The Arctic is now a source of excess CO2 as the danger of climate instability and global warming is becoming more critical every year.
Category: Environment
All Life Matters
Evolving Better Government
BLM is completely correct. It has demonstrated how important political issues are hijacked by those who oppose it. BLM is an important, vital political message – minorities are vitally important. But the real issue we face as a species, all humanity is how we live inside nature. Was Covid-19 created by humans in a lab, or is it more likely that encroaching upon and destroying nature is the real reason? And who is the cause of all these deaths? I place the blame squarely on the Government, the nature of the unfair political systems, especially in the US and UK. These lumbering dinosaurs demonstrate their inability to change or adapt – BLM should have been resolved 50 years ago. Our place on nature, the next pandemics, these are even more complicated and I argue that Government has to evolve.
Conspiracy theories regarding Covid-19 being ‘developed in the lab’ are soundly debunked in this article which states that 3% of people in the border area of Southern China have anti-bodies for other bat corona viruses, and that the ‘corona’ of spikes that allow the virus to attach to cells are indeed naturally occurring in another related corona virus.
The fact that millions of viruses potentially could cross over to infect us from nature casts weak conspiracy theories into a shadow of doubt and highlights that the real danger of human activity destroying and overtaking the habitats of nature is the real and not understood problem.
The level of stark incompetence of the UK and US Governments to respond to this threat and indulgence, at the highest levels, in stupid ideas, also masks that the discussion is not about what it needs to be about.
Government incompetence
Governments are slow and stupid, great lumbering dinosaurs that threaten all life in this planet. And increasingly we are becoming aware that all life matters. Government incompetence does not evolve better societies and it could be argued that cronyism and favouring wealth and capital over social equality and environmental survival is directly producing the extinction event that could wipe out all life on this planet, until nature itself takes over.
The BLM movement values its protests over the risks of infection which demonstrates the value of Governments taking minorities into account. They can not even do that very well, these lumpen beasts. The protests overran the political narrative, highlighting the need for responsive Government. There is no place for racism. There is no place for the rampant destruction of nature.
The details of how this virus emerged naturally are far less exciting. They’re about how humans and animals have interacted for millennia, now at an unprecedented rate. They’re about how human domination of the world’s ecosystems as we encroach on animal habitats is opening new pathways for viruses, once hidden in the depths of the forest, to be transmitted to humans.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/09/conspiracies-covid-19-lab-false-pandemic
Justice is demonstrably important to the peoples of societies. But living within the rules of Nature is imperative if we are to survive at all.
We must immediately evolve a better system of Government. The systems that the US and UK use are ridiculous.
The Climate Prophet
Greta Thunberg had dedicated her life for the past year to telling the world that how they are talking about climate, what they are doing about the ongoing climate catastrophe.
Her voice means something. She speaks a plain language that even politicians can hear. The public needs to hear it as well.
Greta Thunberg has gained the attention of the world in quite a short period making her one of the most extraordinary campaigners on the world stage. She has had more impact than years of awareness campaigns.
Her address to the EU MEPs is emotional and has extraordinary impact.
George Monbiot and Greta Thunberg have made a video that provides the solution to the climate crisis. And the world looks on as half of the Amazon Rain Forest is in flames. That itself could overtip the balance a few years earlier than has been predicted.
Empire of Dirt
Sustainability is a word that casts a political shadow, in the same dark place where “a vote for Green is a wasted” vote lives, i.e. discouraging people to take action to protect life on Earth.
Empire building takes many forms. The 20th Century saw major world powers allow mega-corporations to ruin the natural world with oil, plastic, and pollution. This Empire is self-destructive, threatening not just our future but the future of all lives and thus thousands of millions of years of evolution. How do we re-create insects? We can not. If we do not do something about pollution and the insanity of greed, there will be one less
See also: Cars are Killing us
Air pollution
The WHO now see air pollution as the new tobacco. That is a strange word, “new”. It is not new that people object to air pollution and it is certainly not new that excessive poisons in our atmosphere is nothing but a crime against humanity.
12 years to avert catastrophe
The IPCC has said that the planning to limit global temperatures rises to below 2C by 2100 is not now a goal that will be achieved, instead advising we must stop warming before it exceeds 1.5C by 2030.
That is twelve years of accelerating and increasing decline in stability before we are well and truly cooked.
Blame this directly on Donald Trump and his apocalyptic economics. This time he can not just bankrupt the enterprise as the economy adjusts to unsustainable tax cuts with an infrastructure that no longer looks after its people. Denuclearisation
In the opening minutes of the Trump-Kim summit it will become very obvious that Trump will withdraw because Kim does not immediately lie down and offer his entire nuclear arsenal in exchange for reunification with South Korea.
Kim has already achieved what he wants – a meeting with the US President. He will offer an exchange of denuclearisation – he will give up his weapons when the remaining nuclear powers give up their and he will then demand a set on the Security Council.
Trump will then depart. Kim will have made his point.
Nuclear Threat
Does North Korea pose a genuine threat to the USA with a handful of nuclear missiles pointed in its general direction?
Does the USA pose a genuine threat to North Korea?
Both bear the scars of a dreadful war in the early 1950s; a war that has not officially ended. In the intervening years, South Korea has emerged as a powerhouse exporting nation with advanced technology competing with Japan and China boasting companies such as Samsung. North Korea, in comparison, has locked itself into a military specialisation to the detriment of its own people who slavishly admire their leader or land up in a gulag, starved to death.
And now they are testing ICBM missiles and it is only a matter of time before they are able to use one against its enemy, the sponsor of South Korea, the USA. And now both countries have belligerent leaders who want to prove themselves with a “good war”.
The USA accuse Russia and China of responsibility here. Russia and China would rather not be at war with the USAA, so having a proxy threat is perhaps useful. All out nuclear war, of course, is in the interests of nobody.
What is the endgame for this terrible standoff? It seems unlikely that either party would not blink due to the nature of Nuclear weapons. If North Korea were to risk launching one, the retaliation could be complete and final. They will never have enough weapons to stop a systematic invasion let alone a nuclear response, but America would most likely have to live with the threat until it can justify action to China and Russia or better yet, engage with them to finally oust the military regime of North Korea.
Reunification turned Germany into a world leader. It is time for Korea to reconsider its path for mutual benefit between the North and the South. Is it in the interests of the West, Japan or anyone for North Koreans to suffer so and for the shroud of death to hang over the region? Does Trump style diplomacy help or is there a better way to help the Koreans to unify?
Wet Cities at 4 degrees of climate change heat
Have a look at some scenes from cities of the world, with 2 degrees of global warming compared with 4 degrees of warming.
Or use these diagrams against a world map to see maps of water damage to cities with unchecked pollution or a 2 degree or 4 degree temperature change.
Why is the UK government spending billions on the historic Houses of Parliament and Big Ben when they will be underwater with the planned 2 degrees of temperature.
And if the politicians are able to hold the very long term threat to 2 degrees and stop methane or other gases that cause accelerated warming from having any effect, or the odd storm or tsunami from destroying riverside buildings and other expensive soggy properties.
Deadly Air Pollution
The WHO warns that air pollution is killing millions in cities. It is a growing problem – cities in China and India covered by thick smog. In the UK London has exceeded its NO2 levels for 2016 a few days into the year. Politicians are questioning the value of expansion at Heathrow if it increases the level of air pollution and makes millions more at risk.