This blog contains articles and commentary on Climate Change / Global Warming. These changes will have an affect on the entire planet and all of us who reside therein.
Life as we know it will change drastically. There is also the view that there is a high likelihood of climate change being a precursor of conflits triggered by resource shortges.
Today, Costa Rica took steps to eclipsing even these amazing countries in terms of sustainability. President Carlos Alvarado announced they would be banning fossil based fuels altogether. This makes Costa Rica the first country in the world to completely decarbonize.
"Getting rid of fossil fuels is a big idea coming from a small country. This is an idea that's starting to gain international support with the rise of new technologies," Costa Rican economist Monica Araya said.
As unlikely as going carbon-free in today's modern world might seem, Costa Rica already derives 99% of its energy from renewable sources. Their biggest hurdle will be in the transportation industry, where there is very little in the way of development in that sector and demand for cars is growing. Read More
This hugely important film tells the story of how we veered off the very path we evolved to follow and what that decision is doing toour human biology, fertility and brains. I can think of nothing more important to our survival."
Dave Asprey - Founder of The Bulletproof Executive
Watch the exclusive worldwide premiere of the Origins film from APRIL 17-26th.
A pair of new studies show how various forms of human activity, driven by a flawed economic system and vast consumption, is laying waste to Earth's natural systems
The conclusion that the world's dominant economic model—a globalized form of neoliberal capitalism, largely based on international trade and fueled by extracting and consuming natural resources—is the driving force behind planetary destruction will not come as a shock, but the model's detailed description of how this has worked since the middle of the 20th century makes a more substantial case than many previous attempts. (Photo: NASA)
Humanity's rapacious growth and accelerated energy needs over the last generation—particularly fed by an economic system that demands increasing levels of consumption and inputs of natural resources—are fast driving planetary systems towards their breaking point, according to a new pair of related studies.
"It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a geological force at the planetary-scale." —Prof. Will Steffen
Prepared by researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the first study looks specifically at how "four of nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed as a result of human activity." Published in the journal Nature on Thursday, the 18 researchers involved with compiling evidence for the report—titled 'Planetary Boundaries 2.0'—found that when it comes to climate change, species extinction and biodiversity loss, deforestation and other land-system changes, and altered biogeochemical cycles (such as changes to how key organic compounds like phosphorus and nitrogen are operating in the environment), the degradation that has already take place is driving the Earth System, as a whole, into a new state of imbalance.
"Transgressing a boundary increases the risk that human activities could inadvertently drive the Earth System into a much less hospitable state, damaging efforts to reduce poverty and leading to a deterioration of human well-being in many parts of the world, including wealthy countries," said Professor Will Steffen, a researcher at the Centre and the Australian National University, Canberra, who was lead author for both studies.
In addition to the four boundaries that have already been crossed, the study looked five other ways in which the planetary systems are under assault by human activity. They include: stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; freshwater use; atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms); and the introduction of novel entities into ecosystems (e.g. organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and micro-plastics).
"I don't think we've broken the planet but we are creating a much more difficult world," Sarah Cornell, another report author, told Reuters.
In this interview with Wired last year, Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, described the idea about planetary boundaries in details:
Related to the findings of the first study, the second report examines what it calls the "Great Acceleration" and is an assessment of the speed and influence that specific factors have had in damaging the planetary systems described in Planetary Boundaries 2.0. Using a series of indicators, the study compares the relationship, over time, between 12 'socio-economic factors'—including economic growth (GDP); population; foreign direct investment; energy consumption; and water use—on one side with 12 'Earth system trends'—like the carbon cycle; the nitrogen cycle and biodiversity—on the other.
Using what it calls a "planetary dashboard," the research charts the spread and speed of human activity from the start of the industrial revolution in 1750 to 2010, and the subsequent changes in the Earth System – e.g. greenhouse gas levels, ocean acidification, deforestation and biodiversity deterioration. The analysis found that increased human activity—and "predominantly the global economic system"—has unseated all other factors as the primary driver of change in the Earth System, which the report describes as "the sum of our planet's interacting physical, chemical, biological and human processes." The most striking, i.e. "accelerated," changes to that system have occurred in the last sixty years.
"It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive. History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today." —Prof. Will Steffen"It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a geological force at the planetary-scale," said Steffen, who also led the Acceleration study.
The conclusion that the world's dominant economic model—a globalized form of neoliberal capitalism, largely based on international trade and fueled by extracting and consuming natural resources—is the driving force behind planetary destruction will not come as a shock, but the model's detailed description of how this has worked since the middle of the 20th century makes a more substantial case than many previous attempts.
