<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><i><font size="+1"><b>July 24, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[water rationing to start in August] <br>
<b>California moves to cut off water to thousands of farmers, as
drought dries up rivers</b><br>
BY DALE KASLER - JULY 23, 2021 <br>
The State Water Resources Control Board on Friday released an
“emergency curtailment” order that would cut thousands off from
rivers and streams in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river
watersheds. The five-person board still has to vote on the order
Aug. 3, and it would take effect about two weeks later.<br>
Eileen Sobeck, the board’s executive director, said the proposed
order shows the dire conditions of California’s water supply. There
“is just not enough to meet all of the legitimate demands,” she
said...<br>
- -<br>
“We don’t take this action lightly; we know that it’s going to
impose hardships on folks,” she said. Exceptions will be made for
drinking water and other human needs...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article252986953.html">https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article252986953.html</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[BC Wildfires]<br>
<b>Wildfire triples in size in BC's Okanagan; Health concerns over
smoky skies</b><br>
Jul 23, 2021<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QjlnwMg7hs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QjlnwMg7hs</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<p>[Daily wildfire video report]<br>
<b>Holt Hanley Weather</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGjtp7iaeVmoVx-K7EGiYKA">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGjtp7iaeVmoVx-K7EGiYKA</a><br>
</p>
<p>- -</p>
[Tipping point is not a place in China]<br>
<b>Climate 'mysteries' still puzzle scientists, despite progress</b><br>
by Amélie Bottollier-Depois - - JULY 23, 2021<br>
Heatwaves—and particularly the tendency of current models to
underestimate the intensity of these bursts of deadly, searing
temperature.<br>
<br>
This is one of the "major mysteries" science still has to unravel,
climatologist Robert Vautard told AFP, even as researchers are able
to pinpoint with increasing accuracy exactly how human fossil fuel
pollution is warming the planet and altering the climate.<br>
<br>
"Today we have better climate projection models, and longer
observations with a much clearer signal of climate change," said
Vautard, one of the authors of an upcoming assessment by the United
Nations' panel of climate experts...<br>
- -<br>
<b>'Phenomenal' heat</b><br>
Scientists now have a greater understanding of the mechanisms behind
"extreme phenomena, which now occur almost every week around the
world", said Vautard, adding that this helps better quantify how
these events will play out in the future.<br>
<br>
In almost real time, researchers can pinpoint the role of climate
change in a given disaster, something they were unable to do at all
until very recently.<br>
<br>
Now, so-called "attribution" science means we can say how probable
an extreme weather event would have been had the climate not been
changing at all...<br>
- -<br>
<b>Tipping points</b><br>
Even on a global scale, some fundamental questions remain.<br>
<br>
Perhaps one of the most ominous climate concepts to have become
better understood in recent years is that of "tipping points".<br>
<br>
These could be triggered for example by the melting of the ice caps
or the decline of the Amazon rainforest, potentially swinging the
climate system into dramatic and irreversible changes.<br>
<br>
There are still "a lot of uncertainties and mysteries" about tipping
points, Vautard said, including what level of temperature rise might
set them off.<br>
<br>
Currently, they are seen as low probability events, but he said that
it is still crucial to know more about them given the "irreversible
consequences on the scale of millennia" that they could cause.<br>
<br>
Another crucial uncertainty is the state of the world's forests and
oceans, which absorb about half of the CO2 emitted by humans.<br>
<br>
"Will this carbon sink function continue to be effective or not?"
