Walmart patents bee drones

SUBHEAD: Autonomous robotic insects owned by a rapacious soul destroying corporation are not the solution.

By Claire S. Bernish on 18 March 2018 for The Mind Unleashed -
(https://themindunleashed.com/2018/03/walmart-files-patent-for-autonomous-bee-drones.html)


Image above: Illustration of a hypothetical robotic bee. From original article.

With honey bee populations still in peril from one or several of a litany of hotly debated causes — neonicotinoid insecticides, changing climate, and more — Walmart appears to have joined the race for a technological solution to a potential looming disaster, filing a patent for robotic, drone bees earlier this month.

Technically called pollination drones, Business Insider points out, the tiny bee imposters’ capabilities would theoretically include crop pollination — managed remotely through sensors and cameras allowing precision maneuverability between crops and monitor, as well as to monitor that pollination was both sufficient and successful.

CB Insights, credited with first publicizing the patent filed on March 8, surmised Walmart is seeking further control of its supply chain, as the pollinator drones are among six “patents targeting farm automation. The applications propose using drones to identify pests attacking crops, monitor crop damage, spray pesticides, and pollinate crops.”

It continues, “Drones could spray pesticides across a more targeted set of crops, rather than the blanket approach used today. The patent notes that ‘chemical spraying of crops is expensive and may not be looked upon favorably by some consumers.’”

Walmart’s move might thus be considered proactive and positive — although an albeit eerie dystopian commentary on the state of the planet and its ecosystems, or humankind’s unfortunate myopathy — but criticism questions whether funds might be better spent identifying issues facing honey bees and working to conserve and rejuvenate dwindling populations, rather than essentially planning for the worst.

“On top of more practical arguments, such as costs to smaller farms,” Quinn McFrederick, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, told NPR, “I would not like to live in a world where bees are replaced by plastic machines. Let’s focus on protecting the biodiversity we still have left.”

McFrederick doesn’t deny the efficacy of drone pollinators, particularly in conjunction with the use of artificial intelligence, but sees the effort heaved at solutions for a problem which has yet to fully develop — without a coincident examination of the root problem — as somewhat misguided.

If bees die out, humans would face a drastically-reduced food landscape — according to Big Think, mirroring similar estimates, around a third of the food humans eat relies on honey bee pollination — and honey bees comprise a paltry 2 percent of all bees.

“Bee deaths have been on the rise, with losses outpacing colonies’ ability to regenerate,” NPR reported last year. “Last year, the U.S. lost 44 percent of all honeybee colonies — a species essential to commercial pollination in this country. Other species of bees have neared mass extinction, including the rusty patch [sic] bumble bee and seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees.”

Even with a slightly lessened decline in recent years, that’s an astoundingly high figure next to the generally-expected 17-percent decline in honey bee populations in a ‘typical’ year, Phys.org noted in 2016, adding that myriad environmental and biological factors likely contribute to colony collapse disorder — even though a solid cause has yet to be fully established.

Robotic bees, pollinator drones, would certainly stave off one of the more pernicious problems facing honey bees in recent years: a mite which acts like a vampire in the tiny insects. Phys.org explains,

“Beekeepers’ biggest challenge today is probably Varroa destructor, an aptly named parasitic mite that we call the vampire of the bee world. Varroa feeds on hemolymph (the insect ‘blood’) of adult and developing honey bees. In the process it transmits pathogens and suppresses bees’ immune response. They are fairly large relative to bees: for perspective, imagine a parasite the size of a dinner plate feeding on you. And individual bees often are hosts to multiple mites.”

Whether single issue as-yet undiscovered or a plethora of damaging factors acting insidiously, the decline of pollinators is a silent if impending doom whose fruition may yet be halted — even if by corporations and private entities like Walmart, whose self-interest in self-preservation in the matter is undeniable.

However, that in itself is a timely caveat for the state of food, wildlife, and the natural order — creating a robotic version of an evolutionary masterpiece bespeaks volumes of humans’ sad penchant for examining problems post mortem — rather than applying forethought..

Kavanaugh to Earth - "Drop Dead!"

SUBHEAD: Supreme Court lets stand an anti-EPA decision written by then Judge Kavanaugh.

By Jay Michaelson on 10 October 2018 for The Daily Beast -
(https://www.thedailybeast.com/kavanaugh-and-supreme-court-to-planet-drop-dead)


Image above: Illustration of grumpy, bitter Burt O'Kavanaugh smelling coal burning smokestacks. From original article.

In the same week that the world’s scientists declared global climate disruption has reached a “point of no return”, the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, and the Trump administration all agreed to do nothing about it.

On Monday, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report describing the effects of climate change that are already being felt today, and the disastrous effects that could come as soon as 2040 absent dramatic action.

Then on Tuesday, the Supreme Court, at the request of the Trump administration, dismissed an appeal of a D.C. Circuit decision that prevented the EPA from regulating a powerful greenhouse gas.

The author of that decision: Judge Kavanaugh.

For anyone waiting for the impact now-Justice Kavanaugh will have on the Supreme Court, you need wait no longer.

While Kavanaugh was not involved in the decision to dismiss this case, it is his opinion is now the law of the land — and is it a disaster for the environment.

David Doniger, who had argued the case for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that “Coming only a day after the world’s leading climate scientists called for urgent action to curb dangerous carbon pollution, the court’s decision lets irresponsible companies continue harming our planet.”

The regulation in question dates back to the good old days when the EPA accepted the global consensus of climate scientists that manmade gas emissions are causing the earth’s atmosphere to trap more heat – a phenomenon that, among other things, enabled life on earth to develop 2.5 billion years ago, but which is now causing the Earth’s climate to warm at a breakneck pace unlike anything in the history of the planet.

Among the gases doing the most damage are hydrofluorocarbons.

While HFCs are helpful in preventing ozone loss (they replaced chlorofluorocarbons, which cause it), they are nasty greenhouse gases – nicknamed “super-pollutants” because each molecule causes around 14,000 times as much warming as a CO2 molecule. And they are ubiquitous, found in millions of household products from air conditioners to hairspray.

So, in 2015, the EPA effectively banned companies from using HFC in their products when alternatives were available. A consortium of industries sued – although since the leading HFC alternative is manufactured by Honeywell, Inc., it sided with environmentalists.

In August, 2017, the D.C. Circuit court struck down the regulation, in a 2-1 opinion written by Kavanaugh. The court held that while the relevant provision of the Clean Air Act gave the EPA authority to ban ozone-depleting chemicals, it could not ban the replacements for those chemicals, such as HFCs.

