Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon Fell 68% in April Compared With Last Year
The finding reflects positively on the administration of leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has vowed to make the destruction of the crucial ecosystem "a thing of the past."
Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest decreased by 68% this April compared with last year, according to preliminary government data published Friday.
I got some pushback on the post I made a couple of days ago about how our grandparents lived and whether you and I could be happy living that way again.
Some people said looking backward was a mistake, that we must not forget about the terrible racial prejudice, gender inequality, and other serious problems that were so rampant in those "good old days."
I certainly agree that the past should not be idealized or looked at with an uncritical eye. We have learned a lot, hopefully, from the mistakes made by previous generations, though we still do have far to go.
But my real point, which perhaps I did not communicate very well, was about simplicity. That's an approach I've tried to take in my life, following the mantra of reduce and reuse, finding happiness in doing well with less. Not to say I'm a saint in this area, because I can always do much better!
When we enter the era of degrowth — whether that happens voluntarily or is forced upon us by climate catastrophe and societal collapse — simplification will be a necessity. So perhaps it's wise to begin moving in that direction now. 🤗
learning about how the highly-invasive strawberry guava (psidium cattleianum, also called waiawi) got introduced to the hawaiian islands and the story is just as bad as one would expect...
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
(a thread of threads, quotes, and links)
This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done to us, and what has been taken from us.
By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities.
By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality and exploitation, hunger and starvation; a world of fences, walls, tollbooths, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable diseases; a world of vanishing biodiversity and blooming fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital.
Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall:
"After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned."
Following the dismal results of COP27 in Egypt, Klein proposed, in series of tweets:
"Now is the time to decide not to do this all over again next year, when the summit will be in the UAE. Of all places. Civil society should announce a boycott, and instead hold a true people's summit. One gathering per continent to limit flying. Links to the official summit by video.
"There can be lobbying sessions built into the COP28 program with governments who will obviously go to the UAE. But why should civil society expend the carbon, money, and time to join them just to declare it a failure all over again? Let's try something new."
Since then, I haven't heard anything about whether this idea of hers — a good one that I agree with! — has gained traction and is moving forward, or if it's not.
Happy to be at #appdevcon and super happy I met @jeffwatkins@dimsumthinking and others this morning. I’ll be giving a talk at 2pm in Pathe 1 about the #environment#climate and if you wanna help me, boost and follow! Be there or be square (brackets?)
I stopped driving 20 years ago, in favor of walking or cycling. When I travel out of state, I take the train instead of flying. I'm trying my best to live without plastic (though late-stage capitalism makes that very difficult), and I'm making steady progress toward a vegan diet.
But enough about me. Let's talk about the people who are better than me, better than you, better than anyone except themselves. I'm talking about the very very rich.
What are those folks doing to change their lives? They're buying private jets!
Sales of private jets are likely to reach their highest ever level this year, placing an increasing burden on the planet, while many of the owners escape aviation taxes, and there are few curbs on the greenhouse gases emitted, according to a report.
The global fleet of private jets has more than doubled in the last two decades, and more private flights were made last year than ever before. Greenhouse gas emissions from private aviation have increased by nearly a quarter since the pandemic, when flying of all types nearly ceased in many countries for an extended period.
There were 5.3 million private flights globally in 2022, according to the report compiled by the US Institute for Policy Studies. Last year was the first time that private aviation surpassed its previous peak, which came in 2007, before the financial crisis of 2008-09 and global recession. Sales of pre-owned and new private jets are forecast to reach $34.6 billion this year, up from $34.1 billion last year.
Although private jet travel makes up only 4% of the global aviation market, it produces about 10 times as much greenhouse gas per passenger.
#Terraso is an open source tool for integrated landscape management. In our first two years we focused on data and mapping, focusing on making a story-mapping experience that everyone can access.
Today a bunch of Kenyan landscape members created storymaps and landscapes. I'm tired but so, so, excited about what's coming next.
Check out a story map about a Mangroves project in Kenya:
A group of 18 European Parliament Members have issued a statement officially calling for #Degrowth.
Here is part of what they wrote...
We believe that the current economic model, based on endless growth, has reached its limits.
Firstly, continuous economic growth, especially based on the consumption of fossil fuels, is leading to catastrophic global warming.
Secondly, the infinite pursuit of growth relies on the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of biodiversity, and the accumulation of waste and pollution. This also poses risks to our health, our economies, and our societies writ large.
Thirdly, the current economic model is contributing to social inequality and exclusion. The emphasis on economic growth has not translated into equal distribution of wealth or opportunities. Instead, it has resulted in a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few leaving many behind.
Fourthly, the current economic model is inherently unstable and prone to crises, as seen, for example, during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pursuit of growth at all costs has created a global economic system that is fragile and vulnerable to shocks.
We need an economic system that prioritises human well-being and ecological sustainability over GDP growth, one that recognises that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
We also believe we need to find new ways of organising our economies without relying on the continuous exploitation of resources and the constant increase in production and consumption.
We call for more pluralism in economic thinking within EU institutions and for its alignment with the scientific evidence of climate, ecological, and social sciences.
We call for economic models and other decision-support tools to be more diverse, more comprehensive, and more readable for citizens.
We call for decision-making processes to be aligned with our common policy objectives rather than on the basis of the variation of GDP figures.
