[TheClimate.Vote] November 18, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 18, 2018/
*
**[Some wildfire sites for resources and donation]*
*https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-to-help-the-victims-of-the-california-wildfires*
*https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article180136626.html*
*https://www.hunker.com/13419145/grants-for-victims-of-house-fires*
*https://www.usa.gov/disaster-financial-help*
*https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=5456*
*https://www.fastcompany.com/90266047/how-to-help-california-wildfire-victims-19-things-you-can-do-for-woolsey-hill-and-camp-right-now*
*https://www.calfund.org/wildfire-relief-fund/*

- - -
[Wildfire news]
*Relentless California wildfires leave 79 dead, nearly 1,300 others 
still missing 
<https://abcnews.go.com/US/devastating-california-wildfires-leave-74-dead-1000-unaccounted/story?id=59262994>*
By MORGAN WINSOR - Nov 17, 2018
https://abcnews.go.com/US/devastating-california-wildfires-leave-74-dead-1000-unaccounted/story?id=59262994
- - - -
[images]
*These Photos Show What It's Like To Live In A Walmart Parking Lot After 
Fleeing A Wildfire 
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/camp-fire-california-walmart-parking-lot-photos>*
After being displaced by the Camp fire in Northern California, almost a 
thousand people have set up makeshift housing in a Walmart parking lot.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/camp-fire-california-walmart-parking-lot-photos


[Activism]
*Because 'Good Planets Are Hard to Find,' Extinction Rebellion Shuts 
Down London Bridges to Save Mother Earth 
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/17/because-good-planets-are-hard-find-extinction-rebellion-shuts-down-central-london>*
Day of revolt leads to mass arrests in the UK as protest participants 
argue too many still don't "recognize the seriousness of our existential 
crisis" and almost nobody is doing enough to end humanity's wreckless 
assault on planet's living systems
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/17/because-good-planets-are-hard-find-extinction-rebellion-shuts-down-central-london
- - -
["beautifully edited video of the Extinction Rebellion action yesterday"]
*WhartonFilms Black Friars Bridge The Rebellion 
<https://vimeo.com/301399993?activityReferer=1&fbclid=IwAR1UnHOPZ1FIRqf3F1MtbPQkOwtj58nbLrMj-jbcfjLLpz7pt4tk2ZIKqcU>*
Charlie Wharton
Filming footage to be used with 4 other camera operators for both a 
documentary and the Rebellions stock footage
https://vimeo.com/301399993?activityReferer=1&fbclid=IwAR1UnHOPZ1FIRqf3F1MtbPQkOwtj58nbLrMj-jbcfjLLpz7pt4tk2ZIKqcU


[Investigative journalism. Great. Must hear.]
*DRILLED <https://www.criticalfrequency.org/drilled>*
The first true-crime style pod to tackle corporate crime, Drilled digs 
into how a small group of fossil fuel execs and trade groups 
manufactured climate denial--how they did it, why it worked, and what 
happened as a result. The podcast includes never-before-published 
details about how the industry funds the bulk of climate science in the 
country and the sort of influence that has bought them over what gets 
studied and how, as well as a never-before-published internal document 
from ExxonMobil about how their advertorial program has effectively 
shifted how the media covers climate change. Host and reporter Amy 
Westervelt conducted research for more than a year, tracking down both 
documents and former oil company employees and scientists to uncover how 
exactly the industry's influence campaigns worked. The podcast is 
supported in part by a grant from the Institute for Governance and 
Sustainable Development.
- website: www.drilledpodcast.com
- Apple - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/drilled/id1439735906?mt=2
- Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/range/drilled
- Spotify: 
https://open.spotify.com/show/6zrL0QQWBhlVFsCveE2mtE?si=ENof9maQTF2XaAVf7BUjAQ
- TuneIn: 
https://tunein.com/podcasts/News--Politics-Podcasts/Drilled-p1175859/
- PocketCasts: https://pca.st/8qSZ
- RSS feed for the feedburner folks: https://drilled.libsyn.com/rss
- Google Play/Android - 
https://playmusic.app.goo.gl/?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&apn=com.google.android.music&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/I35tyxb55ysetxugu5vaugol2da?t%3DDrilled%26pcampaignid%3DMKT-na-all-co-pr-mu-pod-16
https://www.criticalfrequency.org/drilled


