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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>August 21, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[Five hour time lapse video of fire near Bakersfield - dramatic]<br>
<b>French Fire 8/20/21</b><br>
Aug 20, 2021<br>
ALERTWildfire<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxb_jloMfBU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxb_jloMfBU</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[The Guardian video]<br>
<b>The climate science behind wildfires: why are they getting worse?</b><br>
Aug 20, 2021<br>
Guardian News<br>
We are in an emergency. Wildfires are raging across the world as
scorching temperatures and dry conditions fuel the blazes that have
cost lives and destroyed livelihoods.<br>
Subscribe to Guardian News on YouTube ►
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bit.ly/guardianwiressub">http://bit.ly/guardianwiressub</a><br>
<br>
The combination of extreme heat, changes in our ecosystem and
prolonged drought have in many regions led to the worst fires in
almost a decade, and come after the IPCC handed down a damning
landmark report on the climate crisis.<br>
<br>
But technically, there are fewer wildfires than in the past – the
problem now is that they are worse than ever and we are running out
of time to act, as the Guardian's global environment editor,
Jonathan Watts, explains<br>
<br>
Heat, drought and fire: how climate dangers combine for a
catastrophic ‘perfect storm’
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/10/heat-drought-and-fire-how-climate-dangers-combine-for-a-catastrophic-perfect-storm">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/10/heat-drought-and-fire-how-climate-dangers-combine-for-a-catastrophic-perfect-storm</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oJ0j1OZSTU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oJ0j1OZSTU</a><br>
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<p><br>
</p>
[information battleground skirmish --thnx AW! ]<br>
<b>U.N. Climate Report scapegoats “human activity” rather than
fossil-fuel capitalism</b><br>
The root economic causes of the climate crisis appear nowhere in the
report, but must be at the centre of movements’ efforts<br>
by Steve D'Arcy - - Aug 10 2021<br>
<br>
Analysis<br>
The backdrop for the latest climate report from the United Nations
has been a series of terrifying reminders of the unfolding crisis.<br>
<br>
In the first ten days of August 2021, the world has been shaken by
record-high temperatures, droughts, and out-of-control wildfires.
Greece alone has lost 140,000 acres to fires in the past ten days,
and catastrophic fires have also raged across Canada and the United
States, Italy and Turkey, Algeria and Siberia. <br>
<br>
The fires add to a growing list of catastrophic changes:
disappearing glacial ice, mass extinctions, critical shortages of
fresh water for agriculture, and collapsing pollinator populations.
<br>
<br>
With 234 authors drawing on evidence from over fourteen thousand
scientific papers, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) is comprehensive. And like previous reports,
it paints a very grim picture indeed. The report confirms that the
extremely dangerous changes to the planet’s land, oceans, waterways,
and weather systems can be slowed and in some cases reversed—but
only if drastic transformative measures are taken in every part of
the global economy. <br>
<br>
That much is—or should be—uncontroversial. But the very feature of
the new IPCC Report that garners it so much attention—its claim to
be rigorously scientific—is something we can ask critical questions
about...<br>
- -<br>
Does “scientific” mean that it is free of ideological bias and
politically “neutral”? Unfortunately not. Reports of the IPCC, down
to each individual sentence, have to be approved by representatives
of all the governments participating in the United Nations climate
change process. <br>
<br>
This process has the predictable effect that controversial or
politically challenging claims are systematically filtered out of
the reports, especially claims that are perceived as threats to
leading industries supported by governments. <br>
<br>
It is indeed a scientific report, informed by a vast body of
scientific research, but it is also an ideological document. The
IPCC report tells us a lot about what is happening, and how, but it
also actively covers up key causes of the crisis and insulates
powerful systems from critical scrutiny. <br>
<br>
By shifting the blame away from corporations and the governments
that do their bidding onto the generic scapegoat of “human
activity,” the report hides almost as much as it uncovers. <br>
<br>
The Report comes in three main versions: a 41-page “Summary for
Policymakers,” a 150-page “Technical Summary,” and 4,000-page “Full
Report.” In the crucial and widely-read “Summary for Policymakers,”
the word “human” appears 79 times. <br>
<br>
By contrast, the word “capitalism” occurs zero times, the word
“colonialism” occurs zero times, the word “corporation” occurs zero
times, the word “business” occurs zero times, the word “money”
occurs zero times, and the expression “fossil fuel” (or even just
“fuel”) occurs zero times. Even in the Full Report’s 4000+ pages,
where the word “human” appears over 800 times, “colonialism” is
completely absent, and mentions of “business” and “corporation” are
at best incidental.<br>
<br>
Have scientists researched the causes of climate change and proven
that capitalism, colonialism, corporations and fossil fuel
extraction are not key drivers of climate change? Absolutely not. A
vast body of research confirms the role these systems and
institutions continue to play in driving the Earth to the brink of
catastrophic climate change.<br>
<br>
Policy makers have known about the threat of climate change for
decades and have on the whole accelerated fossil fuel consumption.
