By Kristin Palitza
Dubbing Saturday the "Global Day of Action", demonstrators from international and national non-governmental groups as well as labor, women, youth, academic, religious and environmental organizations came together to highlight civil society's demands for politicians all over the world to take serious action to fight climate change.
"We are asking for 100 percent change. Today will be the beginning of a strong movement that is going to challenge the rich nations of the world," said Global Day of Action subcommittee convenor Desmond D'Sa. "World leaders are discussing the fate of our planet, but they are far from reaching a solution to climate change."
Protesters said it was time for climate change negotiators to listen to the voices of ordinary people. They marched holding banners which said: "Never trust COP17", "Unite against Climate Change", "Climate Justice Now" and "Ensure the survival of coming generations".
There was a general feeling that ordinary people remained largely excluded from important debates on important issues that directly affected their lives.
View the Original article
Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Saturday, 13 August 2011
The Fires This Time: In Coverage of Extreme Weather, Media Downplay Climate Change
By Neil deMause
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history-but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the 2011 Super Outbreak that spread more than 300 tornadoes across 14 states from April 25 to 28 (including an all-time one-day record of 188 twisters on April 27), killing 339 people, including 41 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN, 5/1/11).
It was an unprecedented string of severe weather: By mid-June, more than 1,000 tornadoes had killed 536 people (NOAA, 6/13/11), nearly as many deaths as in the entire preceding decade. And it was only natural to ask: Were we seeing the effects of climate change?
Most scientists would say yes, or at least "probably." The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, a global scientific body that has been a target of conservatives despite a record of soft-pedaling its findings to avoid controversy (Extra!, 7/8/07), warned on February 2, 2007, "It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent." (In science-speak, "very likely" refers to a certainty of greater than 90 percent, and is as near as you get to a definitive conclusion.) Other forecasts (e.g., Environment America, 9/8/10) have projected that wet regions will receive record rainfall thanks to increasing evaporation, while dry ones get record drought, as climate patterns shift to accommodate the new normal.
Yet despite these dire predictions, U.S. media were hesitant to investigate the links between climate change and this spring's extreme weather. Much coverage settled for the cheap irony of contrasting extreme phenomena, as when NBC's Saturday Today show meteorologist Bill Karins (6/11/11) quipped:
Feast or famine's been the rule this spring. The northern half of the country, we've dealt with the heavy rain, the record snow pack that's now melting in the northern Rockies. That's causing the flooding. The southern half of the country, you would love some of that rain.
View the Original article
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history-but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the 2011 Super Outbreak that spread more than 300 tornadoes across 14 states from April 25 to 28 (including an all-time one-day record of 188 twisters on April 27), killing 339 people, including 41 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN, 5/1/11).
It was an unprecedented string of severe weather: By mid-June, more than 1,000 tornadoes had killed 536 people (NOAA, 6/13/11), nearly as many deaths as in the entire preceding decade. And it was only natural to ask: Were we seeing the effects of climate change?
Most scientists would say yes, or at least "probably." The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, a global scientific body that has been a target of conservatives despite a record of soft-pedaling its findings to avoid controversy (Extra!, 7/8/07), warned on February 2, 2007, "It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent." (In science-speak, "very likely" refers to a certainty of greater than 90 percent, and is as near as you get to a definitive conclusion.) Other forecasts (e.g., Environment America, 9/8/10) have projected that wet regions will receive record rainfall thanks to increasing evaporation, while dry ones get record drought, as climate patterns shift to accommodate the new normal.
Yet despite these dire predictions, U.S. media were hesitant to investigate the links between climate change and this spring's extreme weather. Much coverage settled for the cheap irony of contrasting extreme phenomena, as when NBC's Saturday Today show meteorologist Bill Karins (6/11/11) quipped:
Feast or famine's been the rule this spring. The northern half of the country, we've dealt with the heavy rain, the record snow pack that's now melting in the northern Rockies. That's causing the flooding. The southern half of the country, you would love some of that rain.
View the Original article
Sunday, 3 July 2011
How to Fight Obesity and Climate Change at the Same Time
By Sarah Laskow
LOUISVILLE - This city's Broadway displays its own array of neon signs - two dozen fast-food restaurants, as diverse as McDonald's and the local Indi's - beckoning along a 2.8-mile corridor bookended by low-income neighborhoods on the front lines of a multimillion-dollar battle against obesity.
