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<font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>March</b></i></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b> 21, 2024</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font><i>[ Seek relief via the Internet ]</i><br>
<b>Can Climate Cafes Help Ease the Anxiety of Planetary Crisis?</b><br>
The groups, which are springing up across the country, allow people
to talk through their emotions around environmental change.<br>
By Lola Fadulu and Emily Schmall<br>
Lola Fadulu reported from New York, and Emily Schmall from Chicago.<br>
March 20, 2024<br>
In a small room in Lower Manhattan, a group of eight New Yorkers sat
in a circle sharing kombucha and their climate fears against the
background of pattering rain and wailing sirens.<br>
<br>
In Champaign, Ill., a psychotherapist facilitating a meeting for
other therapists held up a branch of goldenrod, asking the
half-dozen participants online to consider their connection to
nature.<br>
<br>
And in Kansas City, Mo., a nonprofit that runs a weekly discussion
on Zoom began its session with a spiritual reading and a guided
meditation before breaking into groups to discuss topics like the
ethics of childbearing amid a fast-rising global population and
concerns of resource scarcity.<br>
<br>
All were examples of a new grass-roots movement called climate
cafes. These in-person and online groups are places for people to
discuss their grief, fears, anxiety and other emotions about the
climate crisis.<br>
They are springing up in cities across the United States — including
Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston — and around the world. It isn’t
clear how many exist, but Rebecca Nestor of the Climate Psychology
Alliance, a nonprofit that trains facilitators, said the number of
cafes had greatly increased in the past three years. The group has
trained about 350 people to run climate cafes in the U.S., Canada,
and Europe, and its North American branch lists 300 clinicians in
its climate-aware therapist directory.<br>
<br>
The alliance examines how mental health is affected by ecosystems —
extreme weather and disasters; tainted air and water — and how that
intersects with other forces, like racism and income inequality.
Psychologists say that such groups help people face the unsettling
realities of the climate crisis.<br>
<br>
Ms. Nestor first hosted a climate cafe in Oxford in Britain in 2018.
She said the idea was modeled after the death cafe, a concept
created by a Swiss sociologist, through which people gather to talk
openly about death in order to better appreciate their lives.<br>
<br>
Many of the climate cafes are free and open to the public, but some
have been convened especially for librarians, therapists and other
professionals.<br>
<br>
<b>‘I can’t buy into the narrative anymore that there’s no choice in
how this ends.’</b><br>
Since June 2023, Olivia Ferraro, 24, who works in finance, has
hosted more than 20 intimate climate cafes in New York City that
have had between five and 20 attendees. She has also trained people
online from all over the U.S. and the world — Puerto Rico,
Vancouver, England and Australia — who want to facilitate such
meetings in their own communities.<br>
<br>
On a recent drizzly, unseasonably warm January evening — the
temperature was 51 degrees and the high was 56 degrees — Ms. Ferraro
prepped for her meeting. She lit her Brooklyn Candle Company Fern +
Moss candle, which she has lit for every meeting, and turned on
Khruangbin’s chill melodies.<br>
She arranged 10 chairs into a circle near a brick wall, and set out
grapes, sparkling water, plantain chips and other snacks on a table,
and brought out reusable cups from her mother’s 2016 wedding.<br>
<br>
Slowly, people from every part of the city trickled in. The crowd
skewed young, with a few older adults in the mix. Each was attending
a climate cafe for the first time.<br>
<br>
After some small talk, Ms. Ferraro shared the rules for the evening.
