CLIMATE CRISIS
From BBC: “The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder of the Potsdam Climate Institute. The sense is that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change….
Read More about Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months
ALTERNATIVES
Jack Thomas writes: I have worked for the last 15 years or so as a professional in various parts of the environmental movement. And I’m sorry. All of us who have feasted off the carcass of a dying planet bear some responsibility, but those of us who got paid to know what was happening and…
Read More about An apology from an environmentalist
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The Guardian: With over 43% of India reeling under drought, hundreds of villages have been evacuated and homes abandoned after wells, handpumps ran dry in a 45C heatwave. Estimates suggest that in villages 250 miles from Mumbai, up to 90% of the population has fled, leaving the sick and elderly to fend for themselves….
Read More about Indian villages lie empty as drought forces thousands to flee
CLIMATE CRISIS
By Dahr Jamail: Permafrost, or frozen soil in the Arctic is now thawing so fast that scientists are literally losing their measuring equipment. This is due to the fact that instead of there being just a few centimeters of thawing each year, now several meters of soil can become destabilized in a matter of days….
Read More about Arctic is thawing so fast scientists are losing their measuring tools
ALTERNATIVES
The Green New Deal seeks to generate growth and reduce emissions. The problem is that growth and emissions are profoundly correlated. The Green New Deal thus risks becoming a sort of Sisyphean reform, rolling the rock of emissions reductions up the hill each day only to have a growing, energy-hungry economy knock it back down….
Read More about Jasper Bernes: Between the Devil and the Green New Deal
ALTERNATIVES
Ron Patterson writes: Jay Hanson was the founder of multiple energy resources or peak oil lists from the 1990s, starting with the incredibly popular Dieoff website and Dieoff list which looked at peak oil, population numbers, and scarcity. He was probably more responsible for starting the whole Peak Oil Awareness Movement than any other person….
Read More about Obituary: Jay Hanson, early populariser of the converging crises
Economy
“Most people aren’t paying attention. Most people have no idea what’s going on. Industrial civilization is already having serious health problems and heart palpitations. By 2020, industrial civilization’s going to suffer a massive stroke. By 2025, it will be in hospice. By 2030, it will be dead,” writes the anonymous author of Articulating The Future….
Read More about Thermodynamic Failure: Phase 2
ALTERNATIVES
Thunberg, the face of school climate-strikes, writes, “Either we go on as a civilization, or we don’t”. But who said we must go on with this civilization? If we drop this idea, then the survival of the human species (not of the current Western civilization) is possible – with a different, yet to be fully described, kind of civilization….
Read More about Greta Thunberg’s problem. A problem without a solution?
ALTERNATIVES
Nupur Chowdhury writes: The ‘polluter pays principle’ is seen as an effective remedy to address environmental degradation. The PPP allows the polluter to evade punitive action by paying for environmental damage, the presumption being that the monies collected would then be used for restoring the environment. We’ve failed to understand that environmental damage is irreversible….
Read More about Why the ‘polluter pays’ principle should be abandoned
ALTERNATIVES
Rebecca Solnit writes: I want to say to all the climate strikers: thank you so much for being unreasonable. You may be told that what you are asking for is impossible. Don’t listen. Don’t stop. Don’t let your dreams shrink an inch. Don’t forget; this might be the year when you rewrite what is possible….
Read More about Thank you, climate strikers. You are the force of possibility that runs through the present like a river through the desert.
Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans
Daesung Lee
CLIMATE CRISIS
Given the scale of the problem, India’s response to climate migration has been woefully inadequate. Administrative lethargy or the lack of foresight and planning will only exacerbate the suffering and plight of climate migrants. This is particularly unjust to them, as they are least responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, writes Nandan Sharalaya…
Read More about Taking India’s climate migrants seriously
Bookshelf
Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it. “We’re facing not just a technological crisis but a philosophical crisis,” says the author of ’21 Lessons for the 21st Century’….
Read More about Why technology favors tyranny: Yuval Noah Harari
ALTERNATIVES
Many of these battles were fought not because people understood how these projects affected the environment but because they saw the loss of their land and livelihoods as the loss of security and dignity. As a woman adivasi farmer succinctly put it, “I wish to be a farmer, and not a housemaid in someone’s home.”…
Read More about Indian environmental movements: Why they failed or succeeded, and the challenges ahead
ALTERNATIVES
Michael Löwy writes: Capitalism, driven by the maximization of profit, is incompatible with a just and sustainable future. Ecosocialism offers a radical alternative that puts social and ecological well-being first. Attuned to the links between the exploitation of labor and the exploitation of the environment, ecosocialism stands against both reformist “market ecology” and “productivist socialism.”…
Read More about Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green future
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The Guardian: Thousands of Central American migrants trudging through Mexico towards the US have regularly been described as either fleeing gang violence or extreme poverty. But another crucial driving factor behind the migrant caravan has been harder to grasp: climate change, even if migrants don’t often specifically mention “climate change” as a motivating factor….
Read More about The unseen driver behind the migrant caravan: climate change
Bookshelf
From Global Research: Fundamentally, this book is a call to action. Author Robert J. Burrowes uncovers the critical role played by the global power elite in creating our present predicament. If we cannot persuade the global power elite to respond sensibly to that predicament, or nonviolently compel it to do so, humanity’s time on Earth is indeed limited….
Read More about Giants: The Global Power Elite
ALTERNATIVES
Carol Dansereau writes: Is there a place for incremental reforms in our struggle to save humanity? Yes. But support for such reforms must be carried out in the context of our larger goal: securing and using real power through democratically managed public-ownership and guaranteed economic rights. Everything we do needs to feed into that goal….
Read More about What It Will Take: Rejecting Dead-Ends and False Friends in the Fight for the Earth
ALTERNATIVES
From The Revelator: In the year ahead we all need to stand up and let our elected officials and unelected corporate power-brokers know what really matters to us and to the planet. We need to demand transparency and the truth, rapid change, renewed protections for imperiled species and a commitment to sustainability on all fronts….
Read More about 2018: The year things fell apart — or the year the tide turned?
ALTERNATIVES
In this book, Kerryn Higgs traces the rise of economic growth to the status of the number one goal of nations, and how this pernicious idea prevailed over carefully reasoned counter-arguments through well-funded, carefully orchestrated propaganda. Its a kick in the head for those of us who believe in the persuasive power of reasoned argument….
Read More about Herman Daly reviews ‘Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet’
ALTERNATIVES
Naomi Klein writes on the game-changing proposal for a ‘Green New Deal’ mooted by popular U.S. politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Also, an inside view of the youth climate movement unexpectedly making waves in Trump’s America, and an interview with co-founder Varshni Prakash. Also included is a critical take on the Green New Deal by Don Fitz….
Read More about The Sunrise Movement and the ‘Green New Deal’: Climate hope from Trump’s America?
