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<p><font size="+2"><i><b>October 13, 2021</b></i></font></p>
<i>[ Check site for wildfire info ] </i><br>
<b>Alisal Fire burns to the ocean, then spreads east</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wildfiretoday.com/">https://wildfiretoday.com/</a><br>
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<i>[ Top discovered realization, now published ]</i><br>
<i> </i><b>The advertising industry is fuelling climate disaster,
and it’s getting away with it</b><br>
Andrew Simms<br>
Overconsumption is inevitable when adverts are so ubiquitous and
sophisticated. There must be a pushback<br>
<br>
To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to
drop dramatically. Yet every day we’re told to consume more. We all
know about air pollution – but there’s a kind of “brain pollution”
produced by advertising that, uncontrolled, fuels overconsumption.
And the problem is getting worse.<br>
<br>
Advertising is everywhere, so prevalent as to be invisible but with
an effect no less insidious than air pollution. A few years ago, an
individual in the US was estimated to be exposed to between 4,000
and 10,000 adverts daily.<br>
<p>UK spending on advertising almost doubled between 2010 and 2019
and, after a pandemic dip, the £23bn spend for 2020 is expected to
rise by 15% in 2021. It’s woven into our personal communications
whenever we use social media platforms. In public spaces, where we
have little choice over where we look, adverts are invasive,
appearing without our consent. And the trend towards digital
billboards only exposes us ever more. Some big companies even
boast about how “unmissable” digital screens are on busy roads,
“captivating audiences” when drivers would be better off watching
the road. Such roadside “out of home” advertising is set to grow
by 25%, in 2021 and evolving advertising technologies that could
use facial detection and tracking capabilities only heighten the
sense of our privacy being invaded.</p>
<p>Advertising works by getting under your radar, introducing new
ideas without bothering your conscious mind. Extensive scientific
research shows that, when exposed to advertising, people “buy
into” the materialistic values and goals it encourages.
Consequently, they report lower levels of personal wellbeing,
experience conflict in relationships, engage in fewer positive
social behaviours, and experience detrimental effects on study and
work. Critically, the more that people prioritise materialistic
values and goals, the less they embrace positive attitudes towards
the environment – and the more likely they are to behave in
damaging ways.</p>
Even worse, findings from neuroscience reveal that advertising goes
as far as lodging itself in the brain, rewiring it by forming
physical structures and causing permanent change. Brands that have
been made familiar through advertising have a strong influence on
the choices people make. Under MRI scans, the logos of recognisable
car brands are shown to activate a single, particular region of the
brain in the medial prefrontal cortex. Brands and logos have also
been shown to generate strong preferences between virtually
identical products, such as fizzy drinks – preferences that
disappear in blind tests. Researchers looking to assess the power of
advertised brands concluded that, “there are visual images and
marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous
systems of humans.”<br>
<br>
Indeed, some of the earliest work in this area concluded, “Scary as
it may sound, if an ad does not modify the brains of the intended
audience, then it has not worked.” Yet this is little known more
widely. Through a combination of experience and ad exposure
connected to emotional responses, brands and their logos become more
“mentally available”. This happens through the development of new
neural pathways reinforced by repeated encounters. Still other
research demonstrates how exposure to different brands can influence
behaviour, for example making them behave less honestly, or
creatively. Customisable tools for neural profiling are now
available to test the effectiveness of brands and logos on
consumers, giving rise to what has become known as “neuromarketing”.<br>
<p>That’s bad enough for adults, but children are now at the mercy
of so-called “surveillance advertising”. It is estimated that by
the time a child turns 13, ad-tech firms would have gathered 72m
data points on them. The more data collected from an early age,
the easier it is for advertisers to turn young children into
consumer targets.</p>
Overconsumption in general, encouraged by advertising, has a climate
and ecological impact. But advertising heavily polluting products
and services, such as for fossil fuels, aviation and petrol-engined
cars, is particularly damaging. It’s like the days when tobacco
adverts were allowed. In 2018 the car sector is estimated to have
spent more than $35.5bn on advertising in key markets globally,
roughly equal to the annual income of a country like Bolivia. And,
in recent years, advertising has pushed a major shift to people
buying larger, more polluting SUVs.Regulators are very far behind
the curve on these issues. The Competition and Markets Authority
recently launched a public consultation to investigate misleading
green claims. The advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards
Authority, belatedly followed suit with a pledge to develop a code
on greenwashing. But the ASA is a weak body with a narrow focus,
paid for by the industry, which is effectively marking its own
homework. Only 22% of adverts complained about are investigated by
the ASA, and then only 2% of complaints are upheld, by which time
the advertising campaign is usually over.<br>
<br>
Tackling “brain pollution” requires action equivalent to the
campaign to end tobacco advertising. New checks and balances need to
accommodate the natural concerns of councils and residents around
climate, air pollution, environmental light pollution, the
“attention economy”, mental health and the dominance of
non-consensual adverts in public spaces.<br>
<br>
Advertising, the business of attention-seeking, has ironically
avoided scrutiny so far. But as the climate crisis bites, its role
is set to rise up the agenda. Campaigners are calling for
legislation against high-carbon advertising, focusing on fossil fuel
companies, petrol- and diesel-engined cars and aviation; at
municipal level, places like Norwich, Liverpool and north Somerset
are introducing measures to end high-carbon advertising; and an
EU-wide campaign is now following a ban on the Amsterdam metro.
