Welcome to the eKos Earthship, your one-stop-shop for green diaries and series.
Beneath the fold you will find news and notes, community announcements, and our eco-diary roundup.
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Tonight's editor: boatsie
Please stop by and visit tonight's Ecoadvocateswith 10:10 guest bloggers!
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
"... It's not just climate change, of course, but the multiple ecological crises. Anyone who is paying attention is bound to have some kind of emotional response ... I think emotions are important because we are emotional animals. It really is that simple. How can we confront the end of the systems that have structured our lives and not have powerful emotional reactions? . ... people in general, avoid these realities because reality is so grim. It seems overwhelming to most people, for good reason. So, rather than confront it, people find modes of evasion. ... more than ever, "let a hundred flowers blossom." ... When we know so little about what's coming, it's best if people pursue a variety of strategies that they feel drawn to. .. We need experiments on every front that help us imagine new ways of being." A World in Collapse Robert Jensen
... in the end we are animals who feel as much, or more, than we think. And if thinking and feeling are not wholly separate processes but are part of the way people understand the world, it is folly not to pay attention to our emotional reactions. None of this should be confused with the apolitical therapy culture that dominates in the United States . I'm not talking about emotions separate from politics, but the emotions that flow from political engagement. Jensen.
—‘the world’s poor cannot be left to sink or swim with their own resources while rich countries protect their citizens behind climate-defence fortifications.’ ‘Put bluntly’, it continues, ‘the world’s poor and future generations cannot afford the complacency and prevarication that continue to characterize international negotiations on climate change.’ The refusal to act decisively on behalf of all humanity would be ‘a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history’. [25] If this sounds like a sentimental call to the barricades, an echo from the classrooms, streets and studios of forty years ago, then so be it; because on the basis of the evidence before us, taking a ‘realist’ view of the human prospect, like seeing Medusa’s head, would simply turn us into stone. Who will Build the Arc?
To borrow a phrase from a friend, I wake up every morning in a state of profound grief. We humans have been given a privileged place in a world that is beautiful beyond description, and we are destroying it and destroying each other. I cope with that by building temporary psychological damns and dikes to hold back that grief. But the emotion comes so powerfully from so many different directions that life feels like a process of constantly patching and moving and rebuilding those damns and dikes. Some of this is intensely personal, but for me the political work is a crucial part of that coping process. If I weren't politically active, I would lose my mind. The only way I know how to cope is to use some of my energy in collective efforts to try to build something positive. Jensen
In his latest data released last week, Stanford University pollster Jon Krosnick reported that more than 70 percent of Americans in three states, Florida, Maine and Massachusetts, say they support government limits on greenhouse gases and think a rise in the world's temperature is caused "mostly or partly" by human activity.
Those results mirror Krosnick's recent findings at the national level and also reveal that more than 67 percent of people in the three states also favored a cap-and-trade system when the concept was explained to them. More than half of respondents in all three states would support a tax increase of $150 yearly if it would lead to an 85 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, he said.
He also found that a hypothetical candidate mentioning belief in man-made climate change in a speech garnered more support than one who did not mention the issue at all. In Florida, support rose by 24 percent for such a candidate. From Climate Wire 1. PUBLIC OPINION: Dueling pollsters add heat to torpid climate debate
In addition to the ecological questions, I think we also have to keep focused on the political and cultural questions, about how the existing distribution of wealth and power are serious impediments to meaningful change. That means continuing to think about the predatory nature of empire and capitalism, and the degree to which patriarchy and white supremacy structure our world and undermine our capacity to be fully human. Jensen.
Disasters 'scream' call for climate action: UN
GENEVA (AFP) – UN climate chief Christiana Figueres on Thursday warned that a string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a breakthrough deal on global warming this year.
Speaking before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call.
"The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate disasters is not the future that we want," Figueres, newly-appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters.
"Science will show whether and how those events are related to climate change caused by humanity's greenhouse-gas emissions, but the point is clear: We cannot afford to face escalating disasters of that kind."
I worry that in a society like the United States, where so many have lived for so long with abundance and a sense of entitlement, people won't be able to face up to the dramatic changes that are inevitable. That could lead people to accept greater levels of hierarchy and authority if political leaders promise to protect that affluence. In that case, people's inability to deal with the emotions that arise out of awareness of collapse could usher in an era of even more unjust distribution of wealth and resources in an even more violent world.
The only way to combat that is to talk openly about what we see coming and work to create conditions that allow us to rely on the best of our nature, not the worst. Jensen.
A CD Swarm Starter Kit (selected from The Climate Think Tank)
Climate Adaptation KNowledge Exchange (CAKE) - a stellar resource resource to help us adapt to climate change. There is no sense in denial. We cannot rely upon mitigation. We need to help species and communities adapt now before it is too late.
