[✔️] October 13, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*October 13, 2021*/

/[ Check site for wildfire info  ] /
*Alisal Fire burns to the ocean, then spreads east*
https://wildfiretoday.com/



/[ Top discovered realization, now published ]/
//*The advertising industry is fuelling climate disaster, and it’s 
getting away with it*
Andrew Simms
Overconsumption is inevitable when adverts are so ubiquitous and 
sophisticated. There must be a pushback

To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to drop 
dramatically. Yet every day we’re told to consume more. We all know 
about air pollution – but there’s a kind of “brain pollution” produced 
by advertising that, uncontrolled, fuels overconsumption. And the 
problem is getting worse.

Advertising is everywhere, so prevalent as to be invisible but with an 
effect no less insidious than air pollution. A few years ago, an 
individual in the US was estimated to be exposed to between 4,000 and 
10,000 adverts daily.

UK spending on advertising almost doubled between 2010 and 2019 and, 
after a pandemic dip, the £23bn spend for 2020 is expected to rise by 
15% in 2021. It’s woven into our personal communications whenever we use 
social media platforms. In public spaces, where we have little choice 
over where we look, adverts are invasive, appearing without our consent. 
And the trend towards digital billboards only exposes us ever more. Some 
big companies even boast about how “unmissable” digital screens are on 
busy roads, “captivating audiences” when drivers would be better off 
watching the road. Such roadside “out of home” advertising is set to 
grow by 25%, in 2021 and evolving advertising technologies that could 
use facial detection and tracking capabilities only heighten the sense 
of our privacy being invaded.

Advertising works by getting under your radar, introducing new ideas 
without bothering your conscious mind. Extensive scientific research 
shows that, when exposed to advertising, people “buy into” the 
materialistic values and goals it encourages. Consequently, they report 
lower levels of personal wellbeing, experience conflict in 
relationships, engage in fewer positive social behaviours, and 
experience detrimental effects on study and work. Critically, the more 
that people prioritise materialistic values and goals, the less they 
embrace positive attitudes towards the environment – and the more likely 
they are to behave in damaging ways.

Even worse, findings from neuroscience reveal that advertising goes as 
far as lodging itself in the brain, rewiring it by forming physical 
structures and causing permanent change. Brands that have been made 
familiar through advertising have a strong influence on the choices 
people make. Under MRI scans, the logos of recognisable car brands are 
shown to activate a single, particular region of the brain in the medial 
prefrontal cortex. Brands and logos have also been shown to generate 
strong preferences between virtually identical products, such as fizzy 
drinks – preferences that disappear in blind tests. Researchers looking 
to assess the power of advertised brands concluded that, “there are 
visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves 
into the nervous systems of humans.”

Indeed, some of the earliest work in this area concluded, “Scary as it 
may sound, if an ad does not modify the brains of the intended audience, 
then it has not worked.” Yet this is little known more widely. Through a 
combination of experience and ad exposure connected to emotional 
responses, brands and their logos become more “mentally available”. This 
happens through the development of new neural pathways reinforced by 
repeated encounters. Still other research demonstrates how exposure to 
different brands can influence behaviour, for example making them behave 
less honestly, or creatively. Customisable tools for neural profiling 
are now available to test the effectiveness of brands and logos on 
consumers, giving rise to what has become known as “neuromarketing”.

That’s bad enough for adults, but children are now at the mercy of 
so-called “surveillance advertising”. It is estimated that by the time a 
child turns 13, ad-tech firms would have gathered 72m data points on 
them. The more data collected from an early age, the easier it is for 
advertisers to turn young children into consumer targets.

Overconsumption in general, encouraged by advertising, has a climate and 
ecological impact. But advertising heavily polluting products and 
services, such as for fossil fuels, aviation and petrol-engined cars, is 
particularly damaging. It’s like the days when tobacco adverts were 
allowed. In 2018 the car sector is estimated to have spent more than 
$35.5bn on advertising in key markets globally, roughly equal to the 
annual income of a country like Bolivia. And, in recent years, 
advertising has pushed a major shift to people buying larger, more 
polluting SUVs.Regulators are very far behind the curve on these issues. 
The Competition and Markets Authority recently launched a public 
consultation to investigate misleading green claims. The advertising 
regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority, belatedly followed suit 
with a pledge to develop a code on greenwashing. But the ASA is a weak 
body with a narrow focus, paid for by the industry, which is effectively 
marking its own homework. Only 22% of adverts complained about are 
investigated by the ASA, and then only 2% of complaints are upheld, by 
which time the advertising campaign is usually over.