Tackling brain pollution won’t just make us feel better, but help
clear the air too.<br>
<br>
Andrew Simms is an author and campaigner<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/11/advertising-industry-fuelling-climate-disaster-consumption">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/11/advertising-industry-fuelling-climate-disaster-consumption</a><br>
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[quick video]<br>
<b>Greta Thunberg: "Democracy Is the Only Solution to the Climate
Crisis"</b><br>
Oct 12, 2021<br>
Covering Climate Now<br>
In an interview with the global media collaboration Covering Climate
Now, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg expressed surprise
at the idea that Biden, or any world leader, might want to sit down
with her at COP26, but said she was open to the possibility, if
asked. “I guess that will depend on the situation,” she said. “I
don’t see why these people want to meet with me, but yeah.”<br>
<br>
She also spoke about the role of the media in combatting the climate
emergency. See stories from the interview by Covering Climate Now
partners here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://coveringclimatenow.org">https://coveringclimatenow.org</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xAHv4kRz4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xAHv4kRz4</a><br>
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<i>[ "Overshoot" ] </i><br>
<b>‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way
to avert catastrophe</b><br>
George Monbiot<br>
It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of
economic activity without destroying the environment<br>
There is a box labelled “climate”, in which politicians discuss the
climate crisis. There is a box named “biodiversity”, in which they
discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as
pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust
in our planet’s lost property department. But they all contain
aspects of one crisis that we have divided up to make it
comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense
of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the
“thing-in-itself”. They describe artefacts of our perceptions rather
than the world.<br>
<br>
Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted
by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.<br>
<br>
Take the situation of the North Atlantic right whale, whose
population recovered a little when whaling ceased, but is now
slumping again: fewer than 95 females of breeding age remain. The
immediate reasons for this decline are mostly deaths and injuries
caused when whales are hit by ships or tangled in fishing gear. But
they’ve become more vulnerable to these impacts because they’ve had
to shift along the eastern seaboard of North America into busy
waters.<br>
- -<br>
Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems. When
coral reefs are weakened by the fishing industry, pollution and the
bleaching caused by global heating, they are less able to withstand
the extreme climate events, such as tropical cyclones, which our
fossil fuel emissions have also intensified. When rainforests are
fragmented by timber cutting and cattle ranching, and ravaged by
imported tree diseases, they become more vulnerable to the droughts
and fires caused by climate breakdown.<br>
<br>
What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would
see a full-spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere
is now safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper
estimates that only 3% of the Earth’s land surface should now be
considered “ecologically intact”.<br>
<br>
The various impacts have a common cause: the sheer volume of
economic activity. We are doing too much of almost everything, and
the world’s living systems cannot bear it. But our failure to see
the whole ensures that we fail to address this crisis systemically
and effectively.<br>
<br>
When we box up this predicament, our efforts to solve one aspect of
the crisis exacerbate another. For example, if we were to build
sufficient direct air capture machines to make a major difference to
atmospheric carbon concentrations, this would demand a massive new
wave of mining and processing for the steel and concrete. The impact
of such construction pulses travels around the world. To take just
one component, the mining of sand to make concrete is trashing
hundreds of precious habitats. It’s especially devastating to
rivers, whose sand is highly sought in construction. Rivers are
already being hit by drought, the disappearance of mountain ice and
snow, our extraction of water, and pollution from farming, sewage
and industry. Sand dredging, on top of these assaults, could be a
final, fatal blow.<br>
- -<br>
Or look at the materials required for the electronics revolution
that will, apparently, save us from climate breakdown. Already,
mining and processing the minerals required for magnets and
batteries is laying waste to habitats and causing new pollution
crises. Now, as Jonathan Watts’s terrifying article in the Guardian
this week shows, companies are using the climate crisis as
justification for extracting minerals from the deep ocean floor,
long before we have any idea of what the impacts might be.<br>
<br>
This isn’t, in itself, an argument against direct air capture
machines or other “green” technologies. But if they have to keep
pace with an ever-growing volume of economic activity, and if the
growth of this activity is justified by the existence of those
machines, the net result will be ever greater harm to the living
world.<br>
<br>
Everywhere, governments seek to ramp up the economic load, talking
of “unleashing our potential” and “supercharging our economy”. Boris
Johnson insists that “a global recovery from the pandemic must be
rooted in green growth”. But there is no such thing as green growth.