That suited the Trump-era EPA just fine; they were planning to roll back the HFC regulations, part of Obama’s Climate Action Plan, anyway.

And so while Honeywell and environmental groups appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, the EPA filed a memo arguing that since they weren’t going to regulate HFCs anyway, there would be no point in the Court taking the case.

The Court agreed today – which makes sense, really. There would be little point going through the effort of a Supreme Court briefing, argument, and decision process if, at the end of the day, the regulation is doomed anyway. So they dismissed the case.

The larger contexts, of course, are Kavanaugh and climate change.

Kavanaugh’s opinion in Mexichem Fluor vs. EPA is the perfect example of his view that agencies may not act without specific statutory authority.

That sounds like a neutral principle, but in practice, it would spell the end for a huge swath of environmental, health, safety, labor, financial, commercial, and other regulations.

Congress has neither the time nor the expertise to specify every consequence of every law it passes.

That’s why it delegates that level of decision-making to agencies, who have teams of experts (until the Trump administration, anyway) to work out the details.

In the case of HFCs, the EPA noted that it had the authority to replace ozone-depleting chemicals with “safe substitutes.” HFCs, it said, are unsafe, because they are climate change super-pollutants. But Judge Kavanaugh called this a “novel reading” of the statute and struck down the regulations.




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The well-to-do wrecking our climate

SUBHEAD: Almost 50% of all carbon emissions arise from around 10% of the global population.

By Kevin Anderson on 8 October 2018 in Resilience -
(https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-10-09/response-to-the-ipcc-1-5c-special-report/)


Image above: A car for every adult in the house in apocalyptic Phoenix, Arizona requires parking on what might have been meant to be a lawn. From (http://uglyhousephotos.com/wordpress/2014/06/10/soft-parking/).

The University of Manchester’s Professor Kevin Anderson responds to the recent report from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change in Manchester Policy Blogs.

The IPCC report meticulously lays out how the serious climate impacts of 1.5°C of warming are still far less destructive than those for 2°C.

Sadly, the IPCC then fails, again, to address the profound implications of reducing emissions in line with both 1.5 and 2°C. Dress it up however we may wish, climate change is ultimately a rationing issue.

The responsibility for global emissions is heavily skewed towards the lifestyles of a relatively few high emitters – professors and climate academics among them. Almost 50% of global carbon emissions arise from the activities of around 10% of the global population, increasing to 70% of emissions from just 20% of citizens.

Impose a limit on the per-capita carbon footprint of the top 10% of global emitters, equivalent to that of an average European citizen, and global emissions could be reduced by one third in a matter of a year or two.

Ignoring this huge inequality in emissions, the IPCC chooses instead to constrain its policy advice to fit neatly within the current economic model.

This includes, significant reliance on removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere much later in the century, when today’s senior scientists and policy makers will be either retired or dead.

Conjuring up such futuristic ‘negative emission technologies’ to help achieve the virtually impossible 1.5°C target is perhaps understandable, but such inter-generational buck-passing also dominates the IPCC’s 2°C advice.

To genuinely reduce emissions in line with 2°C of warming requires a transformation in the productive capacity of society, reminiscent of the Marshall Plan.

The labor and resources used to furnish the high-carbon lifestyles of the top 20% will need to shift rapidly to deliver a fully decarbonized energy system.

No more second or very large homes, SUVs, business and first-class flights, or very high levels of consumption. Instead, our economy should be building new zero-energy houses, retrofitting existing homes, huge expansion of public transport, and a 4-fold increase in (zero-carbon) electrification.

The Paris Agreement notes how it will take a little longer for poorer countries to fully decarbonize, raising the bar still further for the UK, USA and other wealthy nations.

Even for 2°C the maths points to such nations moving to zero-carbon energy by 2035-2040, with poorer nations following suit a decade later. For 1.5°C, such ‘real’ 2°C mitigation will need to be complemented with planetary scale negative emissions.

Whilst the IPCC’s 1.5°C report rightly emphasizes the urgent need to research these speculative technologies, it continues to run scared of the economic elephant dominating the room.

Until the IPCC (and society more generally) are prepared to acknowledge the huge asymmetry in consumption and hence emissions, temperatures will continue to rise beyond 1.5 and 2°C – bequeathing future generations the climate chaos of 3°C, 4°C or even higher.

• Prof Kevin Anderson is professor of energy and climate change in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at The University of Manchester.



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Trump in your face

SUBHEAD: Local governments, corporations, organizations and individuals need  push back against Trump.

By Juan Wilson on 9 October 2018 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2018/10/trump-in-your-face.html)


Image above: The test message from President Trump to all cell phones as illustrated by FEMA. From (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/cell-phone-presidential-alert-fema/index.html).

A week ago today FEMA was used to send a test "Trump Alert" message to all US cell phones capable of receiving it. Thank God I have no "smart" phone to be so imposed on by a tyrannical egoist.

From CNN:

The "presidential alert" headed to Americans' cell phones won't actually be written by President Donald Trump, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday.

Wednesday afternoon's message is the first nationwide test of the system built by the government and cell phone carriers to push an emergency message to nearly all cell phones in the US, a senior FEMA official told reporters on a Tuesday conference call.

Despite the name, "the president will not originate this alert, say, from his mobile device," the official said. "You would not have a situation where any sitting president would wake up one morning and attempt to send a particular message."

That name had generated questions about how and when the system can be used. The official said the uses are limited, such as to a "coordinated attack on our major cities across the country" or "some other type of public peril that is ongoing in the country at the time."

The FEMA official spoke to reporters on a conference call the agency arranged on the condition of anonymity. FEMA did not elaborate on why the official could not be named.
 
The official said the system includes safeguards. In a real emergency, a FEMA official using a device "very similar to a laptop computer" will receive information from multiple federal agencies and the White House, and select one of several pre-written messages and update it to fit the circumstances.

The system requires passwords and the text will be "checked by two people before that message is sent. 

Donald Trump's first 'Presidential Alert,' an unblockable wireless alert warning to cellphones in the United States, was deployed last Wednesday, October 2nd at 11:18 a.m. PT/2:18 p.m. ET.

"THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed,"

No emergency, just testing. Now a group of New Yorkers are suing the President and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to stop the new practice, which many fear Trump will abuse.

From CNET:

Three New York residents last week filed a lawsuit in the Southern District Court of New York against President Donald Trump and William Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The residents want to halt FEMA's new Presidential Alert messaging system, which enables Trump to deploy alerts of national emergencies.

"Plaintiffs are American citizens who do not wish to receive text messages, or messages of any kind, on any topic or subject, from defendant Trump," the lawsuit (posted below) reads. "[Trump's] rise to power was facilitated by weaponized disinformation that he broadcast into the public information sphere via Twitter in addition to traditional mass media."

