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.
Peruse the eKos Library to find previously listed diaries. You can also follow eKos on Twitter.
Today's editor: boatsie
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.ss
Running parallel to the upcoming US elections - almost clear out of site of most Americans as we engage head on in a ferocious battle for the future of our country - the climate movement appears to remain front and center in the 'global' worldview.
Yesterday's 7500 10/10/10 Global Work Parties are a clear indicator of just how world citizens and organizations possess a field dependent view of the world, one in which the USA's corporately controlled politics are just one of many, many factors in the battle for the survival of Planet Earth.
Over at The Wonk Room, resident climate reporter Brad Johnson, who for several months now has been tirelessly tracking The House’s Top Races Between Climate Heroes And Deniers, posted 10-10-10: Regrowing The Climate Movement, identifying events in districts which are key to the climate fight.
Demonstrating, one could project, that many of us are quite capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
Journalist Johann Hari is just one member of a gathering storm of alarmists, who are relentlessly sounding the warning that we must act now or miss the opportunity to catch up with the impacts of climate change before they do us all in. In an August 25 article in The Independent, Hari vents: How much proof do the global warming deniers need?
Given the stakes, the reasons why so many people still refuse to accept the evidence can seem oddly trivial. A common one is: "It snowed a lot in the US and Britain last year. Where was your warming then, eh?" But scientific theories are based on patterns, not individual events. You might know a 90-year-old woman who has smoked a pack of cigarettes every day of her life, and is totally healthy. (I do.) It doesn't disprove the theory that smoking causes lung cancer. In the same way, one heavy snowfall doesn't prove anything if it is part of a wider overall pattern of dramatic warming. And that snow probably was. While it snowed a lot in a few places, there were at the very same time harsher, more bitter droughts in many more places – making it globally the fifth hottest winter ever recorded, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (All the others were in the past decade). And that winter is your punchline proof that warming isn't happening?
But the broader public mood, smeared like sun-screen over us all, isn't active denial. No – it's the desire to endlessly postpone this issue for another day. In 1848, a 25-year-old man called Phineas Gage was working on constructing the American railroads. It was his job to lay explosives to clear rocks out of the way – but one day his explosive went off too soon, and a huge metal rod went through his skull and out the other side. Amazingly, he survived – but his personality changed. Suddenly, he was incapable of thinking about the future. The idea of restraining himself was impossible to grasp. If he had an urge, he would act on it at once. He could only ever live in an eternal present. As a civilisation, we are beginning to look like Phineas Gage on a planetary scale.
(snip)
Nature doesn't follow political fashion. Global warming may not be hot today, but the planet is – hotter than ever. When you stare out over the wave of Weather of Mass Destruction we are unleashing, who looks crazy – the protesters, or the people who have yet to join them?
As the Tianjin climate talks ended this weekend with little progress towards resolving differences over last year's Copenhagen Accord, plans for next month's COP16 in Cancun are well underway.
The UNFCCC has taken every precaution to prevent the massive demonstrations, which accompanied the official talks last year. Klimaforum last April issued its protest about the choice of Cancún, and in particular, the decision to house the official COP16 talks behind the lush gated Moon Palace Hotel with the alternative conferences over four miles away at the city’s new convention center.
"The fact has not yet officially announced but already known to many, that headquarters site, the Moon Palace Hotel, will be removed from the site (the Cancún Messe) in where they want to lock up the national and international groups they have much to contribute on Climate Change, shows so loud and clear that anyone not accredited by groups government will not be able to access the sites where negotiations would be plenary."
Klimaforum 10
We call upon all social movements, autonomous organizations of indigenous people, nomads, peasants and fishermen, workers, women, youth, teachers, students, neighbors, social activists, environmental, ecological and animal rights activists, professionals, pensioners, thinkers, scientists, and citizens in general to participate in the Klimaforum10, to be held in Cancun – Puerto Morelos, Mexico, between the 26th of November and the 11th of December 2010, in parallel to the COP16 hosted by the United Nations.
To date, the following are the scheduled events. (And it's not too late to register an event or to volunteer in exchange for free boarding at the Global EcoVillage, free pass to events and three vegetarian meals a day.)
• NUCLEAR ENERGY-FREE WORLD
Pacifism; Demitiralization; Deglobalization; Global democracy.
• ABANDON OUR DEPENDANCE ON FOSSIL FUELS
Peak Oil; Radical reduction of energy consumption; Renewable energy.
• SACRALIZE WATER
• The spiritual, ecological and social dimension of water; Desertification; Privatization of water.
• SAVE ANIMALS AND PLANTs
Animal products consumption?; Trade of endangered species; Rejection of genetically modified organisms.