Growth is wiping the green from the Earth.<br>
<br>
We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we
dramatically reduce economic activity. Wealth must be distributed –
a constrained world cannot afford the rich – but it must also be
reduced. Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of
almost everything. But this notion – that should be central to a
new, environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.<br>
<br>
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/green-growth-economic-activity-environment">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/green-growth-economic-activity-environment</a><br>
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<i>[ first some humor, then some serious learning]</i><br>
<b>Misinformation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)</b><br>
Oct 10, 2021<br>
LastWeekTonight<br>
John Oliver discusses how misinformation spreads among immigrant
diaspora communities, how little some platforms have done to stop
it, and, most importantly, how to have a very good morning.<br>
Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost
news as it almost happens: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.youtube.com/lastweektonight">www.youtube.com/lastweektonight</a> <br>
Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would:
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.facebook.com/lastweektonight">www.facebook.com/lastweektonight</a> <br>
Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news:
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.twitter.com/lastweektonight">www.twitter.com/lastweektonight</a> <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jtFqWq5iU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jtFqWq5iU</a><br>
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<i>[ new credo from the founder of Extinction Rebellion - long
video]</i><br>
<b>How to Stop the Climate Crisis in Six months | 4 September 2021 |
Roger Hallam</b><br>
posted Oct 11, 2021<br>
Extinction Rebellion UK<br>
<blockquote>00:00 Introduction<br>
5:40 The Climate Crisis<br>
20:45 The Theory<br>
55:45 The Practice<br>
1:45:40 Conclusion<br>
</blockquote>
"We have to move quickly. What we do, I believe, in the next three
to four years will determine the future of humanity". Sir David
King. Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government. <br>
<br>
Given there is a real world out there and we have 3-4 years to stop
it being destroyed, we have to engage in nonviolent direct action to
stop governments imposing upon us the greatest act of criminality in
the history of humanity: namely destroying the livelihoods and lives
of the next thousand generations. This video gives you the key
elements of success which people are adapting as they step into
their responsibilities to force political change. Nothing is more
important. We can not longer afford to lose. <br>
<br>
"We struggle to name any climate scientist who at that time thought
the Paris Agreement was feasible. We have since been told by some
scientists that the Paris Agreement was “of course important for
climate justice but unworkable” and “a complete shock, no one
thought limiting to 1.5°C was possible”. Rather than being able to
limit warming to 1.5°C, a senior academic involved in the IPCC
concluded we were heading beyond 3°C by the end of this century."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368">https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368</a><br>
<br>
The future of the human niche paper: <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/21/11350.full.pdf">https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/21/11350.full.pdf</a><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://map.extinctionrebellion.uk/">https://map.extinctionrebellion.uk/</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZT0tSdUog">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZT0tSdUog</a><br>
<p><br>
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[The key realization - essay in the Conversation by 3 climate
scientists]<br>
<b>Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap</b><br>
April 22, 2021 <br>
Authors <br>
<blockquote>James Dyke<br>
Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter<br>
<br>
Robert Watson<br>
Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences, University of East
Anglia<br>
<br>
Wolfgang Knorr<br>
Senior Research Scientist, Physical Geography and Ecosystem
Science, Lund University<br>
</blockquote>
Sometimes realisation comes in a blinding flash. Blurred outlines
snap into shape and suddenly it all makes sense. Underneath such
revelations is typically a much slower-dawning process. Doubts at
the back of the mind grow. The sense of confusion that things cannot
be made to fit together increases until something clicks. Or perhaps
snaps.<br>
<br>
Collectively we three authors of this article must have spent more
than 80 years thinking about climate change. Why has it taken us so
long to speak out about the obvious dangers of the concept of net
zero? In our defence, the premise of net zero is deceptively simple
– and we admit that it deceived us.<br>
<br>
The threats of climate change are the direct result of there being
too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So it follows that we
must stop emitting more and even remove some of it. This idea is
central to the world’s current plan to avoid catastrophe. In fact,
there are many suggestions as to how to actually do this, from mass
tree planting, to high tech direct air capture devices that suck out
carbon dioxide from the air.<br>
The current consensus is that if we deploy these and other so-called
“carbon dioxide removal” techniques at the same time as reducing our
burning of fossil fuels, we can more rapidly halt global warming.
