OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #168, MARCH 4, 2024.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.

Robert Hunziker.  “Fastest Warming on Earth.”
Bendell and Read.  Deep Adaptation.

ROBERT HUNZIKER .  “Fastest Warming on Earth.”  Counterpunch FEBRUARY 23, 2024.        FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

. . .As the massive glaciers recede, space opens at the edge of permafrost, releasing ancient methane. . . .Methane detected in the High Arctic puts a big hole in the Global Methane Pledge of more than 100 countries that agreed to cut emissions 30% by 2030. It’s an add-on that nobody knows how to deal with.  The High Arctic location is Svalbard, Norway (pop. 2,642) which is the fastest warming region of the planet only 700 miles from the North Pole. It’s ironic that the fastest warming is the farthest northern human outpost, deep into the Arctic North.

“On the Dot with David Schechter,” CBS News released a 45-minute film December 4th, 2023, documenting the warmest place on Earth: Ancient Methane Escaping from Melting Glaciers Could Potentially Warm the Planet Even More.    

[The] underlying message of the film is a climate system that has radically changed into a threatening monster filled with sudden unforeseen risks and ultimately the potential of a metaphoric runaway freight train barreling down a mountainside. The risks are only too evident, prompting a very straightforward question: Is it too late?

The answer found in the film is yes and no, depending.

Radical temperature changes are at the core.   To see the complete film:  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/the-fastest-warming-on-earth/

OMNI began its Climate Change Book Forum in 2006.  Our first purpose was to understand what was cc, our second was to prevent it, and if that failed to learn how to adapt.  The Book Forum ended when Covid-19 began.  Bendell and Read claim their collection is the first book to declare the effort to prevent cc (now called climate catastrophe or emergency or chaos) was lost, and we must now devote ourselves to adapting to a heating planet beyond tipping points.  –Dick

Jem Bendell & Rupert Read, eds.  Deep Adaptation : Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos.  Polity P,  2021.

Posted on February 23, 2021by jembendell

https://jembendell.com/2021/02/23/deep-adaptation-the-book/

Jem Bendell’s Introduction. 
How on Earth do we begin to talk to each other and work from a starting point of experiencing or anticipating societal disruption and even collapse?

It needs to become the biggest conversation, with views from different contexts. I am still learning as I talk to more and more people from around the world. Some of them share their thoughts in this book, including Rene Suša, Sharon Stein, Vanessa Andreotti, Tereza Čajkova, and Dino Siwek, who are scholars and activists in decolonization efforts, and XR’s Skeena Rathor, who works on co-liberation from the systemic oppressions that underlie environmental destruction. With this detailed attention to the causes of climate chaos, I hope the book helps support a sober and non-divisive approach to navigating the implications.

I co-edited the book with Professor Rupert Read. We are especially delighted that someone who is an inspiration to us, Joanna Macy, co-writes of one the chapters. The book is written as a scholarly contribution, mainly focused on informing people who take a professional interest in this topic, rather than the general public.

“The authors of this book have courage to recognise the reality of our time and face the uncomfortable facts of climate calamity. The theme of this book is indeed scary. But it’s full of bright ideas for how to transmute both fear and difficulty into kind and wise ways of living and working. The thinkers, academics and activists who have contributed to this book embody the wisdom to adapt to this unprecedented catastrophe. They also show the practical ways and means to live and act with the imagination and resilience. Not everyone would agree to these radical ideas but everyone needs to know about them. So, I recommend this book to all.”
Satish Kumar, Editor Emeritus Resurgence & Ecologist and Founder, Schumacher College.

“This book is the “red pill” of our times- offering neither certainty nor confirmation of any story you may be holding about where we are heading, in the face of so many colliding crises. What it does offer is togetherness in our insecurity and frameworks in our unknowing, for coming to terms with and making sense of these times. I look forward to both “deep adaptation” and “collapsology” entering mainstream discourse, so that we might then imagine creating together, as our current paradigm crumbles.”  Gail Bradbrook, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion.

“Collapse followed by transformation is a common way that complex systems evolve. Perhaps collapse of our high consumption, climate-destabilising society can lead to transformation towards a brighter human future. The Deep Adaptation framework outlined in this book is a helpful way to seek that transformation.”
Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University Climate Change Institute.