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<i><font size="+1"><b>April 3, 2020</b></font></i><br>
<br>
[it is all connected]<br>
<b>Covid-19's viral lessons for climate heating</b><br>
April 2nd, 2020, by Kieran Cooke<br>
In the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, Covid-19's viral lessons
offer a warning of what may lie ahead.<br>
<br>
LONDON, 2 April, 2020 - There are some glimmers of hope discernible
in the loss, confusion and misery that's spreading worldwide, and
one is that Covid-19's viral lessons could help to equip us all to
tackle the climate crisis that's remorselessly building up.<br>
<br>
A major side effect of the battle against the spread of the corona
virus, for example, has been a significant reduction in the amount
of climate-changing greenhouse gas being pumped into the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
Power plants and factories in China and elsewhere have been shut
down: the use of fossil fuels, particularly oil, has plummeted.<br>
<br>
As a result of this reduced pollution, millions of people in cities
and regions across the world are breathing fresher, cleaner air.<br>
<br>
The epidemic has had other environmental consequences: residents of
Venice in northern Italy say they have never seen such clear water
in the city's canals, mainly due to the dramatic drop in tourist
numbers.<br>
<br>
With several countries in lockdown, car and truck traffic no longer
clogs up the roads and motorways.<br>
<br>
"Covid 19 is a test of how the world copes with crisis. Climate
change will present a much greater challenge"...<br>
- - <br>
Warnings ignored<br>
Epidemiologists have constantly warned of the likelihood of the
worldwide spread of a virus, saying it is not a case of if, but
when. For the most part, they have been ignored.<br>
<br>
In the same way, climate scientists have been warning for decades of
the catastrophe threatened by global heating. Covid-19 shows how
vital it is to listen to the science. Perhaps the epidemic will
prompt a more urgent approach to climate change.<br>
<br>
Covid-19 also reinforces the difficult-to-get-hold-of concept that
nothing is normal any more. Suddenly the world has been turned into
a very uncertain place. Behaviour which many of us have taken for
granted, such as international travel, is, for now at least, no
longer acceptable, or good for our health.<br>
<br>
Scientists say climate change will mean even greater and more
sustained adjustments to our lives. Rising seas will result in the
displacement of millions of coastal dwellers. Floods and droughts
will cause agricultural havoc and severe food shortages. People will
have to adjust to a new - and constantly changing - reality.<br>
<br>
Leadership and a clarity of policy - again, both at a national and
international level - have been shown to be essential in fighting
the coronavirus. After initial failings, China and South Korea moved
to impose a strict and comprehensive regime to control the
epidemic...<br>
- - <br>
In Brazil, Bolsonaro - he refuses to believe in climate change -
describes Covid-19 as a fantasy, suggesting it's all a plot by China
to weaken the country's economy. Opposition to Bolsonaro's lack of
action on the pandemic is growing.<br>
<br>
Covid 19 is a test of how the world - and its leaders - copes with
crisis. Climate change, rapidly galloping down the tracks, will
present a much greater challenge. - Climate News Network<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/covid-19s-viral-lessons-for-climate-heating/">https://climatenewsnetwork.net/covid-19s-viral-lessons-for-climate-heating/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Bloomberg Green]<br>
<b>Cost-Benefit Analysis in the Time of Coronavirus and Climate
Change</b><br>
Like climate economics, the economics of Covid-19 mean we need to
take aggressive action, not incremental steps.<br>
By Gernot Wagner - April 1, 2020<br>
- - -<br>
Denying basic physics and chemistry will not make the climate
problem disappear, as much as attempting to reinterpret biological
and medical realities isn't going to make Covid-19 go away. In both
cases, the economics, too, point in one and only one direction.
Economics 101 supports the fundamental conclusions of climate
science, much like it supports the fundamental epidemiological
conclusions in the case of Covid-19.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/cost-benefit-analysis-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-and-climate-change">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/cost-benefit-analysis-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-and-climate-change</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[rescheduled - from the Guardian]<br>
<b>Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow postponed until 2021</b><br>
Crucial UN conference will be delayed until next year as a result of
the coronavirus crisis<br>
<br>
The UN climate talks due to be held in Glasgow later this year have
been postponed as governments around the world struggle to halt the
spread of coronavirus.<br>
<br>
The most important climate negotiations since the Paris agreement in
2015 were scheduled to take place this November to put countries
back on track to avoid climate breakdown. They will now be pushed
back to 2021.<br>
<br>
A statement from the UN on Wednesday night confirmed that the
meeting of over 26,000 attendees would be delayed until next year.
It said new dates for the conference would be decided in due course.<br>
<br>
The UK energy minister and president of the Cop26 conference, Alok
Sharma, held crunch talks with the UN and several other countries on
Wednesday evening to confirm the timing of the summit. "The world is
currently facing an unprecedented global challenge and countries are
rightly focusing their efforts on saving lives and fighting
Covid-19. That is why we have decided to reschedule Cop26," he said.<br>
<br>
"We will continue working tirelessly with our partners to deliver
the ambition needed to tackle the climate crisis and I look forward
to agreeing a new date for the conference."<br>
<br>
The Cop26 meeting was scheduled to be held in Glasgow at the SEC
arena, a venue that the Scottish government plans to turn into a
field hospital to treat virus victims...<br>
more at -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/01/uk-likely-to-postpone-cop26-un-climate-talks-glasgow-coronavirus">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/01/uk-likely-to-postpone-cop26-un-climate-talks-glasgow-coronavirus</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[From Wired a few paragraphs]<br>
<b>This Is Not the Apocalypse You Were Looking For</b><br>
Pop culture has been inundated with catastrophe porn for decades.
