OMNI

CLIMATE URGENCY, EMERGENCY ANTHOLOGY

 #2, October 30, 2024

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.

http://omnicenter.org/donate/

What’s at Stake:  “Emergency” became consensus five years ago.       Before then, a warming world was comfortingly called  “global warming” or “climate change.”     Then “climate catastrophe” or “climate calamity,” certainly not comforting labels, were recognized.  And now “climate emergency” takes precedence, or “chaos,”at least among scientists and the well informed populace.   Two examples from 2019: Brenda Looper in her column in the mainstream newspaper Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette (“Weighty Words,” 12-11-19, 7B) wrote about this rapid evolution of the language used to describe the increase of atmospheric temperature and its consequences.  The Oxford Dictionary’s“Word of the Year for 2019” is “climate emergency.“   Example from 10-29-2024: an early morning mainstream news station reported that a new scientific report on the Paris Agreement’s limit at 1.5 degrees increase of global temperature had been breached, 2 degrees was likely, and 3 degrees is now possible.   The truth has emerged.  Now what will our criminal advocates and rationalizers of fossil fuels and our irresponsible leaders do?   Can we look to The People?  --Dick

From hieroglyphic stairway by Drew Dellinger

What Did You Do?

it’s 3:23 in the morning

and I’m awake

because my great great grandchildren

won’t let me sleep

my great great grandchildren

ask me in dreams

what did you do while the planet was plundered?

what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something

when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest

when democracy was stolen?

what did you do

once

you

knew?

Contents
2024
Jill Stein or Kamala Harris
2024 State of the Climate Report
Climate and Capitalism 10-29-24 
2022
PBS: Earth Emergency.  Climate Change: The Facts.  Extinction: the Facts.
Tina Landis.  “Social Planning” v. “UN Climate Report.”
2021
IPCC 6^th Assessment Report.
Mark Schuller.  Humanity’s Last Stand.
John B. Foster, et al. “Against Doomsday Scenarios” (despite multiple cataclysmic convergences)
Jayati Ghosh.  “Apocalypse or Cooperation?”
Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch.  “Our Not-so-slow-motion Apocalypse.”
Tom Hartmann.  “Is That Civilization-Ending Climate….”
Andreas Malm.  “Because Nothing Else Has Worked,”  How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
2019
Ecowatch.  “20 Reasons Why 2019 Gave Us Hope.”
OMNI Climate Emergency Anthology #1, Dec. 17, 2019.

Sources
What’s the point of the Sources?  Why is the US population still passive regarding the climate catastrophe?  Are the majority still ignorant?  Or too feebly informed for action?  And is that because they do not read magazines or see television programs that insistently and stringently present climate realities?  Not one of my sources is one of the corporate mainstream media read and watched by the majority of the population.   Not one leads to fun and escape from reality,   The arc of history leads to  crisis, study, thought, and action. 
BioScience
Climate and Capitalism
Green Left
Independent Media Institute
IPCC
La Progressive Newsletter
Liberation
Monthly Review
mronline.org
Thomas Neuberger
Project Syndicate
PBS
Rolling Stone
Rutgers UP (Mark Schuller)
Tom Dispatch
Verso Books (Andreas Malm)

TEXTS

What follows is a miscellany of writings about what the UN Secretary-General called the “defining issue of our time,” now widely and increasingly labeled catastrophe, calamity, emergency, or chaos.  I hope to follow soon with a timeline.

2024

JILL STEIN
Campaign climate statement
From record heat waves and wildfires to devastating hurricanes, droughts and floods, the warning signs are clear: we must take decisive action now to fight runaway global heating and prevent the worst-case scenario of climate collapse. We need a Green New Deal with massive investment in green jobs, industries, and technologies to revitalize the American economy, improve our quality of life, protect our planet and safeguard our children’s future.

“Climate crisis enters ‘critical and unpredictable new phase’.”  : Climate & Capitalism  October 9, 2024.  Editor.  mronline.org

Scientists warn: ‘The future of humanity hangs in the balance.’

Originally published: Climate & Capitalism  on October 9, 2024 by The 2024 State of the Climate Report(more by Climate & Capitalism)  (Posted Oct 12, 2024).

