Dry banks, due to the lack of rain, are seen at Funil Hydroelectric Plant reservoir, in Resende, about 160 km west from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on February 3, 2015 (AFP Photo/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
By Richard Ingham February 11, 2015 2:13 AM
Paris (AFP) – For years, scientists and security analysts have warned that global warming looms as a potential source of war and unrest.
Storms, droughts, floods, and spells of extreme heat or exceptional cold: all can destroy wealth, ravage harvests, force people off land, exacerbate ancient rivalries and unleash a fight for resources, they say.
These factors are predicted to become more severe as carbon emissions interfere with Earth’s climate system.
Yet some argue there is evidence that man-made warming is already a driver in some conflicts.
“In a number of African countries the increase in violent conflict is the most striking feature of the cumulative effects of climate change,” South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS) warned in 2012.
“In the Sahel region, desertification is causing clashes between herders and farmers because the availability of cultivated land is being reduced.
“Climate-related effects of this nature are already resulting in violent conflicts in northern Nigeria, Sudan and Kenya,” it added.
Scientists who study ideas to engineer the climate to mitigate global warming say we should be ready to deploy an armada of instrumentation when Earth has its next major volcanic eruption.
Data gathered in the high atmosphere would be invaluable in determining whether so-called “geoengineering” solutions had any merit at all.
It would have to be an event on the scale of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
That eruption cooled global temperatures for a couple of years.
It did so by pumping 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide high into the sky above the Philippines.
Activist Tim DeChristopher speaks at the Massachussetts State House during the #DivestMA Global Divestment Day event on 2/12/15 organized by 350 Mass. For more on Global Divestment Day visit http://gofossilfree.org Tim, an independent climate justice activist, was featured in the documentary Bidder70, and is currently inciting dissent at Harvard Divinity School.
Tim DeChristopher speaking at the Massachusetts State House yesterday as part of 350 Massachusetts’ #DivestWeek & Global Divestment Day. As Tim says, divestment is in some ways a dangerous idea — and that’s a good thing. #divest
In 2008 Tim DeChristopher grabbed national attention when he disrupted an oil and gas auction. It was a calculated act of civil disobedience, for which he was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with a federal felony and served 21 months in prison. DeChristopher was released in April.
In this exclusive interview with InsideClimate News before he was sentenced, DeChristopher explains why crossing legal boundaries became a necessary part of his environmental activism; why civil disobedience is so effective; and how the climate change movement in American can make progress.
http://storyofcitizensunited.org —- Season Two launches on March 1st with The Story of Citizens United v. FEC, an exploration of the inordinate power that corporations exercise in our democracy.
WANT TO HELP THIS MOVIE REACH NEW AUDIENCES? Visit http://bit.ly/storyofcitizens and support our campaign with LoudSauce to buy ads to do just that!
Kathleen Dean Moore and Rachelle McCabe: Variations on a Theme of Extinction: Rage, Rage, Against the Dying
The truths of our time are deeply challenging – the on-rushing extinctions, the coming storms, and the moral necessity of safeguarding Earth’s beautiful lives. Words alone cannot express the urgency of action. And so we turn to music.
University Unitarian Church is delighted to announce the inaugural Robert and Marianne Fleagle Lecture for outstanding leaders and thinkers in liberal religion and social action. The inaugural lecture: Rage, Rage, Against the Dying: Global Warming, Extinction, and the Call to Life, focuses on climate change and features Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Rachelle McCabe, Professor of Music, both at Oregon State University.
In this duet of music and words, concert pianist Rachelle McCabe plays Rachmaninoff’s “Variations on a Theme from Corelli,” whose outpouring of descending chords gives voice to both the grief and the ferocious hope in the human heart. Writer Kathleen Dean Moore will speak of the call to save Earth’s astonishing lives – a sacred trust, a great and glorious gift, to be honored and protected for all time.
Kathleen Dean Moore is a philosopher, environmental advocate, and award-winning writer who speaks across the country about the moral urgency of stopping a global carbon catastrophe.
Rachelle McCabe enjoys an international career as an artist-teacher and as a solo recitalist and highly respected chamber musician.
This program was filmed in Seattle, at the University Unitarian Church, January 25, 2015
Michael Nagler, PhD gave this talk at the Fellowship of Reconciliation annual conference at Seabeck, WA July 4, 2014. He talked about the power of nonviolence and new science that shows that nonviolence is at the core of what makes us human.
Michael Nagler is Professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC, Berkeley, where he co-founded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program in which he taught the immensely popular nonviolence course.
The Chomsky Videos Published on Jan 17, 2014
Noam Chomsky: U.S. Politics Are Now ‘Pure Savagery’
Date – January 8, 2014
Author and activist Noam Chomsky said that the congressional controversy over extending unemployment benefits is evidence that American politics has descended into madness.
“The refusal to provide very minimal living standards to people who are caught in this monstrosity — that’s just pure savagery,” Chomsky said during an interview with HuffPost Live. “There’s no other word for it.”
Chomsky is a leading American intellectual known at first for his academic work in the field of linguistics. He has since become an influential activist and progressive political thinker. HuffPost will be publishing excerpts from its interview with Chomsky over the next week.
Republicans pursued food-stamp cuts last year, and blocked a deal to extend unemployment benefits during budget negotiations in December. On Tuesday, a handful of Republicans joined Senate Democrats to advance a bill reinstating the benefits for three months, but the agreement faces an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled House. There are currently about three people seeking a job for every job opening in the United States.
Chomsky said that recent economic doldrums, however, are not isolated phenomena, but rather the product of decades of economic policies pursued by American elites. Some of the major changes included the signing of World Trade Organization treaties, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the deregulation of major industries, he said.
“The general and very severe problem of the economy that’s staring us in the face … that has nothing to do with bad apples in Congress,” Chomsky said. “These are deep structural problems having to do with, in effect, the neoliberal assault on the population, not just of the United States but of the world, that’s taken place in the past generation. There are areas that have escaped, but it’s pretty broad.”
Chomsky told HuffPost that corporate interests dominate the policy agenda of the Democratic Party, and cited conservative scholar Norm Ornstein’s observation that the Republican Party has “drifted off the spectrum” and no longer functions as a serious parliamentary entity.
“It used to be said years ago that the United States is a one-party state — the business party — with two factions, Democrats and Republicans,” Chomsky said. “That’s no longer true. It’s still a one-party state — the business party — but now it has only one faction. And it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. The so-called New Democrats, who are the dominant force in the Democratic Party, are pretty much what used to be moderate Republicans a couple of decades ago. And the rest of the Republican Party has just drifted off the spectrum.”
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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By Richard Ingham February 11, 2015 2:13 AM
Transition Studies 