124 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. for - liberal blind spot - Chris Yates - book - liberalism and the challenge of climate change - adjacency - liberalism - individual liberty - progress - bond spot - political polarization - fuel for the right -hyperobjects

      Summary - This short article contains some key insights that point to the right climate communication strategy to target and win over the working class - Currently, climate communications speak to elitist values and is having the opposite effect - The working class farmer protests spreading across the EU is a symptom of this miscommunication strategy - as is the increasing support and ascendency of right wing political parties - Researcher and author Chris Yates is in a unique position with one foot in each world - He articulates his insightful ideas and points is in the right direction to communicate in a way that reaches the working class

      comment - the figure 4 graph is an example of carbon inequality

      Example - carbon inequality - see figure 4

    2. My belief is that societies cannot organize effectively to cope with the impacts of climate change without a shared understanding of the future that awaits.

      quote - shared futures - climate crisis and appropriate language - (quote below)

      • My belief is that
        • societies cannot organize effectively
        • to cope with
        • the impacts of climate change
        • without a shared understanding of
        • the future that awaits.
      • Currently, representations of the net-zero future
        • don’t do that.
      • They are a denial of the best of human nature.
      • They shut down the possibility of
        • imagining something different
        • in favor of a fantasy of more of the same,
          • minus catastrophic climate change.
      • With a better, shared understanding of the world we’re moving toward,
        • we can better organize ourselves to live in that world,
          • whatever that might mean,
          • whatever that might look like.
    3. it reveals that it’s those immediate experiences of the environment rather than global atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that affect people’s ideas about climate.

      insight - hyperobjects

      Comment - This of why a Deep Humanity approach that identifies and clarifies the fundamental issues is so important

    4. If acting on climate change means sacrificing what little freedom I have left, then what value is that to me?

      key insight - of all about the venison of individual liberty that modernization had sold is a companion bill of goods on

  2. Feb 2024
    1. Dubbed “litigation terrorism” by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist. ISDS is a corporate tribunal system

      for - litigation terrorism - ISDS - corporate tribunal system - Michael Levin - multi-scale competency architecture - example - adjacency - evolutionary biology - corporate law - climate crisis

      adjacency - between - corporate law - climate crisis - evolutionary biology - cultural evolution - adjacency statement - Biologist Michael Levin's multi-scale competency architecture of evolutionary biology seems to apply here - in the field of corporate law - Corporations can be viewed as one level of a social superorganism in a cultural evolution process - Governments can be viewed similiarly, but at a higher level - The ISDS is being weaponized by the same corporations destroying the global environment to combat the enactment of government laws that pose a threat to their livelihood - Hence, the ISDS has been reconfigured to protect the destroyers of the environment so that they can avoid dealing with their unacceptable externalizations - The individual existing at the lower level of the multi-scale competency architecture(the corporation) is battling to survive against the wishes of the higher level individual (the government) in the same multi-scale competency architecture

  3. Jan 2024
    1. “A second Trump term is game over for the climate — really!”

      for - quote - Michael Mann - quote - a Second Trump presidency - polycrisis - politics and climate crisis - climate mitigation strategy - voting in 2024 U.S. election - adjacency - Michael Mann - 2nd Trump presidency - exceeding planetary boundaries - exceeding 1.5 Deg C - Gen Z voting

      adjacency - between - Michael Mann - 2nd Trump presidency - exceeding planetary boundaries - exceeding 1.5 Deg C - Trump's presidency is existential threat to humanity - Gen Z voting - 2024 election - adjacency statement - Michael Mann's quote " A second Trump term is game over for the climate - really" applies to the 2024 election if Trump becomes the Republican nominee. - Trumps dismal environmental record in his 2016 to 2020 term speaks for itself. He would do something similiar in 2025 if he were the president. G - Given there are only 5 years and 172 days before we hit the dangerous threshold of burning through all the carbon budget for humanity, - https://climateclock.world/ - It is questionable whether Biden's government alone can do enough, but certainly if Trump won the 2024 election, his term in office would create a regression severe enough to put the Paris Climate goal of staying within 1.5 Deg C out of reach, and risk triggering major planetary tipping points - A Biden government is evidence-based and believes in anthropogenic climate change and is already taking measures to mitigate it. A Trump government is not evidence-based and is supported by incumbent fossil fuel industry so does not have the interest of the U.S. population nor all of humanity at heart. - Hence, the 2024 U.S. election can really determine the fate of humanity. - Gen Z can play a critical role for humanity by voting against a government that would, in leading climate scientists Michael Mann's words, be game over for a stable climate, and therefore put humanity and unimaginable risk. - Gen Z can swing the vote to a government willing to deal with the climate crisis over one in climate denial so voting activists need to be alerted to this and create the right messaging to reach Gen Z - https://hyp.is/LOud7sBBEe6S0D8itLHw1A/circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/41-million-members-gen-z-will-be-eligible-vote-2024

      • for: health, David Sinclair, longevity tips, adjacency - lifestyle choices - diet - climate crisis - biodiversity crisis

      • SUMMARY

        • The main tips for staying healthy from a lifetime of longevity research on this video.
      • adjacency between

        • lifestyle choices
      • personal diet
        • climate crisis
        • biodiversity crisis
      • adjacency statement:
        • Promoting this kind of diet and lifestyle can have enormous benefits on climate crisis as well.
        • One could write a paper about the crossover benefits to climate and biodiversity crisis.
  4. Dec 2023
      • for: James Hansen - 2023 paper, key insight - James Hansen, leverage point - emergence of new 3rd political party, leverage point - youth in politics, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics

      • Key insight: James Hansen

        • The key insight James Hansen conveys is that
          • the key to rapid system change is
            • WHAT? the rapid emergence of a new, third political party that does not take money from special interest lobbys.
            • WHY? Hit the Achilles heel of the Fossil Fuel industry
            • HOW? widespread citizen / youth campaign to elect new youth leaders across the US and around the globe
            • WHEN? Timing is critical. In the US,
              • Don't spoil the vote for the two party system in 2024 elections. Better to have a democracy than a dictatorship.
              • Realistically, likely have to wait to be a contender in the 2028 election.
      • reference

