tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9316738273892977272024-03-14T16:14:20.000+10:30Dr Robert Muller - The Zeitgeist is ChangingThis site has been inspired by the work of Dr David Korten who argues that capitalism is at a critical juncture due to environmental, economic and social breakdown. This site argues for alternatives to capitalism in order to create a better world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2215125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-63861070701746169292018-08-27T19:59:00.003+09:302018-08-27T19:59:44.020+09:30Even Trump’s EPA Admits His Power Plan Will Kill Thousands of Americans<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">by <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/author/danspinelli/">Dan Spinelli</a>, Mother Jones: <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/08/even-trumps-epa-admits-his-power-plan-will-kill-thousands-of-americans/">https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/08/even-trumps-epa-admits-his-power-plan-will-kill-thousands-of-americans/</a></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: "mallory" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">Zhou Changguo/AP</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">When President Barack Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/08/03/remarks-president-announcing-clean-power-plan" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">unveiled the Clean Power Plan</a> in the East Room of the White House three years ago, he called it “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change.” Today, that plan, which <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/ttnecas1/docs/ria/utilities_ria_final-clean-power-plan-existing-units_2015-08.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">would have reduced</a> carbon dioxide emissions by 19% in 2030 relative to 2005 levels, will be replaced by the Trump administration’s “<a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-proposes-affordable-clean-energy-ace-rule" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">Affordable Clean Energy</a>” proposal, which will give states more authority to craft regulations for coal-burning power plants and replaces the “overly prescriptive and burdensome” requirements in the CPP <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-proposes-affordable-clean-energy-ace-rule" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">with what they describe as</a> “on-site, heat-rate efficiency improvements.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">These regulations are expected to only decrease CO2 levels by a fraction of the amount that were anticipated under Obama’s plan. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged this will lead to hundreds of more deaths each year, along with sharp increases in the number of hospital admissions, lost work days, and school absences because of the health impacts of dirtier air. Not to mention the fact that increased emissions of carbon dioxide will further accelerate global warming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“The ACE Rule would restore the rule of law and empower states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide modern, reliable, and affordable energy for all Americans,” said EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-proposes-affordable-clean-energy-ace-rule" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">in a statement</a>. Wheeler and EPA air pollution chief Bill Wehrum are both <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/04/scott-pruitt-out-from-the-epa-this-coal-lobbyist-will-take-his-place/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">former lobbyists</a> for coal-producing companies that benefit from the agency’s new rule. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Clean Power Plan faced powerful opposition from nearly the moment it was signed. Several coal-producing states, including Texas and West Virginia, led a group of industry stakeholders to <a href="https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/content/2016.01.26_wv_et_al._scotus_stay_application.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">ask the Supreme Court to stay the CPP</a> in January 2016 pending an appeals court’s ruling. The Court <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us/politics/supreme-court-blocks-obama-epa-coal-emissions-regulations.html" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">agreed to temporarily block</a> the plan and it has been suspended ever since. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Republicans, state environmental officials, and fossil fuel industry titans have urged the Trump administration to replace the Clean Power Plan for the past several months, citing its costs and dubious legality under the Clean Air Act. All 11 Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee <a href="https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6/6/66370304-037c-4289-852d-5f7c3f3fee96/2BC1F8AB998072D409CCFEAC04584E1F.1.12.18-epw-republicans-cpp-repeal-letter-to-epa.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">wrote to former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt</a> in January asking him to eliminate the rule. “Not only is the CPP bad policy, it is unlawful,” they wrote. “Congress did not give EPA the authority to transform our energy sector.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Former agency officials blasted the proposal in a call with reporters hours before the EPA unveiled ACE. Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator who developed the CPP under Obama, called its replacement “galling and appalling.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">This is all about coal at all costs,” she said. “</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">They are continuing to play to their base and following industry’s playbook step by step.”</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a member of the Environment and Public Works committee, <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1031904470765109248" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">tweeted</a> after the announcement, “Trump is actively destroying the planet in order to enrich his billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry. We must fight back.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">The savings highlighted in Trump’s proposal—</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">$400 million in annual net benefits with a reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 1.5% by 2030—include a severe human cost, which the agency mentions in the fine print of its 289-page <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-08/documents/utilities_ria_proposed_ace_2018-08.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">impact analysis</a>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Because of an increase in a tiny air pollutant known as PM 2.5, which contributes to smog and is <a href="https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/pmq_a.htm" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">linked to asthma and heart disease</a>, the EPA predicts between 470 to 1,400 more deaths and thousands more lost days of school. Depending on how aggressively states make efficiency standards for individual power plants, those numbers could decrease. </span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“The Clean Power Plan would have reduced particle pollution along with the CO2 benefits by 25% by 2030. And we know reduction in particle exposure means saved lives,” said Janet McCabe, the <a href="http://elpc.org/staff/janet-mccabe/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">former head</a> of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. The EPA deferred a request for comment on former agency officials’ criticism of the Trump plan to an <a href="https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/proposal-affordable-clean-energy-ace-rule" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">agency press release</a> about the proposal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">The United States’ level of CO2 emissions <a href="http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/GECO2017.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">actually decreased</a> in 2017, but experts fear that a weakened regulatory scheme with decentralized goals could hike up rates of pollution nationwide. “Environmental regulation in many cases is one of the leading causes of the decline in emissions that we observed over the past twenty years,” said Reed Walker, an associate professor at UC Berkeley who co-authored a <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w20879.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">recent study</a> that found regulation to be a key factor in reducing emissions in the manufacturing sector, even with increasing output. </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Under Wheeler and former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, the federal government has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">started the process</a> of rolling back at least 76 environmental regulations, according to the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em>. Many of these rules include protections to wildlife habitats and restrictions aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Trump, who will celebrate the Affordable Clean Energy proposal at a rally in West Virginia, has <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/15/trumps-love-affair-with-coal-215710" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">propped up coal miners</a> with several regulatory decisions. In June, he ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/01/donald-trump-rick-perry-coal-plants-617112" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">bail out</a> struggling coal-fueled power plants and, last month, the EPA finalized a rule that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-eases-rules-on-how-coal-ash-waste-is-stored-across-the-us/2018/07/17/740e4b9a-89d3-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html?utm_term=.fe3cb0b236db" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">relaxes the requirements</a> for storing toxic coal ash. He <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/11/stop-repeating-the-us-is-the-only-country-not-in-the-paris-agreement/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url("/wp-content/themes/motherjones/css/../img/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0px 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px -1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px;">also announced his intention</a> to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. </span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Once the Trump administration’s proposal is formally published, members of the public will have 60 days to comment on it. The EPA also plans to hold a formal hearing. </span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-16840682309614003942018-08-23T22:01:00.000+09:302018-08-23T22:01:15.920+09:30Going to War on Climate Change<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">by <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/author/john-halle">John Halle</a>, Common Dreams: <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/08/21/going-war-climate-change">https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/08/21/going-war-climate-change</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img alt=""Those who heard Roosevelt’s speech were aware that confronting fascism would result in dramatic changes to their lives within months if not weeks." (Photo: Wikicommons)" class="caption-processed" height="500" src="https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/views-article/day.jpeg?itok=BC1oS-5m" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="955" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Those who heard Roosevelt’s speech were aware that confronting fascism would result in dramatic changes to their lives within months if not weeks." (Photo: Wikicommons)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">With the federal government currently flooring the accelerator on the road toward the climate precipice, it is somewhat comforting to know that a likely majority believes in “avoid(ing) the apocalyptic future” by requiring a shift to renewable energy sources. At least, that is what Kate Aronoff, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/14/hothouse-earth-climate-change-neoliberal-economics/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">writing in The Intercept</a>, suggests is the case.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Also contained in Aronoff's piece is an equally obvious though perhaps more controversial assertion from climate scientist Will Steffen: the only way that we will get there ”is to “shift to a 'wartime footing.'” Only a fundamental change in attitudes will allow us to "roll out renewable energy and dramatically reimagine sectors like transportation and agriculture . . . at very fast rates,” necessary to address the scale of the problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Steffen's view has, of course, few friends on a political right who, even if they do not view climate change as a hoax are philosophically committed to limited government. Somewhat surprisingly, it also has not circulated widely on the political left. A likely reason has to do with the militaristic imagery which has in the past functioned as a bludgeon to repress political dissent and to pre-empt questions about elites' fitness to rule.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But, as Aronoff notes, a war footing can also point in a very different direction. In particular, producing weapons of war requires that "the government play a heavy hand in industry, essentially shifting . . . to a centrally planned economy”-- anathema to the right which has always been at least rhetorically hostile to government intervention in the economy. Also, as Aronoff observes, insofar as these “interventions" have been permitted, they have "tend(ed) to be on behalf of corporations.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Our history shows that it doesn’t have to be that way: fighting Hitler wasn't a service to private corporations, it served a public united in its revulsion for fascism. Furthermore, doing so required a massive, centrally planned effort. No one raised questions about the cost of protecting ourselves when President Roosevelt <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8gYGg0dkE" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">appeared before congress</a> on December 8, 1941. The same should apply to the massive investment which fighting climate change requires now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Those who heard Roosevelt’s speech were aware that confronting fascism would result in dramatic changes to their lives within months if not weeks. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Similarly, most of us are aware that equally dramatic changes will be required by our response to global warming. What these are are not yet clear, however the rough outlines are apparent to anyone who has thought about what needs to be accomplished.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In particular, many of these will be centered around the broad objective of achieving massively higher levels of energy efficiency, one component of which will be to meet strict <a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/28/california-looks-zero-emissions-buildings-next-climate-frontier/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">zero emissions building standards</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Doing so will involve millions of workers installing insulation, efficient heating and cooling systems, and where necessary, effecting structural and architectural alterations to support a sustainable lifestyle. Others will be involved in the procurement, production and distribution of necessary materials with many thousands of others involved in site assessments, planning and scheduling of work crews and associated logistics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Another component would achieve similar efficiencies in the transportation sector. This would likely have at its center <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">rail electrification</a> targeting commercial freight currently powered by diesel fueled locomotives. Raw materials and product shipments will be shifted to rail with fossil fuel intensive trucking industry limited to short routes in electrified vehicles. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once in place, an electrified rail system would function as well as a conduit for excess electricity provided by intermittent renewable sources whose full incorporation will require a thoroughly </span><a href="https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/GridModReport.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; font-family: inherit;">redesigned and reconstructed electrical grid</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, itself requiring the investment of many millions of man hours. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">On a roughly similar order of magnitude will be required investments in infrastructure improvements to address the effects of climate change, most notably in the protection of low lying areas vulnerable to floods and sea surges. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">All of these components of the climate initiative would require personnel with appropriate training in relevant fields provided at trade schools, junior colleges and colleges extending to the university level. Federal funding would encourage matriculation into these programs while discouraging the growth of academic majors (such as <a href="http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mfin/academic-excellence/optional-concentrations/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">financial engineering</a>) which channel technical talent away from where it is most needed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Similar priorities will also inform a major shift in goverment funding of basic and applied science research, a large fraction of which is presently consumed by weapons reserach undertaken at Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Oak Ridge and other <a href="https://www.energy.gov/maps/doe-national-laboratories" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">national laboratories</a> These investments would be shifted to research institutions modelled on the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories which have gave rise to energy efficient technologies now in common use. The funding would underwrite a Manhattan project devoted to basic research in new energy sources and also in energy storage systems as well as atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration technologies. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We are in a race against time to achieve scientific breakthroughs but also to apply existing technologies which are able to drastically reduce our carbon footprint.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Asking the question whether we can afford these is a waste of time-a distraction from investing ourselves both intellectually and emotionally in what will be required.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The right question is exactly that which Alexandria Ocasio Cortez <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/08/09/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-medicare-for-all-intv-sot-cuomo-vpx.cnn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">famously asked</a> a couple of weeks ago. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“Why is it our pockets are only empty when it comes to education and healthcare for our kids and 100 percent renewable energy that is going to save this planet? We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do, but when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires and unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money fairly easily.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">We did not ask “can we afford it” when we invested a full one quarter of our economy into producing the infrastructure which was required to beat back the axis powers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Adopting a war footing to confront the even more dire spectre of climate catastrophe would seem to be the rhetorical framework which allow us to move forward in doing what needs to be done.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-84897979010134464822018-08-16T15:12:00.000+09:302018-08-16T15:12:25.502+09:30Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter<a href="https://www.servicespace.org/inc/ckfinder/userfiles/images/dgood/Eager_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.servicespace.org/inc/ckfinder/userfiles/images/dgood/Eager_cover.jpg" style="border: 1px solid; height: 396px; margin-top: 7px; padding: 0px; width: 262px;" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">by <a href="http://www.dailygood.org/search.php?op=auth&name=Ben%20Goldfarb" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Ben Goldfarb</a>, Daily Good: </span><a href="http://www.dailygood.org/story/2068/eager-the-surprising-secret-life-of-beavers-and-why-they-matter-ben-goldfarb/">http://www.dailygood.org/story/2068/eager-the-surprising-secret-life-of-beavers-and-why-they-matter-ben-goldfarb/</a></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">This excerpt is from Ben Goldfarb’s new book <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter </em>(Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher www.chelseagreen.com</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Close your eyes. Picture, if you will, a healthy stream. What comes to mind? Perhaps you’ve conjured a crystalline, fast-moving creek, bounding merrily over rocks, its course narrow and shallow enough that you could leap or wade across the channel. If, like me, you are a fly fisherman, you might add a cheerful, knee-deep angler, casting for trout in a limpid riffle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s a lovely picture, fit for an Orvis catalog. It’s also wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s try again. This time, I want you to perform a more difficult imaginative feat. Instead of envisioning a present-day stream, I want you to reach into the past—before the mountain men, before the Pilgrims, before Hudson and Champlain and the other horsemen of the furpocalypse, all the way back to the 1500s. I want you to imagine the streams that existed before global capitalism purged a continent of its dam-building, water-storing, wetland-creating engineers. I want you to imagine a landscape with its full complement of beavers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">What do you see this time? No longer is our stream a pellucid, narrow, racing trickle. Instead it’s a sluggish, murky swamp, backed up several acres by a messy concatenation of woody dams. Gnawed stumps ring the marsh like punji sticks; dead and dying trees stand aslant in the chest-deep pond. When you step into the water, you feel not rocks underfoot but sludge. The musty stink of decomposition wafts into your nostrils. If there’s a fisherman here, he’s thrashing angrily in the willows, his fly caught in a tree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although this beavery tableau isn’t going to appear in any <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Field & Stream </em>spreads, it’s in many cases a more historically accurate picture—and, in crucial ways, a much healthier one. In the intermountain West, wetlands, though they make up just 2 percent of total land area, support 80 percent of biodiversity; you may not hear the tinkle of running water in our swamp, but listen closely for the songs of warblers and flycatchers perched in creek-side willows. Wood frogs croak along the pond’s marshy aprons; otters chase trout through the submerged branches of downed trees, a forest inverted. The deep water and the close vegetation make the fishing tough, sure, but abundant trout shelter in the meandering side channels and cold depths. In <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A River Runs Through It</em>, Norman Maclean captured the trials and ecstasies of angling in beaver country when he wrote of one character, “So off he went happily to wade in ooze and to get throttled by brush and to fall through loose piles of sticks called beaver dams and to end up with a wreath of seaweed round his neck and a basket full of fish”(1).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And it’s not just fishermen and wildlife who benefit. The weight of the pond presses water deep into the ground, recharging aquifers for use by downstream farms and ranches. Sediment and pollutants filter out in the slackwaters, cleansing flows. Floods dissipate in the ponds; wildfires hiss out in wet meadows. Wetlands capture and store spring rain and snowmelt, releasing water in delayed pulses that sustain crops through the dry summer. A report released by a consulting firm in 2011 estimated that restoring beavers to a single river basin, Utah’s Escalante, would provide tens of millions of dollars in benefits each year (2). Although you can argue with the wisdom of slapping a dollar value on nature, there’s no denying that these are some seriously important critters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To society, though, beavers still appear more menacing than munificent. In 2013 I lived with my partner, Elise, in a farming town called Paonia, set high in the mesas of Colorado’s Western Slope. Our neighbors’ farms and orchards were watered by labyrinthine irrigation ditches, each one paralleled by a trail along which the ditch rider—the worker who maintained the system—drove his ATV during inspections. In the evenings we strolled the ditches, our soundtrack the faint gurgle of water through headgates, our backdrop the rosy sunset on Mount Lamborn. One dusk we spotted a black head drifting down the canal like a piece of floating timber. The beaver let us approach within a few feet before slapping his tail explosively and submarining off into the crepuscule. On subsequent walks we saw our ditch beaver again, and again, perhaps half a dozen times altogether. We came to expect him, and though it was probably our imaginations, he seemed to grow less skittish with each encounter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like many torrid romances, our relationship acquired a certain frisson from the certain knowledge that it was doomed. Although our beaver showed no inclination to dam the canal—and indeed, beavers often elect not to dam at all—we knew the ditch rider would not tolerate the possibility of sabotage. The next time the rider passed us on his ATV, a shotgun lay across his knees. The grapevine gave us unhappy tidings a few days later: Our ditch beaver was no more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That zero-tolerance mentality remains more rule than exception: Beavers are still <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">rodenta non grata </em>across much of the United States. They are creative in their mischief. In 2013 residents of Taos, New Mexico, lost cell phone and internet service for twenty hours when a beaver gnawed through a fiber-optic cable (3). They have been accused of dropping trees atop cars on Prince Edward Island (4), sabotaging weddings in Saskatchewan (5) and ruining golf courses in Alabama—where, gruesomely, they were slaughtered with pitchforks, a massacre one local reporter called a “dystopian </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Caddyshack</em><span style="font-family: inherit;">” (6). Sometimes they’re framed for crimes they did not commit: Beavers were accused of, and exonerated for, flooding a film set in Wales (7) (the actual culprits were the only organisms more heedless of property than beavers: teenagers). Often, though, they’re guilty as charged. In 2016 a rogue beaver was apprehended by authorities in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, after barging into a department store and rifling through its plastic-wrapped Christmas trees (8). The vandal was shipped off to a wildlife rehab center, but his comrades tend not to be so lucky.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although our hostility toward beavers is most obviously predicated on their penchant for property damage, I suspect there’s also a deeper aversion at work. We humans are fanatical, orderly micromanagers of the natural world: We like our crops planted in parallel furrows, our dams poured with smooth concrete, our rivers straitjacketed and obedient. Beavers, meanwhile, create apparent chaos: jumbles of downed trees, riotous streamside vegetation, creeks that jump their banks with abandon. What looks to us like disorder, though, is more properly described as complexity, a profusion of life-supporting habitats that benefit nearly everything that crawls, walks, flies, and swims in North America and Europe. “A beaver pond is more than a body of water supporting the needs of a group of beavers,” wrote James B. Trefethen in 1975, “but the epicenter of a whole dynamic ecosystem” (9).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Beavers are also at the center of our own story. Practically since humans first dispersed across North America via the Bering Land Bridge—replicating a journey that beavers made repeatedly millions of years prior—the rodents have featured in the religions, cultures, and diets of indigenous peoples from the nations of the Iroquois to the Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest. More recently, and destructively, it was the pursuit of beaver pelts that helped lure white people to the New World and westward across it. The fur trade sustained the Pilgrims, dragged Lewis and Clark up the Missouri, and exposed tens of thousands of native people to smallpox. The saga of beavers isn’t just the tale of a charismatic mammal—it’s the story of modern civilization, in all its grandeur and folly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite the fur trade’s ravages, beavers today face no danger of extinction: Somewhere around fifteen million survive in North America, though no one knows the number for certain. In fact, they’re one of our most triumphant wildlife success stories. Beavers have rebounded more than a hundredfold since trappers reduced their numbers to around one hundred thousand by the turn of the twentieth century. The comeback has been even more dramatic across the Atlantic, where populations of a close cousin, the Eurasian beaver (<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Castor fiber</em>), have skyrocketed from just one thousand to around one million (10). Not only have beavers benefited from conservation laws, they’ve helped author them. It was the collapse of the beaver—along with the disappearance of other persecuted animals, like the bison and the passenger pigeon—that sparked the modern conservation movement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But let’s not pat ourselves on the backs too heartily. As far as we’ve come, beaver restoration has many miles farther to go. When Europeans arrived in North America, the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton guessed that anywhere from sixty million to four hundred million beavers swam its rivers and ponds (11). Although Seton’s appraisal was more than a bit arbitrary, there’s no doubt that North American beaver populations remain a fraction of their historic levels. Will Harling, director of the Mid Klamath Fisheries Council, told me that some California watersheds host just one one-thousandth as many beavers as existed before trappers pursued them to the brink of oblivion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That story, of course, isn’t unique to California, or to beavers. Europeans began despoiling North American ecosystems the moment they set boots on the stony shore of the New World. You’re probably familiar with most of the colonists’ original environmental sins: They wielded an ax against every tree, lowered a net to catch every fish, turned livestock onto every pasture, churned the prairie to dust. In California’s Sierra Nevada, nineteenth-century gold miners displaced so much sediment that the sludge could have filled the Panama Canal eight times (12). We are not accustomed to discussing the fur trade in the same breath as those earth-changing industries, but perhaps we should. The disappearance of beavers dried up wetlands and meadows, hastened erosion, altered the course of countless streams, and imperiled water-loving fish, fowl, and amphibians—an aquatic Dust Bowl. Centuries before the Glen Canyon Dam plugged up the Colorado and the Cuyahoga burst into flame, fur trappers were razing stream ecosystems. “[Beavers’] systematic and widespread removal,” wrote Sharon Brown and Suzanne Fouty in 2011, “represents the first large-scale Euro-American alteration of watersheds” (13).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If trapping out beavers ranked among humanity’s earliest crimes against nature, bringing them back is a way to pay reparations. Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year.</span></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Excerpted from Ben Goldfarb's book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter </em>(Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018). R<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">eprinted with permission from <a href="https://www.chelseagreen.com/" style="border: 0px; color: brown; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Chelsea Green Publishing,</a> publishers of renewable energy, sustainable living, organic gardening, and progressive books since 1984.</em></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ben Goldfarb is an award-winning environmental journalist who covers wildlife management and conservation biology. His work has been featured in Science, Mother Jones, The Guardian, High Country News, VICE, Audubon Magazine, Orion, Scientific American, and many other publications. He holds a master of environmental management degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and is the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018). Follow him on Twitter @ben_a_goldfarb.</em></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-26867807698842799212018-08-06T21:41:00.000+09:302018-08-06T21:41:59.029+09:30Eternity, Nature, Society and the Absurd Fantasies of the Rich<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/WSJ-gasmask.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://climateandcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/WSJ-gasmask.jpg" style="background-color: transparent;" /></a><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The wealthier they are, the more they fear that others will try to take their wealth. No wonder the super-rich are building bunkers to escape the apocalypse.</strong></em></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kurt Cobb</em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. This article is reprinted, with permission, from his excellent blog, <a href="https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Resource Insights</a>.</em></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by Kurt Cobb</strong></div>
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Professor and author <a href="http://www.rushkoff.com/about/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Douglas Rushkoff</a> recently <a href="https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">wrote about a group of wealthy individuals who paid him to answer questions</a> about how to manage their lives after what they believe will be the collapse of society. He only knew at the time he was engaged that the group wanted to talk about the future of technology.</div>
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Rushkoff afterwards explained that the group assumed they would need armed guards after this collapse to defend themselves. But they rightly wondered: in a collapsed society how they could even control such guards. What would they pay those guards with when the normal forms of payment ceased to mean anything? Would the guards organize against them?</div>
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Rushkoff provides a compelling analysis of a group of frightened wealthy men trying to escape the troubles of this world while alive and wishing to leave a decaying body behind when the time comes and transfer their consciousness digitally into a computer. (<a href="https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2018/03/driverless-cars-and-bodiless-brains.html" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">I’ve written about consciousness and computers previously.</a>)</div>
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Here I want to focus on what I see as the failure of these people to understand the single most salient fact about their situations: their wealth and their identities are social constructs that depend on thousands if not millions of people who are employees; customers; employees of vendors; government workers who maintain and run the law courts, the police force, the public physical infrastructure, legislative bodies, the administrative agencies and the educational institutions — and who thereby maintain public order, public health and public support for our current systems.</div>
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Those wealthy men aren’t taking all this with them when they die. And, while they are alive, their identities will shift radically if the intellectual, social, economic and governmental infrastructure degrades to the point where their safety is no longer guaranteed by at least minimal well-being among others in society. If the hunt for diminishing food and other resources comes to their doors, no army of guards will ultimately protect them against the masses who want to survive just as badly but lack the means.</div>
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One would think that pondering this, the rich who are capable of pondering it would have an epiphany: Since their security and well-being ultimately hinges on the security and well-being of all, they ought to get started helping to create a society that provides that in the face of the immense challenges we face such as climate change, resource depletion, possible epidemics, growing inequality and other devils waiting in the wings of the modern world. (In fairness, <a href="https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">some do understand this</a>.)</div>
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At least one reason for the failure of this epiphany to occur is described by author and student of risk Nassim Nicholas Taleb. <a href="https://medium.com/incerto/only-the-rich-are-poisoned-the-preference-of-others-c35ddf65cf68" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Taleb describes how the lives the rich become increasingly detached</a> from the rest of society as arbiters of taste for the wealthy convince them that this detachment is the reward of wealth. The rich visit restaurants that include only people like themselves. They purchase larger and larger homes with fewer and fewer people in them until they can spend whole days without seeing another person. For the wealthiest, neighbors are a nuisance. Better to surround oneself with a depopulated forest than people next door.</div>
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The rich are convinced by this experience that they are lone heroes and at the same time lone victims, pilloried by the media as out of touch and heartless. These self-proclaimed victims may give to the Cato Institute to reinforce the idea that the individual can go it alone and should. They themselves have done it (or at least think they have). Why can’t everyone else?</div>
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The wealthier they are, the more their fear and paranoia mounts that others not so wealthy will try to take their wealth; or that impersonal forces in the marketplace will destroy it or at least diminish it significantly; or that government will be taken over by the mob and expropriate their wealth through high taxes or outright seizure. And, of course, there are the natural disasters of uncontrolled climate change and plague, just to name two.</div>
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<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/super-rich-buying-apocalypse-safe-bunkers-protection-natural-disasters-nuclear-attack-kansas-us-a7833641.html" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">It’s no wonder some of the super rich are buying luxury bunkers to ride out the apocalypse</a>. These bunkers come with an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-survival-condo-project-luxury-doomsday-shelter-2017-4/?r=UK&IR=T/#these-days-halls-tells-business-insider-its-the-ever-increasing-threats-to-society-both-natural-and-manmade-that-keep-him-at-night-fortunately-he-has-a-safe-place-to-crash-22" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">array of amenities</a> that include a cinema, indoor pool and spa, medical first aid center, bar, rock climbing wall, gym, and library. High-speed internet is included though one wonders how it will work after the apocalypse.</div>
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But strangely, even in these luxury bunkers built in former missile silos, dependence on and trust in others cannot be avoided. The units are actually condominiums. And while they contain supplies and ammunition said to be enough for five years, it will be incumbent on the owners, whether they like it not, to become intimately acquainted with their neighbors in order to coordinate a defense of the compound should that need arise.</div>
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The irony, of course, is that this is precisely the kind of communal entanglement which their wealth is supposed to allow them to avoid. Society, it seems, is everywhere you go. You cannot avoid it even when eternity is advancing on your door. And, you cannot escape with your consciousness into a computer (assuming that will one day be possible) if there’s no stable technical society to tend to computer maintenance and no power to keep the computer on.</div>
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It turns out that we are here for a limited time and that trusting and reciprocal relationships with others are ultimately the most important possessions we have — unless we are too rich or too frightened to realize it.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-20190627990147166632018-07-31T11:10:00.001+09:302018-07-31T11:10:48.778+09:30The U.S. Government Tried to Stop These Kids' Lawsuit Over Climate Change - It Didn't Workby <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/annie-reneau">Annie Reneau</a>, Upworthy: <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/the-u-s-government-tried-to-stop-these-kids-lawsuit-over-climate-change-it-didn-t-work?c=upw1">https://www.upworthy.com/the-u-s-government-tried-to-stop-these-kids-lawsuit-over-climate-change-it-didn-t-work?c=upw1</a><br />
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<div class="article__body-content" id="nuggetBody" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: Regular, VllgRegular, "Avenir Next", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 33px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<div data-react-class="ArticleBodyContent" data-react-props="{"content":"\u003Ch2\u003ESince 2015, 21 young people aged 8 to 20 have been engaged in \u003Ca href=\"http://climatecasechart.com/case/juliana-v-united-states/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EJuliana v. the United States\u003C/a\u003E, a lawsuit over climate change.\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe plaintiffs argue that the federal government \u003Ca href=\"https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehas not taken sufficient action\u003C/a\u003E to battle catastrophic climate change and that the dire future of the planet infringes on their constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey contend that the government has known for decades how carbon dioxide pollution and \u003Ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-3.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ethe greenhouse effect\u003C/a\u003E affects the Earth, yet has failed to take action to save future generations from those effects. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv data-reactroot=\"\" data-card=\"facebook\"\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"fb-post\" data-href=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/photos/a.186886431354003.40508.186475038061809/1384219294954038/?type=3\" data-width=\"552\"\u003E\u003Cblockquote cite=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/posts/1384219294954038:0\" class=\"fb-xfbml-parse-ignore\"\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBREAKING: Youth seek to obtain testimony from Rex Tillerson in climate lawsuit\r\n\r\nRead the full press release here: https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/161229RexTillersonDepoPR.pdf\u003C/p\u003EPosted by \u003Ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/\"\u003EOur Children's Trust\u003C/a\u003E on \u003Ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/posts/1384219294954038:0\"\u003EThursday, December 29, 2016\u003C/a\u003E\n\u003C/blockquote\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn fact, \u003Ca href=\"https://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-teens-leading-an-unprecedented-lawsuit-against-the-us-government\"\u003Ethese kids say\u003C/a\u003E, the government has actually taken actionable steps to make climate change \u003Cem\u003Eworse \u003C/em\u003Eand has \"failed to protect essential public trust resources.\"\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs \u003Ca href=\"https://www.earthguardians.org/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EEarth Guardians\u003C/a\u003E — a youth-led environmental group and organizational plaintiff in the lawsuit — \u003Ca href=\"https://www.earthguardians.org/youthvgov\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Estates\u003C/a\u003E, \"\u003Cstrong\u003EWe're holding the federal government accountable for putting our future at risk and refusing to act on climate change.\u003C/strong\u003E\"\u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EThe government, under both Obama and Trump, has made multiple attempts to get the lawsuit tossed out.\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJuliana v. U.S. was filed during the Obama administration and has carried over into Trump's tenure. Both administrations have attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed before it reached trial, and unsurprisingly, fossil fuel industries \u003Ca href=\"https://www.thenation.com/article/21-kids-are-suing-president-obama-over-climate-inaction/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehave attempted to join\u003C/a\u003E in the effort. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHowever, the court system rejected \u003Ca href=\"https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ethe government's appeals\u003C/a\u003E to drop the case in \u003Ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/576195342fe1316f09d2eb8d/1466012983313/16.04.08.OrderDenyingMTD.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EApril 2016\u003C/a\u003E, \u003Ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/5824e85e6a49638292ddd1c9/1478813795912/Order+MTD.Aiken.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ENovember 2016\u003C/a\u003E, and \u003Ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/593a101403596e9ea174ce22/1496977428927/Aiken+adopts+Coffin+F%26R.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EJune 2017\u003C/a\u003E. A judge also \u003Ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/59541c8db3db2b21ddf4c17e/1498684558660/2017.07.28+Order+Granting+Motions+to+Withdraw-Setting+Trial+Date.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Eissued an order\u003C/a\u003E in June 2017 that removed the fossil fuel defendants from the case. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv data-reactroot=\"\" data-card=\"facebook\"\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"fb-post\" data-href=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/photos/a.186886431354003.40508.186475038061809/2052000204842607/?type=3\" data-width=\"552\"\u003E\u003Cblockquote cite=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/posts/2052000204842607:0\" class=\"fb-xfbml-parse-ignore\"\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBREAKING: U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken presided over a telephonic hearing yesterday to discuss new motions the...\u003C/p\u003EPosted by \u003Ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/\"\u003EOur Children's Trust\u003C/a\u003E on \u003Ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/youthvgov/posts/2052000204842607:0\"\u003EThursday, May 24, 2018\u003C/a\u003E\n\u003C/blockquote\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStill, the government persisted, with a \u003Ca href=\"https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/federal-proceedings/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003E\"drastic and extraordinary\"\u003C/a\u003E attempt to have higher courts intervene in those judges' decisions. Though ultimately unsuccessful, their actions \u003Ca href=\"https://thinkprogress.org/youth-climate-lawsuit-trial-date-february-6490ae01e5f0/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Esucceeded in delaying\u003C/a\u003E the original scheduled trial date of Feb. 5, 2018. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EHowever, an appeals court again ruled in favor of the kids, finally giving them their day in court.\u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-lawsuit/u-s-loses-bid-to-end-childrens-climate-change-lawsuit-idUSKBN1KA2SB\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EIn a final plea\u003C/a\u003E in summer 2018, the government tried again to get a higher court to intervene and put a swift end to the lawsuit, claiming that letting the case go to trial would be too burdensome on the government and would unconstitutionally pit the judicial and executive branches of government against one another. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv data-reactroot=\"\" data-card=\"twitter\"\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\n\u003Cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"\u003E\n\u003Cp lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003EBREAKING: Ninth Circuit Rules in Favor of Youth Plaintiffs Again, Denies the Trump Administration’s Second Petition for Writ of Mandamus in Juliana v. United States. Read the full press release here: \u003Ca href=\"https://t.co/GnjDZRCuDQ\"\u003Ehttps://t.co/GnjDZRCuDQ\u003C/a\u003E \u003Ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/youthvgov?src=hash\u0026ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\"\u003E#youthvgov\u003C/a\u003E \u003Ca href=\"https://t.co/HGccShphJZ\"\u003Epic.twitter.com/HGccShphJZ\u003C/a\u003E\u003C/p\u003E— Our Children's Trust (@youthvgov) \u003Ca href=\"https://twitter.com/youthvgov/status/1020364659935891458?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\"\u003EJuly 20, 2018\u003C/a\u003E\n\u003C/blockquote\u003E\r\n\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003C/div\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut on July 20, three judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals \u003Ca href=\"https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/5b521e4f88251ba4cb6f19fa/1532108367826/2018.07.20+Press+Release+on+Ninth+Circuit%27s+Second+Decision.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Eunanimously voted\u003C/a\u003E to allow the case to continue, stating that such arguments were better decided in court. The kids and their lawyers are scheduled \u003Ca href=\"https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20180523-Telephonic-Hearing-Press-Release-dkpp.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Eto begin trial\u003C/a\u003E on Oct. 29 in a federal court in Eugene, Oregon. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EOnce again, young people are engaging in civic action to make change in their world. Hallelujah! \u003C/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESuing the federal government may seem like an extreme move, but climate change is an \u003Ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/7/11/15950966/climate-change-doom-journalism\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Eundeniably urgent reality\u003C/a\u003E — one this young generation will bear the brunt of. \u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThankfully, kids and teens \u003Ca href=\"https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/youth-activism-young-protesters-historic-movements/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ekeep proving over and over\u003C/a\u003E that they are ready and willing to take collective action to protect their future, no matter what obstacles lie in their path. It takes gumption and diligence to speak truth to power, and \u003Ca href=\"https://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-teens-leading-an-unprecedented-lawsuit-against-the-us-government\"\u003Ethese youth\u003C/a\u003E seem to have plenty of both.\u003C/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGo, kids, go. Millions of your fellow citizens will be rooting for you in October. \u003C/p\u003E","promoted":false,"sponsored":false}" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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Since 2015, 21 young people aged 8 to 20 have been engaged in <a href="http://climatecasechart.com/case/juliana-v-united-states/" style="background: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%) 0px 23px / 1px 1px repeat-x; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">Juliana v. the United States</a>, a lawsuit over climate change.</h2>
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The plaintiffs argue that the federal government <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">has not taken sufficient action</a> to battle catastrophic climate change and that the dire future of the planet infringes on their constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.</div>
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They contend that the government has known for decades how carbon dioxide pollution and <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-3.html" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">the greenhouse effect</a> affects the Earth, yet has failed to take action to save future generations from those effects.</div>
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In fact, <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-teens-leading-an-unprecedented-lawsuit-against-the-us-government" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;">these kids say</a>, the government has actually taken actionable steps to make climate change <em style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">worse </em>and has "failed to protect essential public trust resources."</div>
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As <a href="https://www.earthguardians.org/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">Earth Guardians</a> — a youth-led environmental group and organizational plaintiff in the lawsuit — <a href="https://www.earthguardians.org/youthvgov" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">states</a>, "<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">We're holding the federal government accountable for putting our future at risk and refusing to act on climate change.</span>"</div>
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The government, under both Obama and Trump, has made multiple attempts to get the lawsuit tossed out.</h2>
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Juliana v. U.S. was filed during the Obama administration and has carried over into Trump's tenure. Both administrations have attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed before it reached trial, and unsurprisingly, fossil fuel industries <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/21-kids-are-suing-president-obama-over-climate-inaction/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">have attempted to join</a> in the effort.</div>
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However, the court system rejected <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">the government's appeals</a> to drop the case in <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/576195342fe1316f09d2eb8d/1466012983313/16.04.08.OrderDenyingMTD.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">April 2016</a>, <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/5824e85e6a49638292ddd1c9/1478813795912/Order+MTD.Aiken.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">November 2016</a>, and <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/593a101403596e9ea174ce22/1496977428927/Aiken+adopts+Coffin+F%26R.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">June 2017</a>. A judge also <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/59541c8db3db2b21ddf4c17e/1498684558660/2017.07.28+Order+Granting+Motions+to+Withdraw-Setting+Trial+Date.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">issued an order</a> in June 2017 that removed the fossil fuel defendants from the case.</div>
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Still, the government persisted, with a <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/federal-proceedings/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">"drastic and extraordinary"</a>attempt to have higher courts intervene in those judges' decisions. Though ultimately unsuccessful, their actions <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/youth-climate-lawsuit-trial-date-february-6490ae01e5f0/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">succeeded in delaying</a>the original scheduled trial date of Feb. 5, 2018.</div>
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However, an appeals court again ruled in favor of the kids, finally giving them their day in court.</h2>
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<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-lawsuit/u-s-loses-bid-to-end-childrens-climate-change-lawsuit-idUSKBN1KA2SB" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">In a final plea</a> in summer 2018, the government tried again to get a higher court to intervene and put a swift end to the lawsuit, claiming that letting the case go to trial would be too burdensome on the government and would unconstitutionally pit the judicial and executive branches of government against one another.</div>
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BREAKING: Ninth Circuit Rules in Favor of Youth Plaintiffs Again, Denies the Trump Administration’s Second Petition for Writ of Mandamus in Juliana v. United States. Read the full press release here: <a class="link customisable" data-expanded-url="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20180720-Press-Release-on-Ninth-Circuits-Second-Decision.pdf" data-scribe="element:url" dir="ltr" href="https://t.co/GnjDZRCuDQ" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2b7bb9; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank" title="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20180720-Press-Release-on-Ninth-Circuits-Second-Decision.pdf"><span class="u-hiddenVisually" style="border: 0px !important; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px) !important; height: 1px !important; overflow: hidden !important; padding: 0px !important; position: absolute !important; width: 1px !important;">https://www.</span>ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20180720-Pre<span class="u-hiddenVisually" style="border: 0px !important; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px) !important; height: 1px !important; overflow: hidden !important; padding: 0px !important; position: absolute !important; width: 1px !important;">ss-Release-on-Ninth-Circuits-Second-Decision.pdf </span>…</a> <a class="PrettyLink hashtag customisable" data-query-source="hashtag_click" data-scribe="element:hashtag" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/youthvgov?src=hash" rel="tag" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2b7bb9; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="PrettyLink-prefix">#</span><span class="PrettyLink-value">youthvgov</span></a></div>
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But on July 20, three judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/5b521e4f88251ba4cb6f19fa/1532108367826/2018.07.20+Press+Release+on+Ninth+Circuit%27s+Second+Decision.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">unanimously voted</a> to allow the case to continue, stating that such arguments were better decided in court. The kids and their lawyers are scheduled <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20180523-Telephonic-Hearing-Press-Release-dkpp.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">to begin trial</a> on Oct. 29 in a federal court in Eugene, Oregon.</div>
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Once again, young people are engaging in civic action to make change in their world. Hallelujah!</h2>
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Suing the federal government may seem like an extreme move, but climate change is an <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/7/11/15950966/climate-change-doom-journalism" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">undeniably urgent reality</a> — one this young generation will bear the brunt of.</div>
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Thankfully, kids and teens <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/youth-activism-young-protesters-historic-movements/" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;" target="_blank">keep proving over and over</a> that they are ready and willing to take collective action to protect their future, no matter what obstacles lie in their path. It takes gumption and diligence to speak truth to power, and <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-teens-leading-an-unprecedented-lawsuit-against-the-us-government" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(146, 146, 146, 0) 25%, rgba(146, 146, 146, 0.6) 25%); background-position: 0px 23px; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1px; text-decoration-line: none; text-shadow: none;">these youth</a> seem to have plenty of both.</div>
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Go, kids, go. Millions of your fellow citizens will be rooting for you in October.</div>
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</footer>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-65927740764416515952018-07-23T10:56:00.000+09:302018-07-23T10:56:10.350+09:30It Takes a Village: Saving the South-Eastern Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo is a Community Ambitionby <a href="http://www.rememberthewild.org.au/author/daniella-teixeira/">Daniella Teixeira</a>, Remember the Wild: <a href="http://www.rememberthewild.org.au/it-takes-a-village-saving-the-south-eastern-red-tailed-black-cockatoo-is-a-community-ambition/">http://www.rememberthewild.org.au/it-takes-a-village-saving-the-south-eastern-red-tailed-black-cockatoo-is-a-community-ambition/</a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "gorditaregular"; font-size: 8.57143px; font-style: italic;">The Red-tailed Black-cockatoos of Victoria’s south-west are a distinct sub-species, known as the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo. Image: Daniella Teixeira</span></td></tr>
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In Victoria’s far south-west, the Red-tailed Black-cockatoo survives in a fragmented landscape of stringybark forests within a matrix of agricultural lands. The birds here are a distinct subspecies of Red-tailed Black-cockatoo, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Calyptorhynchus banksii graptogyne </em>or the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo, isolated from others of their kind by thousands of kilometres. Their life history is inextricably tied to the landscape of this region, which includes the adjacent areas of South Australia. They feed almost exclusively on the small fruits of stringybark and Buloke, to which their relatively small bills are starkly adapted. They nest most often in the large, deep hollows of very old River Red Gums, many of which were ringbarked in the early 1900s.</div>
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Like its fellow Forest Red-tailed Black-cockatoo in Western Australia, the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo is endangered. Unlike its counterpart, however, the South-eastern Red-tail hasn’t adapted to any novel food sources, thanks (at least partly) to its small bill. With the population now at about 1,400 birds, the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo is one of Australia’s most endangered Black-cockatoos. In terms of having a small population, it is second only to the Kangaroo Island Glossy Black-cockatoo, which sits at around 400 birds (and growing, thanks to an intensive recovery program).</div>
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The decline of good quality feeding habitat is thought to be the red-tail’s most significant threat. Buloke has suffered the most severe loss through direct clearing, but the <a href="http://www.rememberthewild.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/c-b-graptogyne.pdf" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #242424; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #00aeab;">roughly 58% of stringybark that remains in Victoria continues to be threatened by fire</span></a>. With no sign that the birds can eat anything else, and Buloke being too slow-growing to be planted for short- to medium-term gains, the protection of stringybark is vital to the red-tail’s survival.</div>
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I began studying this population of red-tails in early 2016, as part of my PhD research. My project came from the need for better methods to directly monitor breeding, because long-term data collected by the recovery team (<a href="http://www.redtail.com.au/" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #242424; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #00aeab;">a collaboration of scientists, government, non-profit groups, farmers and other stakeholders</span></a>) suggested a decline in the number of juveniles in the population. Direct nest monitoring by humans had proved unfeasible.</div>
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I set out for my first field trip in the spring of 2016 to find as many red-tail nests as I could, my ultimate goal being to develop a way to monitor breeding with nothing but standalone sound recorders. If it worked, this would mean, in practice, that sound recorders at nests could provide us data on breeding behaviour and nest success. To do this, I needed to understand how red-tails behave and vocalise at nests – which meant that I first needed to find lots of nests.</div>
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I had planned for months of looking for nests in forests, but I quickly learned that with the help of the farmers who are familiar with red-tails, all my work at nests could be done on private property. In fact, this proved a much more effective approach since almost all known red-tail nests are on private land, because that’s where the big, dead River Red Gums still stand. Engaging with landowners, as it turned out, became the most important tool in my nest-monitoring arsenal. So, while every PhD student dreams of fieldwork in pristine wilderness, I found myself working not in forests but on livestock farms.</div>
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Skip forward to 2018 and I have data from nests on farms across a large part of the red-tail’s range. What’s more, the farmers keep an eye on things for me when I can’t be in the field. It’s the collaboration – and enthusiasm – of the farmers along with me and the recovery team that has allowed this project to move forward.</div>
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In a broader context, community involvement is key to this bird’s recovery. While conservation actions are guided by the scientists and stakeholders that form the recovery team, the on-ground work relies on the dedicated investment from community members. Each year, volunteers get together to find red-tail flocks so that the recovery team can collect data on population size, demographics, and the flocks’ locations in the landscape that year. This provides the most important long-term monitoring data that we have for the red-tails. Landowners also volunteer their properties for food habitat revegetation and artificial nest hollow installations.</div>
