Profile: cc89a173...
If Trump wins, that will make fundraising for the Democrats much easier. And bringing in more cash is always a higher priority for them than passing good legislation.
Hot take:
The people who control the Democratic Party don’t care if Donald Trump wins the election. If they did care, they would offer a better candidate than Joe Biden to oppose him.
#USA #Politics
It looks like YouTube is closed off again for people (like me) using ad blockers. And I can't find a single Invidious instance that's still working either. Just error codes everywhere, as if YT is killing them.
Has anyone else experienced this? Are there any known solutions?
"You worry too much. Everything's going to be fine. Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. We've always adapted before, and so of course we also can adapt to climate change."
Ever hear something like that?
Andrew Dessler (nostr:npub1dzxlj75ctjaqjyuhu7cud9ssgk0gcaghpyq2t85u6nrgrcz4w6mq6540ny), a climate scientist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, offers a response to the optimistic "We'll adapt" crowd...
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“Humans have always adapted.”
If you’ve followed the climate debate, you’ve inevitably come across these soothing words, usually made by someone rich, often working for a think tank whose agenda is stopping action on climate change.
The argument taps into the romantic notion of human resilience, suggesting that adaptation is not just possible but a simple, cost-free solution to the climate catastrophe unfolding before us.
This view is overly optimistic. Adaptation, far from being an easy way out, is shaping up to be an absolute nightmare.
Here’s why.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/adaptation-to-climate-change-will
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
We urgently need to get off fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas. Right? Does everyone agree with that?
Human extraction and burning of fossil fuels is destroying Earth's delicately balanced ecosystem and radically altering the stable climate that sustains us. Our industry and commerce are quickly making this world unlivable both for people and for countless innocent species who are dying now and who will disappear along with us in the near future if something doesn't change fast.
But the problem is, where do we go from here? How can we sustain our complex modern society *without* using fossil fuels to power it?
And… take another step beyond that. Are we even asking the right question? Does it truly make sense to try and find a way to sustain an unsustainable way of living?
Indrajit Samarajiva (https://indi.ca/about/) is a writer living in Sri Lanka. I’ve pointed to his essays before, and now I want you to consider his challenging response to the type of questions I’ve posed above.
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The common understanding of winning the climate fight is that we stop using fossil fuels, stop emitting (and even capture) CO₂, and carry on with a virtually indistinguishable type of civilization. Broadly, we change the engine, but not the type of vehicle or where it’s going.
The general vibe is that one type of product (fossil fuels) is bad, and so we should switch to consuming other products (renewables!). If you look at the marketing of our climate change fight, the promise is that you can have the same lifestyle but in an electric vehicle and with a different type of milk.
The promise is that the future will be even better, faster, more comfortable, and without all that pesky guilt weighing you down. As the Miller Lite slogan goes, “same great taste, less filling.” This type of marketing is just another emission, called bullshit.
All of the ‘solutions’ to climate change are just marketing slogans to ‘keep capitalist and carry on’. It’s like cigarettes telling you that they have ‘less tar.’ Okay, but what about all the other shit? Infinite growth on a finite planet still gives you cancer in the long run, which is where we are.
As you can see, our stated goal of ‘fighting climate change’ is precisely the problem, which is human domination of the natural world. It’s the very idea that we should control nature that caused the problem. You can’t mitigate the effects of this hubris with more cause.
What are we proposing, really, with all this 'green growth' and ‘innovation’? We’re proposing to bind nature in lithium chains instead of hydrocarbons. That’s all. We’ve gotten away with it for so long that we think we can pull a fast one on nature again, but nature will not be fooled.
This is just the same old hubris in new packaging. This attitude of ‘fighting’ and ‘winning’ over nature is precisely why we lose. Nature is a balance. One species ‘winning’ is an oxymoron.
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There’s much more in Indi’s potent essay, including numerous links to his previous work and to other useful information sources. I hope you’ll read the whole thing.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://indi.ca/why-we-need-to-stop-fighting-climate-change/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism
Compare the two photos below … which is worse?
One reflects a large amount of emotional and psychological damage. When we saw that the iconic tree at Hadrian’s Wall had been cut down, evidently in an act of vandalism, our souls suffered.
The second photo reflects a huge amount of physical damage to our environment, to biodiversity, and ultimately to the climate. Yet it’s just a random shot of quotidian deforestation. Nothing special about it. Nothing unusual at all.
Do you know that over 40,000,000 (forty million!) trees are cut down *every day* in the world? THAT is the true outrage.
See -- https://theroundup.org/how-many-trees-are-cut-down-every-day/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #Trees #Deforestation #Biodiversity #BusinessAsUsual
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#FollowFriday
Imagine the worst villain in the scariest horror movie. Then imagine something even worse — that’s the oil industry, which fully intends to be around for the next “60, 70, or 80 years.”
They are murderers, openly declaring their aim to continue with Business As Usual until they destroy Earth’s biosphere.
