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<font size="+2"><i><b>January 5, 2023</b></i></font><br>
<br>
<i>[ California deluges ]</i><br>
<b>How Climate Change Is Shaping California’s Winter Storms</b><br>
So far, the downpours are largely in line with past storms, an
official said. But their quick pace is testing the limits of the
state’s infrastructure.<br>
By Raymond Zhong<br>
Published Jan. 3, 2023...<br>
- -<br>
Michael Anderson, California’s state climatologist. “This is where
we’re getting hit this year: We’re seeing a lot of big storms fairly
quickly.”<br>
- -<br>
Scientists are also studying whether global warming might be
shifting the way winds carry moisture around the atmosphere,
potentially influencing the number of atmospheric rivers that sweep
through California each year and how long they last. They have not
yet come to firm conclusions on these questions, though.<br>
“The dominant thing that’s happening is just that, in a warmer
atmosphere, there’s exponentially more potential for it to hold
water vapor,” said Daniel L. Swain, a climate scientist at the
University of California, Los Angeles. “And that exerts a really
profound influence on things.”<br>
- -<br>
It is still unclear how global warming might be affecting the
likelihood for atmospheric rivers to crash into California in
rapid-fire clusters. Another study last year found that in nearly
four out of five years between 1981 and 2019, half or more of all
atmospheric rivers that affected the state were part of an
atmospheric river “family,” or a rapid parade of storms...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/climate/california-flood-atmospheric-river.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/climate/california-flood-atmospheric-river.html</a><br>
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<p><i>[ time and political structures of our predicament ]</i><br>
<b>How our perception of time shapes our approach to climate
change</b><br>
January 4, 2023<br>
REBECCA HERSHER...</p>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<p>
Most people are focused on the present: today, tomorrow, maybe
next year. Fixing your flat tire is more pressing than figuring
out if you should use an electric car. Living by the beach is a
lot more fun than figuring out when your house will be underwater
because of sea level rise.<br>
<br>
That basic human relationship with time makes climate change a
tricky problem.<br>
<br>
"I consider climate change the policy problem from hell because
you almost couldn't design a worse fit for our underlying
psychology, or our institutions of decision-making," says Anthony
Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change
Communication.<br>
<br>
<b>Our obsession with the present obscures the future</b><br>
Those institutions — including companies and governments that
ultimately have the power to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas
emissions — can be even more obsessed with the present than
individuals are.<br>
<br>
For example, says Leiserowitz, many companies are focused on
quarterly earnings and growth. That helps drive short-term
behavior, such as leasing new land to drill for fossil fuels, that
makes long-term climate change worse.<br>
And there are also big incentives for political leaders to think
short-term. "The President gets elected every four years. Members
of the Senate get elected every six years. And members of the
House get elected every two years," Leiserowitz points out, "so
they tend to operate on a much shorter time cycle than this
problem, climate change, which is unfolding over decades."<br>
There are deadlines looming for those elected leaders. The Biden
administration pledged to cut emissions in half by 2030. By 2050,
humans need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions entirely in
order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change
later this century.<br>
<br>
Fortunately, our collective focus on the present also offers
hints, psychologists say, about how to harness that hyperfocus on
the present to inspire action.<br>
<br>
<b>To spur action, speed up the psychological rewards for
addressing climate change now</b><br>
For example, there are ways to highlight the quick payoff for
addressing climate change. In the political realm, that could mean
that an elected official gets more votes because they support
policies that reduce emissions. The promise of a benefit in the
next election may be more galvanizing than the goal of protecting
future generations, even if the latter has more moral weight.<br>
"The benefits that we get today are more salient, and we want them
more than benefits that may be larger, but will accrue in the
future," explains Jennifer Jacquet, a researcher and associate
professor of environmental studies at New York University who
studies the psychology of collective action, including on climate
change.<br>
Jacquet says the huge spending bill passed last year by Congress,
called the Inflation Reduction Act, is another example of using
our focus on the present to drive climate-conscious behavior. The
bill includes financial incentives for people who buy electric
vehicles or install solar panels.<br>
<br>
"They're trying to speed up the benefits," says Jacquet. "That's
smart. That's good. That plays into how we think about things."<br>
<br>
<b>Extreme weather is starting to catch everyone's attention</b><br>
In some ways, our focus on the present is less and less of a
problem as climate change makes itself more and more obvious today
— in our daily lives. Everyone on Earth is experiencing the