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The situation seems bleak for the South-eastern Red-tailed Black-cockatoo. We know that food habitat is being impacted by fire, and we know that natural nest hollows are collapsing. While there is serious cause for concern, optimism arises from the impressive dedication that I’ve witnessed in the red-tail community. If we can better understand how well red-tails breed and where, and then use that knowledge to take actions like revegetation and installing artificial nest boxes on private land, we will have a good chance of promoting better breeding in this endangered population.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Daniella Teixeira’s research was recently featured on an episode of ABC’s </em><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Off Track</strong><em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">. Make sure you give it a listen <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack/fledge-or-fail/9742456" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #242424; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #00aeab;">here</span></a>.</em></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-72482878798403067192018-07-16T19:56:00.002+09:302018-07-16T19:56:42.849+09:30Is it Time for a Post-Growth Economy? The growth-driven economic model we have adopted is killing our planet.<div class="article-p-wrapper" id="body-201172416000000001" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNBYHhEUqK9vbXz5bvotWEY3VOjbL3-Hg7KphOCfEeEPHxtwk6PoU4D8O2mQGXbJnDV6YyP4bzIde5COA8Ww6s0T9zsHWK44LJad6GLDK8vrL1G0LnxXbzsxw6Fox7ziIbOpCB-tKuXAtn/s1600/1baa5529beaf40a99b100a55d5e88cd3_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNBYHhEUqK9vbXz5bvotWEY3VOjbL3-Hg7KphOCfEeEPHxtwk6PoU4D8O2mQGXbJnDV6YyP4bzIde5COA8Ww6s0T9zsHWK44LJad6GLDK8vrL1G0LnxXbzsxw6Fox7ziIbOpCB-tKuXAtn/s400/1baa5529beaf40a99b100a55d5e88cd3_18.jpg" width="400" /></a><div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;">by </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/jason-hickel.html">Jason Hickel</a>, Al Jazeera: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/time-post-growth-economy-180715141049984.html">https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/time-post-growth-economy-180715141049984.html</a></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The crowds of protesters that confronted US President </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/profile-president-donald-trump-161109050153947.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #006fa8; cursor: pointer; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; outline-offset: -2px; outline: 0px;">Donald Trump</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">during his visit to London last week have</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> channelled the world's outrage at all that he represents. But despite this opposition, Trump's base is expanding. Even those who baulk at his regressive </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">positions - his</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/subjects/racism.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; outline: 0px;">racism</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, misogyny</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">, divisiveness - are willing to hold their noses and line up behind him. Why? Because of his promises to deliver growth.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Politicians rise and fall on their ability to grow the GDP. It doesn't matter what it takes, whether it's ripping up environmental protections, gutting labour laws, or fracking for cheap oil: If you achieve growth, you win.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is only the beginning. As we bump up against the limits of growth - market saturation, resource depletion, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/issues/climate-change.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">climate change</a> - politicians will become increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of it. People like Trump will proliferate because everyone knows that we need growth: if the economy doesn't keep expanding by at least two percent or three percent a year in developed countries, it collapses into crisis. Debts can't be repaid, firms go bust, people lose their jobs. </span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The global economy has been designed in such a way that it needs to grow just to stay afloat. We are all hostages to growth, and hostages to those who promise it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">This is a massive problem because growth is tightly linked to environmental degradation. Growth of three percent may not sound like much, but it means doubling the size of the economy every 20 years - doubling the number of cars, smartphones, air miles... i.e. doubling the waste. </span><a href="http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Scientists tell us</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"> that we have already exceeded key planetary boundaries, and we can see the consequences all around us: deforestation, biodiversity collapse, resource wars and climate change.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. We can choose to create an economy that doesn't require endless growth and thus take the wind out of the sails of politicians like Trump. In fact, it's already happening: scholars and activists around the world are building the foundations for </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">post-growth economics.</span></span></div>
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<a class="article-embed-title" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/earthrise/2018/06/turning-tide-plastic-creation-art-waste-180611101445709.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.14; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Turning the tide on plastic: Creation and art from waste</span></a></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">The first step is to challenge the myth that growth is required by society. Economists and politicians tell us that we need growth in order to boost people out of poverty. But of all the new income generated by growth, </span><a href="http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/incrementum-ad-absurdum-global-growth-inequality-and-poverty-eradication-in-a-carbon-constrained-world/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">only five percent goes to the poorest 60 percent of humanity</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">. Growth is an extremely inefficient and ecologically insane way of improving people's lives. We can end poverty much more quickly, without any growth at all, simply by distributing existing income more fairly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">This is the core principle of a post-growth economy: Equity is the antidote to growth<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">. </em>There are lots of ideas about how to get there. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">We could introduce a global minimum wage and strengthen international labour laws. We </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">could put a maximum cap on income and wealth. We could encourage and even subsidise worker-owned cooperatives so wealth and power are distributed more equally.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But we also need to do something about our structural dependence on growth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For example, capitalism has a built-in incentive to increase labour productivity - to squeeze more value out of workers' time. But as productivity improves, workers get laid off and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/subjects/unemployment.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">unemployment</a> rises. To solve this crisis, governments have to find ways to generate more growth to create more jobs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are proven ways to escape this vicious cycle. We could introduce a shorter working week as<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-introduces-six-hour-work-day-a6674646.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank"> Sweden has just done</a>, sharing necessary labour so that everyone can have access to employment without the need for perpetual growth. Or we could ease off on the labour requirement altogether by rolling out a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/04/basic-income-birthright-eliminating-poverty" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">universal basic income,</span></a>funded by progressive taxes on carbon, resource-extraction, and financial transactions.</span></div>
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<a class="article-embed-title" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/earthrise/2018/06/fighting-insectageddon-bugs-matter-180603102924067.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.14; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Fighting insectageddon: Why bugs matter</span></a></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Another reason our economy has to grow is because of debt. Debt comes with interest, and interest is a compound function. Individuals, companies and states have to grow their output simply in order to pay down their debts. We can escape this cycle by cancelling unjust or unpayable debts - maybe using</span><a href="http://www.cadtm.org/Citizen-debt-audits-how-and-why" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">citizen debt audits</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"> - which would help liberate us from the growth imperative. We could also shift to</span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/nov/05/how-a-new-money-system-could-help-stop-climate-change" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">new monetary systems</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"> that don't have debt and interest built into them from the very start.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In order to help us get back within planetary boundaries, we could introduce new rules that limit the total amount of resources that we consume and waste we produce - much like we have done with CO2 emissions - so that we never extract more than the Earth can replenish or pollute more than our ecosystems can safely absorb.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">And of course, we can choose to get rid of GDP as our primary indicator of economic success and embrace saner, more holistic measures, like the </span>Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">, which accounts for the negative ecological and social impacts of economic activity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Countries as diverse as Bhutan, Scotland, Slovenia, Costa Rica and New Zealand are already embracing alternative measures. When politicians are told to pursue something like GPI instead of GDP, they are incentivised to maximise social goods and minimise ecological "bads". </span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">All of these ideas would help us transition away from the "growth-at-all-costs" model, and overthrow the tyranny of growth-obsessed politicians. We have a choice to make as a civilisation: either we prioritise growth or we prioritise life. We cannot do both. If we are going to survive the Anthropocene, it will be because we create post-growth economies that allow us to flourish in harmony with this beautiful and generous planet we call home.</span></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.</span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Illegal Deforestation: Death by a Thousand Cuts</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">ABOUT THE AUTHOR</span></h3>
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<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/jason-hickel.html" rel="author" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #fa9000; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img alt="Jason Hickel" class="img-profile-large" src="https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/profile/mritems/Images/2018/3/16/6bd13efa1eeb4b609aa9384b0c33a6a0_6.jpg" style="border-radius: 100%; border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; height: 70px; margin-bottom: 1em !important; margin-right: 10px; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out; vertical-align: middle; width: 70px;" title="Jason Hickel" /></span></a></div>
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<a class="article-author-end-name" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/jason-hickel.html" rel="author" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494949; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Jason Hickel</span></a><div class="article-about-author" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #4f4f4f; line-height: 1.52; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Dr Jason Hickel is an academic at the University of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-52248451388465542162018-07-11T13:56:00.000+09:302018-07-11T13:56:03.867+09:30Saving Tigers, Killing People: States are evicting and murdering Indigenous people in the guise of biodiversity conservation<div style="background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;">by <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/profile/souparna-lahiri.html">Souparna Lahiri</a>, </span>Al Jazeera: <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/saving-tigers-killing-people-180703110004941.html">https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/saving-tigers-killing-people-180703110004941.html</a></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfh46mZ-qrWALOjMuIbFYOWGyXpzhUX2vFbrcjQGtV_TCpsp8YnHd0iVL0aigLM9OEkqHK_8RYKA_AhjskBCDoy51d0e2gYsDAbViTNyBMjjKNbmNmywt3oyJijjmljFVSXbCwg46585Xd/s1600/8cc6fda794234cfb938e65292fa3b052_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfh46mZ-qrWALOjMuIbFYOWGyXpzhUX2vFbrcjQGtV_TCpsp8YnHd0iVL0aigLM9OEkqHK_8RYKA_AhjskBCDoy51d0e2gYsDAbViTNyBMjjKNbmNmywt3oyJijjmljFVSXbCwg46585Xd/s640/8cc6fda794234cfb938e65292fa3b052_18.jpg" width="575" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #8e8e8e; font-family: , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">[Photo credit: Global Forest Coalition]</span></td></tr>
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From forced eviction to restrictions on access to resources, conservation practices have long been tied to violence against the indigenous peoples that live in forest areas. In recent years, we witnessed an exponential increase in conservation-related violence across the world.</div>
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Today, as conservation efforts become more and more militarised, state-sponsored actors are not only evicting and restricting the movements of indigenous community members, but also killing them for allegedly trespassing on their own ancestral lands.</div>
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In <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/country/india.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">India</a>, conservation violence seems to be on the rise.</div>
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On June 5, a 40-year-old villager named Roopchand Sonwane <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/8-madhya-pradesh-forest-officials-arrested-for-killing-man-burning-his-body/story-ngDN9WBzfdClGPrPt4IDML.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">was beaten to death</a> by Forest Department Officials in the central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh, near Pench Tiger Reserve. Sonwane was simply collecting firewood, but officials suspected he was preparing to fell teak trees so they detained him and took him to a forest ranger's residence. At the residence, they beat up and killed the villager and later burned his body to destroy evidence. </div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">In November 2017, </span><a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/2-killed-in-police-firing-during-Kaziranga-eviction/articleshow/54403631.cms" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">two people were killed</a><span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"> and five others injured when police opened fire to disperse protesters demanding compensation before they move out of areas near the <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Kaziranga-National-Park" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">Kaziranga National Park</a> as part of a state-sanctioned eviction drive. </span></div>
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<a class="article-embed-title" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/02/myanmar-denies-villagers-access-ancestral-lands-160224074324479.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.14; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none !important;">Myanmar denies villagers access to ancestral lands</a></h4>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Also in November last year, over <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/700-families-left-homeless-assam-governments-eviction-drive-amchang-wildlife-sanctuary" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">700 families were rendered homeless</a> by a similar eviction drive in the Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary located in the northeast Indian state of Assam. A posse of 1,500 policemen carried out the eviction razing houses, demolishing schools and places of worship, and injuring women and children in the process.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Since 2007, Forest Department Officials <a href="https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/tribals-falling-victim-to-fire-from-forest-guards/article20490007.ece1" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">shot and killed</a> at least 13 villagers in</span> the Buxa National Park, a Tiger Reserve situated along the foothills of the eastern Himalayas in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. Officials claimed the killed villagers were part of a so-called "timber mafia". </span></div>
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Elsewhere in the Indian states of Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, coercive relocation of forest communities is continuing in the protected areas of <a href="https://www.landconflictwatch.org/research/tribespeople-struggle-get-their-forest-rights-recognized-nagarhole-national-park" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">Nagarhole</a>, <a href="https://ejatlas.org/conflict/achanakmar-tiger-reserve" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">Achanakmar</a>, Udanti, <a href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/tadoba-tiger-reserve-an-unsafe-haven-4600" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve</a>, <a href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/forests/community-forest-rights-in-critical-habitats-face-hurdle-due-to-lack-of-legal-roadmap-57602" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">Melghat,</a> and Pench.</div>
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For decades, India's Forest Department officials - aided and abetted by the omnipotent National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) - have been implementing a violent policy of "people-less conservation" resulting in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/categories/human_rights.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">human rights</a> violations. </div>
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But, of course, people-less conservation is not a problem specific to India. <span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Across the world, governments have long been using the need for the conservation of land and wildlife as an excuse to remove Indigenous communities from their homes, sometimes with the support of </span><a href="http://www.redd-monitor.org/2015/07/23/wwf-scandal-part-6-evictions-of-indigenous-peoples-in-india-for-tiger-tourism/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">large international conservation groups</a><span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">. </span></div>
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Targeted relocation and eviction of indigenous and local communities living in biodiversity-rich ecosystems for conservation, have, over the years, brutalised, belittled and decimated them. Communities have gone extinct, their traditions, language and culture vanishing forever.</div>
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Take the example of San and Bakgalagadi people who have been removed from their ancestral lands to make way for the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana or the Miwok people who were forced to leave the Yosemite National Park in California. Maasai of eastern <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/regions/africa.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">Africa</a> were similarly pushed off their traditional grazing lands to make way for the parks that foreign tourists enjoy today. The Dongi-Dongi people were evicted from their homes in Sulawesi, Indonesia and the Banding Agung were removed from the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Sumatra.</div>
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READ MORE</div>
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<a class="article-embed-title" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/05/2013515185518112735.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.14; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none !important;">African tribes losing ground to conservation</a></h4>
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<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/186480/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">One study estimates</a><span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"> that as many as 14 million people in Africa alone have become "conservation refugees" since the beginning of modern conservation efforts in the 19th century. In India, the government also admits pushing over a million people out of National Parks, mostly to protect tigers.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Today, most governments around the world imitate this Western style of people-less conservation and continue to disregard community-based conservation systems where communities can coexist with wildlife.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">But globally, there is a wealth of knowledge and documentation around <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2008.00040.x" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">Community Conserved Areas </a>(CCAs) where local communities have championed biodiversity protection. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">A growing body of scientific evidence shows that </span>forest communities and indigenous peoples actively conserve and restore biodiversity in their territories, with women often <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3178217.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">taking the lead</a> in such conservation efforts. Studies show that such conservation governance systems are often more effective in<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10736-w" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;"> protecting biodiversity</a> <span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">than systems that prioritise formation of state-controlled conservation areas.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Moreover, </span>when protected areas overlap with the traditional territories of indigenous communities, they harm the communities' health, livelihoods and spiritual wellbeing. Protected areas threaten essential aspects of the communities' resilience, such as their autonomy and self-management.</div>
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Community-based conservation systems protect the land and wildlife while also taking local people's rights, knowledge, culture and skills, as well as their right to land and territory into consideration.</div>
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Indigenous communities have conserved their territories for millennia through their own customary practices. They are closely connected to these ecosystems. </div>
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<span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;">Therefore, the mainstream, militarised conservation model supported by states like India and often big international conservation <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/topics/organisations/ngo.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #005079; cursor: pointer; outline: 0px;">NGOs</a> must change. It must give way to a more humane and community-centred, managed and governed model of conservation that will not only protect our forests and conserve biodiversity, but will also secure livelihoods, provide shelter and ensure the well-being of millions of people who call forests their home.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><span lang="EN-IN" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.7 !important; margin-bottom: 20px !important;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.</em></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-66978513372201929772018-07-02T12:23:00.002+09:302018-07-02T12:23:47.226+09:30Smart City Planning Can Preserve Old Trees and the Wildlife That Needs Themby <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/philip-gibbons-4587">Philip Gibbons</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a>, The Conversation:<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/smart-city-planning-can-preserve-old-trees-and-the-wildlife-that-needs-them-98632">https://theconversation.com/smart-city-planning-can-preserve-old-trees-and-the-wildlife-that-needs-them-98632</a><br />
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<img alt="File 20180629 117377 112lzty.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1" height="266" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225439/original/file-20180629-117377-112lzty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="400" />
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Mature trees have horizontal branches that are attractive to wildlife and birds.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
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Australia’s landscapes are dotted with mature eucalypts that were standing well before Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay. These old trees were once revered as an icon of the unique Australian landscape, but they’re <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099403">rapidly becoming collateral damage</a> from population growth. Mature eucalypts are routinely removed to make way for new suburbs. <br />
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<img alt="" height="127" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224873/original/file-20180626-112604-f000n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="400" />
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<span class="caption">Good planning can ensure many more mature eucalypts are retained in urban developments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gibbons</span></span>
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This has a considerable impact on our native fauna. Unless society is prepared to recognise the value of our pre-European eucalypts, urban growth will continue to irrevocably change our unique Australian landscape and the wildlife it supports.<br />
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Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/trees-are-a-citys-air-conditioners-so-why-are-we-pulling-them-out-21890">Trees are a city's air conditioners, so why are we pulling them out?</a>
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Why are old eucalypts worth saving?</h2>
In urban landscapes, many consider large and old eucalypts a dangerous nuisance that drop limbs, crack footpaths and occupy space that could be used for housing. But when we remove these trees they are effectively lost forever. It takes at least <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/3010/">100-200 years</a> before a eucalypt reaches ecological maturity. <br />
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224870/original/file-20180626-112604-1lg07d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" />
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<span class="caption">Birds use old eucalypts as places to perch or nest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gibbons</span></span>
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As trees mature, their branches become large and begin to grow horizontally rather than vertically, which is more attractive to many birds as perches and platforms where they can construct a nest.<br />
Wildlife also use cavities inside ageing eucalypts. These are formed as the heartwood – the dead wood in the centre – decays. When a limb breaks it exposes cavities where the heartwood once occurred. <br />
This is such a ubiquitous process in our forests that around <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/3010/">300 of Australia’s vertebrate species</a>, such as possums, owls, ducks, parrots and bats, have evolved to use these cavities as exclusive places to roost or nest.<br />
Mature trees also support high concentrations of food for animals that feed on nectar, such as honeyeaters, or seed, such as parrots.<br />
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/concrete-jungle-well-have-to-do-more-than-plant-trees-to-bring-wildlife-back-to-our-cities-51047">Concrete jungle? We'll have to do more than plant trees to bring wildlife back to our cities</a>
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<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2011.00216.x">One study</a> found that the number of native birds in an urban park or open space declines by half with the loss of every five mature eucalypts.<br />
<h2>
How can we keep old trees?</h2>
Decaying heartwood in older eucalypts leads to some large branches falling. This is when most eucalypts are removed from urban areas. So we remove trees at the exact point in time when they become more attractive to wildlife.<br />
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<img alt="" height="224" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224868/original/file-20180626-112634-j0si21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="400" />
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<span class="caption">Plantings around the base of a mature eucalypt discourage pedestrian traffic or parked cars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gibbons</span></span>
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A well-trained arborist knows that old — or even dead — eucalypts don’t need to be removed to make them safe. A tree is only dangerous if it has what arborists call a target. Unless there is a path, road or structure under a tree, then the probability of something or someone being struck by a falling branch is often below the <a href="http://unri.org/ECO%20697U%20S14/quantified_tree_risk_assessment-_ellison.pdf">threshold of acceptable risk</a>.<br />
Progressive arborists first focus on eliminating targets. For example, they might plant shrubs around the base of dead or rapidly ageing trees to minimise pedestrian traffic, rather than eliminating trees.<br />
Where targets can’t be managed, trimming trees can remove branches that have a high risk of falling. Trees can also be structurally supported (braced) to remain stable. Such trees remain suitable as habitat for many native species.<br />
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225442/original/file-20180629-117371-k61l05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225442/original/file-20180629-117371-k61l05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" /></a>
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<span class="caption">Developers can plan around old trees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<h2>
How to design around trees</h2>
The removal of mature eucalypts is, in part, due to urban developers not considering these trees early in the planning process.<br />
I have worked with one <a href="https://ginninderry.com/not-just-tree-home/">developer</a> on the outskirts of Canberra to identify important trees. The developer then planned around, rather than in spite of, these trees.<br />
The outcome has been <a href="https://ginninderry.com/not-just-tree-home/">around 80%</a> of mature trees have been retained. This is much greater than the proportion of mature trees retained in other new urban developments in Canberra.<br />
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/trees-versus-light-rail-we-need-to-rethink-skewed-urban-planning-values-57206">Trees versus light rail: we need to rethink skewed urban planning values</a>
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<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98632/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" width="1" />Australia’s population is <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3222.0main+features52012%20(base)%20to%202101">projected to double in 50 years</a>, so our suburbs will continue to infill and expand. This will result in the continued loss of our mature eucalypts unless our approach to planning changes.<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/philip-gibbons-4587">Philip Gibbons</a>, Associate professor, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a></em><br />