[Smart sober lecture - very current, direct]
*Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clphk5JgoZs>*
University of California Television (UCTV)
Published on Aug 1, 2018
(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/)
0:13 - Intro - Harry Helling
2:35 - Main Presentation - Mark Merrifield, Director, Center for Climate 
Change Impacts and Adaptations
*Scripps Institution of Oceanography*
As humankind faces massive changes in weather patterns, sea level, ocean 
acidity, and oxygen levels, Scripps Oceanography has launched a new 
center focused on understanding and adapting to the impacts of climate 
change. Mark Merrifield, Director of the Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations explains 
how the members of this dynamic network will develop strategies for 
climate change adaptation. Recorded on 06/11/2018. Series: "Jeffrey B. 
Graham Perspectives on Ocean Science Lecture Series" [8/2018] [Show ID: 
33720]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clphk5JgoZs


[another suggestion]
*Ask a Scientist: How to Deal with a Climate-Change Skeptic 
<https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/ask-a-scientist-how-to-deal-with-a-climate-change-skeptic>*
By Carolyn Kormann
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/ask-a-scientist-how-to-deal-with-a-climate-change-skeptic


[Hot flaming lingo]
*Firenado? Bambi Bucket? A guide to wildfire vocabulary 
<https://grist.org/article/firenado-bambi-bucket-a-guide-to-wildfire-vocabulary/>*
By Kate Yoder on Nov 16, 2018
Amid a hellscape of glowing coals, a fiery column recently took flight 
in Northern California, spinning against a red sky. The name for it? 
Firenado.

"I had never heard of a fire tornado until today and I really kind of 
hope I never see a firenado again in my life," music video producer 
Robby Starbuck said in a tweet that went viral.

Yes, a firenado is a real thing. Same with pyrocumulus, wildland-urban 
interface, and Bambi Buckets. This month's rash of fires brought 
wildfire jargon to the masses, and the masses (myself included) were 
pretty confused. I wondered what other fire words and concepts people 
were encountering for the first time as they read about the Camp Fire, 
the deadliest wildfire in California history.

What does it mean, for instance, when a wildfire is 45 percent 
"contained"? What the heck are the "Santa Ana winds," other than a 
frequent crossword answer? And is there a difference between a 
"firenado" and a "fire whirl"?

To understand these bewildering terms, I turned to Andrea Thode, a fire 
ecologist at Northern Arizona University. She acknowledged that these 
new words could be daunting for outsiders. "Terminology in the fire 
world is…there is a lot," she told me. To illustrate, she asked if I'd 
seen the National Wildfire Coordinating Group's 183-page glossary of 
wildfire terminology -- yes, that's 183 pages, not 183 words.

With climate change making wildfires worse, you're sure to be hearing 
these pyro-specific words for the rest of your life. You might as well 
learn them now.

***Bambi Bucket*
No, it's not an oversized pail to rescue lost fawns. A Bambi Bucket is a 
collapsible bucket that hangs from a helicopter to collect water and 
dump it on wildfires. What's with the name? The inventor, Don Arney, 
made it up as a joke name for the bucket he planned to planned to call 
SEI-Flex after his company, SEI Industries. Then a friend pressured him 
into making it the real name. End of story.

*Containment*
The Camp Fire was 45 percent "contained" as of Friday, according to Cal 
Fire. That doesn't mean 45 percent of the fire has been extinguished. It 
means that firefighters have surrounded 45 percent of the perimeter 
around the fire with "containment lines" -- rivers, trenches, and other 
physical barriers that prevent fire from creeping past. The percentage 
is a judgment call on the part of the fire teams, Thode says. Generally, 
they underreport the figure until the very end, because it would be 
embarrassing to call it contained and then have the fire run wild again.

