Note: The spotlight will be on vacation for the Labor Day Weekend.
The spotlight is a weekly compilation of links and excerpts from Daily Kos environmentally related posts. Any posts that are included in the collection do not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of them. Because of the interconnectedness of the subject matter, some of these posts could be placed in more than one category.
CRITTERS AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Morning at the Bosque del Apache Refuge by BrushyCanyon. It’s a little early for the big Crane and Goose migrations, but the beautiful songbirds are hard at work. Yesterday Ms Canyon and I hit the road from Abq at about 0545 in a cool morning rain. By the time we got to Socorro the rain had lifted, the sun was rising, and a few patches of blue sky were showing. As we reached the Refuge the clouds were breaking up and the sun was bright. The birds were a bit wet, cold and hungry. This Swainson’s Hawk found a sunny perch and was carefully preening and drying their feathers before the morning hunt.
Bucket - Friday sequence, Little Blue Heron by CaptBLI. I normally see Little Blue Herons when they are in non-breeding plumage. I heard the croaks of Egrets and Herons. Suddenly, a Little Blue emerged from under the low limbs of nearby trees. It hunted as it moved forward. The Heron stopped on the shore and began hunting (Video here). I had not seen the hunting technique it used before. I suspect it was sweeping it’s head back and forth to focus on the prey. The tip of its beak was also used in this movement (possibly as a lure?).
Daily Bucket - Limpkins in Mississippi by CaptBLI. What a wonderful weekend for wading birds. Last weekend, I was out at two different locations expecting to see shore birds and got my wish, twice over. I was thrilled to report the single Limpkin I saw at Grenada Lake (last Friday) as I filled out the official Mississippi State Audubon (and ebird) reports. The responses here were generous and I thank you all for those.I decided to visit a closer site (Sardis Lake) for shore birds Sunday. I did get to witness Killdeer foraging and enjoyed their behavior. Here is the quaint short video of “little peepers.” I never tire of these little birds.
CDFW releases 23 million fall-run Chinook salmon as fishing closure continues on ocean, rivers by Dan Bacher. As the salmon fishing closure continues on California’s ocean waters and rivers, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced yesterday that it has completed the release of approximately 23 million juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon raised at its four Central Valley anadromous fish hatcheries. These facilities include the Feather River Fish Hatchery, the Nimbus Fish Hatchery on the American River, the Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery and the Merced River Hatchery. [...] “This year’s production goals were increased as a coordinated effort among state and federal partnering agencies to help fall-run Chinook salmon overcome impacts from an extended drought that increased water temperatures and decreased water flow throughout the Central Valley during critical salmon spawning and rearing periods,” the CDFW stated in an announcement. “Drought conditions coupled with Thiamine Deficiency Complex, a vitamin deficiency that impacts reproduction, have reduced in-river spawning success the past several years.
The Daily Bucket - Oddities Observed in the Idaho Woods by foresterbob. Trees have a great deal of redundancy engineered into their structure. They can be deformed, they can lean at scary angles, or their boles can be quite rotten, yet they remain standing and continue to grow. Despite being seriously deformed by canker disease at an early age, the lodgepole pine in the photo at right has not only avoided falling down or snapping in two, it actually is doing very well. This individual has certainly earned its scientific name, Pinus contorta.
The Daily Bucket - Idaho Storm Clouds, Photo Diary by foresterbob. Whenever I’m working in the west, I enjoy taking pictures of stormy landscapes. I often have the advantage of wide open spaces, where power lines and billboards don’t interfere with the pictures. When the horizon is miles away, the clouds can be a major part of the scene. This week, the remnants of Hurricane Hilary reached Idaho. Monday saw steady rain, alternating between light and heavy spells. The rainfall total for McCall was 2.33 inches. That’s a lot of rain for normally-dry August.While the rain was coming down, the sky was uniformly overcast. As the rain moved out, the clouds became more interesting, and I began taking pictures.