Hopefully around the middle of this century we will achieve “net
zero”. This is the point at which any residual emissions of
greenhouse gases are balanced by technologies removing them from the
atmosphere.<br>
This is a great idea, in principle. Unfortunately, in practice it
helps perpetuate a belief in technological salvation and diminishes
the sense of urgency surrounding the need to curb emissions now.<br>
<br>
We have arrived at the painful realisation that the idea of net zero
has licensed a recklessly cavalier “burn now, pay later” approach
which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar. It has also
hastened the destruction of the natural world by increasing
deforestation today, and greatly increases the risk of further
devastation in the future.<br>
<br>
To understand how this has happened, how humanity has gambled its
civilisation on no more than promises of future solutions, we must
return to the late 1980s, when climate change broke out onto the
international stage.<br>
<b>Steps towards net zero</b><br>
On June 22 1988, James Hansen was the administrator of Nasa’s
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a prestigious appointment but
someone largely unknown outside of academia.<br>
<br>
By the afternoon of the 23rd he was well on the way to becoming the
world’s most famous climate scientist. This was as a direct result
of his testimony to the US congress, when he forensically presented
the evidence that the Earth’s climate was warming and that humans
were the primary cause: “The greenhouse effect has been detected,
and it is changing our climate now.”<br>
<br>
If we had acted on Hansen’s testimony at the time, we would have
been able to decarbonise our societies at a rate of around 2% a year
in order to give us about a two-in-three chance of limiting warming
to no more than 1.5°C. It would have been a huge challenge, but the
main task at that time would have been to simply stop the
accelerating use of fossil fuels while fairly sharing out future
emissions.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392826/original/file-20210331-15-4x9q0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2">https://images.theconversation.com/files/392826/original/file-20210331-15-4x9q0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2</a><br>
Four years later, there were glimmers of hope that this would be
possible. During the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, all nations agreed to
stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases to ensure that they did
not produce dangerous interference with the climate. The 1997 Kyoto
Summit attempted to start to put that goal into practice. But as the
years passed, the initial task of keeping us safe became
increasingly harder given the continual increase in fossil fuel use.<br>
<br>
It was around that time that the first computer models linking
greenhouse gas emissions to impacts on different sectors of the
economy were developed. These hybrid climate-economic models are
known as Integrated Assessment Models. They allowed modellers to
link economic activity to the climate by, for example, exploring how
changes in investments and technology could lead to changes in
greenhouse gas emissions.<br>
<br>
They seemed like a miracle: you could try out policies on a computer
screen before implementing them, saving humanity costly
experimentation. They rapidly emerged to become key guidance for
climate policy. A primacy they maintain to this day.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately, they also removed the need for deep critical
thinking. Such models represent society as a web of idealised,
emotionless buyers and sellers and thus ignore complex social and
political realities, or even the impacts of climate change itself.
Their implicit promise is that market-based approaches will always
work. This meant that discussions about policies were limited to
those most convenient to politicians: incremental changes to
legislation and taxes.<br>
<br>
The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with
academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in
projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.<br>
<br>
Around the time they were first developed, efforts were being made
to secure US action on the climate by allowing it to count carbon
sinks of the country’s forests. The US argued that if it managed its
forests well, it would be able to store a large amount of carbon in
trees and soil which should be subtracted from its obligations to
limit the burning of coal, oil and gas. In the end, the US largely
got its way. Ironically, the concessions were all in vain, since the
US senate never ratified the agreement.<br>
<br>
Postulating a future with more trees could in effect offset the
burning of coal, oil and gas now. As models could easily churn out
numbers that saw atmospheric carbon dioxide go as low as one wanted,
ever more sophisticated scenarios could be explored which reduced
the perceived urgency to reduce fossil fuel use. By including carbon
sinks in climate-economic models, a Pandora’s box had been opened.<br>
<br>
It’s here we find the genesis of today’s net zero policies.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393117/original/file-20210401-13-puplc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2">https://images.theconversation.com/files/393117/original/file-20210401-13-puplc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2</a><br>
That said, most attention in the mid-1990s was focused on increasing
energy efficiency and energy switching (such as the UK’s move from
coal to gas) and the potential of nuclear energy to deliver large
amounts of carbon-free electricity. The hope was that such
innovations would quickly reverse increases in fossil fuel
emissions.<br>
<br>
But by around the turn of the new millennium it was clear that such
hopes were unfounded. Given their core assumption of incremental
change, it was becoming more and more difficult for economic-climate
models to find viable pathways to avoid dangerous climate change. In
response, the models began to include more and more examples of
carbon capture and storage, a technology that could remove the
carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations and then store the
captured carbon deep underground indefinitely.<br>
This had been shown to be possible in principle: compressed carbon
dioxide had been separated from fossil gas and then injected
underground in a number of projects since the 1970s. These Enhanced
Oil Recovery schemes were designed to force gases into oil wells in
order to push oil towards drilling rigs and so allow more to be
recovered – oil that would later be burnt, releasing even more
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
Carbon capture and storage offered the twist that instead of using
the carbon dioxide to extract more oil, the gas would instead be
left underground and removed from the atmosphere. This promised
