Everybody who knows me knows that I've been engaged in a long project of daily Letters to the Editor on the subject of climate change. The Climate Letter Project has been an ongoing practice of conscience for me since January 1, 2010, which means that as of December 31, 2013, I will have been doing it for four years.
That's 1,461 letters, which is a lot.
Over that time, I've written letters on just about every aspect of climate change. Some of my letters are outrageous, some are snarky, some are dry and technical, some dry and witty. I've had a fairly high hit rate, with my pieces seeing print in enough outlets around the US and the world that I am now one of the most widely read environmental writers on the planet.
That's not a boast, by the way, but a rueful recognition of what is really a deplorable state of affairs. Our media is pathetic; lazy, irresponsible, wholly owned by corporate forces.
Well, that phase of my career as an environmental activist is coming to an end. 1,461 letters is a lot. And making a daily ritual of summarizing grim and awful news in 150-word bursts is pretty depressing.
In this diary, I'll alternate between sharing the letters I've had published over the past few months — and telling you about my new project, The Climate Message.
The Climate Letter Project was the result of a New Year's Resolution, the only one I've ever kept. I kept it for four years, and now it's time to move on.
The Climate Message is my new New Year's Resolution. Read on!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
My life in music has brought me in contact with artists famous and obscure, in so many genres and styles of music that it's impossible to keep count. Many of these people remain close friends today. That's good, because from January 1, 2014, my goal is going to be to get every single musician on the planet to incorporate a single simple message into every gig. Every recital, every dance, every club date...any time there's a chance of reaching an audience.
Why?
Introducing...
The Climate Service Announcement:
What we can do, and why we need to do it.
Music is a climate issue.
Musicians are guardians and custodians. Some of us present the idioms and repertoire of centuries past; some of us create new and original music â but all of us form an unbroken line of transmission and continuity dating back thousands of years before the beginning of recorded human history.
Music links humans in joy and sorrow, brings us together in synchrony for work and play, and is a source of profound communion in every human culture everywhere on the world.
Our musical expressions have grown up as part of our complex civilization, starting with the beginning of farming in the fertile crescent twelve thousand years ago, and evolving as part of thousands of different regional cultures all over the world. The variety and richness of humanity's music is an integral part of human civilization, and one of our species' greatest and most admirable accomplishments.
Thanks to twelve millennia of relatively consistent climatic conditions that have made our agriculture unbelievably productive and allowed our numbers to expand, human civilization has grown to cover the planet.
Ironically, the magnitude of our technology now imperils us. The carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels like oil and coal have entered the upper atmosphere, where they concentrate the sun's heat in a "greenhouse effect" that is now melting polar ice caps and triggering potentially catastrophic transformations — changes in climate that will often happen far too rapidly for life to adapt.
The number of climate-related disasters around the world is growing with each passing year. Droughts, wildfires, floods, devastating storms, and freak weather events are regular parts of the news everywhere on Earth.
Climate change is the first genuine planetary emergency humanity has ever faced. And we are musicians, not climate scientists or engineers. How can we make a meaningful contribution to the struggle against climate change?
Here's what we can do.
We start by recognizing that our mass media have failed us; most reporting on the climate crisis is irresponsibly negligent and inadequate. But we have something else: our listeners.
We musicians can make a genuine impact on this critical battle, and all it needs is less than a minute. At every gig, every concert, every time we appear in front of an audience, we can take a few seconds to say:
“Before we go on, here’s a Climate Service Announcement. Please make an effort to educate yourself and everyone you know about climate change. The climate crisis endangers not only our agriculture and our infrastructure, but the integrity and sustainability of our civilization. And that means it threatens the music we love. No stable climate: no music. It’s as simple as that. Thank you…and now, our next song is….”
It should be no more controversial than saying, “this event was made possible by a grant from ___,” “support our troops,” “don’t forget to vote,” or “be sure to tip your servers generously” — and it’s a way we can remind people about the most pressing and important issue of our time every time they go out to hear some live music.
Are you prepared to make a Climate Service Announcement (C.S.A.) a regular part of your performances?
I am. How about you?
Warren Senders
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Miami Herald sends intrepid reporter Nancy San Martin to Greenland:
QAQORTOQ, Greenland -- -- On an inlet nestled between soaring cliffs, huge chunks of ice shimmer from a distance like precious stones on a cocktail ring.
