How to Persuade Others to Care about Biodiversity? | Dec ‘22 IPCC Report–Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Back in Rhode Island when I was bicycling 6 or so miles from Providence – to swim in the only nearby lake at Lincoln Woods State Park – I encountered a dead deer along the road. The Police were already standing next to it. It was upsetting. It’s an area where Power lines cut through the trees, which in fact provide space to allow animals (with no residential properties or fences blocking their passage) to move freely through this corridor. I was quite distraught that there weren’t more protections for the animals, warning automobiles to slow down. But often humans are in a hurry, trying to live around their work schedules. 

When I investigated online, regarding who to contact to help and assist wildlife, management, blah blah blah, almost everything that popped up was not geared towards helping and protecting wildlife, but towards how to contain them, an attitude of ‘pest control’. As in the case of the bison hunt article below. It’s not what have we done and what can we do to help, but the opposite mentality. At least the Indigenous people historically have been more observant and in awe of nature and natural cycles. Their mentality is more as guardians, able to see the larger picture. Like ‘not making any major decisions without first considering how it may affect the next 7 generations’ mentality.

Ah hum.

Thé headlines of this article Mass Yellowstone Hunt Kills 1,150 Bison, is disturbing’

The decision was, to hunt the perpetrators down, in this case bison, who have encroached too close to human activities, after their own territory and habitat has been maliciously overlooked. Meanwhile, humans continue in their construction, building, fencing, blocking, poisoning and ecological destruction, disregarding the natural world and the rights of forests and rivers and animals to live in a healthy environment. 

This previous mass killing of bison, was to effectually make a power statement and cripple the Native American indigenous population, who relied on this hunt for food.

This image is from the article talking about ecological amnesia; Life without Wild things.

Eileen Crist speaks of Confronting Anthropocentrism, human preoccupation with themselves; all about me, protecting mine and profiting from controlling and commodifying nature. 

What is biodiversity? Why it’s under threat and why it matters

In the last months, the newest IPCC report – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – came out. “Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe. The Next Decade Is Crucial, U.N. Panel Says.”

Here’s the Technical Summary, condensing the 18 Chapters of the IPCC Full Report

And here the Figures of the Full Report

The youth activists of the Sunrise group called on everyone
F*ck that. We’re not going to stand for it, Carol. Can you add your name to our petition today to call on President Biden to declare a climate emergency NOW and invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to expedite the transition to renewable energy?

They and other groups like Extinction Rebellion point out, “Last week, President Biden broke his campaign promise to end new oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters, and approved the Willow Project — the single largest oil extraction project ever proposed on federal lands…And today, the IPCC released another damning report, issuing a final warning to our governments and corporations across the world: if we don’t stop using fossil fuels, the Earth will hit a critical warming threshold that we can’t come back from by the early 2030s.”

Humans should acknowledge their affect on the territory of creatures of the natural world and help them, as they should assist refugees fleeing conditions in their own homelands affected by the out of control energy consumption on the other side of the world (the Western Wealth Bound World). With a loving and compassionate connection to this world and it’s beauty and abundance, you would think people would recognize and accept with open arms people who have lost their homes. 

Frankly, the oil industry should be on the front lines; compensating for all the land, pollution, contamination and loss of habitat for wildlife and humans; and put their massive profits towards developing agencies specifically to make amends, feed and shelter people whose lives have been dislocated and contribute to restoring and rewilding natural areas for all of the creatures whose habitat have been destroyed and shrunken from climate chaos.

As George Monbiot wrote recently for the Guardian, Hard Landing ~ A self-perpetuating political spiral is blocking the easier ways of preventing environmental collapse.

“There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it.“ That the only two not acquiescing to the demands, are the Vatican and the United States of America. Monbiot continues in this article, “The question that assails those who strive for a kinder world is always the same but endlessly surprising: how do we persuade others to care? The lack of interest in resolving our existential crises, expressed by the US Senate in particular, is not a passive exceptionalism. It is an active, proud and furious refusal to care about the lives of others.

