environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists idiots Republicans rising sea levels
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 12: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.
The Lincoln Journal-Star (NE) on the relative unpreparedness of coastal vs. inland states for the impacts of climate change:
Eighteen states, including Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Wyoming and others, were ranked as Category 1, meaning that their plans either mention nothing about climate change or discuss climate change with confusing, dismissive or inaccurate information. Colorado, California, New York and eight others that included the most thorough and accurate discussion of climate change were ranked as Category 4, while the remaining states fell between the two categories.
“By identifying the most thorough plans that have been prepared, we hope to provide planners in other states with models that can serve as a place to start in upgrading their own plans,” said Michael B. Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Center for Climate Change Law, which conducted the survey.
Since the data were gathered, about half the states have begun revising their hazard mitigation plans. Some revisions that have been completed are not accounted for in the survey, he said.
The hazard mitigation plan for Colorado, the only western land-locked state the report ranked in Category 4, focuses on how climate change could have a significant impact on drought and water resources in the state. Colorado recently has experienced numerous climate change-influenced extreme weather events, including a withering drought, the state’s two most destructive wildfire seasons in its history and catastrophic flooding.
“The example of Colorado shows that climate-related hazards are not only coastal; land-locked states have their own hazards, and there are ways to anticipate them and plan for them,” Gerrard said.
States whose hazard mitigation plans ignore climate change entirely are Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota. The Mississippi and Montana plans discuss climate change only as a source of added complexity when dealing with wildfire, the report says.
A generic Republican-bashing letter. November 30:
The most immediately obvious impact of global climate change is the intensity and frequency of storm activity, so it makes sense that coastal dwellers will be more keenly aware of the crisis. But inland states’ unpreparedness cannot be entirely blamed on geography, for there is nowhere on Earth where the consequences of the accelerating greenhouse effect are not felt, and the facts of climate science are by now well-known.
Did I say “nowhere”? Perhaps I misspoke. It’s surely revealing that of the eight states which ignore climate pressures completely in their disaster planning, all but one are governed by members of a political party which is now dominated by science-denial and magical thinking. Republican lawmakers seem to be completely insulated from the obvious realities of a changing climate — a state of affairs which is a sad comedown for the erstwhile party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 11: That Bears A Lipstick’s Traces
The Newcastle Herald (Australia) runs a column from a scientist who notes the leftover tobacco tactics in use:
Replication is the heart of scientific research. We checked our results by asking the actual scientists who authored the climate papers to rate their own research. As a result 1200 scientists rated their own papers. Among papers self-rated as stating a position on human-caused global warming, 97.2 per cent endorsed the consensus.
Just as many independent observations confirm human-caused global warming, there are many independent indicators of overwhelming agreement among climate scientists.
Consensus matters. When people correctly perceive that scientists agree about climate change, they’re more likely to support climate action. Consequently, those who oppose policy to mitigate climate change have sought to cast doubt on the consensus for over two decades.
This is done with the same techniques of the tobacco industry and right-wing ideologues who denied smoking causes cancer.
This is a recycled letter. November 29:
There’ll always be good-paying jobs for professional liars as long as corporations can profit hugely at ordinary citizens’ expense. It’s no surprise that the groups and individuals so busily misinforming the world about climate change were once on the payrolls of tobacco companies, and it’s no surprise that the same tactics are encountered in both situations.
There is something else happening, though, just below the surface. Addiction has its own psychology, whether it’s nicotine or fossil fuels.
Think of every smoker’s excuses: “I’ll just cut down a bit,” “I need to relax,” “my dad is 90 and he smokes like a chimney,” “I’ll quit when I’m not so busy.” How similar these phrases are to the rhetoric of big oil and coal corporations arguing against policies for addressing climate change in any but the most anodyne ways.
