"Cancer and climate change"

I’M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?

After handling the immediate business associated with the medical news — informing family, friends, work; tidying up some finances; putting out stacks of unread New York Times Book Reviews to recycle; and throwing a large “Limited Edition” holiday party, complete with butlers, I had some time to sit at my kitchen table and draw up the bucket list.

Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon. Instead, I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible.

I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own, not NASA’s). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating.Continue reading the main story

Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in Paris set a goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.

It’s doubtful that we’ll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises, model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.

All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.

Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.

The initial heavy lifting will have to be done by policy makers. I feel for them. It’s hard to take a tough stand on an important but long-term issue in the face of so many near-term problems, amid worries that reducing emissions will weaken our global economic position and fears that other countries may cheat on their emissions targets.

Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term impacts to the climate.

Ultimately, though, it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world to save us. They must come up with the new technologies and the means of implementing them. The technical and organizational challenges of solving the problems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution are enormous, and they must be solved within a few decades with minimum disruption to the global economy. This will likely entail a major switch to nuclear, solar and other renewable power, with an electrification of our transport system to the maximum extent possible. These engineers and industrialists are fully up to the job, given the right incentives and investments. You have only to look at what they achieved during World War II: American technology and production catapulted over what would have taken decades to do under ordinary conditions and presented us with a world in 1945 that was completely different from the late 1930s.

What should the rest of us do? Two things come to mind. First, we should brace for change. It is inevitable. It will appear in changes to the climate and to the way we generate and use energy. Second, we should be prepared to absorb these with appropriate sang-froid. Some will be difficult to deal with, like rising seas, but many others could be positive. New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways we cannot anticipate. There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks. History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat.As for me, I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.

And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.

nyt

Piers J. Sellers is the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times

	The Conversation US (@ConversationUS)
12/26/16, 7:57 AM If a corporation can have the rights of a person, why can't the natural world have rights? #reversecitizensunited bit.ly/2hQUr5z

"These six utopian cities of the future will help you re-imagine life on Earth"

 

Utopia, a book by English statesman, lawyer and clergyman Thomas More (1487-1535), turns 500 years old this month. A fictional rendering of social philosophy, the book describes an exemplary society on an imaginary island in an unknown place faraway across the seas. Coined by More from the Greek ou-topos, meaning no place, or nowhere, the word utopia has become adopted in the English language to mean a place where everything is ideal or perfect. In celebrating Utopia’s 500th birthday, the Ecotopia 2121 project, of which I am the coordinator, is harnessing Thomas More’s spirit to predict the futures of 100 real cities around the world - if they somehow managed to become super eco-friendly. Of course, modern utopias need to be eco-friendly to overcome the global environmental crisis. Given that cities may be home to 80% of humanity by the end of the century, they can only be sustainable if environmentalism is one of their core features.


The cities of Ecotopia 2121 are presented in the form of “scenario art”, which involves a review of both global and local environmental challenges as well as their unique histories and cultures. This allows for a diversity of future scenarios rather than one common vision of the “future city”. What you will see below are a series of artworks, but this is not an art project. We use art as a means of analysis and communication. With that in mind, here are six ecotopian cities of my own creation that emerged from the project, one from each inhabited continent.

Accra 2121

Accra, the capital of Ghana, is exposed to disastrous floods every year. This has been made worse by climate change, as well as unregulated construction and dumping in and around its waterways. In our imagined future, locals seek to procure housing above the floodline, by building low-cost tree cabins in the nearby forest.




Ghana has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, but by 2121, the forest has become a home for some of its citizens. Accra’s new residents would protect the forest ecosystem from those who would destroy it, such as the logging, mining and oil companies.

London 2121

In the summer of 2121, during an economic downturn, 100,000 pensioners take to the streets of London, the British capital, to protest cuts in pensions and education, shutting down the entire city. They bring along their grandchildren to give them something interesting to do as they mind them. By summer’s end, the protesters despair at the government’s poor response, so they take matters into their own hands, staging a permanent occupation.



