Mom's sick.
She is burning with a fever ...
She is melting away
She is struggling to sustain herself.
She has lost her sense of balance ...
She is manic depressive (Bi-Polar) ...
... Unapproachable. Disengaged.
... Preying on her tormentors ...
She desperately needs troops to re-light her path ...
... and women -- mothers and young people -- from all corners of the globe to re-envision and create behind her veils
She longs for ...
...a metamorphosis
Climate Change News Roundup: Boatsie's Mothers Day Blast
Today's Top Picks
- Thomas Jefferson said "Every generation needs a revolution. "This is ours." iMatterMarch invites youth around the globe to march for a planet worth inheriting. Visit the website to find a march near you, or to organize your own March. This event continues through March 14 is being produced by Earth Island Institute and Kids VS Global Warming.
- IPCC Report Due out Tomorrow... The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its 900 page “Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation” providing the most comprehensive analysis ever of trends and perspectives for renewable energy and comparing 164 scenarios on renewable energy.
- Counterspill Charting 100 years of non-renewable fossil fuel disasters and counting. A timeline of nuclear, gas, coal disasters, augmented with stellar RSS news roundups and twitter feeds, Spin Central “skewing the news” and Action zones, feature stories and blogs, and a section called “In Your Face” - disaster videos gone viral, Counterspill is a powerful motivating, educational and organizing tool. "BigEnergy has their war room. Counterspill is ours!" (5*)
- First call for a European Assembly For Climate Justice in November/December 2011 Hopes for a rerun of last year's highly successful 4 day pre-COP conference.
- "Latest scientific results on climate change impacts are shocking" Recently released research suggests that the current climate and temperature targets fall short of avoiding dangerous climate change.
A recent assessment by Hansen and Sato looked at what the climate on the earth was like ten thousands years ago at a time when greenhouse gas concentrations were at the level, esteemed to be safe by the EU and the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), of 450 parts per million CO2. The scientists' conclusions are chilling: "...goals of limiting human-made warming to 2°C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster." The report contains a strong warning for European politicians: "If we are correct in that conclusion, the EU 2°C scenario [ed. the EU's goal and emission scenario to keep global warming below +2˚C] implies a sea level rise of many meters. It is difficult to predict a time scale for the sea level rise, but it would be dangerous and foolish to take such a global warming scenario as a goal."
- Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry Concerns over the commissions failure to engage in deep vigilance on the nuclear industry linked to lax government oversights.
- SEI Introducing the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability Two weeks to go for expert discussions on ecosystems and human development, the boundaries on a human dominated planet, and the great transformation towards sustainable development.
Gender-iffic
- UN Women Events at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC IV), Istanbul, Turkey, 9-13 May 2011
The newly established UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) will be co-hosting several events at the LDC IV Conferencein Istanbul. The events will highlight the contribution of women, particularly rural women, in the least developed countries, and spotlight how best to unlock their economic potential to accelerate development. Ms. Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, will address the events. All events are open to the media unless stated otherwise.
Honoring the Earth on Mother’s Day and Every Day
The buzz is everywhere: from the New York Times to the United Nations, and on every social media channel in between, women’s environmental leadership is gaining recognition on the world stage. We’re seeing women around the globe taking action to ensure a safe, healthy world for their great grand-children and beyond. Women are marching against toxic and nuclear pollution, defending the earth in the courtroom and boardroom, and singing, dancing and creating art for peace and sustainability. Alongside men, and for the good of their families and communities, women of all ages and backgrounds are creatively demanding a shift in worldwide environmental policies and practices.
The return of population control: Incentives, targets, and the backlash against Cairo. International women’s health activist Betsy Hartmann discusses the neo-liberal battle to disregard The Cairo Plan of Action, and focus on high birth rates in poor counties as the primary cause of social and environmental problems.
Elites in many countries are looking for scapegoats for the financial crisis, climate change, and widespread political upheaval. In the media, as well as many policy circles, blaming ‘overpopulation,’ and hence the fertility of poor women, especially women of color, is back in vogue. …
Neoliberalism’s vicious assault on social welfare has also intensified the view of poor people as unworthy burdens on the state, economy and society. The political mood is turning toward a re-embrace of population control. (download the report)
- Women on the road to Rio+20 convene at United Nations CSD-19"> Last week's summit on Sustainable development profiled just how important women's leadership is to the "tiered mission" of Rio+20, aka Earth Summit 2012 in creating a global green economy, and alleviate poverty. ... "women need to have more control over the Earth's resources and the new technologies that can help to provide clean water, clean energy, clean air, and clean agriculture. With more power and training in the hands of women, particularly in developing countries, there will be more jobs for women, healthier communities, more education for girls, and population stabilization."
Koch-aholics
And Still the Koch Brothers persist in pouring billions into climate denial spanking machine ...
- Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial
Greenpeace’s new research throws a focus on some of the information that has come to light over the last year, not least the Kochs’ previously-secret twice-annual gatherings of their rich and powerful allies to plot their strategy. In one of our three new case studies, we present a dossier showing that the media magnates invited to their summer 2010 meeting in Colorado have provided a convenient echo chamber for the Kochs' media network, thrown into overdrive as more people become aware of the Koch Brothers and how they use their oil money. (download the new report)
BUT WAIT!
- Peak oil is passed as renewable targets plummet In fact, Faith Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, says it happened in 2006, when the media and politicians and billionaire lobbyists were engaged in a full-out blitz to ensure the citizenry remained uninformed ... and unprepared. “The time is running out, the oil is today our lifeline, it is everywhere in the economy, if the prices go up or if there’s a supply disruption this will be definitely very bad news.”
