[TheClimate.Vote] January 12, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sun Jan 12 09:46:38 EST 2020

/*January 12, 2020*/

[Solutions]
*How to Stop Freaking Out and Tackle Climate Change*
Here's a five-step plan to deal with the stress and become part of the 
solution.
By Emma Marris - Jan. 10, 2020
Ms. Marris is the author of "Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a 
Post-Wild World."
- - -
As an environmental writer, I'm often asked for guidance on coping with 
climate change. I have thoughts. Even better, I have a five-point plan 
to manage the psychological toll of living with climate change and to 
become part of the solution.

*Step 1: Ditch the shame.*
The first step is the key to all the rest. Yes, our daily lives are 
undoubtedly contributing to climate change. But that's because the rich 
and powerful have constructed systems that make it nearly impossible to 
live lightly on the earth. Our economic systems require most adults to 
work, and many of us must commute to work in or to cities intentionally 
designed to favor the automobile. Unsustainable food, clothes and other 
goods remain cheaper than sustainable alternatives.

And yet we blame ourselves for not being green enough...
- - -
*Step 2: Focus on systems, not yourself.*
Even if we manage to zero-out our own contributions to climate change, 
it would be practically a full-time job, leaving us little time or 
energy for pushing for the systemic changes we need. And the avoided 
emissions would be tiny compared with the scale of the problem...
- - -
My point is that the climate crisis is not going to be solved by 
personal sacrifice. It will be solved by electing the right people, 
passing the right laws, drafting the right regulations, signing the 
right treaties -- and respecting those treaties already signed, 
particularly with indigenous nations. It will be solved by holding the 
companies and people who have made billions off our shared atmosphere to 
account.

*Step 3: Join an effective group.*
These sweeping, systemic changes are complicated and will be hard won. 
No single person alone can make them happen...
- - -
*Step 4: Define your role.*
The power of these groups is not simply strength in numbers. They work 
well because they divide up the work that needs to be done and give each 
task to those best suited to it. This also makes the fight less 
daunting. Instead of trying to become an expert in international 
regulatory law, global supply chains, atmospheric science and the art of 
protest, you can offer the skills and resources you already have, and 
trust that other people with complementary skills are doing what they 
can do, too...
- - -
*Step 5: Know what you are fighting for, not just what you are fighting 
against.**
*Even though keeping global warming under 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 
degrees Celsius) would absolutely be better than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit 
(2 degrees Celsius) of warming, there is no threshold that means that it 
is "too late" or that we are "doomed." The lower, the better. It is 
always worth fighting.

As we fight, it is important for our mental health and motivation to 
have an image in mind of our goal: a realistically good future.

Imagine dense but livable cities veined with public transit and leafy 
parks, infrastructure humming away to remove carbon dioxide from the 
atmosphere, fake meat that tastes better than the real thing, species 
recovering and rewilding the world, the rivers silver with fish, the 
skies musical with flocking birds.

This is a future where the economic inequality, racism and colonialism 
that made decades of inaction on climate change possible has been 
acknowledged and is being addressed. It is a time of healing. Many 
ecosystems have changed, but natural resilience and thoughtful human 
assistance is preventing most species from going extinct. This is a 
future in which children don't need to take to the streets in protest 
and alarm, because their parents and grandparents took action. Instead, 
they are climbing trees.

This future is still possible. But it will only come to pass if we shed 
our shame, stop focusing on ourselves, join together and demand it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/how-to-help-climate-change.html
- - -
[more suggestion$]
*Want to Do Something About Climate Change? Follow the Money*
Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America are the worst 
offenders.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/opinion/climate-change-bank-investment.html
- -
*WALL STREET IS FINANCING CLIMATE DESTRUCTION*
Banks, insurance companies, and asset managers are funding,
insuring and investing in the climate crisis.