Monbiot points out, “governments must either implement changes in months that should have happened over decades, or watch crucial components of civic life collapse, including the most important component of all: a habitable planet…if we in the rich nations are to meet our twin duties of care and responsibility, we must be prepared to accept many more refugees, who will be driven from their homes by the climate and ecological breakdown caused disproportionately by our economies.”

B E F O R E I T ‘S T O O L A T E

Stan Cox writes, Before It’s Too Late for Tomdispatchk “When MAGA legislators force their taxpayers to support the coal, oil, and natural gas industries, while undercutting the efforts of local governments to free their communities from fossil fuels, they’re not just empowering their fossil-fuelized campaign donors. Their anti-climate laws and regulations are also part of a broader effort to impose ever tighter right-wing political discipline on society. To that end, the authors of such laws — directly out of the authoritarian playbook — are intentionally vague about what constitutes “boycotting” or “discrimination.”

Noam Chomsky and Stan Cox discuss Before It’s Too Late

.Understanding the Conservation of Biodiversity, the variety of life

“It can be studied on many levels. At the highest level, one can look at all the different species on the entire Earth. On a much smaller scale, one can study biodiversity within a pond ecosystem or a neighborhood park. Identifying and understanding the relationships between all the life on Earth are some of the greatest challenges in science.”

D O Y O U F E E L M E ?

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Mass Delusion amidst Mass Disinformation and Fear-Based Distraction

Today, three of us had a very provocative conversation here at this hostel in the middle of nowhere ‘Now Here’ in Portugal; a Portuguese guy, an Argentinian IT worker I’ve come to know in the last week and myself. We talked about how the media uses fear to manipulate people, how Pharma companies have lied about and manipulated the entire world towards feeling fear and guilt about vaccines (along with truths about Covid) and how one very inexpensive and effective cure Ivermectin has been quickly denounced and silenced. We talked about cell phone addictions and ultra materialism….and that many of the political satirists, from George Carlin years ago foreseeing how the government and media are puppets to multinationals who are actually the elite in control. 

The Portuguese guy says that it’s almost the same as an authoritarian dictatorship, except that a tyrannical ruler has a face you can point to and blame, whereas this convoluted machine of money and power driving people to busily occupy themselves with just trying to survive with high costs and who are complacently consuming social media (addictively and incessantly) wind up not really questioning or even being consciously aware of the degree to which they are being controlled.

The NY Times has had one after another super frightening article in the last days, yesterday about Philadelphia being rife with guns and shootings, more than NYC or LA. And today an article about a MASSIVE PERFECT STORM that will at any time hit California. Not earthquakes, droughts or fires, but a brewing mega storm with water building from Hawaii, to the extent of the Mississippi river in the sky…and that when it hits the mountains of CA, it will bring biblical rains. This was in today’s paper. So though it may very well be true, the media does its job of keeping people at a high pitch of fear and dread, because this is an excellent vehicle to control people.

The one guy was saying that George Carlin was so right on…and yet few people are aware enough to even question or seek to know. He and I have seen families, sitting with each parent looking down at their phone while their toddlers are acting out, simply seeking to get attention from a parent who sits there entranced, absent and unavailable to properly give he child attention.

I just made a list of (some) of the political satirists from whom I’ve been enlightened about issues, plus another Brit I hadn’t yet heard of till today, Ricky Gervais. If you haven’t listened to Russel Brand, Bill Maher, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Hasan Minhaj…I suggest that you do.

They discuss truths in depth, which mainstream media averts talking about. And the three wealthiest men in the world – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson – who each coordinated their rocket launches with their massive carbon footprint and complete audacity to ignore the global warming occurring that is causing the massive droughts, floods, mass extinction, as if they are above it all and act with impunity with absolutely no regard for what is occurring on the earth – rather than using their money and power to instigate massive action to begin to heal the world, they are guilty for soaring mass delusion. 