"When we first aggregated these datasets, we expected to see major changes but what surprised us was the timing. Almost all graphs show the same pattern. The most dramatic shifts have occurred since 1950. We can say that around 1950 was the start of the Great Acceleration," says Steffen. "After 1950 we can see that major Earth System changes became directly linked to changes largely related to the global economic system. This is a new phenomenon and indicates that humanity has a new responsibility at a global level for the planet."
The paper makes a point to acknowledge that consumption patterns and the rise of what has become known as the Anthropocene Era does not fall equally on the human population and its examination of the economic system which is underpinning planetary destruction is one rife with inequality, in which certain populations consume at vastly higher levels than others.
According to the report, "The new study also concludes that the bulk of economic activity, and so too, for now, the lion's share of consumption, remain largely within the OECD countries, which in 2010 accounted for about 74% of global GDP but only 18% of the global population. This points to the profound scale of global inequality, which distorts the distribution of the benefits of the Great Acceleration and confounds international efforts, for example climate agreements, to deal with its impacts on the Earth System."
A worrying trend, notes the paper, is how a growing global middle class—exemplified by those in the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—is an increasing threat to the planet as the consumer mindset established in the OECD nations, particularly the U.S., spreads.
In an interview with the Guardian, Steffen spoke clearly about the overall impacts of the two new studies as he sounded the alarm over humanity's trajectory. "People say the world is robust and that’s true, there will be life on Earth, but the Earth won’t be robust for us," he said. "Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that’s a belief system, it’s not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can’t and that’s a problem."
"It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive. History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today."
What increasing amounts of strong evidence shows, he said, is that that there "tipping points" that the human race should simply not "want to cross." More
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United Natures is a documentary movie on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, permaculture, philosophy, spirituality and a neo-indigenous future for humanity.
Featuring a stellar cast of top international thinkers and activists including Starhawk, Dr. Vandana Shiva, David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture), Father Bob Maguire, Polly Higgins (ecocide), Rosa Maria Ruiz, John Seed, Cormac Cullinan and many others.
Superstorm Sandy changed the U.S. political zeitgeist on climate change virtually overnight.
When BusinessWeekruns a cover blazoned with "It's Global Warming Stupid" and politicians start breaking their "climate silence," you know the jig is up. President Obama acknowledged as much in his acceptance speech, when he said he wanted to "pass on a country that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet."
The question is, where we go from here. Are Americans now prepared to accelerate action to slow climate change? Or will a new fortress mentality take hold? And I mean that quite literally. One commentator recently suggested surrounding lower Manhattan with retractable walls, begging the question of where all that displaced water would go.
As the dust settles from the election, the president will come under increasing pressure to make good on his promise, through both domestic action as well as taking a more cooperative stance at the UN climate negotiations. Much will be written about this in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, he might take some inspiration from some of the many transformative solutions being put into practice elsewhere. The good news is that there are many such examples, so many that the United Nations climate agency launched an initiative to celebrate some of the most exciting, inspiring stories they could find. "Momentum for Change" is a platform for encouraging and celebrating innovative action -- designated as "lighthouse" activities -- either to reduce climate change, or to reduce its impacts.
In 2012, the initiative focused on the urban poor. To qualify as lighthouse activities, projects needed to not only address climate change, but also to improve the lives - both socially and environmentally - of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the community. They also had to demonstrate their catalytic potential for long-term transformational change, which meant that they had to be capable of being repeated elsewhere, and could be scaled up over time. More
It is becoming clearer all the time that mankind is approaching a major turning point in its tenure on this planet. Recent reports on the speed with which our climate is deteriorating suggest that much of our earth will become uninhabitable sometime within the next 100 to 200 years.
Small pockets of humanoid DNA may make it through the climatic catastrophe ahead to establish new civilizations in coming millennia; however, very few of the some 7 billion of us running around on earth today are going to have living descendants a few hundred years from now.
Without going into the myriad of details, the new reports forecast that the temperatures will get very high; the oceans will flood the coasts and no longer contain much fish; pandemics will be prevalent; and the storms will be so fierce that there simply will not be enough food or habitable areas to keep us all going.