*Defensible space*
If you live in a fire-prone area, it's a good idea to take precautions 
to protect yourself. You want the area around your house, called 
"defensible space," to be free of dead plants, wood piles, and anything 
that could turn into tinder so that wildfires bearing down on your 
belongings don't get any help.

*Firenado*
A fire tornado -- a spinning column of whirling, red-hot air -- is 
nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to 1871, 
shortly after the Great Chicago Fire. It's also known as a "fire whirl," 
though some experts maintain there's a difference between the two, 
reserving "firenado" for a vortex so big and strong that it's comparable 
to a typical, fire-free tornado. During the Carr Fire in California this 
summer, one of these twisters packed 143-mph winds -- the equivalent of 
an EF-3 rating on the tornado-damage scale. Thode, for one, doesn't make 
a distinction: "I wouldn't say a fire tornado is different from a fire 
whirl."

*Fuel*
Will it burn? If the answer is yes, it's fuel. Anything flammable 
counts. So not just gasoline and trees, but also houses, hand towels, 
and non-dairy creamer.

*Inversion*
An inversion is an atmospheric imbalance that occurs when a belt of warm 
air sits over cold air. That's the reverse of normal, stable conditions, 
in which it gets colder as you go up in elevation. Like a lid on a pan, 
an inversion can trap smoke. "It can make it really smoky for people 
underneath the inversion, because the smoke can't punch out and get 
away," Thode says.

*Prescribed fires*
It's a common forest-management practice to set fires on purpose -- in a 
careful, planned way, of course. Indigenous groups did this for 
thousands of years. But until recently (like 1995), the U.S. actively 
suppressed any and all wildfires, leading to a buildup of fuel in our 
forests. Prescribed burns take out overgrown brush, encourage the growth 
of native plants, and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires.

*Pyrocumulus*
**Evil-looking mushroom clouds sometimes form over a really hot 
wildfire. The name says it all. Cumulus clouds are those puffy, 
cotton-like clouds that people lying in the grass like to imagine are 
animals floating in the sky. Add fire (pyro) and you get the sinister 
name. As flames burn the moisture out of vegetation, they release water 
vapor and hot air that rise up and form a cumulus cloud. On rare 
occasions, rain falls from these clouds, snuffing out the flames below. 
Also known by the name "flammagenitus," pyrocumulous clouds sometimes 
form over volcanic eruptions too.

*Red flag warning*
Growing up near the Great Lakes, I thought red flags warned of dangerous 
currents in the water. But no. It's fire lingo for when warm 
temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds lead to a high risk of fire.

*Santa Ana winds*
Speaking of strong winds…the infamous Santa Ana winds fanned the flames 
of the Camp Fire. These hot, dry winds roll from the Great Basin into 
Southern California in the fall, gusting over already-dry terrain and 
getting warmer as they go. They're part of a larger category of 
pressure-based winds called "foehn" winds, which flow from high-pressure 
areas in the mountains down into low-pressure areas. "Typically you 
would see these Santa Ana winds, but you wouldn't see fuels this dry," 
Thode says. "Climate is definitely playing a role in this."

*Wildland-urban interface*
**This is the zone where the natural environment meets the built 
environment. Wherever you have homes, corrals, and powerlines butting up 
against undeveloped forests or grasslands, it could mean trouble for 
nearby towns and cities. That's because fire can easily spread from 
vegetation to grandma's house.

One final fire-tangential term to keep in mind: the "new abnormal." A 
few months ago, California Governor Jerry Brown called the increase in 
destructive fires "the new normal," but he recently tweaked the term.

"This is the new abnormal," he said at a press conference on Sunday. 
"Unfortunately, the best science is telling us that dryness, warmth, 
drought, all those things, they're going to intensify."