breakthrough technology would allow climate friendly coal and so the
continued use of this fossil fuel. But long before the world would
witness any such schemes, the hypothetical process had been included
in climate-economic models. In the end, the mere prospect of carbon
capture and storage gave policy makers a way out of making the much
needed cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.<br>
<br>
<b>The rise of net zero</b><br>
When the international climate change community convened in
Copenhagen in 2009 it was clear that carbon capture and storage was
not going to be sufficient for two reasons.<br>
<br>
First, it still did not exist. There were no carbon capture and
storage facilities in operation on any coal fired power station and
no prospect the technology was going to have any impact on rising
emissions from increased coal use in the foreseeable future.<br>
<br>
The biggest barrier to implementation was essentially cost. The
motivation to burn vast amounts of coal is to generate relatively
cheap electricity. Retrofitting carbon scrubbers on existing power
stations, building the infrastructure to pipe captured carbon, and
developing suitable geological storage sites required huge sums of
money. Consequently the only application of carbon capture in actual
operation then – and now – is to use the trapped gas in enhanced oil
recovery schemes. Beyond a single demonstrator, there has never been
any capture of carbon dioxide from a coal fired power station
chimney with that captured carbon then being stored underground.<br>
<br>
Just as important, by 2009 it was becoming increasingly clear that
it would not be possible to make even the gradual reductions that
policy makers demanded. That was the case even if carbon capture and
storage was up and running. The amount of carbon dioxide that was
being pumped into the air each year meant humanity was rapidly
running out of time.<br>
With hopes for a solution to the climate crisis fading again,
another magic bullet was required. A technology was needed not only
to slow down the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, but actually reverse it. In response, the
climate-economic modelling community – already able to include
plant-based carbon sinks and geological carbon storage in their
models – increasingly adopted the “solution” of combining the two.<br>
<br>
So it was that <u><b>Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage</b>, or
BECCS</u>, rapidly emerged as the new saviour technology. By
burning “replaceable” biomass such as wood, crops, and agricultural
waste instead of coal in power stations, and then capturing the
carbon dioxide from the power station chimney and storing it
underground, BECCS could produce electricity at the same time as
removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That’s because as
biomass such as trees grow, they suck in carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. By planting trees and other bioenergy crops and storing
carbon dioxide released when they are burnt, more carbon could be
removed from the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ESlXSa1sU&feature=emb_imp_woyt">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ESlXSa1sU&feature=emb_imp_woyt</a><br>
With this new solution in hand the international community regrouped
from repeated failures to mount another attempt at reining in our
dangerous interference with the climate. The scene was set for the
crucial 2015 climate conference in Paris.<br>
<br>
<b>A Parisian false dawn</b><br>
As its general secretary brought the 21st United Nations conference
on climate change to an end, a great roar issued from the crowd.
People leaped to their feet, strangers embraced, tears welled up in
eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.<br>
<br>
The emotions on display on December 13, 2015 were not just for the
cameras. After weeks of gruelling high-level negotiations in Paris a
breakthrough had finally been achieved. Against all expectations,
after decades of false starts and failures, the international
community had finally agreed to do what it took to limit global
warming to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, compared to
pre-industrial levels.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=286&v=_jA8k4YDzlo&feature=emb_imp_woyt">https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=286&v=_jA8k4YDzlo&feature=emb_imp_woyt</a><br>
The Paris Agreement was a stunning victory for those most at risk
from climate change. Rich industrialised nations will be
increasingly impacted as global temperatures rise. But it’s the low
lying island states such as the Maldives and the Marshall Islands
that are at imminent existential risk. As a later UN special report
made clear, if the Paris Agreement was unable to limit global
warming to 1.5°C, the number of lives lost to more intense storms,
fires, heatwaves, famines and floods would significantly increase.<br>
<br>
But dig a little deeper and you could find another emotion lurking
within delegates on December 13. Doubt. We struggle to name any
climate scientist who at that time thought the Paris Agreement was
feasible. We have since been told by some scientists that the Paris
Agreement was “of course important for climate justice but
unworkable” and “a complete shock, no one thought limiting to 1.5°C
was possible”. Rather than being able to limit warming to 1.5°C, a
senior academic involved in the IPCC concluded we were heading
beyond 3°C by the end of this century.<br>
<br>
Instead of confront our doubts, we scientists decided to construct
ever more elaborate fantasy worlds in which we would be safe. The
price to pay for our cowardice: having to keep our mouths shut about
the ever growing absurdity of the required planetary-scale carbon
dioxide removal...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394549/original/file-20210412-13-1n4dgym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2">https://images.theconversation.com/files/394549/original/file-20210412-13-1n4dgym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2</a><br>
Taking centre stage was BECCS because at the time this was the only
way climate-economic models could find scenarios that would be
consistent with the Paris Agreement. Rather than stabilise, global
emissions of carbon dioxide had increased some 60% since 1992.<br>
<br>
Alas, BECCS, just like all the previous solutions, was too good to
be true.<br>
<br>
Across the scenarios produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) with a 66% or better chance of limiting
temperature increase to 1.5°C, BECCS would need to remove 12 billion
tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. BECCS at this scale would
require massive planting schemes for trees and bioenergy crops.<br>
<br>
The Earth certainly needs more trees. Humanity has cut down some
three trillion since we first started farming some 13,000 years ago.