Tackling “brain pollution” requires action equivalent to the campaign to 
end tobacco advertising. New checks and balances need to accommodate the 
natural concerns of councils and residents around climate, air 
pollution, environmental light pollution, the “attention economy”, 
mental health and the dominance of non-consensual adverts in public spaces.

Advertising, the business of attention-seeking, has ironically avoided 
scrutiny so far. But as the climate crisis bites, its role is set to 
rise up the agenda. Campaigners are calling for legislation against 
high-carbon advertising, focusing on fossil fuel companies, petrol- and 
diesel-engined cars and aviation; at municipal level, places like 
Norwich, Liverpool and north Somerset are introducing measures to end 
high-carbon advertising; and an EU-wide campaign is now following a ban 
on the Amsterdam metro. Tackling brain pollution won’t just make us feel 
better, but help clear the air too.

Andrew Simms is an author and campaigner
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/11/advertising-industry-fuelling-climate-disaster-consumption



[quick video]
*Greta Thunberg: "Democracy Is the Only Solution to the Climate Crisis"*
Oct 12, 2021
Covering Climate Now
In an interview with the global media collaboration Covering Climate 
Now, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg expressed surprise at 
the idea that Biden, or any world leader, might want to sit down with 
her at COP26, but said she was open to the possibility, if asked. “I 
guess that will depend on the situation,” she said. “I don’t see why 
these people want to meet with me, but yeah.”

She also spoke about the role of the media in combatting the climate 
emergency. See stories from the interview by Covering Climate Now 
partners here: https://coveringclimatenow.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xAHv4kRz4



/[ "Overshoot" ] /
*‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to 
avert catastrophe*
George Monbiot
It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic 
activity without destroying the environment
There is a box labelled “climate”, in which politicians discuss the 
climate crisis. There is a box named “biodiversity”, in which they 
discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as 
pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in 
our planet’s lost property department. But they all contain aspects of 
one crisis that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The 
categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are 
not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the “thing-in-itself”. They describe 
artefacts of our perceptions rather than the world.

Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by 
everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.

Take the situation of the North Atlantic right whale, whose population 
recovered a little when whaling ceased, but is now slumping again: fewer 
than 95 females of breeding age remain. The immediate reasons for this 
decline are mostly deaths and injuries caused when whales are hit by 
ships or tangled in fishing gear. But they’ve become more vulnerable to 
these impacts because they’ve had to shift along the eastern seaboard of 
North America into busy waters.
- -
Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems. When coral 
reefs are weakened by the fishing industry, pollution and the bleaching 
caused by global heating, they are less able to withstand the extreme 
climate events, such as tropical cyclones, which our fossil fuel 
emissions have also intensified. When rainforests are fragmented by 
timber cutting and cattle ranching, and ravaged by imported tree 
diseases, they become more vulnerable to the droughts and fires caused 
by climate breakdown.

What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would see 
a full-spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere is now 
safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper estimates 
that only 3% of the Earth’s land surface should now be considered 
“ecologically intact”.

The various impacts have a common cause: the sheer volume of economic 
activity. We are doing too much of almost everything, and the world’s 
living systems cannot bear it. But our failure to see the whole ensures 
that we fail to address this crisis systemically and effectively.

When we box up this predicament, our efforts to solve one aspect of the 
crisis exacerbate another. For example, if we were to build sufficient 
direct air capture machines to make a major difference to atmospheric 
carbon concentrations, this would demand a massive new wave of mining 
and processing for the steel and concrete. The impact of such 
construction pulses travels around the world. To take just one 
component, the mining of sand to make concrete is trashing hundreds of 
precious habitats. It’s especially devastating to rivers, whose sand is 
highly sought in construction. Rivers are already being hit by drought, 
the disappearance of mountain ice and snow, our extraction of water, and 
pollution from farming, sewage and industry. Sand dredging, on top of 
these assaults, could be a final, fatal blow.
- -
Or look at the materials required for the electronics revolution that 
will, apparently, save us from climate breakdown. Already, mining and 
processing the minerals required for magnets and batteries is laying 
waste to habitats and causing new pollution crises. Now, as Jonathan 
Watts’s terrifying article in the Guardian this week shows, companies 
are using the climate crisis as justification for extracting minerals 
from the deep ocean floor, long before we have any idea of what the 
impacts might be.

This isn’t, in itself, an argument against direct air capture machines 
or other “green” technologies. But if they have to keep pace with an 
ever-growing volume of economic activity, and if the growth of this 
activity is justified by the existence of those machines, the net result 
will be ever greater harm to the living world.