Dawn Chorus -- Howard Marsh Metropark, Part 2 by Clickadee. In a recent Dawn Chorus, I wrote about the history of Howard Marsh Metropark and why I’m so heartened by the transformation of farmland along southwest Lake Erie to thriving wetland in such a short time. And gave kudos especially the public/private consortium that planned, funded and carried out the project. What turned out to be Howard Marsh Part 1 covered my visits in July this year. This diary highlights a visit on August 19th. I went with my birding pal, both of us hoping to see a Wilson’s Phalarope that had been reported on eBird, plus whatever other water and shorebirds might happen by.
CLIMATE
Nick Anderson:
The Inflation Reduction Act: It's Already Doing A Lot of Good by NebraskaDemocrat. The IRA makes significant investments aimed at the manufacture of electric cars, encourages wind and solar energy production, provides tax credits for Americans to encourage energy efficiency, places restrictions on the the burning of coal, and has even more tax incentives aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases by up to 40% by 2030. The IRA’s climate provisions largely relies on tax credits offering individuals and businesses a variety of payouts to adopt renewable technologies, with the leading example being electric vehicles powered by green energy sources. “Right at the beginning, the Biden administration decided that its climate policy would be all carrots, no sticks — that it would provide incentives to do the right thing, not penalties for doing the wrong thing. This strategy, it was hoped, would prove politically feasible in a way that, say, a carbon tax wouldn’t. And this hope has been vindicated.” Paul Krugman of the NY Times.
In my coastal district, Nancy Mace voted against combating the climate crisis by Michael B. Moore. Last week, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant piece of climate change legislation in American history — and a bill that my opponent, MAGA Rep. Nancy Mace, voted against. [...] Here in the Lowcountry, we know better than most that the threat posed by climate change is real — just look at last month’s dangerous heat wave. It’s on us to take decisive action to protect our flourishing coastal communities from environmental disasters. For South Carolina, government inaction is no longer an option. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to embrace proactive climate policy, keeping our planet healthy and habitable for generations to come.
LIVE KINDLY, But Post Snarky: 'Goop-esque' Luxury Brand Finds Virality Critiquing Consumerism by ClimateDenierRoundup. In addition to once again showing how the fossil fuel industry and its stooges dominate Facebook ads and organic content, this week's edition of the Climate Monitor also covered how "a pro-climate brand discovered the secret sauce to going viral online." "Now, on the surface," Climate Monitor explained, "this account – and the brand behind it, LIVE KINDLY– is a luxury eco-friendly shopping experience that offers products in beauty, home, food, and fashion." "Live Kindly gives off a very strong Goop-esque vibe—an ultra-luxury, self-care-based climate activism experience." (For the uninitiated, Goop is actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s luxury wellness brand that has been accused of spreading medical misinformation.) But despite its similarities with Goop, LIVEKINDLY regularly posts viral climate content, the tone and tenor of which targets Goop's elite spenders: "Online, however, LIVE KINDLY has cultivated an incredibly strong presence in the climate-related space – a 'community of 774k+ planet champions' that pulls no punches when it comes to attacking people who harm the planet. With snarky posts that bash consumerism and billionaires (which is exactly how Gen Z likes their social media), the @livekindly Instagram account has amassed a lot of attention and a huge following."
Even Most Republicans Aren't Deniers Any More, Consider Climate A Problem, Want Gov't Action by ClimateDenierRoundup.Why would a specific demographic of people overwhelmingly believe something that's false? There are many possible reasons, but a big one is that billions of dollars have been spent to cultivate the particular false view that climate change isn’t a problem. For example, the Washington Post’s coverage of recent polling from WaPo and University of Maryland carried the headline, "Democrats and Republicans [are] deeply divided on extreme weather." [...] "In 2023, 87 percent of Democratic-leaning adults say extreme weather is becoming more severe, up slightly from 82 percent in 2019. By contrast, 37 percent of Republican-leaning adults say extreme weather is becoming more severe — ticking down from 42 percent in 2019." "More than 9 in 10 Democrats (93 percent) agree with the scientific consensus that human activity is causing changes to the world’s climate, compared with 55 percent of Republicans."
