Being a Republican in Congress is a lot easier than being a Democrat. That’s because there are very few things that Republicans have or want to do. Most Democrats have full plates in front of them as they want to reform our society so that government provides a strong and secure safety net for all of us, particularly those most at risk. If we reach a point of gridlock, of stalemate, it is the right that wins, because if nothing happens, that is exactly what they want.

In the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and other rebellious acts from the right, there is increasing talk of a new American civil war. What shape it might take is open to all kinds of interpretation. It certainly would not be like America’s first civil war, or even a feared possible upcoming war between Russia and Ukraine.

That does not mean there would not be violence. The January 6 insurrection resulted in the deaths of five individuals and the injuring of hundreds. The Right certainly does not hesitate to use threats of violence against those with whom they merely disagree.

For example, Fox News anchor Jesse Watters recently told a group of conservatives to “ambush” Dr. Anthony Fauci with questions and “go in for kill shot.” Fox News has not reprimanded Watters; in fact, they have not said a word about his using their platform to threaten to kill someone. Fox did the same things with correspondent Lara Logan who compared Fauci to the Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele (also included in the clip below).

As we approach the end of 2021, the Washington Post reports “Inside the nonstop pressure campaign by Trump allies to get election officials to revisit the 2020 vote.” The Big Lie continues more than thirteen months after the 2020 safe, secure and democratic elections.

The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.

The important point in the article is that the Trumpsters are continuing their efforts to intimidate Republican-controlled state legislatures to undo the past and change the future so that free and fair elections become something of the past.

A “civil war” could include numerous other acts of aggression by the right including the intimidation of teachers, vigilante forces, Congressional action to not raise the debt limit and not fund necessary programs that are the framework of our social and economic safety net.

COVID has already played a key role in dividing the nation and threatens to do so for some time to come. Samuel Goldman in The Week suggests:

I’m not the first to compare the way of thinking about the pandemic still dominant in official statements to the military disasters of the last two decades. My colleague Noah Millman and the journalist Daniel McCarthy have both noted parallels between the interminable conflicts that followed 9/11 and the “war” on COVID. “Like the old Afghan government,” Millman wrote, “those in charge of public health have little practical ability to shape events. But they speak as if they are sovereign and in control.”

It is hard to imagine what aggressive actions those on the Left may take. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, extremists far to the left of the Democratic Party engaged in bombing attacks on both public and private buildings. But there was very little coordinated about that and as it became apparent that the bombings were counter-productive, the bombings essentially ended.

Regrettably, there is very little that the Right needs to do now to win a “civil war.” The current stalemate allows those on the Right to generally get their way.

Progressive legislation will not pass. The right to safe and legal abortions will be ended in most states when Roe v. Wade is overturned, elections will be rigged to favor far-right Republicans, COVID and other infectious diseases will continue to run rampant, gun-control measures will not be passed, climate change legislation will stall and those who do not agree with those on the Right will live in fear of violence.

The only real way that progressives and others can prevent an escalated “civil war” is by winning big in elections and having protections against Republican electoral manipulation. This means that the U.S. Senate is going to have to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in order to maximize the chances of free and fair elections. Additionally, Democrats are going to have to figure out a way to elevate the popularity of Joe Biden and improve their chances of winning 2022 Congressional races. Perhaps a backlash to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade would help, but that seems unlikely.

The stakes are truly high for progressives; we need to do all that we legally and non-violently can do.

The post Why A “Civil War” Would Be So Hard for Progressives to “Win” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Imagine if Elon Musk, Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year,” put his mind to minimizing the frequency of and damage from forest fires. Suppose that he also focused on helping the United States and the world deal with mitigating other damage that is already being done to Planet Earth as a result of climate change. Would he be contributing more to the wellbeing of humanity than his efforts to help us colonize Mars?