The icebergs take on various formations — a swan, a whale, a ship, a floating island. Some are as white as the shaved ice on a snow cone. Others as glaring as Superman's kryptonite. The thickest blocks look utterly alive with blue lines running through them like veins, the result of melting and refrozen crevices within the layers of ice that broke away from the glaciers that once covered the nearby cliffs.
Amidst the slow-moving icebergs, the sound of lapping water is interspersed with cracks and pops, similar to the noise that comes from pouring warm water over a frozen ice tray. Up close, one can hear the drip, drip, drip of melting ice. As the sun gets hotter, the drips become a trickle, then a steady flow like rain pouring through a gutter after a heavy storm.
This is a snapshot of climate change.
The melting is taking place thousands of miles away, but its effects can be felt in South Florida in the form of rising sea levels. According to recent studies, the sea level has risen nine inches since the 1920s and if the sea-rise trend continues to accelerate — as some predict — parts of the state could eventually be submerged under water.
Since Miami is populated by retirees, they'll all be dead by then, so who gives a shit? September 9:
Nancy San Martin's report on how Greenlanders are coping with a radically changing world makes for compelling reading. It is self-evident to all but the willfully deluded that the transformations they see around them are harbingers of unwelcome and dangerous changes for those of us in more temperate latitudes.
For too long, climate change has been seen as a problem only affecting people and nations far from us, or times far from now. Given the effect rising sea levels are likely to have on Miami within our children's lifetimes, this type of denial is no longer a viable option.
As droughts, extreme storms, heatwaves, and wildfires make clear, the greenhouse effect's consequences are not going to stay comfortably outside American borders; we're all starting to feel the hangover from our civilization's century-long carbon binge. Soon enough, Floridians will have more in common with Greenlanders than either group can imagine.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Roanoke Times has a nice piece by Sarah Frost, debunking business-sector whining:
In her Aug. 11 commentary, "Climate-change zealotry will cost jobs," Jane Van Ryan posits that by regulating carbon pollution, the Obama administration "could eliminate the ability of many American families to reach for the American dream."
In fact, acting to slow and stop climate change will undoubtedly improve our health, safety, environment and economy. Failing to do so will leave future generations with diminished resources and opportunities.
The science on this issue is unambiguous: 97 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and caused by human activity. We reached 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the first time in human history this spring, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently confirmed that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the U.S.
The costs of inaction are already being felt around the commonwealth and beyond: nine out of 10 Virginians live in counties and independent cities affected by federally-declared weather-related disasters since 2007. Nationally, between 2011 and 2012, Superstorm Sandy and 24 other extreme weather events left $188 billion in damages and claimed more than 1,100 lives. Scientists agree that these types of events are likely to become more frequent and more severe in a warming world.
The United States' largest source of carbon emissions is our power plants, though to date, there are no regulations on carbon emissions from power plants the way there are on arsenic, mercury, sulfur and soot. As part of his Climate Action Plan, President Obama has directed the Environmental Protection Agency, under the authority of the Clean Air Act, to issue limits on carbon pollution from new and existing power plants.
Americans submitted more than 3 million comments — including 130,000 from Virginia — in favor of this plan last year. And in a recent poll, nearly two-thirds of voters said they support "the President taking significant steps to address climate change now."
The opponents of action ignore and deny the science that tells us it is time to act — and often times are quietly backed by corporate polluters.
When Van Ryan suggests that the president and his administration "place a higher value on big government and the environmental movement than on the financial well-being of the American people," she is failing to recognize that the health benefits from the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 are estimated to exceed the costs of implementation by a factor of more than 30 to one.
Hit me baby, one more time. September 17:
It wasn't that long ago that US auto manufacturers were up in arms about legislation requiring that all cars be equipped with seat belts. It would, apparently, cripple sales, alienate consumers, and deal a death blow to American manufacturing. And it wasn't long after that that tobacco companies got into a swivet about mandatory warning labels, which apparently would wipe out all their profits forever. Last I looked, the roads were full of cars, and there's no shortage of smokers either.
It's the same now, as the notion of taxing carbon emissions begins to gain currency among citizens and politicians who can read the unambiguous warning signs of human-caused climate change. Once again, we get to hear wailing predictions of disaster if environmentally sensible approaches to climate change are enacted.
Those nay-sayers who claim that the economy will be damaged by environmental responsibility are perpetuating a mentality of victimization and entitlement in the business sector. America likes to call itself a "can-do" nation, but you would never know it from the whining of some of the world's most profitable and productive industries.