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/smart-city-planning-can-preserve-old-trees-and-the-wildlife-that-needs-them-98632">original article</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-1695969057672993452018-06-25T20:54:00.000+09:302018-06-25T20:54:25.449+09:30This Device Pulls Water Out of Desert Air: A New Water Harvester Can Extract Water From Extremely Dry Air Using Only Solar Energy<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP5zeXUHehbbvz0iAkwLLdhuXxipIGoPXIHkgBtterOQnfn5CBvB8GVVC4EyYIPnqSp8l3_SM1_FAods1NkLhyTlrQZO_TsXe1uj_t7G7inFoGDtWyKzRHx7-ET9I1ocev1Dx0qyQQwrfX/s1600/harvesterinberkeley750_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP5zeXUHehbbvz0iAkwLLdhuXxipIGoPXIHkgBtterOQnfn5CBvB8GVVC4EyYIPnqSp8l3_SM1_FAods1NkLhyTlrQZO_TsXe1uj_t7G7inFoGDtWyKzRHx7-ET9I1ocev1Dx0qyQQwrfX/s320/harvesterinberkeley750_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Installing the water harvester (UC Berkeley)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">by <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/author/emily-matchar/">Emily Matchar</a>, Smithsonian.com: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-device-pulls-water-out-of-desert-air-180969398/">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-device-pulls-water-out-of-desert-air-180969398/</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Droughts have been making headlines across the world in recent years, from the California water crisis to Cape Town’s severe water shortage, and research suggests </span><a href="https://www.upi.com/Global-warming-could-leave-25-percent-of-the-planet-in-permanent-drought/4681514907695/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #003399; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;" target="_blank">25 percent of the globe</a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> could eventually be left in permanent drought due to climate change. But what if you could simply pull water from the air?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That’s the premise of a new technology developed by University of California, Berkeley researchers. It’s a water harvester that can extract water from the air, even in extremely dry climates, using no energy other than ambient sunlight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The key to the water harvester is a new class of materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These MOFs are solid but porous materials with enormous surface areas—an MOF the size of sugar cube can have the internal surface area as big as many football fields. This means they can absorb gases and liquids, and then release them quickly when heat is added.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“Certain MOFs as we showed here have an extraordinary ability to suck in water vapor from the atmosphere, but then at the same time do not hold on to the water molecules inside their pores too tightly so that it is easy to get the water out,” says Omar Yaghi, a professor of chemistry at Berkeley, who led the research.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The researchers tested the harvester in Scottsdale, Arizona, a desert town with a high of 40 percent humidity at night and 8 percent humidity during the day. Based on the trials using a zironium-based MOF, the researchers believe that the harvester could ultimately extract about 3 ounces of water per pound of MOF per day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The harvester itself is a box inside a box. The inner box contains a bed of MOFs. The outer box is a two-foot transparent plastic cube. At night, the researchers left the top off the outer box to let air flow past the MOFs. In the day, they put the top back on so the box would be heated by the sun. The heat would pull the water out of the MOFs, where it would condense on the inner walls of the plastic cube before dripping to the bottom, where it could be collected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“The most important aspect of this technology is that it is completely energy-passive,” says Eugene Kapustin, a Berkeley graduate student who worked on the research.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">That is to say, it needs no energy besides the sun, making it environmentally friendly and accessible to people in places with limited electricity. The results of the trials were published earlier this month in the journal <em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaat3198" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 51, 153) !important; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Science Advances</a></em>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The team needs to conduct more trials on the current models to figure out which factors, such as device size and where the MOF is placed within the device, most affect how much water can be harvested. They also hope to learn more about how specific climate conditions affect water yield. The next trial is planned for late summer in Death Valley, where the nighttime humidity can be as low as 25 percent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">image: https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/MQZyGQ7RZ_sZqpjHgdZsu9zGJyk=/1024x596/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/1e/e9/1ee9eabf-f492-4102-a593-6fde846e9d41/mof303crystals750.jpg</span></div>
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<figure class="article-image " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 1.5em;"><span data-alt="Microscope image of crystals of an MOF (UC Berkeley)" data-picture="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span data-media="(min-width: 600px)" data-src="https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/MQZyGQ7RZ_sZqpjHgdZsu9zGJyk=/1024x596/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/1e/e9/1ee9eabf-f492-4102-a593-6fde846e9d41/mof303crystals750.jpg" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
<img alt="Microscope image of crystals of an MOF (UC Berkeley)" src="https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/MQZyGQ7RZ_sZqpjHgdZsu9zGJyk=/1024x596/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/1e/e9/1ee9eabf-f492-4102-a593-6fde846e9d41/mof303crystals750.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; max-width: 100%;" /></span></span><figcaption class="caption" style="background: rgb(51, 51, 51); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.84615em; margin-top: -1px; padding: 0.5em 0.8em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Microscope image of crystals of an MOF (UC Berkeley)</span></figcaption></figure><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Yaghi has also developed a new aluminum-based MOF he says is 150 times cheaper and can capture twice as much water as the current MOFs. He and his team are designing a new water harvester that actively pulls air into the MOFs at high speed, thus delivering a much larger volume of water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The team is now partnering with industry to test harvesters on an industrial scale. They also continue to search for newer, better and cheaper MOFs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“I am very happy to see that more and more researchers around the world are joining our efforts in this regard,” Yaghi says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The idea of sucking water out of the atmosphere is not new, says Eric Hoek, an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and editor of the journal <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">npj Clean Water</em>. It’s long been noted that when you run an air conditioner, water drips out—this is because the machine is cooling the air to the dew point, the temperature at which the air is saturated with water vapor and condensation occurs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But creating water harvesters based on cooling technology is incredibly energy intense. In very dry climates, the dew point is below zero. Cooling the air to that temperature at any large scale is unfeasible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“The real innovation [of Yaghi’s research] is a materials innovation,” Hoek says. “These materials [the MOFs] pull water out and more easily give it up.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But the concept is challenging to scale, Hoek cautions, as the amount of water produced per square inch of harvester is relatively low, and thus a large harvester would potentially take up a huge amount of land.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“But maybe for a household or village scale it could be a very interesting way for someone off the grid to get fresh water,” Hoek says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Yaghi imagines exactly that: a future where everyone without easy access to fresh water has a harvester in their yard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“My vision is to achieve ‘personalized water,’ where people in water stressed regions have a device at home running on ambient solar, delivering the water that satisfies the basic needs of the individuals,” he says. “More than one third of the population in the world lives in water-stressed regions or is suffering from lack of clean water. The potential implications of this technology in transforming people’s lives and improving the global public health conditions are tremendous.”</span><br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-6T3ICXWqjc" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Read more: <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-device-pulls-water-out-of-desert-air-180969398/#wcAVi3rVISdBXEqJ.99">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-device-pulls-water-out-of-desert-air-180969398/#wcAVi3rVISdBXEqJ.99</a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-78115516944262377212018-06-19T10:41:00.001+09:302018-06-19T10:41:55.116+09:30Eight Lessons From Climate Organizing for Today’s Youth-Led Movements<div class="entry-summary" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(236, 236, 236); border-top: 1px solid rgb(236, 236, 236); color: #434343; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 15px 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/nick-engelfried">Nick Engelfried</a>, Open Democracy - Transformation:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/nick-engelfried/eight-lessons-from-climate-organizing-for-today-s-youth-led-movements">https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/nick-engelfried/eight-lessons-from-climate-organizing-for-today-s-youth-led-movements</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a young person, there’s nothing less empowering than listening to an older person tell you how real activism was done in the 1960s. </span></div>
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This article was first published on <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/lessons-youth-activism-climate-movement/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration-line: none;">Waging Nonviolence</a>.</span></em></div>
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/NickEngelfried.jpg" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="460" /></span></em></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Climate justice activists protest the Dakota Access pipeline outside the White House in February 2017. Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenmelkisethian/page1" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration-line: none;">Flickr/Stephen Melkisethian</a>. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration-line: none;">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On March 24 2018 I stood in the rain in front of City Hall in Bellingham, Washington with some 3,000 people for the local March for Our Lives demonstration. It was one of 800 similar events happening nationwide that day, with about two million people participating coast to coast.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The March for Our Lives against gun violence is one example of the wave of massive demonstrations that have swept the country since the Trump administration took office. From the Women’s March, to responses to Trump’s attacks on Muslims and immigrants, to protests against police violence, rallies for healthcare, and uprisings against pipelines, the last two years have been characterized by mass movements unparalleled in the United States in decades. Many, like the March for Our Lives, involve young people in leading roles. As someone who spent most of the past decade as a “youth activist”—in my case, a climate activist—I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I became an activist while attending Portland Community College at age 17 in 2005. Inspired by a political science professor who discussed social movements in class, I researched projects like the Campus Climate Challenge, a campaign to pressure school administrations to curb campus carbon emissions. I got involved in pushing for recycling at my college.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fast forward a couple years to when Energy Action Coalition organized Power Shift 2007, a gathering of about 5,000 students in Washington, D.C. that included a multi-day organizing conference and a rally at the Capitol. At the time, it was the largest-ever demonstration for climate action in the United States. For many of us, this stands out as the moment the “youth climate movement” became a distinct force in progressive politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t make it to Power Shift 2007. But I was in D.C. in 2009 for the next Power Shift, an even larger gathering of some 12,000 youth. Then a senior at Oregon’s Pacific University, I convinced three classmates to fly across the country with me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lot has changed since those early years of youth climate activism. For one thing, many of us who got involved then are no longer “youth”—I recently turned 30. More importantly, the movement has grown in remarkable, unexpected ways, overlapping with other progressive organizing efforts. Indeed, my sense is that there’s no longer a distinct “youth climate movement” the way there was in 2009. It’s become several movements—for fossil fuel divestment, opposition to pipelines and solidarity with indigenous nations. Another way of looking at it is youth climate activists are just one part of a much larger coalition of progressive movements that simply didn’t exist on this scale 10 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For almost exactly a decade, I identified as a youth climate activist. After graduating from Pacific University in 2009 I volunteered for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, focusing on involving college students in the effort to close Oregon’s only coal-fired power plant. In 2011 I moved to Missoula, Montana and spent four years rallying students and others to oppose coal export and mining projects. These last few years I’ve made a transition to supporting the growth and leadership of a new generation of young activists working on climate change or other issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like all large movements, youth climate activism has had its successes and setbacks, its enormously inspiring moments and others when it failed to live up to its ideals. What follows are some reflections on lessons from the movement, necessarily limited by my own experience and position as a white male organizer from a middle-class background. Despite this bias, I hope these reflections may be of use to people involved in today’s fast-growing youth-led movements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>1. Trust in students’ abilities.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the best things the youth climate movement did early was stop telling young people they were apathetic—as media figures <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/opinion/10friedman.html" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration-line: none;">like Thomas Friedman</a> were doing—and start saying they were powerful and inspiring. Events like Power Shift promoted positive messages about the abilities of youth. This inspired many young people, including me, to think we could make a difference and try to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still, some national groups have not fully realized this lesson, limiting their work with youth to voter turnout drives, trainings and large rallies. With some exceptions, large national groups have been more reluctant to trust students’ ability and willingness to engage in tactics like civil disobedience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I first got arrested at a protest when I was 23, at a <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/montana-coal-protesters-argue-necessity-defense/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration-line: none;">sit-in I helped coordinate</a> in the Montana State Capitol. I had studied the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience and concluded that this was a step I was ready to take. I was less sure my slightly younger peers, who possibly lacked this background, would be willing to do the same. Yet, over the next few years, I was pleasantly surprised to see students who’d only recently gotten involved in activism step forward and risk arrest <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/stop-coal-train-tracks/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration-line: none;">blocking the paths of coal trains</a> and sitting in at lawmakers’ offices.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We tend to underestimate the ability of young people to intuitively grasp the significance of nonviolent direct action as a strategy. Of course, the opportunity to engage in this kind of activism must be presented in a way that feels accessible and meaningful—but when this is done, youth will step up. Have faith in their abilities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>2. Follow-up is hugely important.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Building a sustained movement means following up with those who participate to ensure they stay involved. A campaign that failed to do this well was Power Vote in 2008, a national multi-organization effort focused on getting students to pledge to vote ahead of the election. I was the campus lead for Power Vote at Pacific University and only later realized the flaws in how the national campaign was structured. We gathered hundreds of pledge cards with students’ contact information—but this valuable data wasn’t collated in a timely manner that would have allowed it to be used for following-up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Follow-up is important in all campaigns, not just those with students. But it can be especially important for young people who are mostly new to political engagement. Following up and reminding students to fill out their ballots, show up to the next rally, and contact their elected officials helps build habits that will likely keep for years—but it requires mechanisms to ensure their data is preserved and used.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>3. Teach transferrable skills.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The best activism serves two purposes: It accomplishes a campaign objective while helping participants master skills they can put to use in other contexts. This is especially important with young people, who often have little formal activist training but can take what they learn and apply it again and again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many activist skills—setting up meetings with public officials, testifying at hearings, holding nonviolence trainings—aren’t actually that complicated but can seem vastly mysterious to someone who has never done them before. Once armed with the right knowledge, young people become empowered to transfer skills to new campaigns and situations. Accomplishing this means structuring movements in such a way that youth have leadership roles and get hands-on experience building campaigns from the ground up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>4. Be specific about movement goals.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I got involved in climate activism, we talked a lot about “comprehensive climate legislation” and “creating green jobs.” This sounded great, but it was sometimes unclear exactly what these words meant. This came back to bite the movement in 2009-2010, during the fight over national climate legislation that eventually went down in flames.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem with vague terms like “comprehensive legislation” is they mean many things to many people. As it turned out, to lawmakers—like then-Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Lindsay Graham—they meant a cap-and-trade plan riddled with loopholes and giveaways to polluters. This truly terrible piece of legislation split the climate movement—including youth activists—between those who saw it as a small step forward, and those who believed it was worse than nothing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the other hand, the campaigns that have done most to strengthen the climate movement have very specific goals tied to clearly defined strategies. These include efforts to stop oil pipelines, close coal plants and divest universities from fossil fuels. These campaigns have accomplished concrete wins while building coalitions that leave the movement stronger—whereas the push for national legislation left climate groups fragmented and demoralized. Fossil fuel divestment is a particularly good example of a student-focused campaign with an easily understood goal and clear framework for building power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>5. Partner with frontline communities.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only is this the right thing to do, but it’s strategic, fun and empowering. Some of the most inspiring moments I can think of from youth climate campaigns involved students interacting with people on the frontlines of extraction and polluting industries. I’ve seen student activists collaborate with farmers impacted by natural gas pipelines, residents of working-class rail line neighborhoods affected by coal trains and indigenous groups fighting oil infrastructure. In each case, the partnerships that developed were (I believe) mutually rewarding for both groups.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That said, building effective, lasting partnerships with frontline communities takes work. It’s not just about saying the words “people of color” and “climate justice” in every press release. This kind of work requires commitment to lasting relationships built on good faith and the belief in a shared stake in a better future. It requires learning form the people most affected by pollution so as to challenge fossil fuel industries effectively.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>6. Partner with older activists.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another of the most empowering experiences youth activists can have is the opportunity to work with no-longer-quite-so-young individuals who have a whole different set of life experiences. For students, it can be heartening to see that their generation isn’t the only one concerned about the status quo. Similarly, non-youth activists tend to find it encouraging to see young people rising to build a movement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This doesn’t mean student and older activist groups should merge. There’s real value in youth-specific organizations that let young people bond and learn from their peers in a familiar setting. Different activist generations also tend to have different organizational cultures, which don’t always mesh well in the meeting room. However, none of this prevents youth and non-youth from collaborating on campaigns, attending each other’s events and building strong alliances. I’ve seen college freshmen and retirees sit down for campaign conversations that were eye-opening for both parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>7. Have hard conversations about equity and inclusion.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the movement’s early days, national youth climate organizations have used a lot of language about racial and economic justice. This positive language hasn’t always been supported by the kind of on-the-ground organizing needed to truly combat environmental injustice and oppressive hierarchies embedded in the movement itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mainstream climate movement and environmentalism generally continue to be overwhelmingly white middle-class affairs. But today’s students seem more ready than ever to have tough conversations about dismantling racism and deconstructing environmentalism’s Euro-centric dominant narratives. As a white teenager, I wasn’t asking the kinds of questions that I should have been about these subjects—and I’m continually impressed by how much more aware today’s students, including white students, tend to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This isn’t to say white students don’t have a lot of hard work to do to address the implications of their privilege—and some will do it clumsily, especially at first. However, while the hard work remains to be done, I see a willingness to begin it that seems more widespread than it was 10 years ago. To do this work effectively, students need support from mentors and organizations that are committed to equity and inclusion as much more than catchphrases or boxes to be checked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>8. Youth need mentors, not sages.</strong> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a young person, there’s nothing less empowering than listening to an older person tell you how real activism was done in the good old ‘60s (or the ‘90s, ‘00s, etc.). Young people don’t need sages telling them what to do. What they can use are mentors—people who’ve left their 20s behind and have experience and knowledge they’re willing to share, but do so humbly and with the realization that youth also have their own knowledge and skills to share.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a student, I was never particularly motivated by the argument that because the generation before mine screwed up, it was my generation’s job to fix things. I wanted to know, since that older generation was still around, why they couldn’t pitch in and help. I’ve also known many, many older activists who have tried to help in just this way, and taught me things I never could have learned by myself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The “youth climate movement” of today looks very different from the one of 2007. To become more effective it has both narrowed and broadened its focus. The narrowing is a result of it zeroing in on winnable campaigns like divestment and stopping pipelines, while the broadening is due to a growing focus on building bridges with other movements. Done effectively, both of these approaches may succeed in generating the kinds of incremental wins that could cascade into a national wave of climate and progressive victories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m deeply humbled by campaigns like the March for Our Lives, which succeeded in building a truly massive youth-led movement in a way climate activists of my generation never quite managed to do. Yet, when 5,000 students came together for the first Power Shift in 2007, few movements were prioritizing youth leadership the way climate organizers were. The story of youth activism these last 10-plus years has been one of gradually building power, learning hard lessons and setting examples of what dedicated organizing looks like. The climate movement made a significant contribution to this process. Without the work of climate and other youth activists over the last decade, some of the larger mass movements of today might not have come into being.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What will youth climate activism, and young people’s organizing more generally, look like over the next 10 years? I don’t know, but I look forward to finding out.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-10540615845638190862018-06-14T11:30:00.000+09:302018-06-14T11:30:40.489+09:30The Three Most Dangerous Narratives in Conservation<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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by <span class="author vcard" style="border: 0px; color: #666666; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="url fn n" href="https://thinkinglikeahuman.com/author/csandbrook/" rel="author" style="border: 0px; color: #1982d1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View all posts by csandbrook">csandbrook</a>, Thinking Like a Human: <a href="https://thinkinglikeahuman.com/2018/06/12/the-three-most-dangerous-narratives-in-conservation/">https://thinkinglikeahuman.com/2018/06/12/the-three-most-dangerous-narratives-in-conservation/</a></span></div>
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Emery Roe, an American policy scholar, first developed the idea that ‘narratives’ – stories about the world and how it works – are used in policy making processes to cut through complexity and justify a particular course of action. We are a storytelling species, and people find it easy to understand and get behind a compelling story with strong internal logic and a beginning, middle and end. Once a narrative has taken hold they can be very difficult to shake off, at least until an even more compelling ‘counter-narrative’ arrives on the scene. A classic example from resource governance is the ‘resources will be over-exploited unless they are in private ownership’ narrative, based on Garrett Hardin’s 1968 Tragedy of the Common’s article. It took decades of careful scholarship, and ultimately a nobel prize for Elinor Ostrom, to demonstrate that this narrative was compelling, influential, and wrong.</div>
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There are numerous narratives circulating within the conservation sector. Some are inspiring, some are innovative, some are misleading. However, there are some that are, in my view, potentially dangerous. These narratives sound convincing – that’s why they have become established – and they are significantly shaping conservation research and practice in the world today. They are not entirely false, but their ‘truth’ has become accepted as orthodoxy to the extent that they slip by almost unnoticed, without proper scrutiny. This leads whole areas of conservation activity down particular paths that I fear will not lead to a desirable destination.</div>
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The first dangerous narrative holds that “decision makers only care about money”. This belief underpins the tremendous lengths that (most of) the conservation sector has gone to over the last few decades to repackage and represent the value of nature in monetary terms. Alternative plausible arguments about the value of nature are set aside because they are thought to have no currency with those whose opinions matter (note the double-meanings of value and currency in this sentence and you can see how embedded monetary language is in English!). Some have argued that initial efforts to estimate the economic value of nature’s contribution to humans, such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/387253a0" style="border: 0px; color: #1982d1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Costanza et al’s 1997 paper</a> in Nature, were intended only as a metaphor to grab the attention of money-obsessed decision makers. However, over time the metaphor has taken over the world. It has metamorphosed into a whole suite of instruments that seek to bring this notional value into being in the real economy – payments for ecosystem services, carbon taxes, biodiversity offset markets, and all the rest.</div>
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Of course these market-based approaches can have a positive impact, in some places and some of the time. However, there is plenty of evidence that decision makers, at all scales, are motivated by lots of different things. The monetary value of nature is one, especially in calculating costs and benefits of development. But it is not always the most important. Decision makers, like other people, can be motivated by beauty, rarity, risk, sentiment, ethics or principles. Interestingly, I have heard a number of talks by senior conservation leaders over the last few years who have spoken of the power of taking politicians or captains of industry out to the field to learn about conservation (and sometimes poverty) issues. These speakers have emphasised the power of personal and emotional connection that comes from such visits, and the importance these leaders place on things like securing the future of the world their own children will inherit. Assuming that decisions always boil down to money is over simplistic and potentially counter-productive, particularly given the risks of monetary arguments for conservation actively <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914003668" style="border: 0px; color: #1982d1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">crowding out</a> alternative perspectives.</div>
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The second dangerous narrative holds that “X bad thing would have happened anyway, so anything to minimise the damage is a win for conservation.” This line of argument is particularly prevalent in the field of offsetting – both for biodiversity and carbon. From this perspective, losses of biodiversity caused by development, or carbon emissions caused by human activity, are a fact of life that cannot be altered. Once this is established it becomes logical to seek to minimise the harm of these activities, rather than to reverse them completely. In their brilliant paper on how offsetting reframes conservation, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/biodiversity-offsetting-and-conservation-reframing-nature-to-save-it/77EE3168AF312039E907BC29E90345D7/core-reader" style="border: 0px; color: #1982d1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Elia Apostolopoulou and Bill Adams</a> explain how by deploying this argument “offsetting ties conservation to land development and economic growth”, recasting conservation as an ally of development rather than its opponent. This shift seems subtle at first glance, but actually “implies acceptance of the inevitability of biodiversity loss”. As a result, the narrative normalizes biodiversity loss and supports strategies that adapt to this loss, instead of opposing it. There may be a strong case to say that this is the best we can do, but anyone promoting the “it would have happened anyway” narrative needs to understand where it leads.</div>
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Finally, the third narrative holds that “we can’t possibly change X, so we’ll have to change Y”. This narrative is a close relative of “it would have happened anyway”, in that it also encourages us to accept profoundly undesirable human activities as inevitable and off limits for intervention. A good example of how this narrative is deployed comes from thinking about human diets and sustainable farming. In various articles (e.g. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971732123X" style="border: 0px; color: #1982d1; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">this one</a>), we are asked to accept as a given that ongoing increases in things like human meat consumption are fixed and certain. From that starting point, a chain of logic is presented to arrive at the conclusion that the only way to provide this meat without losing biodiversity is through the radical reshaping of global landuse and the agricultural system to create giant feedlots that can intensively produce meat on limited land while sparing more for agriculture. This logic may be sound given the assumptions (however unpleasant the consequences), but with the radical change that such articles call for, wouldn’t it make sense to at least take a look at those assumptions once again? Yes, tackling rising meat consumption will be difficult, but would it really be any more difficult than reorganising the entire global food and land allocation systems so that enough meat can be produced without losing biodiversity? I can’t help imagining a parallel (and equally plausible) study that starts with the opposite set of assumptions – i.e. ‘we can’t change global land use so we’ll have to change meat consumption’. It’s all a question of which hypothetical levers are to be pulled by the researcher, and which are considered to be locked in place. I would prefer to see all such levers placed into the “maybe we should think about pulling this?” category rather than accepted as fixed, as well as a lot more clarity from researchers about how they choose which policies are up for grabs (choices by which they wield considerable power).</div>