Musk is truly a remarkable man and is deserving of being Time’s “Person of the Year,” award, although I think that Joe Manchin would have been a better selection because of all the impact he has had on the progressive agenda. Musk’s automobile enterprise, Tesla, is currently the world’s biggest selling electric car company. He is also one of a handful of private pioneers of space travel with an ultimate goal of colonizing Mars. His SpaceX program is a main shuttle between Earth and the International Space Station and is truly innovative because in large part it is reusable.

Time estimates Musk’s current net worth to be $250 billion; that’s a quarter of a trillion dollars! He is by far the world’s wealthiest individual. Just a few years ago, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Bill Gates of Microsoft were duking it out for that honor, with net worths in the seventy billions of dollars.

But during the week of Musk’s mug on the face of Time, things happened on Earth which highlight the destruction that is already occurring on Earth as a result of climate change. A rash of tornados broke out across the country, killing nearly 100 people. The town of in Mayfield, Kentucky had a wide swath thoroughly decimated. Minnesota, which had never before had a tornado in December, had several.

A number of communities in the Midwest and South had record low temperatures. We’re not talking about cold weather; we’re referencing the highest December low temperatures on record.

The plains states were pummeled with straight-line winds of over one hundred miles per hour. Forest fires were occurring not only in California and Arizona, but also in Kansas and Nebraska.

It is not as if the world is not trying to combat climate change; individuals in all countries are working diligently on inventing and installing greener modes of energy to help power their countries. Elon Musk may be doing more than anyone individual with his development of the electric cars powered by more powerful batteries, that he too has played a large role in inventing.

If we get to a world dominated by electric cars, it will cut back on the emissions of gasoline-powered cars that contribute so much to climate change. But much damage to the climate has already been done. We need to engage in accelerated remedial work on this planet. These will be extremely costly, and that’s where Musk and his resources come in.

Much of the West Coast is experiencing prolonged drought. Many western states are experiencing forest fires the likes of which we have never seen before. These conflagrations will continue for decades or centuries before we could make enough positive changes to the environment to minimize such natural disasters.

So how could we either prevent or minimize or minimize the damage of forest fires? Clearly, one way is to provide enormous quantities of fresh water to the areas at risk. Here is a possible idea:

We should develop enormous desalination plants along the American coast of the Pacific Ocean. Build huge pipelines from the plants to areas in the west that are experiencing drought and are at greatest risk for forest fires. Desalination is the process by which salt water is heated to the boiling point and then the steam in condensed into pools of fresh water. The salt and other impurities are left behind to be disposed in an environmentally safe fashion. The fresh water can then be pumped inland to the areas most likely to spawn forest fires, or farmland which needs to be irrigated, or to freshwater reservoirs to directly serve individuals and businesses.

This would cost enormous amounts of money, but it would save billions of dollars by preventing destruction. It would also create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs. Musk could utilize his resources to be part of a team that designs, manufactures and installs these systems. It could even be profit-making with reimbursements from both governments and private utilities.

While this may seem like an overwhelming project, let’s remember that Musk has established himself as a premier player in the race to Mars. That excites and engages many people, but right now we need to address new and increasing calamities occurring on Earth. Mr. Musk, please focus on where we all live.

The post If Elon Musk Really Wanted to Change The World appeared first on Occasional Planet.

An important story reported earlier this month (November, 2021), features the impact of climate change on the children of southern Madagascar. This is a report primarily about famine caused by climate change, not war, economic oppression or pestilence. Regrettably, the story also includes more than a trace of self-congratulations from and by ABC News Anchor David Muir.

Those of us who don’t have a phobic distaste for modern science recognize that climate change is causing world-wide land use change. Coastal communities are threatened by rising seas. Once fertile farmland is lying fallow because insufficient rain falls. Five-hundred-year floods are occurring one a decade, not twice a millennium.

It is interesting how in the United States and most other industrialized countries, increasing emphasis is placed on rebuilding and expanding its built infrastructure. When it comes to roads and bridges, an important question is largely going unasked. Where do these ribbons of concrete take us, and do their paths take into consideration how our land is changing due to climate change.