As recently as five years ago we badly underestimated just how quickly climate change would seriously affect civilization as we know it. The reason the climate problem has become more serious in recent years is that nobody has done anything of real significance to control carbon emissions since the problem was recognized 20 some years ago. Moreover, there is no indication that any of the earth’s major carbon emitters are planning to do anything but keep emitting the same or still more carbon in the foreseeable future
We, our children or grandchildren are likely to be living on a world where atmospheric carbon hits 800 to 1000 parts per million and higher – far worse than had been forecast as likely in previous studies. New analyses, while varying in numbers, put global temperatures by the end of the century some 9o to 11o F higher in the mid-latitudes and 20o higher in the arctic leading to sea levels that would flood most of the world’s coastal cities. Some studies even have temperatures 13-19o F higher over much of the US and 27o higher over the arctic. Sea levels could be as much as six feet higher by the end of the century and then rise as much as a foot each decade thereafter to 20 or 30 feet.
As these misfortunes will build up gradually over the rest of the century, somewhere along the line, be it 5, 10 or 50 years from now, climate change will become so harmful to everyday life that a critical mass of people will coalesce around the idea that anything, even giving up “economic growth”, would be better than letting life on earth dry up around us. Whether the day of taking carbon emissions seriously comes before the fabled “tipping point” where the forces of nature take over and drive temperatures ever higher, remains to be seen. Some serious observers believe that day has already past. If so, there is not really much left to do except carve our history in granite in case some successor or extraterrestrial life form comes along before our tectonic plates sub duct below the planet’s surface. More
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — Combine the tree-ring growth record with historical information, climate records, and computer-model projections of future climate trends, and you get a grim picture for the future of trees in the southwestern United States. That’s the word from a team of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. Geological Survey, University of Arizona, and other partner organizations.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change this week, concluded that if the Southwest is warmer and drier in the near future, widespread tree mortality likely will cause substantial changes in forest and species distributions.
The researchers aligned some 13,000 tree core samples with known temperature and moisture data, further blending in historical events such as documented megadroughts that drove the ancient Pueblo Indians out of longtime settlements such as those at Mesa Verde, Colorado.
"The strength of this study is the integration of scientific tools to understand the future of an important regional ecosystem under stress from climate change," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "By combining historical records extending back one thousand years to understand the relationship between climate and forest health, statistical and ecological studies to tease out which climatological variables matter most to forest growth, and computer models of regional climate, the result is a prediction of declining prospects for southwestern forests."
By comparing the tree-ring record to climate data collected in the Southwest since the late 1800s, the scientists identified two climate variables that estimate annual southwestern tree-growth variability with exceptional accuracy: total winter precipitation and average summer-fall atmospheric evaporative demand. Southwestern U.S. forests grow best when total winter precipitation is high combined with a summer and fall that aren’t too hot or too dry.
Findings that summer-fall atmospheric evaporative demand is just as important as winter precipitation have critical implications for the future of southwestern forests. “Atmospheric evaporative demand is primarily driven by temperature,” said A. Park Williams, the study’s lead researcher. “When air is warmer, it can hold more water vapor, thus increasing the pace at which soil and plants dry out. The air literally sucks the moisture out of the soil and plants.”
These trends, the researchers noted, are already occurring in the Southwest, where temperatures have been generally increasing for the past century and are expected to continue to do so because of accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There still will be wet winters, but increased frequency of warmer summers will put more stress on trees and limit their growth after wet winters, the study said.
“We can use the past to learn about the future,” Williams said. “For example, satellite fire data from the past 30 years show that there has been a strong and exponential relationship between the regional tree-ring drought stress record and the area of southwestern forests killed by wildfire each year. This suggests that if drought intensifies, we can expect forests not only to grow more slowly, but also to die more quickly.” More
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2012) — The chronic drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 left dying forests and depleted river basins in its wake and was the strongest in 800 years, scientists have concluded, but they say those conditions will become the “new normal” for most of the coming century.
Such climatic extremes have increased as a result of global warming, a group of 10 researchers reported July 29 in Nature Geoscience. And as bad as conditions were during the 2000-04 drought, they may eventually be seen as the good old days.
Climate models and precipitation projections indicate this period will actually be closer to the “wet end” of a drier hydroclimate during the last half of the 21st century, scientists said.
Aside from its impact on forests, crops, rivers and water tables, the drought also cut carbon sequestration by an average of 51 percent in a massive region of the western United States, Canada and Mexico, although some areas were hit much harder than others. As vegetation withered, this released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with the effect of amplifying global warming.