Pathetic. Just pathetic.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A column of climate denialism by repulsive syndicated hack Cal Thomas n the Winona Daily News included this gem:
Yet the climate change cultists continue to focus on melting polar ice caps and "displaced" polar bears as part of their emotional appeal for government to "fix" the problem. Now comes a report in the UK Daily Mail that "eminent scientists" have observed a record return of the Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60 percent in a year, covering with ice almost 1 million more square miles of ocean than in 2012.
Recycling yesterday's letter, and making it better, too. September 21:
Ignorance may be bliss, but in today's information-rich world, it's no longer excusable, especially when the issue is as fraught with consequences as global climate change. As a representative of the professionally ignorant whose work demands that they remain uninformed, Cal Thomas is an exemplar of intellectual and ethical bankruptcy. His discussion of the increase in polar ice coverage since 2012 is a perfect example, for if Mr. Thomas really cared about it, he could have learned a great deal with a few minutes of research. Unfortunately for his readers, and for the broader national discussion of this important issue, he chose to remain ignorant.
When discussing how Arctic ice expands and contracts over time, there are two things to keep in mind. First, while the surface area with ice cover has indeed increased, it's much, much thinner than ever before â not by any imaginings a good sign. And second, while year-to-year numbers may fluctuate, the trend over decades has been an accelerating decrease. If a terminal patient gains a couple of pounds, that's a good day, not a remission.
Mr. Thomas' simplistic misrepresentation of a planetary crisis does us all a disservice.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I don't know how many people in America and the world get to encounter live music every day...
...but you know, I bet it's a lot. There's no shortage of bar bands, rock shows, buskers, chamber recitals, open mics, polka parties, raves, symphonies, hoedowns, mehfils, drum circles, bhajan sessions, and sing-a-longs happening every day. It sort of seems like making music is something we humans can't stop doing, even in extremis.
"We're out of light and water and bread
So we'll live on song and hope instead."
— Peggy Seeger: Springhill Mine Disaster —
I'm a musician; I've been making my life and my living that way for decades, ever since I had a living to make. I sing and play, compose and direct; it's what I know best, love best, and do best. I teach music, extending into the future the songs of centuries past. I even teach how to teach music, helping young musicians discover sound's power to transform individuals in profound and positive ways.
I needed to bring together my life in music and my concern for the planet that's made all our human music possible.
The Climate Message is a way to get musicians everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) involved in the same way.
I'm talking about you, Irish fiddlers. And you, Indian sitarists. And you, punk rockers. And you, lieder singers. And you, country bands, and street drummers, and everybody else you can think of in every genre you can imagine, and some you can't. Make a difference — make an end run around the destructive and deliberate professional ignorance of our dysfunctional media...just by saying a few careful words every time you face an audience.
At The Climate Message, we (my webmaster, a few consultants, and I) have set up a simple way for individual performers and ensembles to join together in making a commitment to speak out to our audiences on climate, every time it's possible (if you're a hired bass player in a theater orchestra, it's probably best just to keep your mouth shut on the bandstand — but nothing should stop you talking to your bandmates backstage in the dressing room).
Fill in a simple form: your name and/or the name of your organization; where you're based; what kind of music (or other performance form) you do. Your names will join those of performers in multiple genres across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia (we're going to include a rolling "scroll of honor" in the next few weeks).
When you make a Climate Service Announcement, let us know how it went...and we'll post your story. Let us know where and when, and we'll put a pin in an interactive world map (well, as soon as we get the map app fully integrated, anyway). If you make an announcement that you particularly like and want to share, send us a transcript, or a sound file, or a video — and we'll post it.
The more people join in spreading the word, the more likely it'll be over the coming months and years that everywhere people go to hear music, they hear a simple reminder: if you love music, educate yourself about climate change — because climate chaos means the end of music as we know it.
There are too many different kinds of music in the world for us all to be able to sing together — but there's no reason we can't all speak together, lending our voices to help save this beautiful world so full of light and life and song.
Sign up...and spread the word.
Please join the Climate Message Facebook page, especially if you're a performing artist. Among other things, you'll be able to find lots of cool memes:
The Climate Message isn't necessarily exclusive to performers, of course. It's important for all of us to speak out on this issue; to normalize the discussion of climate change and make it both important and "noncontroversial." But musicians, dancers, storytellers, actors and the rest of the tribe are important, because in a world dominated by a mechanized media, we are among the few who get microphones and audiences. Even if we don't reach millions of people every night, we still have the chance to get the message across.
