Tag: forest

Handle with Care

A photo taken from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman Sept. 2, 2014.
A photo taken from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman Sept. 2, 2014.

A group of climate scientists warn that the potential for humanity’s mass extinction has been dangerously underexplored. On this week’s On the Media, we hear how facing our planet’s fragility could inspire hope, instead of despair, and a physicist explains how creation stories are essential for understanding our place in the universe.

Luke Kemp [@LukaKemp], a Research Associate at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, on a new study that says we need to put more attention on the possibility of human extinction and other climate catastrophes. Bryan Walsh [@bryanrwalsh], editor of Vox’s ‘Future Perfect,’ also explains why our brains have a hard time processing catastrophes like climate change. Listen. Charles Piller [@cpiller], investigative reporter for Science Magazine, on his six month investigation into how faulty images may invalidate groundbreaking advancements in Alzheimer’s research. Listen. Guido Tonelli, a particle physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, on the importance of creation myths, and what scientists can tell us about the fragility of the universe.

LINK: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-handle-with-care

Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

Abstract
Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies’ vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.

LINK

The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76 Million American Lives

The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76 Million American Lives
Sierra Nevada Mountains near Lone Pine, California, in February. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Disappearing snowpack is accelerating the historic drought across the Western US, and so far government responses haven’t matched the scale of the problem.

LINK: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-western-us-snowpack-drought/

‘Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert

‘Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert
Record high temperatures and extreme weather events are being recorded around the world. Photograph: Ian Logan/Getty Images

Blistering heatwaves are just the start. We must accept how bad things are before we can head off global catastrophe, according to a leading UK scientist

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/30/total-climate-meltdown-inevitable-heatwaves-global-catastrophe

Bretannike Rebellion

Bretannike Rebellion by Juilan Langer

I love a good story from a time before history, even if it’s not really from a time before history.

Or is it?

I have recommended the work of Julian Langer a few times, as you probably remember, and this is another of those times.

Julian has crafted a wonderful “tale of the tribe” with his new work, Bretannike Rebellion. 

It’s a nice, light, summer read that is short content-wise but long on thoughtfulness.

Julian and I see eye to eye on many philosophical and environmental issues, and my alter ego, Ezra Buckley, also approves of his work.

I don’t want to ruin the revelation of the work for you personally because I hate when reviewers talk too much about someone else’s work they are recommending, so in the interest of brevity, I’ll simply say, read it.

The tale is entertaining while also being thought-provoking, and the accompanying poetry pieces alone are worth the time investment.

Bretannike Rebellion belongs on your virtual or physical shelf.

Bretannike Rebellion – https://forged.noblogs.org/files/2022/07/bretannike-rebellion-READ.pdf

-Ezra Buckley

Dark green religion : nature spirituality and the planetary future


Dark green religion : nature spirituality and the planetary future
Description:
In this innovative and deeply felt work, Bron Taylor examines the evolution of “green religions” in North America and beyond: spiritual practices that hold nature as sacred and have in many cases replaced traditional religions. Tracing a wide range of groups—radical environmental activists, lifestyle-focused bioregionalists, surfers, new-agers involved in “ecopsychology,” and groups that hold scientific narratives as sacred—Taylor addresses a central theoretical question: How can environmentally oriented, spiritually motivated individuals and movements be understood as religious when many of them reject religious and supernatural worldviews? The “dark” of the title further expands this idea by emphasizing the depth of believers’ passion and also suggesting a potential shadow side: besides uplifting and inspiring, such religion might mislead, deceive, or in some cases precipitate violence. This book provides a fascinating global tour of the green religious phenomenon, enabling readers to evaluate its worldwide emergence and to assess its role in a critically important religious revolution.

DOWNLOAD: http://library.lol/main/B9BBB2CCA0487F104A243B0C16D053BC

This Civilisation is Finished with Rupert Read

This Civilisation is Finished with Rupert Read

This episode I’m joined by Rupert Read is an academicand a Green Party campaigner and a former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion). In this episode we discuss the end of civilization, collapse, sustainable energy and more…

Read’s site: https://rupertread.net

LINK: http://library.lol/main/DFD70A0C0020BE5E3EB97AFC6BFE8DA5

Description:
Industrial civilisation has no future. It requires limitless economic growth on a finite planet. The reckless combustion of fossil fuels means that Earth’s climate is changing disastrously, in ways that cannot be resolved by piecemeal reform or technological innovation. Sooner rather than later this global capitalist system will come to an end, destroyed by its own ecological contradictions. Unless humanity does something beautiful and unprecedented, the ending of industrial civilisation will take the form of collapse, which could mean a harrowing die-off of billions of people.

This book is for those ready to accept the full gravity of the human predicament – and to consider what in the world is to be done. How can humanity mindfully navigate the inevitable descent ahead? Two critical thinkers here remove the rose-tinted glasses of much social and environmental commentary. With unremitting realism and yet defiant positivity, they engage each other in uncomfortable conversations about the end of Empire and what lies beyond.

We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist

Katharine Hayhoe says the world is heading for dangers people have not seen in 10,000 years of civilisation

Katharine Hayhoe
Katharine Hayhoe warns that if we continue emitting greenhouse gases no adaptation will be possible. Photograph: Courtesy of Dr Katharine Hayhoe

The world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases, a leading climate scientist has warned.

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilisation, and efforts to make the world more resilient were needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough.

“People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “This will be greater than anything we have ever seen in the past. This will be unprecedented. Every living thing will be affected.”

LINK TO ENTIRE ARTICLE

Coyotes and Town Dogs

Coyotes and Town Dogs

The American Conservation Classic

Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement

Revised and Updated in a 25th Anniversary Edition

Praise for Coyotes and Town Dogs

Susan Zakin’s writing is brilliant and irreverent, tough and funny, opinionated and sometimes outrageous But this is also a serious work, the most thorough and thoughtful survey of the American environmental movement I have seen.

 

Brad Knickerbocker, The Christian Science Monitor

Catches the rowdy, passionate utopianism of the first non-elite generation of environmentalists. They changed the game, and woke a lot of people up.

 

Gary Snyder, Pultizer-Prize winning poet, Turtle Island, Practice of the Wild

A primer for how to face our Earth’s predicament with wit and courage…Funny, smart, irreverent, opinionated and always mind-expanding.

 

Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature, founder 350.org

Riding the rails with YouTube’s hobo vloggers

Critics say their content is dangerous and irresponsible, but these influencers can’t get enough of the train-hopping life.Riding the rails with YouTube’s hobo vloggers

Dancer vividly remembers the first time he hopped a freight train.

It was a warm October day in 2020, and he’d stationed himself north of Longmont, Colorado, near the railway yard, where the train often rolls through town. He’d been standing next to a tree for hours, debating whether he was really going to go through with this dangerous act — and trying to ease the butterflies in his stomach.

He’d learned about train-hopping in 2017, after discovering the videos of James “Jim” Stobie, a prolific vlogger known online as Stobe the Hobo. Stobie died later that same year, after getting into an accident while hopping trains in Maryland. He was 33. Nevertheless, Dancer was inspired by the key message of Stobie’s videos: that viewers should see the often-unexplored areas of the U.S.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE