Climate Change — Videos, Articles, Books, Links

Climate change will define life and hope in the 21st Century
(and for many centuries thereafter…).
(Please check back each month for new content.)



Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg addresses UN Climate Conference — 2018



Reports from the 2015 Climate Summit in Paris

by Mark Hertsgaard


in order of most recent…


The Nation, Dec 14, 2015:  “The Fate of the World Changed In Paris, But By How Much?” https://www.thenation.com/article/the-fate-of-the-world-changed-in-paris-but-by-how-much/


Daily Beast, Dec 14, 2015:  “The Paris Climate Summit:  Follow the Money,”   https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/14/is-the-paris-agreement-an-amazing-achievement-or-a-disaster.html/


The Nation, Dec 11, 2015:  “Scientists Warn:  Paris Agreement Needs Massive Improvement,” https://www.thenation.com/article/scientists-warn-paris-climate-agreement-needs-massive-improvement/


The Nation, Dec 9, 2015:  “In the Final Hours of the Climate Talks …” https://www.thenation.com/article/in-final-hours-of-climate-talks-a-1-5-degrees-c-target-is-still-on-the-table-but-is-that-a-good-thing/


The Nation, Dec 7, 2015:  “With 1.5 C Target, Climate Justice Movement Poised for Surprise Win,” https://www.thenation.com/article/with-1-5-degrees-celsius-target-climate-justice-movement-poised-to-score-surprise-win/


The Nation, Nov 19, 2015: “A Lesson For Paris: Follow the Activists,” https://www.thenation.com/article/the-climate-in-paris/


The Nation, Nov 3, 2015:  “Last Chance For Planet Earth,” https://www.thenation.com/article/the-paris-climate-conference-last-chance-for-planet-earth/

 

Outstanding books on climate change



Shock Waves : Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty
Free PDF book from World Bank (225 pages)


Free PDF Book from World Bank — 2016

SUMMARY: Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction.
It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win” situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Download PDF book (225 pages)


This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate  —  Naomi Klein


 

The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.

 

In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.

 

In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

 

Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.

 

Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.


Look for this book in your local library, order from your local bookstore (ISBN=9781451697391), or click the button below to see online bookstore links.



 

Hot: Living Through the next Fifty Years on Earth — Mark Hertsgaard

 


 

hot-hertsgaard-book-coverOn a quest to protect the next generation from mounting climate change, renowned journalist Mark Hertsgaard offers a deeply reported blueprint on how to navigate this unavoidable new era.

 

“Passionate and somber…Hot’s urgent message is one that citizens and governments cannot afford to ignore.” —Boston Globe“Informative and vividly reported book…passionate.” —San Francisco Chronicle “[A] readable, passionate book . . . persuasively argues that human survival depends on bottom-up, citizen-driven government action.” —Publishers Weekly

 

” Climate change is well underway, writes Hertsgaard, and we must begin to adapt to it even as we work to stop it…. The author’s stated goal is to make readers feel hopeful so that they will act, but he is candid about his own lapses into despair. . . . Hopefully, this book will prompt readers to action. Starkly clear and of utmost importance.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“In Hot, one of America’s finest journalists confronts one of the world’s most urgent problems. Hertsgaard cuts through the denial and disinformation about climate change, offering a clear, tough-minded view of our predicament. More important, he shows that the worst harms of global warming are not inevitable and outlines the steps that can help to avert disaster. Hot bravely takes aim at perhaps the greatest climate threat of all: apathy.” —Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

 

“I know what you’re thinking: The problem is so massive I can’t bear to read any more about it. But you’re wrong. Mark Hertsgaard not only makes the workings of climate change clear, vivid and comprehensible but gives us some reasons for hope. Some of the ways to fight or adapt to global warming are simpler—and more unexpected—than you would think, and some of the places where these lessons are being applied you never would have guessed. Hot is a lively, personal, very human piece of reportage about an issue that will ever more be at the very center of our lives.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost

 

“Mark Hertsgaard is the master of a kind of travelogue reporting that lets you understand possibilities and problems in a deep way. But this time, one of the places he’s traveling to is the near future, and the news he brings back is equal parts scary, invigorating, and full of challenge. This is an important book.” —Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

 

“Like the fairy tales that Mark reads to his daughter, Chiara, Hot is full of out-sized challenges and glimmers of hope. In this brilliant postcard from the year 2060, Mark explores a world that will be defined, for better or worse, by decisions made today as we conduct a massive planetary science experiment—one that future generations will grade us on.” —Terry Tamminen, Secretary of the California EPA for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger 


Look for this book in your local library, order from your local bookstore (ISBN=9780547750415), or click the button below to see online bookstore links.



