My house is covered with solar panels, and I drove the first hybrid electric Ford in Vermont and on and on and on. I try not to fool myself with that’s how we’re going to win this fight. Global warming is a structural and systemic issue, that’s where it comes from, the structures and systems. So changing those is what’s key. As individuals, we’re relatively powerless against climate change. That’s why the most important thing an individual can do is not be an individual, which means joining with other people in this battle.
Bill McKibben, author, activist and co-founder of 350.org, arguing that the collective nature of our climate crisis requires a collective response. In essence, recycling, commuting by bike or electric vehicle, using cloth bags and unplugging our phone chargers are all fine and good, but they aren’t going to get the job done. Why? Because our economies run largely on fossil fuel energy (i.e. coal, oil and natural gas) and need to be decarbonized in order to ensure we all have a future to look forward to. The quote comes from a recent interview with economic researcher Chris Martenson for his website, ‘Peak Prosperity’. The whole interview is worth a listen and share.
Photo: Some of the more than 300,000 strong ‘People’s Climate March’ last year in New York City. (Source: UN)
Infographic: Current pledges by countries to #ActOnClimate and transition to low carbon economies currently exceed the 2°C (3.6°F) threshold beyond which climate science shows catastrophic consequences for people, planet and economies. Long story short, we need to up our ambition and urgency. The COP21 negotiations in Paris this fall are critical to secure a deal to get us on the path to a climate-smart, globally sustainable future. (Source: Climate Interactive) Related:
‘Limited progress seen even as more nations step up on climate’ (New York Times)
‘How your brain tricks you into thinking you are greener than you actually are’ (Washington Post)
Dr. William Rees: ‘Climate change is one symptom’ (YouTube)
‘Systems thinking’ (Wikipedia)
‘Shell abandons Alaska Arctic oil drilling’ (Guardian)
Meet Hannah Herbst, a 15-year-old from Boca Raton, Florida, who just might be the nation’s top young scientist. Earlier this month, Herbst won a $25,000 prize with a very cheap invention: a prototype probe that converts the movement of the ocean’s currents into energy and costs just $12 to make. Out of nine other middle-school finalists, Herbst was awarded first place in the 2015 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.
This 15-Year-Old’s Invention Converts Ocean Currents Into Energy—for Cheap | GOOD
We often take our surroundings for granted. This is an excellent piece that outlines some of the problems and proposes a cool way to keep our forests going.
Shaken is a UK startup that sells subscriptions to “the best cocktails you’ve ever made.” Every month, they send you a handsome box with several bottles of rare and delicious booze, small-batch bitters, and a cocktail recipe explaining the history, chemistry and practice of some classic or novel cocktail.
You bring this stuff into your kitchen and play with it, mixing drinks according to the recipe or its variants, or your taste, according to your preference. They supply everything except ice, fruit, shakers and glassware, and each box has enough booze for four drinks.
The Shaken folks took over my old offices in London when I moved to LA this summer and I got to try some of their packages before I left. They turned me on to what is literally some of the best booze I’ve ever drunk (particularly the Plantation rums, which are finished in Cognac casks and taste like nothing you’ve ever tried before – there’s one that finishes exactly like a smoky Islay, which is indescribably brilliant).
Shaken doesn’t assume that you’re a hardcore cocktail fan, and the recipes are simple to follow. But they strike a great balance for people who want to go beyond, with ideas for refining and improving the basic recipe.
The boxes are no-obligation and you can skip a box any time you feel like it.
Read the rest
in the style of The Toast
That One Unnamed Extinction Event That Happened When Blue-Green Algae Discovered Photosynthesis and Started Pumping the Environment Full of Oxygen, Which Was Toxic to All Other Life on Earth at That Point in Time
This extinction event did result in the extinction of more living organisms than any other, whether you rank by number of individuals, number of orders/genera/species, % of life, or amount of biomass, but they were all single-celled organisms, so they don’t even register on the metal scale.
The Current Slow Slide Due to Anthropogenic Environmental Modification
Habitat destruction isn’t very metal.
Late Devonian
Some super-weird shit died out, which is totally metal, but we have no idea why, which isn’t. It might not even have been an extinction event, just a decrease in the speciation rate. Jawed vertebrates totally unaffected.
End Ordovician
Second-largest extinction event after the End Permian (not counting those blue-green algae fuckers). Caused by tectonic plate shifting (kinda metal) and resulting glaciation (mildly metal).
Deep Impact
Pros: Giant asteroid hitting the earth.
Cons: Fictional.
End Triassic
Probably caused by massive volcanic eruptions, which is pretty metal, but mostly just wiped out some weird looking amphibians, which is only mildly metal.
End Permian
Greatest extinction event of all time (with the exception of that blue-green algae fiasco mentioned above), wiping out ~95% of all species: metal. Only known mass extinction of insects: metal. Probably caused by the biggest volcanic eruptions since life began (metal) which ignited massive coal beds (metal) and caused the release of methane from the ocean floor (metal) resulting in a runaway greenhouse effect that raised the average ocean temperature to 40C for several million years, essentially boiling the earth alive (super metal). Paved the way for dinosaurs to take over the earth: metal. Known as the ‘Great Dying’: totally metal.
However, most of the extinctions occurred in sessile marine organisms, which are way too boring to be metal, and for the first ~20 million years after the extinction event, land was dominated by Lystrosaurus, which is the most un-metal looking reptile you can think of.
End Cretaceous, aka the K-T Event
A GIANT FLAMING BALL OF ROCK HIT THE EARTH AND KILLED ALL THE (non-avian) DINOSAURS. ENOUGH SAID.
Breathtaking Images of Underwater Life Captured by Freediving Photographers Alex Voyer and Alex Roubaud
Ned Richardson-Little is a Canadian academic who went to the US “in search of a better life,” did research in Germany and settled in the UK, something he was able to do thanks to his economic migrant grandfather who happened to have been born in Scotland.
Richardson contemplates the vilified category of “economic migrant” – “the greedy, dark other to those virtuously fleeing conflict” – and wonders how it is that no one has ever vilified him, given that he, too, is so obviously an “economic migrant.”
My grandparents (and father) were displaced people – Red Army deserters who destroyed their papers so that they could escape Europe via the DP boats to Canada – and I left Canada for the USA to found a company, then moved to the UK to represent an NGO and became a citizen, and have now moved back to the USA to write novels and campaign for better information policy. No one has ever called me an economic migrant.
https://boingboing.net/2015/11/29/youre-only-an-economic-mig.html
Iceland to Help Develop Geothermal Energy in Ethiopia
“We are not facing a future without work. We are facing a future without jobs.“
READ MORE: Jobs, Work, and Universal Basic Income
Fearing the spectacle would be misunderstood, community representatives last week visited the 22 migrants — including 12 children — who have been housed in the Alpine village since the end of October.
They were shown the frightening masks and given insight into the event’s history with the help of an Arabic translator. The verdict? The newcomers had “lots of fun,” according to social worker Nicole Kranebitter.
The migrants “will now know what to expect when St. Nicholas and the Krampus creatures knock on their door,” Kranebitter added.
She said the next event planned for the families who fled war-torn homelands will be traditional cookie baking.
sometimes the world is okay