But only if we speak out; only if we resolve to raise our voices not just once, but every day, every time, every place, every audience.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Athens News (OH) runs a great article by the always-great Amy Goodman:
Last week, far out in the Arctic Ocean, the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise approached a Russian oil-drilling platform and launched a nonviolent protest, with several protesters scaling the side of the platform. They wanted to draw attention to a dangerous precedent being set.
The platform, the Prirazlomnaya, owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom, is the first to begin oil production in the dangerous, ice-filled waters of the Arctic. The Russian government responded swiftly and with force, deploying special-forces soldiers, their faces masked by balaclavas, threatening the peaceful Greenpeace activists with automatic weapons, destroying their inflatable boats by slashing them, arresting 30 and towing the Greenpeace ship to the northern Russian port of Murmansk. At last report, the protesters faced a potential charge of piracy.
This protest is remarkable for its sheer audacity. But it is by no means the sole protest lately against runaway fossil-fuel extraction and consumption. People are speaking up around the globe, demanding action to combat global warming. In North America, a broad coalition has been growing to stop the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, as well as to stop the exploitation of Alberta's tar sands, which the pipeline is designed to carry.
The corporate persons aren't just sociopaths, they're stupid. September 30:
The recently released IPCC report confirms the urgency of the climate crisis. While widespread citizen action to advocate sane climate policies in America and around the world is a good sign, it's distressing that the business and financial communities have been both tardy and inadequate in their approach to the problem: a decade late, a trillion dollars short.
The plain facts are simple: action now to mitigate damages will save us money, time and lives in the future. That our government has failed to take even the most anodyne steps to address the metastasizing greenhouse effect is testimony to an ugly reality: the corporate sector which dominates our politics is itself dominated by a toxic mix of scientific ignorance and greed.
The facts are simple: excessive CO2 emissions are damaging our planet's health and are on track to disrupt and destroy much of our civilization over the coming century, while bringing humanity closer to what evolutionary biologists coyly term an "evolutionary bottleneck" — a delicate euphemism for extinction-level global trauma. I may be naive, but I can't see how letting your customers get wiped out is good for long-term profitability. Business needs to wake up and support climate action.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Derrick Jackson, in the Boston Globe, asks:
Are lobsters the new symbol of climate change?
The answer, increasingly, is yes. Lobster populations are exploding in the Gulf of Maine, but are plummeting in the waters of southern New England. In 2012, the Gulf of Maine set a record catch of 126 million pounds, double the average of a decade before and six times the average of the 1980s.
Meanwhile, annual lobster landings in Buzzards Bay were just 72,000 pounds last year, down from 400,000 pounds in the late 1990s and from just under a million pounds in the 1980s, according to Massachusetts state lobster biologist Bob Glenn.
The population loss is likely due to warmer waters and disease that may be associated with such water. "We just watched a geological event occur in about a decade," Glenn said. Scientists speculate that the population boom in Maine is also due to record warm waters, which fueled massive early productions, as well as the overfishing of ground fish that eat lobsters.
The lobster catch in Maine had a record value of $340 million. But the bounty backfired for many individual lobstermen, who were stuck with the lowest per-pound prices in nearly 20 years.
I never liked lobsters, so climate change doesn't concern me. October 12:
Massive shifts in lobster population off New England's coastlines may temporarily favor Maine, but in the long run, climate change is going to bring everybody a bumper catch of pain. Fishermen everywhere are encountering catastrophic declines; there may be brief interludes of plenitude, but overall, it's indisputable that we've reached Peak Fish. The two most immediate oceanic impacts of climate change are heating and acidification, which will bring increasingly catastrophic disruptions in the coming decades.
Given that several billion people directly or indirectly get their sustenance from the seas, this is a genuine humanitarian emergency. Factor in the greenhouse effect's impact on agriculture, and it's a grim harbinger of future sorrows.
The fossil-fuel industry's support for climate-change denial in politics and the media is a grave error. With billions of lives at stake, these corporations have elevated the easy lure of quarterly profits over our species' long-term happiness and prosperity.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Bangor Daily News runs a WaPo piece on the IPCC:
If one body represents the international scientific consensus on global warming, it is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations panel that just released the first portion of its fifth authoritative report on the science.
The report's headline finding is that "it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."
Itâs not just that the planet has warmed over the course of many decades, during which people have released massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Among many other things, there is what scientists have called a "human fingerprint" — a pattern of warming in the troposphere and cooling in the stratosphere that is very likely characteristic of human influence.
