Putin North Korea Would Rather Eat Grass Than Give Up Nuclear Weapons

Watch

Putin calls sanctions useless

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a press conference on the sidelines of the 9th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit in the southeast city of Xiamen on Tuesday, September 5.

Posted September 05, 2017

Putin warns ‘hysteria’ over North Korea threatens ‘global catastrophe’

[North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un] has shown no interest in talks — he won’t even set foot in China, his biggest patron. Even if negotiations took place, the current regime has made clear that “it will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table,”as one envoy recently put it.

Once again, it’s essential to keep in mind that the current core of BRICS is “RC”; the Russia-China strategic partnership. So in the Korean peninsula chessboard, RC context – with both nations sharing borders with the DPRK – is primordial.

Beijing has imposed a definitive veto on war – of which the Pentagon is very much aware.

Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test, although planned way in advance, happened only three days after two nuclear-capable US B-1B strategic bombers conducted their own “test” alongside four F-35Bs and a few Japanese F-15s.

Everyone familiar with the Korean peninsula chessboard knew there would be a DPRK response to these barely disguised “decapitation” tests.

So it’s back to the only sound proposition on the table: the RC “double freeze”. Freeze on US/Japan/South Korea military drills; freeze on North Korea’s nuclear program; diplomacy takes over.

The White House, instead, has evoked ominous “nuclear capabilities” as a conflict resolution mechanism.

Gold mining in the Amazon, anyone?

On the Doklam plateau front, at least New Delhi and Beijing decided, after two tense months, on “expeditious disengagement” of their border troops. This decision was directly linked to the approaching BRICS summit – where both India and China were set to lose face big time.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already tried a similar disruption gambit prior to the BRICS Goa summit last year. Then, he was adamant that Pakistan should be declared a “terrorist state”. The RC duly vetoed it.

Modi also ostensively boycotted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summit in Hangzhou last May, essentially because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

India and Japan are dreaming of countering BRI with a semblance of connectivity project; the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC). To believe that the AAGC – with a fraction of the reach, breath, scope and funds available to BRI – may steal its thunder, is to enter prime wishful-thinking territory.

Still, Modi emitted some positive signs in Xiamen; “We are in mission-mode to eradicate poverty; to ensure health, sanitation, skills, food security, gender equality, energy, education.” Without this mammoth effort, India’s lofty geopolitical dreams are D.O.A.

Brazil, for its part, is immersed in a larger-than-life socio-political tragedy, “led” by a Dracula-esque, corrupt non-entity; Temer The Usurper. Brazil’s President, Michel Temer, hit Xiamen eager to peddle “his” 57 major, ongoing privatizations to Chinese investors – complete with corporate gold mining in an Amazon nature reserve the size of Denmark. Add to it massive social spending austerity and hardcore anti-labor legislation, and one’s got the picture of Brazil currently being run by Wall Street. The name of the game is to profit from the loot, fast.

The BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) – a counterpart to the World Bank – is predictably derided all across the Beltway. Xiamen showed how the NDB is only starting to finance BRICS projects. It’s misguided to compare it with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). They will be investing in different types of projects – with the AIIB more focused on BRI. Their aim is complementary.

On 28^th July, I posted an essay of mine entitled The Global Crisis and Role of So-called Renewable Energies in Solving It on this blog-site (see below). It had been published a few days earlier in the online magazine Insurge-Intelligence as a contribution to a symposium on renewable energies (https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-clean-is-clean-energy-why-renewables-cannot-solve-the-global-crisis-10205baeb781).
Several readers responded to it with comments, both positive and negative. Prof. Mark Diesendorf, another contributor to the symposium, who had expressed views totally opposite to those of mine (https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-feasibility-of-100-renewable-energy-f624d93e1424), also responded with two half dissenting and half agreeing comments.
I thought it was necessary to respond to his comments with a short article that clarifies some important issues not dealt with in my original contribution, which was limited by space. I now publish it here. See below.

I knew that my contribution to the symposium would be controversial. And indeed many readers have commented. I thank those who have expressed agreement with my views, and ignore the suspicion that I am being paid by some people for writing what I have written. I shall here limit my response to some critical comments/views of Mark Diesendorf that he made/expressed in his response to my essay. I think they deserve to be paid attention to.

Numbers, Facts and Statistics

Mark wants to know the names of the experts who doubt that the EROEI of solar energy (PV-tech.) is positive (or, I should say, positive enough to run, in future, an industrial economy). In fact, in my essay I have given reference to Ugo Bardi’s article on the subject. Some references can be found there and in the discussion following it. See also Prof. Charles Hall’s contribution to the discussion inhttp://cassandralegacy.blogspot.de/2016/05/the-real-eroi-of-photovoltaic-systems.html
I am not a researcher on the subject, but I try to keep myself informed as an interested political activist. Mark writes: “The claim was only true several decades ago, before solar PV modules were mass-produced.” My information is just the opposite. In a much quoted scientific paper published in 1991 in a serious scientific journal called International Journal of Solar Energy(Vol. 10, 1991), Wolfgang Palz and Henri Zibetta wrote 26 years ago that, in European climates, the average energy payback time (EPT) for photovoltaic modules were as low as 1.2 to 2.1 years. That means their EROEI was very high. (EPT and EROEI are both measuring units for the same thing, namely net energy, expressed in two different ways. They are roughly inversely proportional). In the following years of the 1990s however, in the works of other researchers, the EPT figures for Photovoltaic modules rose, to 7 years, 9 years and 10 years – in spite of presumable continuous improvements in the technology.
I could not (and still cannot) judge the scientific quality of these research works. The point I want to make here is only that, in the 1990s, it appeared and it still appears to me that a lot of arbitrary calculating methods and perhaps alsobias of the researchers were responsible for this chaotic results. So when Mark writes that, nowadays, the EPT of PV solar modules is typically 1 – 3 years, I cannot accept it as correct, simply because Mark says it. So I tried to apply my own non-researcher faculty of logical thinking, the result of which I have presented in my essay. In the 1990s, to my knowledge, no researcher was taking the energy invested in back-up power stations into account.
Mark gracefully agrees with my assertion based only on logic that the EI figure of all and any industrial product (hence also of PV modules, wind turbines, bicycles, toothpaste etc. etc. etc.) is bound to continuously increase because of continuously increasing remoteness of new mines and wells and continuously increasing difficulty in extracting non-renewable raw materials and raw energy-materials (coal, oil, gas, uranium) from them. But then he makes his argument incomprehensible by saying, “This is indeed a strong limitation on the continued production of fossil fuels, but is irrelevant to renewable energy resources: sunshine, wind, etc.” Haven’t I distinguished in my essay between the sources of energy sunshine and wind from the equipments (PV modules, wind turbines etc.) for producing electricity from sunshine and wind? For the EI of the latter, i.e. the equipments, the difficulties mentioned above are indeed very relevant. Their EI is continuously increasing and hence (it is simple arithmetic), ceteris paribus, the EROEI of solar and wind electricity systems must be continuously diminishing. This generally happens also to fossil and nuclear energy systems and their EROEI.
In statistics, there are many things that cannot be measured satisfactorily and are therefore open to bias of the researcher or the client. Opinion researchers e.g. can never know whether the respondents to their questions are telling the truth. But also actually measurable things like GDP, unemployment rate, total work force, inflation rate, cost of living, poverty rate etc. can be distorted because of varying definitions and/or wrong counting methods such as having too small a sample or the sample being unrepresentative. This fact gave rise to the bon mot “I do not believe any statistics other than those I have myself falsified.”

Hopes for the Future

Mark writes: “… energy technologies are made increasingly by using renewable energy.” I have heard of a solar panel factory in Freiburg, Germany, (not a big one, maybe an experimental one), that derives all its energy from the solar panels installed on the roof terrace of the factory. Supposing the information is true, it does not prove Mark’s point. The four questions put by foodstuff (I only quoted him) are not answered with this example (please read the four questions once more!). Mark himself gives two examples – “A mining company in remote Australia is currently building a solar farm to substitute for most of its prolific diesel consumption, and the Tesla gigafactory for manufacturing batteries will be completely powered by RE.” In the first example, the machines in the factory areusing electricity from solar panels; my informant did not say that they are being built by means of electricity derived from solar panels. In the second example (given by Mark himself) solar electricity will only substitute diesel consumption. The huge machines used by the company for mining activities will not be builtwith the help of solar electricity. In the third example, the batteries will be built by using solar electricity. Tesla is not claiming that the gigafactory itself or the machines for manufacturing batteries will be built by using solar electricity. And if one enquires a little further, one may find that in the second and third case, the solar panels, subsidized by the state, have been manufactured in China using dirty coal-electricity. Reg. the case of the factory in Freiburg, I know that all the 6 major German solar panel manufacturers have gone bankrupt.
Basing himself on the examples he has given, Mark thinks that “… although the current generation of RE technologies is being made mainly by using fossil energy, the next generation will utilize RE to a greater degree and so on until RE systems are made entirely by using RE.” At another place he writes, “The energy for mining the raw materials and building the RE hardware can in future be renewable and this transition has already begun.” I am not convinced that the end result of this transition will be the much touted 100% RE for the whole industrial economy. Because Mark does not say with what kind of energy the mining machinery/hardware, the huge trucks, the caterpillars etc. will be built. On the whole, his hopes appear to me as pure faith in miracles happening in future, wishful, not rational thinking. Wishful thinking is an obstacle to making rational/realistic political decisions.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy Law) and Some Favorite Illusions of RE Enthusiasts

