The main point that I want to make concerns the threat of irreparable harm, which I feel we have not communicated well enough to people who most need to know, the public and policymakers. I’m not sure how we can do that better, but I comment on it at the end of this transcript.
European Union leaders have gathered in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava for a summit that some have described as a crisis meeting.
The gathering was called by the Slovak government following the UK’s Brexit vote to leave the EU.
Central European countries have taken the opportunity to raise objections to a plan to force them to house asylum seekers and refugees against their wishes.
Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee reports from Bratislava.
are rallying in the streets of Berlin against the TTIP and CETA trade agreements. Many Germans continue to harbor suspicions over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US, as well as over the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a proposed agreement between Canada and the EU. Demonstrators fear that the agreements could be dangerous for employee rights and lead to massive job losses; they also worry that only big corporations will benefit from the agreements.
Astronomer Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute discusses the scientific community’s attempts to work with Hollywood in an effort to make movies more scientifically accurate. This presentation was part of the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s 2014–2015 Cosmic Exploration Speaker Series — “Science” on the Silver Screen.
Informed by comparative planetology and a survey of the major episodes in Earth history, Dr. Grinspoon will offer a taxonomy of planetary catastrophes meant to illuminate the unusual nature of the “Anthropocene”, the current epoch of human-driven planetary-scale changes, and reframe our current environmental and technological predicaments as part of a larger narrative of planetary evolution. This saga has now reached the pivotal moment when humans have become a dominant force of planetary change, and geological and human history are becoming irreversibly conjoined. Is this a likely or even inevitable challenge facing other complex life in the universe? Possible implications for exoplanet characterization and SETI will be considered, as well as the choices our civilization faces in seeking to foster a wisely managed Earth.
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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