    1. Washington is a swamp it we throw out one party the other one comes in they take money from special interests and we don't have a government that's serving the interests 01:25:09 of the public that's what I think we have to fix and I don't see how we do that unless we have a party that takes no money from special interests
      • for: key insight- polycrisis - climate crisis - political crisis, climate crisis - requires a new political party, money in politics, climate crisis - fossil fuel lobbyists, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics, James Hansen - key insight - political action - 3rd party

      • key insight

        • Both democrats and conservatives are captured by fossil fuel lobbyist interests
        • A new third political party that does not take money from special interests is required
        • The nature of the polycrisis is that crisis are entangled . This is a case in point. The climate crisis cannot be solved unless the political crisis of money influencing politics is resolved
        • The system needs to be rapidly reformed to kick money of special interest groups out of politics.
      • question

        • Given the short timescale, the earliest we can achieve this is 2028 in the US Election cycle
        • Meanwhile what can we do in between?
        • How much impact can alternative forms of local governance like https://sonec.org/ have?
        • In particular, could citizens form local alternative forms of governance and implement incentives to drive sustainable behavior?
    2. next year we we'll know whether your your your numbers are right in your pipeline paper around May of next year 01:46:30 and then it's going to be a very warm year it's going to be a lot of Destruction then we need we need to see how far the temperature Falls with the elino with the linia that follows but I 01:46:42 I expect it's not going to fall as much as you would otherwise have expected because of the large planetary energy balance there's more energy coming in than going out so it's hard for the 01:46:55 linia to cool it off as much as it used to
      • for:May 2024 - James Hansen prediction, extreme weather event - May 2024 - Hansen 2023 paper, prediction - extreme weather 2024
    3. I think that we should be putting a high priority on developing the Next Generation nuclear 01:45:54 power uh but it's uh it's uh it's going to be a a tough job and as long as the as the special 01:46:05 interests are controlling our government uh we're not going to solve it
    4. we have to do it um and but to to get a third party we 01:26:28 do need to work on this ranked voting so that we're the third party is not a spoiler that ends up electing the worst candidate we have that Oakland here live in ber you know work in Berkeley but 01:26:41 nearby Oakland has it and some places are starting to do it but I don't think it's really caught on
      • for: ranked voting, third party - ranked voting, climate crisis - ranked voting, climate crisis - third party with no money from special interests
    5. I think that what we have to 01:23:24 do is have the revolution that Benjamin Franklin said we need if because if we don't solve the problem in the United States I don't see us solving the global 01:23:39 problem
      • for: quote - James Hansen, quote Benjamin Franklin, climate crisis - leverage point - political revolution

      • quote

        • If we don't solve the problem in the United States, I don't see us solving the global problem
      • author: James Hansen
      • date: Dec 2023

      • comment

        • Tipping Point network
    6. I 01:22:57 think now what is more important is to affect the political system
      • climate crisis - leverage points - young people - politics

      • comment

        • Hansen considers politics to be the key leverage point for young people now, not protesting and raising awareness
      • for: climate crisis - multiple dimensions, polycrisis - multiple dimensions, climate crisis - good references, polycrisis - good references, polycrisis - comprehensive map, power to the people, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics

      • comment / summary

        • The content on this website may be what some call "doomers" that support a narrative of unavoidable catastrophe and civilization collapse
        • The author does an excellent job of drawing together many scientifically validated research papers and news media stories on various crisis and integrates them together to support his narrative.
        • As the author states, it is still incomplete but it is comprehensive and detailed enough to use as a starting foundation to build a complex polycrisis map upon. becaues it shows the complexities of the interwoven nexus of problems we face and the massive network of feedbacks between them that makes solving any one of them alone in isolation an impossibility
        • The Cascade Institute focuses on social tipping points, complexity and polycrisis. We could synthesis a number of tools to map out and reveal effective mitigation strategies including:
          • Cascade Institute tools
          • Social tipping point tools
          • SRG mapping tool along with Indyweb / Indranet
          • Culture hacking tools
          • SIMPOL strategy
          • Downscaled Earth System Boundary tools
          • SRG Deep Humanity BEing journey tools
          • James Hansen's recommendation that the biggest leverage point is new form of governance
            • We need to rapidly emerge a new global third political party that does not take money from special interest groups
          • Progressive International comes to the same conclusion as James Hansen, that the key leverage point for rapid whole system change is radically new governance that puts power back to the hands of the people - power to the people
          • SONEC's
          • Indyweb's people-centered, interpersonal methodology is a perfect match for SONEC circle-within-circles fractal structure
            • mention to @Gyuri
            • I've seen this circle-within-circle fractal, holonic group idea with Tim's software as well as Roberto's
        • Feebate from local governance groups (from another Doomer site - Arctic Emergency)
        • What the author's narrative shows is
          • how precarious our situation is
          • how many trends are getting far worse in the immediate future
          • how we are already undercapacitated to deal with existing crisis so how will we deal with new ones that are exponentially worse?
          • all these crisis will impact our supply chains. Why are these important? Our reliance on technology is dangerous and makes us very vulnerable
          • Think of your laptop, cellphone or other electronic device that relies on a vast, complex and globally operational internet. Imagine that tidal surges wipes out the globally critical data centers located in New York. Or imagine electronic factories in China and Taiwan are wiped out due to extreme weather. How will you get or fix a broken piece of electronic equipment? We rely on each millions of specialized jobs all working smoothly in order for our laptop to continue working and communicating with each other.
      • epiphany

      • recommendation for new Indyweb / Indranet tools
        • independent time and date stamp tool for every online, virtual sentence we write so we recognize in a long composition when we inserted a new idea
        • ability to trace rapid trains of thought to reveal how new insights emerge from within our consciousness
      • While writing this, I just recalled that we should have a way to time and date stamp every single virtual online action, like in this annotation because recall happens so nonlinearly and we won't have a hope to trace and trailmark without it. Hypothesis doesn't have time and date stamps of every sentence available to the user. So we don't know what nonlinear memory recall led to a specific sentence in an annotation. We need some independent Indyweb / Indranet tool that will do this universally. Trains of thoughts are so fragile we can forget the quick cascades very easily.
    1. Many of the neighbourhood organisations were able to support and initiate new projects and busi-nesses
      • for: question - climate crisis - local solutions - scalability

      • question

        • These are great starts but is there a trajectory to scaling them to replace a large part of society's GDP as a minimum but total holistic wellbeing as a final goal?:
    1. Lack of community is a key driver of why the system is so broken
      • for: climate crisis - role of community

      • comment

        • Jane starts off a great conversation with the thesis that communities can be the key for solving the climate crisis
    2. Not sure how "communities" are going to shut down oil refineries as big as large cities in some cases.
      • for: question - can communities have real impact?

