Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If we are to understand how social-ecological resource systems can be better governed, we need to come out of our narrow academic cubicles and interact with other scholars who may themselves be confined in equally narrow academic cubicles.
Generationalism risks obscuring the diversity of experiences, ideas and interests that characterise human society at any given moment. By locating the lines of conflict and solidarity on a cross-temporal plane, some important divisions—between rich and poor countries, different class groups, and rival views of the market, state and the economics of growth—are rendered less visible in the present.
Worldwide tourism accounted for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions from 2009 to 2013, new research finds, making the sector a bigger polluter than the construction industry. The study, which looks at the spending habits of travellers in 160 countries, shows that the impact of tourism on global emissions could be four times larger than previously thought.
So I’m in favor of all the above, there’s no one model to solve this problem, but altogether I think many pin pricks can draw blood, to use a violent metaphor which I don’t uphold strategically. The mosquitos can win.
Any report on mineral availability that starts with “a semi-infinite deposit” should be taken with great caution – it reminds of when Julian Simon said that we have oil for “six billion years”. About this report on rare earths, I’d say that calling it “clueless” is way too kind.
Life actively contributed to the creation and maintenance of conditions on Earth that are favourable for higher organisms. In the words of Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimcry Institute: “Life creates conditions conducive to life.” Over the course of the last forty years James Lovelock’s hypothesis has matured into a new field of scientific investigation that is referred to as Gaia theory or Earth Systems Science.
There is no carbon budget left for 1.5°C climate warming target, which means that to achieve this outcome every tonne of emissions must be matched by a tonne of drawdown of atmospheric carbon from now on. For that reason, carbon budgets and emissions target should be complemented by a carbon drawdown budget and target.
In short, the biggest inhibitor to effective action in the face of the current convergence of crises is a fundamental lack of collective intelligence on the part of the human species as a whole.
The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high, millions of years ago, the planet was very different. For one, humans didn’t exist. On Wednesday, scientists at the University of California in San Diego confirmed that April’s monthly average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration breached 410 parts per million for the first time in our history.
But I always fall back to one question: how do we compel our fellow citizens and politicians to vote/protest/embrace these critical systemic changes if we don’t appear to be taking the issue seriously enough to make the radical changes we’re preaching?
Plan C is a concerted effort to encourage and support the use of ballot measures allowing voters to have a direct say in the climate-related laws and policies of their states. Ballot initiatives are as close to a pure democratic practice as one is likely to find.
Identifying where our campaigning aims overlap through a fossil fuel lens will enable us to expel the industry on a grand scale, and in turn enable us to transform our city on an equally grand scale- fairly, cleanly, and democratically.