Climate Change, EnvironmentGlobalNewswireChristopher Wolf, Fossil Fuels, Greenhouse Gas, William Ripple

This blunt warning opens The 2024 State of the Climate Report published yesterday in the journal BioScience.

We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.

An international coalition of scientists headed by William Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University tracks 35 planetary vital signs. This year, 25 of those indicators are at record extremes. These graphs illustrate some of the climate-related trends since 1980:

Climate related time series, 1980-2024. (Photo: Bioscience, October 8, 2024)

The three hottest days ever came in July 2024, and fossil fuel emissions are at an all-time high. The annual consumption of fossil fuels climbed by 1.5% in 2023, mainly because of big jumps in coal (1.6%) and oil use (2.5%).

The Earth’s average surface temperature is at an all-time high. Ocean acidity and heat content, as well as average global sea level, are at record extremes. Greenland ice mass, Antarctica ice mass and average glacier thickness are at all-time lows.

The report shows that annual tree cover loss globally rose from 22.8 million hectares in 2022 to 28.3 million in 2023. Based on global year-to-date averages, the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane are at all-time highs.

The past year saw multiple climate-related disasters, including a series of heat waves across Asia that killed more than a thousand people and led to temperatures reaching 50°C (122°F) in parts of India. Climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions.

The report, which is subtitled Perilous times on planet Earth, concludes:

We must urgently reduce ecological overshoot and pursue immediate large-scale climate change mitigation and adaptation to limit near-term damage. Only through decisive action can we safeguard the natural world, avert profound human suffering, and ensure that future generations inherit the livable world they deserve. The future of humanity hangs in the balance.

      So why is the public so unresponsive?  Not only forests, but whole towns are burning.  The oceans are tearing away the shoreline.  Why is the public so unreactive?  

CLIMATE & CAPITALISM  10-29-24
The deadly environmental toll of superyachts and private jets   Every week, the ultra-rich emit more greenhouse gas than the poorest people produce in a lifetime   Source  
Other recent articles ...   COP or CON? Big Conservation corrupts biodiversity protection
Basic physics explains why storms are getting stronger
Ubiquitous plastic: A deadly threat to human health
How climate change destroyed a tar sands boomtown

2022

PBS DEPICTS CLIMATE REALITY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

These 3 programs alone should motivate all who care about the planet and our civilization to become a subscribing member of PBS.  Did you know that PBS is on the list for elimination by the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 under Donald Trump. 
PBS:  3 CLIMATE history docs back to back Dec. 29 and 30, 2022:

“Earth Emergency” | PBS  4-20-22    https://www.pbs.org › show › earth-emergency

 Earth Emergency

Climate Change: The Facts

Extinction: the Facts

“Earth Emergency.”  PBS  4-20-22    https://www.pbs.org › show › earth-emergency   From PBS:   This revealing film examines how human activity is setting off dangerous warming loops that are pushing the climate to a point of no return - and what we need to do to stop them. With captivating illustrations, stunning footage and interviews with leading climate scientists as well as support from Greta Thunberg, "Earth Emergency" adds the missing piece of the climate puzzle.   Dick’s commentary: The film, which premiered Dec. 2021, despite its brevity seems to cover feedback loops comprehensively and justifies its title.  Everyone should see it.  It gives us the scarifying reality of the Anthropocene; we know what to do to meet the crisis; we have lacked only the spine.  The film ends emphatically with moral appeals from the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg to respect the planet and get to work to save it and our civilization.       
     Of course, we have known what the film so brilliantly summarizes for several decades (as the film shows); everyone who has followed the IPCC reports and the commentary has known that our leaders have lacked the will for all those decades.  Its conclusion is resoundingly true and equally familiar to everyone who has followed those reports even sporadically.  We know we need leaders who understand the urgency; we know we must not only vote for them but campaign for and finance them.    Yet we do not.
    But the film could have been better.  Two important factors of the “puzzle” are missing:  population growth and the criminal profiteers.    Throughout the film, as feedback loops are illustrated over and over, I expected some mention of the burgeoning population behind those loops.  But not so.   Likewise, from the very first feedback loop, I anticipated some mention, at least, of the industrial and media criminals who so successfully for so long deluded and delayed public awareness and action, still happening effective today.  But nothing.
     But this is only an hour-long film.  What it does it does splendidly.   And it is sufficiently complemented by a 2-Part documentary on Big Oil.   “The Power of Big Oil, Part I” was shown the same night as “Earth Emergency”, countering the power of big money and lies with the power of remembering the historical crimes against nature and its creatures and naming the criminals.   And Part II, “Extinction: The Facts,” will be shown April 26 and 27.
     And for us, elections are approaching.    Dick 4-21-22 