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So there you have it – my three personal conservation narrative bugbears. There may well be even worse narratives out there (please share yours below the line!), but these are the ones that I hear time and again and that most frustrate me. Each forecloses alternative ways of thinking, and in a sense each limits conservation’s potential to bring about truly transformational change. If we can’t see beyond money, and we can’t imagine alternatives to what seems fixed in place, how will conservation ever make more than a trivial difference for, and to, life on Earth?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-85809834488073321642018-06-05T20:34:00.000+09:302018-06-05T20:34:25.627+09:30Ecosocialism and the Recovery of Marx’s Ecological Legacy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Otp3qSbw9D50XjVkOlIQijOWjDobhPdy1jcR3S3O_Q_copum4c-UvSj4aJjS_sZ94iHaEmzzlzLXzyde6153_MwdGllmkcyBc7MUoboEx3N8RPM6M24O4OIRhJd2xtY_ne7zUJXu7bTy/s1600/Das-Kapital.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="281" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Otp3qSbw9D50XjVkOlIQijOWjDobhPdy1jcR3S3O_Q_copum4c-UvSj4aJjS_sZ94iHaEmzzlzLXzyde6153_MwdGllmkcyBc7MUoboEx3N8RPM6M24O4OIRhJd2xtY_ne7zUJXu7bTy/s320/Das-Kapital.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">An ecology that truly seeks to confront today’s challenges requires Marx’s remarkable analysis of the destructive logic inherent in the unlimited accumulation of capital.</strong></em></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Michael Löwy was a co-author of both <a href="http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=146" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">An Ecosocialist Manifesto</a> (2001) and <a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2008/12/16/belem-ecosocialist-declaration-a-call-for-signatures/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration</a> (2009). His most recent book in English is <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/696-ecosocialism" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe</a> (Haymarket Books, 2015). </em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This article, which appears in <a href="https://solidarity-us.org/atc/current/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">the May-June 2018 issue of Against the Current</a>, is published here with his permission.</em></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by Michael Löwy, Climate and Capitalism: <a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/05/17/marxs-ecology-legacy/">http://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/05/17/marxs-ecology-legacy/</a></strong></div>
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While mainstream ecological theory has been dismissive of Karl Marx, serious research in recent decades has recovered some of his very important insights on ecological issues. The pioneers have been James O’Connor and the journal <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capitalism, Nature and Socialism</em> — a tradition continued by Joel Kovel — but the most systematic and thorough investigations on Marx’s ecological views are those of John Bellamy Foster and his friends from <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Monthly Review</em>.</div>
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Many ecologists accuse Marx of “productivism.” Is this accusation justified? No, insofar as nobody denounced as much as Marx the capitalist logic of production for production: the accumulation of capital, wealth and commodities as an aim in itself.</div>
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The fundamental idea of a socialist economy — contrary to its miserable bureaucratic caricatures — is one of producing use-values, goods which are necessary for the satisfaction of human needs. Moreover, the main importance of technical progress for Marx was not the infinite growth of goods (“having”) but the reduction of the labour journey and the increase of free time (“being”).</div>
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The opposition between “having” and “being” is often discussed in the Manuscripts of 1844. In <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital</em>, vol. III, Marx emphasizes free time as the foundation of the socialist “Kingdom of Freedom” (Marx 1968, III, 828)</div>
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As Paul Burkett has perceptively shown, Marx’s emphasis on communist self-development, on free time for artistic, erotic or intellectual activities — in contrast to the capitalist obsession with the consumption of more and more material goods — leads to a decisive reduction of the pressure of production on the natural environment. (Burkett 2009, 329)</div>
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However, it is true that one can find in Marx — and even more in the dominant Marxist currents that followed — a rather uncritical stance toward the productive forces created by capital, and a tendency to see in the “development of productive forces” the main factor of human progress.</div>
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The supposedly canonical text in this respect is the famous <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy</em> (1859), one of Marx’s writings most loaded with a certain evolutionism, a belief in inevitable historical progress, and an unproblematic view of the existing productive forces:</div>
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“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces enter in contradiction with the existing relations of production …. From being forms of development of the productive forces, these relations become fetters [<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fesseln</em>]. Then opens an epoch of social revolution. … A social formation never disappears before all productive forces for which it is broad enough are developed ….” (Marx 1964, 9)</div>
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In this well-known passage, productive forces created by capital appear as if neutral, and revolution has only the task of suppressing the relations of production which have become “fetters,” “shackles,” for a larger (unlimited?) development of the productive forces.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Metabolic Rift</strong></div>
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In several other writings, however, and in particular those concerning agriculture in the three volumes of <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital</em>, one can perceive key elements for a truly ecological approach, through a radical criticism of the disastrous results of capitalist productivism.</div>
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As John Bellamy Foster has shown with great acumen, we can find in Marx’s writings a theory of the metabolic rift between human societies and nature, as a consequence of the destructive logic of capital (Foster 2001, 155-167). The expression <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Riss des Stoffwechsels</em>, metabolic rift — a break in the material exchanges between humanity and the environment — appears for instance in chapter 47, “Genesis of the Capitalist Ground Rent” in <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital,</em> Volume III:</div>
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“Large landed property reduces the agricultural population to an ever-increasing minimum and confronts it with an ever-growing industrial population crammed together in large towns; in this way it produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.” (Marx 1981, 949)</div>
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The issue of the metabolic rift can be found also in another well-known passage of <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital</em>, Volume 1, the conclusion of the chapter on great industry and agriculture. This is one of the most important writings of Marx, because it has a dialectical vision of the contradictions of “progress,” and of its destructive consequences, under capitalist rule, for the natural environment:</div>
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“Capitalist production … disturbs the metabolic interaction [<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Stoffwechsel</em>] between man and the earth, i.e. prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural conditions for the lasting fertility of the soil. … All progress in capitalist agriculture is progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing fertility of the soil for a given time is progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of fertility. The more a country, the United States of North America, for instance, develops itself on the basis of great industry, the more this process of destruction takes place quickly. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.” (Marx 1970, 637-638)</div>
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Several elements are significant in this important passage. First of all is the idea that progress can be destructive, a “progress” in the degradation and deterioration of the natural environment. The example chosen by Marx is limited — the loss of fertility by the soil — but leads him to raise the larger issue of the attacks on nature, on the “eternal natural conditions,” by capitalist production.</div>
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Secondly, the exploitation and debasement of the workers and of nature are presented from a similar viewpoint, as results of the same predatory logic, the logic of capitalist great industry and industrial agriculture. This topic often appears in Capital, for instance, in some sections of the chapter on the labor journey:</div>
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“The limitation of industrial labour was dictated by the same necessity which led to the spreading of guano over England’s fields. The same predatory greed [<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Raubgier</em>] which on one side exhausts the soil, on the other attacks the roots of the nation’s vital force … In its blind and boundless avidity, in its werewolf hunger [<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Werwolfs-Heisshunger</em>] for surplus labour, capital overrides not only the moral but also the physiological limits of the labour journey .… It achieves its aim by reducing the life of the labourer, as a greedy landowner obtains greater rentability by exhausting the fertility of the soil.” (Marx 1968, I, 280-281)</div>
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This direct association between the brutal capitalist exploitation of the proletariat, and of the earth, lays the theoretical ground for a strategy articulating class struggle and ecological struggle, in a common fight against the domination of capital.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Preservation of Nature</strong></div>
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Marx considered the preservation of natural conditions as an essential task of socialism. In Volume III of <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital</em>, he opposes to the capitalist logic in agriculture, based on brutal exploitation and exhaustion of the soil, a different logic, a socialist one grounded on “the conscious and rational treatment of the land as permanent communal property” — a treatment that considers the soil not as the source for short-sighted profit, but as “the inalienable condition for the existence and reproduction of the chain of human generations.”</div>
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A few pages above, we find a very significant statement, which again directly associates the overcoming of private property with the preservation of nature:</div>
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“From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth appears just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">boni patres familias</em> [good heads of the household].” (Marx 1970, III, 911, 948-49).</div>
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In conclusion: 21st-century ecosocialists cannot satisfy themselves only with the 19th century Marxian ecological heritage, and need a critical distance towards some of its limitations. Yet on the other side an ecology able to confront the contemporary challenges cannot exist without the Marxist critique of political economy, and its remarkable analysis of the destructive logic inherent in the unlimited accumulation of capital.</div>
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An ecology that ignores or despises Marx, his theory of value or his critique of commodity fetishism and reification, is doomed to become merely a “correction” of the “excesses” of capitalist productivism. Today’s ecosocialists can build on the more advanced and coherent arguments of Marx and Engels, in order to</div>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">achieve a real materialist understanding of the perverse dynamics of the system;</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">develop a radical critique of the capitalist destruction of the environment; and,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">project the perspective of a socialist society respecting the “inalienable conditions” of life on Earth.</li>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">References</strong></div>
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Burkett, Paul, 2009. <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ecological Economics. Toward a Red and Green Political Economy</em>, Chicago, Haymarket Books.</div>
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Foster, John Bellamy, 2001. <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Marx’s Ecology. Materialism and Nature</em>, New York, Monthly Review Press.</div>
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Kovel, Joel, 2007.<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The Enemy of Nature</em>, New York, Zed Books.</div>
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Marx, Karl, 1964. “Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie,” Vorwort, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Marx Engels Werke </em>(MEW), Volume 13, Berlin, Dietz Verlag.</div>
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Marx, Karl, 1968. Das Kapital, Volume I, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MEW</em> Volume 23.</div>
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Marx, Karl, 1968. Das Kapital, Volume III, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">MEW</em> Volume 25.</div>
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Marx, Karl, 1970. <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital, Volume I</em>, New York, Vintage.</div>
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Marx, Karl, 1981. <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16.94px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Capital, Volume III</em>, New York, Vintage.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-80674263104002529022018-05-21T22:46:00.000+09:302018-05-21T22:46:26.420+09:303 Examples of Local and Shared Renewable Energy Systems<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIPoKTjm_Gi-0CBh7aXIE8Lvwiesqdg6rScl9-A57kojaMb9iGTmzE9YrJthPO60zg4SMWtz1GPxFcbexkDTaI_ASnPvbo-vWJU-zY1b2fzrcVd9SdRg-1OI_JggR4u2D8qjDmEYSCLGP/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="284" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIPoKTjm_Gi-0CBh7aXIE8Lvwiesqdg6rScl9-A57kojaMb9iGTmzE9YrJthPO60zg4SMWtz1GPxFcbexkDTaI_ASnPvbo-vWJU-zY1b2fzrcVd9SdRg-1OI_JggR4u2D8qjDmEYSCLGP/s320/images.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: marketnewsaccess.com</td></tr>
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by <a href="https://www.resilience.org/resilience-author/shareable-staff/">Shareable Staff</a>, originally published by <a href="https://www.shareable.net/blog/3-examples-of-locally-based-shared-renewable-energy-infrastructures">Shareable</a>, Resilience: <a href="https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-15/3-examples-of-local-and-shared-renewable-energy-systems/">https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-15/3-examples-of-local-and-shared-renewable-energy-systems/</a><br />
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The energy infrastructure that we inherited from the 20th century is one dominated by fossil fuels and uranium, mined in relatively few localities in the world. The distribution and refining of these fuels is tightly held by a few large corporations. Electricity generation typically occurs in plants that hold local or regional monopolies, with vast profit potential. While gasoline is burned in millions of vehicles, the distribution system remains within the control of a few corporations, which often have regional or national oligopoly or monopoly control. The environmental impacts of the energy industry are staggering. It is high time for change.</div>
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On the positive side, the need for change to a 21st century energy system based on renewable sources of energy is widely recognized, the necessary technologies exist (and are often cheaper than conventional forms of energy provision), and considerable progress has been made. We can build locally-based renewable energy infrastructures. Renewable energy from the sun, wind, water, organic waste, and geothermal heat can be found everywhere on the planet. Hence, every city and town can make use of available renewable energy sources that offer economic opportunity and enhance resilience in the face of global economic crises and environmental change. On a regional level, localities can exchange energy in order to even out seasonal or daily imbalances in supply and demand.</div>
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A locally based vision of renewable energy generation could eliminate global or national-level domination of the energy infrastructure by a few large players, and thus the concentration of profits in the hands of a very few. It could also reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to very low levels, comparable to the emissions before the industrial revolution. But the local orientation alone would not ensure that the benefits would be shared among all sectors of the local population, and therefore it would not guarantee widespread and active support. This is where sharing solutions come in. Shared energy infrastructure means that people together own and operate both the distributed energy generation facilities and the infrastructure to deliver that energy from where it is generated to where it is used.</div>
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In a sharing vision of a local renewable energy system, many households will generate their own renewable energy (as in solar photovoltaic or solar thermal systems on their rooftops), but many more, for whom this is not an option, will share in the ownership and operation of off-site renewable energy generation infrastructure such as wind turbines. The distribution systems by which energy is delivered to households will belong to cooperatives, municipalities, or trusts that are accountable to their customers and therefore do not take advantage of the potential of supply monopolies to generate economic rents (unearned income; extraordinary profits). The energy infrastructure is built by companies controlled by their employees, ensuring equitable sharing of the economic benefits. The construction and maintenance of this entire infrastructure is financed in such a way that it benefits the producers and consumers (and often prosumers — people who both produce and consume what they produce), rather than simply providing growth opportunities for the finance “industry.” Consumers use their buying power to ensure that they obtain renewable energy that is produced under fair conditions.</div>
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All the elements of this locally-based, sharing vision of a renewable energy infrastructure already exist. Some have even been brought to considerable scale, as for example in Denmark, where a large proportion of the wind energy generation is accomplished by local wind cooperatives. The challenge is to bring all these elements together into mutually supportive networks, and to establish such networks essentially everywhere.</div>
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In many countries, much of the grid is owned by municipal authorities, which is an excellent solution as long as democratic accountability of these authorities is ensured. Unfortunately, there has been a trend in recent years to privatize electric distribution grids, on the basis of the argument that private control is automatically more “efficient.” However, this argument is only valid if there is true market competition, which is not the case in most energy distribution systems.</div>
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In this context, the best way to ensure that a business serves its customers is for the customers to take over the business. There are different models to do this: in rural areas — as in much of the U.S. — rural electric cooperatives have long played a large role in running the local grids. In large urban areas, however, this model has not been as successful. At the urban scale, municipal ownership or trusts are more prevalent.</div>
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Finally, it is important that the workers installing all this equipment get a good deal – and this works best if they themselves own their own companies and make the important decisions. The challenge now is to bring all these elements together and help them to grow, in order to build an energy infrastructure that allows all of us to live well, while ensuring good living conditions for all the other species on this planet. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">—Wolfgang Hoeschele</em></div>
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<a href="http://www.sharingcities.net/" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank"><img alt=" Activating the Urban Commons" height="267" src="https://www.shareable.net/sites/default/files/Embeddable%20Graphic%20FINAL-01_4.png" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="800" /></a></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: initial; font-weight: 700;">1. SolarShare bond: Renewable energy investment cooperative for local commercial scale projects</span></div>
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Governments around the world still subsidize polluting, carbon-based energy projects, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/science/on-tether-to-fossil-fuels-nations-speak-with-money.html" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. In addition to this, the <a href="http://www.ft.com/content/fb264f96-5088-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">Financial Times</a> has reported how these incentives are not yet offered to renewable energy systems at nearly the same scale. In response, entrepreneurs are creating alternative models to build distributed grids that derive power from clean energy sources and financial support directly from their local community members.</div>
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In Canada, residents of Ontario can invest in local solar power projects by buying <a href="http://www.solarbonds.ca/" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">SolarShare</a> bonds. SolarShare is a renewable energy cooperative that enables anyone living in Ontario to invest in solar power projects in the area and become a voting member of the co-op. The minimum buy-in for SolarShare bonds is $1,000 Canadian dollars (around $740) for a 5-year term at 5 percent fixed interest, and CA$10,000 (just over $7,400) for a 15-year term at 6 percent fixed interest. Investors who purchase 5-year bonds receive an annual return through semiannual interest payments until the term of their investment ends, at which point they receive their entire principal investment. The 15-year bonds are self-amortizing, so each semiannual payment is made up of both principal and interest. The investor-members collectively vote in their board members, and can serve on one of the co-op’s many committees. SolarShare has completed 39 solar installation projects and is on track to build eight more through 2017. The cooperative will own solar assets worth more than CA$55 million (over $40 million) by fall 2017. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">—Emily Skeehan</em></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: initial; font-weight: 700;">2. Namasté solar:</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: initial; font-weight: 700;">Solar worker cooperative shares economic benefits of the renewable energy transition with workers</span></div>
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The construction of sustainable infrastructure for renewable-energy projects is a source of immense economic opportunity. The workers who install these new systems, however, tend to gain relatively little from the creation of this wealth. Worker cooperatives are one way to ensure that the benefits of the renewable energy transition are shared more equally. <a href="http://www.namastesolar.com/" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">Namasté Solar</a>, based out of Colorado, began as an employee-owned benefit company when it was founded in 2005, but formally shifted to a cooperative structure in 2011. To become a worker-owner of the cooperative, candidates work with Namasté Solar for a year to determine whether they are the right match. If they are, employees buy a share in the cooperative and earn voting rights in their decision-making process. When business is going well, extra earnings are divided among the worker-owners. Namasté Solar has over 100 worker-owners across four offices in Colorado, California, and New York. The co-op has begun undertaking many big solar installations in Colorado, including a convention center, a hospital, and a museum. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">—Wolfgang Hoeschele</em></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: initial; font-weight: 700;">3. Auckland Energy Consumer Trust: Exercising public oversight and profit sharing among electricity consumers</span></div>
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Public utilities require proper public oversight to ensure that the entities operating them do not exploit their monopoly positions to drive up costs for the communities they serve. In addition to regulatory oversight, another way to instigate public accountability is the creation of trusts, which put control over the utility in the hands of the people. In 1993, New Zealand established the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust (AECT) to own and oversee the companies that operate the electricity distribution networks. AECT was one of 30 energy trusts that the New Zealand government established following national reforms to its electricity system.</div>
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In 2016, it was renamed to <a href="http://www.entrustnz.co.nz/" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">Entrust</a>. Entrust owns a majority share of Vector, the largest electricity distribution company in New Zealand. Entrust equally distributes profit dividends from Vector to all of its beneficiaries, over 320,000 households and businesses across the country. The beneficiaries, who are all customers of Vector, vote trustees into office. Two of Entrust’s trustees serve on Vector’s board of directors to monitor the company’s performance. This system ensures that the monopoly energy provider serves the consumer’s interests. If excessive bills were charged, the profits would ultimately be returned to the consumers. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">—Wolfgang Hoeschele</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Header photo by</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/V4ZYJZJ3W4M?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">Zbynek Burival</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/solar-farm?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">Unsplash</a></em></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-63249562248450884532018-05-01T12:57:00.002+09:302018-05-01T12:57:41.702+09:30Minnesota Court Says Activists can Use Climate Change as a Defence in Trial<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #141414; font-family: Montserrat, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.875; margin-bottom: 30px;">
by <a href="http://www.resilience.org/resilience-author/natasha-gelling/">Natasha Geiling</a>, originally published by <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/minnesota-climate-activists-necessity-defense-appeal-65d5399619cb/">Think Progress</a>, Resilience: <a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-04-25/minnesota-court-says-activists-can-use-climate-change-as-a-defense-in-trial/">http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-04-25/minnesota-court-says-activists-can-use-climate-change-as-a-defense-in-trial/</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFm8S6-WzcOHCSyTmN3anZiTmVCmfl46ZsfCAX7PAFAiJDGryBiMajVBjTLfB3VEc3PkpPNdBlx31yED_VyOD_wiuxLZOtvSQXyqcR-z3rIM_49PSZbLtjt0IkTl5MncJBTSYG1PZ8FHyI/s1600/gettyimages-121727367.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFm8S6-WzcOHCSyTmN3anZiTmVCmfl46ZsfCAX7PAFAiJDGryBiMajVBjTLfB3VEc3PkpPNdBlx31yED_VyOD_wiuxLZOtvSQXyqcR-z3rIM_49PSZbLtjt0IkTl5MncJBTSYG1PZ8FHyI/s640/gettyimages-121727367.jpg" width="600" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">U.S. PARK POLICE OFFICERS ARREST A GROUP OF ABOUT 40 DEMONSTRATORS, PROTESTING A TAR SANDS PIPELINE, IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE ON AUGUST 22, 2011 (CREDIT: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)</td></tr>
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Does climate change pose such an imminent threat to the planet that it’s okay to break the law in order to stop it?</div>
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Four climate activists currently awaiting trial in Minnesota for shutting off a tar sands pipeline think so — and on Monday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed that they should be allowed to make that argument before a jury when their case goes to trial.</div>
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“This is a big win for anyone who cares about climate change,” Kelsey Skaggs, a co-founder of Climate Defense Project and a member of the defendants’ legal team, said in a press statement. “The climate necessity defense is an important tool for pushing back against efforts by the federal government and industry to silence opposition to the reckless development of fossil fuels.”</div>
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The climate activists who shut down the pipeline in Minnesota are part of a small group of protesters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/magazine/afraid-climate-change-prison-valve-turners-global-warming.html" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">known as the Valve Turners</a>, who each shut off a different pipeline across four states in a concerted protest on October 11, 2016. The protesters involved were arrested and charged with criminal charges ranging from trespass to criminal mischief, and each has tried to use a climate necessity defense in court to argue that their actions were necessary to head off a more immediate threat (in this case, climate change).</div>
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In every state but Minnesota, judges have not allowed juries to acquit the Valve Turner defendants on the basis of necessity. That has lead to a mix of outcomes, from a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/magazine/afraid-climate-change-prison-valve-turners-global-warming.html" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">conviction with jail time</a> in North Dakota for one protester to a conviction with community service in Washington.</div>
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Last October, however, a Minnesota judge ruled that the activists could present a necessity defense — something that Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102017/climate-change-activists-arrest-pipeline-shutdown-necessity-defense" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">described to Inside Climate News </a>as “extremely unusual.”</div>
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The state of Minnesota quickly appealed that decision, arguing that allowing defendants to present evidence about climate change would have a “critical impact” on the case and severely undermine the prosecution’s odds at achieving a conviction.</div>
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The Minnesota appellate court, however, disagreed, ruling on Monday that the defendants could mount a necessity defense. The Minnesota court’s decision, however, was not unanimous, with Judge Francis Connolly writing in his dissent that “this case is about whether respondents have committed the crimes of damage to property and trespass. It is not about global warming.”</div>
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Despite Connolly’s dissent, the Minnesota court’s ruling means that the climate activists will be allowed to call experts to testify about climate science and the consequences that inaction could pose for the world — facts that the activists argue will help strengthen their argument that shutting down the pipeline was necessary to avert the worst impacts of global warming.</div>
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As climate action remains stalled at the federal level, climate activists are increasingly turning to protest and civil disobedience to disrupt fossil fuel infrastructure projects around the country. With those acts of civil disobedience on the rise, more defendants are turning to the climate necessity defense — and some are even seeing the technique yield successful results.</div>