Stopping this money pipeline is one of the
most important ways we can address the climate emergency.
StopTheMoneyPipeline.Com

[Trevor Noah news summary]
*If You Don't Know, Now You Know: Australia's Wildfires | The Daily Show*
Jan 9, 2020
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
As wildfires tear through Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison takes 
heat for his handling of the situation, and Good Samaritans around the 
world step up to help. #IfYouDontKnowNowYouKnow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0qXt3mAlcY
- - -
[Australia]
*With Their Land In Flames, Aboriginals Warn Fires Show Deep Problems In 
Australia*
Before Britain started sending convicts to the continent in the 1700's, 
Aboriginal Australians used fire to manage brushlands and forests across 
the continent.
Noel Butler -- who's known even to the fire crews at the end of his road 
as "Uncle Noel" -- and his wife, Trish, used to run the Nuragunya 
Aboriginal culture and education camp deep in a forest in the state of 
New South Wales...
- - -
Butler has been burying kangaroos and wallabies that were killed in the 
blaze. But he's seen one large grey kangaroo still alive and the tracks 
of some wallabies. A few birds have returned. But there's no food for 
them, so Butler is putting out hay for the kangaroos and chicken feed 
for the wallabies.

"Wallabies are like long-legged goats. They'll eat anything."

Butler and his wife once used this place to hold camps and workshops on 
Aboriginal culture. They had a program for troubled indigenous youth. 
School groups would come to learn about native art, history and food. 
Fire was a key issue they'd teach about.

"Fire in this place is our friend," he says. "Fire has been used to 
maintain, to look after this whole continent forever."

Native peoples called them "cool burns," low-intensity fires intended to 
balance the various plants and trees growing in an area.

"How we maintain that balance is through fire, by not letting any one 
thing dominate something else," says Butler.

Australian Fires Prompt Questions About Protecting Houses From Embers
The eucalyptus shouldn't be allowed to overrun all the other trees, he 
explains. If one shrub starts to take over a grassland, it should get 
burned back.

Aboriginal people have generations of knowledge about managing the 
landscape on this continent, but Butler says they're ignored by public 
officials who rely on the massive controlled burns firefighters have 
been using known as backburns. Butler says cool burns target specific 
areas and even specific plants, while the current methods destroy 
everything in their paths.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/11/795224932/with-their-land-in-flames-aboriginals-warn-fires-show-deep-problems-in-australia
- - -
[Opinion - NYTime$ - Paul Krugman]
*Australia Shows Us the Road to Hell*
The political reaction is scarier than the fires.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/australia-fires.html

[the trigger]
***Terrorism police list Extinction Rebellion as extremist ideology*
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance
- - -
[Media battle]
*'How dare they' - Extinction Rebellion responds to terrorism slur by 
Police*
January 10, 2020 by Extinction Rebellion
Email: press at risingup.org.uk
Phone: 07802865819/07479234522
Crowdfund the #ElectionRebellion!
#ExtinctionRebellion#ActNow

How dare they. Children up and down the country are desperately fighting 
for a future. Teachers, grandparents, nurses have been trying their best 
with loving nonviolence to get politicians and big business to do 
something about the dire state of our planet.

And this is how the Establishment responds. [1]

In a world of misinformation, where lies travel faster than the truth, 
we can't help but wonder was this a deliberate attempt to silence a 
legitimate cause. Wouldn't it be nice if they focused on the real 
extremists, the fossil fuel companies and those that do their bidding.

A record number of people in the UK have expressed concern over the 
climate and ecological emergency. The truth is out. 2020 is the year we 
must act to save our future.

Former police Chief Superintendent Rob Cooper said "I find it 
astonishing that police in the Southeast of England regarded Extinction 
Rebellion as an extremist group. XR is non-violent group working hard to 
save the planet from government inaction and a climate and ecological 
emergency.

"We are grateful to the Guardian for bringing this to light and note 
that national anti-terrorism officers will correct this ridiculous 
decision.

"If they wish to add anyone to their list of extremist groups perhaps 
they should consider fossil fuel lobby groups - they seem to be very 
effective at indoctrinating politicians around the globe and enabling 
oil, gas and coal companies to receive massive subsidies whilst the 
planet burns."

Former police detective sergeant of the Metropolitan Police Paul 
Stephens said: "When are the police going to wake up?" The climate and 
ecological emergency is the most serious threat to public safety in 
history and the longer this government fails to address it and continues 
to invest in fossil fuels, the greater the problem will be for the police.

