Technology to Stop Global Warming : NASA Documentary Lecture on Geoengineering and Climate Change.
This is a great documentary. It’s part of a series of exciting and informative documentaries.This Youtube channel is for learning and educational purposes. Learning and Education are fundamental and important in today’s society and becoming increasingly more accessible and convenient online. The availability of important information which is also entertaining helps everyone grow mentally and emotionally as people both individually and as a whole. Documentaries are the resource of choice of the information and internet generations of students around the world. The documentary here along with the other documentaries on this channel relate to important times and people in history, historic places, archaeology, society, world culture, science, conspiracy theories, and education.
Imagine that a storm blows across your garden and that now, without your knowledge and without your consent, foreign and genetically-manipulated seeds are in your vegetable patch which you have nourished and maintained for many years. A few days later, representatives of a multi-national corporate group pay you a visit at home, demand that you surrender your vegetables – and simultaneously file a criminal complaint against you, resulting in a fine of
€ 20.000,00 for the illegal use of patented and genetically-manipulated seeds.
What’s more: The court finds for the corporate group!
Yet you fight back…
This short story is no utopia rather, around the world, the bitter truth. It is also the true experience of the family of Percy und Louise Schmeiser in Canada, also winners of the Alternative Nobel Prize, who meanwhile have been fighting the chemicals and seed manufacturer Monsanto since 1996. Nowadays, nearly three-fourths of genetically-manipulated plants harvested worldwide originate from
Monsanto labs. Monsanto is a U.S.-based corporate group which calls dismal inventions such as DDT, PCB and Agent Orange its own. In its effort to gain absolute hegemony over plants – from the field all the way to the consumer’s plate – Monsanto knows no qualms. The farmers Troy Rush, David Runyon and Marc Loisell also learned the hard way what it means to be confronted with Monsanto’s methods of doing business, as did thousands of other farmers worldwide.
They and the Schmeisers are not just fighting against Monsanto and with that, for the continuation of their livelihood as farmers but also for the right to freedom of speech and the right to their property.
Yet above all, they are campaigning for the future of their children and grandchildren so that they, too, will have a chance to grow up in a world without genetically-manipulated food.
This film is reassuring.
Reassuring to all who fear that as an individual, no one would have any power to confront policymakers, large corporations or the business world.
“David vs. Monsanto” proves the opposite.
http://democracynow.org – In Peekskill, New York, just about an hour north of New York City, residents have launched a blockade in efforts to stop the construction of a gas pipeline slated to run only hundreds of feet from the aging Indian Point nuclear power plant. The proposed project has sparked concerns from residents and nuclear experts that a pipeline break could cause a catastrophic nuclear disaster that would threaten the entirety of New York City. The pipeline is being built by Spectra Energy and is officially known as the Algonquin Incremental Market Project, or AIM pipeline. Well, only hours ago, Peekskill residents and activists escalated the campaign to stop this pipeline’s construction by installing a fully sustainable shipping container at the entrance of Spectra’s work yard—complete with two activists living inside. Democracy Now! was there as the blockade was launched.
Peter Wadhams Conference:
Global Warming, Methane Crisis and Collapse of Civilization (November 2015)
Conference with Peter Wadhams at UCL London (Institute of Archaeology)
November – 2015
This conference was carried out last November 23th at the Institute of Archaeology (IoA) of UCL. This event was sponsored by the World Archaeology Section of the IoA.