But rather than allow ecosystems to recover from human impacts and
forests to regrow, BECCS generally refers to dedicated
industrial-scale plantations regularly harvested for bioenergy
rather than carbon stored away in forest trunks, roots and soils.<br>
<br>
Currently, the two most efficient biofuels are sugarcane for
bioethanol and palm oil for biodiesel – both grown in the tropics.
Endless rows of such fast growing monoculture trees or other
bioenergy crops harvested at frequent intervals devastate
biodiversity.<br>
<br>
It has been estimated that BECCS would demand between 0.4 and 1.2
billion hectares of land. That’s 25% to 80% of all the land
currently under cultivation. How will that be achieved at the same
time as feeding 8-10 billion people around the middle of the century
or without destroying native vegetation and biodiversity?<br>
<br>
Growing billions of trees would consume vast amounts of water – in
some places where people are already thirsty. Increasing forest
cover in higher latitudes can have an overall warming effect because
replacing grassland or fields with forests means the land surface
becomes darker. This darker land absorbs more energy from the Sun
and so temperatures rise. Focusing on developing vast plantations in
poorer tropical nations comes with real risks of people being driven
off their lands.<br>
<br>
And it is often forgotten that trees and the land in general already
soak up and store away vast amounts of carbon through what is called
the natural terrestrial carbon sink. Interfering with it could both
disrupt the sink and lead to double accounting.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396503/original/file-20210422-21-1suqm95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2">https://images.theconversation.com/files/396503/original/file-20210422-21-1suqm95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2</a><br>
As these impacts are becoming better understood, the sense of
optimism around BECCS has diminished.<br>
<br>
<b>Pipe dreams</b><br>
Given the dawning realisation of how difficult Paris would be in the
light of ever rising emissions and limited potential of BECCS, a new
buzzword emerged in policy circles: the “overshoot scenario”.
Temperatures would be allowed to go beyond 1.5°C in the near term,
but then be brought down with a range of carbon dioxide removal by
the end of the century. This means that net zero actually means
carbon negative. Within a few decades, we will need to transform our
civilisation from one that currently pumps out 40 billion tons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, to one that produces a
net removal of tens of billions.<br>
<br>
Mass tree planting, for bioenergy or as an attempt at offsetting,
had been the latest attempt to stall cuts in fossil fuel use. But
the ever-increasing need for carbon removal was calling for more.
This is why the idea of direct air capture, now being touted by some
as the most promising technology out there, has taken hold. It is
generally more benign to ecosystems because it requires
significantly less land to operate than BECCS, including the land
needed to power them using wind or solar panels.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately, it is widely believed that direct air capture,
because of its exorbitant costs and energy demand, if it ever
becomes feasible to be deployed at scale, will not be able to
compete with BECCS with its voracious appetite for prime
agricultural land.<br>
<br>
The Climeworks Gebr. Meier Greenhouse in Hinwil, Zurich. CO2
increases crop yield from direct air capture. Such projects
demonstrate exciting possible applications for captured carbon, but
there is no prospect they will have any measurable impact on
reducing global warming. Orjan Ellingvag/Alamy<br>
It should now be getting clear where the journey is heading. As the
mirage of each magical technical solution disappears, another
equally unworkable alternative pops up to take its place. The next
is already on the horizon – and it’s even more ghastly. Once we
realise net zero will not happen in time or even at all,
geoengineering – the deliberate and large scale intervention in the
Earth’s climate system – will probably be invoked as the solution to
limit temperature increases.<br>
<br>
One of the most researched geoengineering ideas is solar radiation
management – the injection of millions of tons of sulphuric acid
into the stratosphere that will reflect some of the Sun’s energy
away from the Earth. It is a wild idea, but some academics and
politicians are deadly serious, despite significant risks. The US
National Academies of Sciences, for example, has recommended
allocating up to US$200 million over the next five years to explore
how geoengineering could be deployed and regulated. Funding and
research in this area is sure to significantly increase.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393121/original/file-20210401-21-g3swz5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2">https://images.theconversation.com/files/393121/original/file-20210401-21-g3swz5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2</a><br>
<b>Difficult truths</b><br>
In principle there is nothing wrong or dangerous about carbon
dioxide removal proposals. In fact developing ways of reducing
concentrations of carbon dioxide can feel tremendously exciting. You
are using science and engineering to save humanity from disaster.