Seven of the 10 biggest wildfires in California history have occurred in 
the last decade. If we want to escape a future filled with firenadoes 
and pyrocumlous clouds, we've gotta get our act together on climate change.
https://grist.org/article/firenado-bambi-bucket-a-guide-to-wildfire-vocabulary/


[More words, now fiction]
*The literature of the Anthropocene: A genre called Cli-Fi 
<https://factordaily.com/cli-fi-science-fiction/>*
Gautham Shenoy  November 17, 2018
Two years ago, the Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of The Calcutta 
Chromosome, Amitav Ghosh asked "Where is the fiction about climate 
change?", lamenting the fact that "serious literary fiction" had failed 
in its duty when it comes to addressing climate change, noting that 
'fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of 
the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is 
often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of 
science fiction'. By that reasoning, Ghosh's next book is a science 
fiction novel. He describes the novel, Gun Island, as a story about a 
world wracked by climate change in which creatures and beings of every 
kind have been torn loose from their accustomed homes by the 
catastrophic processes of displacement that are now unfolding across the 
Earth at an ever-increasing pace.

When it comes out next year, Gun Island will be the latest amongst SF 
novels that deal with climate change. So many are the books that deal 
with this subject - especially in recent years when climate change has 
gone from science fiction to science fact - that they are now classified 
under a separate sub-genre - Climate Fiction, or Cli-Fi for short.

Climate change is underway, and unless concrete steps are taken, its 
effects could be irreversible and so far, sadly, looks so inevitable 
that for any novel set in the future to be a realistic extrapolation it 
cannot afford to ignore climate change. As Annalee Newitz, the author of 
Autonomous, a novel set over a century in the future, in a world where 
climate change has taken its toll, notes in a Yale Climate Connections 
interview, "Any story about the future that's at least a century out has 
to include a dramatic picture of climate change Any good world-building 
will grapple with climate change in some way." Sometimes, it doesn't 
even have to be set a hundred years in the future. Eliot Peper's 
Bandwidth which I wrote about in last week's column, is set in the 
near-future in a climate-changed world, while in Ian McDonald's 
acclaimed novel, River of Gods - portraying India in 2047 - water wars 
rage across the country, and one of the more desperate states has plans 
of towing icebergs from what's left of the Antarctic ice sheet into the 
Bay of Bengal to the mouth of the Ganga, to overcome the freshwater 
shortage but mostly in the hopes of kick-starting long-delayed monsoons.

Cli-Fi books sharpen this focus by taking it even further, by bringing 
climate change and its effects from the background into the forefront, 
to consider the specific problem of human-made global warming and its 
effects thereof. Because now more than ever, we need well-told stories. 
It will be critical to raise awareness and put the spotlight on the 
implications of climate change, on the planet, on societies, on individuals.

As Dan Bloom, the journalist who coined the term 'Climate Fiction' as 
recently as 2008 and its contraction 'Cli-Fi' tells me, "Cli-fi is 
relevant today more than ever and will remain so for the next 100 years 
because such novels shine a light on today's daily headlines worldwide. 
It's a global viewfinder. Climate change is on everyone's mind now with 
wildfires, floods, heat waves, cyclones, droughts worldwide. So put 
sci-fi together with cli-fi and the hybrid mix is ablaze with timely 
immediacy." And the genre's purpose as per him? "To act as a wake-up 
call, a warning flare, a /cri de coeur/, an alarm bell. Literature 
matters and cli-fi has a future in the 21st and 22nd centuries for sure. 
Cli-fi can minister to our anxieties and fears."

The findings of the latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change makes for alarming reading. It predicts dire 
consequences if the global average temperatures increases 1.5C above 
pre-industrial levels, with the future a lot grimmer if it reaches 2C.