The pensioners convert some 20km² of London into a large eco-village, transforming unoccupied offices into homes, sowing garden lots on street corners, and setting up eco-businesses to trade products and services. In the process, all the children get free education from their experienced elders in these various green arts and crafts.

Los Angeles 2121

The southern Californian city of Los Angeles once had a great network of tramways, but this was systematically bought up and then closed down by a group of conspiring auto-manufacturing companies.



As the world’s oil is depleted by the end of this century, cars will become useless and trams could make a comeback in Los Angeles. The unused freeways could then be redeveloped into vegetated greenways. Such greenways are suited for pedestrians and cyclists, but they could also act as ecological corridors, connecting populations of wild plants and animals around the city that would otherwise be isolated. Retired cars could then serve as part of the fabric of high-density buildings, creating an architectural style whereby people live and work in smaller structures and within tighter-knit communities. This would mean cities such as Los Angeles would not need to sprawl further into the countryside and wild lands.

Alan Marshall, Mahidol University - continues

A Way Forward

Phil -  don't know if you've seen this article in The New Yorker.  I've also read the 23 page document the authors created.  It seems to me an excellent way to move a progressive agenda forward - or any agenda for that matter - given the current character of the US House and Senate:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-crowd-sourced-guide-to-fighting-trumps-agenda?mbid=nl_121716_Daily_Amanda&CNDID=11280738&spMailingID=10072715&spUserID=MTMzMTc5NTUyMTg4S0&spJobID=1061545985&spReportId=MTA2MTU0NTk4NQS2

There's hope abroad in the land!

Exxon's climate lie: 'No corporation has ever done anything this big or bad'

I

’m well aware that with Paris looming it’s time to be hopeful, and I’m willing to try. Even amid the record heat and flooding of the present, there are good signs for the future in the rising climate movement and the falling cost of solar.

But before we get to past and present there’s some past to be reckoned with, and before we get to hope there’s some deep, blood-red anger.

In the last three weeks, two separate teams of journalists — the Pulitzer-prize winning reporters at the website Inside Climate News and another crew composed of Los Angeles Times veterans and up-and-comers at the Columbia Journalism School — have begun publishing the results of a pair of independent investigations into ExxonMobil.

Though they draw on completely different archives, leaked documents, and interviews with ex-employees, they reach the same damning conclusion: Exxon knew all that there was to know about climate change decades ago, and instead of alerting the rest of us denied the science and obstructed the politics of global warming.

To be specific:

• By 1978 Exxon’s senior scientists were telling top management that climate change was real, caused by man, and would raise global temperatures by 2-3C this century, which was pretty much spot-on.
• By the early 1980s they’d validated these findings with shipborne measurements of CO2 (they outfitted a giant tanker with carbon sensors for a research voyage) and with computer models that showed precisely what was coming. As the head of one key lab at Exxon Research wrote to his superiors, there was “unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring about significant changes in the earth’s climate, including rainfall distribution and alterations in the biosphere”.
• And by the early 1990s their researchers studying the possibility for new exploration in the Arctic were well aware that human-induced climate change was melting the poles. Indeed, they used that knowledge to plan their strategy, reporting that soon the Beaufort Sea would be ice-free as much as five months a year instead of the historic two. Greenhouse gases are rising “due to the burning of fossil fuels,” a key Exxon researcher told an audience of engineers at a conference in 1991. “Nobody disputes this fact.”

But of course Exxon did dispute that fact. Not inside the company, where they used their knowledge to buy oil leases in the areas they knew would melt, but outside, where they used their political and financial might to make sure no one took climate change seriously.

They helped organise campaigns designed to instil doubt, borrowing tactics and personnel from the tobacco industry’s similar fight. They funded “institutes” devoted to outright climate denial. And at the highest levels they did all they could to spread their lies.

To understand the treachery – the sheer, profound, and I think unparalleled evil – of Exxon, one must remember the timing. Global warming became a public topic in 1988, thanks to Nasa scientist James Hansen – it’s taken a quarter-century and counting for the world to take effective action. If at any point in that journey Exxon – largest oil company on Earth, most profitable enterprise in human history – had said: “Our own research shows that these scientists are right and that we are in a dangerous place,” the faux debate would effectively have ended. That’s all it would have taken; stripped of the cover provided by doubt, humanity would have gotten to work.