Mark writes: “… there is no contradiction between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and a global 100% renewable energy (RE) system, so long as the Sun continues to shine.” I am not sure I have understood in which sense exactly he has written this. But it sounds like saying there is no contradiction between faith in a good and almighty God and the fact that there is evil in this world, no contradiction between the Genesis story of the Bible and the Evolution theory of Darwin. Polemic apart, Mark seems to forget again and again the distinction I made between sources of energy and equipments of energy. Logically and plausibly, we may argue that humanity will exist on the earth so long as the Sun continues to shine. But we cannot say that the industrial society can continue to exist without the fossil fuels and nonrenewable materials.
I am not an engineer, not one of those who are expected to know the Entropy Law. Yet I was compelled to learn the essence of this law. During a private discussion on future energy and resources shortage, an economist said (in the general sense): I do not understand why availability of oil and minerals should be a problem; science says nothing gets lost in this universe. That was obviously the First Law of Thermodynamics or the law of conservation of matter and energy. So let us recycle everything, all problems solved. A friend of Johnny Rutherford, an RE enthusiast, once said, soon the whole industrial economy would run without having to extract a single molecule more. To lay public it may seem plausible. For, after all, the Sun sends us 15 000 times more energy than all the commercial energy we need, for free. I am a bit surprised that Mark has not suggested this “solution” for all non-renewable resources. But why can’t we recycle everything? Because there is a contradiction between 100% recycling and the Entropy Law.
I have learnt that in the process of being used in any production process, all energy and materials get dissipated, more or less. Some part of it gets lost, that is, becomes unrecoverable. From the state of being available, part of the materials used in production goes over to the state of being unavailable. In pure theory, of course, the whole quantity could be recovered and brought back to their original available state, but only if we are prepared to spend enough energy and materials for this work. In many cases, this process is, in energy and material terms, too costly to be economically viable at all. Again, it may be feasible but not viable. This explains why in real industry not everything is even attempted to be recycled.
Energy recycling is practically impossible. A quantity of coal, gas, or petroleum, once burnt, cannot be recycled, although the hydrogen and carbon atoms are not lost, although they still exist somewhere in the atmosphere or the earth. They are however so strongly dissipated that recycling them is only possible in a laboratory by using immensely more energy than what can be recovered. Lack of knowledge or understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics may lead some people to cherish the illusion that, as commenter Mark Goldes writes, “24/7 cheap green energy is being born. Engines designed to run on atmospheric (ambient) heat instead of fuel. Ambient heat is a huge untapped reservoir of solar energy available everywhere around the clock.” There would be “no combustion” in such engines.
Another commenter, John Weber, who agrees with me, referred to the many high temperature processes required in an industrial economy, especially in metallurgy and glass industries. Now rays of the Sun reach us in a high entropy (i.e. highly dissipated) state. This is why we have to spend a lot of energy and materials to first collect and convert them into electricity before we can use them. If we want to use them in metallurgical furnaces, we have to concentrate them further to a very much higher temperature (strongly low entropy state). And at every stage of collection and concentration, in every process of conversion (e.g. to liquid hydrogen), and in the process of every piece of work done, some energy is inevitably lost, i.e. dissipated without being used. That solar modules have a lifespan of 25 years, does not help much in overcoming these problems.

These are essential points of our controversy. I hope Insurge-Intelligence readers would read also this contribution of mine with interest.

Saral Sarkar was born in 1936 in West Bengal, India. After graduating from the University of Calcutta, he studied German language and literature for 5 years in India and Germany. From 1966 to 1981, Sarkar taught German at the Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), Hyderabad, India. Sarkar is living in Germany since 1982. He is the author of 5 political books(see list in Wikipedia/German) that have appeared in English, German, Chinese, Japanese and (in internet for free downloading) French and Spanish. Sarkar has also published many articles and essays in several journals in India, USA, Germany, UK, Holland, China, Spain. He also writes regularly in two blogs of his own (see Wikipedia/German).

Global Volcanism Program | Toba

Global Volcanism Program – Smithsonian Institution

Because the region lies close to the Sumatra Fracture Zone (SFZ), it is a seething hotbed of subterranean geological activity. This is because the subduction of the Indian Ocean plate under the Eurasian plate is occurring at the rate of 6.7 cm per year and is a part of the basin dubbed “The Ring of Fire” [2], a horseshoe shaped expanse extending across the Pacific rim, while, at the same time, being prone to numerous earthquakes and volcanic activity. For example, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami can be attributed to the instability of these shifting tectonic plates and the seismically activity situated in this, generally, unstable zone.

Jun 29, 2015 – Uploaded by ToP SpreadinG

Global Warming | 10 Causes of Global Warming GLOBAL WARMING looms large over humanity. According … Global Warming | 10 Causes of Global W

The first Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was conducted by 1,300 researchers from ninety-five nations over a four year period. it comprises of the most comprehensive analysis of current planetary conditions ever undertaken and resulted in a detailed report compiled by World Resource Institute (WRI) and approximately thirty partners.

Their ultimate conclusion is that human actions endanger the Earth’s capacity to maintain future generations. Meanwhile our current circumstances include these factors:

As human demand for resources grows exponentially, most ecosystems across the globe have been seriously impaired due to exploitation and the natural processes that support life on Earth are falling apart. Indeed of twenty-four environments that have been assessed, fifteen are seriously damaged. Furthermore, it is only within the past fifty years that this severe destructive change has taken place in which sixty percent of worldwide ecosystem benefits (such as clean air, fish, fiber, timber, etc.) have significantly deteriorated.

In addition, human water usage has doubled over the past fifty years and, currently, forty to fifty percent is being used. However this will change as drought areas spread in addition to glacial runoff and snow packs disappearing due to global warming.

Moreover, fish stock is depleting at an extraordinarily rapid pace, coral reefs are dying, large oceanic dead zones are spreading, whole forests are vanishing, pollution of watersheds (in large measure due to agrochemicals) has led to eutrophication of waters and species extinction rates are now 100-1,000 times above their normal speed of occurrence. In addition, further extreme problems are arising due to the devastation produced by carbon loading.

If this isn’t sufficiently gloomy by itself, the 2007 study (ten years ago during which time between then and now the prognosis has gotten worse) by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offers further grave information. It is that greenhouse gases, with a ninety percent certainty to be caused by our too great reliance on fossil fuels, are driving cataclysmic level of climate change. These, in turn, will introduce other grim perils of which many are already irreversible.

Some of the worst include that there will be increasingly severe water shortages in many regions, dramatic increase in virulent diseases, decreased food supply, greater extremes in weather causing habitat loss (such as the indigenous life forms and my family faced on Water Island), rising oceans, unbearable levels of heat in many spots so that some life (including many humans) will perish from it, vastly expanding desert regions and other dreadful upshots.

For example, the melting of the permafrost will release further CO2 into the atmosphere and, thereby, accelerate the melting. Along with no longer cooling the earth by a sort of refrigeration effect, the lack of much frost, white snow and ice reflecting light back up into the atmosphere will increase the heat trap on earth.

Then, too, there is the methane problem:

Arctic methane emissions – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions

Arctic methane release is the release of methane from seas and soils in permafrost regions of the Arctic. While a long-term natural process, it is exacerbated by global warming. … Global warming accelerates its release, due to both release of methane from existing stores, and from methanogenesis in rotting biomass. Large …

?Contribution to climate … · ?Ice sheets · ?Loss of permafrost · ?Clathrate breakdown

Surge in methane emissions threatens efforts to slow climate change

https://phys.org › Earth › Environment

Dec 12, 2016 – Global concentrations of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and cause of climate change, are now growing faster in the atmosphere than at …

All considered, James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia model (in which the planet is viewed as an interdependent, integrated super-organism), postulates that billions of humans (far more than was killed by the Toba Tuff) will, ultimately, die off due to global warming. As such, he recommends that all communities and countries try to postpone this inevitable outcome (along with delimiting the numbers to be killed) by taking EVERY measure possible to cut back the greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, many others share his bleak outlook while, also, expanding upon it [4].

Despite that we do not know the Earth’s ultimate carrying capacity for people, we do know that it is definitely finite. We, likewise, know that we are running out of critical commodities (most notably fossil fuels, certain ores, some minerals, as well as the plants and animals that our species will, both directly and indirectly, cause to become extinct). In the same vein, we know that there will be massive loss of human life due to various effects of global warming, including ones related to shrinking food production.

All considered, we are faced with a looming cataclysm that perhaps begins to move towards the scale of the Toba Tuff. While our travails are not entirely of human making, they, largely, ARE due to human behavior. This is because they are caused by our collective greed for ever more products, our reproductive patterns doubling the population nearly every thirty years, and the fact that certain resources (such as fossil fuels) have rigidly preset limits while others (such as marine life and trees) are being reduced too rapidly to sufficiently replenish themselves.

In the end, it matters not that, as a species, we are not programmed to react to danger unless it is immediate (rather than slowly evolving), dramatic and concrete (such as is a flood or fire), and in close proximity. It matters not that we deny the existence of global warming and would prefer to think about pleasant topics rather than those that cause discomfort and dismay. This is because, like it or not, the changes that humankind have created for the planet are happening, anyway, due to most people wanting ever more affluence and grander lifestyles, ever more progeny, and ever more personal wealth largely obtained from turning other species into wares. As such, Toba Tuff and other catastrophes give us a little glimpse (and warning) about just how bad life can get when climates radically alter.

This in mind, I wonder about whether whomever is left a hundred or so years from now. Will they wonder about the reason that our generation amused themselves with such questions as, “Should I buy Gucci or Prada shoes?” They, certainly, won’t be trying to select between taking an overseas vacation in Madrid or Tokyo. They might not even know what a jet or cruise liner is unless they go to a museum (that is, if there is any museum left and a way to get to it).

They, also, will likely see the ironic, contradictory folly of jetting in droves to the Great Barrier Reef to study the best way to save it from destruction caused by our large carbon footprint. Likewise, they will probably wonder as to the reason that we didn’t willingly cut back on population growth rather than let “nature” handle the problem for us through tragic and painful means.

Similarly, they will almost certainly be, to some degree, angry at us as our need for constant self-pampering and ever more babies led into the state of affairs that they will have inherited from us. At the same time, perhaps they will be the offspring of sets of individuals who, like the East African tribes of 74,000 years ago, were the most prone to cooperate, share and render mutual assistance rather than war over the last remaining resources in such predatory fashion as is now taking place in the Middle East and elsewhere located on the planet.