Edison Electric Institute Indicates Dedication To Denial With New CEO Paid By Your Power Bills by ClimateDenierRoundup. For at least the last seven years, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) has tried to shed its image as a disinfo-spreading fossil fuel lobby shop by another name (utility industry trade group), but all that's probably for naught given its new CEO. That’s not to say that EEI has been particularly successful at greenwashing the industry lately anyway. Last July, the trade group was namechecked in a New York Times op-ed about how utility customers are paying to block clean energy, in part through groups like EEI. Then earlier this month, HEATED dedicated a whole column to EEI's duplicity, reporting on Leah Stokes' findings that EEI touted carbon capture — right up until the latest EPA regulations require it, at which point the trade group suddenly decided that it's not ready for prime time. It’s the same story for hydrogen as a replacement for methane-fired power plants, something EEI's claiming isn't ready, even as its own members begin making investments that indicate otherwise.
Cowboy State Daily Takes Advantage Of Local News Deserts to Launder Climate Disinfo by ClimateDenierRoundup. Last week, Jem Bartholomew and Dhrumil Mehta of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism published an absolute must-read in the Columbia Journalism Review, exploring how Cowboy State Daily, a conservative media outlet funded by Daily Caller donor Foster Friess, has filled a growing Wyoming news desert with climate disinformation: “Tow Center analysis of Cowboy State Daily content found the five most commonly cited institutes/think tanks in energy stories all had links to climate denial. These were: the Heartland Institute (mentioned in fourteen articles), Manhattan Institute (eleven), American Petroleum Institute (ten), Institute for Energy Research (ten) and Competitive Enterprise Institute (seven). All five appear in nonprofit DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks organizations that ‘delay and distract’ on the need to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.”
After Hottest Month In Human History, Deniers Resort To Endorsing Adaptation As Climate Solution by ClimateDenierRoundup. Between July's record-breaking heat around the world, to the devastating wildfires in Canada and Hawai’i, to Hilary dropping years’ worth of rain in a day in California, extreme weather is making it increasingly difficult for deniers to act like nothing is happening. As a result, we're likely going to see a bit of a shift in rhetoric as deniers attempt to remain at least remotely credible, particularly at more 'elite' outlets like the National Review, the self-styled arbiter of conservative politics. The Review has long published all manner of climate disinfo, but last Friday, a long piece by Joel Kotkin and Hügo Krüger struck a slightly different tone: “Adaptation Is the Answer.” Yes, we've officially made it one step further down (up?) the denial ladder, from “It's not happening!,” to “It's not our fault!” to “It's not that bad!” to, finally, with the evidence piled up, “We can just adapt!”
Overnight News Digest: Thousands of emperor penguin chicks drown as ice vanishes from climate change by Magnifico. We will keep ratcheting up the heat as long as we continue dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Only when we finally stop burning fossil fuels (or somehow magically neutralize their emissions) will we stop adding to the human-caused heating of the planet. What is easy to forget with all the cacophony and politicization around climate change today is this: We completely control when and at what level human-caused global heating will stabilize. So when the IPCC says we must reduce CO2 emissions by 43% by 2030, it is saying, in effect, “this is what you must do to have any chance of limiting human-caused global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures”. At the same time the IPCC is telling us we must do this, it is also telling us we’re not doing this. Not even close.
Major Victory for Climate Activists by Alan Singer. In a major victory for climate activists that, if it stands on appeal, will be a powerful weapon for in the fight to prevent catastrophic change, a Montana state district court judge ruled that the failure of the State of Montana to protect the environment from the impact of climate change violates the state’s constitution. Montana’s constitution, as amended in 1972, includes the passage that the state should “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” A 2012 Republican backed law prohibiting state regulators from considering climate impact when approving mining projects was ruled unconstitutional. In her decision, Judge Kathy Seeley wrote that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury.” She argued that the sixteen plaintiffs in the case, ranging in age from 5 to 22, have a constitutional right to a healthful environment. [...] The law overturned by Judge Seely banned the state from considering “actual or potential impacts that are regional, national, or global in nature.” In May, Montana Republicans forced through the legislature a new law, House Bill 971, that is even more anti-climate. It bars any consideration of climate change when conducting environmental impact reviews. It is not clear how this law will be affected by Seely’s ruling.