But the IPCC’s report does not examine the level of vigor political
and social action must have to bend political leaders in the other
direction before it’s too late.<br>
<br>
Solutions are discussed in the vaguest possible ways, purged of
anything that could be deemed controversial among policymakers. It
is notable that the “Summary for Policymakers” makes no mention of
Indigenous peoples, land defenders, water protectors, or any efforts
to decolonize and democratize decision-making about land use and
resource extraction projects. <br>
<br>
We should welcome the latest IPCC Report for its scientific insight.
But we should also understand it as an ideological document that
obscures the crucial systemic causes of climate change. For advice
on what social forces could push forward climate solutions, readers
will have to look beyond the thousands of pages generated by the
IPCC.<br>
<br>
For information on how we might confront capitalism, colonialism and
global inequality, we’ll have to look elsewhere: the Indigenous
peoples, social movements, and landless peasants leading the way
forward.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://breachmedia.ca/u-n-climate-report-scapegoats-human-activity-rather-than-fossil-fuel-capitalism/">https://breachmedia.ca/u-n-climate-report-scapegoats-human-activity-rather-than-fossil-fuel-capitalism/</a><br>
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[Why? video <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX0tPKQm-Ac">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX0tPKQm-Ac</a> ]<br>
<b>STEPHEN FRY: Is XR doing the right thing? | Extinction Rebellion
UK</b><br>
Aug 20, 2021<br>
Extinction Rebellion UK<br>
<br>
We’re at a crucial moment in history. Our climate is breaking down,
and life on Earth is dying: accelerated by our economic system and
supported by politicians.<br>
<br>
We need urgent change, and we needed it yesterday. People everywhere
need us to step up — once we begin to act, the politically
impossible can become inevitable.<br>
<br>
Extinction Rebellion UK: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://extinctionrebellion.uk/">https://extinctionrebellion.uk/</a> <br>
International: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://rebellion.global/">https://rebellion.global/</a> <br>
Twitter: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR">https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR</a> <br>
Facebook: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/">https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/</a> <br>
<blockquote><b>1. Tell The Truth </b><br>
<b>2. Act Now </b><br>
<b>3. Beyond Politics </b><br>
</blockquote>
World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://rebellion.global/branches/">https://rebellion.global/branches/</a> <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX0tPKQm-Ac">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX0tPKQm-Ac</a><br>
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[Changing climes and oscillations - 3 min video explanation]<br>
<b>Park Williams PhD: La Nina and Megadrought</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvrg5Pa0VF8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvrg5Pa0VF8</a><br>
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</p>
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</p>
[Domestic refugee documentary from DW <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/gv_L1_6U7L4">https://youtu.be/gv_L1_6U7L4</a> ]<br>
<b>Oregon Already Has a Climate Refugee Crisis</b>Aug 19, 2021<br>
VICE News<br>
Last year the Labor Day fires burned over a million acres in Oregon.