      • question: can communities have real impact?

        • In this discussion, Ross is acting as the devil's advocate questioning whether communities can have real impact. He is consistent and his comments are based on evidence and experience. He challenges everyone else to prove him wrong and makes everyone go deeper to validate their positions.
        • Ross makes valid points that so far, have not been effectively addressed, mainly because nobody has thought further of how to systematically organize communities to the scale required. It's not trivial!
      • for: climate crisis - debate - community action, climate crisis - discussion - community action, indyweb - curation example

      • discussion: effectiveness of community action to address climate crisis

        • This is a good discussion on the effectiveness of community action to address the climate crisis.
        • It offers a diverse range of perspectives that can all be mapped using SRG trailmark protocol and then data visualized within Indyweb via cytoscape
    1. we need to build this this again this bridge and it's obviously not going to be written in the 00:50:41 same style or standard as your kind of deep academic papers if you think this is uh U unnecessary or irrelevant then you end up with is a scientific 00:50:56 Community which talks only to itself in language that nobody else understands and you live the general Republic uh uh prey to a lot of very 00:51:09 unscientific conspiracy theories and mythologies and theories about the world
      • for: academic communication to the public - importance, elites - two types, key insight - elites, key insight - science communication

      • comment

      • key insight

        • Elites are necessary in every society
        • Historically, people who strongly believe that the current elites aren't necessary or are harmful often become the revolutionaries who become the new elites
        • elites need to speak in their own specialist language to each other but there are two kinds of elites
          • those who serve society
          • those who serve themselves
          • often, we have fox in sheep's clothing - elites who serve themselves but disguise themselves in the language of elites who serve others in order to gain access to power ,
          • we normally think of wealthy people as elites, but Harari classifies scientists as also a kind of elite
        • elites may be necessary but
          • We are caught in a double bind, a wicked problem as elites are also the world's greatest per capita energy consumers and their outsized ecological, consumption and energy footprint is now a existential threat to the survival of our species
      • references

    1. Almost by definition this would significantly alleviate poverty, as society’s resources will need to move from furnishing the relative luxuries of people like me (along with Elon Musk and Bill Gates) and be mobilised to decarbonise every facet of society. And all this in two decades tops
      • for: climate crisis - resource flow, carbon budget - resource flow, carbon budget - resource redistribution

      • comment

        • This is really a major change in the way resource flows
        • The high consuming countries and individuals need to drop their consumption drastically and give those to the decarbonization effort and to the disenfranchised who need to be uplifted to a state of wellbeing
    2. Fast international travel will, at least temporarily, have to be for urgent or emergency purposes only. A triage approach is needed to ensure that the reallocation of society’s small carbon budget, its labour and resources, are used wisely to provide for a thriving society.
      • for: climate crisis - air travel, climate crisis - triage approach, climate communications - SRG suggestion - energy diet

      • comment

        • Kevin's use of the term triage is aligned to a Stop Reset Go strategy of reframing the challenges in the next few years in terms of a potentially temporary energy diet
        • That may be more palatable for transition for people accustomed to the existing high carbon lifestyle culture to accept
        • The potential of developing alternative energy resources plus a shift to low energy / high efficiency lifestyle could get us to the target and provide incentive for a drastic energy consumption cut
    3. This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate societal aspirations and the narratives around climate change. These extend from well-funded advertising to pseudo-technical solutions, from the financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.
      • for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

      • quote

        • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
          • societal aspirations and
          • the narratives around climate change.
        • These extend from
          • well-funded advertising to
          • pseudo-technical solutions,
          • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
          • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.
      • comment

      • key insight - societal aspirations
        • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
        • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
        • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis
      • for: climate crisis - elites, Kevin Anderson - elites, carbon emissions - elites, adjacency - elites - carbon inequality - incentives - luxury - capitalism

      • title: A Habitable Earth Can No Longer Afford The Rich – And That Could Mean Me And You

      • author: Kevin Anderson
      • date: Nov. 29, 2023

      • comment

      • adjacency between
        • elites
        • capitalism
        • free market
        • incentives
        • double bind
        • wicked problem
        • inequality
        • carbon inequality
        • luxury industry
      • adjacency statement
        • This article was pulled by "The Conversation" for being too controversial
        • It addresses the double-bind / wicked problems that we find ourselves in.
        • It's not just that the elites that are the highest per capita polluters, but
          • it is an indictment of the entire philosophy and worldview of capitalism and the market economy which produces winners and losers and
          • the winners reap enormous resource benefits, including being able to afford luxury items as rewards which constitute the largest ecological footprint of all
        • while at any one time, there is always a minority of the 1%, who hold the most outsized ecological footprint of all, the logic that produced that 1% also serves as the incentives for the majority of the 99%, who because of the inherent precarity created by capitalism, will fight and struggle to become part of that 1%
        • So while one generation of the 1% die off, a new generation is born and created by the incentive structure of scarcity and precarity.
        • In this sense, capitalism has its own self-reinforcing, positive feedback loop that keeps the masses of the disenfranchised aspiring to the same high resource and ecological footprint, luxury lifestyle
        • Look at the culture industry of sports, entertainment, movies, music, TV, etc. and of business in general. The leaders of these and ALL fields are celebrated as heros and they all reward themselves with an ultra-high carbon intensity, luxury lifestyle.
        • Unless we do more than simply demonize the current set of elites, and recognize the root cause and change the incentive structure itself, we will only ever deal with the symptom and not the problem, and continue to generate the next generation of elites
        • The luxury lifestyle industry is a important role-player in the self-reinforcing feedback loop
    1. we're getting a taste of that in the pandemic yes you adopt a wartime or emergency mindset that helps to liberate a kind of level 00:15:22 of collective purpose it makes new things possible
      • for: polycrisis wartime mobilization, climate crisis wartime mobilization, 2024 extreme weather - wartime mobilization opportunity