What can we do about it? It seems not much. Except that the more that people become aware that our financial system is perpetuating our demise – 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6obeUKWmw&t=166s – the more that the massive population  – and the industries profiting from misinformation and disinformation – and government officials who are millionaire pawns pocketing their gifts and continuing as if we aren’t in the middle of a disaster of magnanimous proportions – can hold them accountable. But as long as people are sleep walking and bent over looking down at their phones rather than looking up and speaking personally with one another, nothing will change. 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

8 minute Space Flight ≥ World Population’s Carbon Emissions in a Lifetime | Let your Conscience Decide | What Can You Imagine?

Let your conscience decide. But before you can make a decision, you need to be informed. After all, this affects you. While we’re busy progressing through (or digressing from) our life’s daily activities and responsibilities, there’s a truth blazing right in front of our eyes. Hint: It’s not a comet. 

Leonardo DiCaprio Explains Don’t Look Up | Netflix

That’s right, An 8 minute space flight is equivalent to 1 Million people’s carbon emissions in a lifetime.

I participated in a 2 hour informational meeting organized through members of the Boston XR chapter 1/11/22. The Extinction Rebellion talk was about taking hold of your democratic right to have your voice heard. The topic of the meeting, non-violent direct action; pressing the political body and the media to tell the truth to the public. Non-violent direct action has been around for a long time; such as what Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau and Rosa Parks did. They too, did not feel that the powers that be, were listening. 

Given that neither US political party nor the corporate media give much attention or time to honest communication about Ecological Breakdown and the Climate Crisis. 

While we’re busy, enmeshed in our own worlds, a lot of information of critical importance that affects all of us, is sort of, glazed over. Several years ago when I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I hitched up to the ski basin and a former climate scientist who worked for the California government gave me a lift. He mentioned that in 1991, he was instructed NOT to release his findings in a report, that incriminated the oil industry clearly as being culpable for our heating planet. I was shocked. This wasn’t something to blame on our then current buffoon in the White House. Instead, it reveals a systemic and systematic non disclosure of information; the government and institutions bowing to the industries that feed them with green, and I’m not talking about marijuana. Oh yeah, even the former Speaker of the House during the Obama administration, the guy with the long unsmiling face, John Boehner, who continually voted against legalizing marijuana, now has invested $$$$ in the industry; which is being groomed into a large-scale corporate controlled industry with strict licensing – cutting out the small growers. Boehner has his talons in this one. “John Boehner Was Once ‘Unalterably Opposed’ To Marijuana. He Now Wants It To Be Legal”

In the meantime, the pharmaceutical industry billionaires, along with the tech ones, have also been willingly not disclosing information, as they looked at their sky rocketing accounting books as a burgeoning mass opioid epidemic was happening. They kept quiet, because they were seeing massive profits. 

This systematic cover-up and looking the other way while one’s bank account fattens, has already been in place.

Noam Chomsky talks of this in his interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now regarding the current Anti-Science evangelical movement and Neo-Liberalism in the United States of Amnesia.

I had to look up ‘the scopes trial’. to see what he was referencing. In 1925 in Tennessee, a teacher was tried for having the audacity to teach evolution theory.

He talks of the evangelical, anti-science minions of Trump today who are misguided through a strong media. Chomsky says 

“It is our responsibility to turn the country to sanity.” 

He talks about the trend of Neo Liberalism in the last 40 years and its transfer of wealth from the working and middle class (90%) to the very rich. The religious right is healthy and strong. 

And with his quote in mind, that’s why we can all rebel against extinction, and decide to actually work and act and play together. And say, I wanna hear more? 

What is it that is blazing before our eyes? Well, it was well-covered by the network television stations. I heard the statistic from one of the people in the zoom meeting.

“Jeff Bezos Got as Much Morning Show Coverage in a Day as Climate Change Got All Last Year”

While governments and industries and corporate stories are about pride, conquering, staking one’s territory and profiting from one’s investments.