Since then, the state has been housing residents who lost their
homes in hotels and motels purchased with state funds, while Oregon
faces yet another major fire season this year.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv_L1_6U7L4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv_L1_6U7L4</a><br>
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</p>
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</p>
[So big changes due, but no rain <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/BuVEZXpgXzw">https://youtu.be/BuVEZXpgXzw</a>]<br>
<b>Update and Forecast for the Dixie Fire, Caldor Fire, Monument
Fire, and other California Wildfires</b><br>
Aug 19, 2021<br>
Holt Hanley Weather<br>
The Dixie Fire, Caldor Fire, Monument Fire, River Complex, Antelope
Fire, Mcfarland Fire, and a number of other wildfires continue to
burn in Northern California. <br>
Throughout this video, we'll dive into all the important updates, as
well as the fire weather forecast to predict how the Dixie Fire, the
Monument Fire, the Caldor Fire, and the other California Wildfires
may change in the coming days.<br>
You can subscribe to stay updated on all major wildfires throughout
the 2021 season.<br>
I hope this video was helpful, and thanks for watching.<br>
<br>
You can also check out Holt Hanley Weather on Twitter, where I post
more concise updates on the current wildfires:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/HoltHanleyWX">https://twitter.com/HoltHanleyWX</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVEZXpgXzw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVEZXpgXzw</a><br>
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</p>
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</p>
[likely to worsen]<br>
<b>WION Climate Tracker: Wildfires across the world | Siberia
battles heatwaves, wildfires and drought</b><br>
Aug 19, 2021<br>
WION<br>
The scale of wildfires across the world has been unprecedented.
Nearly 20 countries across the world have been affected. In some
cases, these blazes have been raging for months. <br>
About Channel: <br>
WION -The World is One News, examines global issues with in-depth
analysis. We provide much more than the news of the day. Our aim to
empower people to explore their world. With our Global headquarters
in New Delhi, we bring you news on the hour, by the hour. We deliver
information that is not biased. We are journalists who are neutral
to the core and non-partisan when it comes to the politics of the
world. People are tired of biased reportage and we stand for a
globalised united world. So for us the World is truly One.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXd4gDV0HBo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXd4gDV0HBo</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Classic from April ]<br>
<b>Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK</b><br>
Ecosystems are being destabilized by climate change and are at risk
of reaching irreversible tipping points. Which way will things tip?
How to manage tipping points as opportunities? Tipping points
experts discuss these and other urgent questions in this Webinar (30
March 2021). With Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (PIK), Tim Lenton (Uni.
Exeter), Cameron Hepburn (Uni. Oxford), Ilona M. Otto (Uni. Graz),
Jonathan Donges (PIK), Manjana Milkoreit (Uni Oslo), Peter Bakker
(WBCSD). Moderator: Oliver Morton (the Economist).<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAGQHPbsvTY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAGQHPbsvTY</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Sci Fi writer declares future -long]<br>
<b>Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames</b><br>
Aug 20, 2021<br>
What does it feel like to live on the brink of a vast historical
change? It feels like now.<br>
<br>
Of course that sounds hyperbolic, and maybe even panicky, but I
think we’re there. Not that a science fiction writer can see the
future any better than anyone else; very often worse. But between
the pandemic, the accelerating drumbeat of extreme weather events
and the accumulations of data and analysis from the scientific
community, it’s become an easy call.<br>
<br>
A few weeks ago, my wife and I drove across the US east to west. In
Wyoming, we hit a pall of wildfire smoke so thick that we couldn’t
see the mountains just a few miles away on each side of the road. It
went on like that for 1,000 miles.<br>
Then we arrived in California just in time for the latest report
from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which
documents in meticulous detail the true scale of the climate
problem. Humanity now stands on the brink of not just change, but
disaster. And because we can see it coming, just as clear as a black
storm on the horizon, our attempts to dodge disaster and create a
healthy relationship with our only home will bring huge changes in
our habits, laws, institutions and technologies.<br>
<br>
All this is visible to us now. Unlike the people living in the years
before the first world war, we won’t be sandbagged by catastrophe.
The 2020s will not be filled with surprises — except perhaps at the
speed and intensity of the changes coming down. With its atmosphere
of dread foreboding, our time more resembles the years preceding the
second world war, when everyone lived with a sensation of helplessly
sliding down a slippery slope and over a cliff.<br>
<br>
But historical analogies will take us only so far in understanding
our current situation, since we have never before been able to wreck
our own means of existence. Scientists coined the name the
Anthropocene to signal that this moment in history is unprecedented.
There are so many of us, and our technologies are so powerful, and
our social systems so heedless of consequences, that our damage to
Earth’s biosphere has increased with stunning speed.<br>
<br>
Many historians refer to the period since the second world war as
the Great Acceleration, and the harmful aspects of the changes we’ve
initiated have immense biological and geophysical momentum. We can’t
just gather our diplomats and call it off, declare peace with the
biosphere.<br>
<br>
Although we did do that, in 2015: it’s called the Paris agreement.
