environment music: 350 benefit concert flutes Renaissance music
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Renaissonics…
…performing Thomas Simpson’s “Bonnie Sweet Robin.”
So beautiful.
They’re performing at “Flutes Against Climate Change” on May 19 — don’t miss it.
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 15: Harper Valley PTA
Neela Banerjee writes in the LA Times about Tennessee’s embarrassing new legislation, which is eagerly awaiting its gubernatorial flourish before slime-spattering students throughout the state:
WASHINGTON — Tennessee is poised to adopt a law that would allow public schoolteachers to challenge climate change and evolution in their classrooms without fear of sanction, according to educators and civil libertarians in the state.
Passed by the state Legislature and awaiting Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature, the measure is likely to stoke growing concerns among science teachers around the country that teaching climate science is becoming the same kind of classroom and community flash point as evolution. If it becomes law, Tennessee will become the second state, after Louisiana, to allow the teaching of alternatives to accepted science on climate change.
The Tennessee measure does not require the teaching of alternatives to scientific theories of evolution, climate change, human cloning and “the chemical origins of life.” Instead, the legislation would prevent school administrators from reining in teachers who expound on alternative hypotheses to those topics.
The measure’s primary sponsor, Republican state Sen. Bo Watson, said it was meant to give teachers the clarity and security to discuss alternative ideas to evolution and climate change that students may have picked up at home and want to explore in class.
Morons. Sorry — that should be Morans; my bad. Sent April 7:
When contemporary conservatives want schools to “teach the controversy,” it’s a sure bet they’re referring to controversies they’ve created themselves. Tennessee’s new legislation is an excellent example of this; the notion that science teachers are somehow restricted by requiring them to actually teach science is a fabrication of the evangelical subset of American conservatism.
The arguments within climatology concern the details of feedback and forcing mechanisms in Earth’s environment, and what they portend for the future of the planet and its inhabitants; the human causes of global warming are as fully settled as the basic processes of Darwinian evolution. Assertions to the contrary are either mendacious or ignorant; probably both.
But what the hell — let’s teach the controversy: is Marxist economics valid? Is the Earth flat? Does your astrological sign influence your life? Is Elvis alive? Is Paul dead? Is there really a Flying Spaghetti Monster? Welcome to school.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: analogies Buckminster Fuller slavery timescale
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 14: Ventilated Prose Edition
Curse you, Jim Hansen! Why must you be right, all the time? The Guardian (UK):
Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, according to the leading Nasa climate scientist Prof Jim Hansen.
He argues that storing up expensive and destructive consequences for society in future is an “injustice of one generation to others”.
Hansen, who will next Tuesday be awarded the prestigious Edinburgh Medal for his contribution to science, will also in his acceptance speech call for a worldwide tax on all carbon emissions.
In his lecture, Hansen will argue that the challenge facing future generations from climate change is so urgent that a flat-rate global tax is needed to force immediate cuts in fossil fuel use. Ahead of receiving the award – which has previously been given to Sir David Attenborough, the ecologist James Lovelock, and the economist Amartya Sen – Hansen told the Guardian that the latest climate models had shown the planet was on the brink of an emergency. He said humanity faces repeated natural disasters from extreme weather events which would affect large areas of the planet.
“The situation we’re creating for young people and future generations is that we’re handing them a climate system which is potentially out of their control,” he said. “We’re in an emergency: you can see what’s on the horizon over the next few decades with the effects it will have on ecosystems, sea level and species extinction.”
This is the first time I’ve been able to invoke Bucky Fuller in a letter. Sent April 6 (I’m now 8 days ahead — yay me):
Dr. James Hansen has it exactly correct. Just as the slave trade’s poisonous legacy continues to haunt the United States a hundred and fifty years after the “peculiar institution” passed into history, the consequences of a century’s worth of profligate carbon consumption will be felt by the next twenty generations of our descendants.
Since the advent of the industrial revolution, we have become accustomed to an apparently inexpensive and endless supply of what the futurist Buckminster Fuller called “energy slaves” — fossil-fueled technology that replaces captive human labor. But now, as climatology reveals the damage wrought by burning all that oil, gas and coal, it is becoming apparent: those energy slaves weren’t cheap after all, and the bill is coming due.
A globally-implemented carbon tax is essential if we are to transform our economic system into one that is not ruinous to the earth upon which all of us depend.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 13: Whodunnit?
Krishneil Narayan writes in the Fiji Times, attempting to clarify an important distinction:
There is always much confusion between the terms Global Warming and Climate Change (CC). Many a times, people young and old, find it difficult to define these terms and use it interchangeably. But to tackle the devastating impacts of the changing climate and its threats to humanity, it is important to be able to differentiate the fine line stuck between the two.
The international scientific community agrees that there has been a significant change in global climate in recent years. The Earth’s climate is changing at an alarming rate.
In most places around the world, average temperatures are rising. Scientists have observed a warming trend beginning around the late 1800s.
According to the leading international scientific body for the assessment of climate change consisting of some 4000 climate scientists — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the reason behind this trend is global warming and CC due to human activity. Humans releasing heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the basis of the warming trend.