Vautard said.<br>
<br>
If they stop absorbing carbon—as has been found in areas of the
Amazon, for example—then more C02 will accumulate in the atmosphere,
raising temperatures even further.<br>
<br>
"It is a concern," said Vautard.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-climate-mysteries-puzzle-scientists.html">https://phys.org/news/2021-07-climate-mysteries-puzzle-scientists.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[different politician]<br>
<b>Why Mitt Romney says doing nothing about global warming would be
seen as ‘extraordinary lapse’</b><br>
By Dennis Romboy -- Jul 21, 2021<br>
Failure to take steps to prevent global warming because of politics
will be seen as an “extraordinary lapse” in America’s judgment
decades from now, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday.<br>
<br>
Romney, a Republican, said at a Senate hearing that it’s time for
the country to come together and to find solutions that will
actually help protect the planet for future generations.<br>
<br>
When people look back on the current generation 50 years from now,
they will be most critical of “our failure to act to prevent the
warming of the planet and the climate change associated with that
warming, and that the political winds that prevented us from acting
will be seen as an extraordinary lapse in America’s judgment,” he
said.<br>
<br>
Romney, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on East Asia, the
Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy, made the statements
at a hearing on combating climate change in East Asia and the
Pacific...<br>
- -<br>
The first-term senator said that the only effective way to deal with
climate change is through advances in technology because it is
effective in reducing emissions and less expensive than some of the
carbon-based alternatives.<br>
<br>
“I know that sometimes we’re tempted to politically get behind
initiatives that sound good. Doing things here, that people here
feel like, ‘boy, we’re doing green things here isn’t that
wonderful?’ But the reality is that those things won’t make a hill
of beans worth of difference to reducing global emissions,” Romney
said...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/7/21/22587651/why-mitt-romney-says-not-doing-anything-global-warming-extraordinary-lapse-climate-change">https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/7/21/22587651/why-mitt-romney-says-not-doing-anything-global-warming-extraordinary-lapse-climate-change</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[odd or perplexing?]<br>
<b>California's carbon mitigation efforts may be thwarted by climate
change itself</b><br>
by University of California, Irvine<br>
JULY 22, 2021<br>
To meet an ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, California's
policymakers are relying in part on forests and shrublands to remove
CO2 from the atmosphere, but researchers at the University of
California, Irvine warn that future climate change may limit the
ecosystem's ability to perform this service.<br>
In a paper published today in the American Geophysical Union journal
AGU Advances, the UCI Earth system scientists stressed that rising
temperatures and uncertain precipitation will cause a decrease in
California's natural carbon storage capacity of as much as 16
percent under an extreme climate projection and of nearly 9 percent
under a more moderate scenario.<br>
<br>
"This work highlights the conundrum that climate change poses to the
state of California," said lead author Shane Coffield, a UCI Ph.D.
candidate in Earth system science. "We need our forests and other
plant-covered areas to provide a 'natural climate solution' of
removing carbon dioxide from the air, but heat and drought caused by
the very problem we're trying to solve could make it more difficult
to achieve our objectives."<br>
<br>
Trees and plants draw CO2 from the atmosphere when they
photosynthesize, and some of the carbon ends up stored in their
biomass or the soil. California's climate strategy depends in part
on enhanced carbon storage to offset some of the emissions from
transportation, power generation and other sources. The combination
of this natural carbon sequestration system and measures to promote
green energy is hoped to help the state reach its target of not
contributing net carbon to the environment by 2045.<br>
<br>
But the UCI scientists suggest that an even more aggressive approach
to curtailing emissions may be necessary.<br>
<br>
"The emissions scenario that we follow will have a large effect on
the carbon storage potential of our forests," said co-author James
Randerson, who holds the Ralph J. & Carol M. Cicerone Chair in
Earth System Science at UCI. "A more moderate emissions scenario in
which we convert to more renewable energy sources leads to about
half of the ecosystem carbon [sequestration] loss compared to a more
extreme emissions scenario."<br>
<br>
Coffield said that current climate models are not in agreement about
California's future precipitation, but it's probable that the
northern part of the state will get wetter and the southern part
drier. He also said that coastal areas of Central and Northern
California and low- and mid-elevation mountain areas—sites of large
offset projects—are the most likely to lose some of their carbon
sequestration powers over the next several decades.<br>
<br>
In addition, the researchers were able to estimate the effects of
climate change on specific tree species. They project that coast
redwoods will be constrained to the far northern part of their range
by the end of the century and that hotter, drier conditions will
favor oak trees at the expense of conifers.<br>
<br>
While the study used statistical modeling to peer into the future of
the state's ecosystems, the research also highlights the importance
of present-day drought and wildfire as key mechanistic drivers of
carbon sequestration losses. Other studies have estimated that the
2012-2015 drought killed more than 40 percent of ponderosa pines in
the Sierra Nevada range. Another issue the researchers describe is
the loss of trees from California's worsening wildfire situation.<br>
<br>
"We hope that this work will inform land management and climate
policies so that steps can be taken to protect existing carbon
stocks and tree species in the most climate-vulnerable locations,"
Randerson said. "Effective management of fire risk is essential for
limiting carbon [sequestration] losses throughout much of the
state."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://phys.org/news/2021-07-california-carbon-mitigation-efforts-thwarted.html">https://phys.org/news/2021-07-california-carbon-mitigation-efforts-thwarted.html</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[Source material may help with understanding]<br>
<b>Climate-Driven Limits to Future Carbon Storage in California's
Wildland Ecosystems</b><br>
Shane R. Coffield, Kyle S. Hemes, Charles D. Koven, Michael L.