The White House, FEMA, and plaintiffs didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

(..) The plaintiffs' main complaint is that Presidential Alerts are compulsory -- there's no way to opt-out of receiving them. They argue that under civil rights law, government cannot use cellular devices to compel listening, "trespass into and hijack" devices without a warrant or individual consent.

The plaintiffs are also concerned Trump might use the alerts to spread disinformation because IPAWS doesn't regulate the content of the messages. That means Trump may be free to define "act of terrorism" and "threat to public safety," and may broadcast "arbitrary, biased, irrational" messages to "hundreds of millions of people," the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit.

If you do not think this is an unwarranted intrusion you've already taken the "Blue Pill" from the Matrix and everything is just fine:

"You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

If you have read Ea O Ka Aina: Final call to save the world (10/8/18) and Ea O Ka Aina: Scientists outline paths to survival (10/4/18) then you know that Donald Trump will be in office and and in a daze of self delusion until it is too late to save the "Earth" from a transition to what Bill MCKibben has named "Eaarth"- a planet inhospitable to life as we know it.

States, counties, municipalities, corporations, organizations and individuals need to act on their own to push back against Trump's stranglehold on federal regulations and activities. For the moment the nation is lost. Trump has embraced worldwide extinction for a moment in the spotlight and in your face.

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Final call to save the world

SUBHEAD: We will need rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of human society.

By Matt McGrath on 8 October 2018 for the BBC -
(https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45775309)


Image above: View of Earth showing the "10,000 Mile Desert" spanning all of North Africa, across the Middle East and across much of Asia. Will all the planet look like Mars in the following decades? From the original article.

It's the final call, say scientists, the most extensive warning yet on the risks of rising global temperatures.

Their dramatic report on keeping that rise under 1.5 degrees C says the world is now completely off track, heading instead towards 3C.

Keeping to the preferred target of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will mean "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".

It will be hugely expensive - but the window of opportunity remains open.

After three years of research and a week of haggling between scientists and government officials at a meeting in South Korea, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a special report on the impact of global warming of 1.5C.

The critical 33-page Summary for Policymakers certainly bears the hallmarks of difficult negotiations between climate researchers determined to stick to what their studies have shown and political representatives more concerned with economies and living standards.

Despite the inevitable compromises, there are some key messages that come through loud and clear.

"The first is that limiting warming to 1.5C brings a lot of benefits compared with limiting it to two degrees. It really reduces the impacts of climate change in very important ways," said Prof Jim Skea, who co-chairs the IPCC.

"The second is the unprecedented nature of the changes that are required if we are to limit warming to 1.5C - changes to energy systems, changes to the way we manage land, changes to the way we move around with transportation."

What's the one big takeaway?
"Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW, IDIOTS,' but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, of Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have."

The researchers have used these facts and numbers to paint a picture of the world with a dangerous fever, caused by humans. We used to think if we could keep warming below two degrees this century, then the changes we would experience would be manageable.

Not any more. This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years, in 2030.

We can stay below it - but it will require urgent, large-scale changes from governments and individuals and we will have to invest a massive pile of cash every year, about 2.5% of global gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced, for two decades.

Even then, we will still need machines, trees and plants to capture carbon from the air that we can then store deep underground - forever.

What can I do?
The report says there must be rapid and significant changes in four big global systems:

• energy • land use • cities • industry

But it adds that the world cannot meet its target without changes by individuals, urging people to:

• buy less meat, milk, cheese and butter 
• buy more locally sourced seasonal food
• throw away less of the food you buy
• drive electric cars but walk or cycle short distances
• take trains and buses instead of planes 
• use videoconferencing instead of business travel
• use a washing line instead of a tumble dryer
• insulate homes and businesses
• demand low carbon footprint in every consumer product

Lifestyle changes can make a big difference, said Dr Debra Roberts, the IPCC's other co-chair.

"That's a very empowering message for the individual," she said. "This is not about remote science; it is about where we live and work, and it gives us a cue on how we might be able to contribute to that massive change, because everyone is going to have to be involved."

"You might say you don't have control over land use, but you do have control over what you eat and that determines land use.

"We can choose the way we move in cities and if we don't have access to public transport - make sure you are electing politicians who provide options around public transport."

Five steps to 1.5ºC

1. Global emissions of CO2 need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030
2. Renewables are estimated to provide up to 85% of global electricity by 2050
3. Coal is expected to reduce to close to zero
4. Up to seven million sq km of land will be needed for energy crops (about the size of Australia)
5. Global net zero emissions by 2050

How much will all this cost?
It won't come cheap. The report says to limit warming to 1.5C, will involve "annual average investment needs in the energy system of around $2.4 trillion" between 2016 and 2035.

Experts believe this number needs to be put in context.

"There are costs and benefits you have to weigh up," said Dr Stephen Cornelius, a former UK IPCC negotiator now with WWF. He says making big emissions cuts in the short term will cost money but be cheaper than paying for carbon dioxide removal later this century.

"The report also talks about the benefits as there is higher economic growth at 1.5 degrees than there is at 2C and you don't have the higher risk of catastrophic impacts at 1.5 that you do at two."

What happens if we don't act?
The researchers say that if we fail to keep temperature rises below 1.5C, we are in for some significant and dangerous changes to our world.

You can kiss coral reefs goodbye, as the report says they would be essentially 100% wiped out at two degrees of warming.

Global sea-level will rise about 10cm (4in) more if we let warming go to 2C. That may not sound like much but keeping to 1.5C means that 10 million fewer people would be exposed to the risks of flooding.

There are also significant impacts on ocean temperatures and acidity, and the ability to grow crops such as rice, maize and wheat.

"We are already in the danger zone at one degree of warming," said Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace. "Both poles are melting at an accelerated rate; ancient trees that have been there for hundreds of years are suddenly dying; and the summer we've just experienced - basically, the whole world was on fire."

---

Is this plan at all feasible?
Analysis by David Shukman, BBC science editor

The countdown to the worst of global warming seems to have accelerated. Seriously damaging impacts are no longer on a distant horizon later this century but within a timeframe that appears uncomfortably close.

By the same token, the report's "pathways" for keeping a lid on temperatures all mean that hard decisions cannot be delayed:

• a shift away from fossil fuels by mid-century
• coal phased out far sooner than previously suggested
• vast tracts of land given over to forests

It's mind-bending stuff and some will say it's hopelessly unrealistic, a climate scientists' fantasy. So is any of it plausible? On the one hand, the global economy relies on carbon and key activities depend on it. On the other, wind turbines and solar panels have tumbled in price and more and more countries and states such as California are setting ambitious green targets.