So, is Cli-fi what we need to spur a change in our thinking, to spark 
action that could accelerate a positive political transformation? But 
can works of fiction contribute to saving this world, from itself? 
Perhaps they can. Because science fiction can help us imagine our 
planet's dystopian future through the eyes of people like us and in 
doing so help us avoid it. To quote the late, great Ursula Le Guin, "We 
live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the 
divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by 
human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in 
our art, the art of words." Climate change may seem inescapable, but at 
the very least, cli-fi can drive home the enormity of what awaits us if 
we don't change through stories that engage us and help us comprehend 
what lies ahead, and in doing so spur us and inspire us to do our bit in 
doing something about climate change.

So, here then are just three more cli-fi novels - to add on to the ones 
already listed & recommended in a previous edition of this column - that 
approach climate change from different perspectives.

*New York 2140 - Kim Stanley Robinson*
Set in 'super Venice' as New York City is nicknamed a 122 years from
now in a world forever altered by climate change, 2140 explores a
wide range of topics and themes as only Kim Stanley Robinson can.
Two 'pulses' of sea level rise means that it now stands at 50ft
(above today's levels), submerging much of New York City. Streets
have become canals and the skyscrapers have all become islands.
Inequality is at its extreme, with the 1% owning 80% of what's left
of the world's wealth. Richly detailed and very broad in scope -
from politics and economics (especially capitalism) to romance and
kidnapping - with eight different narrative strands that each
contribute to fleshing out one possible future that awaits the world
if climate change goes on and gets worse in the years to come. A
scathing criticism of inaction in the face of crisis, 2140 truly
drives home the consequences of climate change being a current blind
spot so to speak, and why we shouldn't wait till catastrophe strikes
to do something about it.

*Barbara Kingsolver - Flight Behaviour*
Flight Behaviour goes beyond the 'drowned world' trope and
highlights the effects of climate change on the planet's flora and
fauna as well, in this case Monarch Butterflies. The novel has as
its starting point a woman on a farm discovering a valley full of
monarch butterflies in a place that they shouldn't be at all,
displaying unseasonal patterns that go against everything that
people know about butterfly migration. The flummoxed locals and
others come up with many a theory, not all of them scientific in any
way, until an ornithologist proposes a very different reason for the
aberrant behaviour of the butterflies: climate change. The monarch
butterflies may take centre stage in this poignant tale, but what
the book leaves you with is the very human consequences of climate
change.

*Maja Lunde - The History of Bees*
Staying with insects, The History of Bess posits a world where
flowers have to be hand-pollinated by people. Driving home the
effects of climate change by highlighting the interdependence of
nature and people, the story follows three narrative stands:
England, 1851. William is a biologist and seed merchant, who sets
out to build a new type of beehive that will give both him and his
children honour and fame. USA, 2007. George is a beekeeper who has
spent his life keeping bees the old-fashioned way and is fighting an
uphill battle against modern farming, with hopes for his son, who in
turn has other ideas. China, 2098. Tao is one of the many 'human
bees' who manually sweep pollen from one flower to another, now that
all the real bees are forever gone. When Tao's son is mysteriously
hurt, and taken away by the authorities, she sets out on a journey
to find out what really happened to him. The History of Bees weaves
these three strands into a thought-provoking story of relationships,
love and loss, against the backdrop of the long-term effects of
climate change.

And as you go on to explore and cli-fi novels, I bid you farewell until 
next week, when we shall return with yet another edition of New Worlds 
Weekly as we together explore this many splendored thing we call science 
fiction. Here's to hoping the world and the powers that be take action 
and act soon on climate change so that on this planet itself, our 
children and our children's children can Live Long and Prosper!
https://factordaily.com/cli-fi-science-fiction/