Earth Emergency  p
2m 24s

Earth Emergency DVD - Shop PBS

https://shop.pbs.org › Science & Nature › Earth  

Out of dozens of environmental feedback loops, Earth Emergency focuses on four, explaining how warming in forests, permafrost, the atmosphere, and the poles’ $19.99     [I couldn’t open the file 6-25-23, OR 10-29-24!]  ] 
Earth Emergency (TV Movie 2021) - IMDb

https://www.imdb.com › title  Earth Emergency: Directed by Susan Gray. With The Dalai Lama, Richard Gere, Greta Thunberg. Told by leading climate scientists, Earth Emergency examines ...

 Rating: 6.1/10 · ‎76 votes

“Socialist planning could reverse sobering findings in new UN climate report.”  Editor.  Mronline.org (3-12-22)
Originally published: Liberation  on March 3, 2022 by Tina Landis (more by Liberation)  |  (Posted Mar 11, 2022)’  Capitalism, Climate Change, Environment, StrategyUnited StatesNewswire

 The latest UN Climate Report [IPCC] on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability released Feb. 28 once again urges immediate action and outlines the catastrophic effects that humanity faces with the continued lack of meaningful action. Compiled by 270 researchers from 67 countries, it outlines the impacts that are already unfolding and how these disasters will increase even if warming is limited to the 1.5 Celsius temperature threshold above pre-industrial levels.  [By October 2024 evidence has grown to suggest that the 1.5 threshold has been exceeded, that 2. Celsius will also soon, and 3. also unless drastic, culture-wide measures are taken.  –D]

2021

Mronline.org (8-17-21).   The sixth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) runs to nearly 4,000 pages. The IPCC has tried to summarise its report as the ‘final opportunity’ to avoid climate catastrophe.

Mark Schuller.  Humanity’s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe.  Rutgers UP, 2021.  Dissects a wide range of interconnected problems—especially climate change, ultra-right wing nationalism, global inequality—and “proposes steps to avert total catastrophe.”  [A significant effort to inform our officials and The People of the convergence of harmful social forces and how we can resist.  –D]

 John Bellamy Foster, John Molyneux and Owen McCormack.  “Against Doomsday Scenarios: What Is to Be Done Now? “   Monthly Review (Dec 01, 2021).   https://monthlyreview.org/2021/12/01/against-doomsday-scenarios/

John Bellamy Foster: We should of course avoid promoting “doomsday scenarios” in the sense of offering a fatalistic worldview. In fact, the environmental movement in general and ecosocialism in particular are all about combating the current trend toward ecological destruction. As UN general secretary António Guterres recently declared with respect to climate change, it is now “code red for humanity.” This is not a doomsday forecast but a call to action.

Still, the word catastrophe is scarcely adequate in the present age of catastrophe capitalism. Catastrophes are now ubiquitous, since extending to the scale of the planet itself. We are experiencing throughout the globe a series of extreme weather events due in large part to climate change, each of which rank as “catastrophic” by historical precedents, sometimes lying outside the range of what was previously thought to be physically possible. The extreme conditions experienced this summer in the Northern Hemisphere—including floods in Europe; Hurricane Ida in the United States, which not only devastated New Orleans, but also ended up killing people in floods in New York and New Jersey; and the worsening drought and wildfires in California and the entire Pacific Coast of the United States—clearly represent something qualitatively new.