For instance, the metropolitan area of Houston, TX has been battered over the past ten years by hurricanes. Isaac devastated Texas’ Gulf Coast in August, 2012. Hurricane Harvey struck in August, 2017 and Hurricane Laura in August, 2020. Despite some enlightened leadership in the area with County Judge [Supervisor, Harris County] Lina Hidalgo and Mayor Sylvester Turner, the private sector seems to believe that nothing bad can happen again for another 500 years, and they rebuild in the areas that have been flooded and destroyed. They are aided by state-wide science deniers like Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz.

People who are homeless or starving are not the only displaced people in the world. The world’s population continues to grow, and that puts people in tighter confines with one another. We like to believe that we live in nation-states, but perhaps our second tightest bond to family is our tribes. And as the global population expands and arable land compresses, more tribes are running up against other tribes – ones whose company they would prefer not to keep.

The result is more war and violence. It may be cloaked under the guise of religious differences, or political differences, or economic disparities. In any event, it is more and more difficult for peace-loving people to find areas to live where they are not threatened by other groups of humans.

When people who don’t want to be neighbors are cramped together, anthropologically we know that peaceful resolution of problems is a hard sell. More often than not, violence is the likely modus operandi of settlement. Conflict and violence lead to displacement. Necessary relocation means refugees – often millions of people moving, often by foot, to new places where they think that they will be physically safe and will be able to find gainful work.

Frequently this traffic rapidly changes directions. In the early 2000s when the U.S. invaded Iraq for no particular reason, millions of Iraqi civilians headed west to Syria where they were welcome in many small villages. But just a few years later, Iraq was more at peace while Syria was engaged in a gruesome civil war with a external counties such as the United States and Russia adding to the mayhem and destruction. By the mid two-thousand-teens, millions of Syrians were fleeing their country, often heading east to Iraq to a land that is similar to their own.

However, in both incarnations of this Middle East refugees-in-motion, many moved toward what they saw as a better life in Europe. In some places, and in cases where the numbers were not too large, the migration to Europe worked, especially since the E.U. was looking for people to fill low-paying jobs. But as the numbers jumped into the millions, the inevitable happened. Refugees were seen as foreigners who were outsiders to their staid communities, and new conflict was born.

Just as the world needs to create new ways to find homes for local, regional, or global refugees, it needs to do the same for those who are displaced by politics as well as climate. These problems become only more severe as population growth creates more crunches. So, what options to people of the world have?

There are basically two ways to find venues where displaced people can live:

1. Find existing land on our planet which currently is largely uninhabited and has the natural resources to sustain a significant number of human beings.
2. Where arable and otherwise resourceful land does not exist, humanity needs to find ways to create new land masses where refugees can move and comfortably live, at least until they are able to find another part of the planet on which to live.

China has built three man-made islands in the South China Sea for military bases against Taiwan and other potential adversaries in the Pacific Rim. Reaction to their construction has ranged from enormous fear of expansion to mockery because there are reports that the islands are falling apart and sinking into the ocean.

Regardless, humankind, under the aegis of the United Nations, needs to find largely unoccupied places for refugees to live. These new homes can be temporary; to give political or climate factors time to reverse themselves. Equally plausible is for them to become “permanent” homes so that they can be free from the strife that caused them such misery in their most recent homes.

Countries large in area such as the United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Australia, and others have room for refugee settlements. China is so residentially over-built that it literally has high-rise cities that are vacant and capable of housing literally millions of people.

However, virtually all land on Planet Earth is accounted for. It is either owned by a private enterprise or the government is holding it for recreation, environmental protection or future development.

The post Finding New Settlement Areas for Refugees appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In the tiny village in New York’s Hudson Valley where I reside, there are 1,135 people. The Village of Kinderhook is just one municipality out of the 16,411 self-governing communities across the U.S. with less than 10,000 residents.

Like other small municipalities, the structure of government is straightforward: a mayor, four trustees, a code-enforcement officer, a village clerk, a deputy village clerk, a department of public works, planning and zoning boards, and a historic preservation commission. In 2014, New York State rolled out a Climate Smart Communities initiative to assist large and small communities in pursuing actions to minimize the risks of climate change, reduce greenhouse gases, and commit to building a resilient, low-emission future.

