[TheClimate.Vote] December 6, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Dec 6 09:36:05 EST 2018
/December 6, 2018/
[Washington Post wakes up]
***'A kind of dark realism': Why the climate change problem is starting
to look too big to solve*
By Steven Mufson - Reporter covering energy and other financial matters
December 4 at 6:00 AM
In the daunting math of climate action, individual choices and
government policies aren't adding up.
Solar panels are being nailed to rooftops, colossal wind turbines
bestride the plains and oceans, and a million electric vehicles are on
U.S. roads -- and it isn't enough. Even if the world did an unlikely
series of about-faces -- halting deforestation, going vegetarian, paying
$50 a ton carbon taxes, boosting energy efficiency, doubling car
mileage, and more -- it would not be enough.
"There's no silver bullet," said Andrew Jones, co-founder of the
modeling firm Climate Interactive. "There's silver buckshot: many
actions in many domains."
As the 24th U.N. conference on climate change kicks off this week, a
steady drumbeat of scientific reports have sounded warnings about
current climate trajectories. One warned of the need to curb global
warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius -- 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit -- over
preindustrial levels instead of the widely accepted target of 2 degrees
Celsius. Another warned of the growing gap between the commitments made
at earlier U.N. conferences and what is needed to steer the planet off
its current path to calamitous global warming.
If it sounds downbeat, that's because it is.
The world has waited so long that preventing disruptive climate change
requires action "unprecedented in scale," the U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change said in an October report.
William Nordhaus, the Yale University professor who just won the Nobel
Prize for his work on the economics of climate change, recently
described his outlook like this: "I never use the word 'pessimism'; I
always use the word 'realism,' but I'd say it's a kind of dark realism
today."
Climate scientists and policy experts realize that they walk a fine line
between jolting consumers and policymakers into action and immobilizing
them with paralyzing pessimism about the world's ability to hit climate
targets.
"If you're driving on a highway and the car in front of you stops short,
and you slam on brakes and realize that you're going to hit the guy no
matter what, that's not the time to take your foot off the brake," said
John Sterman, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology's business school. "And you certainly don't step on the
gas."..
Sterman said that the world has missed the chance to contain warming
without huge disruptions. "Now, it's technically possible to do that,
but we don't have the policies in place," he said. "That's discouraging.
But that just means we have to redouble our efforts."
It's not that corporations and governments haven't attacked the problem
or made breathtaking advances in energy technology. The cost of solar
has plunged 78 percent for utility-scale projects since 2010. Over the
same period, the cost of wind electricity fell nearly a quarter; the
biggest turbines offshore now have arms weighing roughly 35 tons each
that stretch nearly two football fields across...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-kind-of-dark-realism-why-the-climate-change-problem-is-starting-to-look-too-big-to-solve/2018/12/03/378e49e4-e75d-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html?utm_term=.b57b82f353e5
[acceleration]
*Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accelerate Like a 'Speeding Freight Train' in
2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-2018.html>*
Greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are growing at an accelerating pace
this year, researchers said Wednesday, putting the world on track to
face some of the most severe consequences of global warming sooner than
expected.
Scientists described the quickening rate of carbon dioxide emissions in
stark terms, comparing it to a "speeding freight train" and laying part
of the blame on an unexpected surge in the appetite for oil as people
around the world not only buy more cars but also drive them farther than
in the past -- more than offsetting any gains from the spread of
electric vehicles.
- -
The new assessment is the third major scientific report in recent months
to send a message that the world is failing to make sufficient progress
to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
- -
Even as coal has fallen out of favor in some markets, the rise in
emissions has been driven by stronger demand for natural gas and oil,
scientists said. And even as the use of renewable energy like solar and
wind power has expanded exponentially, it has not been enough to offset
the increased use of fossil fuels.
- -
Last year, extreme weather disasters cost the United States a record
$306 billion.
Dr. Jackson said the new report was "not good news," but added that it
still contained "some glimmers of hope," particularly about air
pollution associated with the burning of coal for fuel. "Coal use has
dropped 40 percent in the United States, replaced by natural gas and
renewables," he said. "That's saving lives as well as helping the
climate problem."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-2018.html
- - -
*Global energy growth is outpacing decarbonization*
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303
- -
*Global warming will happen faster than we think*
Three trends will combine to hasten it, warn Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran
Ramanathan and David G. Victor.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5
[bugs bug out]
*The Insect Apocalypse Is Here
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html>*
What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?