“Climatic extremes such as this will cause more large-scale droughts and forest mortality, and the ability of vegetation to sequester carbon is going to decline,” said Beverly Law, a co-author of the study, professor of global change biology and terrestrial systems science at Oregon State University, and former science director of AmeriFlux, an ecosystem observation network.
“During this drought, carbon sequestration from this region was reduced by half,” Law said. “That’s a huge drop. And if global carbon emissions don’t come down, the future will be even worse.”
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, U.S. Department of Energy, and other agencies. The lead author was Christopher Schwalm at Northern Arizona University. Other collaborators were from the University of Colorado, University of California at Berkeley, University of British Columbia, San Diego State University, and other institutions. More
The post-summit pledge was an admission of defeat against consumer capitalism. But we can still salvage the natural world.
Our children must ‘experience something of the delight in the natural world and of the peaceful, unharried lives with which we have been blessed'.
It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth's living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue "sustained growth", the primary cause of the biosphere's losses.
The efforts of governments are concentrated not on defending the living Earth from destruction, but on defending the machine that is destroying it. Whenever consumer capitalism becomes snarled up by its own contradictions, governments scramble to mend the machine, to ensure – though it consumes the conditions that sustain our lives – that it runs faster than ever before.
The thought that it might be the wrong machine, pursuing the wrong task, cannot even be voiced in mainstream politics. The machine greatly enriches the economic elite, while insulating the political elite from the mass movements it might otherwise confront. We have our bread; now we are wandering, in spellbound reverie, among the circuses. More
Governments must seize the "historic opportunity" of the Rio+20 summit to put the world on a new sustainable course, says a panel of Nobel laureates, ministers and scientists.
The evidence that society is "on the edge of a threshhold of a future with unprecedented environmental risks" is unequivocal, they conclude.
Their declaration will be presented to government delegations here.
In the main negotiations, nations are reportedly closing in on an agreement.
The Brazilian government, which is now chairing the talks, wants negotiators to finish work on the draft text by the end of Monday.
Heads of government from about 130 countries, and ministers from others, will begin their session on Wednesday and would sign off the text by the end of the week.
While the majority of people here expect a deal to be done, there are warnings from various organisations that it will not go nearly far enough towards sorting out the environment and development issues facing humanity.
Without explicitly criticising the draft agreement, the panel's declaration makes it clear that they agree.
"The combined effects of climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience at a time of increased demand, poses a real threat to humanity's welfare," they write.
"There is an unacceptable risk that human pressures on the planet, should they continue on a business as usual trajectory, will trigger abrupt and irreversible changes with catastrophic outcomes for human societies and life as we know it." More
George Town, Cayman Islands - 19 October 2009 - Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s recent speech on climate change catastrophe in the UK applies to the entire world.
Climate change is the most serious peril that has faced humanity in its long history. However, we are faced with more than climate change, there is peak oil and an out of control population, as well as concerns for water and food security in the years to come.
As I said to a colleague earlier today “failing to plan is planning to fail”.
Humanity is today playing in the major leagues. We are in a sink or swim situation. If we can keep the planet habitable by mitigating and adapting to the changing climate, switching to alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, wave, ocean thermal and nuclear, sequester CO2 and provide the population with adequate supplies of water and food and bring the population under control, humanity may survive .
Warfare and conflict will also need to become a thing of the past as climate change and energy may well exacerbate conflict situations. With a 9.5 billion global population by 2050 ensuring that everyone has adequate food and water could be problematic.
There is however, no ‘Plan B’ if we fail to resolve all the problems facing us.
When playing in the major leagues there is no time out, there is no one that is going to offer help, let alone rescue us. Look around, the neighbourhood is somewhat sparsely populated and there are no other worlds on which humanity can survive. Even if there were other habitable worlds nearby they would in all probability belong to someone else.
There are, in all likelihood, other intelligent races out there somewhere, however in the major leagues one survives on ones own. As a young civilisation it is up to us to solve all our problems, to make peace among ourselves, to bring the population under control, to implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). We must solve our own problems. As a young race we are as children, and as such we may not be able to solve our own problems. But solve them we must.
If we are able to solve the situation facing us and make it to adulthood, in the galactic meaning of the world, we may then be introduced to the neighbours.
If we do not make it to adulthood we will be just another minor statistic, a failure, a insignificant footnote in the universal history book.
For all these reasons we have to come together in Copenhagen and produce a new global climate change deal to replace the ageing Kyoto treaty. Unless we can do so, we are ‘planning to fail‘. Editor
We are extremely pleased to be able to announce the new edition of Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, to be released this spring (and already available for discount pre-order at Powell's, Barnes and Noble, Borders and Amazon).
