CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #141, AUGUST 21, 2023 OMNI's War and Warming Newsletter: OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #141, AUGUST 21, 2023 (jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com)
Greta Thunberg. The Climate Book. Penguin, 2023.
Hanson and Brown. Government of and for
Its Citizens.
Matthew
Gindin. “What is metabolic rift?”
Greta Thunberg. The
Climate Book. Penguin, 2023.
I received this book a few days ago
and quickly began to admire its “creation” (as the title-author page unusually
declares: “Created by Greta Thunberg.”) For
her presence is essential throughout. She opens her book with four jolting graphics
showing the relationship between CO2 and global warming. The Table of Contents numbers each of the
essays and divides them into five parts, both devices, along with the Index,
enhancing helpful cross-referencing in such a numerous collection intended to
lead to action. The anthology contains 102 essays, of which 18 are her
own. Her contributions are prominent in
all five, ranging from 3 to 5. The
groupings support coherence: 1. How Climate Works. 2. How Our Planet Is Changing. 3. How It Affects Us. 4.
What We’ve Done About It. 5. What We Must Do Now. One of Greta’s essays opens the anthology,
another closes. Numerous graphics accentuate the texts. A photo of frozen bubbles of methane in Lake Baikal,
Russia, follows the Table of Contents. Even the book jacket is purposeful, as
explained by its designer in a note that ends the book, beginning with these
words: “No words. No numbers.
No graphs. Just a series of
vertical, coloured stripes showing the progressive rise in global temperatures
in a single, striking image.” Beginning
with 4 images and ending with one bind her creation. She writes as effectively as she organizes,,
and has selected some of the best climate communicators on the planet for her climate book. I’ll return to it in CMM soon.--Dick
But of course, it’s not the
book, for as she reminds us in page after page, “we need a system change.” “We need new laws, new structures, new
frameworks” (280), to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Here’s a legal start.
A COURT RULING IN COLORADO
Amy Beth Hanson and Matthew Brown. Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette. 15 Aug 2023
HELENA, Mont. — Young
environmental activists scored what may be a groundbreaking legal victory
Monday when a Montana judge said state agencies were violating their
constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil
fuel development.
The ruling in this first of-its-kind
trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world
that have established a government duty
to protect citizens from climate change.
If it stands, the ruling could set an important legal precedent,
though experts said its immediate impacts will be limited and state officials
pledged to seek to overturn the decision on appeal.
District Court Judge Kathy
Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel
permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse
gas emissions — is unconstitutional.
Judge Seeley wrote in the
ruling that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a
substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm
and injury” to the youth.
Law professor David Dana at
the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law said the ruling was a “remarkable win”
for the young climate activists and predicted it will be used as a guidepost
for attorneys bringing similar suits in other states.
However, it’s up to the
Montana Legislature to determine how to bring the state’s policies into
compliance. That leaves slim chances for immediate change in a fossil
fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse. MORE
The Cancer of Industrial Capitalism Produces the Heat That’ll
Kill Us Unless We Change Our System.
Matthew Gindin. “What is Metabolic Rift?”
Editor.
mronline.org (7-13-23).
The
Ecosocialist idea you’ve never heard of and might need.
Originally published: Medium on August 3, 2018 by Matthew Gindin (more by Medium) | (Posted Jul
12, 2023). Capitalism, Ideology, Marxism,
SocialismGlobalNewswiremetabolic rift
Imagine for a moment that when you ate food a part of your body
siphoned off the energy and stored it in structures which did not contribute to
the overall homeostasis of the organism, but instead converted the energy into
cellular structures which did not give back to the body. Instead these entities
were unproductive and undigestible, forcing the body to adapt to them in a
further loss of energy. As these entities grew larger the body would become
weaker and increasingly malfunction until, overwhelmed, it would no longer be
able to function at all. The rift in its metabolism would go from being a
disruption to an assassin.
In the human body this is a fair description of cancer, and in
the ecology it refers to much of the technological infrastructure of industrial
capitalism. Both the generation of cancer within the human microcosm and the
generation of techno-industrial capitalism within the world ecology bring
disfigurement, inflammation and death in their wake. MORE https://mronline.org/2023/07/12/what-is-metabolic-rift/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-metabolic-rift&mc_cid=ef06d1b1fe&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e