[✔️] May 5, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed May 5 11:42:38 EDT 2021

/*May 5, 2021*/

IFLAS - Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability
Wednesday, 24 March 2021
*Monetary adaptation to planetary emergency: new paper addresses the 
monetary growth imperative*
- -
The paper notes the increasing likelihood of disruptions to economic 
systems from the direct and indirect impacts of environmental change 
means that the current monetary system is neither resilient nor helping 
humanity become more resilient.

For twenty years, and with little influence, some environmental 
economists argued that the way money is issued into circulation forces 
the economy to grow, and that only fundamental monetary reform could 
change that. But over the last decade some economists influential in 
environmental policy communities, including the field of degrowth (and 
postgrowth), have argued that capitalism without growth is theoretically 
possible. This paper shows, in simple terms, they were mistaken to 
conclude that, and it makes the case again for systemic changes to our 
monetary systems.

Therefore, the authors show how even green-tinged economists have been 
misinforming both activists and policy makers. The paper suggests that 
as members of the establishment, academics often have a bias towards 
questions, conclusions and narratives which will be acceptable to power. 
As an economist, sociologist and community activist, the three authors 
call on the economics profession to look again at the way the banking 
systems force our economies to expand in order to avoid disruption to 
businesses, jobs and financial assets. They argue that no criticism of 
capitalism is coherent nor a credible basis for alternatives unless it 
addresses the Monetary Growth Imperative.

“The world is in an unprecedented mess. This means, among other things, 
that economists should question their assumptions, or risk becoming 
outdated and toxic. The money system is a major, often overlooked driver 
of economic behaviour, and it needs urgent reform. It's time for a 
radical overhaul," explains co-author Professor Christian Arnsperger, 
University of Lausanne. .

It is the first academic paper that directly challenges economists in 
the environmental field to stop being anti-radical in their assessment 
of the need for monetary reform...
http://iflas.blogspot.com/2021/03/monetary-adaptation-to-planetary.html

[Beckwith shouts out the future]
*It’s the End of the World as we Know It, and I Feel FINE. What’s Next 
for Abrupt Climate Disruption?*
May 4, 2021
Paul Beckwith
People often ask me for my projections and guesstimates on what happens 
next with our ongoing abrupt climate system disruption.
For example:

When we we first lost all Arctic Sea Ice?

When will methane burst out from the Arctic?

What will happen to our global food supply? Will we have a global famine?

What is the best way to pull carbon from the atmosphere/ocean system?

Will we deploy solar radiation management technologies? Lime the oceans. 
Put mirrors everywhere on land, oceans, or in space?

How does one deal with all this bad news?

I chat about some of my thoughts on these complex questions as I sit on 
a log in a forest in Northern Ontario in front of a gorgeous waterfall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPa6UdvVpmo

[Housing govt hearing]
*Virtual Hearing - Built to Last: Examining Housing Resilience in the 
Face of... (EventID=112576)*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM0YwTIFeBw
Overview

America’s housing infrastructure is vulnerable to the growing costs of 
climate and weather disasters, which may accelerate the need for 
maintenance and repair, or render units of housing infrastructure 
uninhabitable. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 
increases in global average temperature are linked to “widespread 
changes in weather patterns,” and scientific studies have shown that 
climate change caused by humans will likely lead to more frequent and 
intense extreme weather events. The U.S. National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Centers for Environmental 
Information reported that 2020 set a new annual record with 22 
weather/climate disaster events that caused over $1 billion in damage, 
the sixth year in a row the U.S. has experienced ten or more such 
events. While a comprehensive federal data set specific to the number of 
units of housing lost to climate and weather events does not exist, the 
destructive impacts on the nation’s housing stock have been profound 
both in terms of financial and human costs. Between 2016 and 2020, 
weather and climate disasters have cost $615.9 billion in damages4 and 
have displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Climate Change and Environmental Injustice

Prior to the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, housing policies, 
such as redlining and zoning, were used to overtly segregate low-income 
people and people of color into less desirable areas that were 
susceptible to flooding, located in close proximity to industrial 
districts, lacked adequate infrastructure, and were systemically 
disinvested in. Due to historic and ongoing socioeconomic segregation, 
the current effects of climate change and weather events are 
concentrated among low-income communities and communities of color.