To the surprise of many residents, the village’s elected officials decided that, unlike some other nearby communities at the time, it was important for the village to participate in the state’s initiative. A small group of concerned and determined Kinderhook residents stepped up. They formed a volunteer task force that would help the village contribute to the state’s ambitious goals.

To date, Kinderhook counts itself as one of 285 New York State communities to have adopted the Climate Smart Communities pledge. Those communities represent more than 8.3 million people – or 43 percent of the state’s population.

Adopting a Climate Crisis Resolution

At the village’s February 2020 board meeting, following discussions about nuts-and-bolts issues like snow removal, stop signs, and building-code violations, Kinderhook’s elected officials went a step further.  They adopted a Climate Crisis Resolution.

Knowing all five of the individuals who took this vote, I imagine that they probably didn’t see their “yes” votes as a moment of personal courage. But I saw the vote in a different light. At this critical juncture, when the environmental policies of the federal government are being driven backwards in the most dangerous and destructive manner, five elected officials—with differing viewpoints on local issues and varying political affiliations—stepped up and voted unanimously and yes, courageously, to adopt a symbolic declaration acknowledging the global climate emergency. Residents in attendance raised no objections. The moment seemed almost offhand– like a foregone conclusion. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

If one were to look back at the arc of the four-decade-long struggle for consensus on the reality of the cause-and-effect relationship between carbon emissions and global climate change, nothing in this struggle for the future has been—or still is—a foregone conclusion. In some quarters, even acknowledging the problem is still a difficult political and philosophical road to travel.

The Village of Kinderhook is only the fourth governing body in New York State (New York City, the Town of Saugerties, and Ulster County) and the seventy-eighth governing body in the U.S. to have officially passed a declaration of climate emergency. The reality is that only eight percent of Americans live in a community that has affirmed the seriousness of the climate task we’re facing.

If it is true that recognizing a problem is the first step in solving it, then the record of the world beyond our borders is more reassuring than the current record of where Americans land on the issue of climate change. Across the globe, more than 1,300 governing bodies in 25 countries—representing 809 million people—have declared a climate emergency and dedicated themselves and their governments to climate mobilization and driving down emissions to protect humanity and the natural world. The Village of Kinderhook should take pride in being counted among them.

Village of Kinderhook’s 2020 Climate Crisis Resolution

Whereas, climate change poses a real and increasing threat to our community and our way of life.

Whereas, adoption of the New York State Climate Smart Communities Pledge included a commitment to engage in an ongoing process of climate action.

Whereas, the ability to access potential funding and other resources for rapid mobilization to mitigate climate change can result in economic, environmental, and social benefit to our community.

We therefore hereby declare that a state of climate emergency exists.

[Image: Governing bodies, worldwide, that have declared a Climate Emergency. Searchable image at https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/world-map]

The post Tiny New York Village joins worldwide Climate Mobilization, passes Climate Crisis Resolution appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In an emotional address to members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on April 16, 2019, sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a stark message. “I want you to panic,” she began. “I want you to act as if the house is on fire.”

Thunberg, the founder of a now-global movement of student climate activists called Fridays for Future, has become the inspiration for more than 2,000 student strikes in more than 100 countries around the world. Inspired by the walk-outs of traumatized students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where fourteen students were brutally gunned down, Thunberg saw in the students’ anti-gun tactics an opportunity to harness through similar actions the energy of young people to jolt politicians out of their complacency about the looming dangers of climate change.

See you for yourself in the video below why Thunberg’s eloquent and passionate plea for immediate climate action has both inspired legions of young people and also forced some climate-change denying politicians and fossil-fuel lobbyists to take seriously this determined young woman.

