Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[mspohr]

Coronavirus: 'Nature is sending us a message’, says UN environment chief

Coronavirus: 'Nature is sending us a message’, says UN environment chief

Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis, according to the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen.

Andersen said humanity was placing too many pressures on the natural world with damaging consequences, and warned that failing to take care of the planet meant not taking care of ourselves.

Leading scientists also said the Covid-19 outbreak was a “clear warning shot”, given that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and that today’s civilisation was “playing with fire”. They said it was almost always human behaviour that caused diseases to spill over into humans.

To prevent further outbreaks, the experts said, both global heating and the destruction of the natural world for farming, mining and housing have to end, as both drive wildlife into contact with people.

They also urged authorities to put an end to live animal markets – which they called an “ideal mixing bowl” for disease – and the illegal global animal trade.

 

[mspohr]

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation | George Monbiot

We have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world. The wealth we’ve accumulated – often at the expense of others – has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between capsules – our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls – we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.

The planet has multiple morbidities, some of which will make this coronavirus look, by comparison, easy to treat. One above all others has come to obsess me in recent years: how will we feed ourselves? Fights over toilet paper are ugly enough: I hope we never have to witness fights over food. But it’s becoming difficult to see how we will avoid them.

In combination with a rising human population, and the loss of irrigation water, soil and pollinators, this could push the world into structural famine. Even today, when the world has a total food surplus, hundreds of millions are malnourished as a result of the unequal distribution of wealth and power. A food deficit could result in billions starving. Hoarding will happen, as it always has, at the global level, as powerful people snatch food from the mouths of the poor. Yet, even if every nation keeps its promises under the Paris agreement, which currently seems unlikely, global heating will amount to between 3C and 4C.

 

[mspohr]

Great Barrier Reef suffers third mass coral bleaching event in five years

Great Barrier Reef suffers third mass coral bleaching event in five years

The Great Barrier Reef has experienced a third mass coral bleaching event in five years, according to the scientist carrying out aerial surveys over hundreds of individual reefs.

With three days of a nine-day survey to go, Prof Terry Hughes told Guardian Australia: “We know this is a mass bleaching event and it’s a severe one.”

It follows the worst outbreaks of mass bleaching on record killing about half the shallow water corals on the world’s biggest reef system in 2016 and 2017.

 

[mspohr]

The Ecological Crisis is a Political Crisis - Resilience

Oligarchic control compromises a society’s ability to make correct decisions in the face of existential threats. This explains a seeming paradox in which past civilizations have collapsed despite possessing the cultural and technological know-how needed to resolve their crises. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t understand the source of the threat or the way to avert it. The problem was that societal elites benefitted from the system’s dysfunctions and, prevented available solutions.

Today, oligarchic control over decision-making, and its catastrophic ecological effects, have never been clearer. In the U.S., Donald Trump and his billionaire-dominated cabinet are seeking to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency13, to question climate science14, and to pursue a policy of “American energy dominance” that will dramatically expand production of fossil fuels.15

 

[mspohr]

Blinded By Disbelief: COVID-19's Devastation Is A Mirror For Climate Change

He was describing the inadequacy of the U.S. Federal government’s response to COVID-19, but he may just as well have been describing our cluelessness and lack of attention to the impending climate crisis, which will be far more devastating. Imagine the worst of COVID-19. Now magnify that by an order of magnitude.

COVID-19 is one virus. Just one. Climate change impacts will bring many new illnesses, as we have seen from the spread of the Zika virus. There are possibly viruses lying dormant in the melting permafrost, now. There will be existing illnesses related to water and air quality, land use and agriculture that are exacerbated by climate. There will be increased flooding, tornadoes and wildfires. We won’t have the luxury of dealing with them one at a time, since they are coming at us with a random and unpredictable speed and intensity.