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Earlier this year, for instance, a judge in Massachusetts found 13 pipeline protesters that were charged with trespass for disrupting pipeline construction in Boston <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/roxbury-pipeline-protest-necessity-defense-36de64c83ffd/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">not responsible</a> on the basis of necessity — in other words, the judge ruled that the illegal actions taken by the protesters had been legally necessary due to climate change.</div>
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But the West Roxbury, Boston defendants only presented their necessity defense to a judge; the Minnesota trial will be the first time that climate activists are able to present a climate necessity defense to a jury. Arguing a case in front a jury often helps attract more attention, and can help move public opinion, more than simply arguing a case before a judge.</div>
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At the same time as climate activists are attempting to use necessity defenses to justify acts of civil disobedience, Republican lawmakers — supported by the fossil fuel industry — are seeking to impose harsher penalties for environmental protest in several states.</div>
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In Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota — all states with controversial pipeline projects currently under consideration — <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/pipeline-protest-criminal-conspiracy-bd67475b7504/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bc5; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.15s ease;" target="_blank">lawmakers have recently introduced bills </a>that would allow prosecutors to charge individuals for “conspiracy” if they are involved in the planning of a protest that includes a civil disobedience component like trespass, even if they ultimately don’t participate in the protest itself.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Teaser photo credit: By Laura Borealis, Tar Sands Blockade – https://www.flickr.com/photos/tarsandsblockade/8033975309/in/photostream, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63458081</em></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-64300555318379777022018-03-26T12:02:00.000+10:302018-03-26T12:02:11.567+10:30The Water is Coming, Cities are Sinking: When are We Going to Stop the Fossil Fuel Party?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_mp_AZZ4ihNYMob9r-fAD3hqok5GVnKnbW8BLKQpmqRN8-CPRbckurdYUGCdbnnlaBaY55dGir6s-DxlgwcTpNPsC2pcTtWnWxQ3NV83aOwS-M_ZmPfOAGz4OpIlA1i5Z7Ud3cKWBUn3E/s1600/5ab39a001e0000fb077af670.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_mp_AZZ4ihNYMob9r-fAD3hqok5GVnKnbW8BLKQpmqRN8-CPRbckurdYUGCdbnnlaBaY55dGir6s-DxlgwcTpNPsC2pcTtWnWxQ3NV83aOwS-M_ZmPfOAGz4OpIlA1i5Z7Ud3cKWBUn3E/s400/5ab39a001e0000fb077af670.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #999999; font-family: ProximaNova, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; text-align: left; text-transform: uppercase;">WARREN FAIDLEY VIA GETTY IMAGES</span></td></tr>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">by <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/jeff-goodell">Jeff Goodell</a>, Huffington Post: <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sea-levels-fossil-fuel_us_5ab395cee4b008c9e5f48fd9">https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sea-levels-fossil-fuel_us_5ab395cee4b008c9e5f48fd9</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.125rem;">After the hurricane hit Miami in 2037, a foot of sand covered the famous bow-tie floor in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. A dead manatee floated in the pool where Elvis had once swum.</span></div>
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Most of the damage came not from the hurricane’s 175-mile-an-hour winds, but <span style="font-size: 1.125rem;">from the 20-foot storm surge that overwhelmed the low-lying city. In South Beach, historic Art Deco buildings were swept off their foundations. Mansions on Star Island were flooded up to their cut-glass doorknobs. A 17-mile stretch of Highway A1A that ran along the famous beaches up to Fort Lauderdale disappeared into the Atlantic.</span></div>
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The storm knocked out the wastewater treatment plant on Virginia Key, forcing the city to dump hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into Biscayne Bay. Tampons and condoms littered the beaches, and the stench of human excrement stoked fears of cholera.</div>
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More than 300 people died, many of them swept away by the surging waters that submerged much of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale; 13 people were killed in traffic accidents as they scrambled to escape the city after the news spread — falsely, it turned out — that one of the nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, an aging power plant 24 miles south of Miami, had been heavily damaged by the surge and had sent a radioactive cloud floating over the city.</div>
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The president, of course, said that Americans did not give up, that the city would be rebuilt better and stronger than it had been before. But it was clear to those not fooling themselves that this storm was the beginning of the end of Miami as a booming 21st-century city.</div>
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This is, of course, merely one possible vision of the future. There are brighter ways to imagine it — and darker ways. But I am a journalist, not a Hollywood screenwriter. I want to tell a true story about the future we are creating for ourselves.</div>
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It begins with this: The climate is warming, the world’s great ice sheets are melting, and the water is rising.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">This is not a speculative idea, or the hypothesis of a few wacky scientists, or a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. </span><a class="bn-clickable" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-beacon="{"p":{"lnid":"Sea-level rise","mpid":1,"plid":"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html"}}" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="2" data-v9y="1" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:8" href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html" style="box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Sea-level rise</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> is one of the central facts of our time, as real as gravity. It will reshape our world in ways most of us can only dimly imagine.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">My own interest in this story began with an actual hurricane. Shortly after Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, I visited the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of the neighborhoods that had been hardest hit by flooding from the storm. The water had receded by the time I arrived, but the neighborhood already smelled of mold and rot. The power was out; the shops were closed. I saw broken trees, abandoned cars, debris scattered everywhere, people hauling ruined furniture out of basement apartments. I have been writing about climate change for more than a decade, but seeing the flooding on the Lower East Side made it visceral for me.</span></div>
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<figcaption class="image__caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #666666; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 16px; margin-top: 7px; padding-bottom: 8px;">Workers load bottles of water into bags at Fine Fare in lower Manhattan, New York, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.</figcaption></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">In the 20th century, the oceans </span><a class="bn-clickable" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-beacon="{"p":{"lnid":"rose nearly 6 inches","mpid":2,"plid":"https://phys.org/news/2016-02-sea-20th-century-fastest-years.html"}}" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="3" data-v9y="1" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:10" href="https://phys.org/news/2016-02-sea-20th-century-fastest-years.html" style="box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none;">rose nearly 6 inches</a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">. But that was before the heat from burning fossil fuels had much impact on Greenland and Antarctica. Today, seas are rising at more than twice the rate they did in the last century. As warming of the Earth increases and the ice sheets begin to feel the heat, the rate of sea-level rise is likely to increase rapidly.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">A 2017 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the United States’ top climate science agency, says global sea-level rise could range from about </span><a class="bn-clickable" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-beacon="{"p":{"lnid":"1 foot to more than 8 feet by 2100","mpid":3,"plid":"http://www.noaa.gov/explainers/tracking-sea-level-rise-and-fall"}}" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="4" data-v9y="1" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:11" href="http://www.noaa.gov/explainers/tracking-sea-level-rise-and-fall" style="box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none;">1 foot to more than 8 feet by 2100</a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">. Depending on how much we heat up the planet, it will continue rising for centuries after that.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Although there is still some uncertainty about these forecasts, many scientists I’ve talked to now believe that the high-end projections are likely to increase as they get a better understanding of ice dynamics. Temperature-wise, the trend lines are rising: 2016 was the hottest year on record, and as I’m writing this, the Arctic is more than </span><a class="bn-clickable" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-beacon="{"p":{"lnid":"45 degrees Fahrenheit warmer","mpid":4,"plid":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/02/21/arctic-temperatures-soar-45-degrees-above-normal-flooded-by-extremely-mild-air-on-all-sides/?utm_term=.9086881a6204"}}" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="5" data-v9y="0" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/02/21/arctic-temperatures-soar-45-degrees-above-normal-flooded-by-extremely-mild-air-on-all-sides/?utm_term=.9086881a6204" style="box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none;">45 degrees Fahrenheit warmer</a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> than normal.</span></div>
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But if you live on the coast, what matters more than the height of sea rises is the rate at which they rise. If the water rises slowly, people will have time to elevate roads and buildings and build seawalls. Or move away. It is likely to be disruptive but manageable.</div>
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Unfortunately, Mother Nature is not always so docile. In the past, the seas have risen in dramatic pulses that coincide with the sudden collapse of ice sheets. After the end of the last ice age, there is evidence that the water rose about 13 feet in a single century. If that were to occur again, it would be a catastrophe for coastal cities around the world.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.125rem;">The best way to save coastal cities is to quit burning fossil fuels. But even if we ban coal, gas and oil tomorrow, we won’t be able to turn down the Earth’s thermostat immediately. For one thing, carbon dioxide is not like other kinds of air pollution, such as the chemicals that cause smog, which go away as soon as you stop dumping them into the sky. A good fraction of the carbon dioxide emitted today will stay in the </span><a class="bn-clickable" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-beacon="{"p":{"lnid":"atmosphere for thousands of years","mpid":5,"plid":"https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air"}}" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="11" data-v9y="0" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:15" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air" style="box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit;">atmosphere for thousands of years</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.125rem;">.</span></div>
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Even if we replaced every SUV on the planet with a skateboard and every coal plant with solar panels and could magically reduce global carbon pollution to zero by tomorrow, because of the heat that has already built up in the atmosphere and the oceans, the seas would not stop rising — at least until the Earth cooled off, which could take centuries.</div>
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This doesn’t mean that cutting carbon dioxide is pointless. On the contrary. If we can hold the warming to about 3 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial temperatures, we might only face 2 feet of sea-level rise this century, giving people more time to adapt. However, if we don’t end the fossil fuel party, we’re headed for more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit of warming — and with that, all bets are off. </div>
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<figcaption class="image__caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #666666; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 16px; margin-top: 7px; padding-bottom: 8px;">Last year, President Donald Trump said he was lifting an Obama-era policy that curtailed the financing of coal-fired power plants overseas as he sought to reorient the U.S. government away from fighting climate change and toward American “energy dominance.”</figcaption></div>
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We could get 4 feet of sea-level rise by the end of the century — or we could get 13 feet. If we burn all the known reserves of coal, oil and gas on the planet, seas will likely rise by more than 200 feet in the coming centuries, submerging virtually every major coastal city in the world.</div>
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The rise will make itself felt in higher storm surges, higher tides, and a gradual washing away of beaches, of roads, of coastal infrastructure. Even in the worst-case scenarios, the changes will occur over years, decades and centuries.</div>
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It’s exactly the kind of threat that we humans are genetically ill-equipped to deal with. We have evolved to defend ourselves from a guy with a knife or an animal with big teeth, but we are not wired to make decisions about barely perceptible threats that gradually accelerate over time.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">One of the hard truths about sea-level rise is that rich cities and nations can afford to build seawalls, upgrade sewage systems and elevate critical infrastructure. Poor cities and nations cannot. But even for rich countries, the economic losses will be high. One recent study estimated that with 6 feet of sea-level rise, </span><a class="bn-clickable" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-beacon="{"p":{"lnid":"nearly $1 trillion worth of real estate","mpid":6,"plid":"https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/18/rising-seas-threaten-nearly-1-trillion-worth-of-us-homes-zillow.html"}}" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="12" data-v9y="1" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:21" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/18/rising-seas-threaten-nearly-1-trillion-worth-of-us-homes-zillow.html" style="box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit;">nearly $1 trillion worth of real estate</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> in the U.S. will be underwater, including 1 in 8 homes in Florida.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">But it is not just money that will be lost. Also gone will be the beach where you had your first kiss; the mangrove forests in Bangladesh where Bengali tigers thrive; St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy; NASA’s Kennedy Space Center; the slums of Jakarta, Indonesia; entire nations like the Maldives; and, in the not-so-distant future, Mar-a-Lago, the winter White House of President Donald Trump.</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">About 145 million people live 3 feet or less above the current sea level. As the waters rise, millions of these people will be displaced, many of them in poor countries, creating generations of climate refugees that will make today’s Syrian war refugee crisis look like a high school drama production. </span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">The real issue here is the complexity of human psychology. At what point will we take dramatic action to cut carbon dioxide pollution? Will we spend billions on adaptive infrastructure to prepare cities for rising waters — or will we do nothing until it is too late? Will we welcome people who flee submerged coastlines and sinking islands — or will we imprison them? No one knows how our economic and political system will deal with these challenges. </span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">The simple truth is, human beings have become a geological force on the planet, with the power to reshape the boundaries of the world in ways we didn’t intend and don’t entirely understand. Every day, little by little, the water is rising, washing away beaches, eroding coastlines, pushing into homes and shops and places of worship. As our world floods, it is likely to cause immense suffering and devastation. It is also likely to bring people together and inspire creativity and camaraderie in ways no one can foresee. Either way, the water is coming.</span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">CORRECTION: </strong>A previous version of this story called Mar-a-Lago the summer White House. It is known as the winter White House.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">This excerpt has been adapted from </strong><strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World</strong><strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">, published by Black Inc. (£17.99 / AU$34.99) and in the U.S. by Little, Brown ($28.99).</strong></em></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-3520808713899318002018-01-31T15:28:00.000+10:302018-01-31T15:28:41.329+10:30All Children Need Nature: 12 Questions About Equity and Capacity<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.childrenandnature.org/category/newnaturemovement/richardlouv/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">by </span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: blue;">Richard Louv</span></span></a>, Children and Nature Network: </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2018/01/16/all-children-need-nature-12-questions-about-equity-capacity/">https://www.childrenandnature.org/2018/01/16/all-children-need-nature-12-questions-about-equity-capacity/</a></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFxaRLNgOuOLJDVcsStwMBnN2hitL4uL8GlGb38g8KV7uQ_Oxo9-X9G8FHtcvejED0UKdOKyrBVDteWWe8R_C7qhxtiaR4HAdlEk0cVAuV9PjVNd4RTagKxHzJRU5RNqhMiQpiIrCuind/s1600/all-children-need-nature.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="843" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFxaRLNgOuOLJDVcsStwMBnN2hitL4uL8GlGb38g8KV7uQ_Oxo9-X9G8FHtcvejED0UKdOKyrBVDteWWe8R_C7qhxtiaR4HAdlEk0cVAuV9PjVNd4RTagKxHzJRU5RNqhMiQpiIrCuind/s640/all-children-need-nature.jpg" width="600" /></a></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: green; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The children and nature movement may be more diverse than many others, but it needs even more diversity of ethnicity, culture, abilities and economics. I invite you to <a href="http://bit.ly/2B1nhsu" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">join us by becoming a Member of the Children & Nature Network.</a> Your support will help children in the U.S. and around the world experience the wonder of nature. — Richard Louv</em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. </em></span></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">All children need nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or gender or sexual identity or set of abilities. <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every</em> child.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other species, never experiences the richness of nature, what happens to that child?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In economically challenged neighborhoods, towns and rural areas, the impact of toxic dumps is well known. The evidence makes it clear that when we poison nature, we poison ourselves. But there’s a second, related threat that is less familiar. What do we know about how human beings, particularly children and their families in poor communities, are affected by the absence of nature’s <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">intrinsic</em> benefits?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Students examining plants with teacher</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Research suggests that exposure to the natural world – including nearby nature in cities – helps improve human health, well-being, and intellectual capacity in ways that science is only recently beginning to understand. People need nature for healthy development. We know that.</span></div>
<blockquote style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: initial; border-color: rgb(90, 127, 176); border-image: initial; border-left-style: solid; border-right-style: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 5px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; margin: 20px 0px 30px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; quotes: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What we don’t know enough about is the natural capacity of different ethnic or economic communities.</span></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Nature Principle, </em>I introduced the term “natural cultural capacity” to describe the strengths and capacities of different cultures to connect with nature, often in unexpected and underreported ways. The new growth of urban immigrant agriculture comes to mind – Somali community gardens in inner-city San Diego, for example; also, how Latino families often use parks as places for family gatherings, and the long-neglected history of African-American environmentalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Some good work has been done in these arenas (Audubon’s study on Latino attitudes, for example), but we need a much deeper understanding of both <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">equity</em> and <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">capacity</em>.</span></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: green; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Here are 12 questions to explore:</span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1. </strong>How do different minority or ethnic communities — urban, suburban or rural — connect to nature? What tools and traditions do these communities practice that could be encouraged – and adopted by other groups?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2.</strong> According to grandparents in minority or ethnic communities, what tools and traditions faded or were lost, but could be revived?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3. </strong>What barriers to nature experience are specific to children and young people with disabilities? Also, what nature-oriented abilities and capacities could be adapted to other communities?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4.</strong> What role do urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods play in the political support for parks and open space?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">5. </strong>What is the comparative availability of nearby nature (especially natural parks) based not only on acreage, but also on such issues as crime, legal restrictions, and the quality of the built environment?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">6.</strong> Which institutions and organizations do the best job reaching underserved populations; what new approaches are emerging, and where (the role of libraries, for example)?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">7.</strong> How likely is it for teachers or parents to take children to nearby nature or wilderness to learn and explore? And who gets to go to camp?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">8.</strong> What role does prejudice — based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability — play in the nature experience?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">9. </strong>What is, or will be, the impact of the widening income gap on the nature experiences of children?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">10. </strong>How will current or future cuts in education, nature-based programs and parks impact different socio-economic levels?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">11.</strong> In urban, suburban and rural areas, what is the impact of repeated nature experience on developmental advantages, confidence, resilience and health benefits – and how aware are residents of the benefits?<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">12.</strong> In these communities, do people believe that nature experiences – the availability of them — should be considered a privilege or a human right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Many other questions should be asked about equity and capacity. But this truth is clear: <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every</em> child needs nature.</span></div>
<div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: green; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">C&NN first published the following essay in 2013. </span></em></span></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.richardlouv.com/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">____________________________</span></a></em></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.richardlouv.com/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.richardlouv.com/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard Louv </a>is co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Children & Nature Network. His newest book, VITAMIN N,<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> offers 500 ways to build a nature-rich life in urban, suburban and rural communities. Among his other books are </em></em>THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Reconnecting With Life in a Virtual Age<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </em>LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Follow Rich on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Richard-Louv/115198775229294" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Facebook</a> and @RichLouv on Twitter.</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> <strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For more on natural cultural capacity and diversity, </em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">please see:</em></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2013/10/09/the-fierce-urgency-of-nature-a-new-generation-works-for-the-human-right-to-connect-with-the-natural-world-and-a-healthy-environment/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Fierce Urgency of Nature: A New Generation Works for the Human Right to Connect with the Natural World</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2012/10/25/new-international-attention-to-the-forgotten-human-right/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">New International Attention to the Forgotten Human Right</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2012/08/06/my-feet-six-inches-from-the-ground-disability-and-our-connection-with-nature/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My Feet, Six Inches From the Ground: Disability, Kids and Our Connection with Nature</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2013/01/08/what-a-leader-looks-like-nkrumah-frazier-is-the-children-and-nature-movement/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What a Leader Looks Like</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2012/10/21/how-city-kids-will-save-the-planet/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How City Kids Will Save the Planet</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2012/09/26/all-children-need-nature-worldwide-three-major-advances-at-iucn-world-congress/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All Children Need Nature Worldwide: Three Major Advances at IUCN World Congress</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2012/09/03/the-wild-an-african-american-environmentalist-faces-her-fear/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Wild: An African American Environmentalist Faces Her Fear</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/2011/09/30/saving-the-fields-of-dreams/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Saving the Fields of Dreams</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/2010/08/20/a-tree-grows-in-south-central/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Tree Grows in South Central</a></em><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/2011/11/21/occupy-nature/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Occupy Nature</a></em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="s1" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN Natural Leaders</b></span></em><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><span class="s2" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2016/08/04/making-fresh-tracks-natural-leaders-from-the-arctic-circle-and-urban-los-angeles-partner-up/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MAKING FRESH TRACKS: Natural Leaders from the Arctic Circle and Urban Los Angeles Partner Up</a></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><span class="s5" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/184368383" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fresh Tracks video</a></span><span class="s6" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> capturing participants’ voices from the August experience<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2016/12/20/forging-fresh-tracks-bringing-america-together-through-youth/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Forging Fresh Tracks</a></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><span class="s1" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/2014/07/09/why-i-wear-jorda%25E2%2580%25A6s-between-worlds/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">WHY I WEAR JORDANS IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS: A Natural Leader Builds Bridges Between Worlds</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN Resources</strong></em><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/connect/cnn-conference/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></a><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/research-docs/cnns-nature-clubs-for-families-tool-kit-spanish/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN’s Nature Clubs for Families Tool Kit in Spanish</a><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/research-docs/cnns-natural-leaders-network-tool-kit-spanish/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN’s Natural Leaders Tool Kit in Spanish</a><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/research-docs/cnns-nature-clubs-for-families-tool-kit-simple-chinese/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN’s Nature Clubs for Families Tool Kit in Simple Chinese</a><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/research-docs/cnns-nature-clubs-for-families-tool-kit-traditional-chinese/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN’s Nature Clubs for Families Tool Kit in Traditional Chinese</a><a href="https://www.childrenandnature.org/learn/research-resources/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a7fb0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">C&NN’s Research Library</a></em></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-29064671920116412652018-01-13T16:07:00.001+10:302018-01-13T16:07:30.560+10:30How Much Does Climate Change Cost? Try $1.5 Trillion (and Counting)<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">