 

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet — by Mark Lynas 

 


 

Possibly the most graphic treatment of global warming that has yet been published, Six Degrees is what readers of Al Gore’s best-selling An Inconvenient Truth or Ross Gelbspan’s Boiling Point will turn to next. Written by the acclaimed author of High Tide, this highly relevant and compelling book uses accessible journalistic prose to distill what environmental scientists portend about the consequences of human pollution for the next hundred years.

 

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report projecting average global surface temperatures to rise between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. Based on this forecast, author Mark Lynas outlines what to expect from a warming world, degree by degree. At 1 degree Celsius, most coral reefs and many mountain glaciers will be lost. A 3-degree rise would spell the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, disappearance of Greenland’s ice sheet, and the creation of deserts across the Midwestern United States and southern Africa. A 6-degree increase would eliminate most life on Earth, including much of humanity.

 

Based on authoritative scientific articles, the latest computer models, and information about past warm events in Earth history, Six Degrees promises to be an eye-opening warning that humanity will ignore at its peril.


Look for this book in your local library, order from your local bookstore (ISBN=9781426203855), or click the button below to see online bookstore links.



 

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight — Thom Hartmann

 


 

 

While everything appears to be collapsing around us — ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, the end of cheap oil, water shortages, global famine, wars — we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children’s children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s web movie Global Warning, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture’s blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem. Thom Hartmann’s comprehensive book, originally published in 1998, has become one of the fundamental handbooks of the environmental activist movement. Now, with fresh, updated material and a focus on political activism and its effect on corporate behavior, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight helps us understand—and heal—our relationship to the world, to each other, and to our natural resources.

 

Read sample excerpt.


Look for this book in your local library, order from your local bookstore (ISBN=9781400051571), or click the button below to see online bookstore links.



 

The Sixth Extinction — Elizabeth Kolbert

 


 

From a book review by Al Gore in The New York Times: “In lucid prose, [Kolbert] examines the role of man-made climate change in causing what biologists call the sixth mass extinction…This is the world we’ve made. And in her timely, meticulously researched and well-written book, Kolbert combines scientific analysis and personal narratives to explain it to us. The result is a clear and comprehensive history of earth’s previous mass extinctions—and the species we’ve lost—and an engaging description of the extraordinarily complex nature of life. Most important, Kolbert delivers a compelling call to action…Her extensive travels in researching this book, and her insightful treatment of both the history and the science all combine to make The Sixth Extinction an invaluable contribution to our understanding of present circumstances, just as the paradigm shift she calls for is sorely needed.”

 

Read 33-page sample from Barnes and Noble.


Look for this book in your local library, order from your local bookstore (ISBN=9781250062185), or click the button below to see online bookstore links.



 

Video

 


 

From 60 Minutes Australia — May 1, 2022






From: Bloomberg Quicktake — March 3, 2021


Searching for ways to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, engineers and entrepreneurs are looking to a largely untapped potential source of renewable energy: wave power.

From: Just Have a Think on YouTube


Science tells us there’s enough energy in the first 10 kilometres below our planet’s surface to provide all our energy needs for millions of years. The Romans tapped into it for their hot water spas. Today, we all know it as Geothermal Energy. There’s no carbon dioxide emissions and no air pollution with geothermal, and it’s literally right there beneath our feet. So why isn’t our entire planet powered by it? Help support this YouTube channel’s leading edge reporting at http://www.patreon.com/justhaveathink  and please visit http://www.justhaveathink.com




David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg and Jane Goodall
want to talk to you about climate change





TEAM HUMAN: Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff and UK journalist George Monbiot
discuss the world we are making TOGETHER and how we could make it differently!