The latest report of the IPCC, its Sixth Assessment Report: The Physical Science Basis, explains that the various climatic and extreme weather events will tend to compound, as in the case of droughts, desertification (dustbowlification), soil erosion, wildfires, and weakening monsoons, on the one hand, and a melting cryosphere, sea level rise, megastorms, and flooding, on the other—thereby intensifying and extending these catastrophic events, which will appear to come from everywhere at once. Moreover, the human consequences go deeper with temperature increases diminishing world grain production and putting strains on the world food supply; climate change contributing, along with the destruction of ecosystems by agribusiness, to the emergence of novel zoonoses, such as COVID-19 (along with numerous other health hazards); whole populations in cities throughout the planet exposed to unprecedented flooding; the prospect of climate refugees running into the hundreds of millions; and numerous other equally dire consequences, imposed on present and future generations.

 The IPCC, which has a record of scientific reticence, tells us that we will see in the next couple of decades, and indeed throughout this century, growing cataclysms and a shift toward an Earth System that is increasingly unsafe for humanity, even in the most optimistic scenarios. . . . The point is that even in the most optimistic scenario—which would require a global ecological revolution on the part of humanity in order to be achieved, leading to carbon emissions peaking halfway through this decade and net zero emissions being achieved by 2050—the overall climate catastrophe facing humanity will be extremely dire.

The second most optimistic scenario is one of staying below a 2°C increase (somewhere around 1.7°C). It too would require a global ecological revolution. The other three scenarios offered by the IPCC are basically unthinkable, for which the word apocalyptic is appropriate. In fact, we are currently headed toward the IPCC’s most apocalyptic scenario (SSP5-8.5), in which global average temperatures this century would, in the “best estimate,” rise by 4.4°C, which would, according to current scientific assessments, mean the collapse of industrial civilization, raising questions of human survival. In an ominous statement leaked from Part II of the Sixth Assessment Report, on “Impacts,” which will not be published until February, the IPCC says that if humanity is driven into extinction during the “sixth extinction” arising from anthropogenic causes, evolution will not bring the human species back.

The trouble is that if we go beyond a 1.5°C increase, and especially beyond a 2°C increase, more and more climate feedback mechanisms, such as the loss of arctic ice and thus the weakening of the albedo effect (the earth’s reflectivity), the release of methane and carbon dioxide from the melting tundra, the burning of the Amazon, and the degradation of the ocean as a climate sink will compound the climate problem and create an irreversible situation, increasing the possibility of runaway climate change that would in effect feed on itself, to the extent that the very existence of humanity would be in question.

There is still a possibility of avoiding absolutely catastrophic climate change on the level that would threaten human existence altogether. But to accomplish this would require revolutionary changes in social relations, as well as in technology and ways of living. Such a revolution would need to begin within the capitalist system but would lead beyond capital. There is no other way. As Karl Marx indicated, the struggle against capitalism is not simply about human freedom, it is also about human survival.

I have a lot of respect for Michael Mann’s work on climate change and his fight against the absolute climate denialism of the right. . . .There is no doubt that Mann knows the science well, and he is worth paying attention to in that respect. But he seems to have no understanding whatsoever of the existing social relations of production of capitalism, leading him to dismiss as mere “doomsayers” everyone who points to the extreme urgency of the world’s present plight, rooted in the nature of our social system, and the need to change the social rules of the game—as if they were giving up, simply by insisting on the need for radical social change. He clearly believes there is some moderate, responsible, enlightened approach based on the existing political-economic system and the actions of established political elites, and to deviate from that is to be “defeatist” and a “doomsayer”. . . .    Continued: https://monthlyreview.org/2021/12/01/against-doomsday-scenarios/

Jayati Ghosh.  “Apocalypse or cooperation?”

Mronline.org (8-15-21)

The perfect storm of COVID-19 and climate change, and the resulting economic damage, will most likely trigger much more social and political instability. Although substantially increased international cooperation can still avert this nightmarish scenario, the current state of global politics provides few grounds for optimism.

Originally published: Project Syndicate  on August 12, 2021 (more by Project Syndicate)  | 

Climate Change, Health, Political Economy, State RepressionIndiaNewswirecoronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, vaccine

The Apocalypse is now. That is the glaring message of the perfect storm of COVID-19 and climate change that has now broken. The pandemic is unlikely to end for years, as the novel coronavirus mutates into increasingly transmissible, drug-resistant variants. And the climate catastrophe is no longer “impending” but playing out in real time.