In any case, let us hope that they will learn better methods for conservation than our feeble attempts, feel more greatly protective of the natural world, and look at the wilderness as a necessity rather than as, primarily, a site to plunder. If not, they will have to learn all over the understandings that we are just now starting to know and it certainly will NOT be easier for them given the voluminous amount of the Earth that we, right here and now, are almost utterly destroying so as to turn it broken over to them as our legacy.

In the end, we, all of us, have to ask ourselves whether we wish to have more of everything (manufactured goods, vacation homes, holidays in far away locations and so on) in the short term or do we want to stretch out our use of resources to give the Earth a break to heal and to try to help ensure that future generations can more easily survive. Do we want a little inconvenience now or the formation of a whole lot of it down the road? (Surely if our forebears on the African plains could learn to live within their daunting limits, we can manage a little personal discomfort or irritation so as to generally improve life on Earth for all.)

Do we have a sufficient supply of self-control and compassion toward our unknown descendants to curb our boundless desire for ever more merchandise, petrol, electricity and offspring? Can we find some modicum of happiness within deliberately self-proscribed limits?

If not, it is almost inevitable that we will, eventually, wind up with far less people, inadequate energy sources and minimized per person consumption due to the mounting harm to our globe that we are now producing. … Our forebears had no choice but to deal with the effects of Toba Tuff. We, though, DO have a choice and it is a clear one with high stakes.

Thus, can we start changing immediately out of our growing recognition that it is absolutely essential that we do so? In the least, we owe it to the future generations to make a determined effort to cooperate together to create better methods to reduce our ecological damage! Literally, their lives depend on it!

Sally Dugman is a writer in MA, USA

After Tuesday’s deluge and many people staying indoors on Wednesday, due to state government advisories advising to do so, most of the people in Mumbai were back to work today. I too had to stay overnight in my office and reached back home on Wednesday morning. After staying at home yesterday, I came back to work today by the local harbor line train. Rains had stopped late night on Tuesday and on Wednesday, there was hardly any rain, most places in Mumbai experiencing a sunlit day. Still, on Thursday morning, as I reached my local railway station, there were unexpectedly huge crowds waiting on the station. I soon found out that two previous trains on harbor line had been cancelled and the train expected to start from the station in the reverse direction at 7.50 AM had not arrived even by 8.00 AM. It eventually did arrive and started back at around 8.10 AM, with twice or three times the regular number of passengers, because the previous trains had been cancelled and this train was itself running late. Throughout the 1 hour 10 minutes journey, as I was observing the mad rush of people, jostling for bare minimum space to at least stand on one foot, some questions kept on nagging me.

Why is it that almost 30-36 hours of no rains and hence, availability of ample recovery time, the trains services had still not normalized

Why is it that there was a complete absence of timely warnings about the impending heavy rains prior to Tuesday, so that people could have been warned well in advance, and could have stayed at home?

Why is it that all the advisories started pouring in only post noon on Tuesday, when the maximum damage had already been done, and the trains had already stopped functioning? How could the people stranded at workplaces be expected to reach back in such a scenario and of what use were these advisories then?

Why is it that there were predictions of continuous heavy rains for 24-48 hours after Tuesday, and then there was actually no or little rain recorded? Who is accountable for this absolutely off the mark forecast?

Why is it that the authorities are as helpless in handling the rainfalls in Mumbai, as they were in 2005? Why is it that the financial capital of the nation came to a standstill with only one-third the amount of rainfall that had fallen in 2005, and that too 12 years later? Who is accountable for these lost 12 years of no preparation to handle such a situation?

Why is it that the people of Mumbai had only each-other for their help and support, somehow trying to grapple with the crisis situation? Who is accountable for the non-existent disaster management system in a city which experiences 4-month long monsoons every year?

Many, I am sure would be struggling with innumerable questions like the above. These will be discussed in small groups among people for a couple of days, and then all will be forgotten, till the time another adverse situation knocks on the door. People will continue with their lives, putting up with whatever is thrown their way, occupied in the struggles of their day-to day existence. The authorities will be blamed for a day or two, and then narratives will slowly start shifting. We will slowly be told how well the situation was actually handled and if not for the same, how much worse it could have been. The same authorities who were being blamed and trolled will then be rewarded for their excellent work. The narratives will gradually be shifted, and we will not blink an eye, because we will be too busy in managing the affairs of our personal lives.

The process of shifting the narratives has already begun in case of the Panchkula riots. The very Chief Minister who was under the dock till yesterday, is slowly being tried to be portrayed as a hero, because had he not handled the situation so efficiently, the death toll could have been ten times what it was now.

Each one of us needs to seriously introspect today and ask ourselves, which direction are we all headed in? What is the kind of world that we want to create for ourselves? What is the kind of life that we want to provide to our future generations? Have we forgotten the meaning of the term ‘dignified life’? Are we ready to put up with anything and everything? If yes, then for how long do we expect such a kind of world to sustain itself? Or are we not bothered about this at all? Because in all probability, it might just sustain for the duration of our lifetimes. Is that what everything has been reduced to? Is that how dangerously selfish and apathetic the human race has become that it is incapable of thinking and feeling beyond oneself? If yes, then nothing really matters anymore.

Nivedita Dwivedi has done MA in Elementary Education from Tata Institute of Social Science.Blog at http://fromwordstovoid.blogspot.in

Editor’s Note: The University of Oxford Interviews Professor Franklin Lamb about the Future of Syria. Interview conducted by graduate students from Oxford Universities Middle East Center, St Anthony’s College, UK. August, 2017. Franklin Lamb is Oxford University Research Fellow, Oxford, UK

Franklin Lamb is a Doctor of Philosophy in international law and is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford, Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, Oxford England. Oxford University is one of the leading universities in the world, with a history dating back 1,000 years.

Professor Lamb has many years of experience on the ground in the Middle East. For over the past 6 years he was in Syria dedicating himself to, among other activities, the grass roots human rights group Meals for Syrian Refugee Children, Lebanon,

Dr. Lamb’s other major accomplishments have included his efforts to document and preserve for posterity Syrian endangered archeological sites and artifacts dating back over 7,000 years. His book on the subject is Syria’s Endangered Heritage: An International Responsibility to Protect and Preserve.

Franklin Lamb with 7 year-oldNagham, her hand wounded by aMadaya sniper
(Image by Meals for Syrian Refugee Children)   

Question by Oxford University Interviewer: The Assad regime appears to be making significant territorial gains with Russian and Iranian help. Do you expect a reversal or will he stay in power?

Franklin Lamb: For the immediate future, yes, he will remain. Barring an alternative plan by Iran, it appears to me that he and his Baathist Alawi dominated regime will remain. Iran wants Assad in power for the time being so as to guarantee its Persian Gulf to Mediterranean Sea Shia crescent arm shipments to Hezbollah, real estate acquisitions, population transfers, and future control of Syria’s economic, security and military institutions and decision making apparatus.

According to Syrian and Russian military sources in Syria with whom I have discussed this subject at length, Iran has no plans to leave Syria. It plans to stay. Given growing fatigue by opposition supporters here in the region there is not much the West wants or can do about this reality short of another long-term war in this seemingly cursed region. There is also little that the Russians can do about this reality although they are increasingly unhappy about what they are witnessing from Tehran and its Shia militia across the region.

But reports that Western governments have decided that Assad will stay may be premature. One example is France where it appears to have returned to its original position which it held until last years that Bashar Assad “cannot be the solution.”  French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian declared this week that “We cannot build peace with Assad.  He cannot be the solution,” Le Drian insisted that “The solution is to establish… a timeline for political transition that can lead to a new constitution and real elections, and this transition cannot happen with Bashar al-Assad.”  Some western and other powers seem to believe that IS will soon be defeated in Syria leaving the country with a “single conflict, that of the civil war” pitting a more united opposition against the Assad government.

Question: How do you see the coming months unfolding in Syria? What shape are the rebels in?

Franklin Lamb:Relatively bad shape at the present it appears.  In the months and perhaps years ahead it appears to me that Syria’s current government will continue its recent expansion of its authority from Damascus.  Being strongly backed by Iran and Russia as both of these countries increasingly compete and position themselves to have major decision making authority once the fighting substantially ends. But major battles with countless civilian causalities loom in Idlib and DeirEzzor and asymmetrical and guerilla warfare by the opposition with continue.

The countries that backed the rebels and opposition backers are withdrawing their support due partly to the failure of opposition political leader’s to unite with respect to strategy and allocation of foreign weapons and financial resources. As I noted in reply to your previous question, donor countries have over the past two years experienced “squabbling fatigue.” Plus as the opposition appears to cooperate with extreme jihadist groups some supporters such as Jordan and the US equivocated and then pulled back.

With respect to Turkey an early strong supporter  of the opposition, their current single focus is to prevent the Syrian Kurds  from achieving any kind of autonomy and much less, statehood. After ISIS retreats from Raqqa and DeirEzzor, it’s a near certainty that Iranian militias including Hezbollah and other pro-regime forces will concentrate their firepower against the Kurds and will not respect the Rojava ceasefire. Turkey, a member of NATO will be ecstatic.  I predict that Washington will not use American troops to defend the Syrian Kurds against this Iranian led alliance.

The Kurds err if they think Washington will stick by them. The American public has had enough of foreign wars and we have plenty of our own domestic problems that urgently require fixing.

But nothing is confidently predictable these days in Syria and while much of the opposition appears to be throwing in the towel, some Russian sources are suggesting that Russia, in order to counter Iran’s plans to colonize Syria, will negotiate with Washington and the West a “peaceful exile for certain Syrian leaders with some kind of an amnesty thrown in.” At the moment, Washington appears willing to go along with the Russian proposal and that’s partly why the White House has cut off the rebels from previous US missiles and other weaponry.

Question: What is Israel likely to do about Iran’s apparent dominance in Syria?

Franklin Lamb:Perhaps due partly to his current domestic political vulnerabilities stemming from some apparently serious fraud charges, PM Netanyahu has been making increased threats that Israel with enter the war in Syria.  For example, a senior Israeli intelligence delegation made visits last month to Washington and Moscow and according to the Jerusalem Post,  Israel’s Prime Minister told Russia’s Putin that Israel was ready  to bomb the Presidential Palace in Damascus, and to disrupt  the Astana process, should Iran continue to ‘extend its reach in Syria’.

