OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #141, AUGUST 21, 2023

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #141, AUGUST 21, 2023

Greta Thunberg.  The Climate Book.  Penguin, 2023.
Hanson and Brown.  Government of and for Its Citizens.
 Matthew Gindin.  “What is metabolic rift?”

 

  

Greta Thunberg.  The Climate Book.  Penguin, 2023. 

I received this book a few days ago and quickly began to admire its “creation” (as the title-author page unusually declares: “Created by Greta Thunberg.”)  For her presence is essential throughout.   She opens her book with four jolting graphics showing the relationship between CO2 and global warming.   The Table of Contents numbers each of the essays and divides them into five parts, both devices, along with the Index, enhancing helpful cross-referencing in such a numerous collection intended to lead to action. The anthology contains 102 essays, of which 18 are her own.  Her contributions are prominent in all five, ranging from 3 to 5.  The groupings support coherence: 1. How Climate Works.  2. How Our Planet Is Changing.  3. How It Affects Us.  4.  What We’ve Done About It.  5.  What We Must Do Now.  One of Greta’s essays opens the anthology, another closes.   Numerous graphics accentuate the texts.  A photo of frozen bubbles of methane in Lake Baikal, Russia, follow the Table of Contents.   Even the book jacket is purposeful, as explained by its designer in a note that ends the book, beginning with these words:  “No words.  No numbers.  No graphs.  Just a series of vertical, coloured stripes showing the progressive rise in global temperatures in a single, striking image.”  Beginning and ending bind her creation.  She writes effectively, and has selected some of the best climate communicators on the planet for her climate book.  I’ll return to it in CMM soon.--Dick

 

 

But of course, it’s not the book, for as she reminds us in page after page, “we need a system change.”  “We need new laws, new structures, new frameworks” (280), to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

A COURT RULING IN COLORADO

Amy Beth Hanson and Matthew Brown.  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  15 Aug 2023

HELENA, Mont. — Young environmental activists scored what may be a groundbreaking legal victory Monday when a Montana judge said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development.

The ruling in this first of-its-kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.

If it stands, the ruling could set an important legal precedent, though experts said its immediate impacts will be limited and state officials pledged to seek to overturn the decision on appeal.

District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions — is unconstitutional.

Judge Seeley wrote in the ruling that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury” to the youth.

Law professor David Dana at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law said the ruling was a “remarkable win” for the young climate activists and predicted it will be used as a guidepost for attorneys bringing similar suits in other states.

However, it’s up to the Montana Legislature to determine how to bring the state’s policies into compliance. That leaves slim chances for immediate change in a fossil fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse.  MORE

 

 Matthew Gindin.  “What is Metabolic Rift?”

Editor.  mronline.org (7-13-23).   

The Ecosocialist idea you’ve never heard of and might need.
Originally published: Medium  on August 3, 2018 by Matthew Gindin (more by Medium)  |  (Posted Jul 12, 2023).  Capitalism, Ideology, Marxism, SocialismGlobalNewswiremetabolic rift

Imagine for a moment that when you ate food a part of your body siphoned off the energy and stored it in structures which did not contribute to the overall homeostasis of the organism, but instead converted the energy into cellular structures which did not give back to the body. Instead these entities were unproductive and undigestible, forcing the body to adapt to them in a further loss of energy. As these entities grew larger the body would become weaker and increasingly malfunction until, overwhelmed, it would no longer be able to function at all. The rift in its metabolism would go from being a disruption to an assassin.

In the human body this is a fair description of cancer, and in the ecology it refers to much of the technological infrastructure of industrial capitalism. Both the generation of cancer within the human microcosm and the generation of techno-industrial capitalism within the world ecology bring disfigurement, inflammation and death in their wake.  MORE  https://mronline.org/2023/07/12/what-is-metabolic-rift/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-metabolic-rift&mc_cid=ef06d1b1fe&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e