Our stories are more about surviving, and surfing the net. We might have similar ambitions nestled in quiet achievements and joys about conquering our own fears and losing bad habits. In the meantime, we need to guard from being Zucked by our boy billionaire, who wants to conquer our inner space. Mark would like (with our purchase of his software and hardware) for everyone, to ‘switch’ from life, to a fantasy. From being sensorily in touch with our own bodies, the turning of the planet, the changes of seasons and some semblance of connection to the living systems of our earth and to each other face to face. To instead, buy into Meta. Rather than walking and driving while staring down at our phones, that’s old school. We can instead meet (anyone) and go (anywhere) in Meta, without even having to get dressed or brush our teeth. We can put on any mask or costume we like, to hide behind. A fantasy world that you, yes you, can create. You don’t have to bother to leave your house or couch. Now we’re talking zombi land, for real. We can all say ciao, see ya later, while merging into being mesmerized in our goggles, wired to a virtual universe. 

Why spend time being concerned about nature, if you can ‘be there’. If there are no tigers anymore, who cares? We can visit with them while sitting on the toilet with our googles on and bluetooth.

While the billionaires are shooting off rockets to conquer and profit from space flight – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson – they are ignoring a glaring part of the equation. 

One 8 minute rocket launch is equivalent to 1 million peoples carbon output in a lifetime. 

“How the billionaire space race could be one giant leap for pollution” (not for mankind)

“One rocket launch produces up to 300 tons of carbon dioxide into the upper atmosphere where it can remain for years.”

These are educated intelligent guys, uh, chaotic weather systems from global warming? extinction? 

One Space Trip Emits a Lifetime’s Worth of Carbon Footprint ”That’s pretty messed up.”

This statistical analysis of carbon emissions relative to income and wealth levels globally, clearly indicates where accountability lies 2022 World Inequality Report 

“One space flight emits more carbon dioxide than most of the world’s population will create in their entire lifetime.”

Regarding Global Carbon Inequality

Per capita emissions across the world, 2019

Per capita emissions across the world, 2019

Per capita emissions across the world, 2019

I had to look what MENA stood for. Middle East/North African countries consisting of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

We are in the midst of an environmental extinction crisis and global heating climate catastrophe whose main driver is fossil fuels and industrialized well, ‘everything’.

Rather than the world’s wealthiest men orchestrating and paying for the seeds for a worldwide participatory tree planting movement, or putting money and incentivizing people to participate in realizing the recently deceased biologist EO Wilson’s Biodiversity foundation and his Half-Earth project, or mobilizing the world’s population to collect plastic and rubber tires and make renewable building materials from them. 

Instead, they perform a virtual drag race (eerily close in time to one another), launching their mechanical penises into the sky, in a salute to endless technical expansion; symbolizing their desire to financially occupy and profit from the skies. Before space junk comes crashing down from failed missions…

Corporate media gave more hours of coverage to the wealthiest men in the world, who rather than saving rainforests, or driving a collective planetary undertaking committed to not building walls and paving every piece of earth, but weaving together habitats and nurturing the earth’s systems: wetlands, forests, rain forests, oceans.

Philip McMaster Sustainaclaus | co-founder World Sustainability Coop

In light of the fact that business enterprises rule and money speaks, XR realize that the only way to pressure change organized from the top down, is to share information and messages to the public and media, to influence those who can coordinate and facilitate major action. 

I can imagine a really delightful more peaceful and beautiful environment, with people interacting and taking the time to build new paradigms in action and interaction, as we physically re-invent life that is not car-driven. I see public parks, gardens, car-free cities, and more care going into education and empowerment. Clean, efficient and pleasant train travel. Bicycle infrastructure everywhere.

What can you imagine?

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

October 22nd is Half-Earth Day – EO Wilson

The biologist E O Wilson upon seeing the mass extinction taking place on the Earth due to human spoilage and encroachment on habitats, decided to implement Half-Earth > to set aside half of the earth and water in the most biodiverse regions, to ensure the survival, rather than extinction of species. 

