by Juliette Jowit and Christine Ottery
Published on Tuesday, July 6, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

The world is heading for an average temperature rise of nearly 4C (7F), according to analysis of national pledges from around the globe. Such a rise would bring a high risk of major extinctions, threats to food supplies and the near-total collapse of the huge Greenland ice sheet.

More than 100 heads of state agreed in Copenhagen last December to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C-2C (2.7-3.6F) above the long-term average before the industrial revolution, which kickstarted a massive global increase in the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet and triggering climate change.

But six months on, a major international effort to monitor the emissions reductions targets of more than 60 countries, including all the major economies, the Climate Interactive Scoreboard, calculates that the world is on course for a rise of nearly double the stated goal by 2100.

Another study by Climate Analytics, at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, suggests there is “virtually no chance” world governments will keep the temperature rise to below 2C, and the rise is likely to be 3.5C (6.3F) by the end of the century.

In both analyses the current commitments suggest a much better outcome than the estimated business-as-usual temperature rise of 4.8C (8.6F), but are well above the 2C maximum the UN hoped would be agreed at the next major meeting this December in Cancún, Mexico - and even further from the 1.5C target many developing nations argue is needed to stop the worst impacts of climate change in their countries. Read the complete Post.

Bob Cesca
June 2, 2010, 05:00 PM

Author, One Nation Under Fear

I’m sitting here at my desk watching the oil droids hack away at the blowout preventer in preparation for the “cap” portion of the “cut and cap” procedure, which, contrary to what I’m hearing on cable news, is intended to do something other than stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, this latest solution isn’t a solution for stopping the flow of oil at all. The oil will continue to gush from the well, only now BP will be able to more effectively harvest some of the oil — a more reliable version of what they were doing with the riser insertion tube for the better part of last month.

Good for them. So they can resume drinking their milkshake between now and August when, we hope, the relief well will be completed. At which time, corporate milkshake drinking will carry on via more conventional methods.

And why not? It’s the free market after all. As I watch these robots slice the riser from the blowout preventer and read the news about lakes of oil moving towards the coasts of Florida. I’m wondering who to blame for this. The list is long, but, in part, I blame anyone who bought into the lines: “government is the problem” and “the era of big government is over.” It’s been systematic deregulation and the elevation of free market libertarian laissez-faire capitalism that have wrought this damage and allowed potentially destructive corporations to write their own rules and do as they please.

Does anyone seriously believe that BP has suddenly become a philanthropic venture interested in doing whatever it takes — sparing no expense — to make the Gulf region whole again? It will do the absolute minimum necessary to weasel its way through this crisis. Not a red cent more. Read the complete Post.

By Andrew Glikson

07 February, 2010
Countercurrents.org

“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.” (Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute, advisor to the German government).

The release of more than 320 billion tons of carbon (GtC) from buried early biospheres, adding more than one half of the original carbon inventory of the atmosphere (~590 GtC) to the atmosphere-ocean system, has triggered a fundamental shift in the state of the atmosphere at a rate of 2 ppm CO2/year, a pace unprecedented in the geological record with the exception of the effects of CO2 released from craters excavated by large asteroid impacts.

Recent paleoclimate studies, using multiple proxies (soil carbonate δ13C, boron/calcium, stomata leaf pores), indicate that the current CO2 level of 388 ppm and CO2-equivalent level of 460 ppm (which includes the methane factor), commits warming above pre-industrial levels to 3 to 4 degrees C in the tropics and 10 degrees C in polar regions [1], leading to an ice-free Earth.

Such conditions existed in the early Pliocene (5.2 Ma) and mid-Pliocene (2.8 Ma) Pliocene, about the time Australopithecine bipeds were emerging from tropical forests [2]. Pliocene climates changed gradually and pre-historic humans responded through migration. There is nowhere the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go, not even the barren planets into the study of which space agencies have been pouring more funding than governments allocated for environmental mitigation to date [3].

It appears difficult to explain to the public and politicians that, at 460 ppm CO2-equivalent, the climate is tracking close to the upper stability limit of the Antarctic ice sheet, defined at approximately 500 ppm [4]. Once transcended, mitigation measures would hardly be able to re-form the cryosphere, which serves as the Earth’s thermostat, from which cold ocean and wind current emanate – keeping lower latitudes cool. Once the ice melts the atmosphere-ocean system shifts to greenhouse Earth conditions such as existed about 15 Ma (mid-Miocene), before 40 Ma (Eocene), and much of the Cretaceous (141 – 65 Ma), when only small burrowing mammals could live on land.