      • key insight

      • adjacency between
        • real COVID mobilization
        • imagined future climate crisis wartime mobilization
      • adjacency statement

        • The rapid response to the COVID pandemic was a real life case of a wartime scale mobilization in a very short time. This shows that it is possible. We need to see if we can strive for this for climate change. If 2024 becomes the year of extreme weather due to El Nino, then we could use it as an opportunity for a wartime mobilization

        • one good thing about the COVID pandemic is that it did show that a rapid wartime mobilization is possible, because it did kind of happened during COVID

    2. i commissioned some original polling for my book from abacus research and i found some very hopeful stuff and you know the public gets the emergency and incidentally i've tried to recast 00:12:46 some of the the extreme weather events we've experienced as attacks on our soil let's think about them that way yeah um and they're ready for bold action actually the public is ahead of our politics in terms of that i was surprised to see 00:12:58 that you even mentioned in alberta the numbers are much higher than you so you mentioned quebec before so the the opinion polling nationally ranges from a high in quebec in terms of their readiness fraction right to a low in alberta but even in alberta 00:13:12 the level of support is remarkably high
      • for: climate crisis - Canada - surprising positive public opinion shift
      • for climate change - wartime mobilization, interview - Seth Klein - A Good War, polycrisis - conflict, climate crisis - conflict, Naomi Klein - brother

      • summary

        • An interview with activist Seth Klein on his book: A Good War. Klein studied how WWI and WWII stimulated a rapid mobilization of Canada with an eye to translating the same methods to combating climate change.
      • for: Kevin Anderson, transition, climate equity, climate justice, climate justice - Kevin Anderson, carbon inequality - Kevin Anderson, life within planetary boundaries, lifestyle within planetary boundaries - elites, climate crisis - Kevin Anderson

      • summary

        • Kevin offers a picture of what a world within the stable climate planetary boundary would look like for the wealthy of the planet.
      • for: climate crisis - voting for global political green candidates, podcast - Planet Critical, interview - Planet Critical - James Schneider - communications officer - Progressive International, green democratic revolution, climate crisis - elite control off mainstream media

      • podcast: Planet Critical

      • host: Rachel Donald
      • title: Overthrowing the Ruling Class: The Green Democratic Revolution

      • summary

        • This is a very insightful interview with James Schneider, communications officer of Progressive International on the scales of political change required to advert our existential Poly / meta / meaning crisis.
        • James sees 3 levels of crisis
          • ordinary crisis emerging from a broken system
          • larger wicked problems that cannot be solved in isolation
          • the biggest umbrella crisis that covers all others - the last remaining decades of the fossil fuel system,
            • due to peak oil but accelerated by
            • climate crisis
        • There has to be a paradigm shift on governance, as the ruling elites are driving humanity off the cliff edge
        • This is not incremental change but a paradigm shift in governance
        • To do that, we have to adopt an anti-regime perspective, that is not reinforcing the current infective administrative state, otherwise, as COVID taught us, we will end up driving the masses to adopt hard right politicians
        • In order to establish the policies that are aligned to the science, the people and politicians have to be aligned.
        • Voting in candidates who champion policies aligned to science is a leverage point.
        • That can only be done if the citizenry is educated enough to vote for such politicians
        • So there are two parallel tasks to be done:
          • mass education program to educate citizens
          • mass program to encourage candidates aligned to climate science to run for political office
    1. we're on the highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator and he completely right 00:33:33 apart from one thing right
      • for: climate crisis - analogy

      • climate crisis - analogy

        • We're on a highway to the cliff
        • our foot is on the accelerator
        • the ruling class is driving
        • we are bound and gagged in the boot
        • we have to
          • work together to untie ourselves,
          • break through the front seat,
          • remove the driver,
          • take control of the steering wheel and brakes and
          • avoid driving over the cliff edge
    1. Conclusion: Supporting our hypotheses, we identify a general trend that social marginalization is associated with less system-justification. Those benefitting from the status quo (e.g., healthier, wealthier, less lonely) were more likely to hold system-justifying beliefs. However, some groups who are disadvantaged within the existing system reported higher system-justification—suggesting that system oppression may be a key moderator of the effect of social position on system justification.
      • for: system justification theory, status quo bias, question - lack of commensurate action

      • summary

        • Supporting their hypotheses, the authors identify a general trend that social marginalization is associated with less system-justification.
        • Those benefitting from the status quo (e.g., healthier, wealthier, less lonely) were more likely to hold system-justifying beliefs.
        • However, some groups who are disadvantaged within the existing system reported higher system-justification—suggesting that
          • system oppression may be a key moderator of the effect of social position on system justification.
      • Question

        • The question here is this:
          • Can system justification theory be applied to explain why the majority of citizens, even though they are aware that the current fossil fuel energy system must be rapidly scaled down, there is no commensurate sense of emergency of concomitant action?
  5. Nov 2023
    1. Malm, Andreas. How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Verso Books, 2021. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2649-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline.

      Aram Zucker-Scharff indicated that this was one of his favorite books on the climate crisis and has interesting consequences for both individual and group action. He said it might make an interesting pairing with Palo Alto (@Malcolm2023).

      It came up as we were talking about the ideas of climate crisis in the overlap of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

      Might also be interesting with respect to @Hoffer2002 [1951].

    1. Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster, disavowed work Thursday in the early 2000s to cast doubt on the science behind climate change and said America, on the whole, wants the federal government to “do more, right now, to address it.” “I was wrong in 2001,” Luntz told an ad-hoc Senate Democratic climate panel. “I don’t want credit. I don’t want blame. Just stop using something that I wrote 18 years ago because it’s not accurate today.”

      Of course, one ought to be cognizant of the fact that he knew (or should have known) he was patently wrong then too.

      His statements as quoted here allow him to gloss over the fact that a lot of the blame rests at his own feet.

    2. Adragna, Anthony. “Luntz: ‘I Was Wrong’ on Climate Change.” POLITICO, August 21, 2019. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/21/frank-luntz-wrong-climate-change-1470653.