It will take all of us, because Climate Catastrophe i.e. Global Warming and the 6th Mass Extinction can be slowed down, if we all stand up and do something to contribute our energy, intention and make the effort to change habits and recognize the part that we play (either contributing to destruction (through continued development and construction) or acting as protectors and being kind and respectful to all other species, rather than being human centric and negligent to all other life on the planet.  

Registration for Half-Earth Day 2021 is Live

https://half-earthday2021.brandlive.com/half-earth/en/home

We Need To Clean up Our Oil Act and Introduce Transportation Alternatives – Bicycle-Pedestrian Infrastructure, Trains, Trams, Battery Operated Public Buses

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/health-sapping.htmlSatellite Maps created by NASA documenting the unseen air pollution killer.

I was reading this article in the New York Times about the massive oil that has leaked in the Gulf of Mexico after hurricane Ida, and the regularity of leaks springing from both active and inactive/abandoned oil pipelines and platforms there.

After Hurricane Ida, Oil Infrastructure Springs Dozens of Leaks

By Blacki Migliozzi and Hiroko Tabuchi Sept. 26, 2021

“There are some important caveats. NOAA’s satellite tracking effort started years after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which triggered a series of spills that ultimately released about 10 million gallons into the Gulf, the same amount of oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off of Alaska. It also doesn’t cover BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010, which spewed more than 120 million gallons of oil, the biggest offshore oil spill in United States history. (At the time, NOAA did engage in an experimental effort to use satellite imagery to track the oil’s spread.)”

By Blacki Migliozzi and Hiroko Tabuchi Sept. 26, 2021

“The spills caused by Hurricane Ida have brought more damage to a shoreline made fragile from decades of oil and gas drilling. One of the slicks was very near the East Timbalier Island National Wildlife Refuge, an ecologically-rich part of a barrier island chain. “We won’t know the true ecological impact for a while,” said Scott Eustis, community science director at the New Orleans-based nonprofit, Healthy Gulf, who has long studied the effect of oil and gas drilling on Louisiana’s wetlands. Some scientists have said the island is too far gone to save.”

“On Aug. 30, even as the thick slicks spread their way across the water, the Biden administration moved to lease more than 80 million acres in the Gulf for new oil and gas production. “

Lawsuit Filed After Biden Opens 80 Million Acres of Gulf of Mexico for Oil

https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/lawsuit-filed-after-biden-opens-79-million-acres-of-gulf-of-mexico-for-oil-2021-08-31/

Just days ago, ‘Major’ Oil Spill Off California Coast Threatens Wetlands and Wildlife was written for the New York Times by Neil Vigdor, Melina Delkic.

“Mayor Kim Carr of Huntington Beach, CA said “the responsible parties” to blame for the spill should “do everything possible to rectify this environmental catastrophe.” She added that officials were looking at measures “to make sure that they are held accountable for this.”

In the meantime, we receive new like this.

And the United States of America remains car-centered. Why do we continue to ignore this?

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/29/1041393172/u-s-says-ivory-billed-woodpecker-and-more-than-20-other-species-have-gone-extinc

Perhaps it’s Ecological Amnesia: Life Without Wild Things

“E.O Wilson on the protection of Half-Earth for biodiversity: “There are ways to stop [mass species extinction] and I think we’re going to have to start talking about big changes in how much of the Earth’s surface we put aside for nature just to keep it from going extinct in a very short period of time. And I’m in a group of scientists working very hard on that part right now.”

STORY: Mass Species Extinction and Wilding the Wilderness

Perhaps it’s because the majority of humanity are so distanced from caring about all the other lives with whom we share our planet, because of our anthropocentrism.

Eileen Crist: Confronting Anthropocentrism

The answer? Change not just our diets and lifestyles, but specifically our Transportation.

“Mayor Anne Hidalgo eventually wants to make Paris a mostly car-free city, part of a much wider push by leaders around the globe to rethink the car’s place in the urban landscape. Her next big initiatives, in addition to Ville Du Quart D’Heure (city of fifteen minutes), include following up on her plan to ban diesel cars by 2024 and fuel cars by 2030 within city limits, and a coalition of local cycling associations plans to release a proposal to extend the city’s bike network into the suburbs.