Instead, knowingly, they helped organise the most consequential lie in human history, and kept that lie going past the point where we can protect the poles, prevent the acidification of the oceans, or slow sea level rise enough to save the most vulnerable regions and cultures. Businesses misbehave all the time, but VW is the flea to Exxon’s elephant. No corporation has ever done anything this big and this bad.

I’m aware that anger at this point does little good. I’m aware that all clever people will say “of course they did” or “we all use fossil fuels”, as if either claim is meaningful. I’m aware that nothing much will happen to Exxon – I doubt they’ll be tried in court, or their executives sent to jail.

But nonetheless it seems crucial simply to say, for the record, the truth: this company had the singular capacity to change the course of world history for the better and instead it changed that course for the infinitely worse. In its greed Exxon helped — more than any other institution — to kill our planet.

Bill McKibben, The Guardian Oct.14, 2015

"The threat is us, the solution is in us"

Review of THE UNNATURAL WORLD: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age
By David Biello

The term Anthropocene is geological shorthand for a world of carbon-induced climate havoc — i.e., the world in which we now live, a world where, given the frightening pace of global warming, all bets are off. (By last summer, the hottest on record, mass coral bleaching was racing through the world’s oceans, with more than 90 percent of the Great Barrier Reef already bleached.) In “The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age,” David Biello, the science editor for TED and a contributing editor at Scientific American, sets off on a tour of our Anthropocenic world, to scout for ideas on how we might now live on a planet that our grandparents won’t recognize for long. Early on, Biello visits with a paleobiologist at the University of Leicester, who tells him, bluntly, “We’ve reset the Earth’s biology.” For some people, “that is the argument of the Anthropocene — a warning that our bad ways will quickly lead to our extinction,” Biello writes. “But for others, it’s a challenge. How do we make a good human epoch?”

“The Unnatural World” is a travelogue with that good human epoch in mind, a trip around the world to meet people working out new ways for humanity to live as well as survive. At the University of Leicester, the paleobiologist describes the man-made fossils that mark human presence — the stratum of plastics, soot and radionuclides that stain the Earth everywhere from lake bottoms to mountaintops. “Massive technofossils like London and Shanghai will call out to the future: Something was here!” Biello writes.

Indeed, the defining feature of the new world is a tangle of what we consider natural and what we don’t, nature not ended but morphed. In Maryland, Biello visits a landscape ecologist who has pioneered investigations of human interactions with ecosystems, mapping various anthropogenic biomes, concluding that people are, in Biello’s words, “the world’s most (successful) invasive species.” Biello follows along as this ecologist programs drones to monitor forests in the anthropogenic biome known as suburban Maryland, refining ways to measure and manage relatively new landscapes. “The threat is us, the solution is in us,” Biello writes... 

(Robert Sullivan, continues)

So far

Mother Jones (@MotherJones)

12/12/16, 5:15 PM Every insane thing Donald Trump has said about global warming ow.ly/nHX63073O7l

Before the Flood PT 2. *Sorry for lateness. Wanted to share for educational purposes even if too late. Link to film included

So, for my second installment about Before the Flood, I’m going to talk about how the movie show us the moral responsibility we hold as humans to make active movements toward supporting the environment, why we’re facing such opposition on the issue (although I know everyone in this class already knows why), and a little hope for the future.

