[✔️] April 15, 2024 Global Warming News | Leaders push catastrophe, Brit wind farms, Michael Mann, Book review Weight of Nature, 1988 Al Gore C-Span

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 15*//*, 2024*/

/[ Well, DUH ]/
*‘Grownup’ leaders are pushing us towards catastrophe, says former US 
climate chief*
Paris agreement negotiator Todd Stern attacks premiers who say that 
decarbonisation programmes are unrealistic and should be slowed down
Fiona Harvey Environment editor
Sun 14 Apr 2024
Political leaders who present themselves as “grownups” while slowing the 
pace of climate action are pushing the world towards deeper catastrophe, 
a former US climate chief has warned.

“We are slowed down by those who think of themselves as grownups and 
believe decarbonisation at the speed the climate community calls for is 
unrealistic,” said Todd Stern, who served as a special envoy for climate 
change under Barack Obama, and helped negotiate the 2015 Paris agreement.

“They say that we need to slow down, that what is being proposed [in 
cuts to greenhouse gas emissions] is unrealistic,” he told the Observer. 
“You see it a lot in the business world too. It’s really hard [to push 
for more urgency] because those ‘grownups’ have a lot of influence.”

But Stern said the speed of take-up of renewable energy, its falling 
cost, and the wealth of low-carbon technology now available were 
evidence that the world could cut emissions to net zero by 2050. 
“Obviously it’s difficult – we’re talking about enormous change to the 
world economy – but we can do it,” he said.
Stern would not name any world leaders, but he said the UK was in 
“retrenchment” over climate issues. Rishi Sunak and Claire Coutinho, the 
energy secretary, made several U-turns on climate policy last year, and 
have repeatedly said climate policies imposed “unacceptable costs on 
hard-pressed British families” and that by slowing such action they were 
“being pragmatic and protecting family finances”.

Stern said that, in fact, delaying action to cut greenhouse gas 
emissions was leading to disaster, given the rapid acceleration of the 
climate crisis, which he said was happening faster than predicted when 
the Paris agreement was signed. “Look out your window – look at what’s 
happening,look at the preposterous heat. It’s ridiculous.”

Leaders who claimed to be grownups by saying the pace of action had to 
be slowed had to be honest about the alternatives, he said. Just as 
political leaders took swift action to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in 
2020, so must they confront the consequences of slowing climate action now.

“All hard questions of this magnitude should be considered by way of a 
‘compared to what’ analysis. The monumental dangers [the climate crisis] 
poses warrant the same kind of ‘compared to what’ argument when leaders 
in the political and corporate worlds balk at what needs to be done.”

He warned of the backlash against climate action by “rightwing populism” 
in Europe. “Hopefully, it doesn’t go very far,” he said. “If that kind 
of attitude gets some purchase among parts of the population, that’s not 
helpful.”

Stern praised Joe Biden for “an extraordinarily good first term”, 
including the Inflation Reduction Act, which he called “far and away the 
most significant climate legislation ever in the US, and it’s quite 
powerful”.

But he warned that if Donald Trump were to be elected this November, the 
US would exit the Paris agreement and frustrate climate action globally.
He will try to reverse whatever he can in terms of domestic policy [on 
climate action],” he warned. “I don’t think anybody else is going to 
pull out of Paris because of Trump, but it’s highly disruptive to what 
can happen internationally, because the US is a very big, very important 
player. So [without the US] you don’t move as fast.”

Stern called for stronger demonstration from civil society of support 
for climate action. “What we need, broadly, is normative change, a shift 
in hearts and minds that demonstrates to political leaders that their 
political future depends on taking strong, unequivocal action to protect 
our world,” he said.

“Normative change may seem at first blush like a weak reed to carry into 
battle against the defenders of the status quo, but norms can move 
mountains. They are about a sense of what is right, what is acceptable, 
what is important, what we expect and what we demand.”