'We are not doomed,' but we will be if we keep stalling by Meteor Blades. The everywhere-you-look occurrence of severe impacts from this climate chaos and the speed with which some effects have arrived that most scientists didn’t expect until late in this century or beyond has engendered in some people a profound sense of doom. It is no stretch to say that some climatologists are freaked out by the data they’re seeing. And you don’t have to search far on social media to find non-scientists predicting end of days, not the Rapture, but a secular apocalypse. Believe me, I get it. I’ve breathed the smoky air from distant wildfires, had friends who barely escaped the fire that incinerated Paradise, California, and others in Louisville, Colorado, whose house survived just blocks away from the fire that burned more than half the city’s homes. I frequently talk with friends and acquaintances who are stunned by what they’re seeing in their country, state, city, backyard. Every week, I read scores of climate-related articles and check out two or three journal studies. Since January, to the many books on the subject I’d read in the past, I’ve added 11 others with titles like “Nowhere Left to Go: How Climate Change Is Driving Species to the Ends of the Earth”: “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity”; “Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis”; and “Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet and How We Fight Back.” So I think it’s understandable that many people have become so-called climate “doomers.” I’m surprised more people haven’t.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Climate News by boatsie. Last week, I wrote about how I rely on the hope Bill McKibben provides in his substack The Crucial Years. This week he writes: “My work on this newsletter—and the community we’re building here together—sometimes feels a little bit that way to me; one of my jobs is to open up the tangle of politics and technology and economics and science that surrounds the climate crisis and let the sun shine in, beaming on the things that matter the most. Usually that requires just steadily beavering away. But in a moment as dangerous and dynamic as this one, we’re not actually going to win this fight the slow and steady way; we also need some dramatic change. This year has been high drama almost without cease—I started highlighting for you back in January the fear that we were going to see a truly horrific summer. Even I didn’t quite guess its extent—the hottest weather on our planet in at least 125,000 years, with all the chaos that implies.“ McKibben, a co-founder of 350.org, shifted his focus maybe two years ago to creating and working with The Third Act, an organization formed for baby boomers and older folks to work together on issues involving climate change.
Climate change is not the only problem caused by excess CO2 by DanielEMichelsen. Probably the worst effect is on our bodies. Try holding your breath. Do it long enough and your body forces you to breath. Why? How does your body know it needs to breath? The buildup of carbon dioxide in your blood is what makes you feel the need to breath. It is not the need for oxygen. We think of carbon dioxide as nontoxic, but that is false. Carbon dioxide is very toxic to your tissues at higher levels. Chemicals will disperse through diffusion and move from areas of higher concentration to areas of lower concentration. But you blood level of CO2 can never be any lower than the level in the atmosphere. We will reach a point, if we haven’t already, when people become less mentally acute. As levels continue to rise, we are all one big laboratory experiment. As we increasingly need to all become more reasonable to solve our environmental problems, we just might all have brain fog from excess levels of CO2.
Overnight News Digest: Urgency and agency—our winning combo to manage climate doomerism by Besame. Now that the effects of climate change are unmistakably present in our daily lives—myriad wildfires around the globe, 100-year floods occurring every few years, eerily warm winters, hurricane warnings in California, and much more—people have studied their thesauruses for increasingly dramatic alarming horrifying, terrifying, dire descriptions for these events. Even we who haven’t been gazing at our navels (investment portfolios) saying “la la la,” we who have seen climate change reality all along and work to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, we, too, are dragged into “it’s too late doomerism” by the media, corporations responsible for a large amount of carbon emissions, and our peers. While we’ve been acting with agency because we recognize the urgency of climate chaos, we, too, need the doomerism reality check that Michael Mann has been providing all along. Check out this interview from 2021—“Urgency and Agency”: Michael Mann on Conquering Climate Despair—where Mann discusses how to sidestep the attempts to stall our actions.
