How to Persuade Others to Care about Biodiversity? | Dec ‘22 IPCC Report–Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
April 4, 2023 Leave a comment
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 ?
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