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OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #154, NOVEMBER 20,
2023
Dick. Mark Lynas,
Climate Scholar
David Bromwich. “The Only Issue.”
Basav Sen. Anyone
especiallly responsible?
Mark Lynas,
Climate Scholar
Lynas is one of our most distinguished
scholars of climate change. His
first book on the subject was published two decades ago, when a one-degree
world lay in the future. The first
edition of Six
Degrees appeared over fifteen
years ago; here is how he compared the two editions in Our Final Warning: “…I am now substantially more pessimistic about the future than I
was….While there have been positive shifts…these are dwarfed both by
rising emissions and an alarming trend towards denialism….that allows us
to keep on living our lives as usual despite…what climate scientists are
telling us” (p. xi). And what they
are telling us repeated what Lynas reported in 2007 reinforced by fifteen
years more of research by the UN’s global IPCC scientists and additional research
and commentary by climatologists around the world. These studies suggest what each rise in
one degree of temperature will bring our planet. In 2015 the earth’s global mean
temperature reached 1 degreeC above preindustrial levels (1850-1900), and
we are already “becoming impoverished and reduced“ (fires, floods, rising
seas, hurricanes, degraded soils). Now the temp is about to breach 1.5
degreesC. “…what was once our
future is now the present. If we
don’t succeed in cutting
back carbon emissions in time, the increasingly
terrifying impacts detailed in later chapters—of two, three, four degrees
and even higher—will also one day become our present.” --D
David Bromwich. “The Only Issue.” The Nation
(1.10-17,2022). “The commitment
required to avert climate catastrophe is going to be staggering,
expensive, and…tedious and ordinary. . . .if we are going to maintain a
shred of decent living half a century from now. If there were ever a cause that
demanded single-minded attention, this is it.”
Anyone especiallly responsible?
Janine
Jackson Interviews Basav Sen. Extra!
(June 2019).
Sen is director of the Climate Justice Project at the Institute for
Policy Studies. Sen: The US “has
one of the largest global emissions of any country in the world” and the
US has the highest cumulative emissions. Thus we have a special responsibility to
fix what we broke. It’s a “simple
principle of justice.” The US “owes
the world on funding for climate mitigation and climate adaptation.”
END OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #154, NOVEMBER 20,
2023
“Deforestation in
Brazilian Amazon Fell 68% in April Compared With Last Year.”
May 13, 2023.
"Still a lot
more to do but this is the impact
of electing an environmentalist like Lula over a right-wing populist
like Bolsonaro," said one observer.
Elect candidates who understand the situation we are facing, who
possess a sense of the full picture, who know more or less what to
do. And—perhaps just as
importantly, who know what not
to do.
THE GREAT
UKNRAVELING by Kelly Mulhollan
Could have been
born when the Mastodons roamed
When we all made
do with sticks and stones
But instead, I
showed up just in time
For the great
unraveling. . . .
And I’m searchin’
all over for the silver lining
Mostly in the
dark, but I keep on trying
Looking for the
light in a world gone blind
Trying to hold on
to some piece of my mind
Maybe we’ll get
there just in time
For the great
turning
May
14, 2023
Mothers
on Six Continents Demand Action to Protect Children From Climate Crisis
"If
we don't act now, it will be too late," one mom warned. "I
could not live with myself, as a mother, as a doctor, and as a human
being, if we didn't do all we can to try and bring about the much-needed
systemic change."
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