Read the complete Post.

By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
Posted on April 5, 2010, Printed on April 5, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146286/

Anna Lappe’s new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, may just be the most important book published this year. This past month, rising oceans buried New Moore Island, a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal that India and Bangladesh fought over for nearly 30 years. Closer to home, Massachusetts has suffered “two 50-year storms in the course of two or three weeks,” according to Governor Deval Patrick. That’s a reality check that the climate crisis has already caused tangible effects on our planet, with much more to come. Lappe’s book does not only expose how our current dominant methods of food production, processing, distribution and disposal significantly contribute to climate change; she also tells us how food production can actually mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon in the soil.

However, climate-friendly agriculture is a money-loser for currently powerful industries — agrochemicals, oil and meatpackers to name a few. Lappe debunks their spin, putting the lie to claims that people on earth would starve without Big Ag and factory farms. Instead she reveals the truth, based on well-documented science, on how agriculture can be part of the solution.

What is perhaps most striking is that Lappe’s book comes nearly 40 years after her mother’s classic, Diet for a Small Planet, which tackled the problem of world hunger. Even though they wrote about how to solve different problems through food and agriculture, their proposed solutions are the same. Perhaps that is more than a coincidence (especially since, as Lappe notes below, their advice on eating a plant-centered diet of whole foods is similar to dietary advice for good health). Read the complete Post.

Deniers are dancing on the graves of their reputations, to say nothing of reality itself. But Earth will still get the last laugh on all of them, and us for that matter.

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on March 21, 2010

And if the ground’s not cold/Everything is gonna burn/We’ll all take turns/I’ll get mine too. — Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven.”

Bad news. Thanks to perfectly timed, premeditated reality assassinations like so-called ClimateGate, nearly half of Americans may now believe that the various threats of climate change are exaggerated. That’s the highest quotient ever since polling on the issue commenced. But there is good news: They’re on the wrong side of history and science, and Earth will still get the last laugh on all of them, and us for that matter.

Welcome to our existential nightmare. From rising seas and runaway droughts and storms to the outer limits of dystopian catastrophes like the fart apocalypse — I’ll explain later — our planet has no shortage of ways to bitch-slap us back into our dangerous reality, whether we want it to or not.

Of course, we could stave off some of the more egregious probabilities of extinction, if we acted now to limit global warming’s inexorable rise to 2 degrees. But that means a determined destruction of the status quo, and that’s always messy for those who like things just the way they are, thank you very much. But they’ll still get theirs. How? Let us count the ways. Read the complete Post.

March 11, 6:30-9pm
Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co
1255 Lynn Valley Road, No. Vancouver

Writer-producer-activist Jon Cooksey will mix humor, credit crisis metaphors and hard-hitting facts to show how climate change is only one symptom of an even messier problem: overshoot. “Overshoot means too many people using up too little planet. So in the end, we either need fewer people, more planets, or we’re going to have use less stuff. Or all three. I dib Mars.” As Antoine de Saint Exupery said, “if you want to get people to build a boat, make them yearn for the sea”; with humor and hope, Jon shows not only the water rising, but also the fun to be had sailing the seas of social change.

FORMAT:
6:30 Mingling and appetizers
7:00 presentation & Dialogue
8:50 Socializing and connecting

To register, please invite a friend and send names and emails to: registration@coolnorthshore.ca
Please bring $5 to cover admission and appetizers.

For more information: http://www.coolnorthshore.ca/action/cool-drinks-jon-cooksey

Cool Drinks is a monthly social and learning gathering to connect and inspire individuals interested in climate change in our community. On the third Thursday of each month, we invite a ‘provocateur’ to share knowledge and perspective on a climate change-related topic. Supported small group dialogue and informal networking allow participants to push the ideas further, and get the information and support they need to act.

MORE DETAILS:

BC - Award-winning writer and producer Jon Cooksey will speak about the impact that humans are having on the planet – including global warming, energy issues, and other light topics.

Cooksey is currently at work on a feature-length eco-comedy called How to Boil a Frog (HTBAF), which chronicles his personal, four-year adventure as a filmmaker, activist and, above all, a father driven, as he puts it, “to make sure my daughter’s going to have a future beyond living on a raft with the last polar bear.”