We’re hooked on fossil fuels, and our addiction’s destroying the health of our planet. The industry-funded arguments against the reality of this grave threat are eerily reminiscent of a chain-smoker’s rationalizations for ignoring the doctor’s warnings.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility crowdsourcing ecosystems heroes sustainabiity timescales
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 10: Used To Wander Through The Park, Shadowboxing In The Dark…
In my heart I have always lived up the road a bit, in The People’s Republic of Cambridge. The Cambridge Chronicle talks about some of the good guys:
Cambridge —
When it comes to climate change, top-down approaches haven’t worked well, at least not according to a group of environmental organizations at MIT.
Earlier this month, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence’s Climate CoLab together with the MIT Energy Initiative, the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and MIT Sloan Sustainability, sponsored a conference to explore the role new technology-enabled approaches – like crowdsourcing, social media, and big data – could have in combating climate change. The Climate CoLab is an MIT project that seeks to crowdsource citizen-generated ideas on a range of topics related to climate change.
“Top-down approaches haven’t worked very well,” said Laur Fisher, community and partnerships manager for the MIT Climate CoLab. “Now, new information technologies—especially the Internet—are making it possible to organize and harness the intelligence of huge numbers of people in ways that have never been possible before in the history of humanity.”
By constructively engaging a broad range of scientists, policy makers, business people, investors and concerned citizens, Fisher said the hope is that the Climate CoLab will help develop and gain support for climate change plans that are more effective than past efforts.
“We know how to make real progress on climate change, what we must create is the political will to achieve it. Creating that will require all of us to engage. It can’t be a top-down process,” said Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund president and the event’s keynote speaker. “The arch of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but the line on the graph of global emissions won’t bend until we make it do so.”
This letter is a bit of a hash, but it came out OK, I think. November 28:
To be meaningful, attempts to address climate change must be both polycentric and polytemporal; they must operate on scales of size from individuals to nations, and must reflect both long- and short-term thinking. Crowdsourcing initiatives like that of the MIT’s Climate CoLab are essential; the hegemony of old notions about society, energy and sustainability has delayed progress for far too long. We need dedicated and innovative people, families and communities anticipating and out-thinking the inevitable infrastructural and agricultural disruptions that will accompany an intensifying greenhouse effect. But there is no denying the urgent need for large-scale national policies which can support a wide range of individual, local, and regional initiatives. Unfortunately, as the recent inconclusive Warsaw conference once again demonstrates, the industrialized world’s governments are systemically unable to take the problem seriously.
It will take enormous political will and engagement to wrest the controls of our government from the hands of the corporate interests which no longer even pretend to have our interests at heart. The fossil fuel industry’s grossly disproportionate influence on our political system demonstrates that when it comes to making progress on climate change, oil is not a lubricant.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialism media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 9: There Is Danger At Your Door
The St. Louis Times-Dispatch gives some space to a former denier named Larry Lazar, who seems to have seen the light:
Five years ago, I was a climate change denier.
Now, I give talks in the St. Louis area about the dangers of climate change and our obligation to do something about it — like speaking out for strict limits on carbon. I changed my views on climate change because my dad taught me to pay attention to the world around me … and it’s obvious that something is wrong with the weather. It’s like the weather is on steroids — and getting worse.
The record heat wave in March 2012, when the temps in the high 80s made it feel like it was July, comes to mind.
My dad and I talked about that heat wave while picking apples for cider a few weeks ago. He reminded me that he lost his apple crop that year for the first time in 40 years. We went on to talk about how the weather has changed over his 85 years, especially in recent decades.
My dad is 85 years old and still spends his most of his day outside: cutting wood, working in the garden, hunting and fishing, and trimming Christmas trees (only $10, except the church, they get theirs for free). When you are outside as much as my dad, it is obvious and undeniable that the weather is changing. It hits you over the head — again and again.
“I don’t know what it is, but something isn’t right,” he told me.
Good luck to you, buddy. November 27:
It is only because of our terribly irresponsible news media and the corporate interests for whom they speak that there is any significant climate change denial in America. For decades, the oil and coal industries have funded conservative “think tanks” which supply broadcast and print outlets with authoritative-sounding pundits who stridently reject the work of climatologists, arguing instead that we as a nation need to continue our profligate overconsumption of fossil fuels. It is surely just a coincidence that these companies continue to enjoy the highest profit margins in history.