It’s all part of her wider climate policy, which includes providing subsidized public transit for children, expanding public transit, and greening the city with new parks and urban forests.

But Hidalgo’s key message—that seriously addressing climate change can also improve your quality of life by cutting air pollution and getting more people out of cars—is one more and more leaders should echo. McLeod says that conversation linking climate change and transportation, especially given the partisan divide on environmental policies in the U.S., is making it harder to make that kind of infrastructure push underway in Paris.”

“Parisians have heeded the call: A million people in a metropolis of 10 million are now pedaling daily. And Paris now ranks among the world’s top 10 cycling cities.”

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition.

The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

my mountain bicycle

Amtrak bound

Sufi master – Fire Season | Myth of Progress and Endless Economic growth fostering Ecocide

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee – Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order – writes for Parabola Magazine Fire Season – A Sufi master looks at—and beyond—the approaching flames

“Will the fires and floods finally awaken us, turn our attention back to the living Earth? Or have we lost that connection, that place of belonging? How long before we are forced to wake from this nightmare of alienation? I used to imagine how Spring would come after the hard Winter of materialism, after all those years when we put profit before people, before the more-than-human world.

The fires remind us that our present story is broken, its myth of progress and endless economic growth fostering ecocide.

Nature untouched, thrives.

Meanwhile, in East Africa, the Somali pastoralists have already moved on, after watching their animals die in the years of drought. They’ve left the land they’d walked for centuries, moving into camps. They know that climate change brings hunger and migration, as they suffer the effects of our use of fossil fuels. They did not put carbon into the atmosphere. They are too poor to pollute. But they are among the first to suffer.

I am sure we will find a victim to blame, anything to escape the deep knowing that our way of life is over, that we cannot continue with this story of exploitation and consumerism, this plague that is burning the land.

Years ago I had a series of visions of the future, of a civilization waiting to be born. I was shown how we would find new ways of healing, bringing together the wisdom of the shaman with the techniques of modern medicine. I saw how we would be given a technology as simple as photosynthesis that could provide us all with free and unpolluting energy from the sun. I saw earth magic coming alive, plants speaking to us again after centuries of silence.

The pandemic has taught us about uncertainty, and the need to listen even more closely to the Earth, to sense her present imbalance.

I used to think that I would live to see the future of my visions. Now I only hope that my grandchildren’s grandchildren will walk in a kinder world, alive to a multidimensional kinship, knowing that everything they can see, hear, and touch is sacred.”

Text excerpted from his article. https://parabola.org/2021/08/01/fire-season/

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition.

The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

World Elephant Day | Elephant Sanctuaries

I previously contacted a sanctuary inquiring about working or volunteering there and learned that they only hire local people. They want people to be available for years for the benefit of the animals. When they are locals, they can receive a long term commitment by people, with whom the elephants can establish a relationship with continuity over time.

I’ll simply try to volunteer sometime.

Kenya’s indigenously run elephant sanctuary.

“12 Steps to Climate Sobriety” by Erik Molvar

12 Steps to Climate Sobriety by Erik Molvar 12/17/15 

“The nations of the world have unanimously agreed, 195 to zero, that climate change is a major problem, that human activities are a major cause and that it’s high time to do something about it. Those debates are now over globally, although some American politicians have yet to notice.

This signals the arrival of a new era, an era in which the catastrophic consequences of our global fossil fuel addiction have become so obvious that they can no longer be ignored. Recognizing that the world has a problem — and that human activities caused it — is the first step on the long and uncertain path to finding solutions. The Paris summit should put to rest the last of the climate deniers in our own nation.