What you are doing is important. There is also the realisation that
carbon removal will be needed to mop up some of the emissions from
sectors such as aviation and cement production. So there will be
some small role for a number of different carbon dioxide removal
approaches.<br>
<br>
The problems come when it is assumed that these can be deployed at
vast scale. This effectively serves as a blank cheque for the
continued burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of habitat
destruction.<br>
<br>
Carbon reduction technologies and geoengineering should be seen as a
sort of ejector seat that could propel humanity away from rapid and
catastrophic environmental change. Just like an ejector seat in a
jet aircraft, it should only be used as the very last resort.
However, policymakers and businesses appear to be entirely serious
about deploying highly speculative technologies as a way to land our
civilisation at a sustainable destination. In fact, these are no
more than fairy tales.<br>
<br>
Crowds of young people hold placards.<br>
‘There is no Planet B’: children in Birmingham, UK, protest against
the climate crisis. Callum Shaw/Unsplash, FAL<br>
The only way to keep humanity safe is the immediate and sustained
radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way.<br>
<br>
Academics typically see themselves as servants to society. Indeed,
many are employed as civil servants. Those working at the climate
science and policy interface desperately wrestle with an
increasingly difficult problem. Similarly, those that champion net
zero as a way of breaking through barriers holding back effective
action on the climate also work with the very best of intentions.<br>
<br>
The tragedy is that their collective efforts were never able to
mount an effective challenge to a climate policy process that would
only allow a narrow range of scenarios to be explored.<br>
<br>
Most academics feel distinctly uncomfortable stepping over the
invisible line that separates their day job from wider social and
political concerns. There are genuine fears that being seen as
advocates for or against particular issues could threaten their
perceived independence. Scientists are one of the most trusted
professions. Trust is very hard to build and easy to destroy.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394551/original/file-20210412-13-bllb2g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2">https://images.theconversation.com/files/394551/original/file-20210412-13-bllb2g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2</a><br>
But there is another invisible line, the one that separates
maintaining academic integrity and self-censorship. As scientists,
we are taught to be sceptical, to subject hypotheses to rigorous
tests and interrogation. But when it comes to perhaps the greatest
challenge humanity faces, we often show a dangerous lack of critical
analysis.<br>
<br>
In private, scientists express significant scepticism about the
Paris Agreement, BECCS, offsetting, geoengineering and net zero.
Apart from some notable exceptions, in public we quietly go about
our work, apply for funding, publish papers and teach. The path to
disastrous climate change is paved with feasibility studies and
impact assessments.<br>
<br>
Rather than acknowledge the seriousness of our situation, we instead
continue to participate in the fantasy of net zero. What will we do
when reality bites? What will we say to our friends and loved ones
about our failure to speak out now?<br>
<br>
The time has come to voice our fears and be honest with wider
society. Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within
1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are
driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate. If
we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon
emissions need to happen now. That is the very simple acid test that
must be applied to all climate policies. The time for wishful
thinking is over.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368">https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368</a><br>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://newsoveraudio.com/?embedPubName=The%20ConversationembedPubId=103">https://newsoveraudio.com/?embedPubName=The%20ConversationembedPubId=103</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ I wish this </i><i> conversation </i><i>was a longer YouTube
Zoom recording ]</i><br>
<b>Post-doom with Joanna Macy (Feb 2021) "To Collapse Well"</b><br>
Jul 27, 2021<br>
thegreatstory<br>
"To Collapse Well" - post-doom talk recorded February 2021.