 


 

Goodbye little sisters and brothers...

 

Creative Commons Photo
Creative Commons Photo

 

The Golden Toad of Costa Rica -- already extinct -- are we next?

 

For spiritual support and suggestions for working on climate change issues, please see Spiral Journey and Companions in Blessing.

 


Articles




from https://www.catf.us/work/superhot-rock/

Superhot rock geothermal energy is a visionary technology deserving of investment, and yet almost entirely unrecognized in the decarbonization debate. It has the potential to meet long-term demands for zero-carbon, always-on power, and can generate hydrogen for transportation fuel and other applications. Unlocking the potential of this energy source could expand our options and potentially carve a path forward to replace fossil fuels.

Superhot rock energy could support rapid global decarbonization

Click to download report (PDF file).





https://www.livescience.com/can-carbon-removal-slow-climate-change.html — Donavyn Coffey — November 2020

Nature has equipped Earth with several giant “sponges,” or carbon sinks, that can help humans battle climate change. These natural sponges, as well as human-made ones, can sop up carbon, effectively removing it from the atmosphere.

 
Photo by Alex Indigo — Creative Commons

But what does this sci-fi-like act really entail? And how much will it actually take — and cost — to make a difference and slow climate change? 

Sabine Fuss has been looking for these answers for the last two years. An economist in Berlin, Fuss leads a research group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and was part of the original Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — established by the United Nations to assess the science, risks and impacts of global warming. After the panel’s 2018 report and the new Paris Agreement goal to keep global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) or less, Fuss was tasked with finding out which carbon removal strategies were most promising and feasible. 

Afforestation and reforestation — planting or replanting of forests, respectively — are well known natural carbon sinks. Vast numbers of trees can sequester the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere for photosynthesis, a chemical reaction that uses the sun’s energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen. According to a 2019 study in the journal Science, planting 1 trillion trees could store about 225 billion tons (205 billion metric tons) of carbon, or about two-thirds of the carbon released by humans into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began.  
 
Agriculture land management is another natural carbon removal approach that’s relatively low risk and already being tested out, according to Jane Zelikova, terrestrial ecologist and chief scientist at Carbon180, a nonprofit that advocates for carbon removal strategies in the U.S. Practices such as rotational grazing, reduced tilling and crop rotation increase carbon intake by photosynthesis, and that carbon is eventually stored in root tissues that decompose in the soil. The National Academy of Sciences found that carbon storage in soil was enough to offset as much as 10% of U.S. annual net emissions — or about 632 million tons (574 million metric tons) of CO2 — at a low cost. 
 
But nature-based carbon removal, like planting and replanting forests, can conflict with other policy goals, like food production, Fuss said. Scaled up, these strategies require a lot of land, oftentimes land that’s already in use. 

read more




Washington Post — January 22, 2020 –By Ben Guarino
Photographs by Hannah Reyes Morales

At age 9, Felix Finkbeiner planted his first tree.

He had just learned about Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading an effort to plant 30 million trees in Africa. The boy was struck by her message — that trees are powerful allies in the fight to curb global warming.

Some of the more sophisticated details went over his head, Finkbeiner recalled. But, he said, he “understood the tree-planting part.” So, in 2007, he dug a hole in front of his school near Munich and inserted a crab-apple sapling. “I thought that we kids should be planting some trees, as well,” he said.

Finkbeiner’s fourth-grade awakening blossomed into a personal crusade and eventually birthed a tree-planting foundation, Plant for the Planet. The organization, which is responsible for planting millions of new trees around the world, is part of a growing constellation of campaigns that seek to reforest every continent except Antarctica.

Driven by the recognition that trees suck Earth-warming carbon out of the atmosphere far more efficiently than any machine, the effort has attracted millions of dollars in support — and inspired hope that trees could become an even more potent weapon in the battle against climate change.

“We’ve been astonished to find that it is up there with all the best climate change solutions,” said ETH Zurich ecologist Thomas Crowther, thesis adviser to Finkbeiner, now a 22-year-old PhD student in environmental science. Plant for the Planet inherited a massive tree-planting program, renamed the Trillion Tree Campaign, from the United Nations in 2011; Crowther is its chief scientific adviser.