Apparently discussed also was the report that an Al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has seized control of some uranium mines in Africa and will supply the material to Iran. According to a claimed diplomatic letter from the Somalia Minister of Foreign Affairs signed the letter appealing to the U.S. Ambassador to Somalia, Stephen Schwartz.  Israel claims that Iran works in several ways with ISIS for mutual benefits and partly to preserve its “we vs. the terrorists” tactic to justify its occupation of Syria.

Israel’s concern about Iranian presence in Syria is based on Iran having tens of thousands of pro-Iranian fighters from half a dozen countries who after the war will become Iran’s “Foreign Legion” in the region which Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah recently insisted will be available to fight with it against Israel during the next war.

Israel and some of its allies in the US Congress as well as AIPIC has recently claimed that Russia has stationed S-400 batteries near Hamas to protect an area where it’s claimed that Iran has built a long range guided missile factory to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon for use during its next war.

Hezbollah, which has already accumulated over 100,000 rockets, is now seeking to target specific strategic sites in Israel. To that end, it has been trying to obtain long-range guided missiles by smuggling them from Iran through Syria to Lebanon but Israel is thought to have destroyed most of the transfer convoys with loss of Iranian and Hezbollah lives. The Syria army reportedly refuses to help Iran with the transfers considering participation a death sentence.

Without doubt the increasing dominance of Iran in Syria has weakened Israel’s position.  So have Hezbollah’s deployments near its border.  The increased Russian air presence as well as its combat air operations and the new surface-to-air missile batteries the Russians have deployed in western Syria including at the Khmeimim airbase.

Question: The Trump Admiration according to Lebanon’s An Nahar this week announced that it was cutting off military aid to Lebanon. But the next day a senior U.S. general claimed that military aid to Lebanon would continue. What’s behind this?

Franklin Lamb:Certainly an arms cutoff would be a harsh unexpected blow for Lebanon which since 2005 has received nearly $ 1.5 billion in US military aid and for that country’s hopes of establishing a real army is shattered at least in the near term. For example, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) was expecting to receive two Super Tucano light attack aircraft in October with another two to follow in 2018 as well as the first batch of 32 M2 Bradley armored fighting vehicles. These shipments would have made Lebanon only the third country beside the US and Saudi Arabia to have and deploy them.

The Pentagon has also ordered the battlefield retrieval of approximately 50 of its latest model tanks some of which were deployed by the LAF the weekend of 8/26/2017. Other expected shipments of aircraft, drones, and even “missile proof “watchtowers will be stopped. Will the US insist that they be pulled from that battle field where some are presently deployed near the Lebanon-Syria border?

Briefly what is behind Washington stopping military aid to Lebanon’s army is that the State Department recommended cutting aid to Lebanon in 2018 but this was advanced because the US government does not believe Lebanon’s claims this week that the LAF did not coordinated its operations along the Lebanon-Syria border with Hezbollah and Syria’s armed forces. Washington has been dismayed by Lebanon’s agreement with Syria and Hezbollah to give free passage to Islamic State militants from Lebanon’s border region to enter Iraq.  Two days later the U.S-led coalition carried out air strikes to block Islamic State group fighters evacuated from Lebanon from reaching eastern Syria and entering Iraq.

To be blunt, while back in 2006 Washington believed the Lebanese government and its armed forces could be a counter weight to the rise of the Iranian backed Hezbollah but they admit they erred.  Washington believes that Lebanon has essentially lost its sovereignty and that Iran through Hezbollah, which it created, arms and funds and now occupies Lebanon. Whatever Iran’s wants from Lebanon’s 28 ministries, Hezbollah will use its political power to obtain.

The same goes for Lebanon’s army which, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Israeli lobby and many in Congress consider Lebanon’s army, as does Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman merely a “subsidiary unit of Hezbollah.”

Moreover, Members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees claim that Iran now views Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon  the same and that Tehran has essentially colonized all three countries and has no intension of  withdrawing any of them.  It remains to be seen what becomes of future US military aid to Iraq.

Question: Is there reason for optimism that the post-war government in Syria will allow the development of local autonomy as well as the formation of an active empowered civil society along with local administration and decentralization?

Franklin Lamb:As you can imagine it depends entirely on the make-up of Syria’s post-war government and to what extent Syria’s Arab Baath Socialist Party, assuming it is still in power, will allow it.

My personal sense is that significant decentralization is unlikely in Syria given the nature of Baathism in the region. At the core of Ba’athist ideology is the creation of one party strong central security states. I do not anticipate substantive changes in the elements of the security state?  That does not allow for much democratic opposition.  The thtee countries which have been governed by Baathist regimes, Iraq, Syria and Algeria, have in the main rejected political pluralism while advocating an unspecified amount of time for the Ba’athist government to develop an enlightened Arabic society. Moreover, to date the Syrian government has made consistent efforts to limit civilian governance structures in the suburbs of Damascus including Jobar and East Ghouta.

Even though Russia’s President Putin claims it will happen, and it has yet to be experienced significantly in Russia itself, I am personally dubious that effective decentralization will be achieved.

Unless there is a new post-war civil rights struggle that succeeds, I believe it is unlikely that Syria will witness meaningful decentralization, less a vibrant social society or the granting of effective local autonomy. I may be very mistaken but to date and given current trends, I do not see probative evidence that broad-based local decentralizationor federalism will happen in Syria anytime soon.

Question: What is your view of the Russian promoted “de-escalation zones” as a way to end the war in Syria?

Franklin Lamb:Contrary to some political hype by Russia and Iran, they are not effective and very likely will not be.

The four zones are set up in the largely rebel controlled areas of Deraa and Coneitra along the Jordan border in South Syria,  Idlib province, including the northeastern areas of Latakia province, western areas of Aleppo province and northern areas of Hama province. Also the Rastan and Talbiseh enclave in northern Homs province and the fourth is in Eastern Ghouta in the northern Damascus countryside.

These “de-escalation zones” are a political tactic to pressure the rebels into concessions—a  tacticalslight of hand if you will. The zones are violated constantly whenever a military advantage sought. The three ‘guarantors’ Turkey, Iran and Russia have ignored violations. Iran has no incentive to back any ceasefires, and the war has brought Iran and Syria’s leadership closer.  These four areas in my opinion will surely be attacked and bombarded again when resources become available and a military advantage appears achievable.

Although the de-escalation zones in Syria are also intended to bring about a cessation of hostilities and restore a sense of normalcy to the country, they lack a protective framework.The Syrian government was to allow “unhindered” humanitarian aid into rebel-held areas, and public services such as electricity and water were to be restored where they have been cut off.

For example, the agreement declares and assumes that the hostilities between the Syrian regime and rebels will end within these zones. But this has not happened as claimed and is unlikely to given that certain armed opposition groups have not agreed and this is a major stumbling block as well have seen with past agreements.  The three “guarantors” claim the right to fight rebels from both ISIS and Al-Qaeda within and outside the de-escalation zones.

Question:  Given the many reports and extensive documentation of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria do you anticipate that someday the victims will achieve any justice? And that the main perpetrators will be held accountable?

Franklin Lamb:I am inclined to believe that there eventually will be an Independent International Tribunal as a result of the nearly seven years of crimes against civilians that we continue to witness in Syria. But whatever justice is eventually achieved will likely to be a long time coming and miniscule given the scope of the crimes.

Not since World War II has there been so much complete disregard for humanity as well as   violations of international humanitarian law, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which were specifically designed to protect the half million killed in Syria, the 11 million displaced and the 6 million forced from Syria into other countries as refugees.

A former Syrian government photographer known as Caesar, who was tasked with documenting victims, released 28,000 photos of deaths which showed mutilated bodies and malnourished individuals. Several other in depth judicial investigations of war crimes and crimes against humanity have been published relating to the use of deadly gas against civilians, summary executions, torture, forced disappearances, rapes, torture and killings of women and children imprisoned without trial.  Tens of Thousands of documents and testimonies are being preserved by more than a dozen humanitarian organizations as they prepare cases against both sides in the civil war in Syria.

Unless there is an international amnesty, similar to the one in Lebanon following its civil war that exonerated many war criminals, presumably sponsored by Russia and Iran to protect certain allies, some of the accused in Syria will eventually be arrested or tired in abstentia and held criminally responsible.

Franklin Lamb can be reached c/o franklin.lamb@hmc.ox.ac.uk or fplamb@gmail.com

Please visit:http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com

On July 9, New York magazine published “The Uninhabitable Earth,” a worst-case climate change scenario suggesting that our current human course may produce an unlivable future for Earth. A burst of media commentary and controversy followed, and it quickly became the most-read article in the magazine’s history.

I’m often struck in conversations with friends and colleagues by the number who feel that humans may not have a future. They are comforted, however, by the thought that Earth will ultimately recover. This response suggests that in some deep sense, our love for Earth may exceed our love and concern for our own species. Perhaps we consider our fate a fitting punishment for the sins that we, in our anthropocentric arrogance, have committed against one another and the Earth that birthed and nurtures us.

No one knows for certain the outcome of human-caused climate disruption and accelerating depletion of Earth’s fertile soils, freshwater supplies, forests, and fisheries. Nor can we be certain of the causes and consequences of deadly new infectious diseases,declining human sperm counts, and Earth’s release of methane from the melting permafrost.

We are coming to understand that Earth is a living superorganism that self-organizes to create and maintain the conditions essential to its own vitality—and our human existence. Human activity, however, is disrupting living Earth’s regenerative system. We are destabilizing the climate through the release of sequestered carbons; disrupting natural habitats through ocean acidification and temperature change; destroying natural forest andgrassland habitats; and depleting, degrading, and contaminating soils and sources of fresh water on which all species depend. This in turn drives species extinction and renders growing areas of Earth uninhabitable.