Before the Flood highlighted some devastating results of climate that I had not thought about it and it just made me think: Don’t I have a moral responsibility to these effects? If I know there are fellow humans out there suffering, even if I am separated by land, and I also know there is some action I can take to prevent their suffering, then I morally responsible for doing so. For example, China manufactures for the entire world. They make A LOT of products that we use in our everyday lives. I know we’ve all seen “Made in China” tags on things. I’ve seen those tags more than I’ve seen “Made in USA”. That being said, China is also the largest contributor to CO2 in the entire world. But it’s because they are making things for other countries, like ours. The movie showed people living in China that have to wear masks to go outside. They have to protect themselves just to go out into the world. Some people were describing their fear of getting cancer just from breathing in the air around them. Can you imagine putting a mask on your child to go play soccer outside? It’s devastating. Not to mention the psychological understanding that these kids have to have. They were born into a world where the air they breathe is not suitable for them to live without protection. And some know the reason they have to wear masks is because an old man wants to keep profiting billions from oil and coal. I feel guilty when I hear facts like this, I feel like I’m living in an illusion and when I am told about children in China wearing masks to school, illusion is shattered. Another shattering fact I learned from the movie is that there are millions of people without simple electricity. Right now, I sit with Wi-Fi, my phone is charging, I have a lamp on, my Christmas lights are strung up around my apartment, glittering with electricity. My feet are receiving cozy warm air from a heater. There are humans, on this planet, at this time, that does not have access to ANY electricity. Mind blowing. For some reason, I tend to unconsciously think that everyone has the privileges that I do. Until I am reminded that I am so so wrong. There were some interesting statistics provided. Every human in the USA using electricity is equivalent to 64 humans in India. 64 humans use the same amount of electricity as ME. But if we had renewable energy technology, there is no need to connect to a grid. A tribe in Africa can have their own power without needing cables that connect to some more-fortunate city. Once we make the transfer to renewable, everyone can enjoy free energy FOREVER. It’s a textbook perfect solution. The perfect answer: Free energy from the sun! Forever! So why haven’t we switched yet?! Well, the movie makes a few valid points on why renewable energy is facing such opposition. Sadly, the main reason is greedy, selfish mindsets. Money-hungry humans. The fossil fuel industries organize fear. They buy out the senate so that no environmental bills can be passed (A name I recognized was Paul Ryan, but they list a hefty list). Then the people who have sold their morals for a check speak out against climate change with false statistics and facts. As Dr. Michael Mann said in the movie, “They do not need to win scientific debate, they just need to divide the public.” THIS IS THE TRUTH. Dividing the public is key for these monsters. I feel the same can be said with the police brutality stories. There are definitely other factors going on, but who do you think benefits from dividing the public vs. the police? Not us, that’s for sure. Anyway, James Inhoffe is a chair on the Senate Environmental Committee, and he is the largest fossil fuel recipient in the senate. Suprising, right? These men are simply bought out. What we need is a society with a little more backbone, hopefully our generation can change that. Our two biggest oppositions are money and ignorance. People simply do not KNOW enough about this issue. The information is out there, sure, but I think once the public is informed of the truth, even money can’t overcome that. Leonardo says, "The truth is, the more I learn about this issue, and everything that contributes to the problem, the more I realize how much I don't know about this issue." I think that's how the public generally feels. We've all heard the terms and we know that it's oil and electricity and so on. What we know is the tip of the iceberg. That's all I knew before taking this class. Now I feel much much worse about the issue, but at least I know the truth. When the public knows the truth, about our dying populations of wildlife, about our rainforests turning to dust, that children in China wear masks to play outside, that our species WILL be gone in a few hundred years if we don't drastically change our ways is when things will change. As President Barack Obama said in the documentary, "Reality has a way of slapping you in the nose when you're not paying attention. The public is starting to get with the science, in part because it's indisputable." Dr. Michael E Mann said in the film, “You give people the data, you empower the people.” People need to be educated, and informed, fast. Then we can unite and work together, that’s when we will see progress. Those fossil fuel dinosaurs can be beat, it’s just going to take persistence and force. I have hope for us. I think everyone should. If we lose hope, we’ve already lost.

** IT IS SO WORTH YOUR TIME TO SEE THE FILM. I cried. Twice. It recharges you while also reminding you that we are in dire circumstances.  Here is a link to the entire film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v1kU7Rc9c4

A Look at Change - How and Why? Part 2

                I’ll start with just a quick review of what I said in part 1 in case you don’t want to read the first thousand words (I wouldn’t blame you).

