By Dougald Hine, Bella Caledonia
What we know and what we have good grounds to fear about climate change calls our way of living into question. To take this evidence seriously leads to difficult questions about the stories we have been telling about the shape of history, the nature of the world in which we find ourselves and the virtue of achievements in which we have taken pride.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
As I try to explain why Democrats and the clean energy and climate defense sectors proposed a series of climate-related initiatives as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the Cares Act or Act) which will be signed into law within days. The connection between climate change and stimulus legislation intended to respond to the coronavirus pandemic is not as tenuous as it might seem at first blush.
By Subin DeVar, Sustainable Economies Law Center
Because beyond whether we achieve everything in the vision for a Green New Deal or not, it is inspiring that young people do not view climate change as a pass/fail test. For them, failure is not an option. Instead, the question is: how transformative will our success be?
By Roberta Hill, Resilience.org
The bottom line is, that despite the current urgency of the global pandemic, the climate crisis that brought us all together continues unabated. Indeed, scientists warn that the kind of global disruption we are now experiencing so keenly, will become increasingly common in the years to come unless we act now to sharply curb our CO2 emissions.
By Damian Carrington, The Guardian blog
You may have read that there are just eight, or 10, or 12 years to save the world from the climate crisis. There are not. It is already here, gaining strength every day as carbon emissions pour into the atmosphere. It is a slow-motion disaster. Action to avert the worst should have started last week, last year, last decade.
By Stan Cox, Resilience.org
In a Washington Post opinion piece last month, Robert Frank sought to instruct us in how peer pressure can “help stop climate change.” He wasn’t very convincing on that point; he did help, however, to inadvertently make the case that collective efforts, ones much more sweeping than individual role-modeling, are necessary to staving off climate catastrophe.
By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee
“Forty-eight billion trees may seem like a high number to reach but there’s a simple way to get there: just take the first step and keep going,” she writes in her most recent book To Speak for the Trees. But planting native trees won’t do much good if we don’t stop current rates of deforestation in the Amazon and Boreal forests or reduce fossil fuel consumption at the same time.
By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
No longer should our survival be an afterthought. If we are to withstand the climate crisis, every decision should begin with the question of what the planet can endure. This means that any discussion about new infrastructure should begin with ecological constraints. The figures are stark.
By Noam Chomsky, Paul Shannon, Charles Derber, Suren Moodliar, Open Democracy
In his new book Internationalism or Extinction, Noam Chomsky traces the duality of existential threats from nuclear weapons and climate change. He argues for the urgency of international climate and arms agreements, and shows how global popular movements are mobilizing to force governments to meet this unprecedented challenge to civilization’s survival.
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
When looking for solutions to climate change, this case reminds us that we sometimes already know what we should do, but are reluctant to choose options that involve cultural or behaviour change or challenge deep-seated social norms and practices.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
House Minority Leader McCarthy (R-CA) has gone on record warning conservative Republicans that they are in danger of losing the support of voters under the age of 35 over the issue of climate change. To counter the Democrat’s talk of the Green New Deal and the Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s (CLEAN) Future Act released by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Minority Leader called upon Republican House members to show they too care about the future of the planet by introducing their own brand of climate-related legislation.
By Dougald Hine, Bella Caledonia
If there is any hope worth having, in a time when we are rightly haunted by the thought of an ‘uninhabitable Earth’, then I don’t believe it lies in the triumph of reason, nor in the recovery of an imagined past. If I have any clue where it lies, I’d say it’s in the difficult work of learning to feel and think together again; to come down off the high and lonely horses that some of us were taught to ride, to recognise how much has been missing from our maps, how much has gone unseen in our worldviews.