Time-coded list of topics below. Dowd says, "This was originally
intended to be just a catch-up conversation between long-time
friends and colleagues. It quickly spiraled to profound and
inspiring places and, thankfully, Joanna agreed that this this
edited version could be published. This conversation is really the
heart and soul of what I (Michael Dowd) mean by a POST-DOOM
conversation!!"<br>
My wife and mission partner, Connie Barlow, spent three days
adding text and image overlays. She says, "Many of the post-doom
conversations Michael recorded gave me a sense of equanimity about
TEOTWAWKI ("The End Of The World As We Know It"). But this one with
Joanna had me sense the possibility about actually feeling gratitude
for the gift of being alive at such a time. I could see that
gratitude in her face. It moved me, and gave me a fresh possibility
for how I, too, might walk into this future. I wanted to share this
gift with others."<br>
<blockquote>00:02 - Introduction and two previews.<br>
<br>
03:53 - MD (Dowd) and JM (Macy) - "We will be generative right to
the end."<br>
<br>
04:46 - Action needed: advocate for solar panels to be installed
near nuclear power plants to ensure emergency electricity for
pumped-water cooling of spent fuel rods. <br>
<br>
07:00 - Foundational shift: "Admit the myth of perpetual progress
is a false religion" and that that techno-fixes may not be a
solution. Must avoid "geological-scale evil."<br>
<br>
09:22 - Technological hubris becomes "irresponsible in the
extreme." Spiritual leaders can play a role in using morally
laden, relationally oriented language. JM: "We have crippled our
moral imagination." <br>
<br>
11:06 - Shifted meaning of "active hope." New edition of JM book,
"World as Lover, Wolrld as Self." JM chapters in new book "A Wild
Love for the World."<br>
<br>
14:26 - JM: "The great turning will not precede but will come with
or after the process of collapse." Terminology: a
"life-sustaining" (not "sustainable") culture. Importance of "deep
adaptation." Their previous post-doom conversation, "Children of
the Passage." Great turning "becomes a vision, a compass, a
guiding star." Anger over "still fracking." <br>
<br>
18:10 - MD: Business-as-usual as a kind of "addiction" that is
"totally understandable." The long history of "progress-regress,
boom and bust cultures; how civilizations and empires predictably
collapse." JM: "Morally we regress."<br>
<br>
19:57 - Quoting text response that Catherine Ingram offered for
this conversation.<br>
<br>
22:42 - JM story: helped by Buddhist understanding of the self,
plus her study of systems theory and Gaia theory toward growing "a
planet sense of self" and "a vaster sense of experience through
time." JM reflections on "Deep Ecology" with John Seed, and her
own despair work, "The Work That Reconnects" and "Coming Back to
Life."<br>
<br>
25:35 - JM: amazed that when people "had the courage to go into
anguish for the world ... and not numb in out ... there was
sometimes a shift in identity ... almost coextensive with Earth."
MD: "a sense of self that includes a continuity with time ... and
the nested self ... is the key to facing extinction ... death of
expectations and worldviews ... fearlessness around mortality."
JM: "That is what I experience ... such a fulfillment." MD:
"relative equanimity and passionate commitment."<br>
<br>
29:46 - JM: "If this is the last generation, then I'm glad to be
here.... so grateful ... a great harvesting." MD story of shifting
out of fear for his daughter choosing to have a child. "A tsunami
of trust just broke over top of me." JM: "Trust is at the core of
life.... We're going to be humans living as humans till the last."
MD: on being confronted by anti-natalists. JM: "We're a family
till the end."<br>
<br>
33:55 - MD: "What a sacred honor to be alive at this time ... at
the end of the Age of Exuberance and the beginning of the Great
Contraction." JM: saw a play showing the transcendance of people
trapped in the Warsaw ghetto; life is "transforming and redemptive
at every moment, right to the end." MD: "Serenity prayer for the
21st Century ... to collapse well ... post-doom and post-gloom."
JM: "the hope that we can all die well." MD: Why young parents
should not be reminded of this; focus on their daily parenting.<br>
<br>
39:38 - JM: "Our making peace with this makes room for such
fulfillment.... so happy to have a chance to be with this
beautiful planet, after this long, long story ... right at this
climax, ending.... to celebrate, to thank — instead of wallowing
in self-pity and complaint." MD: importance of "celebrating our
relationship to place, to evolution ... tears of gratitude." JM:
"and remember, too, the great poets, the great musicians." Go to
the great landforms in our own regions "and say, glory be!"<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h1wdh3yEc4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h1wdh3yEc4</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[The news archive - looking back]</i><br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
October 13, 1992</b></font><br>
<br>
October 13, 1992: <br>
<br>
Vice President Dan Quayle, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, and Navy Vice
Admiral James Stockdale discuss environmental issues in the Vice
Presidential debate. Quayle says that the US can clearly have both a
healthy economy and a healthy environment, a notion that would be
later disavowed by his party. Quayle praises President Bush for
signing the 1990 Clean Air Act (which utilized cap-and-trade to
combat sulfur dioxide). Quayle then implies that Bill Clinton and Al
Gore will embrace environmental extremism, and denounces the idea of
a tax on emissions from coal. Stockdale viciously attacks Gore's
book "Earth in the Balance," and embraces climate denial. Gore calls
for an "environmental revolution" and hails the progress of clean
energy, before noting that President Bush broke his promise to be
the "environmental president." Quayle also viciously attacks Gore's
book. Gore defends his book and notes that the US needs to work with
other countries to realize the potential of clean energy. Stockdale
repeats his earlier climate denial; Gore points again to the
scientific consensus on climate change. Quayle attacks the book for
a third time and denounces the concept of a carbon tax for a second
time. <br>
<br>
(39:20--48:56)<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/sXU2BZIyqPA">http://youtu.be/sXU2BZIyqPA</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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