HTBAF mixes humor, credit crisis metaphors and hard-hitting facts to show how climate change is just one symptom of an even messier problem: overshoot. “Overshoot means too many people using up too little planet,” says Cooksey, “so in the end, we either need fewer people, more planets, or we’re going to have use less stuff. Or all three. I dib Mars.”

Cooksey plans to explore not only the facts about the mess we’re in, but the psychological effect it’s having on us. “We talk to people about these subjects like they’re rational – like they’re calculators – but who among us isn’t already being driven around the bend by daily life?” Cooksey asks. “Pay my bills, raise my kids, deal with my relationship – or find me one – then talk to me about changing my lightbulbs to keep the world from bursting into flame. People feel the disconnect.”

HTBAF seeks to paint a better future than the one we have now, and as Cooksey puts it, “a lot better than the one we’re going to have if we keep doing what we’re doing.” But he doesn’t feel more facts will do the job. “Antoine de Saint Exupery said, if you want to get people to build a boat, make them yearn for the sea. There’s a fantastic ocean out there, full of friends and fun and meaning and great music. I’d rather be sailing on it than drown in it. How about you?”

Alex Steffen, 15 Feb 10
WorldChanging

When We Talk Zero, We Sound Crazy. When Bill Gates Does It, Bankers Pick Up the Phone.

On Friday, the world’s most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.

Now, I’m not a member of the Cult of Bill myself (I’m typing this on a MacBook), but you don’t have to believe that Gates has superhuman powers of prediction to know that his predictions have enormous power. People who will never listen to Al Gore, much to less someone like me, hang on Gates’ every utterance.

And Friday, Gates predicted extraordinary climate action: zero. Not small steps, not incremental progress, not doing less bad: zero. In fact, he stood in front of a slide with nothing but the planet Earth and the number zero. That moment was the most important thing that has happened at TED.

What, exactly, did he say, and why is it so important?

Gates spoke about his commitment to using his massive philanthropic resources (the Gates Foundation is the world’s largest) to make life better for people through public health and poverty alleviation (”vaccines and seeds” as he put it). Then he said something he’s never said before: that is it because he’s committed to improving life for the world’s vulnerable people that he now believes that climate change is the most important challenge on the planet.

Even more importantly, he acknowledged the only sensible goal, when it comes to climate emissions, is to eliminate them: we should be aiming for a civilization that produces no net emissions, and we should be aiming to live in that civilization here in the developed world by 2050.

Obviously, that’s a big goal. Because he is the world’s biggest geek, to explain how he plans to achieve that goal, Gates put up a slide with a formula (which we can call the Gates Climate Equation): CO2 = P x S x E x C Read the complete Post.

By Andre Piver - VPOE
Feb. 28, 2010

We have more stuff and less time, connection and beauty, while living at the speed of our fossil-fueled machinery. No longer knowing the source of our stuff, we have lost the blessing, the skill and the satisfaction of quality and craft. We have allowed a whole life to be torn apart and marketed back to us needing to go to the gym, the nutritional supplement store, the daycare  centre and eventually the nursing home.

The price for all of these dubious rewards is that Climate Change is in runaway mode.  e.g. melting permafrost represents 20% of the fixed carbon on the surface of the planet and is composting and liberating methane  which is 21 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2.;  the warming oceans are less able to hold dissolved CO2; both of these cause the temperatures to rise more which causes both of them to occur even faster and so on.

The greatest global impact for all life is accelerating drought which is already occurring and running up against depleted aquifers and the predicted flooding of low lying areas with sea level rise affecting the most fertile lands. For humans the most devastating repercussion is crop failures. So yes re-localizing the capacity to grow food is an absolute necessity. Existing and predicted local impacts of CC include the loss of our glaciers, more of our precipitation in the winter mostly as rain with diminishing seasonal snowpack and earlier run-off ,this  eventually combined  with increasing burn-off of our highland tree cover. All of these  are reducing creek flow during our increasingly hotter and drier summers and climate modelers predict migration to this region by drought refugees from at least two directions.

We have already extracted most of the easily accessed oil and what remains is ever more difficult, and expensive to procure. Depletion of known reserves stopped being matched by the finding of new ones as early as 2005 while the pace of increasing consumption in the developing world has accelerated wildly.  In his book “Why Your World is going to get a Whole Lot Smaller”, Jeff Rubin who was the most quoted economist in all Canadian media as head of CIBC World Markets predicts $2.00 per liter gas around the corner as just the beginning of where it is headed. Read the complete Post.