The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–whose assessments predate the extreme climate events of the past year–tells us that some drastic adverse climatic changes are now irreversible. These will affect every region, as the recent heatwaves, wildfires, and floods demonstrate. They will also severely damage many natural species, and adversely affect the possibilities for and conditions of human life.

Keeping future global warming to a manageable level (even if above the 2015 Paris climate agreement goal of 1.5°C) will require a massive effort, involving sharp economic-policy reversals in every country. Major changes in the global legal and economic architecture will be essential.

For its part, the pandemic has devastated employment and livelihoods, pushing hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the developing world, into poverty and hunger. The International Labour Organization’s World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2021 shows the extent of the damage in grinding detail. In 2020, the pandemic caused the loss of nearly 9% of total global working hours, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs. This trend has continued in 2021, with working-hour losses equivalent to 140 million full-time jobs in the first quarter and 127 million jobs in the second quarter.

On current trends, projected employment growth will be insufficient to make up for these losses. So, even in 2022, total employment will be lower than in 2019 by the equivalent of at least 23 million full-time jobs. This is despite relatively strong job growth in the United States, meaning that labor-market deterioration in other, mostly poorer, regions will be even sharper and more intense. Moreover, the “new” jobs associated with recovery from the pandemic will be predominantly low-paying and poor quality.

Meanwhile, economic inequality between and within countries has reached levels that were unimaginable in the already extremely unequal pre-pandemic world. While many people face substantial income losses, declining access to basic needs, acute deprivation, and hunger, a tiny minority of the extremely wealthy and a few large corporations have grabbed even more income and wealth, thereby multiplying their assets.

Today’s new forms of conspicuous consumption–such as the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, recently spending $5.5 billion for a four-minute ride around suborbital space–are literally out of this world. This amount could instead have funded the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) facility to provide vaccines to two billion people in poor countries, who are currently unlikely to get them in the next two years.

This state of affairs obviously cannot continue for long without major social tensions and civil unrest. Indeed, the perfect storm we are beginning to experience will soon include much more social and political instability. Rather than spurring a progressive and transformative agenda, this could descend into ethnic, racial, and other forms of conflicts, violence, and chaos. . . .  MORE

[Ghosh failed to include wars in his “perfect storm” convergence.  Not only virus pandemic and global warming but unceasing wars (especially including nuclear holocaust) create a triadic convergence for the perfect storm.   Analysis and assessment must include all contexts.   An excellent recent book on US wars and culture of war is The United States of War by David Vine.–Dick]

TOMGRAM

Engelhardt.  “Our Not-So-Slow-Motion Apocalypse.” 
“My Extreme WorldAnd (Un)Welcome to It.”   AUGUST 12, 2021 BY TOM ENGELHARDT.  https://tomdispatch.com/my-extreme-world/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=2ad6079912-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_13_02_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1e41682ade-2ad6079912-308836209#more

. . .Lest you think that all of this represents an anomaly of some sort, simply a bad year or two on a planet that historically has gone from heat to ice and back again, think twice. A recent report published in Nature Climate Change, for instance, suggests that heat waves that could put the recent ones in the U.S. West and British Columbia to shame are a certainty and especially likely for “highly populated regions in North America, Europe, and China.”  (Keep in mind that, a few years ago, there was already a study suggesting that the North China plain with its 400 million inhabitants could essentially become uninhabitable by the end of this century due to heat waves too powerful for human beings to survive!) Or as another recent study suggested, reports the Guardian, “heatwaves that smash previous records… would become two to seven times more likely in the next three decades and three to 21 times more likely from 2051-2080, unless carbon emissions are immediately slashed.”
It turns out that, even to describe the new world we already live in, we may need a new vocabulary.  I mean, honestly, until the West Coast broiled and burned from Los Angeles to British Columbia this summer, had you ever heard of, no less used, the phrase “heat dome” before? I hadn’t, I can tell you that.