Everywhere, governments seek to ramp up the economic load, talking of 
“unleashing our potential” and “supercharging our economy”. Boris 
Johnson insists that “a global recovery from the pandemic must be rooted 
in green growth”. But there is no such thing as green growth. Growth is 
wiping the green from the Earth.

We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we 
dramatically reduce economic activity. Wealth must be distributed – a 
constrained world cannot afford the rich – but it must also be reduced. 
Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of almost 
everything. But this notion – that should be central to a new, 
environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/green-growth-economic-activity-environment



/[ first some humor, then some serious learning]/
*Misinformation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)*
Oct 10, 2021
LastWeekTonight
John Oliver discusses how misinformation spreads among immigrant 
diaspora communities, how little some platforms have done to stop it, 
and, most importantly, how to have a very good morning.
Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news 
as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/lastweektonight
Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: 
www.facebook.com/lastweektonight
Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: 
www.twitter.com/lastweektonight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jtFqWq5iU



/[ new credo from the founder of Extinction Rebellion - long video]/
*How to Stop the Climate Crisis in Six months | 4 September 2021 | Roger 
Hallam*
posted Oct 11, 2021
Extinction Rebellion UK

    00:00 Introduction
    5:40 The Climate Crisis
    20:45 The Theory
    55:45 The Practice
    1:45:40 Conclusion

"We have to move quickly. What we do, I believe, in the next three to 
four years will determine the future of humanity". Sir David King. 
Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government.

Given there is a real world out there and we have 3-4 years to stop it 
being destroyed, we have to engage in nonviolent direct action to stop 
governments imposing upon us the greatest act of criminality in the 
history of humanity: namely destroying the livelihoods and lives of the 
next thousand generations. This video gives you the key elements of 
success which people are adapting as they step into their 
responsibilities to force political change. Nothing is more important. 
We can not longer afford to lose.

"We struggle to name any climate scientist who at that time thought the 
Paris Agreement was feasible. We have since been told by some scientists 
that the Paris Agreement was “of course important for climate justice 
but unworkable” and “a complete shock, no one thought limiting to 1.5°C 
was possible”. Rather than being able to limit warming to 1.5°C, a 
senior academic involved in the IPCC concluded we were heading beyond 
3°C by the end of this century."

https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368

The future of the human niche paper: 
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/21/11350.full.pdf

Extinction Rebellion UK: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/
International: https://rebellion.global/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/

    *1. Tell The Truth *
    *2. Act Now *
    *3. Beyond Politics *

World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups: 
https://map.extinctionrebellion.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZT0tSdUog



[The key realization - essay in the Conversation by 3 climate scientists]
*Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap*
April 22, 2021
Authors

    James Dyke
    Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter

    Robert Watson
    Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

    Wolfgang Knorr
    Senior Research Scientist, Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science,
    Lund University

Sometimes realisation comes in a blinding flash. Blurred outlines snap 
into shape and suddenly it all makes sense. Underneath such revelations 
is typically a much slower-dawning process. Doubts at the back of the 
mind grow. The sense of confusion that things cannot be made to fit 
together increases until something clicks. Or perhaps snaps.

Collectively we three authors of this article must have spent more than 
80 years thinking about climate change. Why has it taken us so long to 
speak out about the obvious dangers of the concept of net zero? In our 
defence, the premise of net zero is deceptively simple – and we admit 
that it deceived us.

The threats of climate change are the direct result of there being too 
much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So it follows that we must stop 
emitting more and even remove some of it. This idea is central to the 
world’s current plan to avoid catastrophe. In fact, there are many 
suggestions as to how to actually do this, from mass tree planting, to 
high tech direct air capture devices that suck out carbon dioxide from 
the air.
The current consensus is that if we deploy these and other so-called 
“carbon dioxide removal” techniques at the same time as reducing our 
burning of fossil fuels, we can more rapidly halt global warming. 
Hopefully around the middle of this century we will achieve “net zero”. 
This is the point at which any residual emissions of greenhouse gases 
are balanced by technologies removing them from the atmosphere.
This is a great idea, in principle. Unfortunately, in practice it helps 
perpetuate a belief in technological salvation and diminishes the sense 
of urgency surrounding the need to curb emissions now.

We have arrived at the painful realisation that the idea of net zero has 
licensed a recklessly cavalier “burn now, pay later” approach which has 
seen carbon emissions continue to soar. It has also hastened the 
destruction of the natural world by increasing deforestation today, and 
greatly increases the risk of further devastation in the future.