Read more at Washington Post website




Excerpts from Guardian article

“We call on you to stop what you are doing, to stop the destruction, to stop your attack on the spirits of the Earth. When you cut down the trees you assault the spirits of our ancestors. When you dig for minerals you impale the heart of the Earth. And when you pour poisons on the land and into the rivers – chemicals from agriculture and mercury from gold mines – you weaken the spirits, the plants, the animals and the land itself. When you weaken the land like that, it starts to die. If the land dies, if our Earth dies, then none of us will be able to live, and we too will all die.”

***

“So why do you do this? We can see that it is so that some of you can get a great deal of money. In the Kayapó language we call your money piu caprim, ‘sad leaves’, because it is a dead and useless thing, and it brings only harm and sadness.”

***

“You have to change the way you live because you are lost, you have lost your way. Where you are going is only the way of destruction and of death. To live you must respect the world, the trees, the plants, the animals, the rivers and even the very earth itself. Because all of these things have spirits, all of these things are spirits, and without the spirits the Earth will die, the rain will stop and the food plants will wither and die too.”

–Raoni Metuktire, chief of the indigenous Brazilian Kayapó people

Read more from The Guardian




Dennis Rivers, November 2016

 

Photo credit: EricWalberg.com

This week I’ve been thinking about the struggles going on to protect water supplies on the Standing Rock Reservation, and about the Alberta tar sands projects only a few hundred miles to the north.  For native peoples around the world, the Earth Herself is sacred, and Her waters as well.  So poisoning the Earth, or building industrial projects that create an ongoing unknown risk of poisoning the land and water, are not just material or political issues.  They are spiritual and religious issues as well.  This is not a theoretical risk at all.  Large amounts of  Dine (Navajo) land and water have been permanently poisoned with radioactive waste from uranium mining, causing a giant spike in cancer rates.  And the Alberta Tar Sands photos speak for themselves.  So native peoples have little reason to trust the assurances that they, their land, and their water, are not in danger from the white man’s projects.

Reflecting on the corporations willing to endanger someone else’s water supply in order to get rich building oil pipelines, I think it is time that we gave a proper name to the psychological illness that has been haunting us for several centuries: PIDM: profit-induced-destructive-mania. I intend to rally my friends within the counseling profession to have PIDM added to the DSM-5 as a recognized mental illness.

There are many strands of PIDM at work in U.S. culture. The long term effects of tobacco and greasy hamburgers kill hundreds of thousands of people a year, yet most of us prefer to look away from the spectacle of corporations enriching themselves by selling slow death behind smiling advertisements. We accept this as fairly normal, without really working through the implication that some forms of mental illness may be fairly common. The late psychoanalyst Arno Gruen explored this at length in his book, The Insanity of Normality (which I helped to republish after it was withdrawn from publication by its bought-out publisher).

People suffering from PIDM, a syndrome I see as a spiraling disorientation of both thinking and feeling, experience a chronic narrowing of the attention until they no longer recognize the people, animals, plants, oceans, forests and waters essential to their own survival here on Planet Earth, and begin a autism-like repetitive pattern of screaming, “Drill, Baby, Drill!”. PIDM is the economic parallel to Lord Acton’s observation that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, namely, that profits tend to disorient, and enormous profits disorient enormously. The contemplation of giant wins appears to disable people’s normal survival instincts. The same processes of disoriented thought appear to be associated with nuclear power as well, where the hope of generating mind-boggling amounts of cheap electricity causes otherwise sensible people to abandon their critical faculties, leading to catastrophes such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Just as anorexics cannot bear to face that fact that they are killing themselves, PIDM sufferers cannot bear to face the fact that they are killing their own planet, and the life-support system for their own children and grandchildren. Because of this self-injury component, some elements of self-hatred and suicidal ideation cannot be ruled out.

PIDM is like a Zika virus of the heart (it causes people’s hearts to get smaller). We need new clinical intervention strategies to reconnect EVERYONE on the planet with their own life energies (approaches such as Joanna Macy’s “Work That Reconnects”) and slow the lethal spread of PIDM and poisoned aquifers.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/military-force-criticized-dakota-access-pipeline-protests/








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