The Daily Bucket. Cool summer. No AC required. My electric bill and wallet feels the love by funningforrest. I freely admit I don’t pay that close of attention to global climate change figures, and only pay passing attention to what’s happening over here on the west coast of the U.S. overall, but I know from many summers of experience how hot it has been up here in Plumas County in Augusts past. It was not unusual to have at least one or two occasions during the month when the temperature would hit triple-digits, albeit this was infrequent and not predictable. But up in the 90s as a regular thing for a couple of weeks every August? Oh, you betcha. It had a certain benefit as a kid: we split for the Spanish Creek swimming hole early and mostly came home only because we got hungry. This summer, though, I’d venture to say the rivers and lakes haven’t warmed up all that much. I guess that doesn’t matter much to me anyway, as I haven’t really been swimming in years. What does matter is that with the cool-ish temperatures my air conditioner hasn’t been on much, and that means my electric bill doesn’t contain half the pain of previous summer bills. And that is a fine thing. Less electricity consumption makes me feel better about my impact on the world, too.
EXTREME WEATHER & RELATED EVENTS
Canada On Fire! by River46. Democrats need to get in front of some microphones and cameras and really fight for people! More Democrats need to just fall on their swords rhetorically and say what needs to be said. Let the MSM black them out. Are people really going to let Big Oil and the mega corps ruin everything? Oceans are heating up which will lead to fish dies offs, corals are already dying. The US needs to nationalize Big Oil and announce they are going to phase out oil in X number of years! They are ripping us off because they are a cartel! They are all colluding together to keep prices high and rip off average consumers, we have record production.
Heat index of 120F+ in the shade from Heat Dome and corn sweat. Climate crisis seemingly everywhere by Pakalolo. Kate Marvel, senior climate scientists at Project Drawdown via MSNBC: It’s hard to deny what’s going on, but there’s still money to be made in delaying climate action. Thus, the denier narrative has shifted from saying climate change isn’t real to saying climate change is real, but we’ll just adapt to it. The “just” is the part that worries me. Clearly, we need to adapt. Our society was built for a climate that no longer exists, and we have no choice but to change. But we should never pretend adaptation is the easy way out. [...] Adaptation is harder than the “we’ll just adapt” crowd suggests because the climate keeps changing. When people say “adapt,” I always wonder: Adapt to what? Suppose we manage to “adapt” to the current game of whatever hellscape roulette we’re experiencing. What will we do when the world changes again? If we do nothing to stop climate change, then more and more places will become uninhabitable — and how can we adapt to that? The simple truth is this: Until humans stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the planet will keep warming. Adaptation is a moving target until the climate stabilizes. That won’t happen until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero.
Overnight News Digest: Stronger storms, increased wildfires, excessive heat--the future is now by maggiejean. Deutsche Welle: France issued an extreme heat warning Monday for four regional departments as temperatures scorched the country once again. The "red alerts," which allow local authorities to take measures to protect people from the heat, are in place in the southern regions of Rhone, Drome, Ardeche and Haute-Loire. Temperatures are expected to peak at 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rhone. This is the first time weather service Meteo France issued the alert this year.
ENERGY & EMISSIONS
Carbon capture and storage, the ok the bad and the really bad by Groundnut. Oil companies and oil producing countries have settled on carbon capture and sequestration as their climate policy. Carbon capture is the idea that carbon can be captured from a smokestack. The product is high pressure carbon dioxide that is either stored underground or used to produce more oil. One of the items that came out of COP27 is an emphasis on carbon capture and storage. For those of you who don’t know, the inflation reduction act contains a subsidy of $85/ton dollars per ton of carbon dioxide captured and stored from industrial processes and $60/ton used for enhanced oil recovery. It also includes a subsidy of $180/ton of carbon dioxide captured from the air if stored. Carbon capture and storage seems to be a coming thing. Natural gas and coal companies have determined that they can capture their emissions, and don’t have to be phased out after all. So they are now investing in exploration and drilling. My personal biases in this regard is that I quit Citizens Climate Lobby over their support of it, although that was only the last of a lot of stupid things they did.
