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<font size="+1"><i>July 27, 2017</i></font><br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/26/climate-change-non-white-voters">(<b>audio)
Analysis: Non-White Mass. Voters More Troubled By Climate Change
Than White Voters</b></a><br>
Massachusetts voters are more concerned than ever about climate
change. That's according to a WBUR poll released earlier this
summer, which found more of the state's voters than ever believe
climate change is real, already underway and likely to bring serious
consequences.<br>
The poll also found non-white voters are even more concerned about
the impacts of global warming than are white voters.<br>
Non-white voters are more likely to believe that Massachusetts will
suffer consequences like sea level rise, coastal flooding, strong
storms and extreme heat. They are more likely to oppose President
Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. And,
they think that climate change poses a bigger long-term threat to
the United States than terrorism, while white voters see terrorism
as the more serious concern.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/26/climate-change-non-white-voters">http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/26/climate-change-non-white-voters</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/26/france-wildfires-corsica-cote-d-azur-holiday">Thousands
evacuated after wildfire on France's Mediterranean coast</a></b><br>
Summer wildfires are once again blazing across southern Europe,
forcing the evacuation of 12,000 people on France's Mediterranean
cost and devouring swaths of forests as far afield as Corsica,
Portugal, Italy and Albania.<br>
Authorities in the Côte d'Azur region decided to move people out of
tents, campsites and holiday homes around the hilltop town of
Bormes-les-Mimosas after a fire broke out in the surrounding forests
on Tuesday.<br>
<font size="-1" color="#666666"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/26/france-wildfires-corsica-cote-d-azur-holiday">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/26/france-wildfires-corsica-cote-d-azur-holiday</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/we-re-teaching-kids-wrong-ways-fight-climate-change">We're
Teaching Kids the Wrong Ways to Fight Climate Change</a></b><br>
<b>Is our love for technology to blame?</b><br>
BY HEATHER SMITH | JUL 12 2017<br>
When Seth Wynes was teaching high school science in Canada, there
was one question his students asked him that he had trouble
answering: What can I do to stop climate change? <br>
Then Wynes began comparing ... resesarch to climate-related
documents aimed at teenagers and adults in the three most
high-emitting countries on the list: Canada, Australia, and the
United States. He wanted to know—were the actions on his list the
same as the actions these documents recommended?...<br>
The single most important thing that an individual could do—have one
fewer child than intended—was not mentioned at all. On one level,
this is easier to understand—several countries have a tradition of
relying on an expanding birth rate as a way to subsidize the
retirement of its older citizens. Systematic attempts to reduce
birth rates in many countries have a history of being applied
selectively, in ways that can only be described as racist and
classist. But still, a concerned teenager might want to know that a
U.S. family choosing to have one fewer child than they originally
intended would, as Wynes and Nicholas put it, "provide the same
level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers who choose to adopt
comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives."<br>
When I asked Wynes about why he thought publications aimed at
teenagers had such a strong emphasis on climate actions with only
moderate impact, he hesitated, then hypothesized that the problem
might be hope. Specifically, the hope that new technology would be
the solution to this new, energy-related problem, the way that the
Green Revolution was a solution to the limitations of agriculture,
or the way that the catalytic converter cut urban air pollution.
Only one of the four most-effective options—buying energy from
renewable sources—requires the kind of technological innovation that
has gotten us out of environmental pinches in the past. We already
have the technology to have fewer children and to get around using
fewer cars. Many short-distance air routes could be replaced with
high-speed rail, and the knowledge to make that work well has been
around since the 1970s.<br>
Whether or not the kids are learning it in school, we may already be
living in a world where expectations are adjusting. In the United
States, the percentage of 20-somethings with driver's licenses has
fallen by 13 percent over the past three decades, and they prefer to
live in cities, even if they can't afford to live there. Even if
young people do eventually buy cars and move out to the suburbs as
they get older, by driving less now they've reduced the pollution
they've contributed to in their lifetime.<br>
In my years writing about climate and the environment, I've seen a
lot of what Wynes's and Nicholas's paper describes. I have been told
by scientific papers to buy a more-fuel-efficient car, as though the
existence of people like myself who have never owned a car in the
first place does not exist. I have seen teenagers being told they
can fight climate change by shopping at thrift stores and taking
shorter showers. As a communication strategy, it felt a bit
off—teenagers as I know them are idealistic and intense, more
comfortable at making dramatic statements and life changes than most
adults are.<br>
What would they do if they knew the whole truth about this
troposphere we're handing off to them? I eagerly await that study.<br>
<font size="-1" color="#666666"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/we-re-teaching-kids-wrong-ways-fight-climate-change">http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/we-re-teaching-kids-wrong-ways-fight-climate-change</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fear-factor-defense-new-yorks-climate-doom-cover-story">Fear
Factor: A Defense of NEW YORK's Climate Doom Cover Story</a></b><br>
<b>It's OK to talk about the terrifying worst-case climate change
scenarios</b><br>
BY JASON MARK | JUL 14 2017<br>
In the not-so-distant future (the lifetime of a person born today),
large portions of Earth may become inhospitable to human life, if
not totally uninhabitable. Rising temperatures might scorch the
world's great grain baskets, leading to famine and contributing to
war. Extinctions will continue to mount. Diseases locked in ancient
ice could sweep the planet, producing plagues like we've never
experienced. If humanity fails to radically reduce global greenhouse
gas emissions, "much more dying is coming." <br>
That nightmarish doomsday scenario arrives courtesy of the current
cover story in New York magazine, titled "<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html">The
Uninhabitable Earth</a>." Since it was published, on June 10, the
blockbuster piece (now the most-read in the magazine's history) has
ignited a firestorm of controversy, with many scientists complaining
that it exaggerates the science of climate change, and a host of
environmental journalists offering their hot-takes on the article.
At this point, the Twitter debates on the essay probably measure in
the gigabytes. <br>
Maybe such an over-the-top depiction of climate change's worst-case
scenarios is useful, essential even. "The Uninhabitable Earth" can
be like a splash of cold water to the face, waking up society from
its sleepwalk toward life-threatening climate dislocations. All too
often, climate change reporting is boring, or at least hard to track
if (like most people) you're only following the story out of the
corner of your eye. A planetary disaster unfolding in slow motion
lacks the immediacy of, say, Donald Trump Jr.'s real-time
self-incrimination. In contrast, Wallace-Wells's story is vivid and
visceral. It is, in a word, terrifying. <br>
And that's a good thing. At this point in time, with carbon dioxide
and methane continuing to accumulate in the atmosphere and the
oceans becoming warmer and more acidic, a measure of terror isn't
unreasonable. A good dose of fear might in fact be just the
propellant civilization needs to take immediate, dramatic action. <br>
Make no mistake: Hope—the renewable energy of any successful
political movement—is essential for addressing the climate crisis.
But hope alone is insufficient. If society is going to avoid the
worst climate change impacts, some rational panic is also in order.
There is such a thing as doom without gloom. Fear, just as much as
hope, can fuel a righteous global movement to decarbonize
civilization. <br>
Given the article's huge success, the concerns about the article
seem misdirected. This is the last thing we need right now:
scientists and journalists worrying that people are too worried
about climate change, or worried for the "wrong" reasons. As Vox's
David Roberts puts it, in one of the best defenses of the essay I've
seen, "By any sane accounting, the ranks [of] the under-alarmed
outnumber the over-alarmed by many multiples." <br>
Exactly right. I have to wonder what's worse: a relatively unknown
writer exploring the worst-case scenarios of climate chaos, or one
of the world's preeminent climate scientists (Michael Mann) writing
in the Washington Post that the concerns are overblown. In today's
media environment—in which social media acts as a light-speed-quick
game of telephone—I'm afraid the latter is more likely to give
solace to those who continue to push for reckless fossil fuel
extraction.<br>
It's an open secret among climatologists, policy experts, and
environmental campaigners that staying within a global 2-degree
temperature rise is all but impossible, barring some technological
or political revolution. Wallace-Wells has simply laid that secret
bare. <br>
And yet, as one scientist involved in the Climate Feedback dialogue,
UCLA post-doc Daniel Swain, points out, "It is quantitatively
true—and often underappreciated—that the likelihood of a 'worse than
expected' climate future is actually higher than a 'better than
expected' one." Or, more plainly: It is more probable that climate
change will be a disaster than that we'll manage to avoid the worst
impacts of treating the atmosphere like an open sewer. <br>
Here's Mann in the Post: "Fear does not motivate, and appealing to
it is often counterproductive as it tends to distance people from
the problem, leading them to disengage, doubt, and even dismiss it."
And here's meteorologist-journalist Eric Holthaus writing for Grist:
"If you're trying to motivate people, scaring the shit out of them
is a really bad strategy." <br>
Really? I'm not so sure. There's two problems with this line of
reasoning: It's not half as well grounded in science as the writers
claim; and, more worrisome to me, it represents a kind of
sentiment-censoring, an emotion-shaming that doesn't allow space for
the full range of feelings people might have regarding climate
change. <br>
Arousing fear is OK—as long as people have a sense of personal
agency that there is something they can do to address that fear.