      Potentially interesting with respect to @Linsky2023

  6. Oct 2023
  7. Sep 2023
    1. Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle,something more is required. This is particularly true of a booklike Commoner's, on a subject-the environmental crisis-ofspecial interest and importance to all of us today. The writingis compact and requires constant attention. But the book as awhole has implications that the careful reader will not miss.Although it is not a practical work, in the sense describedabove in Chapter 13, its theoretical conclusions have importantconsequences. The mere mention of the book's subject matter-the environmental crisis-suggests this. The environment inquestion is our own; if it is undergoing a crisis of some sort,then it inevitably follows, even if the author had not said sothough in fact he has-that we are also involved in the crisis.The thing to do in a crisis is ( usually ) to act in a certain way,or to stop acting in a certain way. Thus Commoner's book,though essentially theoretical, has a significance that goes beyond the theoretical and into the realm of the practical

      Interesting to see this take up some space as an example from 1972.

    1. Our choice to fail over the last 30 years has brought us to this position. And a way out of that, a way out of the Marshall Plan, is to say we can have these negative emissions 00:34:42 I think we need to say that, okay that's one way out of it – if they work. Another way out of it is the Marshall Plan. And so we need to open that that dialogue up. but we've... in effect, I think the IAMs have closed that dialogue,. Which is one of the reasons, going back to... It would be interesting to see other parts of the world looking at this, because, I would have a guess, when we say 'that's not feasible', many people elsewhere in the world are saying 'well of course it's feasible, we've been doing... we've been living like that for years!'
      • for: quote, quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - Kevin Anderson - Marshall plan, discussion - Johan Rockstrom / Kevin Anderson, perspectival knowing

      • quote

        • Our choice to fail over the last 30 years has brought us to this position.
        • And a way out of that, a way out of the Marshall Plan, is to say we can have these negative emissions
        • I think we need to say that, okay that's one way out of it – if they work.
        • Another way out of it is the Marshall Plan.
        • And so we need to open that that dialogue up. but we've... in effect, I think the IAMs have closed that dialogue,.
        • Which is one of the reasons, going back to... It would be interesting to see other parts of the world looking at this, because, I would have a guess,
          • when we say 'that's not feasible', many people elsewhere in the world are saying 'well of course it's feasible, we've been doing... we've been living like that for years!'
      • comment

        • In rebuttal to Johan's perspective on Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs),
          • Kevin is addressing the issue of perspectival knowing, and
          • its implications on what solutions we entertain as a global society.
        • The example he cites is Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) illustrates two major perspectives:
          • Johan includes NETs as he see's that without them, the transition goes from manageable to unmanageable
          • Kevin questions the inclusion of the NETs as potentially shutting down discussion about what Johan would consider an unmanageable situation
        • Kevin brings up a valid point for inclusion of other voices, especially those indigenous ones who are still institutionally marginalized not only in economic and cultural spaces, but also academic and intellectual ones.
        • The decolonization of academia takes on a concrete form here. Both the global and local south have lived under severe economic repression for centuries. Anderson's contention is that making do with less is something that billions of people have had to contend with for centuries as a social norm forced upon them by colonialist then post colonialist institutions.
        • Inclusivity of a greater diversity of voices does play an important role in shaping the future direction of humanity.
        • We should be having an open discussion about a Marshall plan and should not be afraid to go there.
          • We had it in WWII, which, while more direct threat, is not as great as the threat of climate change on all life on earth in a slightly greater time scale.
        • The global and local south has a lot to teach the global and local north. For this great transition of humanity to occur likely simultaneously requires
          • radical amounts of resource transfer from the global / local north to the global / local south,and
          • radical degrowth
  8. Aug 2023
    1. At best, we will see new forms of collaboration among large numbers of people toward beneficial ends. The most obvious example is the changing nature of responses to largescale natural disasters. Perhaps we will see this spirit of volunteer and entrepreneurial cooperation emerge to address such pressing issues as climate change (e.g., maybe, the Green New Deal will be crowdsourced)
      • for: TPF, crowdsource solutions, climate crisis - commons, polycrisis - commons, quote, quote - crowdsourcing solutions, quote Miles Fidelman, Center for Civic Networking, Protocol Technologies Group, bottom-up, collective action
      • quote
        • At best, we will see new forms of collaboration among large numbers of people toward beneficial ends.
        • The most obvious example is the changing nature of responses to largescale natural disasters.
        • Perhaps we will see this spirit of volunteer and entrepreneurial cooperation emerge to address such pressing issues as climate change
          • e.g., maybe, the Green New Deal will be crowdsourced.
      • author: Miles Fidelman
        • founder, Center for Civic Networking
        • principal, Protocol Technologies Group
    1. While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, population growth), the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
      • for: climate change - evolutionary causes, cultural evolution - unsustainability, unsustainability
      • definition: Anthroecological theory (AET)
        • This theory proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering
    1. if you're very poor then you're living in some kind of Wilderness Area you're going to destroy the environment in order to survive let me take for 00:08:05 example Gumby Street National Park in 1960 it was part of the Great Forest built by the late 1980s was a tiny Islander forest and all the hills around were bare more people living there in 00:08:19 the land could support two poor to buy food elsewhere struggling to survive cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or Timber or to make more land grow more food and that's when it 00:08:33 hit me if we don't help these people these local communities find ways of living without destroying the environment we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else so we need to 00:08:46 alleviate poverty
      • for: inequality, poverty, W2W, Jane Goodall, socio-ecological system, climate justice, emptiness - example, entanglement - inequality and climate crisis
      • key insight
        • if you're very poor and you're living in some kind of Wilderness Area
          • you're going to destroy the environment in order to survive
          • example: Gumby Street National Park
            • in 1960 it was part of the Great Forest
            • but by the late 1980s was a tiny Islander forest and all the hills around were bare
            • more people living there than the land could support
            • too poor to buy food elsewhere
              • struggling to survive
              • cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or Timber
              • or to make more land grow more food and
            • that's when it hit me
              • if we don't help these people these local communities find ways of living without destroying the environment
              • we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else so we need to alleviate poverty
      • comment
        • This is why the inequality crisis is entangled with the climate crisis
  9. Jul 2023
    1. one of the reasons 00:34:46 why we don't do it is that we think there needs to also be a sudden huge change inside but actually there doesn't need to be a sudden age change inside at all
      • for: climate communications, crisis communications,
        • one of the reasons why we don't do it is that
          • we think there needs to also be a sudden huge change inside
          • but actually there doesn't need to be a sudden age change inside at all
          • that thing is funnily enough getting in the way
        • An awful lot of people who write about ecological things in the newspaper are preventing you from being ecological
        • I know that sounds a bit rude to my to my colleagues you know who write editorials for newspapers
          • but it I'm afraid it's true because you know
          • you look at page one of the newspaper and basically it says
            • you're stupid right ?
            • it gives you a whole bunch of facts that you didn't know
              • in the form mostly of quite raw data
              • it just sort of dumps the data on you which we don't do about
            • anything else we don't do it about?
              • we don't do it about racism
              • we don't do it about economics
            • we don't just dump data on on page one but we do do it regarding global warming and I think that's a bit of a problem
          • then you go on to the middle of the newspaper and you get to the editorial section
          • and the editorial section is saying
            • you're evil
            • you're a bad person
            • you're not being ecological enough
          • stupid and evil is not a good place from which to launch a successful politics or ethics or any kind of creativity
          • what is creativity fundamentally?
          • it's inviting the future
          • creativity means you're allowing the future to be different from the past doesn't it?
            • because you're creating something (new)
            • that's what creating means
            • and in order to do it successfully you actually have to be incredibly gentle
    1. Das Natonale Klima-Anpassungsprogramm, das die britische Regierung in der vergangenen Woche vorgelegt hat, ist nicht nur unzureichend, sondern es ignoriert die Folgen der globalen Erhitzung. Themen wie Kühlung der Innenstädte, Umbau von Gebäuden oder Waldaufbau zum Gewässerschutz werden nicht angegangen. Bill McGuire, emeritierter Professor für Klimafolgen in London, kritisiert die Ignoranz der britischen Regierung im Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/20/government-plan-britain-extreme-heat-society-economy

