politics

lens-artists photo challenge: pick a place

Poudre Canyon.

“...climate investing is still burdened by many preconceptions and myths.”

Six Climate Investing Myths Debunked, Morgan Stanley
  • Myth 1 – The climate problem is all about global warming
  • Myth 2 – An ESG strategy addresses climate solutions
  • Myth 3 – Renewable energy is the main solution
  • Myth 4 – Renewables need subsidies for compelling returns
  • Myth 5 – Early stage clean-tech investing is a wild goose chase
  • Myth 6 – Climate investing depends highly on political and regulatory changes

Lens-Artists photo challenge: pick a place – how about the earth?

forests, sea ice, soil, rain, ecosystems, sentient beings

Nikon D750 f/5.3 1/400s 105mm 1250 ISO

The heat of a warming planet, like an artist’s palette knife on a canvas, etches its way across Western forests, slowly altering ecosystems that have flourished for centuries. cited: Climate change is transforming Western forests. Mark Jaffe, The Colorado Sun July 25, 2019

  • “As ecosystems change, there are going to be winners and losers,” said Thomas Veblen, a biogeographer and distinguished professor at the University of Colorado. “The regulator function of the forest could diminish … leading to more runoff and flash floods. With a reduction of the forest canopy, we are going to see the potential for greater erosion. The question is how much of the forest will fail to regenerate.”

Coasts, oceans, ecosystems, weather and human health all face impacts from climate change, and now valuable soils may also be affected. Climate change may reduce the ability of soils to absorb water in many parts of the world, according to a new study. And that could have serious implications for groundwater supplies, food production and security, stormwater runoff, biodiversity and ecosystems. cited: Climate change may cut soil’s ability to absorb water. Rutgers University, Science Daily, September 11, 2019

  • … a study published in the journal Nature last year showing that regional increases in precipitation due to climate change may lead to less water infiltration, more runoff and erosion, and greater risk of flash flooding.

The Arctic Ocean could become ice-free in the summer in the next 20 years due to a natural, long-term warming phase in the tropical Pacific that adds to human-caused warming, according to a new study: cited: Ice-free Arctic summers could happen on earlier side of predictions. American Geophysical Union, Science Daily, February 27, 2019.

  • There are different climate models used by researchers to predict when the first ice-free Arctic September will occur. Most models project there will fewer than 1 million square kilometers of sea ice around the middle of this century, but projections of when that will occur vary within 20-year windows due to natural climate fluctuations.
Nikon D750 f/3.2 1/4,000 40mm

A global study has found a paradox: our water supplies are shrinking at the same time as climate change is generating more intense rain. And the culprit is the drying of soils, say researchers, pointing to a world where drought-like conditions will become the new normal, especially in regions that are already dry. cited: The long dry: Why the world’s water supply is shrinking. University of New South Wales, Science Daily, December 13, 2018.

  • “It’s a double whammy,” said Sharma. “Less water is ending up where we can store it for later use. At the same time, more rain is overwhelming drainage infrastructure in towns and cities, leading to more urban flooding.”

Youth Climate Strike Coalition Demands

WE, AS A GLOBAL SOCIETY, ARE AT A CROSSROADS. WE HAVE A DECISION TO MAKE. ARE WE GOING TO CHOOSE MONEY OR POWER OR ARE WE GOING TO CHOOSE THE FUTURE? THE SEPTEMBER 20 STRIKE IS AN INVITATION TO EVERYONE TO CHOOSE US. CHOOSE THE KIDS, CHOOSE HUMANITY, CHOOSE THE FUTURE.

Strikewithus.org

A Green New Deal

  • Transform our economy to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030 and phase out all fossil fuel extraction through a just and equitable transition, creating millions of good jobs
  • A halt to all leasing and permitting for fossil fuel extraction, processing and infrastructure projects immediately

Respect of Indigenous Land and Sovereignty

  • Honor the treaties protecting Indigenous lands, waters, and sovereignty by the immediate halt of all construction, leasing, and permitting for resource extraction, processing and infrastructure projects affecting or on Indigenous lands
  • Recognize the Rights of Nature into law to protect our sacred ecosystems and align human law with natural law to ban resource extraction in defense of our environment and people

Environmental Justice

  • A transition that invests in prosperity for communities on the frontlines of poverty and pollution
  • Welcoming those displaced by the cumulative effects of the climate crisis, economic inequality, violence, and lack of opportunity.