Stern first gave his warning in a lecture at the London School of 
Economics on Friday night, in honour of the British civil servant Pete 
Betts, who served as the EU’s chief climate negotiator for the Paris 
agreement. He died last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/14/grownup-leaders-are-pushing-us-towards-catastrophe-says-former-us-climate-chief



/[ British Isles wind farm explanation - video - 13 min ]/
*Ocean Electricity Grid. How do they do that?*
Just Have a Think
Apr 14, 2024
Pylons are ugly and nobody likes them! Filling up our countryside with 
thousands more of them to facilitate a massive electricity grid 
expansion is proving to be a very tricky challenge with lots of local 
opposition. But what if you could build your electricity grid out at sea 
and just bring cables to shore where they’re needed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daGqWqvvtVs



/[ Michael Mann lecture  ]/
*Can Lessons from Earth’s Past Help Us Survive Our Current Climate Crisis?*
Belfer Center
Apr 2, 2024
In his latest book, Our Fragile Moment, award-winning climate scientist 
Michael E. Mann explores innovative approaches to combating climate 
change by examining Earth’s climate history and how the planet has coped 
with - and survived - extreme events in the past. Climate variability 
has at times created new opportunities for innovation. Mann argues that 
the greatest threat to meaningful action today is not denialism but 
despair among those who feel it is too late to do anything about rising 
temperatures and seas resulting from fossil fuel consumption. While the 
window is narrowing, he believes there is still time to take significant 
political, societal and technological steps to avert catastrophic global 
climate change.

Henry Lee, Director of the Belfer Center's Environment and Natural 
Resources Program, provides introductory remarks. Cristine Russell, ENRP 
Senior Fellow, moderates.

For more information: 
https://www.belfercenter.org/event/can-lessons-earths-past-help-us-survive-our-current-climate-crisis-talk-renowned-scientist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxVlyD9DZlA



/[   NYT book review  ]/
*Climate Change Is Making Us Paranoid, Anxious and Angry*
 From dolphins with Alzheimer’s to cranky traffic judges, writes Clayton 
Page Aldern, the whole planet is going berserk.
By Nathaniel Rich
Nathaniel Rich is the author, most recently, of “Second Nature: Scenes 
 From a World Remade.”
April 9, 2024
*THE WEIGHT OF NATURE: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains,* by 
Clayton Page Aldern

We know, often with abject precision, what climate change is doing to 
our coasts, rainforests, wildfires and hurricanes; our immigration 
patterns, crop yields and insurance premiums. But what is it doing to 
our brains?

This question, for Clayton Page Aldern, is not rhetorical but bleakly 
literal. Aldern is a Rhodes Scholar who, in defiance of career 
counselors everywhere, abandoned a promising career in the field of 
neuroscience to become a journalist. He traces his conversion to a pair 
of reports showing a correlation between climate change and increased 
violent conflict. “It wasn’t just that a warmer world would hurt us,” 
writes Aldern, “it was that a warmer world would make us hurt one 
another.”...
- -
Most of the violence cited in those reports derives from the effect of 
higher temperatures on natural resources and weather disasters. A report 
from the Pentagon describes, for instance, how drought and reduced 
agricultural yields helped prime the Syrian civil war, and how Hurricane 
Sandy necessitated the mass mobilization of the U.S. military. But it is 
also true that heat makes people irritable. How much more anger — how 
many more shootings, road-rage accidents, sporting-event brawls, 
declarations of war — is stimulated by a warming of one-and-a-half 
degrees Celsius? How about two degrees, or three? Warmer temperatures 
also tend to make us more cruel, depressed and dumb.

“The Weight of Nature” observes most of the narrative conventions of 
advocacy writing. A set of alarming problems is introduced and bemoaned, 
the dramatic stakes are raised to dizzying extremes, solutions are 
presented, and the reader is encouraged to act. But the weight of the 
“Weight of Nature” falls heavily on the problems, which draw from a 
survey of experimental findings so terrifying that they elicit the prose 
equivalent of nervous laughter; many of them, as Aldern writes in 
reference to the prospect of global-warming-induced mass dementia, are 
“almost comically apocalyptic.”

The book’s exposition, drawing from a selection of recent scientific 
studies, reads like a demonic Harper’s “Findings” column. Naegleria 
fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba, has begun infecting swimmers in lakes 
as far north as Iowa and Minnesota, and may already be present in all 
fresh water; as lakes and ponds warm, writes Aldern, channeling Vincent 
Price, “more N. fowleri are waking up.”

Neurodegenerative diseases will affect some 14 million more people 
annually by 2050. As landscapes reconfigure and cultural practices 
vanish, the mind becomes less able to retain information, which Aldern 
translates as: “Climate change causes amnesia.”