Credit where credit is due. Sent April 6:
As your article makes clear, the warming atmosphere and the changing climate are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. But there is more to this than terminological niceties. The phrase “climate change” was first suggested in 2002, by Frank Luntz, a public relations specialist for the U.S. Republican Party, as a way of deflecting increasing public concern about “global warming.” The new words sounded less ominous, and therefore less likely to trigger demand for meaningful policy responses — anathema to the petrol-funded Bush administration.
In a rare turn of events, the term generated by a political consultant more accurately describes the situation, and is now routinely used by climatologists. But the grim irony of the situation is that Mr. Luntz’ strategic euphemism enabled the United States and its industrialized allies to postpone indefinitely the changes that must be made if our species and our civilization are to prosper in the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: glacial melt mountains peace sustainability
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 12: Imagine….
The Hindustan Times reports on a conference of mountain nations hosted by the Nepali government. Good for them:
Threat posed by global warming and the need to have a collective voice in climate change negotiations have brought mountain countries from across the world to one platform.
Representatives from government and organization from over two dozen countries having peaks with heights of 4,000
metres or more have gathered here to deliberate on the way ahead.Initiated by Nepal government, the two-day conference will discuss effects of climate change on 25% of land Earth’s surface covered by mountains and nearly 13% world population residing there.
The objective is to promote concerns of mountain countries within UNFCCC process, draw global attention to the threat, seek solutions and adopt a Kathmandu Call for Action.
Terming climate change as the greatest threat facing humankind, Nepal President Ram Baran Yadav said that mountain nations are experiencing disproportionate effects of it.
I’m just a peacenik. Sent April 5:
Only a few years ago, climate change was generally understood as something that would only affect our descendants. Now, as the likely consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect become evident in our daily lives, it’s apparent that we — all humanity — are on the front lines of a battle against a remorseless and unfeeling enemy. The conference of mountain nations initiated by the Nepalese government is one of many international collaborations that may very well be our species’ best chance of survival.
As even the nations most invested in climate-change denial will eventually discover, this enemy attacks mountains and islands alike, ravaging forests and deserts with impersonal efficiency. We are under assault by forces we have ourselves created through profligate consumption of fossil fuels, and to win this battle, we must enter a new era of international cooperation; the fight against climate change leaves no more room for war.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: automobiles corporate irresponsibility corporate personhood sustainability transportation
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 11: I’ll Show Him That A Cadillac Is Not A Car To Scorn
A guy named Randy Salzman writes an op-ed in the New York Times that’s well worth a read. It’s titled “Invitation to a Dialogue: Our Addiction to Cars.” The final few grafs:
While oil worldwide costs the same, other nations put higher fees on gasoline and diesel consumption. Japan’s high gas taxes make its 127 million people a huge test market for energy efficiency, while our lower taxes cajoled Detroit into selling gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s.
Of course, decreasing driving in a culture famed for its “love affair with the automobile” is difficult. No one, yet everyone, is to blame for our national default position of key in the ignition to get anywhere, everywhere and — often — nowhere. Our politicians are not willing to tell us the most inconvenient of inconvenient truths.
If we’d use our cars smarter, we’d mitigate a host of problems and prevent our grandchildren from following our children in fighting wars in the Middle East.
To begin using our cars intelligently rather than habitually, we need a rational federal gasoline “user fee” rolled in slowly over a decade.
It’s time politicians led an adult conversation with America.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, though I tried, in this letter, sent April 4:
From the stories of the early pioneers and Horace Greeley’s “Go West, young man,” to Kerouac’s Beat generation tales, the freedom to get up and go wherever we please is a formative element of the American myth. But the individual liberation implied by the automobile is chimerical; our society rightly castigates those who would abdicate their responsibilities to family and community, and our collective responsibility for the past century’s profligate consumption of fossil fuels is not something from which we can simply drive away. There is no freeway that will let us avoid the environmental consequences of introducing so much extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Yes, contemporary America’s social infrastructure is utterly dependent on the automobile — but this cannot be an excuse for inaction. If we are to steer in the direction of planetary good citizenship, we must change our oil economy, and the myths that lend it credibility.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: sustainability timescale urban survival
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 10: People Get Ready…
The Salt Lake Tribune praises the city’s initiatives on climate change:
Climate change should be a matter of science, not politics. But only changes in public policy, which is often determined by political ideology, can reduce the human-caused warming that is threatening ecosystems around the globe.
In the end, governments, large and small, will be forced to confront the vast upheavals that climate change can bring if we don’t act now to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
That’s why it’s important that Salt Lake City is supporting a growing movement among cities to urge President Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency to invoke the Clean Air Act to place limits on carbon emissions. The City Council and Mayor Ralph Becker collaborated on a resolution urging the federal agency to “swiftly employ and enforce” the act. Only Councilman Carlton Christensen voted against it.
The need to act is underscored by a new report on severe weather events related to global warming coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel, founded by the United Nations in 1988, is focusing for the first time on extreme weather changes, which have increased in number and intensity in recent decades.