The street symbolizes one of many hurdles facing officials here working to put a severely overweight population on a diet. After all, Kentucky is where Colonel Harland Sanders first made his famous fried chicken and a hotel invented the Hot Brown, a turkey-bacon sandwich drowning in Mornay sauce.
The street symbolizes one of many hurdles facing officials here working to put a severely overweight population on a diet. After all, Kentucky is where Colonel Harland Sanders first made his famous fried chicken and a hotel invented the Hot Brown, a turkey-bacon sandwich drowning in Mornay sauce.
View the Original article
LOUISVILLE - This city's Broadway displays its own array of neon signs - two dozen fast-food restaurants, as diverse as McDonald's and the local Indi's - beckoning along a 2.8-mile corridor bookended by low-income neighborhoods on the front lines of a multimillion-dollar battle against obesity.
The street symbolizes one of many hurdles facing officials here working to put a severely overweight population on a diet. After all, Kentucky is where Colonel Harland Sanders first made his famous fried chicken and a hotel invented the Hot Brown, a turkey-bacon sandwich drowning in Mornay sauce.
The street symbolizes one of many hurdles facing officials here working to put a severely overweight population on a diet. After all, Kentucky is where Colonel Harland Sanders first made his famous fried chicken and a hotel invented the Hot Brown, a turkey-bacon sandwich drowning in Mornay sauce.
View the Original article
Saturday, 25 December 2010
Seattle-Led Coalition Tells Gates Foundation to Change Approach
A coalition of groups led by Seattle-based activists has sent a letter and online petition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, saying its current approach to agriculture in Africa is unlikely to solve problems of hunger, poverty and climate change, and may make them worse.
The letter, signed by 100 organizations and individuals from 30 countries, was released to coincide with protests at the UN climate talks in Cancun.
Led by the Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ), the coalition said the foundation and its private sector partners are pushing industrialized agriculture and genetically engineered crops at the expense of small farmers and the environment.
The Gates Foundation has made agricultural development one of its priorities in recent years, launching the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006.
The Gates Foundation spent about $316 million last year on agricultural development, which it says is part of a larger strategy to reduce hunger and poverty by giving small farmers tools and opportunities to boost their productivity and increase incomes.
The groups signing the letter, including environmentalists, academics and groups opposed to genetic engineering of food crops, said they're concerned the foundation's grants are "heavily distorted in favor of supporting inappropriate high-tech agricultural activities, ignoring scientific studies that confirm the value of small-scale agroecological approaches."
View the Original article
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
UN Scientists Say Emission Pledges Fall Well Short of Halting Climate Change
UN research shows that the pledges and promises made last year by 80 countries to reduce climate change emissions fall well short of what is needed to hold the global temperature rise to 2C and avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year. Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.
If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes.
In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 - roughly what all the world's power stations emit.
View the Original article
The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year. Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.
If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes.
In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 - roughly what all the world's power stations emit.
View the Original article
Monday, 6 December 2010
The Carbon Ranch: Fighting Climate Change One Acre at a Time
If you are concerned about climate change - and you should be - then these are not the best of times. The decision by the U.S. Senate to postpone climate legislation, perhaps indefinitely, coupled with the failure of the United Nations summit in Copenhagen last winter to produce an international treaty limiting greenhouse gases means Business-as-Usual continues to rule.
Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen to 391 parts-per-million (ppm) - 40 ppm above what many scientists consider a level necessary to keep the planet from becoming ice-free. And it's rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year, far faster than at any time in the Earth's paleoclimate record.
What to do? Some see salvation in high technology, including the 'capture' of CO2 at its source, to be stored underground, or the 'scrubbing' of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by hundred of thousands of boxcar-sized filtering machines. The trouble is, these technologies, even if practical, are years away from deployment. And the climate crisis, as evidenced by recent headlines, is happening now.
Which leads to an idea: what about low technology? As I see it, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.
There are only four natural sinks for CO2: the atmosphere, the oceans, forests and other perennial vegetation, and the soil. The atmospheric sink is overflowing with CO2, as we well know, and the oceans are fast filling up (and becoming alarmingly acidic as a result). Forests have a habit of being cut down, burned up, or die and decompose over time, all of which release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. That leaves soils.
The potential for CO2 storage in soils is three times greater than the atmosphere. And since two-thirds of the Earth's landmass is covered with grass, the potential impact on the climate could be gigantic. In fact, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, the nation's leading climatologist, postulates that 50 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils over the next fifty years.
How? By employing the low technology of green plants, which pull CO2 out of the air and fix it into carbon compounds that are stored in the soil.