At present, formerly redlined areas suffer from hotter temperatures and 
their homes are 25% more likely to experience damage due to flooding 
compared to non-redlined areas. Meanwhile, some formerly redlined 
communities face displacement as a result of climate gentrification. In 
Florida’s Miami-Dade County, for example, rising sea levels are driving 
wealthier White residents to leave their beach-front properties in 
search of homes in higher elevation areas, like Little Haiti, which is a 
historically Black, formerly redlined community, from which families are 
now being priced out of due to the influx of wealthier White residents. 10

Many homes in disaster-stricken areas are lost due to a lack of 
resilient design and poor structural siting. Leading up to the COVID-19 
pandemic, an estimated 800,000 homes in Puerto Rico had been damaged by 
Hurricane Maria. Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, Georgia and 
Tennessee experienced deadly tornados that damaged and demolished more 
than 2,000 homes. In the wake of California’s 2018 wildfires—the 
deadliest in the state’s history—51% of homes that were built to higher 
standard codes established in 2008 went undamaged compared to only 18% 
of homes built to pre-2008 standards.

Similarly, homes in historically disinvested communities, including in 
Native communities and the territories, are also more likely to be 
demolished in the aftermath of disasters. Accordingly, advocates have 
urged policymakers to “be diligent in building more resilient and 
prepared communities” nationwide, while targeting efforts in low-income 
areas and communities of color that face disproportionate climate risk 
and often lack the institutional capacity and monetary resources needed 
to prepare for and recover from disaster.

Biden Administration and Executive Actions on Climate Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM0YwTIFeBw

[from the great actuarial thinker]
*How the World’s Energy Problem Has Been Hidden*
May 4, 2021 by Gail Tverberg
We live in a world where words are very carefully chosen. Companies hire 
public relations firms to give just the right “spin” to what they are 
saying. Politicians make statements which suggest that everything is 
going well. Newspapers would like their advertisers to be happy; they 
certainly won’t suggest that the automobile you purchase today may be of 
no use to you in five years.

I believe that what has happened in recent years is that the “truth” has 
become very dark. We live in a finite world; we are rapidly approaching 
limits of many kinds. For example, there is not enough fresh water for 
everyone, including agriculture and businesses. This inadequate water 
supply is now tipping over into inadequate food supply in quite a few 
places because irrigation requires fresh water. This problem is, in a 
sense, an energy problem, because adding more irrigation requires more 
energy supplies used for digging deeper wells or making desalination 
plants. We are reaching energy scarcity issues not too different from 
those of World War I, World War II and the Depression Era between the wars.

We now live in a strange world filled with half-truths, not too 
different from the world of the 1930s. US newspapers leave out the many 
stories that could be written about rising food insecurity around the 
world, and even in the US. We see more reports of conflicts among 
countries and increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, but no one 
explains that such changes are to be expected when energy consumption 
per capita starts falling too low.

The majority of people seem to believe that all of these problems can be 
fixed simply by increasingly taxing the rich and using the proceeds to 
help the poor. They also believe that the biggest problem we are facing 
is climate change. Very few are even aware of the food scarcity problems 
occurring in many parts of the world already...
- -
If energy prices are chronically too low (so that an energy product 
requires a subsidy, rather than paying taxes), this is a sign that the 
energy product is most likely an energy “sink.” Such a product acts in 
the direction of pulling the economy down through ever-lower productivity...
- -
We are right now in a huge scarcity situation which is starting to cause 
conflicts of many kinds. Even if there were a way of producing these 
types of alternative energy cheaply enough, they are coming far too late 
and in far too small quantities to make a difference. They also don’t 
match up with our current coal and oil uses, adding a layer of time and 
expense for conversion that needs to be included in any model...
- -
*[4] What we really have is a huge conflict problem due to inadequate 
energy supplies for today’s world population. The powers that be are 
trying to hide this problem by publishing only their preferred version 
of the truth.*

The situation that we are really facing is one that often goes under the 
name of “collapse.” It is a problem that many civilizations have faced 
in the past when a given population has outgrown its resource base.