Ultimately, politicians will face a difficult choice: persuade their voters that the revolutionary change outlined in the report is urgently needed or ignore it and say the scientists have got it wrong.

Is all this about saving small island states?The idea of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 is something very close to the hearts and minds of small island and low-lying states, which fear being inundated with flooding if temperatures go to two degrees.

But over the three years that the report was in preparation, more and more scientific evidence has been published showing the benefits of staying close to 1.5C are not just for island nations in the Pacific.

"If you save a small island country, then you save the world," said Dr Amjad Abdulla, an IPCC author, from the Maldives. "Because the report clearly states that no-one is going to be immune. It's about morality - it's about humanity."

How long have we got?
Not long at all. But that issue is now in the hands of political leaders. The report says hard decisions can no longer be kicked down the road. If the nations of the world don't act soon, they will have to rely even more on unproven technologies to take carbon out of the air - an expensive and uncertain road.

"They really need to start work immediately. The report is clear that if governments just fulfil the pledges they made in the Paris agreement for 2030, it is not good enough. It will make it very difficult to consider global warming of 1.5C," said Prof Jim Skea.

"If they read the report and decide to increase their ambitions and act more immediately, then 1.5C stays within reach - that's the nature of the choice they face."

Campaigners and environmentalists, who have welcomed the report, say there is simply no time left for debate.

"This is the moment where we need to decide" said Kaisa Kosonen. "We want to move to clean energy, sustainable lifestyles. We want to protect our forests and species. This is the moment that we will remember; this is the year when the turning point happened."

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Scientists outline paths to survival 10/4/18
Ea O Ka Aina: Mushroom at the End of the World 7/28/17
Ea O Ka Aina: The End of Growth  12/28/14

Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning of the World 12/30/12
Ea O Ka Aina: We Were Warned 12/21/12
Ea O Ka Aina: End of the Industrial Revolution 8/24/12
Ea O Ka Aina: The Ends of the Earth 3/23/11
Island Breath: Lovelock says we're toast 5/11/07
Island Breath: No More Mr. Nice Guy 2/11/06
Island Breath: The Dead Zone 2/7/06
Island Breath: 20 Years to Fix Climate Change 1/20/06
Island Breath: Clinton on Global Warming 12/15/04
Island Breath: God Must Hate Florida 10/6/04
Island Breath: Gore on Global Warming 1/16/04
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Communicating Climate Emergency

SUBHEAD: We must stop emitting gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, as fast as possible.

By David Spratt on 3 October 20018 for Climate Code Red -
(http://www.climatecodered.org/2018/10/how-to-communicate-climate-emergency.html)


Image above: Methane gas blasts one of many large crater-like holes through melting Siberian tundra in 2017. From (https://www.livescience.com/59705-oozing-methane-blasts-craters-in-siberian-tundra.html).

What are effective ways of engaging people in conversation about the gathering climate crisis and the need for an emergency response? Let's start with some key content:

1. Urgency and courage   
 

The Earth is already too hot: we are in danger now, not just in the future. Warming will accelerate, and 1.5°C is only a decade away, yet annual emissions are still growing and the current, post-Paris emissions trajectory will result in catastrophic warming.

The Great Barrier Reef and other coral systems are dying. We are greatly exceeding Earth’s limits, and food and water shortages are contributing to conflicts and forced migration.

On current trends, following the Paris Agreement, we may face catastrophic warming within our children’s lifetimes, with large parts of the world uninhabitable and major food growing regions ruined by drought (such as Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, south-western USA) or rising seas (such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Egypt).

In past periods when greenhouse levels were similar to the current level, temperatures were 3–6°C higher and sea levels around 25–40 metres higher than in 1900.

Climate warming is an existential risk to human civilisation, and on the current warming path we are heading towards outright chaos.

The failure of community and political leaders to talk about such concerns leaves unspoken fears lurking just below the surface of public life, sapping our strength. Fear and alarm should be welcomed as healthy reactions that show we’ve noticed something dangerous is going on.

Our response to the climate crisis is the courage to match actions to the size of the problem.

2.    Emergency response 

Many people realise we are heading for a social and planetary crisis. Three-quarters of Australians consider climate change a “global catastrophic risk”.

Many people have experienced emergencies such as fires, floods or cyclones. In these times, we move into emergency mode. In emergency mode we stop “business-as-usual” because nothing else matters as much as the crisis.

We don't rush thoughtlessly in, but focus on a plan of action, which we implement with thought, and all possible care and speed, to protect others and get to safety. Everyone chips in, with all hands on deck.

Climate warming is now a planetary crisis or emergency, requiring courageous leadership and a coordinated society-wide response of a scale and speed never before seen in peacetime.

It is now too late for gradual, incremental steps to protect what we care about. The Titanic didn’t just need to slow its pace, but needed to turn at emergency speed. It’s the same for climate warming. When you are about to go off a cliff, you need to reverse out of the danger zone fast, not just slow your speed.

3. Peoples’ mobilisation 

A failure to properly recognise and communicate the full extent of the climate crisis has produced a dangerous complacency.

The danger we face didn’t just happen. It’s the result of decisions taken by people with vested interests who run the world’s biggest corporations and too much of the media, and their political colleagues.

People made this problem, not nature, and people can fix it. We have the capacity to solve this problem, and live in a safe climate.

Successful social movements are energised by the strength of purpose that comes with working together for a just cause. Popular movements have stopped tyrannical governments, won civil rights and better working conditions and better health services. They have closed down dirty coal and gas mining.

Change is already happening: new wind and solar are cheaper than new coal power. A transition  disrupting the old energy industries is well under way. We have the economic and technological capacity to succeed, but a failed politics is preventing the fast change that is now essential.

4. Fast solutions 

The planet is already too hot, so we must stopping emitting climate-warming gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, as fast as humanly possible. At emergency speed.

We are already in the climate danger zone, so we need to reduce or “draw down” some of the climate-warming gases in the air. Restoring degraded forests is a great starting point.

Achieving these goals fast is essential if we are to stop further ”tipping points” in the climate system that would lead to many metres of sea-level rise, drowning cities and rich coastal lands.

We have the knowhow to make change fast, and plans to support communities most directly affected by change.

And change can happen fast when we really apply our effort: from fighting natural emergencies and rebuilding cities, to going to the moon or building a digital economy.

The steps to a safe climate will also build a better and more livable world: clean energy, better-designed cities, comfortable homes, healthier food, less waste, regenerative farming and the recovery of the natural world.