 

[SageBrush]

Coal mining companies and state of Wyoming secretly funded “Independence Institute” campaign to keep Colorado coal plant running - Energy and Policy Institute

Read until the end, a extra dose of noxious awaits

 

[mspohr]

Coronavirus UK lockdown causes big drop in air pollution

Coronavirus UK lockdown causes big drop in air pollution

Some scientists have suggested that the number of early deaths avoided due to cleaner air might potentially outnumber the deaths from coronavirus. “It is going to be a very interesting epidemiological study, but they take years to do,” said Lee

 

[mspohr]

Wildlife charity plans to buy UK land to give it back to nature

Wildlife charity plans to buy UK land to give it back to nature

Heal intends to let the land recover naturally rather than by planting nursery-grown trees.

“We face a brutal environment, but we are resilient,” she said. “Nature cannot wait. Everywhere I look, I see absence of wildlife. But each one of our sites will help hundreds of species.”

The Friends of the Earth trees campaigner Guy Shrubsole said: “A wilder green belt filled with trees, scrub, and wildlife is precisely what the UK needs. It would reconnect more city-dwellers with nature and help fix the climate and ecological emergencies.

 

[mspohr]

Opinion | What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change

How hopeful you feel about the direction this response is taking may depend on how long ago you refreshed your news feed. Just last week (which feels like a hundred years ago), a friend suggested that there may be a sort of Freudian transference from coronavirus to climate — that the fear and sense of urgency will be lifted from the faster-moving crisis and settle on the slower one, becoming a catalyst for much-needed action. So far, it seems any transference is working in the opposite direction: Lockdowns and social distancing are providing a litany of necessary actions ripe for the transferal of nebulous climate anxieties and fears. In this context, consumerism perversely provides some relief — you can finally go buy dry goods to prepare for the apocalypse.

But personal consumption and travel habits are, in fact, changing, which has some people wondering if this might be the beginning of a meaningful shift. Maybe, as you hunker down with cabinets full of essentials, your sense of what consumer goods you need will shrink. Maybe, even after the acute phase of the coronavirus crisis has passed, you will be more likely to telecommute. Lifestyles that include, for example, frequent long-distance travel already seem ethically questionable in light of the climate crisis, and, in an age irrevocably scarred by pandemic, these lifestyles may come to be seen as grossly irresponsible. Maybe among the relatively wealthy, jumping on a plane for a weekend away or for a destination wedding will come to seem unthinkable.

In the United States, we could see similarly shortsighted recovery packages aiming to ramp up the economy to pre-pandemic levels that double down on soaring carbon emissions. So far, the American government’s aid legislation has failed to address clean energy or the climate. The $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress this week, the largest fiscal stimulus package in modern American history, includes direct payments to individuals, expanded and extended unemployment benefits, and $500 billion in loans to bail out affected industries. It does not include relief for renewables, such as crucial tax credit extensions for solar and wind

 

[Merrill]

It probably is a pipe dream to think our current problem will wake up some of the people in charge and cause us to move toward a more sustainable environment. We will see, I’m a glass half full person so I’m thinking positive.

 

[mspohr]

Greta's World

Thunberg’s perceived psychological weakness became her superpower. Her flat, affectless, blunt voice was the perfect counterpoint to the bureaucratic bullshit of the climate negotiators. It cut through all the gobbledygook about offsets and the economic necessity of coal and cost curves of solar power. She put it in simple human language: We are losing our planet. Unlike many activists before her, she is not political. She is not interested in reforming the process. Her voice is unabashedly and explicitly moral — “How dare you.”

“I’m very weak in a sense,” says Thunberg quietly. “I’m very tiny and I am very emotional, and that is not something people usually associate with strength. I think weakness, in a way, can be also needed because we don’t have to be the loudest, we don’t have to take up the most amount of space, and we don’t have to earn the most money.”

 

[mspohr]

Campaigners attack Japan's 'shameful' climate plans release

Campaigners attack Japan's 'shameful' climate plans release

Campaigners fear the coronavirus pandemic will be seen by some countries as a way to weaken their commitment to the Paris accord and present less stringent targets instead of the strong cuts needed.

She added that the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, appeared content “to settle for a low target and policies to continue to fund coal, which are firmly taking us down the path to economic and environmental ruin”.

 

[SmartElectric]

the coronavirus pandemic will be seen by some countries as a way to weaken their commitment to the Paris accord and present less stringent targets instead of the strong cuts needed

You don't say?

