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Notes People, Nature & Cities: 'The Big Disconnect' (Infographic)
Source: Cottage Country & The David Suzuki Foundation
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NotesNeil deGrasse Tyson: ‘The Most Astounding Fact’ (Video)
Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked in an interview with TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer. (Vimeo)
Awe-inspiring. Definitely a video deserving of a full screen treatment. The Cinematic Orchestra track in the background is a nice touch as well.
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Notes It’s Gettin’ Hot In Here: Some Good News, For A Change
In a week where Arctic ice has reached a new low and food prices have spiked due to severe droughts in Europe and the United States it feels strange to think that progress is being made in the fight against global climate change. However, over the last couple of weeks four big initiatives have been announced that have potential to make a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.
Last week, China announced it will spend some $372 billion on clean energy, energy efficiency, and reducing its use of the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Its announcement also made clear that:
Seven Chinese cities and provinces will launch CO2 emissions trading schemes over the next two years ahead of a national scheme later in the decade. (Reuters)
The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
On Tuesday, Australia and the European Union announced a partnership to create the world’s largest carbon market, which will begin trading by 2015. Harvard environmental economist Robert Stavins encouragingly described the move in an interview:
Given the relatively primitive state of climate change policy around the world, especially considering the scope of the problem, this is a very significant step forward. (Atlantic Cities)
For those keeping score at home, when California’s carbon trading system opens in November it will be the world’s second largest.
Finally, this week the United States stepped up and delivered a big one-two punch:
President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Thursday that would increase the number of cogeneration plants in the U.S. by 50 percent by 2020, a move that would boost U.S. industrial energy efficiency and slash carbon emissions by 150 million tons per year.
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Thursday’s executive order came just two days after the White House finalized a rule - developed with U.S. automakers - that would double fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The EPA said the car efficiency standards will be the most effective domestic policy in place to curb greenhouse gas emissions, cutting as much as 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2025.” (Reuters)
Canada has indicated it will copy Obama’s fuel efficiency rules.Together these initiatives are significant because they include the countries with the largest carbon footprints, which must be in leadership roles if we are to get a handle on this predicament. We definitely have a long, long way to go and have some epic challenges before us. But, more and more people seem to be waking up, learning about where we are at, talking with others about it, and then making changes. Positive changes.In essence, what I’m trying to get across is that it’s important to celebrate the positives. Dwelling on the bad news about our climate and the health of our planet and society can be counterproductive and self-defeating. Instead of feeling stuck, now more than ever I think we need to be awake and aware. Ready to adapt to what’s already in the pipe while finding new, old, and otherwise ways of remaking our homes, our food, our transportation, our cities, our economies, our institutions, and even our thinking that allow us to use energy, ecosystems, and other resources more creatively and wisely over the long term. As Charles Darwin is quoted, but apparently misattributed as saying,“It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”Those are my two bits for now. Have a good long weekend!(Photo source: Clean Technica) -
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The Washington Post’s award winning editorial cartoonist Tom Toles hits the climate-energy-money-politics nail on the head once again. It reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary* depends upon his not understanding it.”
(* or election)
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R.I.P. Neil Armstrong, you inspired us and helped us understand the larger context. Thank you.
(Photo source: The Atlantic)
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Notes It's gettin' hot in here: 'Enviros want climate question at Obama-Romney debate'From The Hill:
The League of Conservation Voters has launched a petition drive pressing the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer of PBS, to ask about the topic. The first debate is Oct. 3.
“We urge you to ask President Obama and Gov. Romney how they will confront the greatest challenge of our generation — climate change,” states the online petition, launched Wednesday.
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The League of Conservation Voters is seeking 50,000 signatures.
Check out the rest of the article here. You can sign the petition here.
Related:
- ‘Our summer of climate truth’ (Project Syndicate)
- ‘Voters wish politicians would fix the climate. Really.’ (Grist)
- ‘Conspiracy of silence: The irresponsible politics of climate change’ (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)
(Map source: State of the Climate - National Overview, July 2012, NOAA)
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Notes"Today, August 22, is Earth Overshoot Day, marking the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. We are now operating in overdraft. For the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
…Throughout most of history, humanity has used nature’s resources to build cities and roads, to provide food and create products, and to absorb our carbon dioxide at a rate that was well within Earth’s budget. But in the mid-1970’s, we crossed a critical threshold: Human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce.
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The fact that we are using, or “spending,” our natural capital faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continuously exceed income. In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day. Climate change—a result of greenhouse gases being emitted faster than they can be absorbed by forests and oceans—is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others—shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse, higher commodity prices and civil unrest, to name a few. The environmental and financial crises we are experiencing are symptoms of looming catastrophe. Humanity is simply using more than what the planet can provide.
