[✔️] June 3, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

👀 Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Jun 3 08:55:05 EDT 2021 

/*June 3, 2021*/

[means, opportunity and intent]
*NIFC’s forecast for wildfire potential this summer*
June 2, 2021
It is influenced by the fact that more than 87% of the West is now 
categorized in drought.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/06/02/nifcs-forecast-for-wildfire-potential-this-summer/

- -

[Because wood grows on trees ]
[TIME magazine asks a good question to Mike Roddy]
*Wildfires Are Getting Worse, So Why Is the U.S. Still Building Homes 
With Wood?*
- -
Roddy, who has built more than 700 steel-framed houses around the world, 
including for the actor and environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr., says 
concerns about carbon emissions aren’t the only thing driving him to 
push for less reliance on wood. Because of the shorter harvest seasons, 
many trees being cut down are not strong enough to make the type of 
long-lasting beams that were once used to build homes. Instead, builders 
engineered wood or oriented strand board (OSB), which is made by gluing 
together peeled wood products. This material contains chemicals 
including formaldehyde, which has been shown to significantly worsen 
indoor air quality....

And homes made from steel and concrete don’t warp from humidity or water 
damage, and they don’t attract termites, he says—a reason that 72% of 
single-family homes built in Hawaii have steel-frame structures, 
according to the Steel Framing Industry Association.

Forest owners argue that a large-scale move away from wood will actually 
hurt the environment; without a market for trees, they say landowners 
have little incentive to grow them and may instead turn their land into 
farmland or houses. Around 1 billion trees are planted each year in the 
United States, according to the National Alliance of Forest Owners. 
Besides, says Kate Gatto, a NAFO spokesperson, wood still stores carbon 
when used in houses. (There’s debate as to how much carbon is actually 
stored in trees once they’ve been cut down to use for homes; Law 
estimates that just about 20% of wood harvested over the last century is 
still in long-term products, the rest has gone into the atmosphere.)...
https://time.com/6046368/wood-steel-houses-fires/

- -

[wildfire activism]
*A 266-Mile Walk: Youth Climate Activists March From Paradise to San 
Francisco*
Ezra David Romero - May 28
Madeline Ruddell, 16, says she has long lived with the effects of 
climate change as a resident of Sonoma County, where wildfires have 
ripped across the landscape in recent years.

Ruddell, communications lead for the Sonoma County hub of the Sunrise 
Movement, a national youth-led climate activist group, can't remember a 
fall where she didn't prep an evacuation bag, or take time off of school 
because of a big fire.
"I was eager for action because I'm watching fires consume my town and 
consume my county," she said. "These fires ... motivate me to work harder."

She is one of seven young activists marching 266 miles over 2 1/2 weeks 
in an effort to pressure California lawmakers to support the Civilian 
Climate Corps as part of a Green New Deal. She hopes work done by the 
corps could help reduce fire risk in California.

"I want ambitious progressive climate legislation passed by the end of 
summer 2021,” she said. “We only have one planet and my generation is 
gonna have to live on it for the rest of our lives.”
- -
“We're not asking people to only reduce their individual consumption in 
order to tackle climate change,” he said. “We're asking the government 
to invest in people, because that's the only way we're gonna rebuild a 
better future.”

Follow the youth as they march across California: Twitter @smvmtgenonfire
Instagram - @sunrisegenonfire
TikTok - @sunrisegenonfire
https://www.kqed.org/news/11875863/a-266-mile-walk-youth-climate-activists-march-from-paradise-to-san-francisco


[New Yorker says]
*Are We Entering a New Political Era?*
The neoliberal order seems to be collapsing. A generation of young 
activists is trying to insure that it’s replaced by progressive 
populism, not by the fascist right.
By Andrew Marantz - May 24, 2021
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/are-we-entering-a-new-political-era



[says the Washington Post]*
* *It’s wrong to blame ‘overpopulation’ for climate change*
By Sarah Kaplan - May 25, 2021

    “Why is the impact of population growth infrequently mentioned? A
    couple producing more than two children will impact carbon emissions
    to a greater degree than any other activity. That impact cannot be
    offset by any practicable lifestyle change; switching to
    vegetarianism doesn’t come close to balance the scales.”
    — James, Lebanon, Pa.

When the Census Bureau released data recently showing that the United 
States population is growing at its slowest rate in almost a century, an 
old question reappeared in environmental reporters’ inboxes: Do we need 
a smaller population to save our warming planet?

The answer is: Not necessarily. Climate change isn’t caused by 
population growth. It’s caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning 
fossil fuels...
- -
Since the start of the millennium, U.N. reports show, global resource 
use has been primarily driven by increases in affluence, not the 
population. This is especially true in high- to upper-middle-income 
nations, which account for 78 percent of material consumption, despite 
having slower population growth rates than the rest of the world.

Meanwhile in low-income countries, whose share of the global population 
has almost doubled, demand for resources has stayed constant at just 
about 3 percent of the global total...
- -
Another U.N. study has found that inequality within and between 
countries makes them less effective at tackling climate change. A lack 
of social cohesion and the concentration of power in the hands of 
wealthy people — who are more insulated from climate change’s worst 
impacts — makes nations less likely to take the kinds of collective 
actions needed, analysts found. In turn, the effects of warming 
disproportionately harm low-income communities, which makes inequality 
even worse.