[US MAINSTREAM MEDIA]   And by the way, there’s no question that climate change in its ever more evident forms has finally made the mainstream news in a major way. It’s no longer left to 350.org or Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement to highlight what’s happening to us on this planet. It’s taken years, but in 2021 it’s finally become genuine news, even if not always with the truly fierce emphasis it deserves. The New York Times, to give you an example, typically had a recent piece of reportage (not an op-ed) by Shawn Hubler headlined “Is This the End of Summer as We’ve Known It?” (“The season Americans thought we understood — of playtime and ease, of a sun we could trust, air we could breathe and a natural world that was, at worst, indifferent — has become something else, something ominous and immense. This is the summer we saw climate change merge from the abstract to the now, the summer we realized that every summer from now on will be more like this than any quaint memory of past summers.”) And the new IPCC report on how fast things are indeed proceeding was front-page and front-screen news everywhere, as well it should have been, given the research it was summing up.

My point here couldn’t be simpler: in heat and weather terms, our world is not just going to become extreme in 20 years or 50 years or as this century ends.  It’s officially extreme right now. And here’s the sad thing: I have no doubt that, no matter what I write in this piece, no matter how up to date I am at this moment, by the time it appears it will already be missing key climate stories and revelations. Within months, it could look like ancient history.

Welcome, then, to our very own not-so-slow-motion apocalypse. A friend of mine recently commented to me that, for most of the first 30 years of his life, he always expected the world to go nuclear.  That was, of course, at the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  And then, like so many others, he stopped ducking and covering.  How could he have known that, in those very years, the world was indeed beginning to get nuked, or rather carbon-dioxided, methaned, greenhouse-gassed, even if in a slow-motion fashion? As it happens, this time there’s going to be no pretense for any of us of truly ducking and covering. 

It’s true, of course, that ducking and covering was a fantasy of the Cold War era. After all, no matter where you might have ducked and covered then — even the Air Force’s command center dug into the heart of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado — you probably wouldn’t have been safe from a full-scale nuclear conflict between the two superpowers of that moment, or at least not from the world it would have left behind, a disaster barely avoided in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. (Today, we know that, thanks to the possibility of “nuclear winter,” even a regional nuclear conflict — say, between India and Pakistan — could kill billions of us, by starvation if nothing else.)

In that context, I wasn’t surprised when a home owner, facing his house, his possessions, and his car burned to a crisp in Oregon’s devastating Bootleg Fire, described the carnage this way: “It looked like an atomic bomb.”

And, of course, so much worse is yet to come.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a planet on which the Amazon rain forest has already turned into a carbon emitter or one in which the Gulf Stream collapses in a way that’s likely to deprive various parts of the planet of key rainfall necessary to grow crops for billions of people, while raising sea levels disastrously on the East Coast of this country. And that just begins to enumerate the dangers involved, including the bizarre possibility that much of Europe might be plunged into a — hold your hats (and earmuffs) for this one — new ice age!

World War III

If this were indeed the beginning of a world war (instead of a world warm), you know perfectly well that the United States like so many other nations would, in the style of World War II, instantly mobilize resources to fight it (or as a group of leading climate scientists put it recently, we would “go big on climate” now).  And yet in this country (as in too many others), so little has indeed been mobilized. Worse yet, here one of the two major parties, only recently in control of the White House, supported the further exploitation of fossil fuels (and so the mass creation of greenhouse gases) big time, as well as further exploration for yet more of them. Many congressional Republicans are still in the equivalent of a state of staggering (not to say, stark raving mad) denial of what’s underway. They are ready to pay nothing and raise no money to shut down the production of greenhouse gases, no less create the genuinely green planet run on alternative energy sources that would actually rein in what’s happening.

And criminal as that may have been, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and crew were just aiding and abetting those that, years ago, I called “the biggest criminal enterprise in history.” I was speaking of the executives of major fossil-fuel companies who, as I said then, were and remain the true “terrarists” (and no, that’s not a misspelling) of history. After all, their goal in hijacking all our lives isn’t simply to destroy buildings like the World Trade Center, but to take down the Earth (Terra) as we’ve known it. And don’t leave out the leaders of countries like China still so disastrously intent on, for instance, producing yet more coal-fired power. Those CEOs and their enablers have been remarkably intent on quite literally committing terracide and, sadly enough, in that — as has been made oh-so-clear in this disastrous summer — they’ve already been remarkably successful.

