35. Climate Memo Mondays, August 9, 2021
(War: August 9 Nagasaki Remembrance Day)
EARTH OVERSHOOT DAY, JULY 29, 2021
Earth Overshoot Day marks date planet has used up resources for the year
August 22, 2020
In 2020, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 22. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature's budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In 2021 Earth Overshoot Day moves forward by nearly a month
Earth Overshoot Day - #MoveTheDate
In 2021, it falls on July 29. To determine the date ...
About Earth Overshoot Day · Past Earth Overshoot Days · Country Overshoot Days
DANIELLE J. SMITH Opinion (CCL)
SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Fla., was a tragic but preventable event. The building owners were aware of repeated expert warnings about the accelerating deterioration of the building’s structure. For years prior to the collapse, they watched rainwater leak into some condos and rain and groundwater leak into the lower levels of their garage. They watched water puddle around their pool deck, and concrete flake off concrete columns, beams and slabs, exposing the steel reinforcing rods to rapid oceanside saltwater spray-driven corrosion. But because they were not aware the building was facing an eminent catastrophic collapse, they did not pursue repairs in a timely manner and as a result, they paid a terrible price.
Climate change shares many similarities with this tragic event in Florida. We have been repeatedly warned by experts about the accelerating change to our climate and the serious economic and human consequences of delaying actions to rapidly reduce carbon emissions. We’ve been watching the global temperature increase, the stronger and more frequent and expensive storms flooding and destroying our homes. We see the increase in wildfires, drought, rising sea levels and coastal town flooding, human and animal migration, the death of coral reefs worldwide, the melting of the polar ice caps and the release of methane from exposed permafrost.
We experienced extraordinary flooding last month in southeast Arkansas and also in 2019 in Arkansas River Valley cities like Fort Smith, Dardanelle, Little Rock and Pine Bluff. It seems we are also unaware of the serious consequences of inaction because our country still doesn’t have a policy in place to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, which scientists agree is necessary to slow the devastating affects of climate change and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Unlike the condo owners, our experts have given us a deadline because they know exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius will put millions of people worldwide at risk of life-threatening heat waves, drought and failed crops. It will wipe out the coral reefs that entire ecosystems rely on. Rising seas and stronger, more frequent hurricanes will swallow coastal cities, displacing families and forcing mass migrations to higher ground such as we witnessed after Hurricane Katrina. And that’s just the beginning.
So what can you do? Educate yourself about climate change so you can be aware of the serious consequences of not taking action. Talk to your friends about climate change. Contact Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton and your representatives, as well as your local officials. Insist they work with their colleagues to implement a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 so we can avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change and emerge with our homes, our economy and our planet intact. Timely, smart investments and policies can boost jobs, shore up infrastructure and push America forward as an economic clean-energy powerhouse. Doing nothing will ultimately be more costly than taking action, and there is such a thing as moving too slowly as the condo collapse has demonstrated.
Danielle J. Smith of London is a member of
Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Forwarded to me by Charles Sisco 7-9-21
So what can we do in addition? It’s disheartening to read a message virtually verbatim from the dozens of books OMNI’s Climate Book Forum has discussed since the Book Forum started in 2006, but we have no choice but to continue pushing our government and business leaders, except to push harder, more insistently, noisier, more collectively. Keep uppermost in our minds the IPCC/Greta test: “Time's winged chariot hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity,” if we do nothing. --Dick