The authors did not shrink from addressing one of the primary threads that critics have been pulling in their effort to unravel the scientific consensus â the recent flattening of global temperature rise.
This was the hook for some generic media criticism. October 16:
News coverage of the newly issued report from the IPCC is all too often a "balanced" approach in which the opinion of a huge number of climate scientists is countered by the vague assertions of corporate spokespeople.
To cut through the fog and clarify the discussion, we need to understand that scientific speech and writing is careful and rhetorically restrained, while that of our media is sloppy and profligate. Some pundits claim the report represents the views of "environmental extremists" and should therefore be discounted, but in fact, the IPCC's consensus underestimates some threats and almost entirely omits others, such as melting Arctic methane; the document represents a very conservative assessment of our present level of risk.
And as such, it deserves to be taken far more seriously — for if there is one phrase that we are seeing with accelerating frequency in news about Earth's climate, it's "more than expected." Polar ice melt, oceanic acidification, species loss, extreme precipitation, wildfire severity — all of these phenomena are happening faster and more intensely than scientists' predictions even a few years ago. By belittling the findings and expertise of climatologists, our media figures and politicians are endangering the health of our planet and the happiness of our posterity.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I'd like to ask you to help.
If you're a performer, please join The Climate Message and commit to speaking out about climate change whenever you have the opportunity to reach an audience.
The Climate Message website will include:
A chance to sign up and have your name/group listed along with other artists from all over the world committed to speaking out;
World and regional maps displaying places/venues where the Message was delivered, and providing information about the artists who spoke out;
Versions of the Climate Message in as many different languages as we can muster (your translations are actively solicited!);
Reports from people who've spoken out on Climate to their audiences — what was the response? How did it go? Did you get stage fright?;
Tips for performing artists on reducing their carbon footprints;
Reports on musical genres from all over the world which are threatened by climate change (first up, the music of Tuvalu), with lots of video and musical information;
Speculation on the musical impacts of climate change (did you know that the plant which makes saxophone reeds is a potentially huge biomass resource?);
Resources for action, including a searchable Letter-to-the-editor archive and a frequently-updated section of donation and action links;
Reports on people and organizations who are doing inspiring and important work in the fight against climate change â along with a set of instructions on how to produce your own benefit concert;
And more (Musical instruments from junk! Inspiring songs! Poems! Stories!).
The main stream of content starts today, January 1, 2014. Please come and check it out!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Denver Post's Vincent Carroll addresses the LA Times' recent decision to exclude denialists' letters:
Most skeptics of any sophistication recognize that global warming has occurred and appreciate that some or much of it in recent decades could be caused by human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. But they tend to believe, for example, that there are more uncertainties in the science than generally conceded, that the relative dearth of warming over the past 15 or more years is a blow to the models and that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has demonstrated consistent bias in favor of alarmist interpretations.
Surely readers should be free to debate such points.
For that matter, are there really no properly credentialed experts who question whether humans are largely responsible for the warming since the 1970s, as the IPCC maintains? Of course there are — and it would be editorial arrogance to exclude their views.
Climatologist Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville declares on his blog that "evidence from my group's government-funded research ... suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity's greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution."
Is that a factual inaccuracy or simply a minority view among climatologists?
Is it factually inaccurate to declare "we don't know" how large the human contribution to warming is, as Judith Curry, professor of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told an NPR reporter in August?
I've criticized Republican candidates who dismiss the mainstream view of global warming as a hoax, and no doubt will again, but I'm also reluctant to shut down reader discussion on issues in which most scientists may share similar views.
Where would it end? What other debates raging among our readers do the arbiters of truth believe we should silence?
Mealy-mouthed. October 20:
Even the most lenient opinion page would be unlikely to print a letter on a medical topic from an advocate of the medieval theory of "humours," and media outlets don't feel obliged to allot space to arguments for such regressive or unscientific viewpoints as geocentric cosmology, a flat Earth, or the moral acceptability of slavery.
It's in this context the the LA Times' recent decision to reject letters denying the reality of anthropogenic global warming must be understood. While climatologists disagree about particular climate forcing mechanisms or the relative severity of specific effects, there's no longer any scientific argument about the human causes of climate change. Outlying views will always exist, but this is no reason to treat single dissenters as worthy of equivalent airtime or column inches — especially since, in media handling of climate issues, these contrarian opinions invariably come from the same individuals (Spencer, Curry, and Lindzen).