But that was an agreement to start a process of change, which we now
have to live up to if it is to become real. We in effect agreed to
decarbonise our civilisation across the board: in energy generation,
transport, construction — everything. But since all these activities
were run largely by the burning of fossil fuels, this change is a
stupendous challenge, equivalent to the mobilisations made in the
20th century to fight world wars.<br>
<br>
Mean estimates of global surface temperature, change from 1850-1900
average in °C G1380_21X<br>
Whether we can muster that kind of intense effort now is an open
question. Not everyone is yet convinced that such an effort is
necessary, and there are vested interests — not just private
individuals or corporations, but many of the most powerful nations
on Earth — deeply committed to continuing to burn fossil fuels.<br>
<br>
So the Paris agreement could end up as something like the League of
Nations, a nice idea that failed. But if we fail this time, the
consequences could be even worse than the great wars of the 20th
century. Again, this feels hyperbolic, but the facts in hand support
the thought, alarming as it is. We are in terrible trouble, and not
everyone agrees that we are; never will everyone agree on this, even
though droughts and fires, storms and floods, are coming faster than
ever.<br>
<br>
Each moment in history has its own “structure of feeling”, as the
cultural theorist Raymond Williams put it, which changes as new
things happen. When I write stories set in the next few decades, I
try to imagine that shift in feeling, but it’s very hard to do
because the present structure shapes even those kinds of
speculations.<br>
<br>
Right now things feel massively entrenched, but also fragile. We
can’t go on but we can’t change. Even though we are one species on
one planet, there seems no chance of general agreement or global
solidarity. The best that can be hoped for is a working political
majority, reconstituted daily in the attempt to do the necessary
things for ourselves and the generations to come. It’s a tough
challenge that will never go away. It’s easy to despair.<br>
<br>
Still, recently some things have happened that give me cause for
hope. I wrote my novel The Ministry for the Future in 2019. That
time surely torqued my vision because several important developments
— ones I described in my novel as happening in the 2030s — I see now
are already well begun. My timeline was completely off; events have
accelerated yet again.<br>
<br>
Part of that acceleration was caused by Covid-19. It was a slap in
the face, an undeniable demonstration that we live on a single
planet in a single civilisation, which can be disrupted in deadly
ways. And it wasn’t just people everywhere dying of the same
disease, but also our reactions to that shocking reality.<br>
<br>
Supply chains that we rely on for life itself can be disrupted by
hoarding, which is to say by loss of trust in our systems. In the
US, it was toilet paper and cleaning supplies — but if it had been
food, then boom: panic, breakdown, famine, the war of all against
all. That’s how fragile civilisation is; that’s how much individuals
are forced to trust each other to survive. A prisoner’s dilemma
indeed, all of us locked together on this one planet. We either hang
together or we hang separately: Franklin’s law.<br>
- -<br>
Another lesson from the pandemic, one we should have known already:
science is powerful. We need to learn to put it to better use than
we do, but if we were to do that, lots of good things would follow.
Aiming science is the work of the humanities and arts, politics and
law. We have to decide as a civilisation what tasks are most
important for us to take on now.<br>
- -<br>
If private capital will not invest in the cost of pulling carbon out
of the atmosphere — the cost of survival — then we are cooked<br>
<br>
A third lesson we learnt in 2020 was the medical news that humans
can’t survive prolonged exposure to extremely high combinations of
heat and humidity. This realisation, which was already somewhat
known but not yet recognised as an existential problem, should have
silenced those sanguine commentators who were asserting that humans
could simply adapt to whatever climate we happened to create. “Just
adapt!”, these confident people pronounced. So what if we create a
3C or 4C rise in average global temperature? We’ll just adapt.