While the luck of geography has ensured that the US hasn’t been hit as hard by climate change as some other places on the planet, this state of affairs won’t go on much longer. The devastating storms and droughts of the past year are signs that our century-long fossil-fuel binge is having its inevitable consequences. By now, a warming Earth is unavoidable, but we can still make a profound difference to the lives of our descendants by acknowledging the reality of human-caused climate change, and working actively to mitigate its effects.
Warren Senders
Year 4, Month 12, Day 8: If You Haven’t Ever Seen It, You Won’t Understand
The Washington Post is late to the party when it comes to reporting on the divestiture movement:
A divestment movement is marching across U.S. college campuses, borrowing tactics from the 1980s anti-apartheid campaign and using them against oil, gas and coal companies to fight climate change.
Students are teaming with investment advisers to convince universities, pension funds and institutional investors that they can take a stand against fossil-fuel companies without hurting their returns.
“We have a government that has been taken over by the fossil-fuel industry, so we’re going to pressure the fossil-fuel industry itself,” said Chloe Maxmin, a junior leading Divest Harvard. She added that students, spurred by forecasts of dire climate change in “a time frame well within my generation’s lifetime,” have organized divestment groups on about 400 campuses.
Eight small colleges and nearly two dozen towns and cities have pledged to sell their shares in fossil-fuel firms.
Yet many academic institutions are rejecting the divestment argument, including Harvard and Middlebury College, home to climate activist and professor Bill McKibben. They say that divesting shares of fossil-fuel companies would politicize universities and have little to no impact on the companies, or on society’s reliance on fossil fuels.
I never get tired of revamping this letter. It’s a welcome break from paraphrasing bad news. November 26:
Youthful voices have always expressed our nation’s better angels. In the sixties, students spoke out and stood up against war and racism; two decades hence, they highlighted the urgency of divestiture from the apartheid government of South Africa. Now, it’s become increasingly clear that there is another, differently constituted, regime from which we as a society are morally obligated to withdraw support.
Those multinational corporations reaping unimaginable profits from the wasteful consumption of fossil fuels are making catastrophic climate change inevitable, destroying the future in which today’s children will live, work, and raise families of their own. It’s no wonder that young people are speaking out in steadily increasing numbers against the environmental injustices perpetrated by short-sighted “corporate persons.”
Young people realize that “business as usual” is a prescription for planetary disaster. Their actions embody moral authority and a wisdom the rest of us would do well to emulate.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: biodiversity charismatic megafauna ecosystems game hunting
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 7: Two Game Wardens, Seven Hunters, And A Cow
The Bellingham Herald (WA) notes a new report on big game’s unfortunate lot under a climate-change regime:
One example in the report is the elk population. The original elk population was estimated at 10 million, plummeting to about 50,000 or fewer by the early 20th century. But efforts led by sportsmen, the report said, have help the nationwide population rebound to about 1 million.
“But today, a changing climate threatens to rewrite that success story,” the report reads. “Severe drought, rising temperatures and greater weather extremes are affecting the health, habitat, and food and water supply of every big game species.”
Doug Inkley, a senior scientist for the federation, was one of the lead writers of the report.
“This is very real, it is happening right now. The success of the past is being challenged by climate change,” he said during a news conference.
Citing moose as an example, Inkley talked about the impact heat is having on populations nationwide.
“Moose become heat-stressed in warm weather, they stop eating, seeking out shelter instead,” he said. “That leads to lower weights, lower pregnancy rates, higher death rates.”
The report is careful not to solely blame climate change for population declines. It also cites habitat loss and predation. But climate change, the report emphasizes, impacts animals in so many ways.
Extreme weather threatens survivability. Animals weakened by declining food sources are more susceptible to disease.