Telling the story 

The story may be told in the following manner:

Framing.  Research on public health promotion campaigns shows that the messages that work best combine a personally relevant description of the threat (fear), a clear exposition of the solution with a clear path of achievable actions to address it (hope).

 Counterposing “fear” and “hope” narratives is a false dichotomy, because both are needed. Just reading a climate message that forthrightly describes the seriousness of our situation can increase commitment to taking action. Strong fear messages have been found to be more effective than weak fear messages.

 In their hearts, most people value the same things: good relationships with friends and family, providing for and supporting their families, and making a positive social contribution. The “health, wellbeing and livelihood” frame presents climate change in ways that connect to core values and issues familiar to people and decision makers.

It can activate and reinforce values of empathy, responsibility, protection, community, fairness and opportunity, These world views are commonly held by both conservatives and progressives .

The “health, wellbeing and livelihood” frame is an opportunity to spell out not just the centrality of the climate change threat, but how it impacts and threatens each and every part of our lives, including where we live, jobs, transport, energy infrastructure, the economy and even where we holiday.

Sample story. Here is an example:

Our climate is already too hot, with more dangerous heatwaves and bushfires, droughts and crop failures, and coastal flooding.
Accelerating climate warming could bring on social breakdown and global economic crisis.
But Australia’s government, held back by vested interests, is failing to protect us and the things we care about.
Like other emergencies, together we need to throw everything we’ve got at this to restore a safe, healthy climate.
We have the resources and knowledge to succeed.
Success means governments making climate the primary target of policy, and a whole-hearted community effort, to make big changes within a decade.

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'Necessity Defense' to save Earth

SUBHEAD: Those arrested argue saving the planet justified illegal sand pipeline shutdown.

By Jessica Corbitt on 5 October 2018 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/05/landmark-necessity-defense-trial-valve-turners-will-argue-saving-planet-justified)


Image above: A trial for (from left) Emily Nesbitt Johnston, Benjamin Joldersma, and Annette Klapstein regarding their participation in a 2016 multi-state protest begins on Monday. From original article.

"If we really go out there and sit down in front of the machine, eventually they can no longer operate it. And at this point, that is our only option."

Three activists whose landmark trial is set to begin in Minnesota state court on Monday for their 2016 multi-state #ShutItDown action—which temporarily disabled all tar sands pipelines crossing the U.S.-Canada border—will argue the action was necessary because of the threat that fossil fuels pose to the planet.

Rejecting a challenge from state prosecutors in April, an appeals court ruled that the "valve turners" can present a "necessity defense"—and bring in top climate experts to testify. In June, the Minnesota Supreme Court denied prosecutors' petition to appeal that ruling.

The necessity defense "is a plea that, yes technically we committed a crime, but we did it to prevent a greater harm," explained Annette Klapstein, a retired attorney from the Seattle area and one of the valve turners on trial.

"We cannot work through our political system, because its values are nothing but profit," she told The Nation. "We live in an oligarchy, not a democracy."

"It's very much in the interest of the capitalist political system to make us feel powerless, to make us feel that we can't do anything," she added, but "ultimately, they cannot win if we do not consent.

If we really withdraw our consent, if we really go out there and sit down in front of the machine, eventually they can no longer operate it. And at this point, that is our only option."

Klapstein and Emily Nesbitt Johnston are facing felony charges under Minnesota law for shutting down Enbridge Energy's Line 4 and Line 67.

While Benjamin Joldersma, who assisted them, also faces charges in the case, the state has dropped trespassing charges against videographer Steve Liptay.

The Nation reports that Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens and Harvard Law School's Lawrence Lessig are among the expert witnesses slated to testify.

Dr. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist who has been called "the father of modern climate change awareness," and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben will also testify in case, according to the activist group Climate Direct Action.

"These people deserve our respect and support," McKibben said on Twitter about the valve turners in Minnesota on Friday.

This will be the first of the valve turner cases where those on trial can present a necessity defense, as judges in three states have barred fellow activists from doing so.

In Washington, Ken Ward was found guilty of second degree burglary after his first trial ended with a hung jury. The judge used a "first-time offender waiver" to sentence him to two days in jail, which was fulfilled by time in custody after he was arrested for the 2016 action.

In North Dakota, Michael Foster was convicted of two felonies and a misdemeanor, and sentenced to three years in prison, though he only served six months and was released in August.

Sam Jessup, who livestreamed Foster's action, was convicted of a felony and a misdemeanor, and received a two-year deferred sentence with supervised probation. In Montana, Leonard Higgins was found guilty of a felony and misdemeanor. He received a three-year deferred sentence.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: The futility of Big Green activism 3/29/18
Ea O Ka Aina: Being green is being a terrorist 2/20/18
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL battle not over 6/15/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Defense contractors fought NoDAPL 5/27/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Tribes divest DAPL Bankers 2/13/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Veterans defending NoDAPL 2/11/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps okays DAPL Easement  2/8/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump orders go on DAPL EIS 2/3/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Water Protectors pipeline resistance 2/1/17 
Ea O Ka Aina: Force a full EIS on DAPL 1/27/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Missile launcher at Standing Rock 1/19/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Lockdown at Trans-Pecos Pipeline 1/10/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock has changed us 12/9/16
Ea O Ka Aina: As Standing Rock celebrates... 12/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps denies easement 12/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: My Whole Heart is With You 12/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Loving Containment of Courage 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning is Near 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds to shutdown NoDAPL Camp 11/25/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL people are going to die 11/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL 11/22/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Environmentalist going to jail  3/3/11

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Scientists outline paths to survival

SUBHEAD: World greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 — just 15 months from now.

By Eric Holthaus on 4 October 2018 for Grist -
(https://grist.org/article/with-the-world-on-the-line-scientists-outline-the-paths-to-survival/)


Image above: Efforts to rebuild concrete bulkhead on an eroding shore in the Marshall Islands. From original article.

This week, scientists and representatives from every country on Earth are gathering in South Korea to put the finishing touches on a report that, if followed, would change the course of history.

The report is a roadmap for possible ways to keep climate change to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels

Anything beyond that amount of warming, and the planet starts to really go haywire. So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a U.N.-sponsored, Nobel Peace Prize-winning assemblage of scientists — wants to show how we can avoid that.

To be clear, hitting that goal would require a radical rethink in almost every aspect of society. But the report finds that not meeting the goal would upend life as we know it, too.

“This will be one of the most important meetings in the IPCC’s history,” said Hoesung Lee, the group’s chair, in his opening address on Monday.

The report will be released on October 8. From leaked drafts, we know the basics of scientists’ findings: World greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 — just 15 months from now.

