Environment
The COP 26 climate talks took place in Glasgow, Scotland last week. COP stands for Conference of Parties – it is the annual meeting of countries of the world under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to discuss and make commitments for dealing with the climate crisis.
Although COPs occur every year – and have been happening for the past 26 years – some COPs are more important that others. Most important in recent history was COP 21 in Paris, when for the first time all nations of the world agreed to make their own voluntary commitments, known as National Determined Contributions, to fight the climate crisis.
Although the total of national commitments in Paris was not enough to limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) – the limit that the agreement set – the nations did agree to meet every five years to ratchet up their commitments. COP 26 in Glasgow – rescheduled from 2020 due to the covid pandemic – was the first meeting at which these additional commitments were to take place.
Of all the speeches and political grandstanding at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), the words of Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, were the most profound and least hypocritical.
Lopez Obrador raged against the “technocrats and neoliberals” - world leaders who hold the future of humanity in their hands. This was a direct reference to leaders of the powerful countries that “increase their fuel production, at the same time that they hold summits for the protection of the environment,” while arriving in Glasgow on private jets.
Indeed, hypocrisy continues to define what is meant to be a collective global fight against climate change and its ravaging, often deadly consequences.
The tall, grey-haired, 60-year-old attorney Steven Donziger gave a final hug to his son last Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Donziger had spent over two years confined in his Manhattan apartment, restricted by a judge-ordered GPS ankle bracelet. And now his first destination would be the nearest jail, to which Steven, a supposed flight risk, drove himself.
After the years spent on house arrest throughout an intimidation lawsuit and facing an $800,000 bail bond – the highest in U.S. history for a misdemeanor – Donziger will now spend the maximum sentence of six months in a federal prison. The alleged crime was contempt of court, but the real crime was Donziger’s successful lawsuit against Chevron, which resulted in $9.5 billion in damages being allocated to Ecuadorians affected by their deadly pollution in the country.
Not a penny of that $9.5 billion, however, ever made it to the people of Ecuador. Instead, Chevron weaseled their way out of the damages and launched a billion-dollar show trial against the attorney that stuck up for the indigenous people of Ecuador.
Corporate cancer
And climate change begins . . .
“Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence.”
So writes Charles Eisenstein in Sacred Economics, defining a transition in human existence that has finally begun to haunt us — haunting some of us more than others, of course, in particular, that segment of humanity that was never part of the transition: a.k.a, the indigenous . . . the uncolonized . . .people of Planet Earth. Now, as global warming and ecological collapse becomes more and more of a reality, those who had nothing to do with it are bearing most of the hit, at least so far.
Wishful thinking aside, the threat of nuclear war has not receded. In fact, the opposite is the case. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been moving the “Doomsday Clock”ever closer to cataclysmic midnight; the symbolic hands are now merely 100 seconds from midnight, in contrast to six minutes a decade ago.
A new freely downloadable book
I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents the reasons why we urgently need immediate and drastic climate action The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Use of fossil fuels must stop!
The IPCC Report
The 4,000-page report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not due to be released until February, 2022, but a copy was leaked to Agence France-Presse. The report calls for a total transformation of our way of life if we wish to avoid catastrophe. The window of opportunity is closing rapidly. Urgent action must be taken within less than a decade.
The Report states that “We need transformational change operating on processes and behavior at all levels: individual, communities, business, institutions and governments. We must redefine our way of life and consumption.”
The horrifying collapse of a south Florida condo should alarm us all about the next reactor catastrophe.
The owners of that 13-story condo were warned years ago that it could implode. They were apparently getting ready for repairs, but in the interim did nothing.
The owners of America’s 93 licensed reactors have been warned for decades that they could both implode and explode. They have also done nothing.
More than 150 people may have died in this avoidable Florida disaster. The death toll from the next avoidable reactor disaster could stretch into the millions, with property damage in the trillions, a blow from which our economy and ecosystems might never recover.
South Florida authorities have now ordered inspections of large buildings over forty years old. Nearly all US reactors – including four on the ocean in South Florida – are also now around forty years old.
They all must be immediately shut for rigorous inspection. To wait is to invite a radioactive version of what just happened to that condo.
The argument is not about nuclear power. It’s about basic sanity.
I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the duty of scientists and engineers to try to prevent the catastrophes that currently threaten human society and the biosphere. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Three major threats to human society
Science and technology have conferred many benefits on human society, but as we start the 21st century, most thoughtful observers believe that our science-driven and information-driven industrial civilization has entered a period of crisis.
Here’s a video from one of the facilitators lined up for World BEYOND War’s online course on War and the Environment which begins on June 7th, 2021:
This course could not be more important. A culture of extraction and destruction is closely tied to a culture of war. Questioning that ethos of destruction and consumption is challenging, but it has belatedly begun. Challenging a culture of militarism is even harder.
I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the relationships between water and life. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Water-by-John-Scales-Av…
The United Nations' World Water Day
On its home-page for World Water Day the United Nations points out the following facts:
“Today, 1 in 3 people live without safe drinking water.
“By 2050, up to 5.7 billion people could be living in areas where water is scarce for at least one month a year.
“Climate-resilient water supply and sanitation could save the lives of more than 360,000 infants every year.
“If we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, we could cut climate-induced water stress by up to 50%.
“Extreme weather has caused more than 90% of major disasters over the last decade.