These data suggest that stabilizing the climate depends on addressing 
the affluence and technology aspects of the IPAT equation, Ramaswami 
said. “Fixating on population decrease doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Treating people as the problem isn’t just misguided — it’s dangerous. 
When concern about population becomes central to environmental policy, 
said researcher Betsy Hartman, “racism and xenophobia are always waiting 
in the wings.”
- -
James, who posed the question at the beginning of this piece, is correct 
when he wrote that lifestyle changes can’t mitigate a person’s entire 
environmental impact. We all need to eat. We all need homes that are 
warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We all live in a world that 
generates most of its electricity, food and consumer goods with fossil 
fuels. There is no opting out of those systems.

But systems can change.

“One of the biggest opportunities is what we call ‘decoupling,’ ” 
Ramaswami said. “You can still grow your population and GDP if you 
decouple your basic provisioning systems from resource use and 
greenhouse gas emissions.”...
- -
To achieve a sustainable society, Attari said, we should also “decouple” 
consumption from our ideas about progress and growth. Instead of 
focusing solely on GDP, nations could seek to improve a metric known as 
the Human Development Index, which also considers things like life 
expectancy and access to schooling. They could even take it one step 
further and adopt the “planetary pressures-adjusted” HDI, which rewards 
countries that promote human development without increasing greenhouse 
gas emissions and resource use.

The effort to build a safe, healthy and equitable world can’t be boiled 
down to a numbers game. But if you do want to focus on a number, it 
shouldn’t be in the number of people on the planet. It should be 419 
parts per million — the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s 
atmosphere. In the end, that’s the number that most needs to come down.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/05/25/slowing-population-growth-environment/


[Esteemed British Psychotherapist comments on our condition - audio]
Denis Postle *The End of Progress* [audio]
https://soundcloud.com/denis-postle/the-end-of-progress
- -
[the 7 page text essay]
*12 | Self & Society Vol 49 No. 1 Spring 2021*
*The End of Progress 1*
Denis Postle ARCA Summary
This podcast tells the story of how a novel proposal about the deep 
structure of our civilisation emerged from my research into climate 
heating and the Covid-19 pandemic. I outline how, in the pursuit of 
progress, an apparently compulsive urge to crystallise anything and 
everything that is fluid has generated a level of complexity in human 
civilisation that makes it increasingly vulnerable to sudden change and 
possible collapse. I share some strategies for personal survival.
Introduction
I guess we all try to make sense of what is happening to us and around us.
I’m going to tell the story of how I found a helpful, if tragic, 
perspective on these difficult times that we are living through. It’s a 
big perspective – how we’ve made civilisation and how it makes us.
I’m going to talk about digitalisation and growth without limits. I’m 
going to talk about how sudden dramatic change can be triggered.2
And I’m going to have a lot to say about Crystallisation and Fluidity. 
An original, at least to me, proposal about the foundations of our 
civilisation. And how this probably means we are within sight of the end 
of ‘progress’.
And lastly, I’m going to share my experience of how we can begin to meet 
this oncoming peril...
more at - 
https://www.postcarbon.org/crazytown/episode-43/?mc_cid=b86a939fb5&mc_eid=56bdf1d03c
This is an extended version of a psyCommons podcast – 
https://soundcloud.com/denis-postle/the-end-of-progress (accessed 27 
April 2021).
2 Denis Postle, Catastrophe
https://www.postcarbon.org/crazytown/episode-43/?mc_cid=b86a939fb5&mc_eid=56bdf1d03c



[3 middle-aged white guys talking - from Post Carbon Institute - goofy 
talk gets serious]
*Episode 43 – Overproduction of Elites and Political Upheaval, or… the 
Story of Rich People Doing Stupid Things*

    Imagine a factory assembly line running at full steam, but instead
    of spitting out car parts or plastic trinkets, the conveyor belt is
    loaded down with Jeff Bezos wannabes. That’s a disconcerting image,
    but it’s an accurate picture of what’s happening: society is
    producing too many elite people, and their decisions are causing
    extreme inequality, which is one of the key components of today’s
    sustainability crisis. Join Asher, Rob, and Jason as they struggle
    with elite words and phrases (who’s up for some cliodynamics?) and
    try to exorcise the demons of their own elitism. You’ll also hear
    how elites may have formulated the plot of the next Spike Lee movie,
    “Do the Wrong Thing.” Chuck Collins, author of The Wealth Hoarders,
    provides additional insights on how we can work toward a more
    equitable society.

https://www.postcarbon.org/crazytown/episode-43/?mc_cid=b86a939fb5&mc_eid=56bdf1d03c


[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming June 3, 1977*

June 3, 1977: The New York Times reports, "To avoid accumulation in the 
air of sufficient carbon dioxide to cause major climate changes, it may 
ultimately be necessary to restrict the burning of coal and other fossil 
fuels, according to Dr. William D. Nordhaus of the President's Council 
of Economic Advisers."

http://select.nytimes.co/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E15FC355D167493C1A9178DD85F438785F9

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