<span style="color: #231f20; font-size: large;">by <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/@@also-by?author=Mark+Trahant">Mark Trahant</a>, Yes! Magazine:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #231f20; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/how-much-does-climate-change-cost-try-1.5-billion-and-counting-20180111">http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/how-much-does-climate-change-cost-try-1.5-billion-and-counting-20180111</a></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWBRkwlriSJo1nCsaiz7AJSPI8lNiKBM5ocwSxj-iy4WV7bROG2UUKwSObn-r8bkCbq1Z-s6wVmHu2Eu-LoT9-QQDWiJB0GEQeFOQbDDpYrw8oAsCb_sev1g6xxpmEfI82jwWJlBXmIoL/s1600/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="650" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWBRkwlriSJo1nCsaiz7AJSPI8lNiKBM5ocwSxj-iy4WV7bROG2UUKwSObn-r8bkCbq1Z-s6wVmHu2Eu-LoT9-QQDWiJB0GEQeFOQbDDpYrw8oAsCb_sev1g6xxpmEfI82jwWJlBXmIoL/s640/image.jpg" width="600" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Trump administration, and its allies in Congress, are fighting a losing war. They continue to press forward for the development of oil, gas, and coal when the rest of the world understands the implication of that folly. Global warming is the most pressing issue for our time. Period.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The thing is governments really have two choices when it comes to managing the impact on its people from global warming: spend money on trying to reduce the problem or spend money on cleaning up the catastrophes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Trump administration is on the hook for the catastrophe. <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #909393;">A report released Monday by The National Centers for Environmental Information</a> pegged the total cost this year at $1.5 trillion, including estimates for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. (And that doesn’t even begin to count the human toll, lost lives, lost jobs, lost opportunity.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I witnessed firsthand the impact of Hurricane Maria on the island of Dominica last month. We keep hearing stories about the power grid being down (similar to Puerto Rico) and you think, Why? It’s been months. Why aren’t the lights on? Then you see nearly every electrical pole on the island sideways. The entire grid needs to be rebuilt (or better, rethought) and that’s decades of infrastructure. So the figure of $1.5 trillion is far short of what will be needed. Nearly every electrical line, every other house, the damage was so widespread it’s impossible to overstate. And that’s just one island. Multiple the effect across the region. The planet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Even the United States.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Centers for Environmental Information says there were 16 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the country last year. These events included one drought, two flooding events, one severe freeze, eight severe storms, three cyclones, and one extraordinary wildfire. These “events,” as the center defines them, resulted in 362 deaths.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Turns out 2017 was a record-breaking year. “In total, the U.S. was impacted by 16 separate billion-dollar disaster events tying 2011 for the record number of billion-dollar disasters for an entire calendar year,” the report said. “In fact, 2017 arguably has more events than 2011 given that our analysis traditionally counts all U.S. billion-dollar wildfires, as regional-scale, seasonal events, not as multiple isolated events. More notable than the high frequency of these events is the cumulative cost, which exceeds $300 billion in 2017—a new U.S. annual record.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A similar report was published by the Government Accountability Office, including a recommendation that Executive Office of the President “identify significant climate risks and craft appropriate federal responses.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But instead of trying to reduce the impact—and the costs of weather-related catastrophe—the Trump administration continues on course for new development of oil and gas. The Interior Department announced new rules that, if enacted, will open up nearly all of the United States coastal waters to more oil and gas development beginning next year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“By proposing to open up nearly the entire OCS for potential oil and gas exploration, the United States can advance the goal of moving from aspiring for energy independence to attaining energy dominance,” <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-zinke-announces-plan-unleashing-americas-offshore-oil-and-gas-potential" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #909393;">said Vincent DeVito, counselor for Energy Policy at Interior, in the news release.</a> “This decision could bring unprecedented access to America’s extensive offshore oil and gas resources and allow us to better compete with other oil-rich nations.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Or as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke put it: “The important thing is we strike the right balance to protect our coasts and people while still powering America and achieving American Energy Dominance.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Dominance is such a funny word. How can any nation be dominant in the face of hurricanes that are ever more powerful and destructive? How does energy dominance work when tens of thousands of Americans will have to move because their homes are no longer there because of fire or storms? What happens if that number grows into the hundreds of thousands? Millions? How can we afford to spend trillions of dollars rebuilding what we have now?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A group of elders on the Bering Sea immediately condemned the Interior Department’s offshore drilling plan. “We told them that in person last October and again in writing, that there were 76 tribes in these regions opposed to this,” said the statement from the elders. “The draft plan implies that Bering Sea communities were ‘generally supportive of some’ oil and gas activity. This is not accurate and there is no evidence of this from Bering Sea communities. For decades, our people have opposed oil and gas activity and we continue to oppose it today. The northern Bering Sea is a very fragile ecosystem. The marine mammals that we rely on use it as their highway and they follow specific migration routes. That is how we know when and where to find them. The noise and vibration associated with drilling will interfere with their sonar and disrupt their migrations. Then we the coastal people will lose our primary food source.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">There is a connection between developing oil and gas and paying the high costs to clean up after a storm. One side of the ledger goes to a few; the oil and gas “industry.” The folks who bought and paid for this administration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The other side of the ledger is the rest of us. The taxpayers who will foot the bill for this continued folly.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And on the Bering Sea? The folks who live there are one storm away from a tragedy. As the elders put it: “Our people and our way of life are being exposed to danger and we do not understand why.”</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; margin-bottom: 0.7em;">
<span class="discreet" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Editor’s Note: This article was originally published with a headline stating the cost of climate change is $1.5 billion. The actual figure is $1.5 trillion. Corrected January 12, 2018.</span></em></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-56599014084612869492017-11-27T16:05:00.000+10:302017-11-27T16:05:57.415+10:30What's the Net Cost of Using Renewables to Hit Australia's Climate Target? Nothing<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEec7cHv5CwSHTNgm5VlPd_siCUzK467GgKcIA0-io4h7sYv92_JpLY0KDQRPHDq_g3DR1SazqZ1qnh5QXEwxwPbT3ABH4UsgKRRZymWoneypFWQSR2ioIEh3-rgfgmelawvX7dwRcONa_/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEec7cHv5CwSHTNgm5VlPd_siCUzK467GgKcIA0-io4h7sYv92_JpLY0KDQRPHDq_g3DR1SazqZ1qnh5QXEwxwPbT3ABH4UsgKRRZymWoneypFWQSR2ioIEh3-rgfgmelawvX7dwRcONa_/s320/download.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">metering.com</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/andrew-blakers-3328">Andrew Blakers</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bin-lu-335164">Bin Lu</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/matthew-stocks-335116">Matthew Stocks</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a>, The Conversation: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-net-cost-of-using-renewables-to-hit-australias-climate-target-nothing-88021">https://theconversation.com/whats-the-net-cost-of-using-renewables-to-hit-australias-climate-target-nothing-88021</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Australia can meet its 2030 greenhouse emissions target at zero net cost, according to <a href="http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/research/re/assets/171122_Meeting_the_Paris_emissions_target.pdf">our analysis</a> of a range of options for the National Electricity Market.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Our modelling shows that renewable energy can help hit Australia’s emissions reduction target of 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030 effectively for free. This is because the cost of electricity from new-build wind and solar will be cheaper than replacing old fossil fuel generators with new ones.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Currently, Australia is installing about 3 gigawatts (GW) per year of wind and solar photovoltaics (PV). This is fast enough to exceed 50% renewables in the electricity grid by 2030. It’s also fast enough to meet Australia’s entire <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/publications/factsheet-australias-2030-climate-change-target">carbon reduction target</a>, as agreed at the 2015 Paris climate summit.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Encouragingly, the rapidly declining cost of wind and solar PV electricity means that the net cost of meeting the Paris target is roughly zero. This is because electricity from new-build wind and PV will be cheaper than from new-build coal generators; cheaper than existing gas generators; and indeed cheaper than the average wholesale price in the entire National Electricity Market, which is currently A$70-100 per megawatt-hour.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Cheapest option</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Electricity from new-build wind in Australia currently costs around <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/video-wind-solar-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-so-lets-get-on-with-it-67093/">A$60 per MWh</a>, while PV power costs about <a href="https://www.originenergy.com.au/about/investors-media/media-centre/origin-adds-530mw-of-renewable-energy-to-its-portfolio.html">A$70 per MWh</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">During the 2020s these prices are likely to fall still further – to below A$50 per MWh, judging by the lower-priced contracts being signed around the world, such as in <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/09/19/world-record-solar-price-abu-dhabi/">Abu Dhabi</a>, <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-heads-to-1ckwh-before-2020-after-mexico-sets-record-low-62163//">Mexico</a>, <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/02/09/indias-madhya-pradesh-auctions-nations-lowest-priced-solar/">India</a> and <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/chile-solar-auction-sets-new-record-low-for-solar-pv-85114/">Chile</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In our <a href="http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/research/re/assets/171122_Meeting_the_Paris_emissions_target.pdf">research</a>, published today, we modelled the all-in cost of electricity under three different scenarios:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Renewables</strong>: replacement of enough old coal generators by renewables to meet Australia’s Paris climate target</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Gas</strong>: premature retirement of most existing coal plant and replacement by new gas generators to meet the Paris target. Note that gas is <a href="https://industry.gov.au/Energy/Energy-information/Documents/Gas-Price-Trends-Report.pdf">uncompetitive at current prices</a>, and this scenario would require a large increase in gas use, pushing up prices still further.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Status quo</strong>: replacement of retiring coal generators with supercritical coal. Note that this scenario fails to meet the Paris target by a wide margin, despite having a similar cost to the renewables scenario described above, even though our modelling uses a <a href="http://www.co2crc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/LCOE_Report_final_web.pdf">low coal power station price</a>.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;">The chart below shows the all-in cost of electricity in the 2020s under each of the three scenarios, and for three different gas prices: lower, higher, or the same as the <a href="https://industry.gov.au/Energy/Energy-information/Documents/Gas-Price-Trends-Report.pdf">current A$8 per gigajoule</a>. As you can see, electricity would cost roughly the same under the renewables scenario as it would under the status quo, regardless of what happens to gas prices.</span><br />
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196229/original/file-20171123-21838-best22.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" height="265" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196229/original/file-20171123-21838-best22.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="640" /></a></div>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Levelised cost of electricity (A$ per MWh) for three scenarios and a range of gas prices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blakers et al.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">Balancing a renewable energy grid</span></h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">The cost of renewables includes both the cost of energy and the cost of balancing the grid to maintain reliability. This balancing act involves using energy storage, stronger interstate high-voltage power lines, and the cost of renewable energy “spillage” on windy, sunny days when the energy stores are full.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The current </span><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217309568" style="font-size: x-large;">cost</a><span style="font-size: large;"> of hourly balancing of the National Electricity Market (NEM) is low because the renewable energy fraction is small. It remains low (less than A$7 per MWh) until the renewable energy fraction rises above three-quarters.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The renewable energy fraction in 2020 will be about one-quarter, which leaves plenty of room for growth before balancing costs become significant.</span><br />
<br />
<figure class="align-center ">
<span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" height="307" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196230/original/file-20171123-21801-ry3lty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="640" />
</span><figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cost of hourly balancing of the NEM (A$ per MWh) as a function of renewable energy fraction.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The proposed <a href="http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/">Snowy 2.0</a> pumped hydro project would have a power generation capacity of 2GW and energy storage of 350GWh. This could provide half of the new storage capacity required to balance the NEM up to a renewable energy fraction of two-thirds.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The new storage needed over and above Snowy 2.0 is 2GW of power with 12GWh of storage (enough to provide six hours of demand). This could come from a mix of pumped hydro, batteries and </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/reducing-peak-demand-targets-are-good-practice-11749" style="font-size: x-large;">demand management</a><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">Stability and reliability</span></h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">Most of Australia’s fossil fuel generators will reach the end of their technical lifetimes within 20 years. In our “renewables” scenario detailed above, five coal-fired power stations would be retired early, by an average of five years. In contrast, meeting the Paris targets by substituting gas for coal requires 10 coal stations to close early, by an average of 11 years.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Under the renewables scenario, the grid will still be highly reliable. That’s because it will have a diverse mix of generators: PV (26GW), wind (24GW), coal (9GW), gas (5GW), pumped hydro storage (5GW) and existing hydro and bioenergy (8GW). Many of these assets can be used in ways that help to deliver other services that are vital for grid stability, such as </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/baffled-by-baseload-dumbfounded-by-dispatchables-heres-a-glossary-of-the-energy-debate-84212" style="font-size: x-large;">spinning reserve</a><span style="font-size: large;"> and </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/crisis-what-crisis-how-smart-solar-can-protect-our-vulnerable-power-grids-72487" style="font-size: x-large;">voltage management</a><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Because a renewable electricity system comprises thousands of small generators spread over a million square kilometres, sudden shocks to the electricity system from generator failure, such as occur regularly with ageing large coal generators, are unlikely.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Neither does cloudy or calm weather cause shocks, because weather is predictable and a given weather system can take several days to move over the Australian continent. Strengthened interstate interconnections (part of the cost of balancing) reduce the impact of transmission failure, which was the prime cause of the </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-caused-south-australias-state-wide-blackout-66268" style="font-size: x-large;">2016 South Australian blackout</a><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
<br />
<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88021/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="font-size: x-large;" width="1" /><span style="font-size: large;">Since 2015, Australia has tripled the annual deployment rate of new wind and PV generation capacity. Continuing at this rate until 2030 will let us meet our entire Paris carbon target in the electricity sector, all while replacing retiring coal generators, maintaining high grid stability, and stabilising electricity prices.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/andrew-blakers-3328" style="font-size: x-large;">Andrew Blakers</a><span style="font-size: large;">, Professor of Engineering, </span><em style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a></em><span style="font-size: large;">; </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bin-lu-335164" style="font-size: x-large;">Bin Lu</a><span style="font-size: large;">, PhD Candidate, </span><em style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a></em><span style="font-size: large;">, and </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/matthew-stocks-335116" style="font-size: x-large;">Matthew Stocks</a><span style="font-size: large;">, Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, </span><em style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This article was originally published on </span><a href="http://theconversation.com/" style="font-size: x-large;">The Conversation</a><span style="font-size: large;">. Read the </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-net-cost-of-using-renewables-to-hit-australias-climate-target-nothing-88021" style="font-size: x-large;">original article</a><span style="font-size: large;">.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-40053875290422654022017-11-14T10:36:00.001+10:302017-11-14T10:36:33.751+10:30Over 15,000 Scientists Just Issued a 'Second Notice' to Humanity. Can We Listen Now?<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">by <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/author/andrea-germanos-staff-writer" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Andrea Germanos, staff writer</a>, Common Dreams: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/13/over-15000-scientists-just-issued-second-notice-humanity-can-we-listen-now?">https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/13/over-15000-scientists-just-issued-second-notice-humanity-can-we-listen-now?</a></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLJGBpul4vTaqR1XVb-KH19BtYc__N8AuJcsiP_xPifou5YNGMHyPSld10lUX_G0m8LJ8NFppYWrQF9Y5I-rDJD-O6udRcCinUrF5y3NlSbKhJHo-MgX-QxI8M4PkwABLi0cclJ6toQajc/s1600/15-thousand-scientists-warn-catastrophe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="955" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLJGBpul4vTaqR1XVb-KH19BtYc__N8AuJcsiP_xPifou5YNGMHyPSld10lUX_G0m8LJ8NFppYWrQF9Y5I-rDJD-O6udRcCinUrF5y3NlSbKhJHo-MgX-QxI8M4PkwABLi0cclJ6toQajc/s640/15-thousand-scientists-warn-catastrophe.jpg" width="600" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Reassessing warning issued 25 years ago, the "second notice" to humanity warns of "widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss" unless business-as-usual is upended.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Yikes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Over 15,000 scientists hailing from more than 180 countries just issued a dire <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/4605229" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">warning</a> to humanity:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Time is running out" to stop business as usual, as threats from rising greenhouse gases to biodiversity loss are pushing the biosphere to the brink.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The new warning was published Monday in the international journal <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/4605229" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">BioScience</em></a>, and marks an update to the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" issued by nearly 1,700 leading scientists 25 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The 1992 plea, which said Earth was on track to be "irretrievably mutilated" baring "fundamental change," however, was largely unheeded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Some people might be tempted to dismiss this evidence and think we are just being alarmist," said William Ripple, distinguished professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, and lead author of the new warning. "Scientists are in the business of analyzing data and looking at the long-term consequences. Those who signed this second warning aren't just raising a false alarm. They are acknowledging the obvious signs that we are heading down an unsustainable path."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The new statement—a "Second Notice" to humanity—does acknowledge that there have been some positive steps forward, such as the drop in ozone depleters and advancements in reducing hunger since the 1992 warning. But, by and large, humanity has done a horrible job of making progress. In fact, key environmental threats that demanded urgent attention a quarter of a century ago are even worse now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Among the "especially troubling" trends, they write, are rising greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, agricultural production, and the sixth mass extinction event <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #336699; text-decoration-line: none;">underway</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Taking a numerical look at how some of the threats have grown since 1992, the scientists note that there's been a 26.1 percent loss in fresh water available per capita; a 75.3 percent increase in the number of "dead zones"; a 62.1 percent increase in CO2 emissions per year; and 35.5 percent rise in the human population.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperiled biosphere," they write.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Among the steps that could be taken to prevent catastrophe are promoting plant-based diets; reducing wealth inequality, stopping conversions of forests and grasslands; government interventions to rein in biodiversity loss via poaching and illicit trade; and "massively adopting renewable energy sources" while phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Taking such actions, they conclude, are necessary to avert "widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. "</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The goal of the paper, said Ripple, is to "ignite a wide-spread public debate about the global environment and climate."</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-74822730056692807292017-11-06T21:14:00.000+10:302017-11-06T21:14:02.933+10:30Lancet Report: Health Impact of Climate Change is ‘the major threat of 21st century’<header style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;"><h1 class="title entry-title" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 28px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.1em; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Gf2h1rFeFcDbWVjn-9WO6g1OO4tDol7DA7J9KZQ45iVlTjQARMiRkjgCAz3w3JyUm_38KkRA9wkqhR86b2DE9UyGsBx4tWEgHsYC2-3jZIjaaYevoAMioWgffekpCvJ895GA-GtuYC-b/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="260" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Gf2h1rFeFcDbWVjn-9WO6g1OO4tDol7DA7J9KZQ45iVlTjQARMiRkjgCAz3w3JyUm_38KkRA9wkqhR86b2DE9UyGsBx4tWEgHsYC2-3jZIjaaYevoAMioWgffekpCvJ895GA-GtuYC-b/s320/download.jpg" width="320" /></a><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The health of millions of people across the world is already being significantly harmed by climate change, a major new report finds.</strong></em></h1>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by Daisy Dunne, Climate and Capitalism: </strong></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/10/31/lancet-report-health-impact-of-climate-change-impact-is-the-major-threat-of-21st-century/">http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/10/31/lancet-report-health-impact-of-climate-change-impact-is-the-major-threat-of-21st-century/</a></strong></div>
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The health of millions of people across the world is already being significantly harmed by climate change, a major new report finds. From driving up the number of people exposed to heatwaves to increasing the risk of infectious diseases, such as dengue fever, climate change has had far-reaching effects on many aspects of human health in last few decades, the authors say.</div>
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In fact, the effect of climate change on human health is now so severe that it should be considered “the major threat of the 21st century”, scientists said at a press briefing held in London.</div>
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The <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32464-9/fulltext?elsca1=tlpr" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">report</a> is the first from the <a href="http://www.lancetcountdown.org/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change</a>, a project involving 24 academic institutions and intergovernmental organisations from across the world. The project plans to release a report tracking progress on climate change and global health every year.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Feeling the heat</strong></div>
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The report uses a set of 40 indicators to track the effects of climate change on global health. The first of these indicators assesses the “direct impacts” of climate change on human health, including the effects of exposure to extreme heat and natural disasters.</div>
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One of the report’s findings is that, from 2000 to 2016, the rise in the average temperatures that humans were exposed to was around three times higher than the rise of average global temperatures worldwide. This is shown on the graph below, where the rise in the global average surface temperature from 2000 to 2016, when compared to the average from 1986 to 2008 (red), is shown alongside the rise in the temperatures that humans are typically exposed to (blue).</div>
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<img alt="" class=" lazyloaded" data-lazy-src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-13.28.44.png" height="460" src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-13.28.44.png" style="background: none; border: 0px; height: auto; margin: 0px !important; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="855" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.3em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The rise in average global surface temperatures from 2000 to 2016 (red), alongside the rise in the average temperatures that people are exposed to (blue), relative to averages taken from 1986 to 2008. Source: Watts et al. (2017)</div>
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The average temperatures that humans are exposed to are significantly higher than the global surface average because most people live on land, where warming happens most quickly, explains <a href="http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/mathematics/staff/pmc205" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Prof Peter Cox</a>, an author of the new report and a climate scientist at the <a href="http://www.exeter.ac.uk/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">University of Exeter</a>. He tells Carbon Brief:</div>
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“Generally speaking, when you look at where people are, the rate of change appears much larger than when we look at global averages. So maybe when we think about global targets, we should be always bearing in mind that the global mean temperature doesn’t really mean much to most people. We don’t live on the ocean, which is two-thirds of the global mean. We live on the land, and on the land that tends to warm fastest.”</div>
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The report also finds the number of “vulnerable” people exposed to “heatwave” events increased by around 125 million between 2000 and 2016. “Vulnerable” is here defined as being over the age of 65, while a “heatwave” is defined as three consecutive nights where temperatures are in the top 1% of the 1986-2006 average for the region.</div>
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In 2015, a record 175 million more people were exposed to heatwaves, when compared to the average for 1986-2008, the report finds. You can see this in the chart below, which shows the change in the number of people exposed to heatwaves from 2000 to 2016, relative to 1986-2008.</div>
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<img alt="" class=" lazyloaded" data-lazy-src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-27-at-15.36.14.png" height="357" src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-27-at-15.36.14.png" style="background: none; border: 0px; height: auto; margin: 0px !important; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="644" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.3em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The change in the number of people exposed to heatwaves in millions per year from 2010 to 2016 (blue), relative to the 1986-2008 average. Source: Watts et al. (2017)</div>
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These spikes in exposure are a result of an increase in heatwave events, as well as other environmental and social factors, including population growth, Cox says. Heatwave exposure has previously been linked to an increased risk of premature death in many parts of the world, he explains:</div>
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“During the 2003 European heatwave, there were 75,000 extra premature deaths in Europe, including 2,000 in the UK. That was mainly because of people not being able to recover, and I guess breathing gets harder when it’s hot too. There is a correlation between these periods of hot nights and mortality. I suspect there must be a correlation with ill health as well.”</div>
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(<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/billions-face-deadly-threshold-heat-extremes-2100-study" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Carbon Brief</a> has previously reported on the health risks posed by heatwaves.)</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Natural disasters</strong></div>
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The report finds that the number of <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">weather-related disasters</a> from 2007 to 2016 increased by 46%, when compared with the average for 1990-1999.</div>
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Asia is the continent most affected by weather-related disasters, the report says – particularly because of its size and population. Between 1990 and 2016, 2,843 weather-related disasters were recorded in Asia, affecting 4.8 billion people and causing more than 500,000 deaths.</div>
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Despite a rise in the number of natural disasters, there has been no discernable rise in the global number of deaths or in the number of people affected by natural disasters, when compared to data from 1990 to 1999, the report finds. This could indicate that countries are beginning to invest in adaptation strategies to cope with natural disasters, Cox says. However, the mismatch could also reflect a lack of data on deaths from climate-related disasters in the developing world, he adds:</div>
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“If you look at what happens when a disaster strikes, if it’s in the rich developed world, it leads to economic damages but we don’t lose people. If it’s in the developing world, then we lose lives.</div>
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“It is true that there is a kind of contradiction in that exposure is going up, but actually the number of people affected, at least recorded as affected, is staying flat, which either means we’re building greater resilience [to climate change], which I suspect is not true, or that the data we’re collecting on the amount of money being lost is better than on the amount of people being lost.”</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Losses to the global workforce</strong></div>
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Another set of indicators explored by the report look at the “human-mediated” impacts of climate change. These are impacts that are intrinsically linked to human society, but often exacerbated by climate change.</div>
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The first of these indicators explores how climate change has affected the productivity of the global workforce, particularly in the less economically-developed parts of the world. The report finds that the global productivity in rural labour capacity – defined as those who work in outdoor manual labour in rural areas, but excluding agricultural workers – has fallen by 5.3% from 2000 to 2016. The chart below shows how this global loss in productivity is spread across the world, with red indicating a percentage loss in productivity and blue showing a percentage gain in labour capacity.</div>
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<img alt="" class=" lazyloaded" data-lazy-src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-14.19.17.png" height="319" src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-14.19.17.png" style="background: none; border: 0px; height: auto; margin: 0px !important; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="624" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.3em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Global changes to labour capacity from 2000 to 2016 as a result of rising global temperatures, relative to average levels from 1986 to 2008. Red shows areas of loss, while blue shows areas of gain. Source: Watts et al. (2017)</div>
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In 2016, this drop in productivity effectively took more than 920,000 people globally out of the workforce, the report finds, with 418,000 of these workers being “lost” from India. One way that higher temperatures threaten labour capacity is by making manual work more physically challenging, the report finds:</div>