  10. Jun 2023
    1. Ultimately, I’m reminded of the umbrella organisation Stop Climate Chaos that formed in 2005. By 2009, all that its diverse membership could agree on (and this after much negotiation) was a march called the Wave which happened in December to coincide with the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. The numbers on that march? In the same ballpark as the Big One: about 50,000 people. And after the Wave there was only a trickle, for many years.

      What happened to these and why? my guess is that it was hard to breakthrough to the broader public on a complex long-term topic.

  11. May 2023
  12. Mar 2023
    1. Title: How Alive Is 1.5? Part One – A Small Budget, Shrinking Fast

      Author: - Kevin Anderson - Dan Calverley

      Key Messages - For a 50:50 chance of staying below 1.5°C, we’re using up the remaining carbon budget at around 1% every month. - Following current national emissions pledges (NDCs) to 2030 puts the temperature commitments within the Paris Agreement beyond reach. - Claims that 1.5°C is now inevitable also assign “well below 2°C” to the scrapheap. - An ‘outside chance’ of not exceeding 1.5°C remains viable, but ongoing fossil fuel use is rapidly undermining it. - The few credible pathways for an outside chance of 1.5°C are not being discussed. This is an active choice by policymakers and experts, who have largely dismissed equity-based social change.

  13. Dec 2022
    1. Splooting, or more technically heat dumping, is a process through which animals stretch their hind legs back and lie on cooler surfaces to reduce their body heat. It’s commonly done by squirrels and sometimes, by dogs, and it’s no reason for concern, it’s just a sign that the animal is hot and trying to cool off.
  14. Oct 2022
    1. Peter Kalmus, Data Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory: [Update 23 August 2019: This comment was updated for clarity.] What science projects under plausible scenarios of human courses of action is varying degrees of further disruption of fundamental planetary life support systems (e.g. water, agriculture, ecosystems) needed to support the nearly 8 billion humans currently living on Earth. This disruption poses some degree of existential risk to civilization as we know it—with the amount of risk likely still depending on how rapidly we reduce radiative and ecological forcings—but these degrees of risk are not quantified with any certainty. Ice models have had difficulty projecting the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet; predicting the mechanism of the collapse of civilization and the number of lives lost as a result is a far more complex problem, and there is no scientific consensus that six billion lives will be lost. On the other hand, models have tended to underestimate ice sheet melting, and model projections in general have been systematically “conservative.” I unfortunately don’t see how the possibility of six billion deaths can be ruled out with confidence, especially when the intrinsically unpredictable but real possibility of climate-related war (which could include nuclear weapons) is considered. In other words, Hallam’s claim is speculative, but given the depth and rapidity of anthropogenic change, so is confidently ruling it out. While I don’t agree that “science predicts” the death of six billion people, in my opinion Hallam’s broader warning has qualitative merit and in the context of a lay translation of risk his use of “six billion” might reasonably be interpreted as figurative, an illustration of a worst-case scenario (again, that I don’t think can be ruled out). Whether to interpret this claim literally or figuratively is a question perhaps best left to humanists. Given this ambiguity I judge it “unrateable.”

      He is basically saying this is plausible. And his is the most sensible answer here by far IMO.

      The whole point of "bad case" scenarios is that they involve feedback effects and breakdown of "civilization" as we know it.

      This article as a whole is an illustration of the narrow, conventional thinking.

      NB: i came here via https://passivehouseaccelerator.com/articles/building-our-solarpunk-future where they are citing this as evidence future won't be too bad:

      For many of us, it’s all too easy to imagine the terrible, particularly as we witness the damage caused by just 1.2°C of global heating today. We’re also bombarded by Doomist messages.

      For example, Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, recently said this of climate change: “I am talking about the slaughter, death, and starvation of 6 billion people this century. That’s what the science predicts.”

      Only that’s not what the science predicts. According to the fact-checker website, Climate Feedback: “Research shows that continuing climate change results in a broad array of serious threats to humans and other species. However, counter to Hallam’s statement, published studies have not predicted 6 billion human deaths this century and there is no credible mechanism referred to justify how this could happen.”