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer (OH) tries to make some sort of point:
There is no question Typhoon Haiyan was devastating -- some declared it one of the most powerful storms in recorded history. It reportedly had sustained winds near 150 mph and a storm surge of 20 feet. (Some reports say wind gusts exceeded 200 mph.) Initial reports predicting up to 10,000 dead have been scaled back to 2,000 to 2,500 by President Benigno Aquino III. The storm still wiped out large sections of cities and towns, displacing thousands, and has led to an urgent call for aid for survivors.
It also has climate watchers wondering if Haiyan is just the beginning. Like Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Haiyan's strength and destructive impact is bringing warnings of even more powerful storms in the future because of changes in the climate.
Yeb Sano, the head of the Philippines delegation at the United Nations climate talks currently under way in Warsaw, made it clear where he stands. In a speech Monday, Sano said he will stop eating until "meaningful" progress is made on climate change. From the BBC:
"In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home, I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this Cop, until a meaningful outcome is in sight. What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness, the climate crisis is madness. We can stop this madness right here in Warsaw."
Bruce McQuain, writing for the website Hotair.com, offers sympathy to Sano and the people suffering in the Philippines. But he also says Sano is wrong about the UN taking action on climate change and says it's not necessary. McQuain warns that proposed measures to reduce carbon emissions would "ruin" economies and bring only marginal results...
Because a conservative douchebag writing on Hotair.com has so much credibility it's just awesome. November 13:
Self-styled fiscal conservatives who loudly proclaim that meaningful actions to address climate change would hurt economies simply demonstrate their own inability to think in timespans longer than the next quarterly report. Strategies like strengthening infrastructure, decentralizing our power grid, shifting the global energy economy to renewable sources, and developing less wasteful manufacturing practices are all sound investments in a longer-term future; they are the large-scale equivalent of preparing for flooding by reinforcing levees and stockpiling sandbags, steps which deficit hawks would no doubt deride as too costly or economically damaging.
The science is unequivocal, despite the natterings of denialists. There is no more uncertainty about the human causes of climate change — and the dangers it presents to our civilization — than there is about the causal link between smoking and cancer. Anticipating the damage from a climate-transformed world, and working proactively to minimize its extent, is fiscal common sense. Even more important, it's the right thing to do for the posterity of our species.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Providence Journal brings us Sheldon Whitehouse, mensch:
In the annals of congressional oratory, it didn't rival Sen. Rand Paulâs 13-hour filibuster in March over drone policy. But last Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse marked a major milestone of his own — and one welcomed by environmentalists — when he delivered his 50th weekly address on climate change from the Senate floor.
Whitehouse gave his first "Time to Wake Up" address in April 2012. He has returned to the floor every week the Senate is in session to stand before C-Span cameras and shine the spotlight on an issue he says has been alarmingly neglected.
"I am here for the 50th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans," he said at the outset of his speech. "Why do I do this? First because it's real, it's very real, it's happening."
He then turned to charts at his side to present evidence of increases in Earth's surface temperatures.
In an interview before his speech, Whitehouse explained what motivated him a year and a half ago to launch the approximately 15-minute climate talks.
"I wanted to raise the profile of climate change. We had basically stopped talking about it and the climate-change deniers' point of view really doesn't last very well in the daylight," he said. "It shrivels up under scrutiny. It does better in the dark and we were, I thought, cooperating by allowing the dark to shroud the issue."
Versions of this letter have had remarkable success over the past year or so. November 18:
Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago the Minutemen woke to a midnight alarm and became part of our nation's history. Responding to the calls of Paul Revere, these patriots helped usher in a new nation, conceived in liberty — while powerfully demonstrating the usefulness of early-alert systems. Now, in the face of a craven political establishment and a lazy media, even more urgent warnings are coming from the world's climatologists — and from a few unbought politicians like Sheldon Whitehouse.
The accelerating greenhouse effect, if unchecked, will bring incredible damage to our civilization: disrupted agriculture, rising sea levels, huge loss of biodiversity, and extreme storms like Haiyan (Filipinos don't need reminders of the dangers of climate change).
While the public's attention is diverted by phony scandals and nubile starlets, a latter-day Revere tries to wake us. Will we listen to Senator Whitehouse — or punch the snooze button once again?
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
As of December 28, 2013, musicians had delivered the Climate Message in various countries and cities around the world. Here's a list, with a few comments from some of the participating artists:
San Antonio, Texas: "I have made the commitment, had my first announcement
tonight at my monthly kirtan in San Antonio, TX. Thank you for the inspiration to act and the reminder that we have the power to influence hearts and minds."