Renewable Tuesday: Objectives in Media are Closer than They Appear by Mokurai. Peak Coal: 2013. Peak Oil: 2023. Peak Natural Gas: Definitely before 2033. Peak Carbon: Before you know it. Where will the Greenwashers and the Oil and Gaslighters retreat to next? Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani once noted that The Stone Age came to an end, but not for lack of stones. The renewable energy revolution is happening faster than you think: Both China and the US, the world's top carbon emitters, are racing ahead with solar panels and wind turbines. It is even looking like we may soon see the beginning of the end for fossil fuels
Yearly Greenhouse Gas Pollution From Proposed Sites Dam Project Would Equal 80,000 Gas-Powered Cars by Dan Bacher. As U.S. and global oil production is projected to reach record levels this year and a record heat wave hits the nation, Patagonia and Friends of the River (FOR) have just released an alarming scientific report on the environmental impacts that massive greenhouse emissions generated by the Sites Dam and Reservoir Project will have on California.Patagonia is the Ventura-based outdoor apparel company has supported grassroots groups working to find solutions to the environmental crisis for more than four decades, while Friends of the River is one of California’s most respected conservation organizations, according to a press statement. A new analysis using the comprehensive All-Res Modeling Tool estimated the greenhouse gas emissions that would be caused by building and operating the Sites Dam and Reservoir Project — an environmentally destructive, salmon-killing boondoggle backed by agribusiness, water agencies and the Newsom administration, according to critics. Read the full report HERE.
Ecuadorians vote against oil drilling in the Amazon Rainforest by Pakalolo. I don't share the good news on the climate and biodiversity primarily because there isn't much to report. Still, an event yesterday is worthy of visibility, especially when people's power can collectively defeat the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry in a victory for the people of the Amazon and the planet's climate. Ecuadorians voted to prevent the state oil company from drilling in a part of the Amazon Rainforest, home to uncontacted tribes and biodiversity. Surprisingly, having National Park status in Ecuador did not protect Yasuni National Park in eastern Ecuador from the extraction industries. The fight to protect this world wonder has taken decades to achieve. The vote is a great victory, and with the election of LuLa in Brazil, there may be some hope for a biome that is currently at severe risk of collapse. Much more needs to be done; no place is safe from Big Oil. The Eastern Amazon has already tipped from a carbon sink to a carbon source and is transitioning from rainforest to savannah.
AGRICULTURE, GARDENING & PUBLIC LANDS
In Defense of the People who Pick Your Crops by McCrowlerr.Consider yourself lucky that you live in a system where one class of people are forced to live in grinding, hopeless, unbelievable poverty so that you can have those cheap vegetables that you look down on so much. When you see a migrant picker on the street you should get down on your knees and thank them. Seriously. You should be glad people from Mexico want to come to pick your damn crops. Dammit, I’m getting angry. So I will stop. Cesar Chavez was a saint and a hero.
Climate resilience: Grocery Row Garden by Gardening Toad. The Grocery Row Garden aka Linear Food Forest is a style of food gardening which takes the ideas of the classic food forest and makes them more intimate and simple to harvest from. It may be more climate resilient than a traditional row garden because the diversity of plants makes it more likely that some will survive and produce under harsh conditions. The dense planting also buffers temperature and moisture extremes, protecting the soil. Grocery Row Gardens typically concentrate on variety and nutrition rather than calories. Calorie staples are generally grown elsewhere in the garden
ACTION
Global banks are pouring billions into the climate crisis. It needs to end now by Erin Tulley. The world’s largest banks continue to finance the major drivers of the climate crisis, pouring $673 billion into fossil fuel companies last year alone. The world’s 60 biggest banks invested over $5,500,000,000,000 over seven years into the fossil fuel industry. Since the Paris Agreement, top Wall Street banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, have pledged their commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Now, we have the opportunity for Congress to act. Democratic Sen. Edward Markey and Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan have recently reintroduced the Fossil Free Finance Act, which would require big banks to stop financing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Now we need the rest of Congress to cosponsor and then pass this bill. Sign the petition: Demand banks stop funding the climate crisis!
[Note: The climate strike action began at San Francisco City Hall in 2019. The following entries are excerpts from “letters” that were issued each week of the action.]
Climate Strike -- Restorative Justice (week 58) by birches. This week’s topic is RESTORATIVE JUSTICE. There’s a Lot We Have to Fix. Restorative Justice Will Let Us Fix It. Restorative Justice (RJ) is a system derived from Native American/Aboriginal/First Nations, African, and Maori practices that’s been applied in schools, prisons, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions worldwide. It’s cheaper than the justice system we have, it reduces recidivism, it produces lasting results much faster, and it feels more effective to the vast majority of those who participate in it. This is possible because the aim of RJ is to regain balance. Because it focuses on wrongs done to the individual and community (versus the state), it is applicable to all injustices, including ecocide, and to all victims, including non-humans. By focusing on the victim/s needs, and not on the perpetrator, RJ reduces the ability of the perpetrator to claim victimization and to feel vindicated or isolated.