To understand how this has happened, how humanity has gambled its 
civilisation on no more than promises of future solutions, we must 
return to the late 1980s, when climate change broke out onto the 
international stage.
*Steps towards net zero*
On June 22 1988, James Hansen was the administrator of Nasa’s Goddard 
Institute for Space Studies, a prestigious appointment but someone 
largely unknown outside of academia.

By the afternoon of the 23rd he was well on the way to becoming the 
world’s most famous climate scientist. This was as a direct result of 
his testimony to the US congress, when he forensically presented the 
evidence that the Earth’s climate was warming and that humans were the 
primary cause: “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is 
changing our climate now.”

If we had acted on Hansen’s testimony at the time, we would have been 
able to decarbonise our societies at a rate of around 2% a year in order 
to give us about a two-in-three chance of limiting warming to no more 
than 1.5°C. It would have been a huge challenge, but the main task at 
that time would have been to simply stop the accelerating use of fossil 
fuels while fairly sharing out future emissions.
https://images.theconversation.com/files/392826/original/file-20210331-15-4x9q0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2
Four years later, there were glimmers of hope that this would be 
possible. During the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, all nations agreed to 
stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases to ensure that they did not 
produce dangerous interference with the climate. The 1997 Kyoto Summit 
attempted to start to put that goal into practice. But as the years 
passed, the initial task of keeping us safe became increasingly harder 
given the continual increase in fossil fuel use.

It was around that time that the first computer models linking 
greenhouse gas emissions to impacts on different sectors of the economy 
were developed. These hybrid climate-economic models are known as 
Integrated Assessment Models. They allowed modellers to link economic 
activity to the climate by, for example, exploring how changes in 
investments and technology could lead to changes in greenhouse gas 
emissions.

They seemed like a miracle: you could try out policies on a computer 
screen before implementing them, saving humanity costly experimentation. 
They rapidly emerged to become key guidance for climate policy. A 
primacy they maintain to this day.

Unfortunately, they also removed the need for deep critical thinking. 
Such models represent society as a web of idealised, emotionless buyers 
and sellers and thus ignore complex social and political realities, or 
even the impacts of climate change itself. Their implicit promise is 
that market-based approaches will always work. This meant that 
discussions about policies were limited to those most convenient to 
politicians: incremental changes to legislation and taxes.

The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with 
academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects 
to tackle societal and scientific challenges.

Around the time they were first developed, efforts were being made to 
secure US action on the climate by allowing it to count carbon sinks of 
the country’s forests. The US argued that if it managed its forests 
well, it would be able to store a large amount of carbon in trees and 
soil which should be subtracted from its obligations to limit the 
burning of coal, oil and gas. In the end, the US largely got its way. 
Ironically, the concessions were all in vain, since the US senate never 
ratified the agreement.

Postulating a future with more trees could in effect offset the burning 
of coal, oil and gas now. As models could easily churn out numbers that 
saw atmospheric carbon dioxide go as low as one wanted, ever more 
sophisticated scenarios could be explored which reduced the perceived 
urgency to reduce fossil fuel use. By including carbon sinks in 
climate-economic models, a Pandora’s box had been opened.

It’s here we find the genesis of today’s net zero policies.
https://images.theconversation.com/files/393117/original/file-20210401-13-puplc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2
That said, most attention in the mid-1990s was focused on increasing 
energy efficiency and energy switching (such as the UK’s move from coal 
to gas) and the potential of nuclear energy to deliver large amounts of 
carbon-free electricity. The hope was that such innovations would 
quickly reverse increases in fossil fuel emissions.

But by around the turn of the new millennium it was clear that such 
hopes were unfounded. Given their core assumption of incremental change, 
it was becoming more and more difficult for economic-climate models to 
find viable pathways to avoid dangerous climate change. In response, the 
models began to include more and more examples of carbon capture and 
storage, a technology that could remove the carbon dioxide from 
coal-fired power stations and then store the captured carbon deep 
underground indefinitely.
This had been shown to be possible in principle: compressed carbon 
dioxide had been separated from fossil gas and then injected underground 
in a number of projects since the 1970s. These Enhanced Oil Recovery 
schemes were designed to force gases into oil wells in order to push oil 
towards drilling rigs and so allow more to be recovered – oil that would 
later be burnt, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Carbon capture and storage offered the twist that instead of using the 
carbon dioxide to extract more oil, the gas would instead be left 
underground and removed from the atmosphere. This promised breakthrough 
technology would allow climate friendly coal and so the continued use of 
this fossil fuel. But long before the world would witness any such 
schemes, the hypothetical process had been included in climate-economic 
models. In the end, the mere prospect of carbon capture and storage gave 
policy makers a way out of making the much needed cuts to greenhouse gas 
emissions.