I recently read Clive Hamilton’s book Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Hamilton notes that as humans have become like an invasive species, Earth has begun to respond as living organisms do: rejecting the invader. He goes on to suggest that humans may be disrupting Earth’s living systems beyond her capacity for self-healing. More startling—but equally plausible—is Hamilton’s suggestion that Earth’s survival as a living organism may depend on humans transitioning from our role as Earth exploiters to a role as facilitators of Earth healing.

Herein lies a potentially game-changing insight. Earth has recovered before from extreme shocks and mass extinctions, but there is no guarantee. Earth may now need us as much as we need her.

Begin with a recognition that Earth is breathtakingly special. Among the now estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, scientists have yet to identify another planet with the water, soils, atmosphere, and climate required to sustain complex life. Earth may be a unique miracle in the vastness of creation.

I find it impossible to acknowledge Earth’s distinctive beauty and wonder without being overwhelmed by unbearable grief and despair at what humans—in our anthropocentric arrogance—have done to her. Our actions represent a breach of cosmic proportion in our human responsibility to creation and Earth.

As individuals, most humans regularly demonstrate an extraordinary capacity for love and caring—sometimes to the extent of sacrificing our own lives for others. This for me demonstrates the positive potential of our nature.

As societies, however, we have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for violence and mutual oppression at the expense of both ourselves and Earth. It appears our nature is defined by neither love nor violence, but rather by our ability to choose between sharply contrasting and deeply conflicting paths. We exercise that choice both as individuals and, through our culture and institutions, as a global species.

Disgusted by our long history of violence and abuse against one another and Earth, we humans seem ready to abandon hope for ourselves. But what of our Earth mother? Might our love for her hold the key both to her salvation and to ours? Might we, by willful choice, transition from Earth exploiters to Earth healers? If we recognize Earth’s uniqueness, her need for our help, and our responsibility to respond, might we unite in common cause? Might we muster sufficient commitment to serve as loving healers to two of creation’s most extraordinary miracles—a living planet of spectacular beauty and a species with a unique capacity for conscious choice?

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Climate breakdown, as George Monbiot calls it, is happening before our eyes at the same time the science on climate change grows stronger and has wider acceptance. Hurricane Harvey, which struck at the center of the petroleum industry – the heart of climate denialism – provided a glimpse of the new normal of climate crisis-induced events. In Asia, this week the climate message was even stronger where at least 1,200 people died and 41 million were impacted. By 2050, one billion people could be displaced by climate crises.

Climate disasters demonstrate the immense failure of government at all levels. The world has known about the likely disastrous impacts of climate change for decades. Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which  operates under the auspices of the United Nations and was founded in 1988. The IPCC published the first of five reports in 1990. Thousands of scientists and other experts write and review the reports and 120 countries participate in the process. The most common surprises in successive reports are more rapid temperature increases and greater impacts than scientists had predicted.

We can No Longer Ignore the Science and the Evidence Before Us

The science on climate change has become extremely strong as the final draft of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report showed. The document was leaked last month because scientists feared the Trump administration would amend, suppress or destroy it. The report describes overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change impacting us right now and the urgent need to get to zero net carbon emissions.

It is not just science that confirms the climate crisis, it is also people’s experience with extreme weather, constant record breaking temperatures, and deadly heat waves as well as collapsing mountains in Alaska, the shrinking Colorado River and an ice free Arctic as a few examples. People have experienced a series of extreme storms – Hurricanes Harvey, Katrina and Sandy being the most notable this century –droughts, fires and other physical evidence that make it hard to deny climate catastrophe. Climate denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years.

There is no doubt that these storms are made more deadly by climate change. Harvey was a tropical storm until it went over the warm Gulf of Mexico and grew into a hurricane with record rainfall. Climate expert Michael Mann explains that warmer water resulted in greater moisture being absorbed, more rain and more flooding. Sea level rise added to the greater flooding. The stalling of the storm over Houston was also predicted by climate forecasters because the jet stream pattern has changed. Climate change had the same effects on Hurricane Sandy in New York City.

Science is denied because many profit from the dirty energy status quo and denying or even hiding the existence of climate change. There is litigation against oil and gas companies and an SEC investgation because records show they knew their products were causing climate change going back to the 70s but funded research to hide reality.  ExxonMobil is being sued by shareholders for misleading investors and faces shareholder challenges. Coastal communities are suing dozens of oil and gas companies for continuing to pollute after they knew the damage they were doing. Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, now the Secretary of State, used a fake email account to discuss climate change and many of those emails are now missing. Youth suing over the destruction of their environment and climate change are seeking Tillerson’s testimony and emails. There are many climate criminals to point to with the dirty energy companies at the top of the list. There are 100 companies responsible for 71 percent of green house gas emissions. Good government would hold them responsible.

Climate protesters outside of White House. Photo by Susan Walsh for AP.

There’s been no shortage of pessimistic news on climate change lately. A group of climate scientists and policy experts recently declared that we have just three years left to dramatically turn around carbon emissions, or else. Meanwhile a widely circulated New York magazine article detailed some of the most catastrophic possible consequences of climate change this century if we continue with business as usual.

Critics pounced on the article, claiming gloom-and-doom messages are disempowering and thus counterproductive.

But are they? And is there a better way to communicate to people about the urgency of climate change? In a somewhat unorthodox way – creating a mini-series of videos on climate change – my colleagues and I think we’ve gained some insight into these questions.

Communications: Art and science

Naysayers to negative messaging miss an important function of this kind of apocalyptic thinking. It is useful in forcing us to imagine ourselves as the people who allowed a future we don’t want to come about. In California, for example, Governor Jerry Brown has been a master of highlighting the existential threat of climate change. But his real genius has been linking that dystopian vision to what needs to be done to prevent it from becoming real. I call this approach “the California way: sunny with a chance of apocalypse.”

Dystopian visions are easy to conjure these days; they come with scientific probabilities. The second part of that communication strategy – making a compelling connection to how we can act, individually and collectively, to avoid the worst consequences of climate change when so much of our lives depend on fossil fuels – is the really hard part.

To learn more about this challenge, we recently conducted a kind of real-life experiment in the art and science of climate communication with “Climate Lab,” a series of six short, popular videos created by the University of California with Vox.

The series, which has had more than five million views and created a robust online discussion, grew out of a peer-reviewed report co-authored by 50 UC researchers entitled “Bending the Curve: Ten Scalable Solutions for Carbon Neutrality and Climate Stability.” I was the senior editor, and we worked hard to make the executive summary a tool for communicating what needs to be done to get to carbon neutrality by midcentury. We wanted it to be used by UC President Janet Napolitano (who has pledged that the UC system will be carbon neutral by 2025), Governor Brown, the Vatican, and other important players at the Paris climate summit. And it was.

But we knew we had to do something different to reach a wider audience. One of the chapters in our report reviewed the state of research on climate communication, which over the past couple of decades has taught us a lot about what doesn’t work. We don’t know as much about what does work, but we’re beginning to pull some guidelines from research. So we created a series guided by what we know to see what we could learn.

What do we know from the literature?

• Facts are not enough. This is not say that facts are not important. They are. But you can try to pump as many facts as you want into people’s minds and it won’t necessarily change their opinions, let alone motivate action.

• Frames, narratives and values matter. People easily incorporate new facts into their existing frames (the ways they see the world), narratives (the stories they tell about themselves and the world) and values (their beliefs about right and wrong and what matters to them). Or they can simply ignore facts that don’t fit.

• Know thy audience. There are “six Americas” spread across the spectrum from alarmed to dismissive when it comes to climate change. Trying to change the minds of the dismissive is a waste of time. But the rest are potentially movable, from the concerned, to the cautious, disengaged and even doubtful. Seventy-four percent of Americans are in those middle four categories. And, yes, I include the doubtful among potentially movable audiences. Isn’t science supposed to be about doubt?

  Bring people into the story of science and stimulate their curiosity. There is intriguing evidence in science communication research that invoking people’s curiosity, by bringing people into the scientific process, with all of its uncertainties, can move more people to embrace science than just presenting them with the findings. This is captured in a popular meme in science communication circles: Numbers numb and stories stick.

• Messengers matter. Doctors and scientists are trusted more than journalists and politicians. Religious leaders are trusted by their flocks. People trust people who share their frames, narratives and values. This contributes to the echo chambers we tend to live in. But it’s a fact of life communicators need to understand.

• Create positive instead of negative spillover. One of the cautionary findings of climate communication research is that people can easily convince themselves that they’ve done enough (such as recycle) and don’t have to do more (such as support a carbon tax). This is a negative spillover effect. But positive spillovers happen, too, especially when people incorporate actions into their identities and think, “I’m the kind of person who drives a hybrid and believes we need to take collective action, too.”

A real-life experiment in making connections

For “Climate Lab,” we wanted an approachable, even fun and humorous, trusted messenger who would appeal to diverse audiences. We found one in M. Sanjayan, the chief scientist and now CEO of Conservation International, who is also a senior researcher in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. Sanjayan has lots of TV experience (PBS, BBC, National Geographic). And he was eager to try something different.

Working with the UC Office of the President’s creative communications team and a professional video production crew in close collaboration with Vox, we produced six very different videos, unified by a look and feel, slick production values, great graphics, narrative arcs and Sanjayan’s friendly, inviting, quizzical approach.

The subjects ranged from why people are so bad at thinking about climate change to the impacts of our consumer habits, the footprint and fate of our cellphones, food waste as a huge contributor to greenhouse gases, the past and possible future of nuclear power and the importance of diverse messengers, from the pope to a Tea Party member concerned about climate.

I recently conducted an analysis of the reception for these different stories and came away with a few conclusions that reinforce what we’ve learned from the literature, and give us direction for future episodes in the series.

All the stories topped half a million views and generated surprisingly on-point conversations in the comments sections. Well, mostly on-point.

But the three stories that were most popular, those that got the most views and generated the most engagement (thumbs-up and commenting), shared some important characteristics:

• The stories connected individual actions to collective actions.
• They showed agency – people taking action.
• They modeled a positive spillover effect.

These three stories were about why we need to be nudged to think about climate and like to compete to be greener than others, how we can reduce consumer waste individually and collectively, and how simple solutions can lead to big reductions in wasted food.