Humans can adapt to anything!<br>
<br>
But no. Human beings can’t live in conditions above the heat-index
number called wet-bulb 35C, a measure of air temperature plus
humidity. We didn’t evolve for such conditions and, when they occur,
we quickly overheat and die of hyperthermia. And in July this year,
wet-bulb 35s were briefly reached in Pakistan and the United Arab
Emirates.<br>
<br>
As we keep burning fossil fuels, global average temperatures will
continue to rise, and this deadly combination of heat and humidity
will occur more often. And not just in the tropics, where more than
3bn people live; British Columbia’s high temperature record this
summer overtook that of Las Vegas. So mitigating climate change by
rapidly cutting greenhouse gases becomes not just a good idea but a
survival necessity.<br>
<br>
The Paris agreement can serve as our way to organise this massive
effort. We need it because, although our problem is global, we live
in a nation-state system in which the representatives of each nation
are charged with defending that nation’s interests. In any perceived
discrepancy between the interests of one’s nation and the world at
large, some people will choose their nation.<br>
<br>
This creates a lot of problems of the prisoner’s dilemma sort. When
it comes to virtuous action, who goes first? The countries that act
first might create future advantages for themselves, but many people
are too cautious to see that, and so there are some very tough
choices coming.<br>
<br>
For example: we can burn about 900 more gigatons of carbon before we
cross the 2C average global rise in temperature that will put us in
truly dangerous territory. But we’ve already located thousands of
gigatons of fossil fuels around the world. Most of those, which
simply must be left in the ground if we want to avoid cooking the
biosphere, are owned by national governments, who consider these
reserves part of their national assets. They’re already collateral,
and a steady source of income and, for quite a few of these nations,
a big portion of their wealth.<br>
<br>
So although almost every nation has signed the Paris agreement and
agreed in theory to the principle of rapid emissions reduction,
nations including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, Brazil, Nigeria,
Australia, Mexico, China, Venezuela, Norway and the US — not to
mention several others — have made promises under the Paris
agreement that will cost them many trillions of dollars in lost
income.<br>
<br>
Thinking about money, and directing money, are key to getting
through this crisis century successfully<br>
<br>
Naturally, there will be elected officials and civil servants in
these governments doing their best to burn a few last trillions’
worth of these soon-to-be-stranded assets. They will see this as
their patriotic and fiduciary duty. So unless we make other
arrangements, there will be a fire sale.<br>
<br>
This means that one giant aspect of the problem we face is
financial. Thinking about money, and directing money, are key to
getting through this crisis century successfully. We have to figure
out ways to pay ourselves to decarbonise as fast as possible, and to
do all the other work needed to establish a sustainable
civilisation. Keeping the petrostates from going bankrupt and doing
desperate things will have to be part of that new arrangement,
tricky though that will be. Discounts, amortisation, giving up on
blame and righteousness, big haircuts — all these will come into
play.<br>
<br>
And don’t think that the market will do all this by itself, because
it won’t. That whole notion of rule by market was a catastrophic
example of monocausotaxophilia, “the love of single causes that
explain everything”, Ernst Pöppel’s joke neologism for a tendency
very common in all of us. This weakness in our thinking, the futile
hope for a reliable algorithm, or a monarch, needs to be resisted at
all times but especially when constructing a global economy.<br>
<br>
It is not true that leaving finance to the market will arrange
everything well, as the past 40 years have shown. The market
systemically misprices things by way of improper discounting of the
future, false externalities and many other predatory
miscalculations, which have led to gross inequality and biosphere
destruction. And yet right now it’s the way of the world, the law of
the land. Capital invests in the highest rate of return, that’s what
the market requires.<br>
<br>
But saving the biosphere is not the highest rate of return (surely
clear proof of another market miscalculation) because that rescue
involves replacing most of our infrastructure, while also building
what will be in effect a planetary sewage system, retrieving and
disposing of the waste we’ve been dumping into the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
This is no one’s idea of a high-return investment, because no one
actually wants thousands of billions of tons of dry ice. Pulling
that much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is simply a cost —
the cost of survival, but not the highest rate of return. So private
capital will not invest in it, and if we allow that judgment to
stand, we are cooked.<br>
<br>
But finance, too, is a technology, being civilisation’s software.
It’s critically important software because it’s how we value our own
work; and, being a human system, we are free to improve it by way of
various alterations and improvements. And now we have to.<br>
<br>
Happily, many people staffing the central banks of the world are
feeling this need, and looking into innovations. Their involvement
is critically important, because no cryptocurrency will do the job.