*The rise of net zero*
When the international climate change community convened in Copenhagen 
in 2009 it was clear that carbon capture and storage was not going to be 
sufficient for two reasons.

First, it still did not exist. There were no carbon capture and storage 
facilities in operation on any coal fired power station and no prospect 
the technology was going to have any impact on rising emissions from 
increased coal use in the foreseeable future.

The biggest barrier to implementation was essentially cost. The 
motivation to burn vast amounts of coal is to generate relatively cheap 
electricity. Retrofitting carbon scrubbers on existing power stations, 
building the infrastructure to pipe captured carbon, and developing 
suitable geological storage sites required huge sums of money. 
Consequently the only application of carbon capture in actual operation 
then – and now – is to use the trapped gas in enhanced oil recovery 
schemes. Beyond a single demonstrator, there has never been any capture 
of carbon dioxide from a coal fired power station chimney with that 
captured carbon then being stored underground.

Just as important, by 2009 it was becoming increasingly clear that it 
would not be possible to make even the gradual reductions that policy 
makers demanded. That was the case even if carbon capture and storage 
was up and running. The amount of carbon dioxide that was being pumped 
into the air each year meant humanity was rapidly running out of time.
With hopes for a solution to the climate crisis fading again, another 
magic bullet was required. A technology was needed not only to slow down 
the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but 
actually reverse it. In response, the climate-economic modelling 
community – already able to include plant-based carbon sinks and 
geological carbon storage in their models – increasingly adopted the 
“solution” of combining the two.

So it was that _*Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage*, or BECCS_, 
rapidly emerged as the new saviour technology. By burning “replaceable” 
biomass such as wood, crops, and agricultural waste instead of coal in 
power stations, and then capturing the carbon dioxide from the power 
station chimney and storing it underground, BECCS could produce 
electricity at the same time as removing carbon dioxide from the 
atmosphere. That’s because as biomass such as trees grow, they suck in 
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. By planting trees and other 
bioenergy crops and storing carbon dioxide released when they are burnt, 
more carbon could be removed from the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ESlXSa1sU&feature=emb_imp_woyt
With this new solution in hand the international community regrouped 
from repeated failures to mount another attempt at reining in our 
dangerous interference with the climate. The scene was set for the 
crucial 2015 climate conference in Paris.

*A Parisian false dawn*
As its general secretary brought the 21st United Nations conference on 
climate change to an end, a great roar issued from the crowd. People 
leaped to their feet, strangers embraced, tears welled up in eyes 
bloodshot from lack of sleep.

The emotions on display on December 13, 2015 were not just for the 
cameras. After weeks of gruelling high-level negotiations in Paris a 
breakthrough had finally been achieved. Against all expectations, after 
decades of false starts and failures, the international community had 
finally agreed to do what it took to limit global warming to well below 
2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=286&v=_jA8k4YDzlo&feature=emb_imp_woyt
The Paris Agreement was a stunning victory for those most at risk from 
climate change. Rich industrialised nations will be increasingly 
impacted as global temperatures rise. But it’s the low lying island 
states such as the Maldives and the Marshall Islands that are at 
imminent existential risk. As a later UN special report made clear, if 
the Paris Agreement was unable to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the 
number of lives lost to more intense storms, fires, heatwaves, famines 
and floods would significantly increase.

But dig a little deeper and you could find another emotion lurking 
within delegates on December 13. Doubt. We struggle to name any climate 
scientist who at that time thought the Paris Agreement was feasible. We 
have since been told by some scientists that the Paris Agreement was “of 
course important for climate justice but unworkable” and “a complete 
shock, no one thought limiting to 1.5°C was possible”. Rather than being 
able to limit warming to 1.5°C, a senior academic involved in the IPCC 
concluded we were heading beyond 3°C by the end of this century.

Instead of confront our doubts, we scientists decided to construct ever 
more elaborate fantasy worlds in which we would be safe. The price to 
pay for our cowardice: having to keep our mouths shut about the ever 
growing absurdity of the required planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal...
https://images.theconversation.com/files/394549/original/file-20210412-13-1n4dgym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2
Taking centre stage was BECCS because at the time this was the only way 
climate-economic models could find scenarios that would be consistent 
with the Paris Agreement. Rather than stabilise, global emissions of 
carbon dioxide had increased some 60% since 1992.