"Who hasn't criticised our system of government in recent years? Are we 
all extremists?

"I have never seen anyone in Extinction Rebellion encourage violence in 
any way to anyone. Quite the reverse. As a former police officer of 34 
years experience, I seriously doubt the political independence of those 
who published this nonsense.

I really hope that 'Prevent' was not being used as a way to continue the 
intimidatory tactics used against peaceful protesters last October.

Note
[1] 
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance
https://rebellion.earth/2020/01/10/how-dare-they-extinction-rebellion-responds-to-terrorism-slur-by-police/

[Opinion - slavery, coal, agriculture started with racism
"Anthropocene as an expression of geotrauma"]
*Bad Planet*
by JOHN DAVIS
- - -
The 1619 Project published in The New York Times, August 18, 2019, 
attempts to establish the arrival of more than twenty enslaved Africans, 
subsequently sold to the Virginia colonists - four hundred years ago - 
as the true foundation of this country. Nicole Hannah-Jones, who 
inspired the project, declares, "America was not yet America, but this 
was the moment it began."

Whether the choice is 1492 or 1619, the territory we now call the United 
States is deeply implicated in the entwined histories of slavery and the 
Anthropocene. Yusoff demonstrates that the geological construct is as 
much the product of a billion nameless black and brown bodies subjugated 
by white Europeans as it is of the time-stamped deployment of innovative 
technologies. Slavery in America can be seen as a strange, 
bio-mechanical conflation of the two: historian Edward Baptist makes the 
point that it was the 'whipping machine', methodically operated by white 
overseers, that drove the productivity of the plantations in the 
southern states. While the natality of both the Anthropocene and 'the 
idea of America' remain contested, it is now abundantly clear that the 
colonial project that began in the Americas in 1492 substantiated a 
modernity based on the appropriation of land, labor, and geological 
resources in service to capital accumulation. It made a world that must 
now end, if, as Yusoff writes, "another relation to the earth can begin".

As Australia burns, and Greta fulminates, it is the dark histories of 
race, subjugation and violent appropriation that must be reconciled 
before we can begin the work of repairing the planet. David Hammons, the 
New York and Los Angeles artist, notes in an interview with Calvin 
Tompkins, published in the December 9, 2019, New Yorker, that, "Trump is 
the truth about America, because America has been like this forever. 
White people haven't seen it, but we have."

Nicole Hannah-Jones and Kathryn Yusoff may differ on the precise meaning 
of Hammons' 'forever', but along with the artist, they are all agreed 
that America is held hostage by its underlying racism. A resolution of 
the exclusionary practices of white liberal humanism is fundamental to 
the solving of America's and the World's climate crisis - unless we 
adopt Hammons' nihilistic fatalism expressed in his subsequent remark that,

"You know, the reason we never see aliens is that everyone in the galaxy 
knows that this planet is a bad planet. They all know to stay away."
We do not have that choice.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/02/bad-planet/

[Paul Beckwith video talk - mislabeled, this should be part 3 of 3]
*How Arctic Ocean Blue Ocean State Will Crush Humanity Like a Bug: Part 
1 of 3*
Jan 10, 2020
Paul Beckwith
In my previous two videos I discussed how the reflectivity of the Arctic 
region reduced from 52% to 48% between 1979 and 2011, with global 
average warning 0.21 W/m2 (1/4 that of CO2). Now I explain the newest 
science from 2019 on how a Blue-Ocean State (zero Arctic sea ice) in 
summer would heat the overall planet 0.71 W/m2 with expected cloud 
invariance (or 2.24 W/m2 with clear skies, or 0.37 W/m2 if overcast). 
This equals 1 trillion tons of CO2 or 25 years of warming. i.e. global 
food shortage chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH-rQyEoYew

[Digging back into the internet news archive- 4 min audio]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - January 12, 2012 *
NPR reports on climate scientists who are calling for efforts to reduce 
ozone and soot as a means of combating climate change.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/12/145117211/scientists-turn-focus-to-ozone-soot-to-fix-climate

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