Bangalore, India
Missoula, Montana: "Gave a brief climate speech at my gig in Missoula, MT tonight. Got some cheers and fist raises from climatologist Steve Running, who happened to be in attendance."
Pune, India
Dadar, Mumbai, India:
Various cities in Japan
Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts
Bandra, Mumbai, India: The manager/impresario of a small concert venue says, "...it changes the energy in the room. It is as difficult to do as remembering to do it. Its our responsibility to take a leadership role as many of our so called leaders seek only re election....There is big power in this small gesture....We can feel a powerful positive resonance in the house when we address this issue...The primal instinct for survival must be tapped."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
In my heart I have always lived up the road a bit, in The People's Republic of Cambridge. The Cambridge Chronicle talks about some of the good guys:
Cambridge —
When it comes to climate change, top-down approaches haven't worked well, at least not according to a group of environmental organizations at MIT.
Earlier this month, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence's Climate CoLab together with the MIT Energy Initiative, the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and MIT Sloan Sustainability, sponsored a conference to explore the role new technology-enabled approaches — like crowdsourcing, social media, and big data — could have in combating climate change. The Climate CoLab is an MIT project that seeks to crowdsource citizen-generated ideas on a range of topics related to climate change.
"Top-down approaches haven't worked very well," said Laur Fisher, community and partnerships manager for the MIT Climate CoLab. "Now, new information technologies — especially the Internet — are making it possible to organize and harness the intelligence of huge numbers of people in ways that have never been possible before in the history of humanity."
By constructively engaging a broad range of scientists, policy makers, business people, investors and concerned citizens, Fisher said the hope is that the Climate CoLab will help develop and gain support for climate change plans that are more effective than past efforts.
"We know how to make real progress on climate change, what we must create is the political will to achieve it. Creating that will require all of us to engage. It canât be a top-down process," said Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund president and the eventâs keynote speaker. "The arch of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but the line on the graph of global emissions won't bend until we make it do so."
This letter is a bit of a hash, but it came out OK, I think. November 28:
To be meaningful, attempts to address climate change must be both polycentric and polytemporal; they must operate on scales of size from individuals to nations, and must reflect both long- and short-term thinking. Crowdsourcing initiatives like that of the MIT's Climate CoLab are essential; the hegemony of old notions about society, energy and sustainability has delayed progress for far too long. We need dedicated and innovative people, families and communities anticipating and out-thinking the inevitable infrastructural and agricultural disruptions that will accompany an intensifying greenhouse effect. But there is no denying the urgent need for large-scale national policies which can support a wide range of individual, local, and regional initiatives. Unfortunately, as the recent inconclusive Warsaw conference once again demonstrates, the industrialized world's governments are systemically unable to take the problem seriously.
It will take enormous political will and engagement to wrest the controls of our government from the hands of the corporate interests which no longer even pretend to have our interests at heart. The fossil fuel industry's grossly disproportionate influence on our political system demonstrates that when it comes to making progress on climate change, oil is not a lubricant.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
USA Today, on the new face of climate-change: disease.
SACRAMENTO — Software engineer Andres Chavez is used to doing things quickly, efficiently and correctly. So he knew something was seriously wrong when, on a business trip in 2009, he was so confused he could barely sign a stack of paperwork.
"I felt like I was living a quarter-second in the past," he says of the onset of Valley Fever, a disease caused by a soil fungus. It took months for his doctor to finally suggest that might be the cause of Chavez's episodes of "getting stupid," as his wife calls it.
"He called and asked me if I spent any time down in the Central Valley, and I said of course I did, my family lives in Livingston, Calif.," Chavez, 43, remembers.
The soil there and in much of the arid Southwest carries the Coccidioides fungus. In dry months, the dust scatters in the wind and can be breathed into the lungs, infecting humans, dogs and cats and other mammals. The incidence is rising dramatically in the Southwest, where reported cases increased tenfold from 1998 to 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Valley Fever is one of multiple diseases experts say are spreading in part because of climate change. They include a brain-eating amoeba showing up in northern lakes that were once too cold to harbor it and several illnesses carried by ticks whose range is increasing.
Sounds attractive, no? December 5:
The climate-change denialists in politics and media are subject to frequent interludes of confusion and disorientation, rather like those afflicted by Coccidioides. While it isn't as foreign-sounding as, say, "West Nile virus", the fact is that an increasing incidence of "Valley Fever" is yet another unanticipated consequence of the accelerating greenhouse effect: the expansion of disease vectors into new areas. As climate change becomes a fact of our daily lives, America's doctors can expect to encounter hitherto exotic ailments more and more often.