None of it has prepared us for our new reality.<br>
LAURIE PENNY - 03.30.2020<br>
THE SHOCK ITSELF is shocking. Shouldn't we have been more prepared?
Hasn't culture been drenched in catastrophe porn for decades? The
bomb. The breakdown. The fallout. The senseless armies of shambling
corpses, all the nightmares of dead generations sliding out of our
screens. For more than a decade, young and young-ish people have
been living in anticipatory grief for everything we know. But
somehow, this is different.<br>
<br>
The idea of imminent annihilating catastrophe has been part of the
collective unconscious for as long as we've had one. From the end
date of the Mayan calendar to the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the
Genesis flood to the Book of Revelation, humans have been haunted by
the idea of the end of everything for a very, very long time.
Lately, it's been our default popular entertainment. Raised with the
threat of global warming in the teeth of a financial crisis, we sat
stunned and exhausted, watching our civilization die onscreen again
and again. More postapocalyptic entertainment has come out in the
beginning of this century than in the entirety of the last one. The
Day After Tomorrow. Zombieland. The Walking Dead. The Road. Children
of Men. The Last of Us. The same story again and again, somewhere
between wish fulfillment and trauma rehearsal, getting us used to
the idea that the future was canceled, that someday soon everything
would collapse, and there would be nothing left and nothing we could
do about it...<br>
- - -<br>
This is because late capitalism has always been a death cult. The
tiny-minded incompetents in charge cannot handle a problem that
can't be fixed simply by sacrificing poor, vulnerable, and otherwise
expendable individuals. Faced with a crisis they can't solve with
violence, they dithered and whined and wasted time that can and will
be counted in corpses. There has been no vision, because these men
never imagined the future beyond the image of themselves on top of
the human heap, cast in gold. For weeks, the speeches from podiums
have suggested that a certain amount of brutal death is a reasonable
price for other people to pay to protect the current financial
system. The airwaves have been full of spineless right-wing zealots
so focused on putting the win in social Darwinism that they keep
accidentally saying the quiet bit out loud...<br>
- - -<br>
Pop culture catastrophism didn't prepare us for this. "Look, this
isn't a movie," as one furious Italian mayor, broadcasting from his
front room, put it last week. "You are not Will Smith in I Am
Legend." For one thing, it's so relentlessly social...<br>
- - -<br>
The end of the world has never been quite so simple a mythos for
women, likely because most of us know that when social structures
crack and shatter, what happens isn't an instant reversion to
muscular state-of-naturism. What happens is that women and carers of
all genders quietly exhaust themselves filling in the gaps, trying
to save as many people as possible from physical and mental
collapse. The people on the front line are not fighters. They are
healers and carers. The very people whose work is rarely paid in
proportion to its importance are the ones we really need when the
dung hits the Dyson. Nurses, doctors, cleaners, drivers. Emotional
and domestic labor have never been part of the grand story men have
told themselves about the destiny of the species--not even when they
imagine its grave.<br>
In the end, it will not be butchery. Instead it will be bakery, as
everyone has apparently decided that the best thing to do when the
world lurches sideways is learn to make bread. Yeast is gone from
the shops. Even I have been acting out in the kitchen, although my
baked goods are legendarily dreadful. A friend and former roommate,
who knows me well, called from Berlin to ask if I had "made the
terrible, horrible biscuits yet." These misfortune cookies tend to
happen at moments of such extreme stress that those around me feel
obliged to eat them. They say that if you can make a cake, you can
make a bomb; if the whole thing implodes, my job will not be in
munitions.<br>
<br>
My job will be the same as yours and everyone else's: to be kind, to
stay calm, and to take care of whoever happens to need taking care
of in my immediate vicinity. We have been living for many, many
years in what Gramsci called a time of monsters, where "the old is
dying and the new cannot be born." The new is now being induced in a
hurry, because after this, nothing is going back to normal. It's the
end of the world as we know it, and everything does feel fine--not
fine like chill, but fine like china, like glass, like thread.
Everything feels so fine, and so fragile, and so shockingly worth
saving.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-apocalypse-myths/">https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-apocalypse-myths/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Smithsonian Mag site]<br>
<b>Why This Rare, Huge Ozone Hole Over the Arctic Is Puzzling
Scientists</b><br>
The new wound further diminishes Earth's protective shield against
damaging solar radiation<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/huge-ozone-hole-opens-over-arctic-rare-atmospheric-event-180974560/">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/huge-ozone-hole-opens-over-arctic-rare-atmospheric-event-180974560/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
April 3, 1980 </b></font><br>
"The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" reports on the role coal
plays in fueling global warming.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://climatecrocks.com/2013/01/23/1980-cronkite-on-climate/">http://climatecrocks.com/2013/01/23/1980-cronkite-on-climate/</a><br>
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