• PROTECT FORESTS AND JUNGLES
Are trade mechanisms a real solution? REDD, REDD+; Preservation of forests, reefs and mangroves.
• RESTRUCTURE AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND LIVESTOCK
La Vía Campesina; Elimination of large fish and livestock industries; Relocation towards local production and consumption; Rejection of patenting seeds and forms of life.
• REDUCE TRANSPORT AND URBANIZATION
Discourage car use and transport in general; Depave; Diversity in soil use; Neighborhood and cooperative autonomy.
• MINIMIZE WASTE
Radical reduction of packaging; Eliminate disposables; Relocate waste management.
• ECONOMIC DEGROWTH
Ecology over economy; Elimination of national indexes of economic growth and the GDP; Reject Free Trade agreements; Reject consumer society and slave work.
• CLIMATE JUSTICE
Recognition of the historical climatic debt; End the plundering of the Global South; Climatic Tribunal; Mother Earth Rights.
• ACCELERATING THE TRANSITION
Strengthen networks of ecological communities; Encourage food sovereignty; Halt extraction of fossil fuels and metals; Local autonomy; Equalize wealth and work; Promote cooperatives to support the most vulnerable.
• ANCIENT CULTURES REVIVAL
Preserve traditions, languages, handcrafts and cultural wisdom; Encourage local solutions for local problems.
• FALSE SOLUTIONS
Market mechanisms: carbon trading, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM); Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD, REDD+, REDD++); Remove World Bank from administrating environmental funds.
Welcome to La Vía Campesina, an autonomous, independent, and apolitical global movement, representing 70 counties from Asia, Africa, Europe and the American continent and representing the voices of peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples, farm workers, the landless, rural women and rural youth.
Listen to what they say about Climate Change:
* The rains don’t come as they did before, which has altered our traditional production cycles.
* There are more and more devastating extreme climate events, like hurricanes, cyclones, and monsoons that destroy our farms, and ever more severe droughts that kill our crops while our animals die from lack of water.
* There are more and more devastating extreme climate events, like hurricanes, cyclones, and monsoons that destroy our farms, and ever more severe droughts that kill our crops while our animals die from lack of water.
* In no case have the bad governments or the corporations responded adequately to the mounting losses we are suffering, nor do they take responsibility for the wounds they are inflicting on the Mother Earth and our climate.
... and what they recognize as the "False Solutions" to climate change promoted by transnational corporations and governments:
* Carbon credits and trading mechanisms are really just privatizing our atmosphere and climate. They allow polluters of the atmosphere to keep polluting, and are leading to massive land grabs and mass evictions of peasant communities so that giant corporations can "cultivate climate credits" in the form of environmentally disastrous monoculture plantations of Eucalyptus, etc., that are really Green Deserts.
* Agrofuels are another lie that allows corporate criminals to highjack public coffers to plant industrial monocultures – many times with GMOs - and evict peasants and family farmers from our lands – while they do not significantly moderate climate effects.
In promoting its position, La Vía Campesina recognizes the industrial food system as one of primary CAUSES OF GLOBAL WARMING, citing that between 44 and 57% of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated by the IFS, 15-20% by food processing packaging and transport, and 15-18% from resulting deforestation.
Thousands of Caravans: Globalize the Struggle! Globalize Hope!
"Cancun will be a decisive moment for the climate justice and food sovereignty movements to make our voices heard," says La Vía Campesina in its September announcement of plans to launch a fleet of caravans from all over Mexico to convene for a mass demonstration in Mexico City on November 30. The caravans will arrive in Cancun on December 3 for the Alternative Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice, the Via Campesina encampment, and other actions as alternatives to the official sessions of the COP-16. A major motivating factor for this alternative conference was the UNFCCC's decision to exclude Cochabamba's "World Peoples Conference On Climate Change And The Rights of Mother Earth" from the official agenda in Cancun.
"We also call on our friends and allies to create "thousands of Cancuns" by holding events and actions in your own communities on December 7th to add strength and visibility to the mobilizations that will be taking place in Mexico. The climate crisis will not be solved in December by the COP-16, and most of us will not be present in Cancun; this is an opportunity to build on a global movement led by communities to counter the climate crisis. Please see the official Via Campesina call to action attached for further information. Link
Other "Alternative" COP16 Links
COP 16: What Mexicans are saying ...
Sign up Green
New Life Cancun
tcktcktck's Fresh Air Center
Oil Rig at Night. An oil rig stands in the western Gulf of Mexico about 15 miles from shore, Oct. 2, 2010. Rigs dot the area. Tell Congress, No New Drilling Period! Photo by Greenpeace USA 2010
Today's Editor's Choice is Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #407, a salute to the ongoing Pulitzer-quality work of the indefatigable DKos Gulfwatcher's team.