effects of a hotter planet. That makes it a problem of the
present, not of the future.<br>
That immediacy is already showing up in how Americans view climate
change, according to Leiserowitz, who has been leading an annual
poll on the topic for more than 15 years. As extreme weather is
becoming more common, he says support for climate policies is also
growing, especially at the local level.<br>
<br>
For example, the vast majority of respondents in a September 2021
poll said they support local governments providing money to help
make homes more energy efficient, to increase public
transportation and to install bike lanes. And the majority of
respondents supported investments in renewable energy.<br>
<br>
<b>There's no time to waste</b><br>
Widespread public support for climate policies can help push
politicians and corporate leaders to act quickly – which is
important, because scientists warn that greenhouse gas emissions
need to drop dramatically, and immediately, to avoid runaway
warming later this century.<br>
"We have big societal choices to make," says Leiserowitz, and
those changes need to happen now. In the present. "People working
together to demand action by their leaders is going to be an
absolutely critical piece."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/04/1139782291/time-perception-climate-change-risk">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/04/1139782291/time-perception-climate-change-risk</a><br>
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<i>[ NYTimes Magazine - a persistent climate conjecture -- text and
listen to the article ]</i><br>
<b>Has the Amazon Reached Its ‘Tipping Point’?</b><br>
Some Brazilian scientists fear that the Amazon may become a grassy
savanna — with profound effects on the climate worldwide.<br>
By Alex Cuadros<br>
Jan. 4, 2023<br>
- -<br>
A growing number of scientists worry that one tipping point can
trigger another. In some cases the influence is direct. If
Greenland’s ice sheet disappears, the circulation of Atlantic
seawaters could be drastically altered, which would, in turn, wreak
havoc on weather patterns across the globe, making Scandinavia
uninhabitably cold, warming the Southern Hemisphere, drying out
forests. The impact of Amazon dieback would be to release tens of
billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere — which is more
diffuse, but no less dangerous. When Lenton and his colleague David
Armstrong McKay recently compiled the latest evidence on an array of
global climate thresholds, they found that even a very optimistic
1.5 degrees of warming since preindustrial times may be enough to
trigger the gradual but irreversible melting of ice sheets in
Greenland and West Antarctica, and to thaw methane-trapping
permafrost.<br>
<br>
It is difficult to predict how all these shifts might interact, as
most models assume, for example, that Atlantic seawaters will always
circulate according to known patterns. But in a 2018 paper, Lenton
and the American Earth system scientist Will Steffen warned that a
dominolike “tipping cascade” could push the global climate itself
beyond a critical threshold, into an alternate feedback loop called
“hothouse Earth,” with hostile conditions not seen for millions of
years. It can feel like doom-mongering to contemplate such a
scenario. There is no way to put a number on it. Even if it is
improbable, however, Lenton argues that the consequences would be so
dire that it must be taken seriously. He sees it as a “profound
risk-management problem”: If we focus only on the most likely
outcomes, we will never predict anomalies like 2021’s unprecedented
“heat dome” in the Pacific Northwest. Or last year’s winter heat
wave in Antarctica, when temperatures jumped 70 degrees Fahrenheit
above the average. Or, for that matter, the proliferation of
wildfires in the world’s largest rainforest.<br>
<br>
Berenguer wanted to show Gatti how the 2015 megafires had altered
forests in the northeastern Amazon. So Xarope picked us up from the
research base in the morning, and we got back onto the BR-163. Here
and there along the highway, Berenguer pointed out “tree skeletons”
— dead trees whose sun-bleached branches poked from the otherwise
lush green canopy of the Tapajós. Fire did not always kill them
right away. When Berenguer was back in Britain, her assistants would
send her updates by WhatsApp. You know Tree 71? one message might
say, referring to a centuries-old specimen in one of her plots. So,
it just died. It could take a few years more for it to fall to the
ground. Some of the carbon in Gatti’s air samples, then, could be a
delayed consequence of past fires. But as we would see inside the
living forest, something stranger was happening, too.<br>
<br>
Eventually we exited the highway for an unmarked dirt track that
ended in a wall of vegetation. Machete in hand, Berenguer led us
onto a tight path. Just a few days earlier, she and her assistants
spent hours clearing the way for us, but new vines were already
reclaiming the space. “You can see it’s a mess,” Berenguer said. An
impassable thicket of reedy bamboo hemmed us in on either side; the
canopy was low above our heads. To me it looked normal enough, as
far as jungle goes. In reality, though, a healthy rainforest should
be easy to walk through, because the largest trees consume so much
light and water that the understory lacks the resources to grow very
dense.<br>
<br>
We walked over fallen trunks. Unlike in the southeastern Amazon,
Berenguer still saw no evidence of savannalike vegetation moving in.
But the balance of native species was now out of whack, as
opportunistic “pioneers” occupied the spaces left by dead giants. In
some areas, fast-growing embaúba trees stood so uniformly that they
resembled the stems of a wood-pulp plantation. In others, hundreds
of newborn lianas formed a kind of snake nest. (Berenguer’s team had
to measure each one individually, a hellish task.) She pointed to a
tall, proud tree that had somehow survived the blaze. Because all of
the other nearby individuals of its species had been killed, it was
unlikely to reproduce; Berenguer called it a “zombie.”<br>
<br>
A University of Birmingham researcher named Adriane
Esquivel-Muelbert has found similar changes across the Amazon. Even
in the absence of actual “savannization,” trees that can withstand
drier conditions are proliferating, while those that need more water
are dying in greater numbers. The dominance of embaúba is
particularly worrisome because the trees are hollow, storing far
less carbon than a slower-growing species like mahogany. Their life
cycle is also relatively short, leaving more frequent gaps in the
canopy. The end result of this transformation is unclear, but
Gatti’s numbers have only continued to get worse. According to her
latest five-year averages, the Brazilian Amazon is already giving
off 50 percent more carbon than it was in the first five years of
her project — and even the historically healthier western forests
are sometimes emitting more than they absorb.<br>
<br>
Eventually we came into a clearing. I began to sweat. The sun was
searing hot; Berenguer said that unshaded ground can reach 176
degrees Fahrenheit here. Clearings are a natural part of the
Amazonian cycle, as large trees inevitably die and other species
gradually take their place. But even logging could not match the
power of fire to turn the forest into “Swiss cheese.” Berenguer
never used to need sunscreen because the canopy was so thick; now
she gets sunburned here. And the profusion of holes sets off a
vicious cycle. The sun dries out the vegetation; trees shed leaves
to preserve water; the litter becomes fuel for the next fire. The
gaps also create a “wind corridor,” allowing strong drafts to
penetrate deep into the forest during storms. Perversely, with their
heavy trunks, the largest, oldest trees are especially vulnerable to
being knocked over...<br>
- -<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/magazine/amazon-tipping-point.html?unlocked_article_code=XrpG1MMfJ4f3xb-CBKskYr-b-8wQqxURNMzJTAdJG8P3k8tj0qHoo7b8ewRnQe4qdDqL2AUMu4-kX4UdE6Jk38IlvMT2cRf-rmh8u0RiGk1YR4lSK9S92SqpkWgTmYDOkKM_JlJpGjVlaIvpQByzOvELUQRM6TW49jevHvrejrpjGajoMfi2RVFrWdJAIio2xoYPJ2qRHz5aWr5ZQseRzH2yyp_mOg32RvfsVbWm0lJQmbKmdBTUQ6NM9QtGLgtwu4mlpBDGAPvHNnxHwXCCa53sqfvlN_9-wAfr46b9q9kRcITDRznDz4giV9E9rEIX0yppIbHJq9_DHYJh-8Ei&smid=share-url">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/magazine/amazon-tipping-point.html?unlocked_article_code=XrpG1MMfJ4f3xb-CBKskYr-b-8wQqxURNMzJTAdJG8P3k8tj0qHoo7b8ewRnQe4qdDqL2AUMu4-kX4UdE6Jk38IlvMT2cRf-rmh8u0RiGk1YR4lSK9S92SqpkWgTmYDOkKM_JlJpGjVlaIvpQByzOvELUQRM6TW49jevHvrejrpjGajoMfi2RVFrWdJAIio2xoYPJ2qRHz5aWr5ZQseRzH2yyp_mOg32RvfsVbWm0lJQmbKmdBTUQ6NM9QtGLgtwu4mlpBDGAPvHNnxHwXCCa53sqfvlN_9-wAfr46b9q9kRcITDRznDz4giV9E9rEIX0yppIbHJq9_DHYJh-8Ei&smid=share-url</a><br>
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<i>[ A 6 year old video that explains transformation - 5 mins video
]</i><br>
<b>The Climate Crisis with Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern</b><br>
World Economic Forum<br>
Mar 9, 2016<br>
The Climate Crisis<br>
Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University, USA<br>
Nicholas Stern, The British Academy, UK<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOyZYK4xGyA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOyZYK4xGyA</a><br>
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<i>[ Taking actions now to make impacts forever ]</i><br>
<b>5 doable resolutions for US climate policy in 2023</b><br>
The US can tackle methane emissions and deliver on global financing.<br>
By Rebecca <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Leber@rebleberrebecca.leber@vox.com">Leber@rebleberrebecca.leber@vox.com</a> <br>
Dec 30, 2022<br>
- -<br>
There’s much more that can be done in 2023, and the US has a
particular role to play. Historically the world’s biggest polluter,
the US is finally gearing up for its biggest realignment yet on
climate change. The country has a chance to slash its climate
pollution and protect the population from the effects of extreme
weather. And there are also actionable steps people can take in
their own lives and communities to make a difference.<br>
<br>
Here are five things the US could resolve to do in 2023:<br>
<br>
<b>1) Slash methane emissions from the oil and gas sector</b><br>
Next year has the opportunity to be a turning point in the
second-biggest contributor to climate change, methane. Methane is
responsible for only 30 percent of climate change, a smaller share
than carbon dioxide, but it is also much more capable of trapping
heat... <br>
The EPA would require companies to regularly monitor pollution
coming from their oil and gas wells, as well as limit companies from
burning off the excess gas. And the Bureau of Land Management rule
specifically targets public and tribal lands by setting monthly
limits on burning off excess gas and having operators submit a waste
minimization plan with any permit application...<br>
- -<br>
<b>2. Mainstream heat pumps, induction stoves, and electric vehicles
with the Inflation Reduction Act</b><br>
The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats in Congress this
summer includes $369 billion to push American consumers and industry
away from relying on fossil fuels. The utility payments in the law
will ensure that renewables will be cheaper than building new coal
and gas power plants. And the tax credits and rebates aim at helping
consumers make the leap to renewable and energy-efficient
technologies. Some of these technologies are familiar, like rooftop
solar and insulation, but some will be newer to Americans, including
heat pumps, induction stoves, and plug-in electric vehicles...<br>
- -<br>
<b>3. Take extreme heat as seriously as the cold</b><br>
We learned some important lessons about the power grid this year.