[Bugged by fewer bugs]
*INSECT POPULATIONS ARE DECLINING AROUND THE WORLD. HOW WORRIED SHOULD 
WE BE? 
<https://ensia.com/features/insects-decline-armageddon-biodiversity/>*
Widely reported studies this year and last led to headlines globally of 
an "insect Armageddon." The real story is more nuanced -- but probably 
just as unsettling...
Mary Hoff, Ensia editor in chief
October 30, 2018 -- When Susan Weller traveled to Ecuador to study tiger 
moths in the 1980s, she found plenty of insects. A decade later, Weller, 
now director of the University of Nebraska State Museum, returned to 
conduct follow-up research. But the moths she was looking for were gone.
"Just in that time frame, areas I had collected had been transformed. 
Forests had been taken out…brand new cities had sprung up. I tried to go 
back and collect from other historic collecting sites, and those sites 
no longer existed. They were parking lots," she says.
Around the globe, scientists are getting hints that all is not well in 
the world of insects. Increasingly, reports are trickling in of 
unsettling changes in populations of not only butterflies and bees, but 
of far less charismatic bugs and beetles as well. Most recently, a 
research team from the U.S. and Mexico reported a startling decline 
between 1976 and 2013 in the weight of insects and other arthropods 
collected at select sites in Puerto Rico...
- - -
Unsung Heroes
Many people tend to think of animals as large, furry, likeable 
creatures. In reality, insects are the dominant form of animal life. 
Close a million species have been described to date -- compared with a 
paltry 5,416 mammals. And depending on who you ask, entomologists 
suspect there could be two to 30 times as many actually out there.

Not only that, but insects are linchpins of the living world, carrying 
out numerous functions that make life possible.

Insects pollinate a spectrum of plants, including many of those that 
humans rely on for food. They also are key players in other important 
jobs including breaking dead things down into the building blocks for 
new life, controlling weeds and providing raw materials for medicines. 
And they provide sustenance for a spectrum of other animals -- in fact, 
the Puerto Rico study showed a decline in density of insect-eating 
frogs, birds and lizards that paralleled the insect nosedive...
- -
It's unsettling, then, to imagine that insects might be in trouble. But 
a spectrum of studies, combined with anecdotal evidence, increasingly 
suggests that things are, in the words of Harper Adams University 
entomologist Simon Leather, "not how they should be."
- -
In the 1990s, reports started cropping up around the world of 
disappearing pollinators. In 2006, researchers reported dramatic 
declines in counts of moths attracted to light traps in Great Britain. A 
2010 international gathering of firefly experts reported unsettling 
downward trends. In 2017, scientists reported a decline of more than 75 
percent in insect biomass across 63 nature areas in Germany between 1989 
and 2016. A 2018 census found an ominous drop in monarch butterflies 
along the California coast. Anecdotal evidence from Australia earlier 
this year indicates insect declines there as well.
- - -
Worldwide, a 2014 summary of global declines in biodiversity and 
abundance estimated a 45 percent drop in the abundance of invertebrates, 
most of which are insects. And many individual species and species 
groups are declining or even being threatened with extinction, from 
bumblebees in Europe and the United States to fungus weevils in Africa...
- -
First and foremost, many scientists say, we need to get a better handle 
on what's currently out there in terms of species and numbers so we have 
a baseline for measuring change and a notion of what might need 
protecting....
- -
Second, scientists are calling for developing a better sense of trends 
in abundance and diversity through studies that are repeated over time 
at the same location, resampling in areas where baselines were 
established decades ago...
- -
Wagner says there is a "huge, huge" role for citizen science to 
contribute to assessing the status of insects around the world, 
especially species that are seen as desirable or attractive, which are 
most likely going to be of interest to (and identifiable by) nonscientists.

"It's clearly one of the largest data generators," he says. "There's no 
way the scientific community can fund studies all the way across the 
planetary surface and monitor all insects. The only way we can hope to 
get reasonable data on the poster children type of insects -- bees, 
butterflies, moths, some of the more charismatic species -- would be to 
harness citizen scientists."
https://ensia.com/features/insects-decline-armageddon-biodiversity/


[opinion from a wise young woman]
*Column: Climate change, capitalism and the worldwide symbiote 
<https://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/column-climate-change-capitalism-and-the-worldwide-symbiote/article_bf5e9918-c509-5e09-8405-647d5bbbf7a4.html>*
Willa Brosnihan
I am not a tree hugger. I do not always remember to switch off the 
lights when I leave the room, and sometimes I turn the heat up too high 
in the winter. I don't spend my days saving injured birds or picking up 
trash off the beach. But after the climate report issued by the 
International Panel on Climate Change, I started to feel guilty about 
how little I've been doing.