- - -
The insects in the forest that Lister studied haven't been contending
with pesticides or habitat loss, the two problems to which the Krefeld
paper pointed. Instead, Lister chalks up their decline to climate
change, which has already increased temperatures in Luquillo by two
degrees Celsius since Lister first sampled there. Previous research
suggested that tropical bugs will be unusually sensitive to temperature
changes; in November, scientists who subjected laboratory beetles to a
heat wave reported that the increased temperatures made them
significantly less fertile. Other scientists wonder if it might be
climate-induced drought or possibly invasive rats or simply "death by a
thousand cuts" -- a confluence of many kinds of changes to the places
where insects once thrived.
Like other species, insects are responding to what Chris Thomas, an
insect ecologist at the University of York, has called "the
transformation of the world": not just a changing climate but also the
widespread conversion, via urbanization, agricultural intensification
and so on, of natural spaces into human ones, with fewer and fewer
resources "left over" for nonhuman creatures to live on. What resources
remain are often contaminated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
[of course]
*News Networks Fall Short on Climate Story as Dolphins Die on the Beach
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/business/media/climate-change-news-media-red-tide-florida.html>*
- -
Federal officials pointed to a red tide algae bloom as the culprit. Its
toxins deplete seawater of oxygen and kill the sea creatures that ingest it.
Red tide has killed wildlife along the Gulf Coast for centuries. But the
latest bloom has been unusually persistent. It arrived over a year ago,
and its effects have been extreme.
Ms. Gill and others here argued that human activity had contributed to
the stubborn bloom. She joined the debate on Facebook, making the case
that the combined effects of sugar plantations, fertilizer runoff and
warming seas were sustaining the microscopic Karenia brevis algae
species and making it more lethal.
Many scientists agree with that assessment, arguing that human-based
nutrients and climate change are at least exacerbating the red tide and
other algae blooms.
- -
Veterinarians at the von Arx Wildlife Hospital of the Conservancy of
Southwest Florida were deluged. The director, Joanna Fitzgerald, told me
they weren't ready to blame red tide. Working in the reality business,
they were awaiting lab results. But she added that she had never seen
anything like it in 25 years.
"I don't understand the denial when there is proof of something like
this affecting the animals," Ms. Fitzgerald said. "I mean, you can't
keep denying it."
After a pause, she added, "I mean, obviously, you can. Because people are."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/business/media/climate-change-news-media-red-tide-florida.html
[like reverse gear]
*How do you degrow?
<https://www.degrowth.info/en/2018/11/how-do-you-degrow/>*
By Constanza Hepp - 23. November 2018
We live nextdoor to my partner's grandmother, Maria, who was born during
the Second World War in Northern Italy. This means that she knows what
hard times look like. Maria could not believe we would be using washable
diapers for our baby boy. With genuine surprise she asked me, "why?",
and then she was curious in which pot we were planning to boil the
diapers. In her eyes, we could not possibly be choosing to use washable
diapers – to her, an extinct garment reminiscent of poverty and manual
labour – when there exists the comfort of the disposable. Therefore, it
must be that we cannot afford disposable diapers. Needless to say, for
the first six months of our son's life, every time Maria went to the
supermarket, she bought us a packet of disposable diapers.
Everything about the lifestyle we are accustomed to, as rich westerners,
has to change. If we let that sink in for a little bit that is when the
real disruption comes in, giving way to a radical shift in perspective.
So, where do we go from here?
As practitioners of the degrowth creed, the first challenge we face is
precisely this, where do we start? This is a very real question that
needs to be answered when degrowthers decide to settle down. Since it's
possible to start anywhere, why not start with the closest and most
immediate: ourselves. Our life. Our lifestyle, our diet, our jobs. I
want to bring forward how this radical decision – to choose the self as
the first point of action towards a degrowth future – brings large
obstacles, huge consequences, many humbling lessons and above all, so
many mixed feelings.
How do we go about practicing degrowth?
