Climate Mobilization in Inside Philanthropy

Margaret Klein Salamon States: I am absolutely thrilled by an article that recently appeared in Inside Philanthropy, and wanted to share it with you. It is a deep dive into what “climate mobilization” means, our City by City project, and the $100,000 grant that Climate Mobilization Project recently won from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation on Shelter Rock.

The first and last paragraphs are below. Please read the entire article and share it widely, especially with anyone you know in the philanthropic world.

Many thanks,
Margaret

An Unusual Grant Fuels a Push to Start Treating Climate Change as a Real Emergency
By Tate Williams

A major challenge to organizing and advocacy around climate change is how even to approach a problem so large, complex, and gradually advancing (although it feels less gradual with every year, to be honest).

An advocacy group that launched in 2014 has one answer—we respond like we’re at war.

For the Climate Mobilization Project, the climate crisis demands not incremental changes or gradual reductions in emissions, but an emergency response led by government that is on the scale of the response to World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The group just picked up a grant from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Shelter Rock of $100,000, an amount they say is the “country’s single largest philanthropic investment in emergency climate action.”

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The compelling thing about the Climate Mobilization Project is that, while arguably unrealistic in its goals—since there's no political consensus on this issue, as Rockoff's paper notes—it is unflinching in its diagnosis of the level of response that climate change warrants. Much of its goal is to build a movement around how we should collectively think about climate change—mainly that the status quo of the approach to date is unacceptable. And from the standpoint of a funder like UUCSR, it’s a status quo that’s certainly unjust.

Read the Full Article

Why the ocean needs an Oscar

News about vanishing coral reefs was part of the story of 2017. Every time I dive a reef, my breath is taken away by the incredible beauty and bewildering diversity of life in the tropical seas. But around the world, corals are now sadly sentinels of ocean change.

Since the 1970s, more than 93 per cent of the extra heat from greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the ocean. To understand how much heat that is, researchers who worked on the amazing Netflix documentary Chasing Coral have suggested that we think of it this way: If the ocean wasn’t absorbing it, average global temperatures on land would be far higher—around 122°F (50 Celsius). Global average surface temperature right now is about 59°F (15 Celsius). A 122°F world, would be unlivable.

So more than 93 per cent of climate change is out of sight and out of mind for most of us, but as the ocean continues to take on all of this heat, it is becoming a real hazard for the majority of life on Earth. Their home, the world’s ocean, is becoming too hot and too acidic to live in. In turn, the risks we are exposing ourselves to as a result, are terrifying.

Chasing Coral is a must-watch documentary for everyone. It is the story of a band of scientists, film-makers and concerned individuals who set out to tell us one story and end up documenting the heart-wrenching death of parts of the Great Barrier Reef. It is a powerful story of the importance of science, the wonders and pitfalls of technology, the opportunities of innovation, and the stories and experiences of each of the people involved. Read More

This Scientist Aims High To Save The World's Coral Reefs

Most scientists find a topic that interests them and keep digging deeper and deeper into the details. But Ken Caldeira takes the opposite approach in search for solutions to climate change. He goes after the big questions, and leaves the details to others.

We caught up with Caldeira on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, where he was conducting an experiment to measure how coral reefs are coping with increasing acidity in the world's oceans. People are causing this change by burning fossil fuels and putting carbon dioxide into the air. From there, it dissolves into the oceans, and makes them more acidic.

As a result, the world's coral reefs are in trouble. In a matter of decades, ocean water could become so corrosive that reefs may start dissolving faster than the coral can grow.

Caldeira works for the Carnegie Institution for Science, and he's based on the Stanford University campus. But throughout February, his base of operations was One Tree Island, Australia.

He spent many a day out on the reef, wearing a floppy sun hat, tattered shorts and a head-to-toe "rash guard" to block the intense sunlight. He and his team were pumping antacid onto a stretch of the reef to see if neutralizing some of the increased acidity would help the coral grow faster.

Nobody has ever tried this before. And Caldeira readily acknowledges that he may not get a clear answer himself. Over the course of one hourlong dose of antacid, he's hoping to measure changes in the amount of reef-building calcium carbonate the corals absorb. (See related story for more details.)

Caldeira has license to do this because he works at an unusual place. The Carnegie Institution for Science was endowed by industrialist Andrew Carnegie more than a century ago, so Caldeira worries less about money than other scientists do.

"My job offer letter said 'make important scientific discoveries,' " Caldeira says. "And they basically give me some resources and leave me alone to make important scientific discoveries."

This seems to have worked. More than 12,000 papers in the scientific literature refer to papers that Caldeira has written or co-authored.

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science takes a water sample during his experiment on part of the Great Barrier Reef. The water is slightly pink because his team is using a dye to trace an acid-neutralizing chemical as it flows across the reef.

Science wouldn't really work if everyone tried to go after the flashy findings and not fret about chasing down all the details. But big-picture thinkers like Caldeira also help drive the field.

The reef expedition was a relatively rare foray; over the years, most of his work has been at a computer screen. He has calculated what it would take to cool the planet by spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere. He has wondered what would happen to global temperatures if all the trees near the Arctic were cut down. He has calculated just how much clean energy generation would be needed to replace all the fossil fuels we're using.

But for all that, he loves being out on a reef, doing firsthand research and taking risks on experiments that may simply not have enough power to detect the small changes he's looking for.

"This is how the science gets pushed forward, by people taking risks," he says. "And maybe we'll get lucky and it will work, and maybe it won't."

In a world where science is often driven by a researcher's ability to get government grants, taking a risk like this is a luxury.

But when Caldeira steps back to look at the big picture, it leaves room for some startling insights. For example, it might seem that our vast skies have an endless ability to hold the billions of tons of carbon dioxide we produce every year.

But here's how Caldeira visualizes it: "If you were to compress the entire atmosphere so it was the density of water, it would only be 30 feet deep, so all the stuff we're throwing into the atmosphere, it's like we're throwing it into an ocean that's only 30 feet deep." More

 

Outside Cancún climate conference, Caribbean Sea testifies to global warming

2010 was one of the deadliest years on record for coral reefs. The Caribbean Sea just outside the Cancún climate conference offers evidence of global warming's negative effect. 

This summer’s extreme heat may seem like a distant memory as winter approaches the United States.

But the summer that broke heat records across the Northern Hemisphere is still being felt below the surface of the Caribbean Sea: 2010 will likely be one of the most deadly years on record for coral reefs.

If diplomats attending the two-week global climate change talks that opened Monday in Cancún, Mexico, want more evidence of the negative and potentially devastating affects of warming temperatures, they need look no further than the blue sea outside their hotels. Researchers say that throughout the Caribbean coral reefs are “bleaching,” a condition that occurs when they are under extreme stress due to warmer-than-normal sea temperatures. More >>>

Fish key to reef climate survival

Life on the Reef

A healthy fish population could be the key to ensuring coral reefs survive the impacts of climate change, pollution, overfishing and other threats.

Australian scientists found that some fish act as "lawnmowers", keeping coral free of kelp and unwanted algae.

At a briefing to parliamentarians in Canberra, they said protected areas were rebuilding fish populations in some parts of the Great Barrier Reef.

Warming seas are likely to affect the reef severely within a few decades.

Pollution is also a growing problem, particularly fertilisers that wash from agricultural land into water around the reef, stimulating the growth of plants that stifle the coral। More >>>