The report said that the highest temperature increase that the planet 
can safely reach in comparison to pre-industrial global temperatures is 
1.5 degrees Celsius. In 2017, NASA placed us at a 0.9 degree Celsius 
increase, and according to the IPCC report, we are expected to reach 
that 1.5 degrees "between 2030 and 2052."

The effect of this change to our planet's climate would be catastrophic. 
Sea level rise from melting ice caps would worsen the flooding caused by 
the increasing numbers of hurricanes, typhoons and blizzards that could 
be expected. Arid regions and land already damaged by deforestation 
would become completely unfarmable. Poor communities would be the most 
drastically and immediately affected.

Here on the coast, where our high school parking lot already fills with 
ocean water after a big storm, we should be worrying about what our 
little city will look like for our children and grandchildren.
I am not a scientist or a conservationist, but that doesn't mean I'm not 
worried. When I first heard that our world will be irreversibly changed 
by the time I'm 40, I felt defeated; especially now, with an 
administration that officially denies climate change, fixing the 
situation seems impossible. If we are going to stop climate change in 
its tracks, we need to address these people, and understand where their 
ideas come from.

The answer to that question is a complicated one, but for a lot of 
people it comes down to the fact that climate change is inconvenient for 
big businesses. Think about it -- if you were the owner of a company 
that extracted crude oil, would you want the people you sell to to 
switch to sustainable energy sources? If you were involved in a company 
that manufactures goods in factories that spew greenhouse gases into the 
atmosphere, would you want the people buying those goods to believe that 
your methods are endangering them? No you wouldn't, because that's not 
good for business.

This is not to say that all CEOs and business owners are heartless 
tycoons -- choosing to ignore scientific opinion for the continuation of 
your livelihood probably wouldn't be too much of a reach for the average 
person, especially when you are making piles of money. The more central 
problem is the way that our current economic system facilitates greed, 
which doesn't lend itself well to protecting our planet -- or each other.

Capitalism, the driving force of this system, is based on the idea that 
the markets should go generally unregulated by the government, arguably 
creating economic freedom, but also creating lots of room for 
exploitation of people, resources and the environment. Capitalism in 
some form has been around about as long as people have, entrenched in 
systems of hierarchy all over the world; in order for this economic 
system to function, there has to be a lower class to do the grunt work 
for the profit of the upper classes.

During the Industrial Revolution, when climate change got its start, the 
idea of social Darwinism, a way to excuse this disparity, took hold. 
Social Darwinism is the theory, now disproved, that certain people and 
societies who are more evolutionarily fit naturally become more powerful 
through competition, and other peoples are their natural underlings.
As can be expected, this idea was used to defend racism, but it was also 
presented as evidence in support of laissez-faire capitalism, a policy 
of little to no interference in business by the government; if it was 
scientific norm for one group to have the power and another to exist 
according to their superior intellect and way of life, why should the 
government have the right to change the natural order?

Darwin's theory of evolution was the inspiration for this ideology, 
stating that mutations occur randomly, and as they are always in 
competition with members of their own species, those with positive 
mutations survive to reproduce and the change is slowly adopted by the 
entire population, generation by generation. Darwinism is the 
cornerstone of modern biology; it explains where species come from and 
how they change over time, but the stress that it places on competition 
may not be entirely warranted.

Darwinism is centered around the idea that all kinds of organisms, from 
the tiniest microbes to the most enormous blue whales, formed through a 
process of brutal "survival of the fittest" over thousands of years, 
completely disregarding the important impact that symbiosis, or 
organisms working together, has had on evolution. Lynn Margulis, a 
pioneer of endosymbiosis, theorized that the very first eukaryotic cells 
(the cells that make up everything from fungi to people), were formed 
through a symbiotic relationship between un-nucleated bacteria which 
merged, and that chloroplasts and mitochondria (the organelles which 
produce energy for cells to use) were originally each a separate 
bacterial species.