So again, how do we go about practicing degrowth? Keeping in mind that
the larger goal of degrowth is to socially organize through sufficiency,
not to individually organize a lifestyle that soothes colonial guilt. As
I see it, there are two paths for practicing a degrowth lifestyle. One
is to build an autonomous off-the-gird community that performs the
visions for a degrowth society and the other is to coexist within
existing 'conventional' communities, neighbourhoods and families.
I can only speak for the latter path, as it has been my experience for
the last couple of years. Through coexisting with the status-quo, we are
trying to change it from within. So far, the result is a living
contradiction: we live in a small town, we manage a small homestead, and
share with our community, but at the same time we are constantly
breaking apart from them. The cultural obstacles are soul crushing.
Being surrounded by conspicuous consumption and judged by the same
standards is overwhelming. It's too easy to feel constrained when we are
just trying to live in a way that is respectful of the natural world.
"I don't understand this poverty vow you have taken for the sake of the
environment"
Before my son was born, my mother said to me once, "I don't understand
this poverty vow you have taken for the sake of the environment". Only
in that moment I realized what my choices look like to others. To me, it
was both a sobering and a liberating choice, choosing to living with
less in some aspects but really having so much more in other regards.
However, to a set of very pragmatic eyes, voluntary simplicity looks a
whole lot like poverty.
It's hard to swallow just how much privilege is contained within that
sentence, but it's true. With her comment, my mother was echoing the
common renunciations of Degrowth, which is something we (as a movement)
absolutely must learn to deal with. Part-time jobs mean more time for
the unpaid reproductive labour in the home and the farm, but it also
requires to make do with half the salary. Second-hand clothes are an
opportunity to be creative and original, but they also look like you
cannot afford clothes and rely on hand-me-downs. Fostering cooperation
is a way of strengthening the bonds within a community, but it could
also mean you are just needy and always seeking help. And so on.
Can we calmly coexist in communities when the waters are turbulent and
bitter with contradiction? Not really, that's my honest reply. There is
no way around it, wherever both voluntary simplicity and frivolous
materialism (and its resultant over-consumption) occur, a permanent
contradiction exists that must be dealt with, never reconciled.
A couple of weeks ago, our neighbour's daughter handed me a bag full of
boy's clothing and begged me not to be offended. Since the clothes were
still good she thought maybe I could find use for them. Twice she
apologized for offending me in such a way. Offended! If anything, I am
offended she thought I would be offended! I tried to show my gratitude
and praise her gesture, but still she shied away.
In the performance of degrowth principles, the everyday things that add
up to our existence become tense, there are constant contradictions and
irreconcilabilities with the status-quo. And that's a good thing. But a
great deal of support is lacking, because there is definitely a kind of
solitude in trying to be alright with a paradoxical existence.
There is a large degrowth community out there
The good news is, we are not alone! There is a large degrowth community
out there; many odd-duck degrowthers living amidst capitalistic
exploitation who can inspire and encourage each other. We are the
revolutionaries that are living with less, the ones whose food choices
imply a long explanation, and the ones choosing to wash diapers.
I've always accepted Maria's weekly gift of disposable diapers. Although
I've tried to explain several times, my point doesn't really get across.
She is doing us a favour and refusing her gift would damage our
friendship. She is a generous woman who takes pride in her position of
caretaker and the diapers are one of the many ways she helps us out. I
am thankful for that, but we don't really understand each other. She has
come to interpret that we are 'artistic', 'eccentric', and that we
'experiment' a lot. To her, we are not degrowthers, we are just poor.
This is an invitation: we want to read and share your stories.
How do you degrow? Share with us your experiences, your challenges, or
even better – your successes. Write to us at blog at degrowth.de
Author
Constanza Hepp studied Journalism in Santiago (Chile) and Human Ecology
in Lund (Sweden). She is currently living in northern Italy, caring for
her young family and establishing a CSA (Community Supported
Agriculture) project. She is interested in creating a bridge between
academic activism and social practices with potential towards systemic
change.
- - -
[Planning for the future]
*A definition or what does "degrowth" mean to us?