EDITORIAL: After this, there's no way the carbon tax can stay
Toronto Sun-16 hours ago
The oil and gas sector has taken a massive hit, one that could even become a fatal one for some Canadian companies.

I didn't click on the Toronto Sun article because it's a right wing conservative rag with no balance to their reporting.
But the title and beginning are obvious, there will be concerted effort by Canadian oil interests to undercut the carbon tax imposed by the Canadian Federal Government.

This after an election where 70% of the vote was for parties who were carbon tax promoters.

 

[mspohr]

Coronavirus Or Climate Change? Greta Thunberg And The Woke Generation Teach Us Important Lessons In Leadership


If I may say, the one “good” thing about the coronavirus pandemic is that it shows us how urgently governments can react to global emergencies if they want to.

 

[mspohr]

Will the coronavirus kill the oil industry and help save the climate?

Will the coronavirus kill the oil industry and help save the climate?

Adrienne Buller, an economist at the Common Wealth thinktank, said governments in countries like the UK, US and Canada should now consider nationalising major oil corporations.

Experts, including Currie at Goldman Sachs, say the climate change debate will almost certainly take a difference course after the crisis. But exactly what that looks like remains to be seen. “The question is how long this is all going to last, and no one really knows,” said Kretzschmar.

 

[mspohr]

Deforestation And Climate Change Could Unleash A Mind-Boggling Number Of Coronaviruses

Dr. Seth Berkley called for increased surveillance of viruses, particularly in the areas where they are most prone to emerge—deforested areas and environments under stress from climate change.

“Where are likely hot spots? It’s where we’re cutting down forests,” Berkley said this week in a TED Connects broadcast. “It’s where, in urban slums, there’s density of population. It’s with climate change and movement of different vectors.”

 

[mspohr]

Three states pass anti-fossil-fuel protest bills in 3 weeks - Electrek

The brutal tactic of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock — wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes, or natural disasters — to push through radical pro-corporate measures.

Shock tactics follow a clear pattern: Wait for a crisis… declare a moment of what is sometimes called “extraordinary politics,” suspend some or all democratic norms — and then ram the corporate wish list through as quickly as possible.

 

[ggies07]

Three states pass anti-fossil-fuel protest bills in 3 weeks - Electrek

The brutal tactic of using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock — wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes, or natural disasters — to push through radical pro-corporate measures.

Shock tactics follow a clear pattern: Wait for a crisis… declare a moment of what is sometimes called “extraordinary politics,” suspend some or all democratic norms — and then ram the corporate wish list through as quickly as possible.

I read this yesterday and pissed me off....another bit of our democracy being chipped away....I've been trying again to get my wife to allow me to get solar panels for our house (so we can damn the man and produce our own energy - we have 100% wind credits right now), but she is hesitant to take on a loan not knowing how the economy will do in the next several months.

 

[mspohr]

Oceans can be restored to former glory within 30 years, say scientists

Oceans can be restored to former glory within 30 years, say scientists

The glory of the world’s oceans could be restored within a generation, according to a major new scientific review. It reports rebounding sea life, from humpback whales off Australia to elephant seals in the US and green turtles in Japan.

Through rampant overfishing, pollution and coastal destruction, humanity has inflicted severe damage on the oceans and its inhabitants for centuries. But conservation successes, while still isolated, demonstrate the remarkable resilience of the seas.

 

[mspohr]

'Thank you Greta': natural solutions to UK flooding climb the agenda

'Thank you Greta': natural solutions to UK flooding climb the agenda

George Eustice, the environment secretary, has announced that £4bn will be spent on flood defences in the next five years and said a “big part of our focus is going to be nature-based solutions upstream”.

I say thanks very much Extinction Rebellion and Greta [Thunberg] – you’ve done a great job. It’s the job we’ve been trying to do for 50 years. We need to take a holistic view – land can do many, many things.”

In the past, flood plains acted like sponges that soaked up water and stopped it flowing headlong into settlements downstream. Wetter habitats provided useful materials such as willow and reeds for baskets and thatched roofs. However, natural wet woodland, neutral grassland, fens and marshes were ironed out of the postwar landscape and now cover just 11% of English and Welsh flood plains. Intensive agriculture covers 70%.