John COok's Skeptical Science ... they say, you say ..a summary of skeptic arguments, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Note that the one line responses are just a starting point - click the response for a more detailed response.
Real Climate Change Wiki .. tips on how to talk to a climate denier, climate facts, prep sheets, global warming myths.
OneSky: How should scientists communicate about climate?
MoJo: How to Create A real climate movement "People were rallying not just about climate change, but around a remarkably wonky scientific data point, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which NASA's James Hansen and his colleagues have demonstrated is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." Which, come to think of it, we do. And the "we," in this case, was not rich white folks. If you look at the 25,000 pictures in our Flickr account, you'll see that most of them were poor, black, brown, Asian, and young — because that's what most of the world is. No need for vice-presidents of big conservation groups to patronize them: shrimpers in Louisiana and women in burqas and priests in Orthodox churches and slumdwellers in Mombasa turned out to be completely capable of understanding the threat to the future."
Climate Change Denial? There's an "APP" for that ... "A new iPhone climate change sceptics' app inadvertently reveals the strategies of disinformation and denial they employ"
Climate Action Network
Celsias
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
The Quantum Activist- movie
Photocredits
meadow-ness By fake_plastic_earth ~ time out ... Masako Fujinami
鐵銹的歲月 Rusty years By MASON(alex555)
Rainzine Select 2- United Nations Climate Change Conference - COP15 - Copenhagen, Denmark By kk+ kris krüg
Bangladesh Climate Action by Greenpeace
Caribou. Sur la Route du Nord située à 18 km de Chibougamau et longue de 407 km, qui rejoint la route de la Baie James. (Québec, Canada) Photo by Rock Arsenault
Climate Camp Surrounded Ending in Street Riots, LONDON, United Kingdom, Wednesday 1st April 2009. by si gross
I am a Freegan. Freeganism is an anti-consumerist lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on "limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources". Freegans "embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed." The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as dumpster diving. Freegans salvage the food for political reasons, rather than out of need.
The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". Freeganism started in the mid 1990s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. The movement also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s, that gave away rescued food. (Text's source: Wikipedia) Photo by Ben Heine
Annoucements
Help Pakistan
The floods in Pakistan have killed an estimated 1400, and left 1.5 million homeless. Please help if you can. From our last Earthship:
After the worst floods in Pakistan in 80 years, the situation is desperate. Official figures now speak of more than 3 million people who have been directly affected by the floods, with more than 1,400 confirmed deaths. Millions of people have been left homeless, isolated, in desperate need of shelter, water, food and medical attention. Roads and bridges have been washed away and many of the areas are unreachable via land, leaving the inhabitants isolated and in desperate need of assistance.
The immediate challenges for MSF are to expand activities relating to the provision of clean water and to improve hygienic conditions, in order to prevent the spread of acute respiratory infections and potentially fatal epidemics of diarrhea and cholera.
MSF’s response in Pakistan relies on the donations it receives. With your help, we can dispatch more help to the millions in need. But we need you to act immediately.
TAKE 15 SECONDS TO MAKE A DONATION AND SAVE A LIFE.
THANK YOU FOR HELP.
Special CALL OUT to Tnight's Ecoadvocates diary featuring 10:10 Global Bloggers and engaging the Kos community in dicussion and ideas for actions on 10.10.10 and beyond.
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If you would like to make an announcement for an upcoming diary or event, please e-mail us at eKos350atgmaildotcom. Please send us formatted HTML!
(All times Eastern!)
eKos diaries from Wednesday, September 08, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
ecoadvocates: 10:10 Global Guest Bloggers & YOU! | boatsie | 20:14:27 | ecoadvocates, 1010 global, global day of action, 350, environment |
Water Out of Thin Air | NourishingthePlanet | 14:31:34 | Nourishing the Planet, State of the World, Innovation of the Week, Innovation, ekos |
Sept 11th -- Let's Save That Date | Michael Brune | 13:37:52 | 9/11, Serve Outdoors, environment, youth, ekos |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 106 | Gulf Watchers | 06:00:00 | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
eKos diaries from Tuesday, September 07, 2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Our Dying Forests | hold tight | 16:08:37 | climate change, forest decline, Subhankar Banerjee, eKos |
"Renewing a" misguided "commitment"? | A Siegel | 15:19:35 | transportation, ekos, president barack obama |
Congressional Candidates’ Views on Clean Energy, Climate Change: FL-24 | NRDCActionFund | 11:20:54 | florida, ekos, nrdc action fund, american clean energy and security act, florida congressional district 24 |
Help Obama put solar (back) on the White House | Bill McKibben | 09:09:11 | Recommended, bill mckibben, 350.org, global warming, solar power, barack obama |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 105 | Gulf Watchers | 06:00:00 | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |