35. Climate Memo Mondays, August 9, 2021
(War: August 9 Nagasaki Remembrance Day)
EARTH
OVERSHOOT DAY, JULY 29, 2021
Earth Overshoot Day marks
date planet has used up resources for the year
August 22, 2020
In 2020, Earth
Overshoot Day fell on August 22. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date
when humanity has exhausted nature's budget for the year. For the rest of the
year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource
stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In 2021 Earth
Overshoot Day moves forward by nearly a month
Earth
Overshoot Day - #MoveTheDate
In 2021, it falls on July 29. To determine the date ...
About Earth Overshoot Day · Past Earth Overshoot Days · Country Overshoot Days
DANIELLE
J. SMITH Opinion (CCL)
SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The
collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Fla., was a
tragic but preventable event. The
building owners were aware of repeated expert warnings about the accelerating
deterioration of the building’s structure. For years prior to the collapse,
they watched rainwater leak into some condos and rain and groundwater leak into
the lower levels of their garage. They watched water puddle around their pool
deck, and concrete flake off concrete columns, beams and slabs, exposing the
steel reinforcing rods to rapid oceanside saltwater spray-driven
corrosion. But because they were not
aware the building was facing an eminent catastrophic collapse, they did not
pursue repairs in a timely manner and as a result, they paid a terrible price.
Climate
change shares many similarities with this tragic event in Florida. We have been
repeatedly warned by experts about the accelerating change to our climate and
the serious economic and human consequences of delaying actions to rapidly
reduce carbon emissions. We’ve been watching the global temperature increase,
the stronger and more frequent and expensive storms flooding and destroying our
homes. We see the increase in wildfires, drought, rising sea levels and coastal
town flooding, human and animal migration, the death of coral reefs worldwide,
the melting of the polar ice caps and the release of methane from exposed
permafrost.
We
experienced extraordinary flooding last month in southeast Arkansas and also in
2019 in Arkansas River Valley cities like Fort Smith, Dardanelle, Little Rock
and Pine Bluff. It seems we are also unaware of the serious consequences of
inaction because our country still doesn’t have a policy in place to reduce
carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, which scientists agree is necessary to
slow the devastating affects of climate change and limit global warming to 1.5
degrees Celsius. Unlike the condo owners, our experts have given us a deadline
because they know exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius will put millions of people
worldwide at risk of life-threatening heat waves, drought and failed crops. It
will wipe out the coral reefs that entire ecosystems rely on. Rising seas and
stronger, more frequent hurricanes will swallow coastal cities, displacing
families and forcing mass migrations to higher ground such as we witnessed
after Hurricane Katrina. And that’s just the beginning.
So
what can you do? Educate yourself about climate change so you can be aware of
the serious consequences of not taking action. Talk to your friends about
climate change. Contact Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton and your
representatives, as well as your local officials. Insist they work with their
colleagues to implement a plan to achieve
net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 so we can avoid the catastrophic effects
of climate change and emerge with our homes, our economy and our planet intact.
Timely, smart investments and policies can boost jobs, shore up infrastructure
and push America forward as an economic clean-energy powerhouse. Doing nothing
will ultimately be more costly than taking action, and there is such a thing as
moving too slowly as the condo collapse has demonstrated.
Danielle
J. Smith of London is a member of
Citizens’
Climate Lobby
Forwarded
to me by Charles Sisco 7-9-21
So what can we do in addition? It’s
disheartening to read a message virtually verbatim from the dozens of books
OMNI’s Climate Book Forum has discussed since the Book Forum started in 2006,
but we have no choice but to continue pushing our government and business
leaders, except to push harder, more insistently, noisier, more collectively. Keep uppermost in our minds the IPCC/Greta
test: “Time's winged chariot hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity,” if we do
nothing. --Dick
No comments:
Post a Comment