The Problem
Climate Change Crisis
The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof, NY Times, 19 April 2021.
Paltering. "speak indistinctly" (a sense now obsolete). Now used as “using statements that are technically true, but also leave out critical information in order to mislead people.” See Artful Paltering, American Psychological Association, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017. Here is Paltering as used by Big Oil.
Faster, higher, hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022, Breakthrough Online, March 2023.
"We are like tenant farmers, chopping down the fence around our house for fuel, when we should be using nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind, and tide. I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait till oil and coal run out before we tackle that!" - Thomas Alva Edison, March 1931
Climate Change in 60 seconds, Dec 10, 2014. Climate science explained in 60 seconds by the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. (YouTube)
Ten photographs that made the world wake up to climate change, CNN, March 29, 2023.
How we know global warming is real?, Washington Post.
"Most carbon emissions caused by businesses are hidden from sight." The Fight to Expose Corporations’ Real Impact on the Climate, Wired, March 24, 2023.
Why has the weather gotten so extreme?, Yale Climate Connection, March 6, 2023. "Climate change increases extreme weather by adding more heat and moisture to the air and through disruption of fundamental atmospheric circulation patterns."
"...forests in the south-west and California are most vulnerable to decline.", The Guardian, 10 March 2023.
Climate change poses many risks to human health, CDC.
Fossil Fuels kill more people than did the COVID pandemic, The Guardian, 28 Feb 2023. Mostly from air-borne particulates.
Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry (which includes both energy and chemicals) makes false or misleading claims (called 'greenwashing') to deflect action. Have we hit peak greenwashing yet?, NY Times, February 21, 2023.
Most carbon emissions caused by businesses are hidden from sight. Wired, MAR 24, 2023.
And many governments subsidize fossil fuels. The world promised to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. Instead, it doubled them, Heated.world, 2 March 2023.
The climate crisis is a water crisis, The Hill, 3/25/23.
How to fix the global rice crisis, The Economist, Mar 30th 2023. The world’s most important crop is fuelling climate change and diabetes.
Migration
Rising seas threaten ‘mass exodus on a biblical scale’, UN chief warns, The Guardian, Feb 14, 2023.
The Great Climate Migration, NY Times, July 23, 2020.
What is Climate Justice? And what can we do achieve it?, Unicef, February 2022.
On the Run: Voluntary and Forced Climate Migration, Climate One, July 15, 2022.
Where Will Everyone Go?, Climate Refugees, July 23, 2020.
How Climate Migration will Reshape America, NY Times Magazine, September 15, 2020
What We Mean by “Climate Injustice”, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, October 25, 2021
Other Impacts
The Case for Action on Short-Lived Climate Pollutants, Climate and Clean Air Coalition, 16 Nov 2020.
Climate change is sapping nutrients from our food — and it could become a global crisis, Washington Post, August 8, 2019
Biodiversity
Animals and People Are Clashing More Frequently Thanks to Climate Change, Inside Climate News, Feb 28, 2023. "...climate impacts have made human-wildlife conflicts a global problem."
Why is Biodiversity Important? We are much more reliant on the ecosystem services that biodiversity provides than it may appear. Biodiversity provides us with many services including clean air and freshwater. Biodiversity also acts as a barrier between us and zoonotic diseases and can also provide us with valuable medicines. There is also a great deal of evidence to show that there’s a positive link between increased biodiversity and our mental health. This makes maintaining biodiversity incredibly important for our survival, as well as all life on the planet.
Major threats to biodiversity and individual species include habitat degradation, climate change, invasive species, over-exploitation and increased pollution, most of which are a direct result of human activities. In the Amazon rainforest, deforestation is occurring at an unprecedented rate for agriculture (e.g. soy bean and palm oil plantations and cattle ranching), mining, unsustainable logging and development (e.g. roads and infrastructure). This degradation is also exacerbating climate change since the Amazon retains a large proportion of the world’s carbon, which would otherwise be in the atmosphere.
Roads, other infrastructure infringe on many biodiversity hot spots, Washington Post, March 26, 2023.
Your garden is killing the Earth, Washington Post, April 7, 2023.
Plastic Pollution
The plastic water bottle industry is booming. Here’s why that’s a huge problem, CNN, March 16, 2023. "...success comes at a huge environmental, climate and social cost..."
Your ‘Widely Recyclable’ Plastic Yogurt Container Is Rarely Recycled, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 17, 2022.
Kroger customer calls out grocery chain over ‘unnecessary’ money-wasting produce policy, The Cool Down, 24 March 2023. “The world is producing twice as much plastic waste as two decades ago, with the bulk of it ending up in landfill, incinerated or leaking into the environment, and only 9% successfully recycled,” the group reported. “Twenty-two percent [of it] evades waste management systems and goes into uncontrolled dumpsites, is burned in open pits, or ends up in terrestrial or aquatic environments.”
There are 21,000 pieces of plastic in the ocean for each person on Earth, Washington Post, March 8, 2023.
Further, the chemical companies that manufacture the plastics (from petroleum) have made it your responsiblity to manage their disposable products through 'recycling' programs, for which there is very little use. How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled, NPR, September 11, 2020.
Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work, The Atlantic, May 30, 2022.
The Problem: In spite of the USA having one of the largest per person carbon footprints of any country (14 tons, not counting the emissions of the US military), no one in leadership dares suggest that individuals make lifestyle changes as one way of addressing the bad now- but-much-worse-later threat of climate change.
To wit: A recent NPR segment on nuclear power focused solely on maintaining and increasing energy supplies (and didn’t take a call-in comment from NCP suggesting conservation), climate guru John Kerry promised that we can keep “the comforts of modern life” as we see solar farms and electric cars spring up around us with no mention of personal changes, and politicians warn apocalyptically of higher gas prices (exactly what we need, while helping the poor adapt).
Why is this? Surely politics, corporate influence, denial of science, etc., but perhaps at the root of it all is our sense of privilege: the feeling of American exceptionalism that exempts us from responsibility. New Community Project, April 15, 2023