In fact, the climate deniers are taking the threat of Thunberg’s rhetoric so seriously that they’ve launched a campaign questioning her motives and casting doubt on the sincerity of her efforts. There’s a good chance those politicians and lobbyists are seeing exactly what I see: first, a young woman who poses a threat to the status quo and the fossil-fuel industry’s control of the narrative. And, second, the shocking realization that an unusually gifted sixteen-year-old might just be today’s most electrifying spokesperson for climate-change activism out there, and that there’s a fighting chance that Thunberg—and her young supporters—could succeed in convincing the global community to heed the emergency alarms, ignore the special interests, and unite to address the crisis that is climate change.

The post 16-year-old climate change activist says: “Time to panic” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

For more than forty years, scientists and environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about climate change. In 1975 Dr. Wallace S. Broecker, who first introduced the term “global warming,” published his landmark paper that modeled  the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and temperature rise. It was also in the 1970s that ExxonMobil’s own in-house scientists conducted studies that raised red flags about fossil fuels and climate change. That suppressed report motivated ExxonMobil to launch a multi-million-dollar, multi-decade disinformation campaign—the effects of which we’re still living with today.

As the chorus of credible voices on climate change has grown ever louder over the years, scientists, environmentalists, politicians, concerned citizens, and the media have struggled to craft a compelling narrative to communicate to a skeptical American public both the short- and long-term impacts of climate change. Although nearly every avenue of communication has been tried, according to recent polling nearly fifty percent of Americans continue to reject the fact that climate change will affect them during their lifetimes.

Without a doubt, the effort to normalize climate-change denial has ramped up since Donald Trump captured the White House. Incredibly, at least twenty current appointees at major governmental agencies are climate-change deniers. Trump appointees at agencies vital to the health and safety of Americans, like the United States Department of Agriculture, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Housing and Human Development, have expressed in various ways their doubts about the human causes of climate change. Trump himself has muddied the waters by repeatedly denying and denigrating, through his off-the-cuff comments, the documented conclusions of the government’s own climate researchers, space agency, and military.

Listen to your stomach

What will it take to wake up doubting Americans to the greatest challenge humankind may ever face? Publication of the results of scientific studies have failed. Charts and graphs have failed. Dramatic videos of melting ice and glaciers and predictions about the coming devastation to coastal communities of sea-level rise have done little to change the minds of skeptics. Heart-rending photos of dislocated islanders abandoning their flooded homes and devastating videos of starving polar bears gain temporary traction but then are forgotten. Warnings about melting ice caps fall on deaf ears. Climate-disaster blockbuster movies fail to translate into real-life perceptions. Appeals to deniers’ better angels and the oft-repeated religious belief that Earth is a god-given gift to humanity that must be cared for and stewarded with care seem to yield only temporary concern. Entreaties about the responsibility to pass on to children and grandchildren a rich and diverse world—all have failed to break through the psychological barrier of denial.

If science, religion, ethics, love of family, or scare tactics have failed to convince doubters of the reality of climate change, what will? Could the answer to that question be that the disappearance due to climate change of some of our favorite comfort foods will do the trick? In other words, is the way to climate deniers’ minds through their stomachs?

Foods at risk

Some of America’s favorite comfort foods and kitchen staples may either be on the edge of extinction within the next few decades or their availability and affordability threatened by rising growing costs due to the effects of climate change, like changing seasonal weather patterns, drought, or temperature rise. It may be time to remind climate-change doubters that we might be looking at a world in which favorite foods like apples, avocados, bananas, chocolate, coffee, corn, beer, wine, honey, and much more may no longer be available or may end up becoming affordable only to the wealthiest among us.

Here are a few of the predictions:

Apples

The trees on which America’s favorite fruit grows need a certain period of winter chill to produce economically viable yields. Rising temperatures are disrupting the apple-growing season and causing apple trees to bear their fruit sooner. Rising winter temperatures will most likely force apple farmers to breed new cultivars that require lower chilling temperatures, which might affect yields and taste.

Avocados

90% of avocados grown in the U.S. come from California, and 79% of avocados in the U.S. are imported from Mexico. One pound of avocados requires 72 gallons of water to grow. Due to drought and increased costs of water, the cost of growing has increased significantly. Predictions are that the cost of avocados will continue to rise as water supplies become less predictable.

