Earth’s Changing Climate: What is Causing It? What Will It Mean for You? – Beacon Hill Seminars (2016)

As a dynamic system with many changing components, Earth’s climate has been changing over the four billion years that life has existed on the planet. In recent centuries, however, the pace and severity of change have become unsettling, because the relative stability that had characterized roughly the last ten thousand years now appears to be changing in patterned and potentially catastrophic directions.

This course will review the major scientific understanding of the dynamics of climate change and then examine the implications of these changes for the future of communities, nation-states and the global human community. Particular attention will be given to droughts, floods, and the impact of climate change on agriculture. The course will then touch on how climate changes are likely to affect public health both locally and globally. Further attention will be given to the collapse of polar and glacial ice systems and the rise of sea levels around the world.

Strategies for adapting to climate change will be examined, with particular attention given to understanding which strategies are being proposed by which human communities and how likely they are to succeed in the foreseeable future.

Through assigned readings, video, documentaries, and films, students will be encouraged to reflect on what the changing climate will mean for them and to explore possible transitions to a sustainable future on this planet.  Participants will be given access to readings, news clips and further online resources to pursue any particular aspects of this problem which interest them.  Those who have questions may contact the instructor, Tim Weiskel at <tim@ecoethics.net>  or keep current with the succession of Seminar meetings through this online course at:  http://wp.me/p2iDSG-iSH

Tim Weiskel

Participants can obtain links to introductory and background material at:

Where Can We Turn to Learn?
and
Some Recent CCRA Videoblogs

Lecture Slides for Seminar Sessions (in reverse order – most recent first)

• Session 8 – Where can we go from here?
  • Citizens, Science and Climate Action:“If you see something, say something”
  • Noam Chomsky: Trump’s Climate Change Denialism Will Accelerate Global Race to Destruction
  • From Climate Change to Nuclear War, Noam Chomsky Warns of Literal Threats to Our Survival

 

• Session 7– Climate Change, the “News” Media and Information Flow in a “Free” Society? Why have Americans been so “blindsided” by climate change?

 

• Session 6 – Climate Change, International “Flashpoints” and National Security
  • The Predictable Environmental, Public Health and Climate Impacts of the Globally Resurgent Military-Industrial-Prison Complex 
    and
  • Deputy Under Secretary Wormuth Previews the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review
    • Pentagon Declares Climate Change A “Threat Multiplier”
    • Pentagon Calls Climate Change Impacts “Threat Multipliers,” Could Enable Terrorism
    • Why Climate Change Is the Biggest Threat to National Security | Alternet
    • Defense Department to Congress: Global warming is a ‘present security threat’
  •  See subsequently:
  • Age of Consequences The Center for Climate and Security
  • Briefing Book for a New Administration, CSAG, The Center for Climate and Security
  • Sea Level Rise and the US Military’s Mission, The Center for Climate and Security
  • The Center for Climate and Security
  • Special Report: Quadrennial Defense Review – Defense.gov
  • Will ‘Climate Change’ Forever Alter U.S. Military Policy?
  • The Pentagon & Climate Change
  • Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change: Forum on National Security Impacts of Climate Change
  • Pentagon Calls Climate Change Impacts “Threat Multipliers,” Could Enable Terrorism
  • The U.S. National Security Risks of a Changing Climate | Rear Admiral David W. Titley, USN (ret.)
  • Admiral David Titley on Climate and the Military
  • TEDxPentagon – Rear Admiral David Titley, USN – Climate Change and National Security
  • What Good Is a Naval Base That’s Underwater? – The Takeaway – WNYC
    and particularly:
  • Larence Wilkerson Climate Change 2016
    

 

• Session 5 – Climate Change, Food Strategies And our Global Water Circumstance
  • Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have been suggested as  necessary technology for the human community to adopt to meet the expected food scarcity emanating from climate change in the coming years and decades.
    Nevertheless, there are many problems with the GMO strategy for global food production, particularly since it requires ever more consumption of fossil fuels and fresh water, and it does not seem to produce the increase in food supplies that its advocates claim.   See, for example:
    • Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops – The New York Times
      and
    • A Deep Dig On GMO And Crop Yields | On Point
  • See also the major U.N. Report that was published on the Thursday that we meet this week.
    • Emissions Gap Report
  • In addition the “food dimension” of climate change is now being widely discussed around the world.  See for example, the announcement of the forthcoming talk in Oxford.
    • Climate Change and Global Food Production – Oxford Talks

 

• Session 4 – Climate Change, Agriculture and The “Food Problem”
  • For a brief video summary of many of the topics we mentioned, see:
    • “Climate Change and the Structure of the Global Food System: The Transition Toward a Sustainable Agriculture” from Cambridge Community Television.
  • Further supplementary material:
    Consider the following reference material on agriculture and climate issues including the publication in the last week by the UN Food a and Agricultural Organization of:
    • The State of Food and Agriculture 2016 (SOFA)   This important and timely publication — entitled, “Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security”  is specifically devoted to climate change and agriculture.
              [No doubt in Rome at the FAO headquarters they heard that we would be discussing this issue in the Beacon Hill Seminars, and they very graciously decided to devote their annual report to this topic just for us — and the rest of the world at the same time.]
  • For reports that document the full breath of the post-War agricultural moment and the evolution of the “Green Revolution” as it unfolded see:
    • Directory to The State of Food and Agriculture, FAO’s major annual flagship publication.
  • For an assessment of the most recent SOFA (2016) report see:
    • The Industrial Agricultural System is Limiting Food Access and Driving Climate Change
  • To follow general food and agricultural developments see:
    • Food-Matters

 

• Session 3 –Sea Level Change (Part 2) + Climate Change and Food Security
  • Supplementary Material:
    • Cambridge Climate Congress (currently underway)
    • 2016 Cambridge Climate Congress: Building a Community of Response
    • Climate Ready Boston Report (now available for download)
    • An Ethics for the Coming Storm (forthcoming lecture before we next meet).
    • Bruce Friedrich: The Future of Protein: Blending Markets and Food Technology to Solve Some of the World’s Biggest Problems (forthcoming lecture — before we next meet)

 

• Session 2 – 13 October 2016 – “Climate and Sea Level Change”
  • • Adapting to Climate Change Now: Climate Experts, Civic Society & Plans for the Transition to a Sustainable BostonSupplementary material on sea-level change:
    • “Time and Tide Wait for No Man…” Rethinking Boston by the Sea

 

• Session 1 – 6 October 2016 – “Introduction & Overview”

 

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