After repeated close calls around the country this year during high
demand times, California and Texas narrowly averted mass power
outages only when consumers helped to reduce the load on the grid,
through small actions like changing the thermostat.<br>
<br>
These events averted mass blackouts during unusual heat waves. If
the power did go out, millions could have been exposed to
potentially dangerous temperatures. Everyone has different
tolerances to heat, and in a heat wave, the elderly tend to be the
most vulnerable well before the thermostat hits triple digits...<br>
- -<br>
<b>4. Deliver on global climate financing</b><br>
The US still hasn’t delivered on its original Paris climate
agreement pledge in 2015 to deliver $3 billion to the Green Climate
Fund. The fund is meant to help with clean energy financing in
developing countries, in recognition of rich countries’ lopsided
blame for causing climate change. While Biden secured $1 billion
from Congress this year, it’s unclear where the remaining $2 billion
will come from, especially given Republican control of the House
next year...<br>
<br>
The US has other obligations on top of the Green Climate Fund. Biden
also pledged $11 billion to developing countries. That’s on top of
the White House’s announcements of joint energy partnerships with
South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the EU. Some of this funding
can come from agencies’ discretionary budget, but Biden will need to
depend on Congress for the rest.<br>
<br>
The US also has a new kind of climate commitment to deliver on. At
the recent international climate conference in Egypt, the world
committed for the first time to recognizing the loss and damages
suffered by developing countries for a crisis they played a
negligible role in creating.<br>
<br>
The US has long been wary of agreeing to pay for any losses and
damages, worried it will open up a flood of lawsuits and claims
against the world’s historically biggest polluter, but did agree to
a basic framework in Egypt. It’s not clear yet what that will
translate to in dollars...<br>
<br>
<b>5. Get personal and political</b><br>
In 2023, Americans will have more personal control over the kind of
carbon footprint they have than ever before. They’ll be able to take
control over the “mini fossil fuel plants” people run in their homes
every day for their heating, cooking, and driving...<br>
<br>
The incentives available under the Inflation Reduction Act will
finally make it more financially affordable to go electric. There’s
money for rooftop solar; electric vehicles, clothes dryers, stoves,
and ovens; heat pumps for heating, cooling, and hot water; electric
panels and wiring. The law also includes programs that cover the
costs of insulation and weatherization to cut a building’s energy
usage.<br>
It’s also important to get outside the mindset that the only impact
you can have on climate change is in the ways you consume, eat, and
live. There’s more you can do. Action can mean thinking about your
identities, your workplace, your networks, and your privileges, but
also, a little more abstractly, understanding what sorts of action
lead to policy change. All this will help you identify the
appropriate community to link up with. In other words: You can
always do more by not acting alone.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23511257/how-us-fight-climate-change-2023">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23511257/how-us-fight-climate-change-2023</a><br>
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<i>[ intensifying climates means Increasing need for mental health -
24 min video presentation ]</i><br>
<b>Gary Belkin - The Social Crisis in the Climate Crisis</b><br>
The International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL) is
a unique international collaborative that focuses on mental health
and addictions. IIMHL is a collaboration of seven countries:
Australia, England, Canada, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland,
Scotland and USA. IIMHL organizes structured staff exchanges,
systems for international networking, innovation sharing and problem
solving across countries and agencies.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kua-pE9kH8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kua-pE9kH8</a>
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<i>[ maybe the real predicament is population overshoot ]</i><br>
<b>Welcome to a new year on a warming planet, now with 8 billion
people</b><br>
Joan Meiners<br>
Arizona Republic<br>
Jan 4, 2023<br>
We start 2023 sharing the planet with 8 billion other people.<br>
<br>
The United Nations' global population counter clicked passed this
estimated milestone in mid-November. In the context of climate
change, what that means is that roughly 8 billion humans now aspire
to own a smart phone, a tablet, a television, an automobile, a house
connected to power and more. Approximately 27,000 first-time
internet users come online every hour, according to a 2016 analysis
by Our World in Data. And the number of global airline flights, a
major contributor to the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere, is on track to surpass pre-pandemic levels this
year.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, manufacturing of screens and the transition to renewable
energy sources is limited by processes in minerals mining, the grid
is not yet outfitted to fully support electric utilities or
transportation and concern about fossil fuel reliance grows each