And, I would say, there's nothing wrong with arousing fear when the
facts are, in fact, worrisome. <br>
My bigger concern with the fear-shaming is that it represents a
one-dimensional view of human nature. Hope and fear have a
Janus-like relationship; or, perhaps more accurately, hope and fear
are like conjoined twins—two minds, sharing a single heartbeat. It's
hard to have one without the other. <br>
But if you're not fearful about climate change, either you're not
paying attention or you're fooling yourself. <br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fear-factor-defense-new-yorks-climate-doom-cover-story">http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fear-factor-defense-new-yorks-climate-doom-cover-story</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/why_climate_change_discussions_need_apocalyptic_thinking.html">Why
climate change discussions need apocalyptic thinking.</a></b><br>
Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change<br>
Hope that science will provide a solution is its own kind of
surrender.<br>
These demands that we hope against all evidence are examples of what
Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism." Berlant describes the way
people hope for something that is impossible or fantastical. What
makes this cruel, rather than just tragic, is that the hope is
itself part of the problem. Think of the way that dreams of success
and wealth function in American society. Low-paid employees in
precarious positions are told that determination and hard work will
result in greater opportunities and economic security. In actuality,
class mobility is very limited. The optimism at the heart of the
American dream is cruel: Workers invest in a dream that actually
leaves them more open to exploitation rather than challenging the
wider economic system.<br>
<font size="-1" color="#666666"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/why_climate_change_discussions_need_apocalyptic_thinking.html">http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/why_climate_change_discussions_need_apocalyptic_thinking.html</a><br>
</font><br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIODRrnHQxg">Kevin
Anderson: Paris, climate & surrealism: how numbers reveal
another reality</a></b><br>
Visit: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://climateseries.com">http://climateseries.com</a><br>
Speaker: Prof. Kevin Anderson, Professor of energy and climate
change<br>
Title: Paris, climate and surrealism: how numbers reveal an
alternate reality <br>
The Paris Agreement's inclusion of "well below 2°C" and "pursue …
1.5°C" has catalysed fervent activity amongst many within the
scientific community keen to understand what this more ambitious
objective implies for mitigation. However, this activity has
demonstrated little in the way of plurality of responses. Instead
there remains an almost exclusive focus on how future 'negative
emissions technologies' (NETs) may offer a beguiling and almost free
"get out of jail card".<br>
This presentation argues that such a dominant focus reveals an
endemic bias across much of the academic climate change community
determined to voice a politically palatable framing of the
mitigation landscape – almost regardless of scientific credibility.<br>
The inclusion of carbon budgets within the IPCC's latest report
reveals just how few years remain within which to meet even the
"well below 2°C" objective.<br>
Making optimistic assumptions on the rapid cessation of
deforestation and uptake of carbon capture technologies on
cement/steel production, sees a urgent need to accelerate the
transformation of the energy system away from fossil fuels by the
mid 2030s in the wealthier nations and 2050 globally. To put this in
context, the national mitigation pledges submitted to Paris see an
ongoing rise in emissions till 2030 and are not scheduled to
undergo major review until 2023 – eight years, or 300 billion
tonnes of CO2, after the Paris Agreement.<br>
Despite the enormity and urgency of 1.5°C and "well below 2°C"
mitigation challenge, the academic community has barely considered
delivering deep and early reductions in emissions through the rapid
penetration of existing end-use technologies and profound social
change. At best it dismisses such options as too expensive compared
to the discounted future costs of a technology that does not yet
exist. At worst, it has simply been unprepared to countenance
approaches that risk destabilising the political hegemony.<br>
Ignoring such sensibilities, the presentation concludes with a draft
vision of what an alternative mitigation agenda may comprise.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIODRrnHQxg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIODRrnHQxg</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?193612-1/Methodo">This Day
in Climate History July 27, 2006</a> - from D.R. Tucker</b></font><br>
July 27, 2006: Climate scientist Michael Mann testifies before the
House Committee on Energy and Commerce regarding his scientific
research--and the transparently partisan efforts by climate-change
deniers to undermine it.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/8e2GlooAPkM">http://youtu.be/8e2GlooAPkM</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?193612-1/Methodo">http://www.c-span.org/video/?193612-1/Methodo</a><br>
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