Companies like ExxonMobil knew long before most of the rest of us the sort of damage and chaos their products would someday cause and couldn’t have given less of a damn as long as the mega-profits continued to flow in. (They would, in fact, invest some of those profits in funding organizations that were promoting climate-change denial.) Worse yet, as revealing comments by a senior Exxon lobbyist recently made clear, they’re still at it, working hard to undermine President Biden’s relatively modest green-energy plans in any way they can.

Thought about a certain way, even those of us who didn’t live in Greenville, California, are already in World War III. Many of us just don’t seem to know it yet.  So welcome to my (and your) extreme world, not next month or next year or next decade or next century but right now.  It’s a world of disaster worth mobilizing over if, that is, you care about the lives of all of us and particularly of the generations to come.   Copyright 2021 Tom Engelhardt  Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.   Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com. He is also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture.  A fellow of the Type Media Center, his sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.   See All Articles   Top of Form

Thom Hartmann.  “Is That Civilization-Ending Climate Change Knocking on Our Door?”  La Progressive Newsletter(8-6-21).        

. . .The insect apocalypse is only a leading indicator of what is already a larger disaster for much of humanity and is now beginning to hit the wealthy world (the US and Europe) hard. 

Climate change from man-made global warming is here in a way that even fossil fuel billionaires and their paid shills can no longer deny.  For the moment, we still — probably — have the ability to determine how bad it’s going to hit us. 

We long ago passed the point where we could decide if we were going to let it make our lives miserable.  We’re there. In all probability we passed that tipping point several generations ago, when fossil fuel companies and climate scientists were just arriving at a consensus that it was not only real but could be deadly to human life on this planet.  

The response of the fossil fuel industry was to follow the tobacco industry’s playbook and fund phony research, create deceptive think tanks and push out highly paid front men and politicians to lie to the American people and the world. 

The question now is whether we’ll let our current climate emergency get so far advanced it either wipes out the human race along with most life on the planet; produces such chaos it tears apart civilization; or merely disrupts human life so severely it crashes governments around the world and stresses the ability of democracies like ours to continue to function. . . .

[USA]In our own hemisphere, as farmland turns into scrub desert across Central America, climate refugees (particularly from hard-hit Guatemala) began streaming north into Mexico and piling up on our southern border.  

In the western US states water is becoming so scarce that much of our best agricultural land is endangered as well as the ability of reservoirs and dams to produce the electricity needed by Nevada and Southern California; another climate refugee crisis in this country as bad as or worse than the dustbowl of the 1930s is almost certainly just around the corner. 

Even if every country in the world stopped emitting carbon right now, we’ve already gone long past that decision point.  This is the new normal, and it’s starting to really get underway with 120 degree summers and wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, multi-mile-wide tornadoes across the Midwest, and hurricanes, flooding and wild summer and winter temperature swings from Florida to Texas, Kansas to New York. 

We decided in the Reagan years, when the science became clear but the fossil fuel giants covered it up and derided as “doomsayers” the outspoken among our climate scientists, that we’d go this far… and here we are.  

Our current decision isn’t about whether there will be millions of climate refugees in the Americas or whether every change of seasons will bring thousands of deaths across North America; we’re already there.  Our current decision is whether we’ll let modern human civilization as we know it continue or disintegrate. 

This concept of civilization-ending climate change now being just around the corner isn’t far-out or unprecedented; check out the headline in today’s Washington Post: “The best place to ride out a global societal collapse is New Zealand, study finds.”. . . .

Seven years ago, George and Leonardo DiCaprio, Leila Connors, Earl Katz and I put together a short (11 minute) documentary titled “Last Hours” about a worst-case scenario for our world, something that may mimic “the great dying” of the Permian Mass Extinction about 250 million years ago.  Few animals larger than a dog survived that event; the world rebooted itself leading to an entirely new type of dominant animal — the dinosaurs.   An error occurred.  When Last Hours came out, a few climate scientists took me to task for writing and co-narrating a documentary that would “scare the hell” out of people.  . . . .