Protection and Restoration of Biodiversity

  • Protection and restoration of 50% of the world’s lands and oceans including a halt to all deforestation by 2030

Implementation of Sustainable Agriculture

  • Investment in farmers and regenerative agriculture and an end to subsidies for industrial agriculture

are you ready…

Fighting climate breakdown is about much more than emissions and scientific metrics – it’s about fighting for a just and sustainable world that works for all of us.

https://globalclimatestrike.net

On Sept. 20-27, climate action organizers are planning a Global Climate Strike, with hopes that massive and consistent turnout will make a difference. If you’d like to join the 2019 Global Climate Strike, there are lots of ways you can get involved. And if there isn’t a strike planned in your city, the organizers want to help you plan one yourself. 

“The climate crisis is an emergency but we’re not acting like it,” the strike’s official website reads. “People everywhere are at risk if we let oil, coal and gas companies continue to pour more fuel on the fire.” And yes, though past strikes have focused on students, adults are welcome and absolutely encouraged to take part, too.

just in case…

you missed this morning’s NPR’s Morning Edition.

 “Let’s write a song about a woman telling a guy off.”

Ulaby, Neda. “‘You Don’t Own Me,’ A Feminist Anthem with Civil Rights Roots, Is All About Empathy.” June 26, 2019
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/735819094/lesley-gore-you-dont-own-me-american-anthem

“Many have taken up the song [You Don’t Own Me] as a symbol of women’s empowerment — like when the female cast of Saturday Night Live sang ‘You Don’t Own Me’ with actress Jessica Chastain the night of the 2018 Women’s March — but this fiercely feminist anthem was written by two men. David White died earlier this year, but John Madara, now 82 years old, says the two songwriters were disgusted by how much music written for female singers in the early 1960s centered on mooning over guys and decided to try something: “Let’s write a song about a woman telling a guy off.

“Madara says the song’s sensibility was also shaped by his upbringing in a multiracial Philadelphia neighborhood and his participation in the civil rights movement. ‘I saw how black people got treated,’ he says. ‘It was horrible, horrible, horrible. My friends and I got locked up in Philadelphia and Mississippi, and they treated us like gangsters. And my black friends got hit more than I got hit. [The police] had billy clubs and hit you across the legs, but the black guys got hit across the body. Those are things you don’t forget.'”

And while we’re talking about empathy, please join

“Lights for Liberty:  A Vigil to End Human Detention Camps”. 

Lights for Liberty is calling for communities around the country to join them in holding an event called:  “Lights for Liberty:  A Vigil to End Human Detention Camps”.  The event will take place on Friday, July 12.  To find out more about the organization and their plans for this national vigil you can go to their website – https://www.lightsforliberty.org/

solitary

“Reachable, near and not lost, those remained amid the losses this one thing: language.

horsetooth reservoir… Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/25s 85mm 100 ISO

“It, the language remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its wounded wordlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and giveback no words for that which happened.” ~Paul Celan* (cited: V. Schwarcz, Bridge Across Broken Time p. 85)

*Poet, translator, essayist, and lecturer, influenced by French Surrealism and Symbolism. Celan was born in Cernăuţi, at the time Romania, now Ukraine, he lived in France, and wrote in German. His parents were killed in the Holocaust; the author himself escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. “Death is a Master from Germany”, Celan’s most quoted words, translated into English in different ways, are from the poem ‘Todesfuge’ (Death Fugue). Celan’s body was found in the Seine river in late April 1970, he had committed suicide.

Caution Blind Corner

…If we don’t have journalism, we don’t have democracy. ~Barbie Zelizer, director of Penn’s Center for Media at Risk

The fabric of press freedom in the US has been frayed and weakened by political stigmatisation of journalists and cries of “fake news”, but it risks much greater, and more permanent, damage from other forces, including harassment, detention and criminalisation. (cited: The Guardian The biggest risk to American journalism isn’t posed by Trump)

Nikon D750….Caution Blind Corner

In the context of this new world order of dramatic political, social, and unparalleled technological change, the role of media has never been more important, and it’s also never been more dangerous…Foreign reporters in war zones, as well as domestic reporters and journalists like me in war zones of our own here at home, are facing angry people and the threats of violence.” (cited: Multichannel Don Lemon: Role of Journalists Vitally Important in Today’s Divisive Political Environment.)

Who Will Write Our History

In November 1940, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, a secret band of journalists, scholars and community leaders decided to fight back. Led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and known by the code name Oyneg Shabes, this clandestine group vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda not with guns or fists but with pen and paper. Now, for the first time, their story is told as a feature documentary. Written, produced and directed by Roberta Grossman and executive produced by Nancy Spielberg, Who Will Write Our History mixes the writings of the Oyneg Shabes archive with new interviews, rarely seen footage and stunning dramatizations to transport us inside the Ghetto and the lives of these courageous resistance fighters. They defied their murderous enemy with the ultimate weapon – the truth – and risked everything so that their archive would survive the war, even if they did not.