We struggled with whether to even call this book a new edition, rather than a new book: over half of the entries are new and most have been updated. While we weren't able to start completely from scratch (as in an ideal world one might when trying to cover so vast a range of topic), we do feel that we've been really successful in bringing many of the newest worldchanging ideas to the page. Bright green business, carbon neutral cities, passivhaus green building, product backstories, post-ownership, planetary futurism, green infrastructure, deep walkability, parallel collaboration, product-service systems, zero waste communities, retrofitting the ruins of the unsustainable... it's all in there. This is really, in many ways, the definitive statement of the Worldchanging solutions set (or as close as we can get).
The book comes with a foreword by Van Jones and an introduction by Bill McKibben, as well as with a detailed bibliography and index. The design, again, was created by our friend Stefan Sagmeister. We think Abrams has again made a beautiful book.
As with our last book, we're depending on word of mouth and reader recommendations to spread the word. So we hope that you'll share this news with others (blog it, tweet it, mention it on Facebook, or just tell your friends you're excited to read it). Once you've had a chance to read the book, we'd appreciate your positive reviews on all these sites, as well, of course. More >>>
Sierra Pacific's announcement comes less than a week after the Schwarzenegger administration pushed through new rules allowing the company to sell carbon credits.
Reporting from Sacramento - The state's largest timber company Wednesday announced a groundbreaking agreement to begin marketing its vast forests as a weapon in the fight against global warming.
Sierra Pacific Industries' announcement comes less than a week after the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed through new rules that allow the firm to sell its trees' ability to absorb harmful carbon dioxide from the air.
Environmental groups immediately raised questions about the timing, so soon after the administration pressed the California Air Resources Board to approve the new protocols. "There obviously was a backroom deal going on that helped drive approval of those protocols," said Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Promoters of Sierra Pacific's new pact said such criticisms miss the mark and that the new effort is blazing a trail in the battle against global warming.
"This deal is really marking the way not just for California, but for the global carbon market," said Eron Bloomgarden of Equator, a private equity fund for natural resource projects that will work with Sierra Pacific to find buyers for its carbon credits. More >>>
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, titled “Facing the Future” as delivered by HRH The Prince of Wales, St James’s Palace State Apartments, London
London - 8th July 2009 - Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted that you are able to join me here at St. James’s Palace and I am enormously grateful to Jonathan Dimbleby for what was a very well-crafted obituary!
But Ladies and Gentlemen, Richard Dimbleby was, without doubt, one of the world’s finest broadcasters. He combined a flair for language with great human insight to report on some of the most significant moments of the twentieth century – not least when he guided millions of viewers on the day television came of age, with the B.B.C.’s coverage of my mother’s Coronation in 1953. And I remember that day well. I was about the age of four, and I also recall some wonderful lady coming up to me years ago and saying “I remember you so well at your parents wedding, with your little head appearing over the pew.” And I said “I think it was the Coronation”, and she said, “No, no, your parents’ wedding!”
Whenever he turned his powers of observation to those great occasions he always, to my mind, managed to stress that sense of the long-term view which duty and stewardship depend upon.
St. James’s Palace has been at the heart of that process ever since a seventeen year old Prince of Wales ascended the throne to become King Henry the Eighth exactly five hundred years ago this year. It was Henry who commissioned the building of this palace – exhibiting an interest in architecture that may possibly be hereditary! But towards the end of his reign he also showed an interest in sustainability. Perhaps it is not so well known that Henry instigated the very first piece of green legislation in this country. More>>>
Auden Schendler is blowing a metaphorical raspberry at the kind of hybrid-driving, plastic bag-banning environmentalists for which Seattle is known.
"The problem is, too many Americans are saying: 'I've got my Prius and that's all I need to do,'" Schendler, the executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co., said during a luncheon in downtown Seattle Friday.
Then, from Schendler's new book, "Getting Green Done," there's this commentary on a Colorado group's effort to eliminate plastic bags in grocery stores.
"The polar ice caps are melting, and the Midwest in the spring of 2008 experienced flooding consistent with 20 years of climate modeling; Denver was experiencing record drought, with only three inches of rain through July 2008; and Grand Junction was about to break a record for consecutive days over 90 degrees. And we're banning plastic bags," he wrote. "To quote John McEnroe: 'You have got to be kidding me!'" More >>>
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