There are still things we can do, from reconfiguring our civilization to be more climate-resilient to immediately cutting our carbon emissions to radical efforts to decarbonize our atmosphere.  But our options are narrowing day by day, and these will all require worldwide cooperation (you can expect to hear a lot about this next year when the next IPCC report comes out).   But in the face of this climate emergency the Republican Party continues to deny climate change is even happening.  . . .

Thom Hartmann  Independent Media Institute  This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Andreas Malm. ‘Because Nothing Else Has Worked’

Editor.  Mronline.org (7-30-1).  Property violence kills no one. And yet, to say it again, I'm not today advocating property violence. I am, on the other hand, advocating a discussion of it. - Thomas Neuburger.  

Originally published: “Andreas Malm: 'Because Nothing Else Has Worked' “ on July 26, 2021 by Thomas Neuburger (more by Andreas Malm: 'Because Nothing Else Has Worked') (Posted Jul 29, 2021).   Climate Change, Movements, StrategyUnited StatesReview
“Property will cost us the earth.”  — Andreas Malm

While most people take the climate crisis seriously these days–the headlines from the Northwest makes that almost impossible to ignore–it’s very difficult to get most people to take the crisis seriously enough to act effectively.

Could that be true because most people realize that “acting effectively” means acting outside the bounds of what most, these days, are prepared to do? And if so, why is that?

Consider this a preliminary piece on the ideas of Andreas Malm, of whom I’ll write more later. While I don’t (yet) advocate for his ideas, I strongly advocate for discussing them.

Andreas Malm & Attacks on Property

The book of Malm’s that people are talking about is the one pictured above [How to Blow Up a Pipeline] ,though he’s written others of note. That book and its subject are discussed at some length here:

·        “‘Property Will Cost Us the Earth’: On Ecological Rage and Class Hatred”

also here:  “No Safe Options: A Conversation with Andreas Malm” and also here: Andreas Malm: “The ecological transition will take us beyond capitalism as we know it” among many other places.

Even Ezra Klein, the Alex B. Keaton of his generation, is getting into the act. So let’s start with Klein and his thoughts:

I spent the weekend reading a book I wasn’t entirely comfortable being seen with in public. Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline is only slightly inaptly named. You won’t find, anywhere inside, instructions on sabotaging energy infrastructure. A truer title would be “Why to Blow Up a Pipeline.” On this, Malm’s case is straightforward: Because nothing else has worked.

We could stop now and the whole point will have been made. Why blow up a pipeline? Because nothing else has worked. . . .  MORE

How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World ...

Verso Books     https://www.versobooks.com › products › 2649-how-to...  

In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to ...

2019

IT’S NOT ALL BAD NEWS

CLIMATE CRISIS from ECOWATCH

20 Reasons Why 2019 Gave Us Climate Hope

The Climate Reality Project, Dec. 28, 2019

There's no question that 2019 was a wakeup call on the climate crisis. Everything from devastating extreme weather events and seeing the planet's hottest month in recorded history to increasingly dire scientific reports coming out seemingly each week removed any doubt that this global emergency is rapidly escalating. We could hardly blame someone for feeling discouraged.

Here's what we must remember, though. 
For all of the unfortunate events that happened this year, we also saw an equal (and growing) opposite reaction. People all around the world stepped up for the climate like never before.  What's more, technological advancements and plain economics are making the solutions to the crisis more feasible than ever.  So, here are the top reasons why 2019 left us with real climate hope!  https://www.ecowatch.com/2019-climate-wins-2642492657.html

OMNI CLIMATE EMERGENCY ANTHOLOGY #1,  Dec. 17, 2019.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/12/omni-climate-emergency-newsletter.html

Moving from Climate Change, to Climate Catastrophe, to Climate Emergency.

UN Climate report Nov. 26 Bleak

EU Parliament Declares Climate and Environmental Emergency

Climate Emergency Campaign

Cities Passing Emergency Declarations

Strategies for Local Campaigns

National Declarations

Advice and Inspiration

Google Searches

World Scientists Declare Emergency and Plan for Action

Colleges and Universities Declare Emergency and Unveil Plan

And Full Alert: Warming and Nuclear War, Art Hobson, “The Fate of the Earth”

END OMNI CLIMATE EMERGENCY ANTHOLOGY #2