The paper’s website says they’ll take letters only from people who live in their circulation area. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? November 25:
Genuine hunters operate from a position of deep respect for the natural world. So it’s hardly surprising that they recognize a shifting climate’s impacts on local and regional ecosystems all over the planet. As global heating intensifies, animal habitats become less hospitable, and migratory patterns are disrupted. Similarly, forest and plant populations are affected by changes in seasonal freeze and thaw patterns, resulting in disrupted pollination and increased vulnerability to pests. No wonder hunters are worried; their way of life is facing destruction in the wake of an accelerating greenhouse effect that promises only to become more extreme in the decades to come.
Conservative politicians and pundits are all too ready to stigmatize discussion of climate change as mere “politics,” Such a stance is deeply irresponsible. Hunters and environmentalists alike must cooperate to avert a humanitarian and environmental tragedy, not play rhetorical games while the planet burns.
Warren Senders
Education environment: ethics false equivalency journalism media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 6: The Way You Do The Things You Do
The NYT tries to make itself look good, and doesn’t do very well at all:
EARLY this year, The Times came under heavy criticism from many readers who care deeply about news coverage about the environment — especially climate change.
In January, The Times dismantled its “pod” of reporters and editors devoted to that subject. And in March, it discontinued its Green blog, a daily destination for environmental news.
Times editors emphasized that they were not abandoning the subject — just taking it out of its silo and integrating it into many areas of coverage. The changes were made for both cost-cutting and strategic reasons, they said, and the blog did not have high readership. Readers and outside critics weren’t buying it. They scoffed at the idea that less would somehow translate into not only more, but also better.
In the Corporate States of America, discussion of an existential threat to capitalism is a grave error of etiquette. November 24:
Discussion of the Times’ handling of climate change usually tries to cast it as a matter of priorities, with environmental advocates justifiably pointing out that climate deserves more (much more!) coverage. Others note that when the NYT continues to provide a forum for climate-change denialists like columnist Ross Douthat and other apostles of the specious journalistic doctrine of false equivalency, it undermines its own reputation for veracity and integrity.
Here’s another way to think about it. Just as newsprint is the medium for the Times’ journalism, opinion, and advertising, the climate is the medium for the world’s culture. Civilization’s varied accomplishments, discontents, aspirations, joys, and tragedies are only possible because of the climatic stability which has allowed our complex culture to flourish. While newspapers may be able to shift their readership online, Earth’s ecosystems have no analogous option. Lose the climate, and we lose it all.
That’s why good reporting and analysis of the climate crisis is so important.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies diplomacy geopolitics Partition
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 5: Gotta Get Out Of This Place
The Times of India notes Defense Secretary Hagel’s recent remarks on climate change and the Arctic:
WASHINGTON: Climate change is shifting the landscape in the Arctic more rapidly than anywhere else in the world, US defence secretary Chuck Hagel has said.
“Climate change is shifting the landscape in the Arctic more rapidly than anywhere else in the world,” Hagel said in his address at Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada yesterday.
(snip)
The defence secretary said climate change does not directly cause conflict, but it can significantly add to the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty and conflict.
“Food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, more severe natural disasters all place additional burdens on economies, societies and institutions around the world,” he said.
Hagel said planning for climate change in smarter energy investments not only makes US a stronger military, they have many additional benefits: saving money, reducing demand and helping protect the environment.
Things would be very different if they were not as they are. November 24:
The US Defense Secretary’s remarks about climate change’s impact on the Arctic drastically understate the case. Given that temperatures at the top of the world are now higher than they’ve ever been for tens of thousands of years, putting the entire ice cap on track to melt completely within a few decades at most, “shifting the landscape” seems as inadequate as describing decapitation as a new hair style.