I’m making the assumption that humans need to experience some great amount of change to stop and/or reverse the damage we’ve done to the world. My first post attempted to examine how that change might happen. By splitting “change” up into two large halves (reactive and proactive). I defined “reactive” as a population dealing with some sort of phenomena they’ve been exposed to; I defined “proactive” as a type of change resulting from some sort of intentional advancement. While the categories don’t inherently imply that their change is good/bad, it’s really easy to see how examples of reactive events tend to be bad and examples of proactive events tend to be good. My examples will reflect that, but I don’t want them to necessarily enforce the idea.

As my first example of a reactive event, I looked at the 9/11 attacks on America because it is the best example that my generation of Americans have so far. This event illustrated perfectly my theme here- that some sort of huge event (terrorist attack costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars) is going to be required for us to make any sort of positive change (in the same way airlines and general security changed after 9/11).

               

     My second example of a reactive event is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’m going to pull a block quote from the Wiki page because it’s more precise and brief than I could be:

“The United States, with the consent of the United Kingdom as laid down in the Quebec Agreement, dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, during the final stage of World War II. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history.”  

                So, it’s impossible to argue that massive change did not occur as a result of this event. Before I talk about big picture stuff, I’ll talk about the immediate effect on the people who lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. First, there was obviously an immense loss of life, made even worse (by some definitions) by the fact that they were civilian lives. Ninety percent of structures in the two cities were reduced to rubble, and those who survived the initial blast and were not incapacitated or otherwise maimed were left to walk the scorched ruins and rebuild. There was a massive amount of area that had to be surveyed and quarantined, and an even greater need than that was to survive. The affected people had to attempt to grow food in their own gardens or barter with farmers in more rural areas with little more than the rubble the bomb had left them. For these people, change was survival, and in that, a necessity.

                I believe the world experiences hardship and grows from it just as people do, and this may be the best example of that sentiment. War has and will never be the same after the unprecedented destruction following the detonation of the atomic bombs. The immense suffering and loss of life brought about by this event is terrible and tragic, and the minds that allowed it are equally as disturbing in my mind. By August 6, 1945, we had already tested plenty of huge bombs on tiny pacific islands, so we knew full well what to expect when we dropped it on a dense population center, so I won’t hear any defense claiming ignorance. We knew approximately how many people were living in the cities, how much force it takes to knock down their buildings, and the second, third, and fourth order effects. It’s sad to think that a group of people collectively agreed that causing devastation on that scale to a civilian population was in any way at all the correct choice, but it happened, and the world has definitely lived with its choices.

                There are a few bits of this we can salvage and relate to our possible future with climate change. First, very many people were killed in the atomic bombings, but some people still survived, and they rebuilt over time. There is a negative way to view this- if people survived and rebuilt after that tragedy, what’s to stop us from being complacent, losing hundreds of thousands of lives by way of climate change, and simply rebuilding afterwards? However, I prefer the positive outlook, and that is: those people were able to survive and make progress despite their awful circumstances.

                The world certainly learned a valuable lesson from the bombings. There have been meetings and treaties galore following the chaos of World War II in hopes that none of the atrocities will happen again.

                __________

                There are some really great examples of proactive movements creating a huge change in the way people go about their lives. One of my favorite examples is the invention and proliferation of the printing press and printed material in the late 15^th century.

“The printing press was invented in the Holy Roman Empire by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, based on existing screw presses. Gutenberg, a goldsmith by profession, developed a complete printing system, which perfected the printing process through all of its stages by adapting existing technologies to the printing purposes, as well as making groundbreaking inventions of his own. His newly devised hand mould made for the first time possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities, a key element in the profitability of the whole printing enterprise.”

                The introduction of the printing press and printed material completely changed society- initially in Western Europe, then eventually throughout the entire world. Everyday citizens suddenly had access to information and concepts that simply weren’t readily available to them. The sheer quantity of information that could be produced with a press as opposed to handwriting changed society in that it was much harder to control public opinion.

                Besides creating an entirely new industry, Gutenberg provided Western civilization with an enormously useful tool, and gave a wake-up call to all of those in power who used misinformation (or simply a lack of information at all) as a method of controlling their population.