Although Margulis' theory was largely discredited during her career, it 
has now been widely accepted by the scientific community as an 
explanation for the earliest adaptations of life. Margulis went even 
further with her radical scientific ideas, working with British chemist 
James E. Lovelock to develop the highly controversial "Gaia hypothesis," 
(named for the Greek earth goddess) which presented the idea that the 
earth is a complex interconnected system in which living things have a 
regulatory effect on their environment, creating a worldwide homeostasis 
for themselves, and in effect, for each other.

Essentially, Margulis and Lovelock proposed that planet Earth is a self 
regulating system of organisms and natural processes; a huge 
endosymbiotic organism in and of itself.
As we watch the effects of climate change unfold, lamenting the tooth 
and nail nature of survival can be an appealing scapegoat. One might 
think that we have simply conquered the natural world, placing ourselves 
at the top of the food chain through our superior intelligence, and are 
now observing the inevitable effect of Darwinism; a dominant species 
overpowering all the rest. However convenient that excuse might be, the 
Gaia hypothesis throws a wrench in the gears, forcing us to consider 
that it isn't competition that leads us to damage the planet and its 
life, but a flaw in human nature.

The human infatuation with power has seeped into the way we think about 
life on Earth, and our predisposition to greed has allowed us to use 
twisted theories like Social Darwinism to exploit each other, and now 
especially, the environment. Climate change is happening, and it's not 
because the human race was evolutionarily destined to destroy, but 
because we have failed to take action against the inequitable structures 
on which our society depends. We need to self regulate -- be symbiotes 
in the system that we cannot survive without.

Lessening the damage caused by climate change is not just a question of 
remembering to turn the lights off when you leave a room, it requires a 
careful analysis of what caused it, and a complete overthrow of the 
faulty principles that drive our society.
This is a problem that must be solved through systematic and impactful 
change, not individual actions; we need a modern renaissance of 
cooperation. We have a basic duty to each other and the ecosystem we are 
a part of to acknowledge undeniable human flaws, and create legislation 
which keeps them from negatively affecting society.

We need to do something about climate change before it's too late, and 
that means we need to change the way we think and what we value. It is 
time to stop competing, because if we win this self-imposed war against 
nature, humanity will die along side Gaia.
Willa Brosnihan is a sophomore at Gloucester High School. This column 
originally appeared in the student news site The Gillnetter 
(thegillnetter.com). 
https://thegillnetter.com/7490/opinion/climate-change-capitalism-and-the-worldwide-symbiote/
https://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/column-climate-change-capitalism-and-the-worldwide-symbiote/article_bf5e9918-c509-5e09-8405-647d5bbbf7a4.html


[New from Denis Postle]
"Here is the second in my series of videos (10 mins and phone-friendly), 
about the oncoming climate tsunami, Business-as-usual - Messages From 
The Blue Planet 2.'...the Planet has some hard things to say about the 
house-keeping of humankind, the likely consequences of current 
life-styles, plus a proposal for interrupting inevitable near-term human 
extinction'."
*BUSINESS-AS-USUAL - Messages From the Blue Planet 2 
<https://vimeo.com/298238163>*
The Planet has some hard things to say about the house-keeping of 
humankind, the likely consequences of current life-styles, and offers a 
proposal for interrupting inevitable near-term human extinction
https://vimeo.com/298238163


*This Day in Climate History - November 18, 2008 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvG2XptIEJk> - from D.R. Tucker*
November 18, 2008: President-elect Obama addresses the Global Climate 
Summit in Los Angeles, California via a pre-taped speech, declaring that 
his administration will be committed to reducing carbon pollution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvG2XptIEJk
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

*** Privacy and Security:*This is a text-only mailing that carries no 
images which may originate from remote servers. Text-only messages 
provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic 
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.