Names of those who signed on as co-authors: Philippe Lamberts (BE), Bas Eickhout (NL), Ville Niinisto (FI), Manuela Ripa (DE), Marie Toussaint (FR), Ernest Urtasun (ES), Kim Van Sparrentak (NL) — Greens/EFA; Manon Aubry (FR), Petros Kokkalis (EL), Marisa Matias (PT), Helmut Scholz (DE) — The Left (GUE/NGL); Pascal Durand (FR), Aurore Lalucq (FR), Pierre Larrouturou (FR) — Socialists & Democrats (S&D); Sirpa Pietikainen (FI), Maria Walsh (IE) — European People’s Party (EPP); Katalin CSEH (HU) — Renew Europe (RE); and Dino GIARRUSSO (IT) — Non-attached (NI).
So, in the graphic below we find the suggestion that getting to Net Zero emissions will solve everything. And that's completely false.
Because beyond the problem of emissions (which are still growing, by the way), we have aerosols in the atmosphere, masking the true amount of global heating that already would have occurred if those aerosols (soot, dust, smoke, fumes, etc.) weren't there. Some of those aerosols are natural, but much more has been added by human industry (cars, planes, factories, fires for clearing land). If those aerosols are removed, the masking goes away and temperatures could quickly rise.
And beyond ocean heat content is the enormous amount of CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere. It's there to stay, for centuries, at least, unless we somehow manage to invent a near-magical technology that cheaply, quickly, and effectively removes and safely stores all that carbon somewhere else.
Sorry, kids, that's a fairy tale. But it's also the basis of the whole "Net Zero" scam! Because the politicians and industrial magnates understand there is no way the world is ever going to choose degrowth and reduce our overall energy use. So, all the projections used by the IPCC and the pledges made by delegates at COP meetings rely on, you got it, fairy dust.
In just the past 50 years, human industry has burned so much carbon fuel that we have added the total energy of 25 BILLION nuclear bombs to the Earth's ecological system.
All that heat has to go somewhere. But you know what? Only about 10% goes into the atmosphere. The other 90% is being absorbed, for now, by the oceans.
And the oceans are heating up. In fact, they're now at their highest temperature level in more than 100,000 years. (‼)
The global ocean hit a new record temperature of 21.1ºC in early April 2023. What is remarkable is that this is occurring ahead of — rather than during — the El Niño climate event expected to bring warmer, wetter weather to the eastern Pacific region later this year.
That means warmer-than-average ocean temperatures are likely to persist or even intensify, bringing with them more-extreme weather and marine heatwaves, which spell problems for marine life from corals to whales.
“We are probably looking at a string of record highs over the next year or so,” says Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA. “This coming year is gonna be a wild ride if the El Niño really takes off.”
High ocean temperatures can trigger extreme weather events. The unusually warm waters off Peru this year have helped to feed intense rainfall and Tropical Cyclone Yaku — the first such storm to hit the area in decades.
The ocean temperature spike — recorded by NOAA and probably the highest in more than 100,000 years — coincides with other warming trends. For example, in the Southern Hemisphere, the sea ice extent hit a new all-time low in February 2023.
“This wouldn’t have happened without climate change,” tweeted Jens Terhaar, an ocean biogeochemical modeller at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, in response to the news of the new temperature record. “We are in a new climate state. Extremes are the new normal.”
A major worry for climate scientists is that the oceans might at some point max out on their ability to continue soaking up more and more heat. If and when that tipping point is reached, global warming could accelerate out of control.
For now, it's thought that this won't happen until perhaps 2100, if at all. But given the recent string of "sooner than" and "faster than" reports we keep reading, I'm still wary.
This is from a short, easy-to-read primer/explainer on how global warming works and why it’s so dangerous...
Since the 18th century, humans have been taking fossil fuels out of their safe storage deep underground and burning them to generate electricity or power machinery.
We’ve now converted coal, oil and gas into more than two trillion tonnes of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and added them to the atmosphere.
The current result? The average temperature at the planet’s surface is about 1.2℃ hotter than in the pre-industrial era. That’s because adding new carbon to the world’s natural carbon cycle has caused an imbalance in the amount of energy entering and leaving the Earth system.
To warm the entire planet takes an extraordinary amount of extra energy. Recent research shows we’ve added the energy of 25 billion nuclear bombs to the Earth system in just the last 50 years.
We’ve already boosted the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 50%, and added considerable volumes of methane and nitrous oxide as well. This is pushing our life-sustaining greenhouse effect out of balance.
To date, almost every joule of extra energy – about 90% – has gone into our oceans, particularly the top kilometre of water. Water is an excellent heat sink. It takes a lot of energy to heat it, but heat it we have. Hotter oceans are a major contributor to coral bleaching and sea level rise.
It takes a long time to get this much heat into the oceans, and once it is there it doesn’t disappear. Reversing global warming entirely may not be feasible. Just to stop temperatures going any higher means correcting the imbalance and bringing CO2 levels down towards the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.
Back to 280 ppm? As of today, the world is at 423 ppm and rapidly climbing. It will be a very long time until it even starts going down, and a much longer time (probably centuries) until the level gets back to pre-industrial range.
They do a good job of explaining what the "Goldilocks Zone" is, and why that's so vitally important to the survival of human civilization. Recommended reading!
Leaders from Indigenous women’s organizations, environment and land management groups and philanthropists are meeting in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, for a forum aimed at strengthening the role of Indigenous women in Congo Basin land management and conservation.
Organizers hope the forum will result in a fund for Central African Indigenous women supporting biodiversity and climate resilience.