day. With this backdrop, the idea of more and more people seeking to
increase their quality of life, as we all do, by tapping into a
fixed set of global resources may feel overwhelming.<br>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2023/01/02/PPHX/b8e36233-db8a-44e2-92d8-9d4b7567c128-Annual-World-Population-since-10-thousand-BCE.png?width=1320&height=930&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp">https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2023/01/02/PPHX/b8e36233-db8a-44e2-92d8-9d4b7567c128-Annual-World-Population-since-10-thousand-BCE.png?width=1320&height=930&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp</a></p>
<p>This topic seems to have already been on your minds. Looking over
emails from readers regarding our weekly climate series, a theme
emerged: Despite 2022's political, technological and social
progress to address warming trends and the challenges in those
areas that remain, what many of you are thinking most about is
overpopulation.</p>
<p>This concern is so common that, halfway through writing this
story, I noticed that environmental writer Jonathan Thompson
recently wrote a similar response to his readers in High Country
News highlighting key stats on how the crisis is largely created
by rich people specifically. Overpopulation also got airtime on
the first "60 Minutes" broadcast of 2023, with famed Stanford
biologist Paul Ehrlich, who was one of the first to raise the
alarm about climate change and is also credited with "inciting a
worldwide fear of population," talking about how an unsustainable
number of humans is driving the ongoing extinction crisis (a major
problem since we can't survive on a planet of only humans).</p>
<p>One Republic reader was so distressed that he took the time to
print and mail graphs to our newsroom meant to illuminate the
similarities between curves charting both the rising concentration
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the global population
over time. Both show the classic "hockey stick" shape that tracks
slow, steady, mostly-horizontal increases across early human
history (the straight, longer part of the hockey stick the player
holds), followed by rapid, exponential, nearly-vertical increases
in recent decades (the sharp bend leading to the part of the
hockey stick that delivers the devastating puck acceleration).</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2023/01/02/PPHX/fc094972-4669-4588-afe4-b7308c942595-climate-change.png?width=1320&height=932&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp">https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2023/01/02/PPHX/fc094972-4669-4588-afe4-b7308c942595-climate-change.png?width=1320&height=932&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp</a></p>
But while the two curves are undeniably similar, the problem is
arguably more of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Did greenhouse gas
emissions rise to dangerous levels strictly because we allowed
global population to get out of control, in some kind of equation
where more people inexorably equals more energy? Or, amid population
growth typical of a flourishing species, have we increasingly
indulged in excessively energy-rich ways of life?<br>
As far as the exact human causes of the ways we're seeing nature
respond to warming temperatures and how best to respond to ensure
our own survival, in this case, there are some other ideas.<br>
<p>Manfred Laubichler is a professor of Theoretical Biology and the
History of Biology as well as the director of the School of
Complex Adaptive Systems and the Global Biosocial Complexity
Initiative at Arizona State University. Those titles are a
mouthful, but his work boils down to thinking about the what the
evolutionary history of both nature and knowledge might teach us
about possible life hacks moving forward. In even simpler terms,
he studies our biological past for tips on how to live our best
future.</p>
<p>The Arizona Republic reached him in Berlin, where he spent time
between semesters working with collaborators at the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science, to discuss his views on how
population is not the problem and might even be a solution to the
climate crisis, with more brains giving rise to more ideas on how
to adapt. The conversation, including some controversial concepts
he explained in more depth than we could include, has been
necessarily edited for length and clarity.</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1160925986868858880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1160925986868858880%7Ctwgr%5E8da0429560c4155ad04c70b8edc7d6b4e83f99a4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.azcentral.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Farizona-environment%2F2023%2F01%2F04%2Fis-climate-change-fueled-by-overpopulation-what-is-the-solution%2F69765023007%2F">https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1160925986868858880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1160925986868858880%7Ctwgr%5E8da0429560c4155ad04c70b8edc7d6b4e83f99a4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.azcentral.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Farizona-environment%2F2023%2F01%2F04%2Fis-climate-change-fueled-by-overpopulation-what-is-the-solution%2F69765023007%2F</a></p>
<b>I’ve been getting emails from people telling me that whatever I'm
writing regarding climate change doesn't matter because the real
problem is overpopulation. And while I recognize that
overpopulation is certainly a parameter here, it's not something
that can just be fixed in any kind of ethical way. So, I thought
it might be interesting for my readers to hear from you about what
else overpopulation might mean for us as a global society coping
with a dangerously warming climate.</b><br>
<br>
<b>M.L.: </b>As you said, yes, population is a major contributing
factor (to climate change). It is not one that can be solved
overnight. And the absolute numbers are actually only a very small
part of the story. What we did in our work is to try to take that
deep history approach and say, “When did this dynamic that we are
currently experiencing really start?” <br>
<p>You have to go back several thousand years, to the early
Neolithic. We had enough people that had enough experience about
their environment that they extracted the knowledge necessary to
start agriculture. Once that happened, then we see what we call
the "Anthropocene engine" beginning to run. And that is basically
a positive feedback loop between population size, knowledge
generation and energy use. So it’s when enough people produce more
and more knowledge that allows them to extract more energy which
supports more people, and you see how this is going and going and
going.</p>
<p>This is more or less an inevitable process if our species behaves
like any other biological species, using whatever it’s got to
increase its numbers. For a long time, we were limited in our
growth potential because we experienced regulatory feedback from
the environment. But our species is unique because we extracted
knowledge that allowed us to basically emancipate ourselves from a
lot of those regulatory controls as part of what you can call the
process of civilization. And now we have created a mess.<br>
</p>
<b>Human limits of modern agriculture: </b>Climate change could
push produce prices higher, slowing the fight for food justice<br>
<br>
At the same time, we have enough knowledge that we actually know
what to do. What we have not figured out is how to implement that
knowledge as a society because, in many ways, what we have to do is
create regulatory structures as a civilization, meaning rules for a
different type of economic system or application of technologies
that are more circular and non-extractive.<br>
<br>
So that's where the target is. And at ASU, that is exactly the focus
of the Global Futures Laboratory: to understand and then implement
solutions for “how do we actually shape the world of societies to do
something differently?”<br>
<br>
<b>What would that look like, to evolve as an intelligent
civilization to live smarter instead of just bigger?</b><br>
<p>Ten thousand years ago, every human on this planet had an average
daily energy use of about 90 watts. Today, everyone uses about
11,000 watts. That's a more than 104-fold increase. So we are no
longer just a biological species. We are this socio-technological
species. The biological part of what we need to survive is a very
small part of our daily energy use...</p>
Even if we would reduce our numbers, our infrastructure won't go
away. A lot of our energy use actually goes to maintaining and
expanding our technological infrastructure in a way that makes the
relationship between population size and environmental footprint
more complicated. So controlling populations right now doesn't
really help us. Because what you're saying is you want to go back
and use less energy, which nobody wants to do.<br>
<br>
We need to redesign and transform our infrastructure to make it less
of a burden on the environment. Right now we have a linear
extractive mode of production: We mine something, then we turn it
into some products and then we throw them away. If you would close
those material flows, we would eliminate a lot of the negative
footprint on the environment. It's a question of applying a
different set of behaviors.<br>
<br>
<b>For sure. If we could recycle more, use less, be more efficient,
that would be great. But those redesigns cost money. And, under
capitalism, people tend to think that we should let economics
dictate our decisions. So I know you're not a behavioral
scientist, but how do we bridge that gap?</b><br>
<br>
The solution is not about challenging the existence of markets and
competition. It is about having real markets and real competition,
because our current system operates under the assumption that the
profits get privatized and the costs get basically externalized to
the society at large...<br>
If companies can produce whatever they want but are responsible for
the lifecycle of their products, that's a simple regulation that
would change the economics and make modes of production that
incorporate a circular system much more competitive. And I would say
many people actually are very willing to support that, if they would
be given the option. But that only gets us so far, because they do
not really have fair alternatives to purchase products that (align
with these) values because those are currently not competitive in
this marketplace that does not reflect the true (environmental)
costs of products.<br>
<br>
The global fossil fuel industry is corrupt and subsidized, to a
degree that is more costly than what it would take to transition to
renewable energy sources. But this is not something that individual
consumers or citizens can easily influence. What we really would
need to have is some global regulation that allows everybody to
benefit from what those companies have to offer without being
exploited and subjugated to whatever else they're doing.<br>
<p>This is something that I see can happen. But (with the slow pace