Two geeky, techie episodes on cellphones and nuclear energy didn’t do quite as well by these measures. And though it was my favorite, the one meta story about the importance of messengers did the least well.

This tells me that people respond well to two things: stories about what they can do, and how they can be part of a broader effective change. And those two things need to be connected.

We’re going to continue to experiment with “Climate Lab” – we’re also creating a real online class for undergraduates which we hope will be used in other universities as well – until we get where we need to be locally and globally: carbon neutrality with a stabilizing climate by midcentury.

So, by all means, let’s talk about how urgent action is, and imagine the worst results of not acting, but let’s be sure to tell stories that lower the barrier to taking action, too, individually and collectively.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Jon Christensen is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the Department of History, and the Center for Digital Humanities, University of California, Los Angeles.

A new analysis published this month by U.S. Geological Survey scientists found pesticides at high enough concentrations to harm already imperiled aquatic invertebrates in more than half of 100 streams studied in the Midwest and Great Plains. The pesticide levels threaten species like the Hine's emerald dragonfly and the sheepnose mussel.

The U.S. Geological Survey study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, found an average of 54 pesticides in each stream in both agricultural and urban areas, spotlighting the ever-broadening contamination of waterways caused by the nation's escalating use of pesticides.

"This study exposes the hidden harm of our increasing addiction to pesticides," said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "When we see pesticides doing this kind of widespread harm to aquatic animals, we can be sure it has dangerous cascading effects on the entire web of life, including humans."

The analysis of 228 pesticide compounds in 100 streams over a 14-week period in 2013 documented the most complex pesticide mixtures yet reported in U.S. water samples. The waterways included in the study are in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Surprising among the findings was that the concentrations and incidences of some pesticides, including glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup—imidacloprid and 2,4-D, were higher in urban waterways than in agricultural settings.

At least one pesticide in more than half of the 100 streams sampled in the Midwest exceeded a toxicity threshold predicted to cause harm to aquatic insects and other stream organisms, ranging from acute effects in 12 streams to chronic effects in 41 streams. (image: USGS)

"The finding that many of these pesticides are more prevalent in urban waterways than in rural streams shows the escalating risks of dumping millions of pounds of chemicals on the landscape every year," said Donley. "We simply can't keep pretending it's safe to spray more and more poisons on our fields, gardens and waterways."

The analysis comes as a federal court in California is considering a lawsuit filed by conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, urging common-sense measures to prevent dangerous pesticides from harming endangered species like California condors, black-footed ferrets, arroyo toads, Indiana bats and Alabama sturgeon. Evaluations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clearly show that imperiled wildlife continue to be threatened by pesticides.

The study is the first of five regional assessments by U.S. Geological Survey scientists of pesticide pollution of streams. The others regions are the Southeast, the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast and California.

President Donald Trump’s vow to hit North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” is an unveiled threat to unleash America’s most potent weapons of mass destruction onto the Korean peninsula. According to many defence analysts, the risk of nuclear confrontation over Europe and the Indian subcontinent has also increased in recent years.

In a more hopeful turn of events, 122 countries voted in June to adopt the United Nations Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons in New York. The “ban treaty” will make nuclear weapons illegal for ratifying countries, and many see it as an opportunity to kick start a renewed effort towards multilateral disarmament. Supporters of the treaty argue that even a limited, regional nuclear war would produce a catastrophic and global humanitarian crisis.

Equally, other analysts suggest that the reality is not as severe as is often depicted. In March this year, Matthias Eken, a researcher of attitudes towards nuclear weapons, wrote in The Conversation that their destructive power “has been vastly exaggerated” and that one should avoid overusing “doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic language”.

Eken argued that nuclear weapons are not as powerful as often described, on the basis that a 9 megaton thermonuclear warhead dropped over the state of Arkansas would only destroy 0.2% of the state’s surface area. He also observed that more than 2,000 nuclear detonations have been made on the planet without having ended human civilisation, and argued that if we want to mitigate the risk posed by nuclear weapons, we must not exaggerate those risks.

Eken’s sanguine approach towards nuclear weapons stands in contrast to the more dramatic rhetoric of global humanitarian catastrophe and existential threats to humanity. So what is the basis for the latter?

Nuclear war is also a war on the environment

The greatest concern derives from relatively new research which has modelled the indirect effects of nuclear detonations on the environment and climate. The most-studied scenario is a limited regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized warheads (small by modern standards) detonated mostly over urban areas. Many analysts suggest that this is a plausible scenario in the event of an all-out war between the two states, whose combined arsenals amount to more than 220 nuclear warheads.

In this event, an estimated 20m people could die within a week from the direct effects of the explosions, fire, and local radiation. That alone is catastrophic – more deaths than in the entire of World War I.

But nuclear explosions are also extremely likely to ignite fires over a large area, which coalesce and inject large volumes of soot and debris into the stratosphere. In the India-Pakistan scenario, up to 6.5m tonnes of soot could be thrown up into the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun and causing a significant drop in average surface temperature and precipitation across the globe, with effects that could last for more than a decade.

This ecological disruption would, in turn, badly affect global food production. According to one study, maize production in the US (the world’s largest producer) would decline by an average by 12% over ten years in our given scenario. In China, middle season rice would fall by 17% over a decade, maize by 16%, and winter wheat by 31%. With total world grain reserves amounting to less than 100 days of global consumption, such effects would place an estimated 2 billion people at risk of famine.

Although a nuclear conflict involving North Korea and the US would be smaller, given Pyongyang’s limited arsenal, many people would still die and ecological damage would severely affect global public health for years. Additionally, any nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea is likely to increase the risk of nuclear confrontation involving other states and other regions of the world.

It gets worse

A large-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia would be far worse. Most Russian and US weapons are 10 to 50 times stronger than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima. In a war involving the use of the two nations’ strategic nuclear weapons (those intended to be used away from battlefield, aimed at infrastructure or cities), some 150m tonnes of soot could be lofted into the upper atmosphere. This would reduce global temperatures by 8°C – the “nuclear winter” scenario. Under these conditions, food production would stop and the vast majority of the human race is likely to starve.

Eken suggests that both the scenarios of a limited regional nuclear conflict and an all-out war between US and Russia are unlikely. He may be right. However, both scenarios are possible, even if we can’t reliably quantify the risk. Continued adversarial rhetoric from both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un about the use of nuclear weapons is not making this possibility any smaller.

What we can say, is that the doctrine of nuclear deterrence represents a high-risk gamble. Nuclear weapons do not keep us safe from acts of terrorism, nor can they be used to fight sea level rise, extreme weather, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss or antimicrobial resistance.

This is why so many medical and public health organisations have been campaigning to make nuclear weapons illegal. Regardless of how many need to be exploded to cause a catastrophe or produce an existential threat to humanity, and regardless of the risk of this happening, the adage that “prevention is the best cure” remains the case when it comes to these abhorrent and dangerous weapons.

Research papers and discussions on the public health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons will be part of the Health Through Peace 2017 conference at the University of York in September.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

David McCoy is a professor of global public health at Queen Mary University of London.

A new study from the University of California, Berkeley gives us further reason to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

According to the research, the U.S. wind and solar power boom helped prevent the premature deaths of thousands of people and saved the country billions of dollars in healthcare and climate-related costs in a single year.

"We find cumulative wind and solar air-quality benefits of 2015 US $29.7–112.8 billion mostly from 3,000 to 12,700 avoided premature mortalities," according to the paper authored by Dev Millstein of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and his team. The research was sponsored by the Department of Energy and published in the journal Nature Energy.

Unregulated and poorly regulated energy production and use, as well as inefficient fuel combustion, are the "most important man-made sources of key air pollutant emissions," a 2016 International Energy Agency study found. Eighty-five percent of particulate matter—which can contain acids, metals, soil and dust particles, and almost all sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides can be linked back to those sources.

Unhealthful levels of air pollution can put people at risk for premature death and other serious health effects like lung cancer, asthma attacks, cardiovascular damage, and developmental and reproductive harm. But unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar power systems have no associated air pollution emissions.

As the Independent noted from the current study, major air pollutants have declined between 2007 and 2015. Carbon dioxide fell by 20 percent, sulphur dioxide by 72 percent, nitrogen oxide by 50 percent and tiny particles known as PM2.5 by 46 percent.

This decline is due to fossil fuels being replaced by renewable energy—solar and wind capacity increased from about 10 gigawatts in 2007 to roughly 100GW in 2015—as well as tougher emissions regulations.

The study also estimated that wind and solar contributed to the "cumulative climate benefits of 2015 US $5.3–106.8 billion," which includes "changes to agricultural productivity, energy use, losses from disasters such as floods, human health and general ecosystem services."

"The ranges span results across a suite of air-quality and health impact models and social cost of carbon estimates," the study added. "We find that binding cap-and-trade pollutant markets may reduce these cumulative benefits by up to 16 percent."

Lorraine Chow is a freelance writer and reporter based in South Carolina.

It’s no secret that neonicotinoids can harm bees and other insects—they’re designed to kill pests, after all. But an increasing body of evidence is uncovering just how serious an impact these pesticides are having on the environment.

Several new studies seem to have put the nail in the coffin for neonicotinoids, showing that they harm bees and don’t even improve crop yields. And worryingly, scientists at the University of Iowa have found traces of the pesticides in drinking water for the first time. So should we be alarmed? And why haven’t the chemicals been banned?

Neonicotiniods—or neonics—have been a go-to bug buster for many years; they were developed in the 1980s and '90s as a more environmentally “friendly” alternative to traditional insecticides. Rather than having to spray the chemicals over crops, the seeds are coated, supposedly protecting the plants from being eaten by insects during germination and early growth.

Even though farmers use relatively small amounts of the chemicals, they are still leaching into the environment. According to Prof. Nigel Raine, the Rebanks Family Chair in Pollinator Conservation at the University of Guelph in Canada, almost all of the chemical ends up in the environment. “I've seen estimates of as little as 2 to 20 percent of the treatment going into the actual crop,” he said. “So if you've got potentially 98 percent of that active ingredient going into the soil and the water, that is a concern. If the pesticide is not doing its job where it should be, what impact is that having?”