  15. Sep 2022
    1. Leaving aside those far-right doubts about the existence of a climateproblem, any government that wanted to cut carbon emissions substantiallycould not avoid implementing much tougher emissions regulations andhigher business taxes. But any government that did so in advance of othergovernments would only force its corporations to move production andthousands of jobs elsewhere.

      !- example : DGC - also, Yellow jackets in France and working class in Sri Lanka paralyzed their respective country due to rising fuel costs - the precariat class is threatened and are also caught in the wicked problem

    1. "Respondents across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried). More than 50% reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change (eg, 75% said that they think the future is frightening and 83% said that they think people have failed to take care of the planet).

      !- for : Social Tipping Points - Tipping Point Festival - Meaning crisis

  16. Aug 2022
    1. This comes at a momentous time in Australia’s history as we confront the devastating consequences of whitefella knowledge systems and ways of thinking that have led inexorably to a combination of global warming and environmental degradation that is threatening the viability of human habitation in vast areas of the world.
  17. Jan 2022
  18. notesfromasmallpress.substack.com notesfromasmallpress.substack.com
    1. If booksellers like to blame publishers for books not being available, publishers like to blame printers for being backed up. Who do printers blame? The paper mill, of course.

      The problem with capitalism is that in times of fecundity things can seem to magically work so incredibly well because so much of the system is hidden, yet when problems arise so much becomes much more obvious.

      Unseen during fecundity is the amount of waste and damage done to our environments and places we live. Unseen are the interconnections and the reliances we make on our environment and each other.

      There is certainly a longer essay hiding in this idea.

  19. Dec 2021
  20. Nov 2021
    1. Trans Mountain said there have not been any oil leaks due to the flooding, which has triggered an emergency shutdown of the pipeline lasting longer than any previous stoppage in its nearly 70-year-history.
    1. Poultry scientists have also succeeded in selecting for parthenogenesis, increasing the incidence in Beltsville small white turkeys more than threefold, to 41.5 percent in five generations. Environmental factors—like high temperatures or a viral infection—also seem to trigger poultry parthenogenesis.

      Parthenogenesis can be selected for in breeding.

      What might this look like in other animal models. What do the long term effects of such high percentages potentially look like?

      Could this be a tool for guarding against rising temperatures in the looming climate crisis?

  21. Sep 2021
    1. No one but Humboldt had looked at the relationship between humankind and nature like this before.

      Apparently even with massive globalization since the 1960s, many humans (Americans in particular) are still unable to see our impacts on the world in which we live. How can we make our impact more noticed at the personal and smaller levels? Perhaps this will help to uncover the harms which we're doing to each other and the world around us?

  22. Jul 2021
    1. Limiting warming to 1.5°C implies reaching net zero CO2 emissions globally around 2050 and concurrent deep reductions in emissions of non-CO2 forcers, particularly methane (high confidence). Such mitigation pathways are characterized by energy-demand reductions, decarbonization of electricity and other fuels, electrification of energy end use, deep reductions in agricultural emissions, and some form of CDR with carbon storage on land or sequestration in geological reservoirs.

      This is where the net zero by 2050 comes from. Note in this scenario it requires CDR ... plus massive transformations in energy and production systems.

    2. Limiting warming to 1.5°C depends on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the next decades, where lower GHG emissions in 2030 lead to a higher chance of keeping peak warming to 1.5°C (high confidence). Available pathways that aim for no or limited (less than 0.1°C) overshoot of 1.5°C keep GHG emissions in 2030 to 25–30 GtCO2e yr−1 in 2030 (interquartile range). This contrasts with median estimates for current unconditional NDCs of 52–58 GtCO2e yr−1 in 2030.

      i.e. current commitments have 2x the amount of CO2 emitted per year in 2030 that is compatible with 1.5°.

  23. Jun 2021
    1. Ultimately, having access to the top political decision makers and using biased studies, the industrial lobbies have managed to sabotage the reforms the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat called for. A context and tactic we are only too familiar with.

      Details? What biased studies? how did they sabotage this?

  24. May 2021
    1. 71% of global emissions can be traced back to 100 companies,

      This would seem to fall into the Pareto principle guidelines. How can we minimize the emissions from just these 100 companies?

    1. Right now, most of the blockchain mining in the world happens in China, where provinces with the cheapest energy set up mining operations to do the ‘proof of work’ calculations that the dominant paradigm of blockchain requires. Factories that ostensibly make other things now acquire significant computing hardware and dedicate energy in order to, essentially, print money that’s then stored offshore. A recent study shows that 40% of China’s mostly bitcoin mining is powered by coal-burning. We also already know that non-blockchain server farms in cheap energy countries consume so much energy they distort national grids, and throw off huge amounts of heat that then need cooling for the servers to operate, creating a vicious cycle of energy consumption
  25. Mar 2021
  26. Feb 2021
  27. Jan 2021
    1. These predictions are absurd. A 3°C increase could trigger, and a6°C increase would trigger, every “tipping element” shown in Table 2. The Earth would have a climate unlike anything our species has experienced in its existence, and the Earth would transition to it hundreds of times faster than it has in any previous naturally-driven global warming event (McNeall et al., 2011). The Tropics and much of the globe’s temperate zone would be uninhabitable by humans and most other life forms. And yet Nordhaus thinks it would only reduce the global economy by just 8%?Comically, Nordhaus’s damage function is symmetrical — it predicts the same damages from a fall in temperature as for an equivalent rise. It therefore predicts that a 6°C fall in global temperature would also reduce GGP by just 7.9% (see Figure 3). Unlike global warming, we do know what the world was like when the temperature was 6°C below 20th century levels: that was the average temperature of the planet during the last Ice Age (Tierney et al., 2020), which ended about 20,000 years ago. At the time, all of America north of New York, and of Europe north of Berlin, was beneath a kilometre of ice. The thought that a transition to such a climate in just over a century would cause global production to fall by less than 8% is laughable.Again, I found myself in the position of a forensic detective, trying to work out how on Earth could otherwise intelligent people come to believe that climate change would only affect industries that are directly exposed to the weather, and that the correlation between climate today and economic output today across the globe could be used to predict the impact of global warming on the economy? The only explanation that made sense is that these economists were mistaking the weather for the climate.