The scientists also show the difference in impacts between 1.5 and 2 degrees would not be minor — it could be make-or-break for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, for example, which would flood every coastal city on Earth should it collapse.

“The decisions we make now about whether we let 1.5 or 2 degrees or more happen will change the world enormously,” said Heleen de Coninck, a Dutch climate scientist and one of the report’s lead authors, in an interview with the BBC. “The lives of people will never be the same again either way, but we can influence which future we end up with.”

The report has been in the works since the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Three years ago, during the climate talks, leaders of a few dozen small island nations and other highly vulnerable nations, like Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, demanded the bolder 1.5 degrees C temperature target be included in the first-ever global climate pact.

The group represents 1 billion people, and for some of the involved countries, like the Marshall Islands, their entire existence is at stake.

At the time, the lead negotiator from that tiny Pacific island nation used the word “genocide” to describe the inevitable process of forced abandonment of his country due to sea-level rise, should global temperature breach the 1.5 degree target.

Even taking into account the policies and pledges enacted globally since the Paris Agreement, the world is on course to warm between 2.6 to 3.2 degrees C by the end of the century, according to independent analysis by Climate Action Tracker.

According to a U.N. preview of the report, meeting the 1.5 goal would “require very fast changes in electricity production, transport, construction, agriculture and industry” worldwide, in a globally coordinated effort to bring about a zero-carbon economy as quickly as possible.

It would also very likely require eventually removing huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using technology that is not currently available at the scale that would be necessary. And there’s no time to waste: “The longer CO2 is emitted at today’s rate, the faster this decarbonization will need to be.”

The world has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees C, and the implications of that are increasingly obvious. In just the three years since the Paris Agreement was signed, we’ve seen thousand-year rainstorms by the dozens, the most destructive hurricane season in U.S. history, disastrous fires on almost every continent, and an unprecedented coral bleaching episode that affected 70 percent of the world’s reefs.

In this age of rapid warming, the IPCC report is inherently political — there are obvious winners and losers if the world fails to meet the 1.5-degree goal.

If the world’s governments are to take the implications of IPCC’s findings seriously, it would be nothing less than revolutionary — a radical restructuring of human society on our planet.

Right now, scientists are trying to find the precise words to describe an impending catastrophe and the utterly heroic efforts it would take to avert it.

“We’re talking about the kind of crisis that forces us to rethink everything we’ve known so far on how to build a secure future,” Greenpeace’s Kaisa Kosonen told AFP in response to a draft of the report. “We have to try to make the impossible possible.”

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Adapting to the End of the World

SUBHEAD: Researchers are thinking about social collapse and how to prepare for it.

By Christopher Flavelle on 25 September 2018 for Bloomberg News -
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/new-climate-debate-how-to-adapt-to-the-end-of-the-world)


Image above: A home damaged by Hurricane Maria stands abandoned in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 17, 2018. Photo by Xavier Garcia. From original article.

At the end of 2016, before Puerto Rico’s power grid collapsed, wildfires reached the Arctic, and a large swath of North Carolina was submerged under floodwaters, Jonathan Gosling published an academic paper asking what might have seemed like a shrill question: How should we prepare for the consequences of planetary climate catastrophe?

“If some of the more extreme scenarios of ecocrisis turn out to be accurate, we in the West will be forced to confront such transformations,” wrote Gosling, an anthropologist who’d just retired from the University of Exeter in England.

Almost two years later, as the U.S. stumbles through a second consecutive season of record hurricanes and fires, more academics are approaching questions once reserved for doomsday cults.

Can modern society prepare for a world in which global warming threatens large-scale social, economic, and political upheaval? What are the policy and social implications of rapid, and mostly unpleasant, climate disruption?

Those researchers, who are generally more pessimistic about the pace of climate change than most academics, are advocating for a series of changes—in infrastructure, agriculture and land-use management, international relations, and our expectations about life—to help manage the effects of crisis-level changes in weather patterns.

In the language of climate change, “adaptation” refers to ways to blunt the immediate effects of extreme weather, such as building seawalls, conserving drinking water, updating building codes, and helping more people get disaster insurance.

The costs are enormous: The U.S. government is considering a 5-mile, $20 billion seawall to protect New York City against storm surges, while Louisiana wants to spend $50 billion to save parts of its shoreline from sinking. Poorer countries could require $500 billion a year to adapt, according to the United Nations.

But some researchers are going further, calling for what some call the “deep adaptation agenda.”

For Gosling, that means not only rapid decarbonization and storm-resistant infrastructure, but also building water and communications systems that won’t fail if the power grid collapses and searching for ways to safeguard the food supply by protecting pollinating insects.

Propelling the movement are signs that the problem is worsening at an accelerating rate. In an article this summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 climate scientists from around the world argued that the planet may be much closer than previously realized to locking in what they call a “hothouse” trajectory—warming of 4C or 5C (7F or 9F), “with serious challenges for the viability of human societies.”

Jem Bendell, a professor at the University of Cumbria who popularized the term deep adaptation, calls it a mix of physical changes—pulling back from the coast, closing climate-exposed industrial facilities, planning for food rationing, letting landscapes return to their natural state—with cultural shifts, including “giving up expectations for certain types of consumption” and learning to rely more on the people around us.

“The evidence before us suggests that we are set for disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war,” he wrote in a paper he posted on his blog in July after an academic journal refused to publish it. “We need to appreciate what kind of adaptation is possible.”

It might be tempting to dismiss Bendell and Gosling as outliers. But they’re not alone in writing about the possibility of massive political and social shocks from climate change and the need to start preparing for those shocks.

Since posting his paper, Bendell says he’s been contacted by more academics investigating the same questions. A LinkedIn group titled “Deep Adaptation” includes professors, government scientists, and investors.

William Clark, a Harvard professor and former MacArthur Fellow who edited the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, is among those who worry about what might come next. “We are right on the bloody edge,” he says.

Clark argues that in addition to quickly and dramatically cutting emissions, society should pursue a new scale of adaptation work.

Rather than simply asking people to water their lawns less often, for example, governments need to consider large-scale, decades-long infrastructure projects, such as transporting water to increasingly arid regions and moving cities away from the ocean.

“This is not your grandfather’s adaptation,” he says.

Diana Liverman, a professor at the University of Arizona School of Geography and Development and one of the authors of this summer’s paper, says adapting will mean “relocation or completely different infrastructure and crops.”

She cites last year’s book New York 2140, in which the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines the city surviving under 50 feet of water, as “the extreme end of adaptation.”