Earth Overshoot Day is an estimate, not an exact date. It’s not possible to determine with 100 percent accuracy the day we bust our ecological budget. Adjustments of the date that we go into overshoot are due to revised calculations, not ecological advances on the part of humanity. The when is less important than the what.
"Four paragraphs from the Global Footprint Network’s article, ‘August 22 is Earth Overshoot Day’. You can read and learn more here, including about your own ecological footprint and responses to this predicament including examples of cities, countries, and businesses that are transitioning to ‘one planet living’. The BedZed neighbourhood in the UK is one well known example.
Related:
- Jeffrey Sachs: ‘A Global Solutions Network’ (Project Syndicate)
- Tools for Change: ‘Smart Environmental Policy with Full-Cost Pricing’ (Video)
- ‘The Real Barriers to Sustainability’ (UBC Sustainability Initiative)
- Study: ‘Overcoming systemic roadblocks to sustainability: The evolutionary redesign of worldviews, institutions, and technologies’ (PDF)
(Infographic source: Global Footprint Network)
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NotesLester Brown on ‘How the battle for water will reshape our world’
By 2025, two-thirds of people worldwide are expected to face water shortages as businesses, agriculture and growing populations compete for the ever more precious commodity.
Map source: Water for Life Decade (UN)
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Notes Canadian scientists: 'Take direct action on climate inaction' (Nature)From Nature (subscription req’d):
We are scientists recently arrested in Canada for blockading a 125-car train carrying coal destined to release 26,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We joined 11 other Canadians in this act, despite the personal risks and potential negative impact on our careers.
Time is running short and our dialogues on climate change with Canada’s conservative government have been futile, which is why we undertook this extreme action. We were following the example of NASA climatologist James Hansen, who has been arrested three times in the past three years for civil disobedience in protesting against the mining of coal or development of the Canadian oil sands.
If the rate of carbon emissions does not decrease soon, the 2 °C threshold for serious consequences of climate change could be broken this century (M. New et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 6–19; 2011). Yet many nations, including Canada and the United States, remain more concerned with building infrastructure to extract and transport fossil fuels than with seeking alternative energy solutions.
Civil disobedience has a long-standing tradition of inducing social change when those in power fail to act. Governments are neglecting their responsibility to future generations. Because science is built on professionalism and objective evidence, media coverage of our arrests will ensure that they, and the voting public, receive a forceful message.
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Notes"How should we think about the relationship between climate change and day-to-day experience? Almost a quarter of a century ago James Hansen, the NASA scientist who did more than anyone to put climate change on the agenda, suggested the analogy of loaded dice. Imagine, he and his associates suggested, representing the probabilities of a hot, average or cold summer by historical standards as a die with two faces painted red, two white and two blue. By the early 21st century, they predicted, it would be as if four of the faces were red, one white and one blue. Hot summers would become much more frequent, but there would still be cold summers now and then.
And so it has proved. As documented in a new paper by Dr. Hansen and others, cold summers by historical standards still happen, but rarely, while hot summers have in fact become roughly twice as prevalent. And 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.
But that’s not all: really extreme high temperatures, the kind of thing that used to happen very rarely in the past, have now become fairly common. Think of it as rolling two sixes, which happens less than 3 percent of the time with fair dice, but more often when the dice are loaded. And this rising incidence of extreme events, reflecting the same variability of weather that can obscure the reality of climate change, means that the costs of climate change aren’t a distant prospect, decades in the future. On the contrary, they’re already here, even though so far global temperatures are only about 1 degree Fahrenheit above their historical norms, a small fraction of their eventual rise if we don’t act.
"A quote from Paul Krugman’s recent piece in the New York Times, ‘Loading the Climate Dice’. You can check out the rest of the article here and the James Hansen paper referred to in Krugman’s article here.
Related:
- ‘Record Summer Temperatures, By The Numbers’ (Climate Central)
- ‘Study: Many U.S. cities unprepared for future heat waves’ (Washington Post)
(Infographic source: Climate Central)
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Awesome
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Stephen Colbert salutes UVA’s Class of 2013 Followed by this.
FUCKING THANK YOU.
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“We are told “no,” we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. “Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.” And then you’re a player, you don’t want to...”
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Plant a Garden: Reason #9
Help someone out -
- Plant a row for the needy
- Drop off extra produce at the food bank
- Share food...
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Third Year of Drought Threatens Southwestern Oklahoma! Meanwhile … O.K. Sen. Inhofe still says global warming’s a hoax @ State Impact
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Young Monk! by Mardy Photography
Siem Reap, Cambodia
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As our numbers increase, so space for other animals and plants decreases. Our skills and technological ingenuity seem to know no bounds. Having...
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The New York rapper’s political and layered rhymes have been pegged as “conscious rap,” a label that has now become pejorative. His latest album...
