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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged climate crisis
Recognizing Reality
Nov 25th
Question Beliefs
“We live in a culture that is embedded in unquestioned beliefs passing as truth. These beliefs are the source of our current crisis. We attempt to solve the problems of degradation of our environment and climate disruption, but we do not look at these core beliefs. We hold on to the idea that capitalism is the only right way to organize an economy, that democracy is essential to our freedom, that freedom itself is a core ingredient to our happiness. We believe corporate slogans such as “Progress is our most important product” (General Electric), and subscribe to the belief that technology will solve whatever problems we have, even the ones caused by technology.”
The Need for a Greater Vision: Recognizing Reality
By Norton Smith, originally published by Resilience.org
November 19, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-11-19/the-need-for-a-greater-vision-recognizing-reality/
Beliefs can go stale. A belief that one incorporates at one stage of intellectual/spiritual development may not serve a person as they grow older and perhaps wiser. That’s why beliefs should be reviewed from time to time. No need for a schedule, just practice staying in the present and one may find an uncomfortable feeling with a particular behavior. That’s the trigger to question the belief structure behind the action. We are creatures of habit and may find that we have become a slave to a few unquestioned behaviors that do not serve us any longer. No good blaming the devil!
Ships fitted with ‘Cheat Devices’ to Divert Poisonous Pollution into Sea
Oct 6th
Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea
Wil Crisp The Independent
“Global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with “cheat devices” that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air, The Independent can reveal.
More than $12bn (£9.7bn) has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil.”
Is this the result of a mature capitalism? If so, then these kinds of actions reveal a severe mental illness.
Greta Thunberg’s defiance upsets the patriarchy
Oct 3rd
Greta Thunberg’s defiance upsets the patriarchy – and it’s wonderful
“She is a 16-year-old, and these are grown men. And they are terrified. Wonderful. Who knew you could shake the patriarchy simply by refusing to smile for it, dress for it or demur to it? A refusal to acquiesce to the male gaze has these dinosaurs squirming.
Greta, you teach us about more than one kind of climate. Thank you.”
- Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist
Greta Thunberg’s Speech
Sep 25th
Greta Thunberg’s Speech
Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the UN Climate Action Summit
By Greta Thunberg, originally published by PBS News Hours
September 24, 2019
“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years.”
“There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
You are failing us. But young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.
We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”
It takes courage to tell it as it is. It takes courage to speak out when your neighbours are speaking with their heads in the sand. Our exploitative economic system sucks us into such a subservient system – a “company store” – binding that we are compelled to shut up and put up. The ecosystem is still a misunderstood theory to many, boundless, loving Earth energy is credited to God and disaster is too often credited to God’s will. The environment is understood by many to be something “other” than us that we are at the mercy of. Many pray as if they think that the creator needs our praise and dishes out favours to selected followers. Some, hopefully a growing number realise that we “are” the planet. Thus, as the planet suffers so do we.
“It is not a matter of being “close to nature.” The relationship is more one of identity, in the mathematical sense, than of affinity. The Earth is, in a very real sense, the same as ourself (or selves), and it is this primary point that is made in the fiction and poetry of the Native American writers of the Southwest.” Paula Gunn Allen. Maybe that’s why a homespun, behavioural, saying goes: You must love yourself before you can love others.
As long as we see the Earth as “other” there is very little chance that we will change our behaviour or our destructive lifestyle.
Prof Martin Weitzman on climate change
Sep 15th
Economist Prof Martin Weitzman on climate change
Tim Harford, Financial Times
“The message of Weitzman’s recent work has influenced the policy debates on climate change: the extreme scenarios matter. What we don’t know about climate change is more important, and more dangerous, than what we do.”
One of the most significant examples is the predictions of the amount of tropospheric CO2 in the future. Actually, analysis of the records held by the NASA Earth Observatory at Moana Loa on Hawaii reveal that the amount of CO2 is rising and the amount of rising is increasing. It has already hit a tipping point and the amount is unpredictable. See: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
“Weitzman ‘asked us to contemplate the risk of runaway effects’, or ‘tail risks’ that lie well outside the most likely scenarios, such as permafrost thaw, explains Harford. ‘Central estimates can lead us astray,’ says Harford, and’ it is only when we ponder the tail risk that we realise how dangerous climate change might be’. ‘The truly eye-opening contribution – for me, at least – was Weitzman’s explanation that the worst-case scenarios should rightly loom large in rational calculations,’ says Harford.”
Millions raised for climate activists
Jul 13th
US philanthropists vow to raise millions for climate activists
Matthew Taylor, The Guardian
“The Guardian reports that “a group of wealthy US philanthropists and investors have donated almost half a million pounds to support the grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups – with the promise of tens of millions more in the months ahead”. It adds: “Trevor Neilson, an investor and philanthropist who has worked with some of the world’s richest families, has teamed up with Rory Kennedy – daughter of Robert Kennedy – and Aileen Getty, whose family wealth comes from the oil industry, to launch the Climate Emergency Fund. Neilson, who has worked with figures such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, said the fund was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion protesters in the UK in April.” The report continues: “Neilson said the three founders were using their contacts among the global mega-rich to get ‘a hundred times’ more in the weeks and months ahead. ‘This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,’ he told the Guardian.”
Carbon Brief Daily | 12/07/2019 Leo Hickman
Brilliant Idea for heating Large Offices
May 18th
Advanced Heat Recovery (AHR) system
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-16/the-little-technology-that-could/
“What’s impressive is that it prevents about 1.8 million pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere each year, cutting the museum’s carbon footprint by 16 percent. This is significant in the fight against climate change, stresses Patrick Hamilton, the museum’s Director of Global Change Initiatives, because buildings account for one-third of US greenhouse gas emissions.”
“We love that,” he said, “because it means we have $293,000 that can be redirected to the scientific and educational mission of the museum rather than to paying utility bills.” Science Museum of Minnesota
“Here’s how it works. Heat generated by all the electricity used by the museum’s computer servers, elevator motors, telephone switching equipment and other big electricity loads is piped into the two heat recovery chillers rather than being rejected to the outside, as is standard procedure in most commercial buildings. Inside the chillers, compressors step up the heat energy to produce 115 oF water, which then is used to warm incoming fresh, cold winter air and circulated through radiators along the building’s extremities. It makes no sense at all for the Science Museum to purchase energy to heat the building while at the same time it discharges hot air to the outside.
“You don’t throw your aluminum in the garbage at home. You recycle it. So, you should recycle the heat in your building instead of throwing it away,” explains Matt Presser, account manager at Ingersoll-Rand, which manufactures the Trane chillers used at the Science Museum.”
System change not climate crisis
May 18th
SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE
Vicky Robin from Vicky Robin Blog
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-16/from-despair-to-repair/
“Yes! But notice that most system change has to do with human civilization, human inventions gone awry – democracy, justice, infrastructure, food production, finance. Our actions come from fixing our civilizational future. Now our grief is overwhelming: almost everything is too little too late… but if we stop CO2 we may save a remnant of the beauty, intelligence and glue of our human presence on the planet.
I am not saying this is wrong!!! I want to do all of this as well, and work daily locally on it. It’s just missing the true heart of the matter – that we as humans act upon the earth for our benefit but we do not act with the earth at any level of scale for healing all life.”