Secretary Hagel is absolutely correct, however, in drawing the connection between climate change and geopolitical instability. It is common sense to reinforce infrastructure and prepare strategic food reserves to prepare for the increased likelihood of extreme weather events and the crop failures and destroyed harvests they’re certain to bring. Furthermore, global heating brings the potential for unprecedented numbers of refugees and the likelihood that border conflicts will escalate into destructive and tragic resource wars. When rising seas, super-typhoons, and mounting temperatures all come together, the lives of billions will hang in the balance, and the horrors of Partition will seem tame in comparison. Hence the critical importance of strengthening diplomatic mechanisms between nations on the front lines of the climate crisis.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes colonialism corporate irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 4: We Owe Our Souls To The Company Store
The Hindu (India) notes the latest move from the policy-making arms of our corporate overlords:
US wants poor countries to also pay into the Green Climate Fund. The move left the G77 countries angry and made them officially register complaint against negotiations being conducted in bad faith.
In a late night manoeuvre on Thursday the US backtracked from its obligation to the promise of the $ 100 billion funds by 2020 for poor countries instead demanding that the developing countries too should be asked to contribute.
The move by the US of inserting a new fundamental idea going against the decisions that have been taken in previous years at the UN climate negotiations left the G77 countries angry and made them officially register complaint against negotiations being conducted in bad faith.
One of the G77 negotiators walking out of the meeting at about 3 am on Friday told The Hindu, “Now we are renegotiating decisions that all countries agreed to at previous Conference of Parties (annual climate talks). This is the last day of the Warsaw talks and all some countries are trying to do is throw this critical question of finance into disarray.”
He said, “It was decided earlier that the $ 100 billion annually will be provided by the developed countries by 2020 to help the developing countries fight climate change. They agreed to it. Now they are slipping in the idea that developing countries should also contribute to this fund. Besides this they see private investments as a large part of the funds to begin with. This is plain and simple backtracking.”
Infuriating, but hardly surprising. November 23:
While it’s no longer explicitly advocated by developed nations, colonialism is far from dead. The United States’ recent moves to limit financial commitments to poor countries living on the front lines of catastrophic climate change is a case in point.
This sudden reversal makes an ugly kind of sense when we recognize that all the world’s countries, rich and poor alike, have been colonised by multinational corporations; the US government bends to the will of its owners, who are no longer the people of the United States, but the giant companies which have reaped unimaginable wealth from the extraction and sale of fossil fuels. Where the world’s people recognize the need to avert a rapidly metastasizing climatic disaster, these corporations only see a potential drop in profits. When business interests dominate and direct the world’s climate and energy policies, this is nothing more than corporate colonialism at its most malign.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility corporate personhood economics
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 3: Because I Said So, That’s Why.
Wanna know who they are? Here ya go:
WASHINGTON — Just 90 companies worldwide produced fuels that generated two-thirds of industrial greenhouse gas emissions from 1854 to 2010, according to a new study.
The 90 biggest producers of fuels driving climate change include investor-owned corporations, such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and state-owned oil companies, such as Saudi Aramco and Mexico’s Pemex.
The study attributes 914 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases to the fuels extracted by the companies, which is 63% of the total 1,450 billion metric tons of emissions estimated since the mid-19th century.
The study, published in the journal Climatic Change, also found that of the 914 billion metric tons, half was pumped into the atmosphere since 1986, a result of the rapid industrialization of the developing world. The journal focuses on the causes and implications of climactic change.
“This is the most complete picture we have of which institutions extracted coal, oil and natural gas and when,” said Richard Heede, the study’s author and head of the Climate Accountability Institute, a small research group in Snowmass, Colo.
“These are the companies and institutions that have created the products — used as intended — by billions of consumers that have led to persistently higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane,” Heede said.
Disgusting. November 22:
The folksinger and “hobo philosopher” Utah Phillips once remarked, “The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” Indeed. And the new study just published in Climatic Change provides us for the first time with specifics about the corporate entities which have done the most damage to Earth’s environmental stability. Even a few moments’ analysis confirms that these same corporations routinely use their enormous financial power to exacerbate the paralysis of our political system in the face of the extraordinary threat posed by climate change.
Our economic system allows these firms to reap huge profits from the sales of fossil fuels, while providing them with no reason to act responsibly toward the long-term survival and prosperity of our species and our planet. In this post-Citizens-United world, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that these particular “corporate persons” are conscienceless sociopaths.
Warren Senders