A new Yale University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science demonstrates that for past two decades, corporate funding has served as the underpinning of a unified network of “contrarian” lobbying firms, politicians and think tanks dedicated to polarizing the issue of climate change and creating the appearance of scientific doubt that human activities are the source of global climate problems. In short, we’ve been taken for a ride. Now that the tie between corporate funding and specific language and thematic content of climate deniers has been demonstrated scientifically with robust data, political leaders should dispense with the charades and start seeking solutions instead.

Solving the world’s climate crisis probably won’t involve digging up Canadian boreal forests to extract tar sands, and then spending more fossil fuels refining them into a usable product to burn. They probably don’t involve strip mining the American West in a quest for low-grade kerogen trapped in “oil shale,” a primitive oil precursor, or digging up the even more primitive deposits of coal. Drilling and fracking the Sagebrush Sea for natural gas and oil will only set progress back. Deforestation, either in remaining old-growth pockets in the Pacific Northwest that still support spotted owls, or in the tropical rainforests so amazing in their biodiversity, will need to be reversed, not accelerated.Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has developed a famously successful 12-step pathway to help people beat their addictions to alcohol. Modern society’s addiction to fossil fuels is disastrous on a global scale, disrupting the family of nations and visiting calamity on individuals and communities, in a macrocosm of the problems caused by alcoholism. So presented below is a 12-step pathway to climate sobriety, adapted from the blueprint invented by AA (while honoring our Constitution, which requires separation of church and state) to put us all on a path to a more fruitful and sustainable human future:

1. Recognize that burning fossil fuels has altered our global climate by radically increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the air, that deforestation is crippling the planet’s natural ability to absorb this extra carbon and that animal agriculture (especially ruminants like cattle that belch climactically potent methane) plays a significant role in accelerating the aboveground carbon cycle.

2. Recognize that there is a higher authority that can help solve these problems and help restore us to sanity, and it’s called “science.”

3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the planet, without which there is no survival for our interdependent web of life, humans included.

4. Make a searching inventory of our own energy uses to increase our own efficiency and reduce our energy footprint as individuals, corporations, governments and nations.

5. Admit to the world that throughout our development as a nation, these United States have, more than any other nation, contributed to the changing global climate through our conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels and have profited from this problematic behavior through the enrichment of a privileged few exploiting mineral resources, both here in the United States and around the world.

6. Make it a priority at all levels of government to remove our own defects of energy use, through ending fossil fuel subsidies of all kinds, keeping publicly owned fossil fuels in the ground, incentivizing renewable energy sources, developing a smarter electrical grid to handle complexities in powering our nation from renewable sources, and empowering individual citizens to become renewable energy producers at the household scale.

7. Humbly ask scientific researchers and engineers, with the support of ample research and development funding, to invent more energy-efficient instruments for our daily lives, and to provide new solutions to global transportation, electrical generation and agricultural practices that eliminate fossil fuel consumption.

8. Make a list of all human communities and natural ecosystems harmed by fossil fuel extraction, combustion and resulting climate disruptions, to gain a complete understanding of the harm we have caused.

9. Make direct amends to such communities and ecosystems through reparations by the fossil fuel industry that fund active restoration of damaged ecosystems, build resilience into communities battered by climate disruption and especially provide subsidies for developing nations to develop their energy technologies along clean, renewable lines.

10. Continue to take an inventory of energy consumption and production here in the United States in an energy audit every five years, and take corrective actions as needed to ensure that we are meeting or exceeding targets to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

11. Seek through continued scientific research to improve our conscious contact with the planet that supports us, developing methods to move from a culture of exploitation to a culture of stewardship that respects the health of the planet and all living beings, and thereby safeguards the future well-being of humanity for all time.

12. Having achieved our climate awakening and developed sustainable, renewable ways to power our society while protecting our environment as a result of these steps, carry this message and these technologies and innovations to other nations throughout the world so that they might also thrive, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

The fossil fuel industry’s public relations teams would like us all to believe that we are powerless to control our energy habits. Now is our big opportunity to prove that we are not slaves. Step one is to banish the doubts (and doubters) of human-caused climate change to the dustbin of history. The Paris accord has done just that.