Weather disasters including drought, flooding, hurricanes and rising seas cost the U.S. government an average of $3 billion a year in the 1980s. In the past 10 years, that figure has skyrocketed to $20 billion a year, adjusted for inflation.
Read the comments on this article if you want to be seriously depressed. Sent April 3:
Successful approaches to climate change must be polycentric — operating at multiple levels of geographical scale, from the individual home all the way to the national and global.
Urban initiatives like Salt Lake City’s are essential components of the total picture; without the engagement of cities, any attempt at mitigation and adaptation is doomed to failure. Similarly, no progress can take place without the commitment of dedicated people, families and communities, working together to reduce their carbon footprints and prepare for the infrastructural and agricultural disruptions that are now inescapable.
But none of these will make sense without broader-scale government support. Just as the planetary environment supports a vast range of diverse and interdependent ecosystems, only federal government action can support the wide range of individual, local, and regional initiatives that are necessary to address the slowly unfolding catastrophes that are the inevitable consequences of the burgeoning greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders
environment music: genius
by Warren
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The Beauty of Shakuhachi
Elizabeth Reian Bennett plays Tsuki No Kyoku (“Song Of The Moon”). What an exquisite music!
She will be performing at Playing For The Planet: World Flutes Against Climate Change. Don’t miss it!
environment: automobiles corporate irresponsibility corporate responsibility denialists Heartland Institute
by Warren
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 9: Little Deuce Coupe
General Motors is now a certified left-wing tree-hugger (The Boise Weekly):
The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes denial of climate change, lost funding from General Motors last week. The Los Angeles Times reports that a leak of confidential funding documents showed that the General Motors Foundation provided funds to the institute during the last two years.
“GM operates its business as if climate change is real,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin.
The move received immediate praise from environmental groups.
“We applaud GM’s decision and the message it sends—that it is no longer acceptable for corporations to promote the denial of climate change,” said Daniel Souweine, campaign director for Forecast the Facts, a group that urges meteorologists to talk more openly about climate change. “Support for an organization like Heartland is not in line with GM’s values.”
It’s about eleven meta-levels away from actual good news, but I’ll take what I can get. Sent April 2:
In pulling its funding from the anti-science Heartland Institute, General Motors is demonstrating readiness to engage with the factual realities of climate change. While nobody enjoys contemplating a civilizational threat of such magnitude, the evidence of impending drastic alterations of the Earth’s climate is now so irrefutable that denialist posturing is morally, environmentally and fiscally irresponsible.
Since Americans’ love affair with their cars shows no sign of ending, it’s imperative that the automobile industry recognize the urgency of the crisis and begin developing newer, less wasteful technologies — a move that General Motors seems to be making.
Heartland Institute, by contrast, is doubling down, rejecting unambiguous science in favor of ideologically convenient misinterpretations that support the profitability of their funders. GM’s decision to sever ties with this secretive right-wing think tank reflects a deeper understanding of a simple fact: a global climate catastrophe would be terrible for business.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 8: The International Homework Alarmist Conspiracy!
Anne Zammit, in the Times of Malta, notes that the time for denial is long past:
Scepticism is essential for good science but the time for debate has long been over. Scientists (notably climatologists) reached consensus that global warming is happening but it took decades for the problem to penetrate public discourse.
Indications that human activity is having an effect on the climate are nothing new:
In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could change the earth’s climate.
Scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle demonstrated in the 1950s that a large part of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and gas was remaining in the atmosphere because the oceans couldn’t absorb it fast enough.
A scientific advisory panel warned US President Lyndon Johnson of the dangers of adding greenhouses gases to the atmosphere back in 1965.
By 2007 there were no credible scientific sceptics left to challenge the broad projections and underlying scientific theory of climate change.
Two years later the National Academies of Science of the world’s major industrialised nations issued an unprecedented joint statement on the reality of climate change and the need for immediate action.
Despite overwhelming evidence, a cell of climate change deniers showed up for a debate last month in Valletta, organised by the Euro Media forum, a discussion platform which “celebrates freedom of expression while respecting diversity in society”.
Letters like this one are easy; the media’s incredible irresponsibility is a ludicrous target. Sent April 1:
From schoolchildren shirking homework to cardiac patients disregarding the advice of their doctors, there’s no shortage of people who act as if ignoring a crisis will make it vanish. But the psychological mechanisms of denial are not the only thing to blame for the widespread rejection of the scientific reality of global warming.
Imagine a world in which the simple existence of heart disease was vigorously disputed; a world where the media promulgated an equivalency between concerned pulmonary specialists and those proclaiming that heart attacks and COPD are fabrications of an international conspiracy. It sounds bizarre — but it’s analogous to the way many news outlets address the issue of climate change.
Climate scientists are, in essence, “planetary physicians.” While their diagnosis is scary and their advice inconvenient, we owe it to our descendants to stop pretending that the problem will go away if we don’t acknowledge it.
Warren Senders
And it’s printed.