Alas, BECCS, just like all the previous solutions, was too good to be true.

Across the scenarios produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change (IPCC) with a 66% or better chance of limiting temperature 
increase to 1.5°C, BECCS would need to remove 12 billion tonnes of 
carbon dioxide each year. BECCS at this scale would require massive 
planting schemes for trees and bioenergy crops.

The Earth certainly needs more trees. Humanity has cut down some three 
trillion since we first started farming some 13,000 years ago. But 
rather than allow ecosystems to recover from human impacts and forests 
to regrow, BECCS generally refers to dedicated industrial-scale 
plantations regularly harvested for bioenergy rather than carbon stored 
away in forest trunks, roots and soils.

Currently, the two most efficient biofuels are sugarcane for bioethanol 
and palm oil for biodiesel – both grown in the tropics. Endless rows of 
such fast growing monoculture trees or other bioenergy crops harvested 
at frequent intervals devastate biodiversity.

It has been estimated that BECCS would demand between 0.4 and 1.2 
billion hectares of land. That’s 25% to 80% of all the land currently 
under cultivation. How will that be achieved at the same time as feeding 
8-10 billion people around the middle of the century or without 
destroying native vegetation and biodiversity?

Growing billions of trees would consume vast amounts of water – in some 
places where people are already thirsty. Increasing forest cover in 
higher latitudes can have an overall warming effect because replacing 
grassland or fields with forests means the land surface becomes darker. 
This darker land absorbs more energy from the Sun and so temperatures 
rise. Focusing on developing vast plantations in poorer tropical nations 
comes with real risks of people being driven off their lands.

And it is often forgotten that trees and the land in general already 
soak up and store away vast amounts of carbon through what is called the 
natural terrestrial carbon sink. Interfering with it could both disrupt 
the sink and lead to double accounting.
https://images.theconversation.com/files/396503/original/file-20210422-21-1suqm95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2
As these impacts are becoming better understood, the sense of optimism 
around BECCS has diminished.

*Pipe dreams*
Given the dawning realisation of how difficult Paris would be in the 
light of ever rising emissions and limited potential of BECCS, a new 
buzzword emerged in policy circles: the “overshoot scenario”. 
Temperatures would be allowed to go beyond 1.5°C in the near term, but 
then be brought down with a range of carbon dioxide removal by the end 
of the century. This means that net zero actually means carbon negative. 
Within a few decades, we will need to transform our civilisation from 
one that currently pumps out 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the 
atmosphere each year, to one that produces a net removal of tens of 
billions.

Mass tree planting, for bioenergy or as an attempt at offsetting, had 
been the latest attempt to stall cuts in fossil fuel use. But the 
ever-increasing need for carbon removal was calling for more. This is 
why the idea of direct air capture, now being touted by some as the most 
promising technology out there, has taken hold. It is generally more 
benign to ecosystems because it requires significantly less land to 
operate than BECCS, including the land needed to power them using wind 
or solar panels.

Unfortunately, it is widely believed that direct air capture, because of 
its exorbitant costs and energy demand, if it ever becomes feasible to 
be deployed at scale, will not be able to compete with BECCS with its 
voracious appetite for prime agricultural land.

The Climeworks Gebr. Meier Greenhouse in Hinwil, Zurich. CO2 increases 
crop yield from direct air capture. Such projects demonstrate exciting 
possible applications for captured carbon, but there is no prospect they 
will have any measurable impact on reducing global warming. Orjan 
Ellingvag/Alamy
It should now be getting clear where the journey is heading. As the 
mirage of each magical technical solution disappears, another equally 
unworkable alternative pops up to take its place. The next is already on 
the horizon – and it’s even more ghastly. Once we realise net zero will 
not happen in time or even at all, geoengineering – the deliberate and 
large scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system – will probably 
be invoked as the solution to limit temperature increases.

One of the most researched geoengineering ideas is solar radiation 
management – the injection of millions of tons of sulphuric acid into 
the stratosphere that will reflect some of the Sun’s energy away from 
the Earth. It is a wild idea, but some academics and politicians are 
deadly serious, despite significant risks. The US National Academies of 
Sciences, for example, has recommended allocating up to US$200 million 
over the next five years to explore how geoengineering could be deployed 
and regulated. Funding and research in this area is sure to 
significantly increase.
https://images.theconversation.com/files/393121/original/file-20210401-21-g3swz5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2
*Difficult truths*
In principle there is nothing wrong or dangerous about carbon dioxide 
removal proposals. In fact developing ways of reducing concentrations of 
carbon dioxide can feel tremendously exciting. You are using science and 
engineering to save humanity from disaster. What you are doing is 
important. There is also the realisation that carbon removal will be 
needed to mop up some of the emissions from sectors such as aviation and 
cement production. So there will be some small role for a number of 
different carbon dioxide removal approaches.