Needless to say, the issue of collapse is not a story any politician 
wants to tell its citizens. Instead, we are told over and over, 
“Everything is fine. Any energy problem will be handled by the solutions 
scientists are finding.” The catch is that scientists were not told the 
correct problem to solve. They were told about a distant problem. To 
make the problem easier to solve, high prices and subsidies seemed to be 
acceptable. The problem they were asked to solve is very different from 
our real energy problem today.

Many people think that taxing the rich and giving the proceeds to the 
poor can solve our problem, but this doesn’t really solve the problem 
for a couple of reasons. One of the issues is that our scarcity issue is 
really a worldwide problem. Higher taxation of the rich in a few rich 
countries does nothing for the many problems of poor people in countries 
such as Lebanon, Yemen, Venezuela and India. Furthermore, taking money 
from the rich doesn’t really fix scarcity problems. Rich people don’t 
really eat a vastly disproportionate amount of food or drink more water, 
for example.

A detail that most of us don’t think about is that the military of many 
different countries has been very much aware of the potential conflict 
situation that is now occurring. They are aware that a “hot war” would 
require huge use of fossil fuel energy, so they have been trying to find 
alternative approaches. One approach military groups have been working 
on is the use of bioweapons of various kinds. In fact, some groups might 
even contemplate starting a pandemic. Another approach that might be 
used is computer viruses to disrupt the systems of other countries.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/05/04/how-the-worlds-energy-problem-has-been-hidden/

[a 43 minute video]
*Carolyn Baker Interview*
May 4, 2021
*Living in the Time of Dying*

Carolyn Baker is someone who is unafraid to look at the possibility of 
human extinction and what we as a global community are facing. She also 
is willing to look at the spiritual and emotional possibilities that 
this climate and biosphere crisis presents us with. In this interview 
with Carolyn we discuss approaching collapse as a rite of passage and 
accepting and working with the grief inherent in these times.

About Carolyn Baker
Carolyn Baker’s mission is to create islands of sanity in a sea of 
global chaos. This mission necessitates the development of a variety of 
emotional tools alongside commitment to spiritual transformation. 
Through her multi-faceted outreach via webinars, podcasts, live 
workshops, books, and articles, as well as one-on-one life coaching, 
Carolyn is touching the lives of thousands to assist them in preparing 
for the dire consequences of the collapse of industrial civilisation and 
abrupt climate change.

Interviewed by Michael Shaw, director and producer of Living in The Time 
of Dying. For more information visit our website 
www.livinginthetimeofdying.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXHUvUA5UMg

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 5, 2013*

New York magazine's Jon Chait declares that President Obama doesn't get 
enough credit for being a climate hawk:

"The assumption that Obama’s climate-change record is essentially one 
of failure is mainly an artifact of environmentalists’ understandably 
frantic urgency. The sort of steady progress that would leave activists 
on other issues giddy does not satisfy the sort of person whose waking 
hours are spent watching the glaciers melt irreversibly. But there is a 
difference between failing to do anything and failing to do enough, and 
even those who criticize the president’s efforts as inadequate ought to 
be clear-eyed about what has been accomplished. By the normal standards 
of progress, Obama has amassed an impressive record so far on climate 
change."

http://nymag.com/news/features/obama-climate-change-2013-5/

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/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 mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can 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. 
Messages have no tracking software.
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.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20210505/99e44180/attachment.htm>