Relocating large numbers of homes away from the coast is perhaps the most expensive item on that list. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent $2.8 billion since 1989 to buy 40,000 homes in areas particularly prone to flooding, giving their owners the chance to move somewhere safer.

But if seas rose 3 feet, more than 4 million Americans would have to move, according to a 2016 study in the journal Nature: Climate Change.

“The government’s going to have to spend more money to help relocate people,” says Rob Moore, a policy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council who specializes in flooding. The alternative, he says, is “a completely unplanned migration of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in this country.”

Cameron Harrington, a professor of international relations at Durham University in England and co-author of the 2017 book Security in the Anthropocene, says adapting to widespread disruption will require governments to avoid viewing climate change primarily as a security threat.

Instead, Harrington says, countries must find new ways to manage problems that cross borders—for example, by sharing increasingly scarce freshwater resources. “We can’t raise border walls high enough to prevent the effects of climate change,” he says.

There are even more pessimistic takes. Guy McPherson, a professor emeritus of natural resources at the University of Arizona, contends climate change will cause civilization to collapse not long after the summer Arctic ice cover disappears.

He argues that could happen as early as next year, sending global temperatures abruptly higher and causing widespread food and fuel shortages within a year.

Many academics are considerably less dire in their predictions.

Jesse Keenan, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and advises state governments on climate adaptation, says warnings about social collapse are overblown. “I think for much of the world, we will pick up the pieces,” Keenan says.

But he adds that the prospect of climate-induced human extinction has only recently become a widespread topic of academic discourse.

Even mainstream researchers concede there’s room for concern about the effects of accelerating change on social stability. Solomon Hsiang, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the interplay between the environment and society, says it’s too soon to predict the pace of global warming.

 But he warns that society could struggle to cope with rapid shifts in the climate.
“If they are indeed dramatic and fast, there exists substantial evidence that many human systems, including food production and social stability more broadly, will be sharply and adversely affected,” Hsiang says.

For Bendell, the question of when climate change might shake the Western social order is less important than beginning to talk about how to prepare for it. He acknowledges that his premise shares something with the survivalist movement, which is likewise built on the belief that some sort of social collapse is coming.

But he says deep adaptation is different: It looks for ways to mitigate the damage of that collapse. “The discussion I’m inviting is about collective responses to reduce harm,” he says, “rather than how a few people could tough it out to survive longer than others.”



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Trump expects the Earth will boil

SUBHEAD: His administration expects the planet is going to experience temperature rise of 7ºF and doesn't care.

By Bill McKibbon on 2 October 2018 for the Guardian -
(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/02/trump-administration-planet-boil-refugee-camps)


Image above: Trees silhouetted by flames in recent out of control wild fire in California seen in Washington Post article dated 9/28/18 titled "Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100". From (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html).

In the cloud of toxic dust thrown up by the Kavanaugh hearings last week, two new Trump initiatives slipped by with less notice than they deserve. Both are ugly, stupid – and they are linked, though in ways not immediately apparent.

In the first, the administration provided the rationale for scrapping President Obama’s automobile mileage standards: because Trump’s crew now officially expects the planet to warm by 4C . In the environmental impact statement they say it wouldn’t make much difference to the destruction of the planet if we all keep driving SUVs.

The news in that statement is that administration officials serenely contemplate that 4C rise (twice the last-ditch target set at the Paris climate talks). Were the world to actually warm that much, it would be a literal hell, unable to maintain civilizations as we have known them.

But that’s now our policy, and it apparently rules out any of the actions that might, in fact, limit that warming. You might as well argue that because you’re going to die eventually, there’s no reason not to smoke a carton of cigarettes a day.

Meanwhile, reporters also discovered that the administration has set up what can only be described as a concentration camp near the Mexican border for detained migrant children, spiriting them under cover of darkness from the foster homes and small shelters across the nation where they had been staying.

Not an extermination camp – these aren’t Nazis – but a camp that literally concentrates this “problem” in one place: a tent city in the middle of the desert. Schooling is not available there, as it was in the shelters they came from; instead the kids are given “workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.”

That camp is linked to climate change because, first, it’s in a desert. If you searched high and low across the North American continent, you could barely find a place hotter and drier than Tornillo, Texas, where in June the average high is 96F and where, as one climate data source succinctly puts it, “there is virtually no rainfall during the year”.

But the link goes much deeper. Most of those migrants are from Central America and Mexico, and they might as easily be described as refugees fleeing gang violence (much of it rooted originally in the US) and a changing climate. Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras first saw an outbreak of coffee rust linked to higher nighttime temperatures; the El Niño that began in 2015 led to years of unprecedented drought.

Deep new droughts this summer wiped out more harvests: “total or partial loss of crops means that subsistence farmers and their families will not have enough food to eat or sell in coming months,” the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned.

The author Todd Miller, writing in the Nation, described meeting men trying to jump a train in Guatemala headed north toward the border. “When I asked why they were heading for the United States, one responded simply, “No hubo lluvia.” (“There was no rain.”)

This will, of course, get steadily worse in the years ahead – every climate forecast shows deserts spreading and water evaporating across the region. And of course more migration will follow, in every corner of the world.

The World Bank predicts we may see 140 million climate migrants before long, and given the chaos that even a million people fleeing the (partially drought-fueled) crisis in Syria created, we better come to grips.

Some of that migration will be internal – perhaps six million people will abandon their coastal property in Florida alone, according to recent reports. And much of it will be international, as people flee because their lives depend on it.

And telling people to stay home is not a moral option, either. Because the climate chaos setting off waves of refugees is born above all from the unconstrained migration of carbon dioxide molecules from America over the last century.

No wall can prevent the exhaust from our armada of oversized cars from raising the temperature in Mexico; if Guatemala could ship its changed climate back north it doubtless would, but it can’t.

We have to realize that global warming stems from the fact that we are a world without atmospheric borders, where the people who have done the least to cause the problem feel its horrors first and hardest.

That’s why, over the last half-decade, the environmental and migrant-rights movement have grown ever closer.

The Trump years are a fantasy land where we pretend we can go on living precisely as in the past, unwilling even to substitute electric SUVs for our gas guzzlers, and able to somehow insist that the rest of the world stay locked in place as well.

It’s impractical, it’s unfair, and when it ends up with camps for kids in the desert it’s downright evil.



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Puerto Rican local food revolution

SUBHEAD: Puerto Rican farmers to envisage agriculture not reliant chemical companies and fossil fuels.