The problems come when it is assumed that these can be deployed at vast 
scale. This effectively serves as a blank cheque for the continued 
burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of habitat destruction.

Carbon reduction technologies and geoengineering should be seen as a 
sort of ejector seat that could propel humanity away from rapid and 
catastrophic environmental change. Just like an ejector seat in a jet 
aircraft, it should only be used as the very last resort. However, 
policymakers and businesses appear to be entirely serious about 
deploying highly speculative technologies as a way to land our 
civilisation at a sustainable destination. In fact, these are no more 
than fairy tales.

Crowds of young people hold placards.
‘There is no Planet B’: children in Birmingham, UK, protest against the 
climate crisis. Callum Shaw/Unsplash, FAL
The only way to keep humanity safe is the immediate and sustained 
radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way.

Academics typically see themselves as servants to society. Indeed, many 
are employed as civil servants. Those working at the climate science and 
policy interface desperately wrestle with an increasingly difficult 
problem. Similarly, those that champion net zero as a way of breaking 
through barriers holding back effective action on the climate also work 
with the very best of intentions.

The tragedy is that their collective efforts were never able to mount an 
effective challenge to a climate policy process that would only allow a 
narrow range of scenarios to be explored.

Most academics feel distinctly uncomfortable stepping over the invisible 
line that separates their day job from wider social and political 
concerns. There are genuine fears that being seen as advocates for or 
against particular issues could threaten their perceived independence. 
Scientists are one of the most trusted professions. Trust is very hard 
to build and easy to destroy.

https://images.theconversation.com/files/394551/original/file-20210412-13-bllb2g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2
But there is another invisible line, the one that separates maintaining 
academic integrity and self-censorship. As scientists, we are taught to 
be sceptical, to subject hypotheses to rigorous tests and interrogation. 
But when it comes to perhaps the greatest challenge humanity faces, we 
often show a dangerous lack of critical analysis.

In private, scientists express significant scepticism about the Paris 
Agreement, BECCS, offsetting, geoengineering and net zero. Apart from 
some notable exceptions, in public we quietly go about our work, apply 
for funding, publish papers and teach. The path to disastrous climate 
change is paved with feasibility studies and impact assessments.

Rather than acknowledge the seriousness of our situation, we instead 
continue to participate in the fantasy of net zero. What will we do when 
reality bites? What will we say to our friends and loved ones about our 
failure to speak out now?

The time has come to voice our fears and be honest with wider society. 
Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because 
they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to 
protect business as usual, not the climate. If we want to keep people 
safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen 
now. That is the very simple acid test that must be applied to all 
climate policies. The time for wishful thinking is over.
https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368

https://newsoveraudio.com/?embedPubName=The%20ConversationembedPubId=103



/[ I wish this //conversation //was a longer YouTube Zoom recording ]/
*Post-doom with Joanna Macy (Feb 2021) "To Collapse Well"*
Jul 27, 2021
thegreatstory
"To Collapse Well" - post-doom talk recorded February 2021. Time-coded 
list of topics below. Dowd says, "This was originally intended to be 
just a catch-up conversation between long-time friends and colleagues. 
It quickly spiraled to profound and inspiring places and, thankfully, 
Joanna agreed that this this edited version could be published. This 
conversation is really the heart and soul of what I (Michael Dowd) mean 
by a POST-DOOM conversation!!"
         My wife and mission partner, Connie Barlow, spent three days 
adding text and image overlays. She says, "Many of the post-doom 
conversations Michael recorded gave me a sense of equanimity about 
TEOTWAWKI ("The End Of The World As We Know It"). But this one with 
Joanna had me sense the possibility about actually feeling gratitude for 
the gift of being alive at such a time.  I could see that gratitude in 
her face. It moved me, and gave me a fresh possibility for how I, too, 
might walk into this future. I wanted to share this gift with others."

    00:02 - Introduction and two previews.

    03:53 - MD (Dowd) and JM (Macy) - "We will be generative right to
    the end."

    04:46 - Action needed: advocate for solar panels to be installed
    near nuclear power plants to ensure emergency electricity for
    pumped-water cooling of spent fuel rods.