Bananas

The Cavendish banana, which is the commercially grown version sold in supermarkets, has been under a devastating attack by the Panama disease,  which taints the soil in which banana trees are grown. The fungus is rapidly spreading throughout Africa and Asia and could spread more rapidly as climate change encourages spread of the pathogens. According to experts, if the fungus spreads to South America, banana lovers can say goodbye to this staple unless scientists succeed in breeding a new, pathogen-resistant variety.

Cocoa

In the early 1990s, the fungal disease called witch’s broom knocked out 80% of Brazil’s total cocoa output. Today, scientists fear that fungal diseases could send the cocoa bean into extinction because of the plant’s limited genetic variation. The projected higher temperatures in West Africa also pose a significant threat.

Coffee

Researchers predict that by 2050, up to 80% of the land area suitable for growing coffee—particularly in Brazil and parts of Central America—could become unsuitable for growing due to higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, all of which would pose a risk to the global coffee supply chain.

Corn

As global warming progresses, corn yields in the U.S. (now at 300 million tons produced each year in the U.S. alone or 30% of farmland) could decrease by 30 to 46 percent and even up to 63 to 82 percent if faster warming rates occur. Corn is everywhere in the American food chain. From feed for beef, chicken, and pork to ingredients derived from the corn kernel that are used in a multitude of processed foods—Ingredients like corn syrup, corn oil, corn starch, ascorbic acid, acetic acid, citric acid, and more.

Honey

The documented decline and large-scale disappearance of honeybees linked to pesticide use and climate change points to the decline or total loss of honey production in the future.

Beer

Water and hops, the main ingredients in beer production, are under threat by the changing climate. Warming winters are producing earlier and decreased yields of hops. The National Resources Defense Council warns that between 2030 and 2050 the difficulty in accessing freshwater is “anticipated to be significant in the major agricultural and urban areas throughout the nation.”

Wine

Studies are beginning to show that temperatures in California’s wine-producing regions, like the Napa Valley and Sonoma, are becoming too high to grow wine grapes. Predictions of production loss in California over the next fifty years come in as high as a potential 85% decrease. In France, extreme weather, like hailstorms, drought, and heavy rain, are threatening the viability of some of the country’s most iconic wine producers.

The post Climate change endangers food favorites like beer, wine, apples, bananas, chocolate appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Sometimes it takes just one person to spark a movement. Swedish student Greta Thunberg is one such person. In August 2018 the then fifteen-year-old sat down to protest for the first time in front of the Swedish Parliament House in central Stockholm. For three weeks during every school day, Thunberg skipped her classes and sat down to protest the Swedish government’s lack of meaningful action on climate change.

One month later, Thunberg made the decision to stay out of school every Friday and to continue to demonstrate weekly until the government of Sweden committed to take action on policies to cut carbon emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015.

As word of her strike spread via Twitter and Instagram, Thunberg’s solitary act of dissent became a global student movement, called Fridays for Future, that spread to countries on five continents.

In cities across Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, the U.S., Latin America, Africa, and India tens of thousands of students have responded enthusiastically to Thunberg’s call to walk out of their classrooms and join the worldwide fight for the future.

On March 1, addressing thousands of students in Hamburg, Germany, the now sixteen-year-old activist rallied her followers. “Yes, we are angry,” she began. “We are angry because the older generations are continuing to steal our future right now. For way too long the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis. But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer. We will continue to school-strike until they do something.”

Thunberg’s success in rallying students worldwide has given her the platform to expand her message even to world leaders. At the 2019 Davos conference in January, Thunberg explained how the responsibility to act on climate change falls on young people because “their future is at risk, and they need to get angry and then transform that anger into action.” Later, at an EU conference in February, Thunberg urged representatives to double the bloc’s commitment to greenhouse-gas cuts. In Germany, where Fridays for Future rallies have sparked widespread support among students, Chancellor Angela Merkel felt compelled to offer her support of the rallies in a controversial podcast video. While stating her strong support for the protests and the students’ long-term goals, the chancellor offered a note of caution about the challenges Germany faces in the process to end the country’s reliance on coal and coal-fired power plants.