Goulden, James T. Randerson<br>
First published: 22 July 2021 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2021AV000384">https://doi.org/10.1029/2021AV000384</a><br>
This article is a companion to Anderegg (2021),
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2021AV000490">https://doi.org/10.1029/2021AV000490</a>.<br>
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b><br>
Enhanced ecosystem carbon storage is a key component of many
climate mitigation pathways. The State of California has set an
ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, relying in part on
enhanced carbon sequestration in natural and working lands. We
used statistical modeling, including random forest and climate
analog approaches, to explore the climate-driven challenges and
uncertainties associated with the goal of long-term carbon
sequestration in forests and shrublands. We found that seasonal
patterns of temperature and precipitation are strong controllers
of the spatial distribution of aboveground live carbon. RCP8.5
projections of temperature and precipitation are estimated to
drive decreases of 16.1% ± 7.5% in aboveground live carbon by the
end of the century, with coastal areas of central and northern
California and low/mid-elevation mountain areas being most
vulnerable. With RCP4.5 projections, declines are less severe,
with 8.8% ± 5.3% carbon loss. In either scenario, increases in
temperature systematically cause biomass declines, and the spread
of projected precipitation across 32 CMIP5 models contributes to
substantial uncertainty in the magnitude of that decline.
Projected changes in the environmental niche for the 20 most
biomass-dominant tree species revealed widespread replacement of
conifers by oak species in low elevation regions of central and
northern California, with a corresponding decline in carbon
storage depending on expected migration rates. The spatial
patterns of vulnerability we identify may allow policymakers to
assess where carbon sequestration in aboveground biomass is an
appropriate part of a climate mitigation portfolio, and where
future climate-driven carbon losses may be a liability.<br>
</blockquote>
<b>Plain Language Summary</b><br>
<blockquote>Many climate mitigation policies, including those of
California, rely in part on increased carbon uptake by forests and
shrublands. However, these natural ecosystems are also being
impacted by climate change, likely making the goal of increasing
biomass carbon more difficult to achieve. In this study, we used a
variety of statistical models to estimate the impact of rising
temperature and changing precipitation on California ecosystems'
carbon storage. We found that in either moderate or severe warming
scenarios, aboveground live carbon will decrease substantially.
Decreases are driven by the rising temperature, while uncertainty
in future precipitation leads to substantial uncertainty in the
exact magnitude of those decreases. We also modeled several
different tree species separately, finding that climate change
will likely favor oak species at the expense of conifers. Lastly,
some areas of California appear more vulnerable to carbon loss
than others—in particular, the northern and central coasts,
low/mid-elevation mountain areas, and places where there are
currently forest carbon offset projects. The spatially explicit
projections we provide may help with the design of land management
and climate policies to anticipate the impacts of climate change,
and focus carbon offsets and conservation efforts where they will
be most effective.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000384">https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021AV000384</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[2 minute rant from a radical anthropologist]<br>
<b>Our Relationship To The Planet | Wade Davis</b><br>
Jul 23, 2021<br>
Long Now Foundation<br>
Anthropologist Wade Davis asks us all to reexamine our relationship
to the natural world.<br>
<br>
What is the role and purpose of Anthropology today? <br>
<br>
Wade Davis looks back at the pioneering work of Franz Boas in the
early 20th century that upended long-held Western assumptions on
race & gender, along with definitions of "social progress". Boas
and his students used comparative ethnography to advance “cultural
relativism”-- the idea that every culture is as “correct” as every
other culture. Boas showed that our differences can be completely
explained by social conditioning, not inherent genetic makeup,
upending a deep history of scientific racism.<br>
<br>
This fundamental change in understanding laid the intellectual
foundations for the political movements for racial, gender, and
cultural equality in the 20th century. But over the last few
decades, the field of Anthropology has turned inward, and seems
increasingly unable to address global challenges like linguistic
loss, cultural erasure, environmental destruction, and economic