She explained that it was not intended as a substitute for clinical
care.<br>
The attendees, over the course of an hour, described worrying for
their future children and future generations more broadly. They
described feeling overwhelmed, not only by climate change but also
by the political climate. They described oscillating between feeling
hopeless and empowered about the planet’s future.<br>
<br>
At times, long pauses punctuated the comments, as the attendees took
in what had been said, staring simply at each other or into their
laps.<br>
<br>
“I can’t buy into the narrative anymore that there’s no choice in
how this ends and that major corporations have complete control over
my future,” said Sheila McMenamin, 32, who lives in Brooklyn.<br>
<br>
“They do not have total control, and I refuse to cede that,” she
said, as other participants hummed in agreement.<br>
<br>
One Black woman wept, saying it was difficult to know that people of
color would be disproportionately affected by climate change, but
many did not have the time to participate in groups like these.<br>
<br>
“I’m enraged about the fact that more Black and brown people are not
in these rooms,” said the woman, Syrah Scott, a mother in her 40s
who lives in Queens. She said that many people of color were just
focused on survival. “They don’t have the money to be concerned
about these things,” she said.<br>
<br>
<b>‘I find myself struggling to enjoy the outdoors.’</b><br>
The online climate cafe for therapists in Illinois began with Kate
Mauer rubbing the dried stalk of goldenrod in her hand that she had
plucked from her backyard. The object connected her to the climate
crisis, she said, because it was one of the many flowers native to
Illinois that she had planted in an effort to restore the natural
environment.<br>
<br>
But being in her garden had begun to trigger complex emotions, she
said. While nature had always given her solace, it now also made her
sad.<br>
<br>
“I find myself struggling to enjoy the outdoors because of the
constant reminders” of environmental degradation, she said.<br>
<br>
That paradox reminded Lauren Bondy, a cafe participant, of that
morning’s fresh snow, and of a black rhino. Ms. Bondy and her son,
then 19, had glimpsed one of the last of the critically endangered
species on vacation in Tanzania years ago.<br>
“Appreciating the beauty of it, but also appreciating the rarity and
the loss,” said Ms. Bondy, a therapist on Chicago’s North Shore.
“We’re holding it all.”<br>
<br>
This wasn’t psychotherapy, the climate cafe’s facilitators had said,
but rather group catharsis.<br>
<br>
Colleen Aziz, a therapist who runs a virtual practice across
Illinois, said that she felt a responsibility to bring her
professional training to bear, but that few patients brought climate
concerns to their sessions.<br>
<br>
“It’s really wonderful to meet clients who are stable enough that
they’re ready and able to look directly at climate,” Ms. Aziz said
after the cafe, “but it usually amounts to privilege.”<br>
<br>
<b>‘It’s an intergenerational fight.’</b><br>
Other groups have more of a focus on action.<br>
<br>
Around the same time Ms. Ferraro’s group sprang up, Jonathan Kirsch,
32, who works in law and lives in Brooklyn, founded his climate cafe
in November 2022. His group started as a private, informal gathering
in his apartment but is now open to the public, and the group is
more focused on translating feelings into action.<br>
On another recent rainy day in January, more than 30 people crammed
into Mr. Kirsch’s apartment in Brooklyn for a climate cafe. The
doorbell rang almost without interruption as people slogged up the
stairs to the apartment and peeled off their wet coats and piled up
their umbrellas.<br>
<br>
Many at the meeting worked in climate fields, including one man who
worked with Extinction Rebellion, the group that disrupted both the
U.S. Open and the Met Opera in an attempt to shed more light on the
climate crisis.<br>
<br>
The attendees broke into small groups. Though they were frustrated
by local, state and national policies, they felt hopeful. They were
flush with ideas on how to channel their energy: composting,
gardening, propagating, clothing swaps and mending circles, pushing
for certain legislation, joining book clubs and writing groups, and
even going back to school to further their education.<br>
<br>
“The truth is that like this is such a long fight, it’s an
intergenerational fight,” one attendee told the large group after
the smaller discussion groups reconvened. “We have to come with a
resilient mind-set, where we’re ready to lose a lot of battles and
just know that our presence in the greatest struggle will be worth
it.”<br>
<br>
Do climate cafes work?<br>
Convening to share climate worries isn’t new. Environmental
activists have organized meetings since the 1970s to discuss how to
respond to climate threats. Native American communities have long
gathered to grieve the loss of land, according to Sherrie Bedonie, a
social worker and co-founder of the Native American Counseling and
Healing Collective.<br>
<br>
But it seems the practice is becoming more mainstream. Last year was
the hottest year ever recorded, and 2024 is expected to be warmer.