Climate Strike -- Start With The Easy Stuff (week 59) by birches. Are you waiting for disaster before you act? It’s here. General agreement on action? Hasn’t your enlightened self-interest kicked in yet? Because we’re well past tipping points and on our way to unlivable by 2070, and presumably you’ve got some skin in the game. And this is just the easy stuff. We also need you to: Implement countywide blackwater recycling; plant an SF native urban forest with green pathways for plants and animals throughout the city; move immediately to all electric and clean energy transportation, and permanently shut down some roads to car traffic now; eliminate all single-use plastics in SF and move toward eliminating all plastics that are not reusable, locally recyclable, and biologically safe; immediately require all local, carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy — eliminating all methane heating and cooking and assisting fireplace-to-electric heating is a no-brainer; and focus everything on making SF resilient and self-sufficient.
Climate Strike -- Scope (week 60) by birches. Adaptation and mitigation only work if you’re taking action sufficient to the scope of the problem. Examples of superficial actions that ignore the scope of a problem are: treating a gangrenous leg by trimming the toe nails; fighting a house fire with a plant mister; or sheltering from a hurricane in the basket of a hot air balloon. These are all insufficient responses to the problems presented. Methane (natural gas, CH4), a greenhouse gas in its own right that also produces CO2 (another greenhouse gas) when combusted, is clearly a lose/lose actor in climate change. It is not necessary and it is destructive. We have to stop drilling for, making pipelines for, building for, and using methane, period. So why are you only getting rid of methane infrastructure in some government buildings that are going to be built or drastically remodeled? Why are you clipping the toenails and not treating the gangrene? Gangrene will kill you. Methane will kill us. Why aren’t you acting sufficient to the scope of the danger?
Climate Strike -- Carbon Added Fee (week 61) by birches. In order to survive, we need a Green New Deal now. If we’re going to preserve some livability on this planet, we need to: act on the science; ensure social justice and end environmental racism; rapidly mitigate and adapt; and redistribute resources such that the planet and the poor aren’t being ground up. That’s the Green New Deal. But how do we pay for a Green New Deal? Long-term, we know a Green New Deal pays for itself. Even if it didn’t, money and extinction are not equal, and a GND that prevents extinction is well worth whatever it costs. But short-term, for however long there is still a capitalist economic system, we’ll need to figure out how to raise funds to get a GND going. Fortunately, there are at least two ways to raise the necessary money now. They are long-term municipal bonds and CAF.
Climate Strike -- CAF Implementation (week 62) by birches. This week is about how to get a Carbon Added Fee (CAF) going in SF. What does a CAF in SF look like? 1) Set prices. Begin at $140/ton carbon emitted. Again, that’s a low price given the ecological devastation our carbon emissions are causing, but it’s a good price to start with, and should be adjusted upwards regularly. 2) Pick the right metaphor. This is not a tax. It is an occupancy damage fee, akin to a hotel charging you for damage to the room caused by your smoking and other behaviors. This is, of course, an addition to the regular rates charged but it is needed to make the space occupiable again. In this case, the “hotel” is SF and the damage is destroying our ability to survive here. 3) Advertise. Make the CAF public, make it clear, and make it obvious that this is right, fair, necessary, and long overdue. 4) Implement while being open to participation and feedback. [...] 5) Make CAF goals crystal clear: this fee is charged to repair damage caused by the activities being charged, and to eliminate such damages in the future. It is not charged to penalize people but to build infrastructure to make the need for damaging activities less likely. Instead of having bottle rockets as your hotel light, for example, this fee pays for acquiring LED lights. Taking it out of the hotel metaphor, this fee pays for San Francisco’s Green New Deal.