injustice. Davis offers ideas on how the field could change
direction and reclaim global activism as part of its core once
again.<br>
<br>
Wade Davis is a cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author,
filmmaker and photographer. An Explorer-in-Residence at the National
Geographic Society from 01999 to 02013, Davis is currently Professor
of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and
Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. He has
published 22 books including "The Serpent And the Rainbow", "The
Wayfinders" and most recently, "Magdalena: River of Dreams: A Story
of Colombia".<br>
<br>
"Activist Anthropology" was given on June 29, 02021 as part of Long
Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a
compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the
world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco
and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoaW2bvnEPw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoaW2bvnEPw</a><br>
<p> - -</p>
[more Wade Davis - ( bring back the Potlatch!) - 35 min video]<br>
<b>Activist Anthropology | Wade Davis</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkp6bVZsGDE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkp6bVZsGDE</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[ a contrarian insight]<br>
<b>The Worst Answer to Climate Anxiety: Wellness</b><br>
Americans have become adept at prioritizing self-care over
solidarity.<br>
Eleanor Cummins - -July 29, 2020<br>
<br>
The coronavirus turned the world inside out. Essential workers
continued to report to duty, often at great personal risk. The rest
of the United States was stuck indoors, with only the internet to
occupy them—if they were lucky and 80 percent of their time wasn’t
taken up with regaining employment or worrying about the next
month’s rent.<br>
<br>
Confinement has been a challenge for everyone. But where World War
II demanded that those on the home front ration for the greater
good, the coronavirus has asked that we isolate, swapping community
for mail-order consumption. In many ways, Americans have never been
more prepared for this particular kind of crisis.<br>
<br>
Thanks to more than a decade of “wellness” culture—a lifestyle aimed
at optimizing the body and mind, a global industry worth $4.2
trillion, a miasma seeping from every Instagram page and Sephora
shop—millions of Americans are fluent in the language of
self-maintenance and versed in the virtues of the interior world. In
lieu of a functioning health care system for all, individuals with
cash to burn have long since stocked up on jade eggs and facial
rollers. Faced with a burning world, we’ve created comforting
regimens out of face creams and moisturizing serums. As trash has
accumulated on land and in oceans, some throw out belongings in a
new spirit of minimalism. With each new crisis, consumers have
proven that, at its core, wellness culture offers an
individualistic, capitalism-approved response to insecurity in one’s
surroundings.<br>
<br>
When the coronavirus struck, those who could afford it quickly
doubled down on self-care and self-isolation. In March, as
stay-at-home orders spread across the country, streaming increased
85 percent, driven in part by boredom and in part by the entitlement
to excess at the core of commodified wellness, which tells us that
whatever feels good is good. But more active forms of self-care have
driven consumer spending, too. The “sourdough class”—remote workers
with the time, space, and resources to take up bread baking as a
quarantine hobby—rose on Twitter. Kettlebells, newly prized for
their compactness in the era of isolation exercise, quickly sold
out. So too did the Nintendo Switch, as gaming consoles became the
last portals to another world. And for those actually exposed to the
virus, elite lifestyle blogs promised improbable cures: Wellness
influencer Cristina Cuomo, sister-in-law of the New York governor,
detailed her own coronavirus recovery “protocol,” which included
bleach baths and kidney-cleansing asparagus.<br>
<br>
Quarantining itself was clearly prudent; the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention has made clear the only way to suppress the
spread of the coronavirus is for individuals to retreat into their
inner worlds. But the lived experience of the pandemic has clarified
some long-running tensions: not just our systemic racism,
fragmented, for-profit health care system, and unchecked wealth
inequality, but also the limits of personal maintenance as a
response to a collective crisis. While some degree of individual
responsibility and care is essential in order to live, the wellness
industrial complex has ensured self-improvement remains an automatic
response to each new crisis, big and small.<br>
<br>
This peculiar kind of rose-quartz neoliberalism has been quietly
crystallizing for decades. Wellness in the 1650s simply meant the
opposite of illness. Now, it encompasses both legitimate and sham
medical treatments, workplace interventions, and luxury goods. It’s
pervasive in real estate marketing (Deepak Chopra bought a condo in
the “health-centric” Delos building in Manhattan) and tourism (New
Mexico is no longer a hippie paradise—it’s a state-sized spa). Since
2010, interest in the word “wellness” has roughly doubled, according
to Google Trends. Numerous forces drive this linguistic metastasis:
In an unstable economy with little social safety net, maintaining a
healthy body is a capitalistic necessity. The visible erosion of
social norms under the Trump administration has pushed people to
develop private routines, however arbitrary, to satisfy their
cravings for control. And otherwise essential conversations about
mental health, disability, and chronic conditions, when paired with
frustratingly little scientific insight, have given rise to a
questionable culture of cure-seekers. But wellness culture has also
grown in recent years alongside more global anxiety: climate change.<br>
<br>
<b>Implicit in many of our most desirable commercial goods, and in
extreme cases explicit, is the promise that whatever happens to
the Earth, its most optimized inhabitants can continue to thrive.</b><br>
<br>
The American obsession with inner stasis offers a perfect foil to
the country’s increasingly wild CO2 emissions. In 2019, David
Wallace-Wells became one of the more prominent climate writers to
note the problematic trend. Wellness, he wrote in his book The
Uninhabitable Earth, arises from “perception of worldly sickness
uncomplemented by political commitment.” Wellness “gives a clear
name and shape to a growing perception even, or especially, among
those wealthy enough to be insulated from the early assaults of
climate change: that the contemporary world is toxic, and that to
endure or thrive within it requires extraordinary measures of
self-regulation and self-purification.”<br>
<br>
To some 2019 readers this may have seemed a stretch. But the past
few months of Etsy mask orders and a nationwide home-buying frenzy
have only exacerbated these tendencies: Stripped of political
solutions to the degradation of the environment and the existential
peril of climate change, Americans have joined a cult of personal
empowerment through consumption. Implicit in many of our most
desirable commercial goods, and in extreme cases explicit, is the
promise that whatever happens to the Earth, its most optimized
inhabitants can continue to thrive.<br>
<br>
Gwyneth Paltrow did not invent the pursuit of purification. Rather,
Goop is the most recent incarnation of a tradition that extends at
least back to Galen. For millennia, most people subscribed to the
miasmic theory of disease, which understood that illness was caused
by “foul vapors” wafting up from fetid marshes, decaying organic
matter, and general rot—best fought with distance. Just as the
richest Romans spent malaria season in their mountain villas far
from town, the 0.1 percent today retreated from Covid-ravaged cities
to the seaside pastures of the Hamptons.<br>
<br>
Disaster—or the threat of it—has always exacerbated the human desire
for cleansing, although what “clean” means has changed with time. In
medieval Europe, a sect of Catholic radicals began publicly whipping
themselves as a form of penance, the blood on their back washing
their sins away. The flagellants’ practice peaked during the Black
Death, as growing numbers tried to drive the plague away. By the
late twentieth century, cleanliness focused on the absence of more
mundane elements—namely, chemicals: The advent of atomic weapons,
the well-publicized use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War, and
the rising awareness of damaging insecticides like DDT contributed
to widespread chemophobia, driving a preference for “natural”
alternatives.<br>
<br>
Today, many people also live with the persistent dread of a changing
climate and an equally devastating sense of inaction. But by
combining two separate civic religions—purification and
consumerism—wellness has allowed people to purchase spiritual
indulgences without modifying their behavior. Philosophy, the bath
and body company, bottles “Hope” and “Purity.” A boxed set costs
just $40.<br>
<br>
As the locus of our fear shifted from divine wrath to industrial
engineering, so have our solutions. Both earlier cleansing rituals
and our contemporary obsession with the natural “allow their
subscribers to maintain a sense of control over their own health by
pursuing personal purity,” according to Eula Biss in her 2014
bestselling book On Immunity. Nineteenth-century Londoners might
have resorted to “heavy curtains and shutters” to “seal out the
smell of the poor and their problems. Our version of this shuttering
is now achieved through the purchase of purified water, air
purifiers, and food produced with the promise of purity.”<br>
<br>
For an example of how this plays out today, look to Flint, Michigan.