For students interested in getting involved and voicing their concerns about climate change, Thunberg urges them to demonstrate every Friday in front of their own local town halls and to take a picture and post it with the hashtag #Fridaysforfuture or #Climatestrike. Thunberg also urges students who might hesitate to walk out of their classrooms to think creatively about how they might find symbolic ways to “strike” and to share their tactics with the Fridays for Future community.

The post 15-year-old Swedish student sparks international Fridays for Future movement appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 1985, three British scientists working at the British Antarctic Survey stunned the world when they discovered that at certain times of the year a hole opened up in the stratospheric ozone layer above the South Pole. Their observations, backed up by data provided by NASA satellites, were published in Nature magazine in that same year.

Subsequent studies demonstrated that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used at the time in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems as well as in aerosol sprays, were tearing open a hole in earth’s ozone layer, causing dangerous levels of ultraviolet, cancer-inducing radiation to reach the earth’s surface.

Just two years later, in August 1987, a unified global community rallied together and finalized The Montreal Protocol, which phased out the production and consumption of man-made ozone-depleting substances.  At the time, America’s Republican president, Ronald Reagan, encouraged the Senate to ratify the agreement, which it did.

In the speech he delivered at the signing, Reagan took the opportunity to underscore both the global nature of environmental challenges and the need for international cooperation. Here are his words:

“The Montreal Protocol is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects.”

This historic agreement—ratified at a time when science still held sway over at least some of public policy—has been hailed as “one of the most successful multilateral agreements in history.”

Before the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to the White House, preceding administrations had affirmed America’s commitment by joining the international community and agreeing to additional amendments to the protocol. The fifth and most recent amendment, called the Kigali Amendment, was negotiated as late as 2016 with the full support of the Obama administration.

The Kigali Amendment proposes to phase down the production and consumption worldwide of hydro-fluorocarbons (HFCs), which have been used as a substitute in refrigeration and air conditioning since the phase-out of CFCs mandated by the Montreal Protocol. As understanding of climate science has advanced, it’s been proven that HFCs are greenhouse gases that are more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere.

Currently, thirteen Republican senators, led by Louisiana’s John Kennedy and Maine’s Susan Collins, have recommended that the Trump administration support their efforts to gain support for ratification of the Kigali Amendment. Tragically, even with the support of the refrigeration and air-conditioning industries and projections of increased manufacturing jobs and significant export growth, the Trump administration is slow walking the proposal and calling for more study on the issue.

Good news

In the big picture, The Montreal Protocol proves that a firm and long-term commitment by the international community to science-based responses to climate change can achieve significant results. According to multiple studies, including one released at the end of 2018 by the United Nations entitled “Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2018” and another completed by NASA, thirty years after implementation of The Montreal Protocol, the phased elimination of CFCs has done exactly what the scientists had hoped it would. The ozone layer is now on the path to recovery.

And there’s even better news. The Montreal Protocol’s Scientific Assessment Panel now projects that the ozone layer will see almost complete recovery by the middle of the twenty-first century.

That’s great news for the global community. With full, continuing implementation, this still-groundbreaking agreement will have long-lasting health and environmental benefits. It’s estimated that:

• 280 million cases of skin cancer will be avoided.
• Approximately 1.6 million skin cancer deaths will be prevented.
• More than 45 million cases of cataracts will be avoided in the U.S. alone.
• Decreased ultraviolet radiation will prevent reduced agricultural output and the disruption of marine ecosystems.

To view a video on the science of ozone, CFCs, and HFCs, watch here.

The post The Montreal Protocol: Saving Earth’s vital ozone layer appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s like clockwork. A disaster occurs and the airwaves are full of appeals for help from all of us who are clearly more fortunate than those who have been stricken.