By 2035, three-quarters of the world’s oil production from existing fields will need to be replaced, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook report 2010. By then, crude oil output from fields that were in production in 2009 will have fallen from 68 million barrels per day in 2009 to 16 million per day, leaving a gap of 50 million barrels per day to be filled.
Global Warming: Glaciers & Forests
- ArcGIC Explorer Grab the hand of your favorite climate de-nier and settle in for a spook ride through the various horrific scenarios depicting glacial retreat in Alaska. Zoom in on a glacier and "watch the erosion ensue."
- Climate Change Effects in Arctic More Extensive than Expected The NSF reports last week on a new study which reveals that the winter season has become almost two weeks shorter
The Arctic is one of the parts of the globe that is warming up fastest today. Measurements of air temperature show that the most recent five-year period has been the warmest since 1880, when monitoring began. Other data, from tree rings among other things, show that the summer temperatures over the last decades have been the highest in 2000 years. As a consequence, the snow cover in May and June has decreased by close to 20 per cent. The winter season has also become almost two weeks shorter – in just a few decades.
- The World’s Tropical Forests Are Already Feeling the Heat A leading authority on tropical forests reports on the impact of global warming on the species residing in tropical rainforests.
On Jan. 12, 2002, in the Australian state of New South Wales, biologist Justin Welbergen was observing a colony of flying foxes for his Ph.D. research. The temperatures that day on Australia’s subtropical, eastern coast reached record highs, soaring to 42.9 degrees C (109 degrees F) at the weather station closest to Welbergen’s study site — nearly 8 degrees C higher than the average summer maximum temperature.
The flying foxes, or giant fruit bats, normally just doze in the treetops through the day, but on this afternoon they were fanning themselves, panting frantically, jostling for shady spots, and licking their wrists in a desperate effort to cool down. Suddenly, when the thermometer hit 42 degrees C, the bats began falling from the trees. Most quickly died. Welbergen and his colleagues counted 1,453 flying foxes that died from the heat in one colony alone. The scorching heat that day killed at least 2,200 additional flying foxes in eight other colonies along a 250-kilometer stretch of coastline. All the deaths occurred in colonies where temperatures soared above 41.7 degrees C.
- Trees killed by Pine Beetles create more dangerous fires Yup, another dilemna. What do you do when an entire swath of forest, sapped by pine beetles, is petrol-ized into ‘standing fuel’? Cutting the trees down to prevent out-of-control wildfires endangers biodiversity, substantially increasing the difficulty of restoring ecosystems. The national Forest Service is researching methods for dealing with the beetle epidemic, which plagues pine tree species throughout the west, in New Jersey, Texas and the southeastern states and as far north as Canada.
Food
- Food prices driven up by global warming, study shows
Food prices have risen 20% and scientists warn that farming practices must be adapted to a warmer world and rises in global population
"Agriculture as it exists today evolved over 11,000 years of reasonably stable climate, but that climate system is no more." Adaptation is difficult because our knowledge of the future is not strong enough to drive new investments, he said, "so we just keep going, hoping for the best." Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute.
- The Future of Food No time down for Prince Charles of Wales, who journeyed across the pond last week just days after his son's Royal Wedding extravaganza. The Prince (who said farming systems should mirror “the miraculous ingenuity of nature”) hightailed it over the pond and away from all pomp and circumstance to participate in Georgetown University's “The Future of Food.” Speakers at the Wednesday event included Macarthur Fellow and urban farmer Will Allen, poet/farmer Wendell Barry, professor Marion Nestle and a special surprise visit by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Vilsack was bombarded with criticism during the Q&A over the USDA's perpetual blind eye to ecological destruction of yankee industrial agriculture.
One participant tackled the recent approval of GE alfalfa and the lack of labeling of genetically-engineered foods, leading to a heated exchange in which Secretary Vilsack defended himself as doing what the law requires and called upon activists to engage in civil discourse with industry. The Secretary pointed out that organizations on both sides of the GE alfalfa issue have sued him. Yet, he would prefer these issues not be decided in a courtroom and would like to revive a GE advisory group. He compared the two sides to “two sons” that he must respect and satisfy. The questioner’s curt reply: “One of your sons is a bully.”
- Concerns About Food Security Grow In Yemen Amid Escalating Protests "Rocked by months-long mass protests demanding immediate end to the 33-year rule of embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country is also suffering from lengthy blackouts and severe shortages in fuel, cooking gas and water."
Wildlife
- The week in wildlife - in pictures... From a newly hatched cygnet to giant squid and sleeping wolves, 7 days of pics ...
- Grey Wolves Lose Endangered Status, For Good?
Under pressure from hunters, ranchers and farmers, Congress removed the Rocky Mountain grey wolf from the endangered species list in Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington and Oregon this week, much to the consternation of environmentalists and animal-rights groups. Host Scott Simon speaks with reporter Jim Robbins about the first-ever act of Congress to remove an animal from the endangered species list.
Photocredits:
Burning Man 2010 By Scott Williams B&W
Polar Bear Sculpture, COP15, Copenhagen. December, 2009. By neontiger
Rice = Food = Life By NaPix -- Hmon
Burning Man 2010 By theartofdang
A rainy day on the Perfume River By NaPix -- Hmong Soul
Dusty Dusky Mantis by milkybarkid78
Lamplighters By Scott Ashkenaz
Conni's & Karen's "Space" By lemonyellowsky
Metamorphosis By PKG Photography