Climate Strike -- Carmageddon (week 63) by birches. This week is about SAFETY, NOT CARS. What is Carmageddon? The end of the world by car. Traffic so bad it feels like, and contributes to, the end of the world. And, with the death of transit and the push to reopen jobs, by all accounts Carmageddon is coming Is Carmageddon bad? It will cause massive and rapid increases in CO2, particulates, soot, sulfur dioxide, ozone, NOx, noise, more cars hitting and killing more pedestrians and more cyclists, and the loss of exercise and social distancing spaces and calm in a very unquiet time. But we can avoid Carmageddon! How? Through Targeted Universalism: the creation of universal goals achieved through targeted practices. Targeted Universalism is a systems thinking practice that comes out of UCB, so expert assistance is literally next door. So what is our universal goal here? Clearly, as stated in Vision Zero, it is safe streets and zero traffic deaths. Safe streets means more than just zero traffic deaths though, because as Vision Zero goes on to state “safety helps create a lively, vibrant city that works for everyone.” And a lively, vibrant city that works for everyone is a city that isn’t destroying the atmosphere with carbon.
MISCELLANY
Yes, all signs point in that direction, except perhaps the ones we can’t see. Hope remains by mikeymikey. As things stand now, there is a possibility that ‘Doomers’ will prove to be correct in their assessment and I agree that we need to be prepared for this possibility. But it is still too soon to accept it as inevitable. One of the cornerstones of the doomer outlook is grounded in what I have come to see as our collective PTSD. Over and over, the assumption is made that humans will do nothing, because they have so far done so little, and if we choose to, our ‘track record’ can be seen as abysmal. This, I feel, is a myopic, ‘glass half empty’ view, that is not accurately based in a more well-rounded understanding of human nature. It is propagated in the current zeitgeist and that is in the process of shifting. Once it ‘flips’, everything will look different. For many years I held out little hope for our survival prospects, until finally information started surfacing that gave me a broader perspective. I started hearing about the many things being done by private individuals and organizations and I also began to understand the roles innovation and human ingenuity were to play. But even now this more balanced view gets knocked around, see-sawing between hope and despair as I absorb climate news, pro and con.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing ~ August 26, 2023: AI is now working hard to save us from ourselves by Dartagnan. I know I’ve given Artificial Intelligence a bad rap around here. Part of that lies in my cynical belief that, if AI is as smart as it seems to be, it’ll soon figure out that it has no need of us. Cf, Colossus: The Forbin Project, for example. [...[ I’m assuming that AI has not yet developed to that point yet, however, because it appears that it’s still operating under the assumption that the human species may be worth preserving. I suppose we should enjoy this brief interregnum while it lasts. To that end, this from Benj Edwards, reporting for ArsTechnica, and channeling prior stories in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, is pretty fascinating: California's main firefighting agency, Cal Fire, is training AI models to detect visual signs of wildfires using a network of 1,039 high-definition cameras, reports The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. When it sees signs of smoke, it quickly warns firefighters of emerging threats. During the pilot program, the system has already detected 77 wildfires before dispatch centers received 911 calls—about a 40 percent success rate, according to the NYT.
Earth Matters: Campaigning Democrats should follow Biden's lead with two-pronged IRA message by Meteor Blades. A month ago, The Washington Post and University of Maryland conducted a poll showing that a majority of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s climate policy and that they know next to nothing about it. Read a brief description of the IRA, they approved of it, This ignorance on the part of the public is a media problem as much or more than it is a Democratic messaging problem, although that too could use some honing. That’s why it was encouraging this past week to finally see some widespread positive national attention accorded to the first anniversary of the IRA. And it was good to see President Biden in a celebratory mood because there is much to celebrate. To celebrate and to slam Republicans for voting against the act while praising IRA-funded projects in their districts. Even though its effects are as yet far from fully evident, the IRA is working pretty much as expected. [...] This technocratic transformation that so much of the IRA focuses on is only one element of dealing with the climate and biodiversity crises. And many activists who are supportive of the law are nevertheless unhappy with its omissions. So if you happen to think that there are flaws in the Inflation Reduction Act, if you think it doesn’t go far enough or spend enough, if you wish Biden had included as many sticks as carrots in it, please join the queue.
Weekly spotlight on DK climate and eco-diaries (8/20/2023) by Meteor Blades.