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“Higher temperatures pose profound threats to occupational health and labour productivity, particularly for people undertaking manual, outdoor labour in hot areas. Loss of labour capacity has important implications for the livelihoods of individuals, families, and communities, especially those relying on subsistence farming.”</div>
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An additional “human-mediated” impact of climate change is undernutrition, the report finds. It reports that the number of undernourished people in the top 30 undernourished countries of the world has increased from 398 million in 1990 to 422 million in 2016. This is at least in part driven by the effect of climate change of yields of staple crops such as wheat, rice and maize, the report says. <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/interactive-how-climate-change-shapes-food-insecurity-across-the-world" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Climate change affects crop yields</a> through increasing local temperatures, changes to rainfall patterns and more cases of drought. The report says:</div>
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“Increasing temperatures have been shown to reduce global wheat production by 6% for each 1C increase. Rice yields are sensitive to increases in night temperatures, with each 1C increase in growing-season minimum temperature in the dry season resulting in a 10% decrease in rice grain yield. Higher temperatures have been demonstrated rigorously to have a negative impact on crop yields in countries in lower latitudes. Moreover, agriculture in lower latitudes tends to be more marginal, and more people are food insecure.”</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Infectious diseases</strong></div>
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The report also investigates the “environment-mediated” impacts of climate change. These are impacts on human health that are caused by environmental factors but can be worsened by climate change. One such impact is the spread of infectious diseases around the globe. Rising temperatures can increase the spread of infectious diseases by allowing pests to conquer new parts of the world, as well as by creating ideal conditions for reproduction and virus replication.</div>
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Climate change has affected the prevalence of many infectious diseases, the report notes. However, as an example, the report focuses on how climate change has impacted the spread of <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/dengue/Pages/Introduction.aspx" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dengue fever</a>, a disease spread by mosquitoes native to much of southeast Asia, central and south America, and Africa. The research shows that the rate of the spread of dengue fever has increased from between 3% and 5.9% globally, when compared to levels from 1990.</div>
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The chart below shows how the rate of the spread of dengue fever (vectorial capacity) has increased in the world’s most affected countries from 1950 to 2015. The chart shows results from two species of mosquito, including yellow fever mosquito (<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Aedes aegypti</em>; left) and Asian tiger mosquito (<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Aedes albopictus</em>; right). On the heat map, each block represents one year, with red showing an increase in spread and blue showing a decrease in spread. The chart shows that, since 1995, the vast majority of countries have experienced an increase in the rate of the spread of dengue fever.</div>
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<img alt="" class=" lazyloaded" data-lazy-src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-15.07.24.png" height="859" src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-15.07.24.png" style="background: none; border: 0px; height: auto; margin: 0px !important; max-width: 100%; outline: 0px; padding: 4px 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="931" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.3em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Change in the rate of the spread of dengue fever (vectorial capacity) in the countries most affected by the disease from 1950 to 2015. The chart shows results from two species of mosquito: the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti; left) and Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus; right). On the heat map, each block represents one year, with red showing an increase in spread and blue showing a decrease in spread. Source: Watts et al. (2017)</div>
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The increase in the rate of the spread of dengue fever could be driven by changes in environmental conditions as a result of climate change, says <a href="https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=HEMON01" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Prof Hugh Montgomery</a>, co-chair of The Lancet Countdown and a professor at <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">University College London</a>. He told the press conference:</div>
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“It’s essentially because of the transmissibility, the ability of the virus to be spread by mosquito vector. As you get areas that get wetter, the mosquito has a habitat it can live in; populations go up as it gets warmer, they breed more frequently, they feed faster. So it gets easier to spread the bug, and that’s really why we’re seeing a doubling in the spread rate of dengue cases.”</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Outlook</strong></div>
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Looking to the future, the report also explores how climate change could bring new health-related woes, including an increase in the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-adapting-climate-change-through-managed-retreat" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">displacement of people</a> as a result of sea level rise.</div>
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It is clear that both the current and potential future impacts of climate change on health demand immediate action on tackling fossil fuel use, says Cox, adding that it is not too late to stem some of the effects of climate change on human health. He tells Carbon Brief:</div>
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“The co-benefits of action on climate are so huge, I think, well, maybe we present this the wrong way. Rather than saying ‘we should tackle climate change and there’s a co-benefit for health’, it should be ‘we need to do this for our health, and there’s a co-benefit on climate’.”</div>
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Montgomery echoed the call for immediate action to tackle climate change for the good of human health. He told the press conference:</div>
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“It is too late to avoid impacts, they’re here and if we all die tomorrow and stop producing any CO2, we’re still locked in for a temperature rise. There is a lag between CO2 emissions and the warming that will come. It’s like sticking an extra duvet on, the temperature will slowly rise to a new equilibrium. So we’re locked in for change for a long time to come and those harmful effects we’re seeing already from perhaps little around 1C of temperature rise, we’ve got another half degree as a minimum yet to come.”</div>
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However, there are reasons to be hopeful, he adds, pointing to progress on climate action within the last decade, including a shift away from electricity produced from coal and an increase in the investment into electric cars. He adds:</div>
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“Climate change can be fixed right now, there isn’t a problem with the technology, it’s readily available and deployable. The money is available for it, the only thing that’s lacking is the political will to connect the money to the infrastructure.”</div>
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<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/impact-climate-change-health-is-major-threat-21st-century" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Carbon Brief , October 30, 2017</em></a><em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Published under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode" rel="noopener" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0c6d00; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a> license. </em></div>
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</section>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-89879729467571795642017-10-31T10:16:00.001+10:302017-10-31T10:16:47.301+10:30Galapagos Species are Threatened By the Very Tourists Who Flock to See Themby <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/veronica-toral-granda-407607">Veronica Toral-Granda</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephen-garnett-4565">Stephen Garnett</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a>, The Conversation: <a href="https://theconversation.com/galapagos-species-are-threatened-by-the-very-tourists-who-flock-to-see-them-86392">https://theconversation.com/galapagos-species-are-threatened-by-the-very-tourists-who-flock-to-see-them-86392</a><br />
<br />
<img alt="File 20171026 28071 14mtglf.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1" height="210" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191950/original/file-20171026-28071-14mtglf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C414%2C4076%2C2135&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="400" />
<br />
<figcaption>
Life’s not such a beach for Galapagos native species these days.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sea-lion-family-perfect-beach-galapagos-739969879?src=CDitVCmj--4FEFof5xE-fg-1-60">shacharf/shutterstock</a></span></figcaption><figcaption><br /></figcaption><figcaption>Native species are <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/10/e1603080">particularly vulnerable on islands</a>, because when invaders such as rats arrive, the native species have nowhere else to go and may lack the ability to fend them off.</figcaption><figcaption><br /></figcaption>The main characteristic of an island is its isolation. Whether just off the coast or hundreds of kilometres from the nearest land, they stand on their own. Because of their isolation, islands generally have a unique array of plant and animal species, many of which are found nowhere else. And that makes all islands one of a kind.<br />
<br />
However, islands, despite being geographically isolated, are now part of a network. They are globally connected to the outside world by planes, boats and people. Their isolation has been breached, offering a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01442.x/full">pathway for introduced species to invade</a>.<br />
<br />
The Galapagos Islands, 1,000km off the coast of Ecuador, provide a great example. So far, <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184379">1,579 introduced species</a> have been documented on the Galapagos Islands, of which 98% arrived with humans, either intentionally or accidentally.<br />
<br />
More than 70% of these species have arrived since the 1970s – when Galapagos first became a tourist destination – an average of 27 introduced species per year for the past 40 years. <br />
<h2>
New arrivals</h2>
Introduced species – plants or animals that have been artificially brought to a new location, often by humans – can damage native fauna and flora. They are among the top threats to biodiversity worldwide, and one of the <a href="https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/Rep-2000-052.pdf">most important threats</a> to oceanic islands. The <a href="https://www.cbd.int/sp/">Convention on Biological Diversity</a> has a <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/strategic-plan/2011-2020/Aichi-Targets-EN.pdf">dedicated target</a> to help deal with them and their means of arrival. The target states that:<br />
<blockquote>
by 2020, invasive alien species and pathways are identified and prioritised, priority species are controlled or eradicated and measures are in place to manage pathways to prevent their introduction and establishment.</blockquote>
The Galapagos Islands are home to giant tortoises, flightless cormorants, and the iconic Darwin’s finches – species that have evolved in isolation and according to the differing characteristics of each of the islands. <br />
<br />
However, the Galapagos’ natural attributes have also made these islands a top tourist destination. Ironically enough, this threatens the survival of many of the species that make this place so unique.<br />
<h2>
Humans on the rise</h2>
In 1950 the Galapagos Islands had just 1,346 residents, and no tourists. In 2015 <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184379">more than 220,000 visitors</a> travelled to the islands. These tourists, along with the 25,000 local residents, need to have most of their food and other goods shipped from mainland Ecuador.<br />
<br />
These strengthening links between Galapagos and the mainland have opened up pathways for the arrival and spread of introduced species to the archipelago, and between its various islands. <br />
<br />
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191975/original/file-20171026-28041-4x2rta.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" height="304" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191975/original/file-20171026-28041-4x2rta.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="400" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Major species transport routes into and between the Galapagos Islands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184379#pone-0184379-t001">PLoS ONE</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191981/original/file-20171026-28033-rn1uxl.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" height="279" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191981/original/file-20171026-28033-rn1uxl.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="400" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More and more alien species are finding their way to the Galapagos Islands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184379.g003">PLoS ONE</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
Plants were the most common type of introduced species, followed by insects. The most common pathway for species introduction unintentionally was as a contaminant on plants. A few vertebrates have also been recorded as stowaways in transport vehicles, including snakes and opossums; whilst others have been deliberately introduced in the last decade (such as Tilapia, dog breeds and goldfishes).<br />
<br />
The number, frequency and geographic origin of alien invasion pathways to Galapagos have increased through time. Our <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184379">research</a> shows a tight relationship between the number of pathways and the ongoing increase in human population in Galapagos, from both residents and tourists.<br />
<br />
For instance, the number of flights has increased from 74 flights a week in 2010 to 107 in 2015; the number of airplane passengers has also increased through time with about 40% being tourists, the remainder being Galapagos residents or transient workers.<br />
<br />
Global connections between Galapagos and the outside world have also increased, receiving visitors from 93 countries in 2010 to 158 in 2014. In 2015 and 2016, the Galapagos Biosecurity Agency intercepted more than 14,000 banned items, almost 70% of which were brought in by tourists.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="180" id="datawrapper-chart-rlNIe" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" scrolling="no" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/rlNIe/2/" style="min-width: 100%; width: 0;" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="100%"></iframe><br />
<br />
We think it likely that intentional introductions of alien species will decline when biosecurity is strengthened. However, with <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140833">tourists</a> as known vectors for introduced species and with tourism much the <a href="http://www2.unwto.org/annualreport2014">largest and fastest</a> growing sector of the local economy, unintentional introductions to Galapagos will almost certainly increase further.<br />
<br />
<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86392/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" width="1" />If islands are to be kept as islands, isolated in the full sense of the word, it is of high priority to manage their invasion pathways. Our research aims to provide technical input to local decision makers, managers and conservation bodies working in Galapagos in order to minimise a further increase on the number of available pathways to Galapagos and the probable likelihood of new arrivals. Our next step is to evaluate how local tourism boats are connecting the once isolated islands within Galapagos, as a way to minimise further spread of harmful introduced species to this UNESCO World Heritage Site.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/veronica-toral-granda-407607">Veronica Toral-Granda</a>, PhD candidate, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephen-garnett-4565">Stephen Garnett</a>, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-darwin-university-1066">Charles Darwin University</a></em><br />
<br />
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/galapagos-species-are-threatened-by-the-very-tourists-who-flock-to-see-them-86392">original article</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-72360682146921659872017-10-23T10:04:00.001+10:302017-10-23T10:04:16.084+10:30Citizen Scientist Scuba Divers Shed Light on the Impact of Warming Oceans on Marine Lifeby <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/team#madeleine-de-gabriele">Madeleine De Gabriele</a>, The Conversation: <a href="https://theconversation.com/citizen-scientist-scuba-divers-shed-light-on-the-impact-of-warming-oceans-on-marine-life-85970">https://theconversation.com/citizen-scientist-scuba-divers-shed-light-on-the-impact-of-warming-oceans-on-marine-life-85970</a><br />
<br />
Rising ocean temperatures may result in worldwide change for shallow reef ecosystems, according to research published yesterday in Science Advances.<br />
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<img alt="File 20171019 1045 3eh0e1.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1" height="412" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190963/original/file-20171019-1045-3eh0e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4796%2C3094&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="640" />
<br />
<br />
<figcaption>
A volunteer diver surveys marine life at Lord Howe Island.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Stuart-Smith/Reef Life Survey</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption><figcaption><span class="attribution"><span class="license"><br /></span></span></figcaption>
<br />
The study, based on thousands of surveys carried out by volunteer scuba divers, gives new insights into the relationship of fish numbers to water temperatures – suggesting that warmer oceans may drive fish to significantly expand their habitat, displacing other sea creatures. <br />
<h2>
Citizen science</h2>
The study draws from Reef Life Survey, a 10-year citizen science project that trains volunteer scuba divers to survey marine plants and animals. Over the past ten years, more than 200 divers have surveyed 2,406 ocean sites in 44 countries, creating a uniquely comprehensive data set on ocean life. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190970/original/file-20171019-1048-1gcv78i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" height="426" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190970/original/file-20171019-1048-1gcv78i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reef Life Survey takes volunteers on surveying expeditions at hard-to-reach coral reefs around the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Stuart-Smith/Reef Life Survey</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
Lead author Professor Graham Edgar, who founded Reef Life Survey, said the unprecedented scope of their survey allowed them to investigate global patterns in marine life. The abundance of life in warm regions (such as tropical rainforests and coral reefs) has long intrigued naturalists. At least 30 theories have been put forward, but most studies have been based on relatively limited surveys restricted to a single continent or group of species.<br />
<br />
By tapping into the recreational scuba diving community, Reef Life Survey has vastly increased the amount of information researchers have to work with. Professor Edgar and his colleagues provide one-on-one training to volunteers, teaching them how to carry out comprehensive scans of plants and animals in specific areas. <br />
<br />
Dr Adriana Vergés, a researcher at the University of New South Wales specialising in the impact of climate change on ocean ecosystems, said that the Reef Life Survey has already substantially improved our understanding of the marine environment. <br />
<br />
“For example, Reef Life Survey data has greatly contributed to our understanding of the factors that determine the effectiveness of effectiveness of marine-protected areas worldwide. The team have made all their data publicly available and more and more research is increasingly making use of it to answer research questions,” she said.<br />
<br />
Some of the divers have been working with Reef Life Survey for a decade, although others participate when they can. One volunteer, according to Professor Edgar, was so inspired by the project that he began a doctorate in marine biology (he graduated this year). <br />
<br />
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190972/original/file-20171019-1059-2k6ybi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" height="426" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190972/original/file-20171019-1059-2k6ybi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There’s a strong link between fish numbers and water warmth, which means warming oceans are likely to change global fish distribution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Stuart-Smith/Reef Life Survey</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<h2>
Warming oceans means fish on the move</h2>
One of the important insights delivered by the Reef Life Survey datatbase is the relationship between water temperature and the ratio of fish to invertebrates in an ecosystem. Essentially, the warmer the water, the more fish. Conversely, colder waters contain more invertebrates like lobster, crabs and shrimp.<br />
<br />
Professor Stewart Frusher, director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology at the University of Tasmania (and a former colleague of Professor Edgar) told The Conversation that he believes we will see wide-scale changes in fish distribution as climate change warms the oceans.<br />
<br />
“Species are moving into either deeper water or towards the poles. We also know that not all species are moving at the same rate, and thus new mixtures of ecosystems will occur, with the fast-moving species of one ecosystem mixing with the slower moving of another,” he said.<br />
<br />
As species migrate or expand into newly warmed waters, according to Professor Frusher, they will compete with and prey on the species already living in that area. And while it’s uncertain exactly how disruptive this will be, we do know that small ecosystem changes can rapidly lead to larger-scale impacts. <br />
<br />
In order to predict and manage these global changes, scientists need reliable and detailed world-wide data. Professor Frusher said that, with research funding declining, scientists do not have the resources to monitor at the scales required.<br />
<br />
<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85970/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" width="1" />“Well-developed citizen science programs fill an important niche for improving our understanding of how the earth is responding to change,” he said.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/au/team#madeleine-de-gabriele">Madeleine De Gabriele</a>, Deputy Editor: Energy + Environment, <em><a href="http://www.theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a></em><br />
<br />
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/citizen-scientist-scuba-divers-shed-light-on-the-impact-of-warming-oceans-on-marine-life-85970">original article</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-7025914272647261102017-10-16T10:34:00.001+10:302017-10-16T10:34:47.054+10:30VIDEO: The Refugeon KarmaTube: <a href="http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=7625">http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=7625</a><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A4DH5cK37Y8" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For hundreds of generations, the Gwich’in people of Alaska and northern Canada have depended on the caribou that migrate through the Arctic Refuge. They believe that they are guardians of the herd, and that the fates of the people and the caribou are forever entwined. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">For the last 30 years, the Gwich’in have been fighting to preserve a pristine coastal plain where the caribou calve their young, “the Sacred Place Where Life Begins.” With their traditional culture threatened by oil extraction and climate change, two Gwich’in women are continuing a decades-long fight of to protect their land and future.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-931673827389297727.post-18165342011980211622017-10-09T15:51:00.000+10:302017-10-09T15:51:33.267+10:30The Reality of Living With 50℃ Temperatures in Our Major Citiesby <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/liz-hanna-18032" style="text-align: start;">Liz Hanna</a><span style="text-align: start;">, </span><span style="text-align: start;"><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a>, The Conversation: <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-reality-of-living-with-50-temperatures-in-our-major-cities-85315">https://theconversation.com/the-reality-of-living-with-50-temperatures-in-our-major-cities-85315</a></span><br />
<figure style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="File 20171006 9753 1kew8yg" height="281" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/189099/width754/file-20171006-9753-1kew8yg.jpg" width="640" /></figure><figure style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><figcaption>
Sydney is facing 50℃ summer days by 2040, new research says.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><br />
Australia is hot. But future extreme hot weather will be worse still, with <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074612">new research</a> predicting that Sydney and Melbourne are on course for 50℃ summer days by the 2040s if high greenhouse emissions continue. That means that places such as Perth, Adelaide and various regional towns could conceivably hit that mark even sooner.<br />
<div>
<br />
This trend is worrying, but not particularly surprising given the fact that Australia is setting hot weather records at <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065793">12 times the pace of cold ones</a>. But it does call for an urgent response.<br />
<br />
Most of us are used to hot weather, but temperatures of 50℃ present unprecedented challenges to our health, work, transport habits, leisure and exercise.<br />
<br />
Humans have an upper limit to heat tolerance, beyond which we suffer <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/7/8034">heat stress and even death</a>. Death rates do climb on extremely cold days, but increase much more steeply on extremely hot ones. While cold weather can be tackled with warm clothes, avoiding heat stress requires access to fans or air conditioning, which is not always available.<br />
<br />
<figure class="align-center zoomable"><a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/189130/area14mp/file-20171006-25792-1icszfu.png"><img alt="" height="381" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/189130/width754/file-20171006-25792-1icszfu.png" width="640" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The death rate in heat ramps up more rapidly than in cold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data from Li et al., Sci. Rep. (2016); Baccini et al., Epidemiol. (2008); McMichael et al., Int. J. Epidemiol. (2008)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
Even with air conditioning, simply staying indoors is not necessarily an option. People must venture outside to commute and shop. Many essential services have to be done in the open air, such as essential services and maintaining public infrastructure. <br />
<br />
Roughly <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/7/8034">80% of the energy produced during muscular activity is heat</a>, which must be dissipated to the environment, largely through perspiration. This process is far less effective in hot and humid conditions, and as a result the body’s core temperature begins to climb. <br />
<br />
We can cope with increased temperatures for short periods – up to about half an hour – particularly those people who are fit, well hydrated and used to hot conditions. But if body temperature breaches 40-42℃ for an extended time, <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/7/8034">heat stress and death</a> are likely. In hot enough weather, even going for a walk can be deadly.<br />
<h2>
Air conditioning may not save lives</h2>
We expect air conditioning to take the strain, but may not realise just how much strain is involved. Shade temperatures of 50℃ mean that direct sunlight can raise the temperature to 60℃ or 70℃. Bringing that back to a comfortable 22℃ or even a warm 27℃ is not always possible and requires a lot of energy – putting serious strain on the electricity grid. <br />
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Electricity transmission systems are inherently <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/11/114008/pdf">vulnerable to extreme heat</a>. This means they can potentially fail simply due to the weather, let alone the increased demand on the grid from power consumers.<br />
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Power cuts can cause chaos, including the disruption to traffic signals on roads that may already be made less safe as their surfaces <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3390">soften in the heat</a>. Interruptions to essential services such as power and transport hamper access to lifesaving health care.<br />
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Myopic planning</h2>
It’s a dangerous game to use past extremes as a benchmark when planning for the future. The new research shows that our climate future will be very different from the past. <br />
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Melbourne’s 2014 heatwave triggered a surge in demand for ambulances that greatly exceeded the number available. Many of those in distress <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/anger-over-spike-in-deaths-during-record-victorian-heatwave-20140126-31gxb.html">waited hours for help</a>, and the death toll was <a href="http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-23/heatwave-death-toll-expected-to-top-almost-400/5214496">estimated at 203</a>.<br />
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Just last month, parts of New South Wales and Victoria experienced temperatures <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs62.pdf">16 degrees warmer than the September average</a>, and 2017 is <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201707">tracking as the world’s second-warmest year on record</a>.<br />
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Preparing ourselves</h2>
Last year, the <a href="https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/statement-from-the-australian-summit-on-extreme-heat-and-health">Australian Summit on Extreme Heat and Health</a> warned that the health sector is <a href="https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/uploads/db9b955b4917179139bb594184fc3ae9.pdf">underprepared to face existing heat extremes</a>.<br />
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The health sector is concerned about Australia’s slow progress and is responding with the launch of a <a href="http://www.caha.org.au/national-strategy-climate-health-wellbeing">national strategy for climate, health and well-being</a>. Reinstating climate and health research, health workforce training and health promotion are key recommendations. <br />
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There is much more to be done, and the prospect of major cities sweltering through 50℃ days escalates the urgency.<br />
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Two key messages arise from this. The first is that Australia urgently needs to adapt to the extra warming. Heat-wise communities (or “heat-safe communities” in some states) – where people understand the risks, protect themselves and look after each other – are vital to limit harm from heat exposure. The health sector must have the resources to respond to those who succumb. Research, training and health promotion are central.<br />
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The second message is that nations across the world need to <a href="https://theconversation.com/paris-climate-targets-arent-enough-but-we-can-close-the-gap-61798">improve their efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions</a>, so as to meet the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-paris-climate-agreement-at-a-glance-50465">Paris climate goal</a> of holding global warming to 1.5℃.<br />
<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85315/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" width="1" />If we can do that, we can stave off some of the worst impacts. We have been warned.<br />
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/liz-hanna-18032">Liz Hanna</a>, Honorary Senior Fellow, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-national-university-877">Australian National University</a></em><br />
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This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-reality-of-living-with-50-temperatures-in-our-major-cities-85315">original article</a>.</div>
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