Indeed, some of these new cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, only
exacerbate the problem. And in any case, none of them are money;
they are tulips, or any other speculative bubble. Money is a medium
of exchange, a storehouse of value, and — crucially — a sign of
social trust. And in a nation-state system, the money we trust is
money that is nationally backed. The richer the country, the more we
trust its money. So fiat currency is what we’ll need to deal with
the existential emergency that climate change represents.<br>
<br>
Even in our current political economy . . . we might be able to pay
ourselves to do the necessary things and thus dodge the coming mass
extinction event<br>
<br>
What this suggests is that we are soon going to be testing out how
many trillions of dollars our central banks can create per year
without altering people’s trust in money. This will be an
experiment, an improvisation. The quantitative easings of 2008-11
and 2020-21 gave strong evidence that a pretty large amount of new
money can be created every year without negative results. The new
wrinkle to add to that finding is the idea of spending newly created
money first on decarbonisation and other biosphere-friendly
activities. This is getting called carbon quantitative easing, and
is something many central banks are now investigating.<br>
<br>
The Network for Greening the Financial System, an organisation of 89
of the biggest central banks, recently released a paper outlining
possible methodologies for this financial innovation. They suggested
that possibly nations, companies and individuals who draw carbon
from the atmosphere could be paid for it directly.<br>
<br>
Possibly petrostates could be compensated for the fossil fuels they
keep in the ground. Possibly oil companies could be paid to suck
carbon from the air and then pump it back into the ground; they
could also be paid to pump water from under the great glaciers of
Antarctica and Greenland, which are currently sliding into the sea
on newly melted subterranean water slides.<br>
<br>
Of course, legislatures and citizens will need to urge their central
banks, and ultimately to instruct or order them, to do these things.
But the good news is that with these new strategies in hand, even in
our current political economy, awkwardly suited at best to the task
at hand, we might be able to pay ourselves to do the necessary
things, and thus dodge the coming mass-extinction event.<br>
<br>
This is not the total solution; I don’t want to succumb to
monocausotaxophilia myself. It will take far more than carbon
quantitative easing to finesse the coming years. We’ll need to
re-establish wild land to maintain biodiversity, as in the various
“30×30” plans; we may start growing food in vats from
micro-organisms, freeing up land for other purposes; we’ll have to
green our cities; we have to replace much of our infrastructure; and
so on. All this implies a stupendous amount of work, all of which
will have to be paid for.<br>
<br>
Carbon quantitative easing won’t be enough to do all of that but,
when combined with regulation and taxation channelling private
capital into useful, survival-oriented projects, we might squeak
through. And, by the way, full employment is very much implied in
all this; there’s that much work to be done. Can we leverage all
that needed work toward climate equity between nations and to the
lessening of the grotesque inequality between rich and poor? It
seems like we could.<br>
<br>
This array of new policies means returning to some kind of Keynesian
balance of public and private. Good. We need that. But this big
shift naturally adds to the feeling of dread in our time. What — a
new political economy? Didn’t that kind of change last happen in
1980, or 1945, or in the 18th century’s great democratic
revolutions? Surely it’s impossible now? Easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism?<br>
<br>
No. The time has come to admit that we control our economy for the
common good. Crucial at all times, this realisation is especially
important in our current need to dodge a mass-extinction event. The
invisible hand never picks up the check; therefore we must govern
ourselves.<br>
<br>
Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘The Ministry for the Future’ is published in
paperback in October. He will be speaking at the UN’s Cop26 climate
change conference in Glasgow in November<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://todayuknews.com/health/4-out-of-10-parents-have-no-plans-to-get-child-vaccinated-for-school-poll/">https://todayuknews.com/health/4-out-of-10-parents-have-no-plans-to-get-child-vaccinated-for-school-poll/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
August 21, 2007</b></font><br>
<p>August 21, 2007: U.S. District Judge Sandra Brown Armstrong rules
that the George W. Bush administration violated the 1990 Global
Change Research Act (signed into law, ironically enough, by Bush's
father) by not producing a legally required climate assessment
report. The report would finally be released in May 2008.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2007/08/22/court-rules-that-bush-admin-unlawfully-failed-to-produce-scientific-assessment-of-global-change/">http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2007/08/22/court-rules-that-bush-admin-unlawfully-failed-to-produce-scientific-assessment-of-global-change/</a>
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PRESS/global-warming-08-21-2007.html">http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PRESS/global-warming-08-21-2007.html</a>
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PROGRAMS/policy/energy/complaint-national-assessment.pdf">http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PROGRAMS/policy/energy/complaint-national-assessment.pdf</a>
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080705212954/http://www.usda.gov/oce/global_change/sap_2007_FinalReport.htm">http://web.archive.org/web/20080705212954/http://www.usda.gov/oce/global_change/sap_2007_FinalReport.htm</a>
<br>
</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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