<https://www.degrowth.info/en/what-is-degrowth/>*
By "degrowth", we understand a form of society and economy which aims at
the well-being of all and sustains the natural basis of life. To achieve
degrowth, we need a fundamental transformation of our lives and an
extensive cultural change.
The current economic and social paradigm is "faster, higher, further".
It is built on and stimulates competition between all humans. This
causes acceleration, stress and exclusion. Our economy destroys the
natural basis of life. We are convinced that the common values of a
degrowth society should be care, solidarity and cooperation. Humanity
has to understand itself as part of the planetary ecological system.
Only this way, a self-determined life in dignity for all can be made
possible.
Essential for degrowth is:
- Striving for the good life for all. This includes deceleration, time
welfare and conviviality.
- A reduction of production and consumption in the global North and
liberation from the one-sided Western paradigm of development. This
could allow for a self-determined path of social organization in the
global South.
- An extension of democratic decision-making to allow for real political
participation.
- Social changes and an orientation towards sufficiency instead of
purely technological changes and improvements in efficiency in order to
solve ecological problems. We believe that is has historically been
proven that decoupling economic growth from resource use is not possible.
- The creation of open, connected and localized economies.
This definition of degrowth is based on the definition of Research and
Degrowth, which the organizational team of the degrowth conference in
Leipzig adapted and which was further edited by the editorial team of
the web portal.
We distance ourselves from forms of growth critique which do not aim for
the good life for all. We object to all right-wing, racist and sexist
forms of growth critique.
*Why the word "degrowth"?*
English speakers sometimes find the word 'degrowth' problematic and it
can lead to misunderstandings. Reading just the word, it has a negative,
and for some, a non-ecological connotation. But the origin of the term
is anything but that. It is to be found in Latin languages, where "la
décroissance" in French or "la decrescita" in Italian refer to a river
going back to its normal flow after a disastrous flood. The English word
"degrowth" became prominent after the first international degrowth
conference in Paris in 2008. It has since than been established in
academic writing as well as in the media and is used by social movements
and practitioners. An advantage of using a term which does not roll off
the tongue easily in English is that it creates disruption. Disruption
in a world where the critique of economic growth is a radical position.
The editorial team of the degrowth web portal decided to use the English
term "degrowth" to name the page. As a German translation we use
"Postwachstum" in texts. The words "Wachstumsrücknahme" and
"Entwachstum" we use synonymously.
https://www.degrowth.info/en/what-is-degrowth/
[Warning: Sarcasm/Satire from The Onion]
*Researchers Publish List Of Ways Animals Can Help Fight Climate Change*
<https://www.theonion.com/researchers-publish-list-of-ways-animals-can-help-fight-1830855901>
MEDFORD, MA--Explaining that there were many simple things they could do
to tackle one of the most urgent crises facing planet Earth, researchers
from Tufts University published Tuesday a list of ways that animals
could help fight climate change. "Whether you're a beaver, elk, or
trout, it's important for everyone to do their part to stop global
warming with easy lifestyle changes like turning off energy-wasting
appliances, recycling, and driving less," said lead researcher Irene
Gregory, adding that there were dozens of ways mammals, insects,
reptiles, amphibians, and other members of the animal kingdom could
reduce their participation in harmful behaviors that contribute to
rising sea levels, more devastating storms, and other adverse effects of
climate change. "While it may seem daunting to address the root causes
of climate change, things like wolves cutting down on their meat
consumption and raccoons avoiding processed foods with excessive plastic
packaging can make a big difference in the long run. Climate change is a
global issue, so the time is now for animals to do their part to help
protect the environment, and that means cows working to offset their
carbon footprint, birds cutting down on excess travel, and fish having
fewer children. We also urge animals to become more politically involved
by contacting their member of Congress and demand the government focus
on regulatory measures and promoting renewable technology--consider
writing a letter to your representative." Researchers followed up their
advice to animals with several recommendations for plants that aren't
currently doing enough to fight climate change.
https://www.theonion.com/researchers-publish-list-of-ways-animals-can-help-fight-1830855901
*This Day in Climate History - December 6, 1988
<http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/43/a43r053.htm> - from D.R. Tucker*
December 6, 1988: The World Meteorological Organization and the United
Nations Environmental Program establish the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/43/a43r053.htm
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