Zeke Hausfather

State of the Climate: 2017 Shaping up to be Warmest ‘Non-El Niño’ Year

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The year 2017 has seen some of the warmest temperatures ever recorded, only slightly below the record set in 2016. It has also seen unusually low Arctic and Antarctic sea ice for much of the year, though the summer Arctic minimum was only the eighth lowest on record. 2017 is also almost certain to be the warmest year without an El Niño event. When the effects of El Niño and La Niña are removed from the temperature record, the first nine months of 2017 are likely the warmest ever recorded.

Time Is Running Out for the Planet

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I’ve spent my life living in rural America, some of it in blue state Vermont, some of it in red state upstate New York. They’re quite alike in many ways. And quite wonderful. It’s important that even in an urbanized and suburbanized country, we continue to take rural America seriously. And the thing that makes Vermont in particular so special, and I hope this book captures some of it, is the basic underlying civility of its political life. That’s rooted in the town meeting.

Dark Mountain Issue 12 Sanctum: Twelve Pieces

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If your copy of our twelfth book has already landed, then you’ll know that we’ve shaken up the form of Dark Mountain in a whole lot of ways. Not least, where a typical issue would contain forty or more pieces ranging from short poems to longer essays or stories, this time around we have built the book around twelve longer texts – and having introduced the other elements of this issue, it seems like time to tell you a little more about these.

Hoboken Resolves to Mobilize

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Last week was a turning point for our movement: the first big win for mobilization on the city level. After a year of work by members of the Climate Mobilization Hoboken, a resolution passed unanimously through the Hoboken City Council on November 1 calling for mobilization to city-wide carbon neutrality by 2027.

I Had to Take a Plane. So Here’s What We Did About it…

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My flying to Mallorca released 417 kg of CO2 which will now be in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years.  The climate impacts of the decision will be very real.  So, on balance, worth doing?  It’s your call really.  Hard to say.  It was certainly a great way to communicate a Transition story of being aware about flying, of it being a big deal, of linking that to healthy, vibrant, resilient soils and to post fossil fuel farming, and its connection to vibrant, connected communities.

Healthy Soil, Healthy Plants, Healthy People

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Healthy soil is so important for life on earth yet so poorly understood or appreciated.  Science and technology brought us the “green revolution”; chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, supersized tractors, genetically modified crops adapted to life drenched with agricultural chemicals.  What is rarely apparent to most agricultural specialists is the damage this is causing the soil, basically turning it into ‘dirt’.

There Can Be No Genuine Tax Reform Without Addressing Hidden Wealth

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Just as Congress begins debate on the Republicans’ “Tax Cut and Jobs Act,” new revelations have emerged about how wealthy elites around the world hide their wealth. The “Paradise Papers” — the result of a leak from the Bermuda-based law firm Appleby — shines additional light onto the shadowy world of hidden wealth and tax dodging.

A Precautionary Tale: Excerpt

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As Günther and his cows wove their way through Laatsch, a beeping horn stopped him. He turned around, spreading his arms to slow the bovine promenade behind him, and let the car slip by before he and his cows stepped back into the main thoroughfare for their jaunt from the barn to pasture. The driver had Swiss plates and a business suit. Someone in a rush to make money, he surmised, while he headed out to his fields to seal his own financial fate in several plastic bags.

I Bet You Don’t Know These 8 Amazing Things about Trees

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It’s safe to say that life  would not be the same without trees. In fact, all human civilisation is dependent upon them. Not only as a source of valuable resources, but also for the ecological benefits they provide – called ecosystem services. We all know trees are awesome, but most people don’t quite understand all the important things they do.

Saving Farmland for Future Generations

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Welcome to community-owned Huxhams Cross Farm set on the rolling hills of south Devon on the edge of the Dartington Hall estate. Secured by the Biodynamic Land Trust (of which more later), its 34-acres exemplifies human-scale farming in a world increasingly dominated by industrial farming.

Review: No Is Not Enough

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Despite my various friendly critiques here, it goes without saying that Naomi Klein is one of the most important figures on the radical left today. There are few other activists who are able to make radical arguments that are read by so many and taken seriously in the mainstream.