READ THIS -- https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/110967616115278082
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #Greenwashing #BusinessAsUsual
nostr:npub182xnxul30qkdeelh4xjqf75judzckr45fde0dqy2cn3ze4kpaavqsj36l3 Glacial runoff is also a key source of water for many millions of people in India and in China.
nostr:npub19tx6kyxy8qall554lcrh6sqp2572lvxtwk6jmtq789duz6g6hc0s4urve7 nostr:npub1xe6lkf4w9ahnsta7tu377ks0t35m4nd7vu0cqgvtx3kym74gymnqev620q Yes, I agree. As I have said before, I'm optimistic that we CAN make all the necessary changes, but I'm not optimistic that we WILL make those changes.
How does it make you feel when you read the things I post about the climate crisis? Or when you see news stories about what capitalism and consumerism are doing to our beautiful planet?
Does it make you angry? I hope it does. And I hope that this anger will propel you into action.
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"Anger is most powerful emotion by far for spurring climate action, study finds"
FULL STORY -- https://archive.li/S78xm
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #ClimateAction
nostr:npub16a63nsfz465nndfakqdtjl4qhm9a6cw2980yr4mgjr9u35v82nzq338qn5 nostr:npub1rre2s2csu3xhqauqtanluwz2gwqm7cvhcgtgt90g73x76zgtpazqf3vl0r nostr:npub14ukaj9jxt92unn28r7z42n475c7u6typ2cu8wyur4eqrk67tyz9sxs2erc I don't watch any TV news. Even MSNBC is far too right-wing for my outlook.
I haven't read this book, but based on the description it looks like a good one...
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A sense of urgency pervades global environmentalism, and the degrowth movement is bursting into the mainstream. As climate catastrophe looms closer, people are eager to learn what degrowth is about, and whether we can save the planet by changing how we live. This book is an introduction to the movement.
As politicians and corporations obsess over growth objectives, the degrowth movement demands that we must slow down the economy by transforming our economies, our politics and our cultures to live within the Earth's limits.
This book navigates the practice and strategies of the movement, looking at its strengths and weaknesses. Covering horizontal democracy, local economies and the reduction of work, it shows us why degrowth is a compelling and realistic project.
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LEARN MORE -- https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342023/exploring-degrowth/
nostr:npub1zct6zmlwfe5y9tv8ugtlkg5q3j2amm8qmskruzqn3w6h8qfw75kswq4nkp #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth
As described in the article, degrowth feels to me like a deliberate return to a stronger, healthier version of ourselves, of our humanity... a coming home, if you will, and a 'welcome back' to the better angels of our nature that we abandoned far too long ago with the rise of patriarchy and growth-oriented civilization.
Climate change means, among other things, that we can’t take *anything* for granted any longer. There is no normal now.
Used to be we would talk about how important it is to keep our tropical forests and other areas of vegetation intact, because they act as carbon sinks, absorbing CO2 from the air during photosynthesis.
But now even this — one of the most basic science facts we learned in high school biology — is in jeopardy.
"Parts of tropical rainforests could get too hot for photosynthesis, study suggests"
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/world/tropical-forest-heat-photosynthesis-climate-scn-intl/index.html
#Science #Forest #Trees #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
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#FollowFriday
When it comes to your personal impact on global warming, it’s not only how you *spend* your money. It’s also how you *invest* your money — assuming, that is, that you are among those wealthy enough to enjoy such a luxury.
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A recent study finds that U.S. elites are disproportionately responsible for the extreme weather events linked to climate change like heat waves, droughts, floods, tropical storms, hurricanes, and rising sea levels. Study co-author Jared Starr, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, notes that the top 1% of American households are responsible for more emissions (15-17%) than the lower earning half of households put together (14% of national emissions).
"Our study is the first to link U.S. households to the greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution generated when creating their incomes," said Starr. "We found that the highest-earning top 10% of households are responsible for about 40% of U.S. GHG."
Although the United States only includes 5% of the world's population, it is accountable for more than a quarter of the activity fueling climate change. This is in large part because of America's dominance as the world's foremost economic power — a dominance reflected in its large investor class, which because of its wealth is figuratively steering Earth off of the climate cliff.
"For the first time, we also quantify the share of emissions related to investment," Starr explained. "The share of emissions coming from investments increases as we move up the income ladder. For the top 0.1% households, more than half of their emissions are coming from investment income."
Starr used a visual analogy to illustrate his point.
"If we picture this on a graph and imagine the bottom 10% households' emissions are the size of an average house, then the top 1%’s emissions would be the size of five Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other, and the top 0.1%'s emissions would be taller than Mount Everest," he said. "This scale of emissions inequality was unknown before our study. I think it is a climate justice issue and it poses a fundamental challenge to our political system to respond to this level of emissions disparity."
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CHART SOURCE (Headline added) — https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice #CO2 #Emissions