                It’s not hard to relate this argument to the unfathomable amount of information available to anyone with a smartphone. Especially with this recent election (which I promised myself not to talk about), misinformation is an incredibly serious problem. Perhaps it’s not necessarily the access to information that’s the problem, but so many peoples’ inability to sort through it and find truth. An easy answer to that is increasing quality/availability of education. Somebody said “a democracy is only as good as its educational system” and I don’t find many people defending the public education of the U.S., and I see many reasons to fear for the integrity and strength of our democracy.

                The last example I’ll cover is something a bit broader but still relatable: the invention of the plow and the agricultural revolution. Before the invention of the plow, society was composed of mostly hunters and gatherers. The plow allowed for crops to be planted and harvested on a scale previously unattainable. People suddenly were able to produce way more food than they needed to survive, and they could trade their excess for goods and services. The agricultural revolution is sort of the pretext to how human society is structured today, which means it was a change on an absolutely massive scale.

                It’s a little less straightforward to equivocate the type of total change the agricultural revolution brought about to how we could deal with climate change in the future. I like to view it in a similar way I view the printing press- a single invention caused a great number of people to lead more comfortable lives (I’m aware of the theories that glorify hunter/gatherer societies). People were able to stay more or less in the same areas, build up and expand with their excess, and make great things for humanity that may have otherwise been impossible. The way that we are living and conducting ourselves today by expanding at great cost to the Earth is wrong and a revolution the likes of agricultural revolution may be difficult to imagine in the modern world, but a revolution with the future health of the planet at the forefront is something that we could certainly use.

                Thanks for sticking with this to the end. I wish there was a continuation of this course so I could apply this concept of change on a large scale to speculate at how exactly we might change for the better. After all the things I’ve learned this semester that have given me no reason to hope for improvement, I remain cautiously optimistic that some great event (hopefully positive) will push us in the right direction.

Word count: 1508

Total word count: 2463

Link to my previous comments
Link to part 1

WHY SCIENTISTS ARE SCARED OF DRUMPF: A POCKET GUIDE

Next week, the American Geophysical Union will hold its annual conference in San Francisco. The A.G.U. meeting is one of the world’s première scientific gatherings—last fall, some twenty-four thousand experts in fields ranging from astronomy to volcanology attended. This year, in addition to the usual papers and journals, a new publication will be available to participants. It’s called “Handling Political Harassment and Legal Intimidation: A Pocket Guide for Scientists.”

The guide is the creation of a group called the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. One of the group’s founders, Joshua Wolfe, and its executive director, Lauren Kurtz, made the decision to write it on the day after the election. “There is a lot of fear among scientists that they will become targets of people who are interested in science as politics, rather than progress,” Wolfe told me in an e-mail.

With each passing day, that fear appears to be more well founded. The one quality that all of Drumpf’s picks for his cabinet and his transition team seem to share is an expertise in the dark art of disinformation.

Consider, for example, Scott Pruitt, who is reportedly Drumpf’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, currently the attorney general of Oklahoma, is an outspoken critic of the agency that he would lead. This is not, in and of itself, disqualifying, but, as a 2014 investigative piece in the Times revealed, Pruitt’s criticisms have little basis in evidence. Instead, he has basically served as a mouthpiece for talking points dreamed up by the oil and gas industries. In one case, Pruitt signed a letter criticizing the E.P.A. for supposedly exaggerating the air pollution attributable to natural-gas drilling in Oklahoma. It turned out that the letter had been written for him by one of the state’s biggest drilling companies.

“Outstanding!” was the reaction that the company’s director of government relations sent to Pruitt’s office.

Or consider Chris Shank, the first person Drumpf has named to what’s being called the “landing team” for nasa. Shank has spent the last several years working for Representative Lamar Smith, of Texas, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Under Smith, the committee has held about a dozen hearings on climate change, all with the same objective: trying to prove that climate change isn’t happening. This is impossible to do if you are relying on actual information, as opposed to the made-up sort. (In 2015, when government scientists published a study refuting one of Smith’s favorite claims—that there had been a “pause” in global warming—the congressman responded by subpoenaing the scientists’ e-mails.) Shank has compared those who question the basics of climate science to Galileo, an analogy so absurd that Ted Cruz has also used it. To imagine that Ivanka Drumpf, who, according to Politico, wants to make climate change “one of her signature issues,” can counter the likes of Pruitt and Shank is to engage in the same sort of magical thinking that brought us Drumpf in the first place.