In a new study in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, scientists found three common neonics in Iowa City’s drinking water: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. It turns out the pesticides can withstand the standard water treatment process: The team found traces of the chemicals at concentrations of 0.24 to 57.3 nanograms per liter.

That’s low—the equivalent of a drop of liquid in 20 Olympic-sized pools—but there’s currently no defined safe level, and it’s difficult to know what the significance is. “Having these types of compounds present in water does have the potential to be concerning,” said study author Gregory LeFevre to the Washington Post, “but we don’t really know, at this point, what these levels might be.”

A mountain of research

Although there were calls to evaluate neonics shortly after their introduction, it wasn’t until the mass decline in honeybee populations in 2006 that concern properly set in. Dubbed colony collapse disorder, the phenomenon wiped out millions of bees across North America, with beekeepers waking up to find piles of dead bees in and around their hives.

A landmark 2015 study showed that neonics harm queen honeybees, and a raft of research in other pollinators has built on this, revealing that the chemicals impair flight, reduce egg development and cause bees to hatch smaller.

Two new studies give a wider view on this. In the first, scientists carried out some large-scale field experiments in the U.K., Hungary and Germany that showed the pesticides have a negative effect on honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees. In their paper, the researchers conclude that neonics may cause “a reduced capacity of bee species to establish new populations in the year following exposure.” On the same day, Canadian scientists published “realistic” research showing that “neonicotinoids increased [honeybee] worker mortality and were associated with declined in social immunity and increased queenlessness over time.”

Corporate controversy

Unfortunately, the stark polarization on the issue—namely the agrichemicals industry supporting neonics on one side and the environmentalists pushing for a ban on the other—is making it difficult to see what’s really happening.

The companies producing the pesticides—the three biggest being Syngenta, Bayer CropScience and Monsanto—have all at one time committed to funding research into the declining bee population problem, and one of the new studies was industry funded. According to The Economist, Bayer and Syngenta are saying the latest results “don’t warrant a ban on the chemicals.”

If neonics are banned, what will happen? Some say taking neonics off the market could make farmers use other products, which may be even more harmful—an idea conservative organizations like safechemicalpolicy.org are pushing in a bid to protect neonics from a potential ban.

Yet this argument might not hold up, in light of another new study. A team at Purdue university looked at corn in the state of Indiana and found “no benefit of the insecticidal seed treatments for crop yield during the study.” They also showed that 94 percent of honeybee foragers are at risk of exposure to neonics—even lethal levels—when the corn is sown.

So it’s not the case that farmers need neonics to improve yield, said Prof. Raine: “If the evidence to support that is not as strong as we perhaps thought it was, then that may change the balance of decision making.”

A call for evidence-based policy

Neonicotinoids have already been banned in Europe and although the U.S. has yet to follow suit, regional bans are in place in Maryland, Oregon and Washington. A more nuanced approach in Ontario, Canada, may seen an end to the prophylactic use of the chemicals, and the PMRA—the organization that regulates pesticides in Canada—is due to decide whether to ban imidacloprid—a move that Dr. Prosser says “may be a knee-jerk reaction.”

The EPA is working on the issue too, with five of the main neonics—imidacloprid, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, dinotefuran and acetamiprid—scheduled for review in 2018. The EPA has started a range of risk assessments to determine the effect of neonics on pollinators, aquatic animals and humans, but will the results make a difference to the decision? EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has already greenlighted one pesticide believed to damage brain development in children, so there’s little evidence to suggest he might support a ban.

According to Prosser, more evidence will help. “Pollinators are facing a lot of issues; banning neonics might not solve the problem,” he explained. “It’s easy to vilify a chemical. That’s not to say it doesn’t play a role, but it’s important to step back and look at the bigger perspective: What are the agricultural needs? That’s important to society. And what are the scientists saying? Most will say it’s a multifaceted problem that we don’t know everything about.”

While there is clearly a need for more research, Raine thinks we know enough to limit our use of neonics, especially prophylactically. “There is sufficient concern and evidence now to say that there is potential for harm to bees,” he said. “Although pollinator health and supporting them in an agricultural landscape, or an urban landscape, or any kind of human-affected landscape is not just about controlling pesticide exposure, insecticides are clearly one of the environmental stress factors we should be concerned about, and we should mitigate the impacts on pollinators where we can.”

Research can take years to find answers. In the meantime, there are moves to mitigate the impact of neonics by avoiding their use—stores like Walmart and True Value have committed to eliminating neonics from products on their shelves, and will stop selling plants treated with the chemicals.

Although this is a step forward, a 2016 report by Friends of the Earth found that pesticides could be found in the “bee-friendly” plants being sold across the U.S.; there is also peer-reviewed evidence of a similar situation in the U.K. Friends of the Earth U.S. is asking consumers to take action—to join their BeeAction campaign and sign a petition to garden retailers asking that they stop selling neonicotinoid treated plants and products that contain the pesticides.

Lucy Goodchild van Hilten is a freelance writer. Read more of her work at telllucy.com.

Residences and other types of buildings directly impact the environment as a result of the construction process, the design features and the types of materials used. In the past, traditional homes have negatively impacted the environment while continuing to contribute to greenhouse gas through energy usage and heating and cooling. As a result, sustainable building is becoming more popular around the world as future homeowners seek to reduce their carbon footprint.

Earthship homes are 100-percent sustainable homes that are inexpensive to construct and incredible to live in. They boast numerous amenities not found in other sustainable building styles. Earthships started taking shape during the 1970s when Michael Reynolds was seeking a home that used indigenous materials, relied on natural energy and would be feasible for the average person to construct. His vision become a u-shaped home that kicked off the Earthship movement.

Most buildings are horseshoe-shaped to maximize the amount of natural light and solar gains during the colder months. Windows in the home face the sun to admit light and heat. The walls are thick and dense due to the tires used to provide thermal mass that regulates the interior temperature naturally. The tire-based walls are strengthened with concrete inside of the tires and half concrete blocks.

(image: Mark Stephenson/Flickr CC)

Earth-rammed tires are assembled by teams of two with one member shoveling dirt into the tire and the other using a sledgehammer to pack the dirt in. These tires can weigh up to 300 pounds so they are commonly made at the construction location. Since the tire is packed with soil, it will not burn when exposed to fire.

The top of the tire walls contain concrete bond beams that are constructed from recycled cans and bonded by concrete. These are connected to the tire walls using concrete anchors. Non-bearing walls are constructed from a honeycombed shape of recycled cans known as tin can walls that are also joined by concrete. The roof is made from trusses that rest on tin can walls placed on the beams. The roof and all other walls, except the windows facing south, are heavily insulated to maintain the internal temperature.

Benefits of Earthships

Earthship near Taos, New Mexico (image: Lisa Haneberg/Flickr CC)

One of the greatest draws of an Earthship home is its ability to sustain comfortable temperatures. From freezing cold temperatures to blistering climates, Earthships hover around 70 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. This is due to the solar heat stored in thermal mass (tires filled with dirt), which is the basis of the Earthship structure. The thermal mass operates as a heat sink, absorbing heat when the interior cools and insulating when the interior needs warmth. 

Amenities and Energy

When most people hear the word sustainable, they think primitive housing that is removed from 21st-century comforts. Until the Earthship home model, the majority of sustainable solutions have fit this description. 

Most of the materials used to construct an Earthship are recycled. The walls above the tires are constructed with plastic and glass bottles set inside of concrete. In developing nations, these bottles can be gathered from the street to help clean up the neighborhood and build a house.

With solar panels lining the roof and wind turbines in the backyard, the Earthship home allows you to collect electricity the natural way, from the sun and the wind. This will ensure that you are never short of power and eliminates the cost of buying energy from the utility company.

(image: Andrew Stenning/Flickr CC)

With one or two onsite greenhouses that can grow crops throughout the year, regardless of the climate, you can feed yourself with plants that grow inside your home. For a regular source of eggs, construct a chicken coop on your property.

In addition to the money saved on monthly utility bills, Earthships are significantly cheaper than traditional homes. If you have the capability to build the house yourself, the most basic Earthship models start at around $20,000 with more glamorous models running $70,000 or more depending on your decorative preferences. With these low costs, Earthships fit almost every budget.

Using printed plans with no previous knowledge, you can construct a three-story Earthship in as little as three months. There is no need to hire professional assistance or purchase expensive tools. Simply following the printed plans with basic tools and you can have a sustainable home in as little as a quarter of a year.

The water recycling system is another incredible feat of engineering. Even the most arid climates can deliver enough water for daily use using a rain-harvesting system. The roof funnels rain water to the cistern, which pumps it into the sink and shower. The greywater is then pumped into the greenhouse to water the plants, which clean the water and pump it back into the bathroom for toilet use. After this water is flushed, it is now considered black water and pumped into the garden to provide nutrients to the non-edible landscape.

The term ecosexual has had multiple definitions in its short existence. When it first emerged around 2000, Jennifer J. Reed, a PhD candidate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who studies the movement, said, "The word ecosexual started being used to identify people who were interested in environmental issues so much so that they were also seeking a partner who was interested in environmental issues. It became a dating term like, 'I’m an ecosexual, I’m looking for another ecosexual.'"

A second group that adopted the term were people engaged in trying to "green" the sex toy industry. Reed points out that "sex toys and lubes and so forth have not been regulated by a health code" because they are classified as "adult novelty items." Ecosexuals became a term for people concerned about the health effect of sex toys.

But the word hit primetime and took a turn when performance artist Annie Sprinkle and her spouse Beth Stephens married the earth—and people took notice. When Sprinkle and Stephens called themselves ecosexuals, they meant that they experienced erotic pleasure from the earth.

I asked Reed about this, and she pointed out that we routinely stick our noses into bouquets of plants' sex organs (flowers), "but we don't talk about it that way." She says Sprinkle and Stephens' "idea is that we are marrying the earth symbolically to bring back the idea of humans being a part of the environment, being a part of nature rather than dominating over or separate from nature."