Molvar is the Sagebrush Sea Campaign Director for WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit environmental group working to protect wildlife, wild places, wild rivers and the health of the American West.”

Global Heating Feedback Loops – Dalai Lama – Greta Thunberg | Mass Extinction | Last Rhino

The Earth is Warming the Earth. Series of five short films.

Now that our swamp of denial is going to be drained and replenished in the White House with a semblance of normality that instead promotes honesty and directed effort, we can also establish an epic new road as citizens to participate in the health of the globe and its inhabitants. The opposite of nationalism, of waving a flag that is only showing devotion to a particular place, we can extend our love and care to the world. Not just our little family, our 30 mile radius of our town or county, but actually showing interest in the health of the planet, every creature that happens to be share our planet, before they are all wiped out. Godliness is not worshiping in a massive building on Sundays, it is extending empathy and care and love to the fate of our entire home. We have had an economy driven by this promise of security through ‘jobs’ and ‘finance’, but this means NOTHING, if the planet and all of the species around us in the ‘Garden of Eden’ are dead or diseased.

Wake up World. Listen to the Dalai Lama,

https://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/dalai-lama-on-war-war-is-criminal-abominable-despicable-legalized-terrorism-through-brainwashing

Listen to the pure intuitive instinct of a young unpolluted, unjaded girl who connected the dots of information and saw the complete and brutal denial that the citizens of the world have been swept into, this lopsided prioritization of ‘work and earning money’, that actually contributes to the destruction of the earth and spoiling of all habitats.

The Last Two Northern White Rhinos On Earth written By Sam Anderson.

Published Jan. 6, 2021/Updated Jan. 14, 2021. As a journalist, he journeyed to go spend time with the 2 last remaining White Rhino’s, where he came to love them. And in the process of spending time with them and contemplating their fate, he realized that the problem that the human species has contributed to their demise – the cornerstone problem of mass extinction – besides habitat loss, pollution of air, water, soil, the heating globe, wars, poaching (rhino horns worth more than gold)…is that ‘Love among humans seems to have a range of thirty (30) yards. People love and cherish their own families, what they come into contact with personally, yet don’t seem to have the imagination or abstract thinking to extend ‘love’ and empathy to all creatures, and therefore, humanity will never act with the collective urgency that is required to stop the massive climate disruption and mass extinction. In the USA, we don’t even seem to be able to grasp when we are robbed by the government and laws are passed to give charity to billionaires and corporations, but deny it to the people. As long as we are distracted by busily working to pay exorbitant rents all across the nation and drooling into complacency watching a TV show. nobody seems to be paying attention. 

Top scientists warn of ‘ghastly future of mass extinction‘ and climate disruption. Sobering new report says world is failing to grasp the extent of threats posed by biodiversity loss and the climate crisis.

https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/on-positive-transformation-to-health-and-sustainability-through-food-sovereignty-joe-brewer-working-for-billionaires-vandana-shiva-soil-not-oil-dahlia-wasfi-md-on-monsantos-seed-te/

I sit in a new apartment, having driven across the country after searching where I may be able to afford to live. The tap water smells and is toxic, it is cockroach infested and a housemate smokes inside, the area is a ‘food desert’, Walmart has the monopoly on grocery stores. However, I can not presently afford to live anywhere else. I cringe, as a person who is extremely focused on cleanliness and fresh air, yet I need to persist and do all that I can with my own efforts to endure. Why, because I can not as an artist, writer and intellect who cares deeply about the fate of all of the creatures of the world and have cast blame at the laziness and incognizance of humans to how their actions affect everything, everywhere, do anything but continue to do what I believe is right and just.

Give the gift of Half-Earth | E.O. Wilson

The dream of EO Wilson can only be realized through the participation of humans. He strives to protect the most biodiverse places on the earth and seas, to circumvent mass extinction – which is already taking place – by safeguarding the habitats of half of the earth.

See how you can become involved!

Be a guardian of the natural world. Our earth is paradise, if we nurture life and save habitats.