of progress at COP meetings, for example) I don't know on what
timescale it can happen, or what it would take for those necessary
transformations to actually materialize. And the problem is time
is what we don't have. We are running out of time.</p>
<p><b>Ok so if capitalism can work within environmental bounds as
long as companies are responsible for the lifecycle of their
products, do we do that on the front end by pricing items
according to their true environmental cost and improving how we
factor cleanup expenses into permitting? Or is the idea to
expand company operations where if Apple wants to make new
iPhones that only last two years, for example, then they need to
be responsible for retrieving all the old iPhones and recycling
those materials back into circulation?</b></p>
<p>Well, I think what we need is both. There's a saying in
evolutionary biology that you cannot put up a sign "Closed for
reconstruction." Every step in an evolutionary transformation has
to work and I think the same applies to our economy. We can't shut
everything down and start from scratch because we need to continue
to function on a day-to-day basis. So we have to find strategies
of transition that actually work.The question is, what are the
right kind of incentives? If you try to prescribe all of that
upfront, that might not work. But if the framework is that
companies (gradually) adapt to whatever the rules are, then the
ones that are successful will be the ones that survive. Others
that can't adapt will go out of business. That will be the
transition phase. But we need fair playing fields for the market
to work, and values that impose almost a Hippocratic oath in
business: Your products are not allowed to do harm and if you sell
a product that ruins the environment, you get sued...</p>
<p><b>I think you'd get a lot of people who would say that anything
made from plastic, for example, is harmful, which could create a
different kind of harm if it limits production of things like
medical devices. How do we navigate those kinds of
considerations?</b><br>
</p>
That's a good point but, as I said, we don't lack knowledge. Certain
types of plastics are clearly necessary. In other areas, plastic is
just convenient, for packaging and things. We do know that there are
alternatives which are currently not cost effective, including some
new innovations where you have versions of plastic that are
biodegradable.<br>
<br>
If you imposed regulations that say that anything that ends up in a
landfill or pollutes the environment must fulfill certain beneficial
functions and the impacts are priced into your product, but you have
to use materials that are biodegradable for everything else, you can
close that cycle. So we don't have to over-regulate, we just need
the right kind of smart regulations, because for many of the
downstream consequences, I think market mechanisms are quite
effective. They have been effective in building up our current
society and our current range of products. And they can be effective
if we change the regulatory parameters.<br>
<br>
<b>It'll be an interesting year of complex considerations ahead. To
end our conversation back on the idea of overpopulation, is there
a number you think really is unsustainable, if 8 billion isn't it?</b><br>
<br>
We know that we are currently in what's called the Great
Acceleration of the Anthropocene, where everything is growing
exponentially, and that is clearly not sustainable. The models of
population growth are such that we will plateau at between 9 and 10
billion people globally over the next few decades.<br>
<br>
The question is the following: how can we influence the shape of
this curve? We know exactly what we have to do to bend that
population curve down faster. And that is very simple: Educate women
globally, to slow reproduction.<br>
<br>
Joan Meiners is the Climate News and Storytelling Reporter at The
Arizona Republic and azcentral. Before becoming a journalist, she
completed a doctorate in Ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at
@beecycles or email her at <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com">joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com</a>.<br>
<br>
Support climate coverage and local journalism by subscribing to
azcentral.com at this link.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2023/01/04/is-climate-change-fueled-by-overpopulation-what-is-the-solution/69765023007/">https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2023/01/04/is-climate-change-fueled-by-overpopulation-what-is-the-solution/69765023007/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[The news archive - looking back ]</i><br>
<font size="+2"><i><b>January 5, 2000</b></i></font> <br>
January 5, 2000: During a Democratic Presidential debate with former
New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, Vice President Al Gore notes that
as a Congressman, "...I decided to take on the issue of global
warming and make it a national issue, when everybody was saying 'You
know, you're going to run a lot of risk there. People are going to
think that that's kind of off the edge there.' Well, now more and
more people say, 'Yes, it is real,' and the next president has to be
willing to take it on."<br>
<br>
(29:28-29-50)<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://c-spanvideo.org/program/DemocraticCandidatesDebate10">https://c-spanvideo.org/program/DemocraticCandidatesDebate10</a><br>
<i>[ this link does not work to play the video - check other sources
]</i><br>
<br>
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