Congressional Republicans are still, of course, obsessed with their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. If these anti-science lawmakers took their jobs seriously, they'd realize that these spreading insects, viruses and bacteria are a far graver threat to our economy than a mild regulatory regime for health insurers. Apparently lobbyist cash has an even more debilitating impact on the brain than a dust-scattered soil fungus.
Warren Senders
Published.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Portland Press-Herald's Bill Nemitz has some words for Maine's Governor LePage:
Ahoy, Governor LePage!
Not sure if you can hear me over the wind and the waves, but I can't let another day pass without congratulating you on that epiphany you had last week before a crowd of transportation industry types:
You finally believe in global warming!
What's more, now that you're an ocean-is-more-than-half-full kind of guy, you've gone from denying that the Earth's climate is rapidly changing to embracing it as the second coming for Maine's frozen economy.
"Everybody looks at the negative effects of global warming, but with the ice melting, the Northern Pass has opened up — the new sea traffic is going across the north," you told the Maine Transportation Conference on Wednesday. "So maybe, instead of being at the end of the pipeline, weâre now at the beginning of a new pipeline."
No argument there, Big Guy. The more those Arctic waters stay open, the more Maine's deep-water ports stand to benefit as jumping-off points for an endless parade of not-so-slow boats to China.
Well spoken, sir. December 8:
Now that denying the existence of a planetary environmental crisis is no longer viable, expect the talking heads of our media and political environment to start asserting that we must "balance" climate change mitigation with economic expansion, a stance which has the advantage of being temporarily plausible until we remember that infinite growth is impossible on a finite surface.
By asserting the fiscal returns to be expected from a melted Arctic, Governor LePage goes a step further, embracing a global catastrophe as a potential profit center. Which is, quite simply, insane.
Remember the old saw, "health is our greatest wealth?" The Earth's health is the foundation of all human prosperity, and our planet's resources (water, food, the environment's ability to process our wastes) are limited. Impressive quarterly returns won't protect our grandchildren from rising sea levels, agricultural collapses, oceanic acidification, and the other consequences of an accelerating greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders
Published
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Thinking About Responsibility
Some of us live in the industrialized countries, and we are reaping the harvest of a century and a half of high-speed energy consumption. We've learned a lot, gained a lot, and lost a lot. We know more about the universe than anyone ever dreamed possible, and we've built incredibly complex civilizations with detailed and beautiful artforms. But with these privileges come far greater responsibilities than we've acknowledged. Our conveniences, our largely reliable housing, electricity, food, and water (to say nothing of symphony orchestras, community choruses, jazz clubs and concert halls!) must be paid for with action and activism.
Those who use two humans' worth of carbon per day to live their lives must do at least two humans' worth of activism every day. I don't know how much that is; I suspect I'm still falling short. (I have some friends in India who are committed to living a zero-impact, wholly sustainable life, permaculture-farming in a remote village. They're not required to do any additional activism, for they're showing the rest of us how to do what must be done.)
I've had an incredible four years of letter-writing. No doubt I'll write more letters, because it's very easy to do for me now. But my activist energy is now going into making sure the Climate Message gets into the stage talk of every performing artist with a conscience on this planet. I can use all the help I can get.
I'm not a climatologist. I'm just a singer and a teacher. But as long as I've got a voice, and as long as I can write, I'm going to keep pushing. The hour may be late, and any courage I feel may just be my wish not to frighten my daughter beyond her nearly-9 capacity for fear.
I'm afraid, a lot of the time. The future looks pretty grim.
But how can I possibly give up, when Old Pete's still singing?
Don't you know it's darkest before the dawn
And it's this thought keeps me moving on
If we could heed these early warnings
The time is now quite early morning
If we could heed these early warnings
The time is now quite early morning
Some say that humankind won't long endure
But what makes them so doggone sure?
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringing
I know that you who hear my singing
Could make those freedom bells go ringing
And so keep on while we live
Until we have no, no more to give
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger
So though it's darkest before the dawn
These thoughts keep us moving on
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows
Through all this world of joy and sorrow
We still can have singing tomorrows
For the sake of all our Singing Tomorrows, please help me spread The Climate Message.
That's all for now, dear ones. Thank you for everything.
Love,
WarrenS