Following news reports of lead in the majority-Black community’s
water supply, a majority of Americans reported they were concerned
about the contamination of their tap water. But as ever, it was the
wealthy, who are least likely to affected by these problems, that
were the most able to take private safety measures, like in-home
filtration. The rest of the country—unable to filter out generations
of racist, classist policies with a 10-cup-capacity Brita—has
continued to suffer.<br>
<br>
Wellness companies refer frequently to this fractured relationship
between humans and the land, water, and air that sustain us. “For
the most part, people are finding more and more that everyone they
know is kind of sick,” Elise Loehnen, chief content officer at Goop,
said in a 2017 interview with The Cut. “There are concerns about our
food supply, about the rampant use of glycosate. Food used to grow
in many feet of loamy soil! I think we’re just depleted. I think
there’s a vitamin D deficiency because we don’t go outside, and when
we do, we’re always wearing sunscreen. We’re out of touch with the
Earth in general, and I just don’t think this is the way we were
intended to live.” But Loehnen and her competitors will sell you a
sleek, 400-thread-count escape chute: You can practice “earthing”
(walking around barefoot) to realign yourself with the planet’s
electrical energy, buy “grounding crystals” like tourmaline to
balance your “root chakra,” or “sound bathe” on a desert retreat to
deepen your relaxation.<br>
<br>
Skincare, perhaps the most accessible form of wellness today, excels
at such dubious eco-promises. Even the most casual Sephora shopper
knows that gels and balms are considered essential protection
against the ravages of the outside world. But products formally
marketed as “anti-pollution” are now on the rise, according to
industry trend data. Despite no scientific research assessing their
claims, dermatologists gladly offer their advice on how to protect
your skin from smog. In a 2019 piece in Glamour, doctors recommended
readers apply antioxidant creams before they leave the house, “limit
exposure” by walking down less trafficked roads, and use acids and
exfoliants at the end of the day to strip any accumulated grime. If
this sounds like too much work, a $145 bottle of Sturm
Anti-Pollution Drops promises to protect “against daily pollution
and blue light generated by computers and phones to help fight
environmental aggressors that cause aging” all on its own. While air
pollution has been a concern of the beauty industry for at least 150
years, the careful corporate-speak of “environmental aggressors”
seems to gesture beyond the tiny particles that clog our pores and
into a new, diffuse realm of dangers, where some of the biggest
threats we face are, like carbon, totally invisible.<br>
<br>
Wellness culture isn’t limited to the body. Its logic also presents
in physical environments, from storefronts to private homes. As our
illusion of control over the natural world has withered, we’ve
invested in naturalistic design, a clean, minimalist, artificially
atmospheric style exemplified by South Korean beauty brand
Innisfree’s storefronts with ivy walls and LED-equipped artificial
clouds. These brands promise better, healthier materials in their
products—and better, healthier lives for their customers.<br>
<br>
<b>The primary problem with air pollution, carbon emissions, and
other environmental hazards is not wrinkles: It’s death—on a
potentially massive scale.</b><br>
<br>
The illusion grows on our windowsills, too. From the safety of their
climate-controlled homes, people care for species like baseball
succulents, African violets, and the omnipresent Pilea
peperomioides, all of which are wildly popular among plant moms but
endangered or threatened in their native habitats. Most recently,
online shoppers began panic-buying seeds in quarantine. Houseplants,
sales of which have increased 50 percent since 2016, are often
explicitly recommended as an investment in wellness because they’re
shown to lower stress and boost mood and, in office spaces,
productivity—a capitalist win-win. “[I]f the spread of coronavirus
shows us anything, it’s how therapeutic plant care can be in a time
of high anxiety,” Summer Rayne Oakes, a model and environmental
activist, recently wrote on her blog. But they also allow us to lord
over a landscape all our own, no matter what’s going on outside.<br>
<br>
Regular exercise, healthy eating, and work-life balance seem to be
unimpeachable goals. But, as Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her 2018
polemic Natural Causes, a runner’s high can mask a more fundamental
existential power grab: “I may not be able to do much about grievous
injustice in the world, at least not by myself or in very short
order, but I can decide to increase the weight on the leg press
machine by twenty pounds and achieve that within a few weeks,” she
writes. “The gym, which once looked so alien and forbidding to me,
became one of the few sites where I could reliably exert control.”<br>
<br>
The same unsettling logic is at work when people turn to air
purifiers and skincare products to address air pollution, instead of
demanding better regulations that curb the pollution in the first
place. The focus suggests magical thinking at best, and myopic
selfishness at worst: personal solutions for public crises. Climate
activists have recently begun to acknowledge the limits of
individual action when it comes to curbing CO2 emissions, but the
belief persists almost everywhere else, especially when it comes to
health. This bootstrap approach is predicated on a
misunderstanding—or a denial—of the severity of the problems we
face, as well as a persistent belief that some of us can escape with
the right creams and meditation mantras. The truth is that the
primary problem with air pollution, carbon emissions, and other
environmental hazards is not wrinkles: It’s death—on a potentially
massive scale.<br>
<br>
“Self-care,” ironically, started as a radical political act aimed at
asserting and protecting one’s humanity in the face of oppression.
In the 1960s, feminist health clinics decided to take gynecology
back from the academy and educate women on their own anatomy. In the
1970s, the Black Panther Party began building its own clinics to
provide care to marginalized people. In this original incarnation,
the “self” in self-care extended, however narrowly, beyond the
boundaries of an individual. It was women protecting their own
bodies, and those of other women. It was Black people protecting
their own health, and that of other Black people. “It had nothing to
do with massages or manicures,” Amy Larocca observed this spring in
The Cut as Covid-era interest in wellness soared. “It was about
looking out for your community when no one else would do it for
you.”<br>
<br>
Today, “wellness” seems like an exercise in self-isolation. But
perhaps more people are finally waking up to the reality that while
wellness can provide a temporary psychological buffer from climate
change and other social ills, it will never be a real or lasting
one.<br>
<br>
In the midst of the pandemic, many people have joined mutual aid
networks for the first time. These grassroots organizations seek to
redress systemic wrongs like incarceration, but they’re also good at
making sure everyone on the block gets groceries. At rallies
organized in the response to the murder of George Floyd, a common
chant is “We protect us”—a rebuke of the police state, but also the
cult of the individual. While digital distractions abound, Black
Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi told The New Yorker that our
time inside may yet prove productive: “I believe [Americans] are
just thoroughly fed up and thoroughly beside themselves with grief
and concern and despair because the government does not seem to have
a plan of action that is dignified and comprehensive and seeks to
address the core concerns that the average American has.”<br>
<br>
Whether these experiences will lead to substantive change remains to
be seen. But despite the risks of going out to protest, half a
million Americans went anyway. Many more began supporting the effort
from home by calling their representatives and donating to abolition
efforts. No matter how insignificant these Venmo receipts may seem,
it’s a profound shift to spending cash on the collective, not the
individual—and on changing the system, rather than mitigating its
worst by-products. For racial justice advocates and emissions
watchers alike, it’s a hint of what might happen were the affluent
to put that imported Korean sunscreen to good use—by taking to the
streets.<br>
<br>
Eleanor Cummins is a freelance science journalist based in New York.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://newrepublic.com/article/158621/worst-answer-climate-anxiety-wellness">https://newrepublic.com/article/158621/worst-answer-climate-anxiety-wellness</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Disinformation warfare - report from 2017 - audio]<br>
<b>Corporate Media Perpetuates Climate Science Denial – Gabriel
Byrne on RAI Pt 4/4</b><br>
July 22, 2021<br>
On Reality Asserts Itself, Gabriel Byrne says that mutant capitalism
seeks only profit and corporate media’s agenda avoids the climate
crisis; Byrne says its up to us, no superhero will save us – with
host Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself,
produced November 27, 2017.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://blubrry.com/theanalysisnews/79439408/corporate-media-perpetuates-climate-science-denial-gabriel-byrne-on-rai-pt-44/">https://blubrry.com/theanalysisnews/79439408/corporate-media-perpetuates-climate-science-denial-gabriel-byrne-on-rai-pt-44/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming July
24, 2000</b></font><br>
<br>
BP launches its controversial "Beyond Petroleum" advertising
campaign.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010525195935/http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0508-09.htm">http://web.archive.org/web/20010525195935/http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0508-09.htm</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/GVsPT6ePKPw">http://youtu.be/GVsPT6ePKPw</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
<br>
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html"
moz-do-not-send="true"><https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html></a>
/<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote</a><br>
<br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"
moz-do-not-send="true"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
<br>
- 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. This is a hobby production curated by Richard
Pauli<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for
commercial purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote" moz-do-not-send="true">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote" moz-do-not-send="true"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://TheClimate.Vote</a> <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list.<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>