Tag: climate change

American fascism is the term used by Dr. James Luther Adams, who “was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church.” He said that American fascists would dismantle the open society, using scripture, during “prolonged social instability or a national crisis.” Either of those conditions certainly meets the living conditions on many reservations of their social structure and their Nation. I argue from definition that “Christian fascists” or American fascists are appropriate to be applied to those who christianize Indigenous People as well as to be applied to those who committed  “the slaughters of yesteryear” for the following reasons:  

Global Warming, it is said, offers perhaps both the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and perhaps the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had. Either we will figure out how to transform society, to a prosperous and sustainable path, or we will fail to do so with dire consequences.

When it comes to Global Warming and moving forward, one of the greatest challenges has been from those fearful, dismissive, disdainful of “large” government. Yet, to deal with Global Warming will require not just individual action, not just local communities, not just ‘business’ and market activity, but serious government engagement as well — policy, financing, research support, and otherwise.

So, a question that has to be faced: Is Wall Street’s meltdown going to worsen or improve the prospects for navigating the Perfect Storm of Peak Oil and Global Warming? And, the answer is likely: both. It is both challenge and opportunity.

Every day, it seems, brings fresh news and fresh images of Global Warming‘s mounting impact on humanity (and human activities), local ecosystems, and the global ecosystem. Just coming across my desk are images of Global Warming refugees appearing in the nation’s capital.

These refugees provide dramatic images underlinign “how global warming is making polar bears homeless by causing the sea ice they rely on to melt, threatening many polar bear populations with extinction.”

Yesterday, Sep. 10, 2008 a UK court acquitted six defendants from Greenpeace of all charges for their actions on Oct. 8, 2007, when they scaled a smokestack at the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station and attempted to shut it down. The defendants, accused of doing £30,000 in damage to the smokestack by  painting “Gordon Bin It” on its side, did not deny the damage but relied instead for their defense on the principle of lawful excuse. (For more on “lawful excuse” see here.)

In essence they argued that the plant was doing damage to other property through its greenhouse gas emissions on such a scale as to justify their damaging it.

The data just keep pouring in (quite literally,) on ice-melting around the world.

Most people have focused their attention on Arctic sea-ice melt, but the heating of the water and the air that is driving the breakup of Arctic ice shelves is also taking down all of the regions ice sheets as well. Similarly, increased melt rates have been noted in Greenland and Antarctica, while mountain glaciers are also losing mass at unprecedented rates.  See chart below:

There can be no doubt that we are now past the tipping point for ice melt worldwide.

The McCain campaign and Republican Party have both been aggressive in their use of music, clips from movies, etc without, it seems, even bothering to seek copyright permission despite the promise “to protect the creative industires from privacy.” They have gotten pushback, multiple times, for their unauthorized use (read “theft”) of intellectual property. In many of these cases, the involved artists are actually quite Green and environmentalist in their donation streams and stated interests.

A Daily Kos diary highlights Heart’s (Wilson sisters) reaction to the use of Barracuda as a theme song for Sarah “Pit Bull with Lipstick” Palin.  This abuse of Heart’s property rights is not, however, an isolated case.

Our government is setting us up for a life of water wars between communities and between people and wildlife.  We need to stop thinking that solutions to water supply issues in a climate change world can be solved by resolutions used in the past in a pre-climate change world. Resolutions beneficial for isolated droughts, isolated dust storms, isolated flooding or isolated extreme storms will not prepare us for multiple extreme events of greater intensity, frequency and widening geographic scope.  In short, we need to discuss proposals about how to prep for living in a climate change world where our finite water supplies will become so stretched that water wars will be commonplace unless we take action now to develop a national water supply policy designed to minimize or avert climate change impacts on our water resources.  

`When _I_ use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – – that’s all.’

(From Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass)

Yeah, this is a diary about abrupt climate change.  Crossposted at Big Orange.

Cross posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

We’ve reached the tipping point:

On the eve the annual G8 Summit where NASA’s Dr. James Hansen will announce that we’ve passed safe C02 levels (safe being maximum 350 ppm; we’re now at 385 ppm), Hansen has penned a comprehensive letter (PDF) to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, host of the G8 Summit, requesting his leadership in addressing his findings.



From Dr. Hansen’s letter (Reprinted with his permission on THE ENVIRONMENTALIST)

Dear Prime Minister [Yasuo Fukuda],

Your leadership, and continued leadership by Japan, is needed on the matter of climate change, a matter with ramifications for life on our planet, including all species. Prospects for today’s children, and especially the world’s poor, hinge upon success in stabilizing climate. ~snip~

Japan has been a strong supporter of actions to mitigate dangerous climate change, including the Kyoto Protocol. It is not Japan’s fault that international action has failed so far to slow emission of dangerous gases. But as the host for the upcoming G8 meeting, you can initiate discussion of an approach that could meet the challenge humanity faces.

The past approach, and extensions now under discussion, are fatally flawed and would doom our children and grandchildren to an increasingly impoverished life on a more desolate planet. Clear thinking and bold leadership of the international community are essential in the next 1-2 years to change the course of human history.

More below the fold…