In my experience in the arid Southwest, there are six strategies that can increase or maintain the carbon content of grass-dominated ecosystems. They include: (1) planned grazing systems using livestock, especially on degraded soils; (2) active restoration of degraded riparian and wetland zones; and (3) removal of woody vegetation, where appropriate, so grass may grow in its stead. Maintenance strategies include: (4) the conservation of open space, so there is no further loss of carbon-storing soils; (5) the implementation of organic no-till farming practices; and (6) management of land for long-term ecological and economic resilience.
Fortunately, a great deal of the land management 'toolbox' required to implement these strategies has largely been tried-and-tested by practitioners and landowners. Over the past decade, these strategies have been demonstrated individually to be both practical and profitable.
View the Original article
Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen to 391 parts-per-million (ppm) - 40 ppm above what many scientists consider a level necessary to keep the planet from becoming ice-free. And it's rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year, far faster than at any time in the Earth's paleoclimate record.
What to do? Some see salvation in high technology, including the 'capture' of CO2 at its source, to be stored underground, or the 'scrubbing' of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by hundred of thousands of boxcar-sized filtering machines. The trouble is, these technologies, even if practical, are years away from deployment. And the climate crisis, as evidenced by recent headlines, is happening now.
Which leads to an idea: what about low technology? As I see it, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.
There are only four natural sinks for CO2: the atmosphere, the oceans, forests and other perennial vegetation, and the soil. The atmospheric sink is overflowing with CO2, as we well know, and the oceans are fast filling up (and becoming alarmingly acidic as a result). Forests have a habit of being cut down, burned up, or die and decompose over time, all of which release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. That leaves soils.
The potential for CO2 storage in soils is three times greater than the atmosphere. And since two-thirds of the Earth's landmass is covered with grass, the potential impact on the climate could be gigantic. In fact, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, the nation's leading climatologist, postulates that 50 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils over the next fifty years.
How? By employing the low technology of green plants, which pull CO2 out of the air and fix it into carbon compounds that are stored in the soil.
In my experience in the arid Southwest, there are six strategies that can increase or maintain the carbon content of grass-dominated ecosystems. They include: (1) planned grazing systems using livestock, especially on degraded soils; (2) active restoration of degraded riparian and wetland zones; and (3) removal of woody vegetation, where appropriate, so grass may grow in its stead. Maintenance strategies include: (4) the conservation of open space, so there is no further loss of carbon-storing soils; (5) the implementation of organic no-till farming practices; and (6) management of land for long-term ecological and economic resilience.
Fortunately, a great deal of the land management 'toolbox' required to implement these strategies has largely been tried-and-tested by practitioners and landowners. Over the past decade, these strategies have been demonstrated individually to be both practical and profitable.
View the Original article
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Cities, States Start to Adopt Climate Change Survival Strategies
As it becomes ever more clear that Congress has retreatedfrom climate change legislation faster than a Greenland glacier, cities andstates are starting to focus on adapting to the inevitable.
View the Original article
A report released this week by the California Adaptation Advisory Panel laid out themyriad threats climate change poses to the Golden State -- as well as strategies toanticipate and prepare for rising sea levels, along with more wildfires, heat waves, andwater shortages.
"Failure to anticipate and plan for climate variability andthe prospect of extreme weather and related events in land development patternsand in natural resource management could have serious impacts far beyond whathas already been experienced," the report states.
In short, California needs to deploy monitoring technologyalong its 1,100-mile coastline and overhaul its approach to land usedecision-making.
Eight cities and counties across the United States,meanwhile, have joined what is being called the nation's first climate adaptationeffort. The participants are Boston, Cambridge, Mass., Flagstaff, Ariz., Tucson, Ariz., GrandRapids, Mich., Lee County, Fla., Miami-Dade County, Fla., and the San FranciscoBay Conservation and Development Commission.
Created by the ICLEI-LocalGovernments for Sustainability, a Washington nonprofit, the ClimateResilient Communities program gives the cities and counties planning and database tools to prepare for rising temperatures and sea levels.
"Local governments have a responsibility to protect people,property, and natural resources, and these leading communities wisely recognizethat climate change is happening now, and that they must begin planning forimpacts that will only become more severe in the coming decades," MartinChávez, ICLEI USA's executive director and a former mayor of Albuquerque, saidin a statement.
The idea is to create a standardized municipal planningprocess to prepare for climate change.
View the Original article
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)