      Wow!

    1. If human beings really were able to take the long view — to consider seriously the fate of civilization decades or centuries after our deaths — we would be forced to grapple with the transience of all we know and love in the great sweep of time. So we have trained ourselves, whether culturally or evolutionarily, to obsess over the present, worry about the medium term and cast the long term out of our minds, as we might spit out a poison.

      +10

    2. These theories share a common principle: that human beings, whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations. When I asked John Sununu about his part in this history — whether he considered himself personally responsible for killing the best chance at an effective global-warming treaty — his response echoed Meyer-Abich. “It couldn’t have happened,” he told me, “because, frankly, the leaders in the world at that time were at a stage where they were all looking how to seem like they were supporting the policy without having to make hard commitments that would cost their nations serious resources.” He added, “Frankly, that’s about where we are today.”
  28. Dec 2020
    1. It seems to also highlight how much our governments, banks and big corporations roles play into the state of our planet, how much we need them to change so that our individual choices can actually make a significant difference. Read more

      Notice the subtle othering: it's not "us" who have been doing this but the "governments, banks and big corporations" ... But who are their shareholders, who are their citizens, staff, customers etc? Us ...

      Note this is a comment on Attenborough's book. I do wonder what his recommendations are...

  29. Oct 2020
    1. The places migrants left behind never fully recovered. Eighty years later, Dust Bowl towns still have slower economic growth and lower per capita income than the rest of the country. Dust Bowl survivors and their children are less likely to go to college and more likely to live in poverty. Climatic change made them poor, and it has kept them poor ever since.

      Intergenerational social problems here; we should be able to learn from the past and not repeat our mistakes.

    2. Part of the problem is that most policies look only 12 months into the future, ignoring long-term trends even as insurance availability influences development and drives people’s long-term decision-making.

      Another place where markets are failing us. We need better regulation for this sort of behavior.

    1. Miya Yoshitani, executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, which focuses on environmental justice issues affecting working-class Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant and refugee communities.
    2. There's a grassy vacant lot near her apartment where Franklin often takes a break from her job as a landscaping crew supervisor at Bon Secours Community Works, a nearby community organization owned by Bon Secours Health System. It's one of the few places in the neighborhood with a lot of shade — mainly from a large tree Franklin calls the mother shade. She helped come up with the idea to build a free splash park in the lot for residents to cool down in the heat. Now Bon Secours is taking on the project. "This was me taking my stand," Franklin says. "I didn't sit around and wait for everybody to say, 'Well, who's going to redo the park?' "

      Reminiscent of the story in Judith Rodin's The Resilience Dividend about the Kambi Moto neighborhood in the Huruma slum of Nairobi. The area and some of the responsibility became a part of ownership of the space from the government. Meanwhile NPR's story here is doing some of the counting which parallels the Kambi Moto story.

    1. Consumer demand is one of four important variables that, when combined, can influence and shape farming practices, according to Festa. The other three are the culture of farming communities, governmental policies, and the economic system that drives farming.
    2. Festa argues that this is why organic farming in the U.S. saw a 56 percent increase between 2011 and 2016.

      A useful statistic but it needs more context. What is the percentage of organic farming to the overall total of farming?

      Fortunately the linked article provides some additional data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/10/organic-farming-is-on-the-rise-in-the-u-s/

    3. "The fundamental problem with climate change is that it's a collective problem, but it rises out of lots of individual decisions. Society's challenge is to figure out how we can influence those decisions in a way that generates a more positive collective outcome," says Keith Wiebe, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
    4. Agriculture, forestry, and other types of land use account for 23 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, according to the IPCC.
    1. Still, organic farming makes up a small share of U.S. farmland overall. There were 5 million certified organic acres of farmland in 2016, representing less than 1% of the 911 million acres of total farmland nationwide. Some states, however, had relatively large shares of organic farmland. Vermont’s 134,000 certified organic acres accounted for 11% of its total 1.25 million farm acres. California, Maine and New York followed in largest shares of organic acreage – in each, certified organic acres made up 4% of total farmland.
    1. climate theorists

      I find it interesting to be reading about a completely different sort of climate theory in this book than the one commonly known in popular society.

  30. Sep 2020
    1. Keenan calls the practice of drawing arbitrary lending boundaries around areas of perceived environmental risk “bluelining,” and indeed many of the neighborhoods that banks are bluelining are the same as the ones that were hit by the racist redlining practice in days past. This summer, climate-data analysts at the First Street Foundation released maps showing that 70% more buildings in the United States were vulnerable to flood risk than previously thought; most of the underestimated risk was in low-income neighborhoods.

      Bluelining--a neologism I've not seen before, but it's roughly what one would expect.

    2. Jesse Keenan, an urban-planning and climate-change specialist then at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, who advises the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission on market hazards from climate change. Keenan, who is now an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, had been in the news last year for projecting where people might move to — suggesting that Duluth, Minnesota, for instance, should brace for a coming real estate boom as climate migrants move north.

      Why can't we project additional places like this and begin investing in infrastructure and growth in those places?

    3. That’s what happened in Florida. Hurricane Andrew reduced parts of cities to landfill and cost insurers nearly $16 billion in payouts. Many insurance companies, recognizing the likelihood that it would happen again, declined to renew policies and left the state. So the Florida Legislature created a state-run company to insure properties itself, preventing both an exodus and an economic collapse by essentially pretending that the climate vulnerabilities didn’t exist.

      This is an interesting and telling example.

    4. And federal agriculture aid withholds subsidies from farmers who switch to drought-resistant crops, while paying growers to replant the same ones that failed.

      Here's a place were those who cry capitalism will save us should be shouting the loudest!

    5. The federal National Flood Insurance Program has paid to rebuild houses that have flooded six times over in the same spot.

      We definitely need to quit putting good money after bad.

    6. Similar patterns are evident across the country. Census data shows us how Americans move: toward heat, toward coastlines, toward drought, regardless of evidence of increasing storms and flooding and other disasters.

      And we wonder why there are climate deniers in the United States?

  31. Jul 2020
  32. Sep 2019
  33. Aug 2019