This afternoon, Yasuragi points us to a recent post in Another American Lie: After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes
WASHINGTON — Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.
Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.
(snip)
In total, officials have contracted to spend more than $37.3 million in federal money across eight states along the Gulf or north of the Gulf in the path of migratory birds. The states are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.
Alabama has doled out $1.59 million, and Mississippi, $5.15 million, according to Puckett.
The program, run out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is funded with money from the 2008 federal farm bill.
And a reminder as well to revisit Pam LaPier's exceptional Gulf Recovery: How to Help. Pam, who wrote last April 13:
I was a lurker for many years here at Daily Kos until the day the Deep Horizon oil rig exploded and ripped a gash into Mother Earth causing her blood to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Since that day I have spent my time on Daily Kos deeply immersed in the Mothership and her child ROV's finding comfort and commiseration with people who have shown me that America will always have hope as long as such people exist.
WarrenS made a New Year's Resolution to write a letter advocating climate action every day. The result is over two hundred letters to congresspeople, newspapers, President Obama, and more. Warren has even had letters published in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Learn Warren's letter writing technique here. Be sure to steal his stuffand visit his blog.
Month 10, Day 11: Meanwhile...
The UK Telegraph’s environmental correspondent, Louise Grey, writes about the likelihood of failure (again) in Cancun this year, in an article accompanied by the single most gratuitously irrelevant photograph imaginable for an article on global climate change. The comments on this article are a mine of stupid.
The inability of the United States and China to reach consensus on reducing greenhouse gases is a single small, depressing chapter in a planetary tragedy. America’s inaction can be ascribed to a few score members of the U.S. Senate who are either in profound denial about the facts of global warming or who wish to avoid offending those of their constituents who are in similar denial. That this is an election year renders it even more difficult; very few American politicians are ready to tackle the famously deep-pocketed fossil fuel interests. China, for its part, has little reason to trust the United States. And thus this year’s attempt to find agreement on the gravest existential threat humanity has ever faced seems likely to founder — just like last year’s. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide is at almost four hundred parts per million and rising. The clock is ticking for us all.
Warren Senders
It's a dead heat ... two images of hope from Pakistan ... Also, stay on top of
Pakistan news.
Sukkur to Jacobabad. River Indus. Sukkur Barrage. October 8, 2010 By Faisal Qureshi
The Australian Medical Task Force provided life-changing medical assistance when they presented a long term polio sufferer and flood victim with crutches on October 3, 2010. Nadia practices walking on her new crutches as her mother (right) and Medical Officer Lieutenant Joel Hissink (left) look on. By Aust Defence Force
Annoucements
If you love the environment, and have a couple hours to spare... consider becoming an eKos editor!!
You can e-mail us at eKos350atgmaildotcom to let us know you're interested.
Advertise here!
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 10/11/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Macca's Meatless Monday...Apple Scruffs | beach babe in fl | 18:01:08 | eKos, climate change, meat production, livestock production, food crisis |
What plant is a "supermarket on a trunk"? | NourishingthePlanet | 17:45:23 | Africa, Agriculture, Food, Food Security, Indigenous |
Science Tidbits | possum | 15:32:14 | Teaching, Learning, Science, eKos |
Climate Collaboration Contest | gmoke | 15:20:15 | environment, ecology, climate, climate change, collaboration |
Florida Is For Sale - Amendment 4 | JDWolverton | 13:20:53 | Florida, Land Use Plans, Amendment 4, Green, eKos |
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #407 | shanesnana | 09:32:19 | Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Macondo, Gulf of Mexico |
eKos diaries from 10/10/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
A More Ancient World (Biodiversity Diary): Coevolution | matching mole | 21:35:35 | coevolution, mutualism, conservation, ekos, evolution |
Sunday Train: Northeastern HSR Alignments & The Move to Tuesdays | BruceMcF | 19:55:20 | ekos, HSR, transportation, passenger rail, Amtrak |
10/10/10: Massive worldwide action to cut CO2 emissions | eKos | 19:52:32 | Recommended, 10/10/10, 350ppm, ekos, global work parties, climate |
10-10-10: Regrowing The Climate Movement | The Cunctator | 14:21:13 | global warming, climate, 101010, 350, climate change |
10/10/10 All over the world | boatsie | 13:36:36 | 101010, ekos, 350ppm, 10/10/10, climate |
Guess the progressive: 10/10/10 edition | gloriasb | 11:14:08 | Guess the progressive, progressive history, progressive heroes, progressive trivia, political trivia |
Dawn Chorus Birdblog: Talkin' 'Tails | lineatus | 09:06:00 | Recommended, birds, birding, teaching, learning, dawn chorus |
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #406 - Sunday Wrap | Lorinda Pike | 07:18:12 | Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Macondo, Gulf of Mexico |