Canada was ravaged by destructive fires in 2023 because of hot, dry,
and windy conditions fueled by climate change, and the smoke from
those fires brought hazy conditions to New York and other regions.
Climate change already appears to have contributed to less snow this
winter.<br>
Participants have said that gathering to talk openly about their
fears provides a kind of lightness.<br>
<br>
Sami Aaron, 71, a retired software developer, founded the Resilient
Activist in Kansas City after her son, a climate activist and urban
studies graduate student at Berkeley, died by suicide, citing
feelings of hopelessness over the changing climate.<br>
<br>
Her group’s cafes try to instill hope, she said.<br>
<br>
“The dread, the hopelessness is getting exiled in all of us, and
that’s why we’re not talking about it, because it’s too painful,”
Ms. Bondy said. “If we can’t heal what we’re all feeling,” she
added, “we can’t heal our planet either.”<br>
<br>
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to
SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/climate-change-anxiety-fear.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/climate-change-anxiety-fear.html</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[ Light sarcasm ]<br>
<b>Ella Baron on Banksy, Rishi Sunak and restrictions on climate
protest – cartoon</b><br>
Tue 19 Mar 2024 <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/edeb813afdbbf33a7a4826e12f404edcad8775da/5_0_8555_5134/master/8555.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none">https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/edeb813afdbbf33a7a4826e12f404edcad8775da/5_0_8555_5134/master/8555.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ A very positive PR video -- techno fides ]</i><br>
<b>Battery prices just fell off a cliff!</b><br>
Just Have a Think<br>
Mar 17, 2024<br>
Lithium-ion batteries often get a bad rap in the media these days,
blamed for high cost, unwanted fires and poor working conditions in
the supply chain. But the fact remains that this chemistry provides
the power for billions of devices around the world, from the tiniest
pacemakers to the largest utility scale stationary energy storage,
and the manufacturers are making great strides to improve their
systems. So can they do enough to stay at the top of the pile?<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cbm9Cz6OdQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cbm9Cz6OdQ</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ NYT - now opera is the new medium ]</i><br>
<b>Review: ‘The Shell Trial’ Seeks a Guilty Party in Climate Change</b><br>
Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’s new opera, about events still in
progress, finds fault and complicity in every player of a global
blame game.<br>
By Joshua Barone<br>
Reporting from Amsterdam<br>
March 18, 2024<br>
<b>The Shell Trial</b><br>
The climate activist was tired. Protests at the house of Shell’s
chief executive had led to little more than free cookies and the
police being called to break things up. The same thing had happened
the week before. And the week before that. And the week before
that...<br>
- -<br>
Finding new ways to make old points, and powerfully laying out a
vision for a future in which the world changes but we do not, “The
Shell Trial” has much to admire. Remarkable, too, is the effort of
the Dutch National Opera, which has taken a major step toward
operating as a carbon-neutral house with this staging and its Green
Deal, an initiative to weave sustainability into its productions,
limit travel and calculate ways to offset its carbon footprint.<br>
Opera in the past century has become globalized in a way that,
unsurprisingly, has made it a target of activists. The Dutch
National Opera, like the creators of “The Shell Trial,” views
climate change as an ethical issue as well as a political one. And
as the company does its part to help, the wider industry should take
note...<br>
- -<br>
Reid is at her best when she conjures consumerism and online
shopping by turning thoughts and the sight of ads into a fractured,
manic ostinato, repeating a cycle of desire and commerce. Similarly,
“Doom Scroll” passages unfurl so quickly and chaotically that the
busy orchestra flattens, brilliantly, into a kind of white noise.<br>
While the score may be uneven, what seems more important is its
effectiveness. And it achieves that in its haunting final scene. A
chorus of singing children process from the back of the auditorium,