Much has been written lately about what Drumpf’s victory reveals about the electorate’s relationship with the truth. (In short, nothing good.) But to say that we are living in a “post-fact” era is perhaps too benign. The problem is not just that too many people do not seem to care about the truth (though this is certainly a huge problem); it’s that a lot of people—an increasing number of them in high government positions—insist that their ravings are true, and try to act on them. This naturally brings them into conflict with those whose job it is to distinguish fact from fiction; hence the subpoenas and attempts to intimidate.

For climate scientists, the dangers of hewing to reality have been apparent for years. This is why the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was founded in the first place, in 2011. As Marshall Shepherd, the director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric-sciences program, tweeted recently, “Lots of concern about Fake News. As a scientist that works in meteorology & climatology, welcome to our world, dealt with this for awhile.” But this doesn’t make the situation any easier to deal with. The pocket guide’s advice for scientists who think that they are being harassed? “When in doubt, call a lawyer.”

-Elizabeth Kolbert

SCOTT PRUITT, DRUMPF’S INDUSTRY PICK FOR THE E.P.A.

Garvin Isaacs, the president of the Oklahoma Bar Association, isn’t one for understatement, but he topped himself in his reaction to the news that Donald Drumpf is expected to nominate Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It’s the worst thing in the history of our environment!” Isaacs exclaimed when I spoke to him on Wednesday. “We are in danger. The whole country is in danger. Our kids are in danger. People have got to do something about the Citizens United decision that is turning our country into an oligarchy, run by oil-and-gas interests,” he said.

Isaacs is a colorful and respected local litigator who has long been a thorn in the side of Oklahoma’s powerful. He claims the fossil-fuel industry “owns the whole darn state.” But his worries at the state level are now national. By choosing Pruitt, Isaacs said, Drumpf has outsourced his environmental policy to the Republican Party’s most powerful private donors—the oil-and-gas magnates who have funded Pruitt’s campaigns in Oklahoma.

Until now, Pruitt’s greatest claim to national fame was his star role in a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by the Times, in 2014. The investigation revealed that a letter Pruitt sent to the E.P.A in 2011, complaining about federal regulators’ estimation of the air pollution caused by drilling in Oklahoma, was actually written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of the state’s biggest oil-and-gas companies. (“Outstanding!” the company’s director of government relations wrote in a note to Pruitt’s office.) The Times found that Pruitt had sent similar letters, drafted by energy-industry lobbyists, to the Department of the Interior, the Office of Management and Budget, and President Obama. Pruitt has also taken a lead role in coördinating a twenty-eight-state legal challenge to the Obama Administration’s regulations on fossil-fuel pollution, which are at the center of its larger effort to stem climate change.

In taking these anti-regulatory positions, Pruitt has clearly aligned himself with his right-wing campaign donors, including Charles and David Koch. Kochpac, the political-action committee of the brothers’ Kansas-based oil-and-chemical conglomerate, Koch Industries, contributed to Pruitt’s campaigns in 2010, 2013, and 2014. Pruitt has also been backed by several other billionaire oil-and-gas executives, who joined political forces with the Kochs during the Obama years, becoming “investors,” as they called themselves, in the Kochs’ anti-regulatory, pro-business political movement. Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Continental Resources, and Larry Nichols, the chairman emeritus of Devon Energy, have both supported Pruitt. Hamm, in fact, was the co-chairman of Pruitt’s 2013 reëlection campaign. This year, Hamm became an early and ardent Drumpf supporter and adviser on energy matters. In September, Politico reported that Nichols had become a close adviser to Drumpf on energy, too. It’s not clear that Pruitt will continue to take dictation from his fossil-fuel backers, but they almost certainly will have a lot more to thank him for if he enters the Drumpf Administration.