    07:00 - Foundational shift: "Admit the myth of perpetual progress is
    a false religion" and that that techno-fixes may not be a solution.
    Must avoid "geological-scale evil."

    09:22 - Technological hubris becomes "irresponsible in the extreme."
    Spiritual leaders can play a role in using morally laden,
    relationally oriented language. JM: "We have crippled our moral
    imagination."

    11:06 - Shifted meaning of "active hope." New edition of JM book,
    "World as Lover, Wolrld as Self." JM chapters in new book "A Wild
    Love for the World."

    14:26 - JM: "The great turning will not precede but will come with
    or after the process of collapse." Terminology: a "life-sustaining"
    (not "sustainable") culture. Importance of "deep adaptation." Their
    previous post-doom conversation, "Children of the Passage." Great
    turning "becomes a vision, a compass, a guiding star." Anger over
    "still fracking."

    18:10 - MD: Business-as-usual as a kind of "addiction" that is
    "totally understandable." The long history of "progress-regress,
    boom and bust cultures; how civilizations and empires predictably
    collapse." JM: "Morally we regress."

    19:57 - Quoting text response that Catherine Ingram offered for this
    conversation.

    22:42 - JM story: helped by Buddhist understanding of the self, plus
    her study of systems theory and Gaia theory toward growing "a planet
    sense of self" and "a vaster sense of experience through time." JM
    reflections on "Deep Ecology" with John Seed, and her own despair
    work, "The Work That Reconnects" and "Coming Back to Life."

    25:35 - JM: amazed that when people "had the courage to go into
    anguish for the world ... and not numb in out ... there was
    sometimes a shift in identity ... almost coextensive with Earth."
    MD: "a sense of self that includes a continuity with time ... and
    the nested self ... is the key to facing extinction ... death of
    expectations and worldviews ... fearlessness around mortality." JM:
    "That is what I experience ... such a fulfillment." MD: "relative
    equanimity and passionate commitment."

    29:46 - JM: "If this is the last generation, then I'm glad to be
    here.... so grateful ... a great harvesting." MD story of shifting
    out of fear for his daughter choosing to have a child. "A tsunami of
    trust just broke over top of me." JM: "Trust is at the core of
    life.... We're going to be humans living as humans till the last."
    MD: on being confronted by anti-natalists. JM: "We're a family till
    the end."

    33:55 - MD: "What a sacred honor to be alive at this time ... at the
    end of the Age of Exuberance and the beginning of the Great
    Contraction." JM: saw a play showing the transcendance of people
    trapped in the Warsaw ghetto; life is "transforming and redemptive
    at every moment, right to the end." MD: "Serenity prayer for the
    21st Century ... to collapse well ... post-doom and post-gloom." JM:
    "the hope that we can all die well." MD: Why young parents should
    not be reminded of this; focus on their daily parenting.

    39:38 - JM: "Our making peace with this makes room for such
    fulfillment.... so happy to have a chance to be with this beautiful
    planet, after this long, long story ... right at this climax,
    ending.... to celebrate, to thank — instead of wallowing in
    self-pity and complaint." MD: importance of "celebrating our
    relationship to place, to evolution ... tears of gratitude." JM:
    "and remember, too, the great poets, the great musicians." Go to the
    great landforms in our own regions "and say, glory be!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h1wdh3yEc4



/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming October 13, 1992*

October 13, 1992:

Vice President Dan Quayle, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, and Navy Vice 
Admiral James Stockdale discuss environmental issues in the Vice 
Presidential debate. Quayle says that the US can clearly have both a 
healthy economy and a healthy environment, a notion that would be later 
disavowed by his party. Quayle praises President Bush for signing the 
1990 Clean Air Act (which utilized cap-and-trade to combat sulfur 
dioxide). Quayle then implies that Bill Clinton and Al Gore will embrace 
environmental extremism, and denounces the idea of a tax on emissions 
from coal. Stockdale viciously attacks Gore's book "Earth in the 
Balance," and embraces climate denial. Gore calls for an "environmental 
revolution" and hails the progress of clean energy, before noting that 
President Bush broke his promise to be the "environmental president." 
Quayle also viciously attacks Gore's book. Gore defends his book and 
notes that the US needs to work with other countries to realize the 
potential of clean energy. Stockdale repeats his earlier climate denial; 
Gore points again to the scientific consensus on climate change. Quayle 
attacks the book for a third time and denounces the concept of a carbon 
tax for a second time.

(39:20--48:56)

http://youtu.be/sXU2BZIyqPA


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