arriving at a sadly beautiful lament as they step onstage.<br>
<br>
That alone could induce a pang of guilt, but then they begin to
resemble the adults from earlier. And when they yell words like
“deny,” it’s inherently more unsettling, and moving. More disturbing
still is the closing tableau, as the children become a vision of the
future. The C.E.O. is now played by a girl who may look different
from the white, adult male executive, but who behaves exactly like
him.<br>
<br>
The score ends on a silent measure and with these directions:
“Before we reach any conclusion, the light goes out. The future is
uncertain. And that’s hopeful. For now.” But on Saturday, the
children gathered at the front of the stage and lay down in sleeping
bags, like a new generation of climate refugees. There were not
enough sleeping bags to go around, though, and the future C.E.O. had
the last one. She held it high while a little girl repeatedly jumped
and failed to grab it.<br>
<br>
By then, I had stopped paying attention to the music.<br>
<br>
The Shell Trial<br>
Through March 21 at the Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam;
operaballet.nl.<br>
<br>
Joshua Barone is the assistant classical music and dance editor on
the Culture Desk and a contributing classical music critic.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/arts/music/shell-trial-dutch-national-opera-review.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/arts/music/shell-trial-dutch-national-opera-review.html</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/arts/music/shell-trial-dutch-national-opera-review.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE0.vi2H.0q8XQBkIy7Rn&smid=url-share">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/arts/music/shell-trial-dutch-national-opera-review.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE0.vi2H.0q8XQBkIy7Rn&smid=url-share</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ World Premier National Opera and Ballet ]</i><br>
<b>THE SHELL TRIAL</b><br>
Ellen Reid (1983)<br>
A crisis of responsibility<br>
In 2021, a Dutch court ruled that Shell was legally responsible for
its contribution to climate change. In The Shell Trial, the various
voices in the climate debate are heard and it becomes increasingly
clear that we will not make any progress by endlessly pointing the
finger at one another. The message of this topical opera is that the
climate crisis is above all a crisis of responsibility. <br>
<br>
<b>Opera Forward Festival</b><br>
Inspiring, challenging and innovative. Immerse yourself in the 8th
edition of the Opera Forward Festival (OFF) from 8 to 17 March. With
musical performances by both established names and a new generation
of creatives, OFF embraces innovation and ventures into uncharted
territory with inventive and pioneering music theatre shows.
Discover The Shell Trial and more at OFF!<br>
<br>
Based on the prizewinning play "De zaak Shell"<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.operaballet.nl/en/dutch-national-opera/2023-2024/shell-trial">https://www.operaballet.nl/en/dutch-national-opera/2023-2024/shell-trial</a><i><br>
</i><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"> <i>[The news archive - Katie Couric on Al
Gore ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>March 21, 2007 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> March 21, 2007:<br>
In her CBSNews.com "Notebook" segment, Katie Couric observes:<br>
<br>
"The last time Al Gore came to Capitol Hill--six years ago--he was
there to certify the electoral college results that made George Bush
president.<br>
<br>
"But today it was a triumphant return, this time as a private
citizen, to declare that the world faces a 'planetary emergency'
over climate change. And now, a lot of his skeptics agree that Gore
makes a powerful point.<br>
<br>
"The scientific consensus is clear, and Gore urged Congress to
listen to scientists, not special interests. He pushed for an
immediate freeze on greenhouse gases, as well as cleaner power
plants, more efficient cars, and stronger conservation efforts.<br>
<br>
"Gore said 'a few years from now...the kinds of proposals we're
talking about today are going to seem so small compared to the scale
of the challenge.'<br>
<br>
"Here's hoping Congress puts partisanship aside, and comes together
to act boldly on global warming."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/sYpj2ZYfS3M">http://youtu.be/sYpj2ZYfS3M</a><br>
<br>
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