It seems natural, and the right thing to do. For anyone with an ounce of empathy, responding with some form of help is the correct thing to do.

But the carnage of Hurricane Harvey once again raises a fundamental question. Why are we so accepting of the concept of being so charitable in response to a disaster, all the while we accept an unjust government which is sluggish to respond.

There are two key reasons why we should first look to the government:

1. Only the government has the resources to provide all that is needed. Not only does the government have the capacity to raise and spend the necessary $100 billion or more, it can provide ongoing support because if necessary, it can borrow more money. Please don’t say that it is improper or impossible for the government to borrow. After all, we’ve already gone in the red to the tune of over $19 trillion to fight wars of questionable benefit and to ensure that the wealthy not pay their fair share of taxes.
2. The government has the infrastructure through FEMA, the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies to properly respond. The government also has a long history of partnering with non-profits such as the Red Cross to bring more resources on board to deal with disasters.

Donations from the private sector can be helpful, primarily to those who give and then feel a sense of connectedness and having done “the right thing.” They can supplement.

But to have the government stuck in quagmire because Republican legislators say that the only way that the money can be spent is to have off-set spending elsewhere is mean, counter-productive and not in the interests of either those struck by the disaster or those who are removed from the initial consequences.

This is nothing new. House Majority Leader opposed aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Former Congressman and now Director of the Budget Mick Mulvaney opposed similar aid to those struck by Super-storm Sandy in 2012 (as did the two current senators from Texas where Harvey did its most damage).

If they have such objections to deficit spending, then raise taxes on the wealthy. Also, put in place a reasonable plan whereby the federal government literally and figuratively has a rainy-day fund for such occurrences. While we’re at it, we better give it funding on steroids to pay for the consequences of ignoring the effects of climate change.

Let’s not fool ourselves and say that responses by the federal government are without troubles. The more than two million non-military employees of the federal government include many who are not effective workers, or who do not always have concerns with the common good. Our maze of bureaucracies often makes coordination difficult.

But if it is more clearly understood that the way to respond to a Harvey is through a well-prepared and well-funded federal government, we can provide the most comprehensive response to these disasters.

The federal government must also take steps to help communities take necessary steps to minimize future disasters. This includes recognizing the reality of climate change, insisting in urban planning be integrated with environmental planning, and simply not over-building in vulnerable areas.

Do not hesitate to give to charities, particularly if it gives you a good feeling. But do not forget that the only reasonable, responsible and realistic way to react to the disasters is through a comprehensive federal response. It’s called democracy.

The post Harvey once again raises the justice vs. charity issue appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Houston and Southwest Texas are drowning in what the National Weather Service estimates to be 9 trillion gallons of rainwater—so far [as of two days into the disaster].  From a distance, and from the high, privileged ground on which I live, it is hard to visualize how widespread the flooding is—even if you watch the endless hours of live tv coverage featuring images shot from drones and helicopters. It’s even harder to conceptualize what 9 trillion gallons of water is.

Then, last night, the weather team at the Washington Post served up some analogies that put it in understandable — and visually astonishing — terms. Here’s a summary:

What would 9 trillion gallons of water look like?

If that water were collected into a cube next to Houston’s downtown, it would be approximately four miles square and two miles tall.

9 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill the entire Great Salt Lake twice.

It would take 9 days straight for the Mississippi River to drain into Houston and equal the amount of water already there.

If we averaged this amount of water spread equally over the lower 48 states, that’s the equivalent of about 0.17 inches of rain—roughly the height of three pennies stacked atop each other—occupying every square inch of the United States.

This amount of water could fill 2.3 percent of the volume of the mountain range containing Mount Everest.

9 trillion gallons is enough to fill 33,906 Empire State Buildings from basement to penthouse.

If we took the amount of rainfall that Texas has seen [so far], and spread it over the city limits of New Orleans, it would tower to 128 feet in height—roughly reaching as high as a 12-story office building.

And it’s still raining.

The post Houston flood: How much is 9 trillion gallons of water? appeared first on Occasional Planet.