In hotter climates, a high school student’s chance of graduating on time 
decreases by a percentage point for every extra degree Fahrenheit on the 
day of a final exam. On warmer days immigration judges more frequently 
rule against asylum applicants. When it’s hotter than 100 degrees, one 
third of drivers honk more often, and for longer. Heat exposure during 
early pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of conditions like 
schizophrenia and anorexia.

Dolphins appear to be getting Alzheimer’s disease. Mountaintop removal 
makes Appalachians depressed. In Greenland, mercury, a neurotoxin, is 
leaking from melting permafrost “like some kind of cartoonish sludge 
zombie.” Florida will soon be swarmed by rabid vampire bats.

Some of the revelations in this “Pandora’s box of horrors” raise 
practical questions. If students are 10 percent more likely to fail an 
exam taken on a 90-degree day, should the test scores of children in 
southern climates be rounded up accordingly? If higher temperatures lead 
to outbursts of violence, should a hot day be considered a mitigating 
factor when determining the guilt of a defendant? Should parents be 
warned against raising children in tropical zones?

Like any kind of intoxication, indulgence in worst-case scenarios can 
induce a hangover. Since many of these findings are predicated on 
extrapolations, Aldern, the former scientist, is careful to include 
qualifications. “It’s important not to overreach here,” he writes, 
directly after quoting “Crime and Punishment” to demonstrate the 
influence of heat on murderous rage. “Don’t pay attention to the actual 
values,” he writes, after relaying an economist’s prediction that, 
between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 22,000 
murders, 2.2 million cases of larceny and 180,000 cases of rape. 
Brain-eating amoeba infections will “continue to remain relatively 
rare,” he writes, shortly after cautioning readers who might want to 
jump into a warm lake next summer to wear nose plugs. In summary: “I 
know doomsday alarmism is tiresome. But you should still be concerned.”

It is impossible to submit to this barrage and not be concerned. Then 
again one doesn’t need the threat of airborne A.L.S. to be concerned 
about the effect of climate change on our minds, our moods, our spirits. 
Any person who dares to stare down the behemoth of climate change cannot 
escape its mind-altering influence. How does one respond, intellectually 
or emotionally, to an unraveling that seems both unobservably slow and 
teeth-chatteringly rapid; to the unthinking and indiscriminate slaughter 
of billions of creatures; to the ineptitude of our politics and the 
psychopathic venality of our industries; to the assignation of the most 
vulnerable among us to the gravest suffering; to the willful destruction 
of a civilization? The scale of the physical transformation alone 
overwhelms the mind.

Aldern asserts that he has not written a book about climate anxiety — or 
climate communication or neurophilosophy or politics — but one about 
“direct interventions of environmental change on the brain.” 
Nevertheless, as he puts it elsewhere, “bank shots still count in 
billiards.” Regardless of whether you live in a wildfire zone or a 
hurricane alley, or swim in warm ponds, his central insights hold, and 
deserve emphasis. Aldern is the rare writer who dares to ask how climate 
change has already changed us.

“It is the job of your brain to model the world as it is,” writes 
Aldern. “And the world is mutating.” We are mutating with it. We are 
becoming more suspicious, paranoid, anxious, depressive, distracted, 
nihilistic, angry. Not all of us, and not all the time. Some respond, as 
Aldern instructs his readers to do, with greater empathy, resilience, 
collective action and pipeline sabotage.

But that is just another kind of mutation: an antibody response. This 
great transformation is already deforming our inner lives in ways we are 
only beginning to comprehend. Climate change isn’t only here, writes 
Aldern. It is inside us. And it is spreading.

THE WEIGHT OF NATURE: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains | By 
Clayton Page Aldern | Dutton | 320 pp. | $30

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/books/review/the-weight-of-nature-clayton-page-aldern.html


/[The news archive -  ]/
/*April 15, 1988 */
April 15, 1988: In a speech at St. John's University in New York, 
Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore states (specifically in 
reference to the threat of nuclear weapons, though the statement 
certainly applies to *another* worldwide threat): "I believe that it is 
possible that future generations will look back on this election year of 
1988 and wonder with amazement how we could have let these problems go 
unattended for so long."
(22:50--23:01)
http://c-spanvideo.org/program/GoreCampa
https://www.c-span.org/video/?2241-1/gore-campaign-speech



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