Russell Monson, Louise Foucar Marshall Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, College of Science, University of Arizona
How can humans thrive within a natural world that holds the ingredients necessary for our survival, but at the same time is threatened by our domination of that world? Sustainability of the goods and services provided by Earth’s ecosystems is dependent on mechanisms of resilience that include maintenance of biotic diversity and avoidance of climatically-controlled ‘tipping points’. This lecture will explore how recent trends in land use and anthropogenic climate warming have exposed vulnerabilities in the mechanisms of ecosystem resilience, and revealed the potential for surprising shifts in the productivity and persistence of ecosystems. Recognition of the interactions between anthropogenic climate forcing and natural climate cycles, and breakthroughs in the fields of genomics and ecosystem modeling, provide opportunities for management of ecosystem resilience. With adequate foresight and focus, humans can learn to navigate toward a more sustainable future
(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Dr. Darlene Mininni shares how resilience, emotional intelligence and mindfulness can affect physical health. Science consistently shows that positive emotions make a physiological impact on one’s life – whether you are 18 or 80 – and Dr. Mininni offers practical advice to bring more well-being into your life. Series: “Stein Institute for Research on Aging” [6/2015] [Health and
Medicine] [Show ID: 29118]
http://democracynow.org – We host a roundtable discussion in Toronto about how indigenous and Black Lives Matter activists in Canada are working together to address state violence and neglect, and media coverage of their efforts. Last month, First Nations people occupied the offices of Canada’s indigenous affairs department to demand action over suicides as well as water and housing crises in their communities. The protests came after the Cree community of Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency over attempted suicides. Protesters set up occupations inside and outside the offices of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada in Toronto, Regina, Winnipeg and Gatineau, Quebec. Among those who took part in the occupation of the office here in Toronto were local Black Lives Matter activists who just weeks earlier had launched a 15-day encampment outside police headquarters following news there would be no criminal charges for the police officer who fatally shot a South Sudanese refugee named Andrew Loku last July. Among those who turned out in force at the encampment outside Toronto police headquarters were First Nations activists. We are joined by Erica Violet Lee an indigenous rights activist with the Idle No More movement and a student at the University of Saskatchewan; Hayden King, an indigenous writer and lecturer at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy in Ottawa; LeRoi Newbold, a member of the steering committee for Black Lives Matter Toronto and director of the Black Lives Matter Toronto Freedom School Project; and Desmond Cole, a journalist and columnist for the Toronto Star and radio host on Newstalk 1010.
http://democracynow.org – A key figure in Brazil’s interim government has resigned after explosive new transcripts revealed how he plotted to oust President Dilma Rousseff in order to end a corruption investigation that was targeting him. The transcripts, published by Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, document a conversation in March, just weeks before Brazil’s lower house voted in favor of impeaching President Rousseff. Romero Jucá, who was then a senator but became a planning minister after Rousseff’s ouster, was speaking with a former oil executive, Sérgio Machado. Both men had been targets of the so-called Car Wash investigation over money laundering and corruption at the state-controlled oil firm Petrobras. In the conversation, the men agree that ousting President Rousseff would be the only way to end the corruption probe. In the transcript, Jucá said, “We have to change the government so the bleeding is stopped.” Machado then reportedly said, “The easiest solution is to put Michel in”—a reference to Vice President Michel Temer, who took power once Rousseff was suspended. We speak to Maria Luisa Mendonça, director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights.
Peter Wadhams Conference:
Global Warming, Methane Crisis and Collapse of Civilization (November 2015)
Conference with Peter Wadhams at UCL London (Institute of Archaeology)
November – 2015
This conference was carried out last November 23th at the Institute of Archaeology (IoA) of UCL. This event was sponsored by the World Archaeology Section of the IoA.
Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current oil and energy crisis that our world is facing. Whatever measures of ignorance, greed, wishful thinking, we have put ourselves at a crossroads, which offer two paths with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don’t our way of life will collapse.
There is no panic in this film ….just an absolute and stark reality that we either choose to face or not.
But you will not see this film on network TV or just about nowhere else. It challenges too directly fundamental assumptions on which the continuance of our corporate economy and our consumer culture is based — in particular, the unquestioned assumption that growth is good, that “expansion is tantamount to progress.”
“Blind Spot” makes no attempt to soften or sweeten its message in order to make it palatable to a wider audience. The people interviewed are blunt about the seriousness of the problems we face: peak oil; climate change; population overshoot and a diminished environment.
Whatever temporary progress we make in curbing these problems is quickly nullified by a growing population and the fact that increased technological efficiency in the use of a resource tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate at which that resource is consumed.
These problems have potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire human species; indeed, we run the risk that positive feedback loops will develop that take matters completely outside our control.
And we’ve largely squandered the last forty years, precious time that we desperately needed to plan for these imminent crises.
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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