The reason ecosexuals aim to end humans' separation from nature is because that idea "has led to environmental destruction because the idea that humans rule over the earth has led to [things] like mountaintop removal coal mining." Reed says it engenders the feeling that "we're separate from nature and this is just here for us to take from." She adds, "Because we are part of nature there are also health consequences because we are not separate from nature."

But why connect sexually instead of some other way? Reed says ecosexuals' "expanded notion of sexuality includes the human life force," adding, "The reason we're alive, a species on the earth, is because sex is happening... Really, ecology and the environment are all about sexuality and fertility and the life force and keeping life going."

Reed defines ecosexuality as a mindset, a set of practices and a social movement. "The mindset is number one," she says. It means recognizing the interrelation between the sexuality and nature in some way. "Somebody who is an ecosexual definitely sees the situatedness of humans within the environment."

People with the mindset often add practices "to call back to the sensuality of life," according to Reed. Hiking in the mountains or sitting on the beach are sensory experiences. But, Reed says, these activities can also be "sensual or erotic experiences."

Some people experience similar sensations when they are out in nature as when they have an orgasm. Reed describes it as "a feeling of connection." Reed sees a parallel between the belief that the mind and body are separate and the belief that humans and the environment are separate, with ecosexuality attempting to bridge both at once.

As Sprinkle and Stephens' Ecosex Manifesto puts it: "We shamelessly hug trees, massage the earth with our feet, and talk erotically to plants. We are skinny dippers, sun worshippers, and stargazers. We caress rocks, are pleasured by waterfalls, and admire the Earth's curves often. We make love with the Earth through our senses."

Ecosex practices can be as simple as feeling the soil between your toes or the sun on your skin. That said, some ecosexuals find more X-rated ways to experience the connection between sexuality and nature.

Reed traces the social movement back to 2010, when the first ecosexual conference was held. A year later, in 2011, Sprinkle and Stephens unveiled the Ecosex Manifesto. The pair also founded the EARTH Lab at UC-Santa Cruz. EARTH stands for Environmental Art Research Theory Happening. Ecosexuals do not just have erotic feelings about the earth; they fight to defend the planet.

The Ecosex Manifesto sums up the activist component as follows: "We will save the mountains, waters and skies by any means necessary, especially through love, joy and our powers of seduction. We will stop the rape, abuse and the poisoning of the Earth... We embrace the revolutionary tactics of art, music, poetry, humor, and sex. We work and play tirelessly for Earth justice and global peace. Bombs hurt."

Ecosexuals also hold annual convergences in the woods. I had to ask, and Reed assured me, "No, it's not an orgy." It's family-friendly and held in a campground. But, she added, the group does set aside an area in the woods where people can "go naked and get freaky." After attending a workshop on consent, that is.

If you can get to Australia, you can even go to an ecosexual bathhouse.

In summary, if the Ecosex Manifesto resonates with you, then you're an ecosexual, and you can enjoy the sensuous of the earth and experience humans' connection with nature in any way you wish to.

Falling sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States are expected to substantially increase rainfall in Africa’s semi-arid Sahel, while bringing slightly more rain to much of the United States, according to a recent study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Pollution filters placed on coal-fired power plants in the United States starting in the 1970s have dramatically cut emissions of sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas that contributes to acid rain and premature deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. If U.S. sulfur dioxide emissions are cut to zero by 2100, as some researchers have projected, rainfall over the Sahel could increase up to 10 percent from 2000 levels, computer simulations published in the study suggest.

“Reducing emissions in one region can influence rainfall far away because our global atmosphere is interconnected,” said the study’s lead author, Dan Westervelt, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We show that the health and environmental benefits of U.S. clean air policies extend to global climate as well.”

Sulfur dioxide simultaneously cools and dries earth’s climate by reflecting sunlight back to space and suppressing heat-driven evaporation near the ground. Though prior research has linked high sulfur emissions in Europe and Asia to the Sahel’s severe droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, this study is the first to look at how U.S. emissions influence precipitation in various regions globally.

Land at the northern edge of Africa’s Sahel could become suitable for farming if sulfur emissions in the United States continue to rapidly decline, says a new study. Here, farmers near Segou, Mali, plant maize at the start of the rainy season. (credit: Francesco Fiondella/International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University)

The researchers ran three independent global climate models to compare the relative impact of the United States cutting its human-caused sulfur emissions to zero and keeping its emissions at 2000-2005 levels. In the zero-emissions scenario, all three models showed a slight increase in average global rainfall, with higher levels in the United States and other northern-hemisphere regions. In the Sahel, two models found that wet-season rainfall increased by 5 to 10 percent, with one producing a rainy season two-and-a-half days longer.

“We were surprised to find that removing sulfur emissions in just one country would significantly influence rainfall on another continent, thousands of miles away,” said study coauthor Arlene Fiore, an atmospheric scientist at Lamont-Doherty.

The added rainfall came as the tropical rain belt returned to its normal, northernmost position above the equator during northern hemisphere summer, the models showed, consistent with earlier research. The rain belt ordinarily shifts north when the northern hemisphere heats up during summer, but when sulfur emissions are high, cooler temperatures in the north stop the rain belt from migrating as far.

Cutting U.S. emissions to zero was enough to move the rain belt roughly 35 kilometers north, placing more of the Sahel in its path, the researchers found.  “We did not expect to see such a clear, significant influence on the Sahel,” said Westervelt. “This northern shift of the tropical rain belt could mean that cropland at the Sahel’s northern edge could become more productive in the future.”

Though two of the three models were generally consistent, they disagree on exactly how much rain different regions can expect as U.S. sulfur emissions go to zero, says study coauthor Drew Shindell, an atmospheric scientist at Duke University. “We have just one real-world example — historic data — to rely on, making it very challenging to quantitatively link emissions to response,” he said.

The influence of rising carbon emissions is another complicating factor. The technology to trap carbon dioxide, unlike sulfur dioxide, is still far from being cost-effective. So while carbon dioxide levels continue to climb, falling sulfur emissions impose a climate “penalty” — less human-caused cooling to offset human-caused warming from carbon dioxide.

“It’s still a good idea to cut SO2 with pollution control equipment on coal-fired power plants for the sake of public health, but even better would be to move away from coal-fired power plants entirely to reap the benefits of public health and climate change mitigation,” said Shindell.

The study’s other authors are Andrew Conley and Jean-François Lamarque of the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Michael Previdi and Gus Correa of Lamont-Doherty; Greg Faluvegi of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research; and Larry Horowitz of Princeton’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

This article was originally published by Columbia University's Earth Institute. Read the original.

Kim Martineau is a science writer for The Earth Institute at Columbia University. She was newspaper writer for the Times Union in Albany, NY, and The Hartford Courant in Connecticut, and twice named a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. She lives in New York City. Find her writing at The Earth Institute.

Although California is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it won’t stop global warming. We can slow down extreme weather events like those in San Jose, but communities will continue to feel the impacts of climate change no matter how much we curb emissions.

The weather conditions brought on by climate change—like  flooding, heatwaves and wildfires—can affect everyday life for people. Californians face the increasing likelihood of power outages, displacement, increased costs for electricity and food, contaminated drinking water, worsened air pollution and increased asthma rates.

While climate change impacts will affect everyone, poor communities and communities of color will be hit hardest. These frontline communities already spend as much as 25 percent of their entire income on just food, electricity and water, which is much more than most Americans. They face a greater risk of heat-related illness and death.

And while air conditioning and transportation could alleviate extreme heat impacts, many people of color and low-income residents lack access to air conditioning or cars to escape hot days. Often located in areas with severe air pollution, these communities will also breathe even dirtier air as smog increases due to climate change.

So what is California doing to ensure frontline communities are prepared to handle the impacts of climate change and continue to thrive?

The state has developed a climate adaptation strategy called the Safeguarding California Plan. The plan covers 10 sectors, including energy, transportation, public health, water and forests. For each sector, the plan discusses what the state is currently doing to address climate adaptation, what must be done, and how the state plans to accomplish those goals. The plan covers a lot of ground, but focuses heavily on the vulnerability of built infrastructure (e.g. roads, highways and energy facilities) and natural systems like wetlands, forests and agricultural lands.

The plan does little to prioritize community vulnerability. For instance, are cooling centers available on hot days for communities lacking access to air conditioning? Are emergency evacuation routes available for people without vehicles? What is the emergency response system to warn people of extreme weather events in rural or hard-to-reach communities? What measures are in place to prevent displacement?

Recognizing the need to address these issues, the Resources Legacy Fund brought together several environmental justice, public health and climate equity organizations, including Greenlining, to create a Climate Justice Working Group. The working group provided recommendations to the state as it updated the Safeguarding California Plan earlier this year. We also just released a set of climate justice principles and recommendations that go beyond “Safeguarding California.” We believe the state should include the recommendations in all climate adaptation policies it develops.

Here’s an overview:

• The state should prioritize the protection of essential facilities that provide health care, food, and emergency shelter; bring economic opportunities into frontline communities and avoid negative consequences such as displacement.

• The state should conduct community vulnerability assessments to identify what make a community vulnerable. The assessments can inform strategies to build community resilience.

• Importantly, the state should meet with and actively engage frontline communities to include their voice in all climate adaptation plans.

• The state should identify at least $1 billion by 2020 and $10 billion by 2025 to accomplish climate resilience goals.

To hear what communities have to say about climate change, Resources Legacy Fund and EMC Research conducted a survey of 800 California voters of color. Sixty-one percent of these voters say climate change poses a major threat to low-income communities, and 85% want their elected officials to develop stronger policies to help their community prepare for the impacts of climate change.

The recently passed extension of California’s cap-and-trade program designates climate adaptation as a priority that must get funding from cap-and-trade revenue. Since climate adaption will get funding, this is an opportune time for the state to think about incorporating the Climate Justice Working Group’s recommendations into its policies—especially since voters of color want to see policies that address community vulnerability.

Officials must listen to the voices of the communities hit first and worst, and make sure that we build up the resiliency of those communities and don’t accidentally increase poverty and displacement.

Sona Mohnot is environmental equity program manager and policy analyst at the Greenlining Institute.