By Alex Sammon on 2 October 2018 for FoodTank -
(https://foodtank.com/news/2018/10/a-local-food-revolution-in-puerto-rico/)


Image above: A hillside at Plenitud Teaching Center in Puerto Rico, that grows ginger, turmeric, taro, string beans, and bananas. Plenitud uses practices such as terraces, swales, berms and other permaculture methods to manage stormwater and reduce erosion. From (https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/people/puerto-ricos-farms-were-wiped-out-heres-how-theyre-bouncing-back.aspx).

A year has passed since Hurricane Maria first made landfall in Puerto Rico, destroying homes, roads, and vehicles in its path—and taking thousands of lives.

The island languished for months as an insufficient emergency response campaign attempted to restore basic services like water and power.

After a recent independent study, the official death toll was raised from the initial 64 to 2,975 through analysis done by The New York Times, citing malnutrition and other food-based ailments as possible culprits for surging mortality in the storm’s aftermath, estimated that number could be over 4,000.

How could this happen?

By taking out the island’s infrastructure like highways, trucks, gas stations, and more, the storm also wiped out its agricultural supply lines. Puerto Rico imports about 85% of all its food, producing just 15% of what’s consumed on the island. [IB Publisher's note: Hawaii imports a higher percentage than that.]

In the wake of the storm, people stood in lines for hours and walked barely-stocked aisles looking for canned, non-perishable foods.

Many relied on emergency responders and Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) meals, made of packaged and processed foods that require little to no preparation, like the beef jerky and crackers you’d expect to find in a vending machine.

In harder-to-service rural areas on the island, the threat of starvation loomed large.

“They say that during Maria, Puerto Rico only had enough food for one week,” says Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, who became an international figurehead after calling out President Trump for his inadequate response to the crisis.

“I hate to say anything positive about Maria. But what the hurricane did was force us to look at the realities of life here and how our dependency on the outside weakens our ability to ensure our people are taken care of. Maria made it evident that we need agricultural sovereignty.”

The story of Puerto Rico’s food production is also the story of the island’s own colonial history.

Large-scale plantations replaced native farming during Puerto Rico’s days as a Spanish colony, resulting in the consolidation of agricultural land and landholding, as well as the number of crops being grown on it.

When the United States took over the island in the wake of the Spanish-American War in 1898, economic restructuring meant that the remaining agricultural activity focused only on cash crops like sugarcane and coffee.

Then, in the 1940s, Congress launched Operation Bootstrap, a campaign to overhaul the Puerto Rican economy that focused on manufacturing and tourism—moving even further away from agriculture.

Subsequent tax breaks and economic initiatives to encourage investment in these sectors solidified these moves.

Deliberately, over the course of years, an import-driven food system was put in place in Puerto Rico, and all other farming fell by the wayside.

“Puerto Rico’s economy has always been categorized by being an import economy: we produce things we do not consume but then we have to import things we do consume, especially in agriculture,” notes Gladys González-Martínez, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Puerto Rico.

Still, Puerto Rican local farming had been experiencing the beginning stages of a renaissance even before the storm hit, spurred by the economic crisis of 2006.

According to statistics provided by the governor’s office, farm income grew 25% from 2012 to 2014, while the number of acres under cultivation rose by 50% between 2012 and 2016, generating at least 7,000 jobs.

That progress was short-lived: 80% of the island’s crops were destroyed in the storm. But, despite those losses, the seeds of a local agricultural had taken root. Some took the storm as inspiration.

At farms like Cosechas Tierra Viva in Las Piedras, run by Eduardo Burgos and Franco Marcano, where they grow kale, arugula, green beans, and eggplant for local farmers’ markets, the storm kicked them into high gear.

Just a month after Maria’s landfall, they converted the farm to run exclusively on solar energy and shifted their irrigation system’s source to rainwater.

“Maria was the push we needed to execute the ideas we had to expand our production,” Burgos told NBC News in July.

They’re not alone.

Agroecology—defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as both a movement and practice of socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable development—is an approach to farming that promotes diversity through crop rotation, polycultures, or livestock integration, and uses natural systems and local knowledge like planting flowers to attract insects that keep pest levels under control.

Using agroecology has allowed Puerto Rican farmers to envisage an agriculture system not reliant on external inputs from chemical companies and fossil fuels. And the idea is rapidly taking hold in farms, schools, and community groups across the island.

Already, organizations like the Puerto Rico Resilience Fund are supporting the movement by establishing sites like the student-run farm at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus, while networks like the Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico are helping small farms like the Pachamama Bosque Jardín find their feet.

These projects are crucial for the island’s food security, but also for its protection from storms that are likely to grow in intensity and frequency due to climate change.

Surveys after hurricanes in the late 1990s in countries like Nicaragua and Cuba have shown that diversified, small-scale farms suffer less damage than bigger farms practicing conventional agriculture.

Already, the movement is making a noticeable difference. The Puerto Rican Department of Agriculture is aiming to have food imports down to 65% to 75% by the end of the year, which could represent as much as a 20% decrease on pre-Maria levels and a 30% drop from the island’s post-Maria peak.

Ricardo Fernandez, CEO of Puerto Rico Farm Credit, sees signs of the transformation. People are flocking to farmers’ markets; university students are signing up for agricultural classes.

“There’s a resurgence now, because we have to re-invent ourselves,” he says in a recent interview with NPR. For an island facing serious questions about its own colonial legacy and territorial status, local food may well be the first step towards a more independent Puerto Rico.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: The Off-Grid poster child 9/20/18
Ea O Ka Aina: 13 Years of Permaculture 9/5/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture in Hawaii 4/26/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture Cool Lab 4/5/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Forging Permaculture Hand Tools 2/15/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Forest Farms 8/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture, Climate & Survival 10/23/15
Ea O Ka Aina: The Permaculture Fail 8/21/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture Development 3/18/14
Ea O Ka Aina: The trouble with Permaculture 1/23/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Let's get real! 7/17/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Paradise Lot 6/7/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Programmable Permaculture 3/1/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Use of Space 5/24/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Design Diversity 5/24/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Problems to Solutions 5/24/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Relative Location 5/14/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Seattle Permaculture 2/29/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture Taking Off in Hawaii 3/29/11
Ea O Ka Aina: UN is Getting Into Permaculture 2/12/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture as a Venture 1/25/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Bill Mollison on Permaculture 11/12/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Multiple Functions 3/29/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Introduction to Permaculture 3/24/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Growing Zones 3/22/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture Realists & Optimists 5/2/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture Design Course 2/16/09
IslandBreath: Cultural Change at the Limits to Growth 5/7/2008
IslandBreath: The Garden of Eden 4/22/07
IslandBreath: Kauai 2007-2029 12/15/06
IslandBreath: How Cuba survived Peak Oil 7/23/06

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