During the Presidential campaign, Drumpf signalled his support for the fossil-fuel industry and his lack of concern about climate change, which he called “a hoax.” He also echoed the industry’s calls to dismantle the E.P.A. In that sense, Drumpf’s nomination of Pruitt would not be unexpected. But it is deeply inconsistent with his populist rhetoric during the campaign. Drumpf mocked billionaire Republican political donors, including the Koch brothers. Steve Bannon, his campaign manager and now his chief strategist, derided the “donor class,” which he said had sold out ordinary voters, while Drumpf promised to take on corrupt special interests in Washington, and, as he put it, “drain the swamp.” With the choice of Pruitt, though, Drumpf appears to have once again chosen the plutocrats over the populists.

-Jane Mayer

"How would our neighborhoods be different if they were owned by the people who lived in them"? Jimmy Stice. Coe. Kalu Yala.

Second Installment: Modern Day Ecotopia

Caroline Duncan

December, 7, 2016

[ here is the link to my first installment: https://envirojpo.blogspot.com/2016/11/1st-installment.html#comment-form ]

If some of you did not get to look at my first installment I have been following this newly developed city titled Kalu Yala, a completely self-sustainable community built in the jungles of Panama. The idea of this city started back in 2006 and has gradually increased. The central concepts and ideas of this community are very close to those of Ecotopia, which is why I decided to do my final report on this. As for Nick, who commented on my last post, bellow me is a picture of where Kalu Yala is located. (The Valley) It was hard to get a clear picture so I hope this one works well...if not, you can easily google it :) 

As for my second installment, I really just wanted to focus on the making of Kalu Yala, as to why it was designed and the inspiration that came to the founder, named Jimmy Stice. I wish I had come across this place much sooner and had time to get in touch with some of the co-founders, because Kalu Yala is still so new, it seems like making a connection with some of these people could definitely be available. I mean as of right now, one could just friend request Jimmy on Facebook personally! (which I just figured out...hehe) So maybe as time continues and Kalu Yala develops, I might think about sending Jimmy a message, and who knows I might even pay 50$ a day and fly out for the weekend to catch this incredible community! And possibly see some of you all there. 

The story of Kalu Yala begin really when Jimmy was 12-years old boy, playing Sim City and dreaming of the perfect place to live. His father was a real estate executive, and Stice really did not know much about his dads business.  "Instead of following the traditional real estate track — establishing himself in the industry and "making a bunch of rich men a lot richer" — Stice ended up doing his own market research in Panama, which pointed him to a 575-acre piece of land in May 2007. Perfect for urban development in terms of topography, watersheds and a climate conducive to going off the grid completely, it became the future site of Kalu Yala" (maskable.com). 

"Kalu Yala, which means "sacred village" in the indigenous Kuna language, comprises two entities — a development company and an increasingly hands-on internship program — that work closely with local villages, support locally owned businesses and responsibly tap into the area's natural resources. The goal is to transcend traditional real estate by bringing together people who seek inspiration, and giving them part ownership of where they live" (mashable.com).

In 2006, the idea of Kalu Yala was put into place by founder Jimmy Stice, with the help of a few of his close friends. June through December of 2006, Jimmy and his friends spent most of their time in Panama, touring the country, collecting data, and making connections to find the perfect land for their new home, ideas and way of live. In March of 2007, by coincidental chances, Jimmy runs into a park ranger who knows of  this 'hidden land', deep in the valley that many people do not know about. (some people believe in coincidence, i do not). But anyways, throughout the rest of 2007, Jimmy and his friends spent months hiking these lands, making friends with the families who have lived there and used much of the land for generations upon generations. It was extremely important to the finders of Kalu Yala that they did not just build a new community without understanding and being in touch with the surrounding villages, (especially those families who as lived there forever).  In August of 2008 till about 2010, Kalu Yala sat on the blackburn waiting to be finalized, taking into much consideration how this new project would affect the families and small towns already living off this land. Much of the backward and finalizing of Kalu Yala was done in New York City.

In 2010 the blueprint has been set into in progress. By 2011, the Kalu Yala institute had opened their doors and ideas in San Miguel, the closest town to Kalu Yala. It was important for Jimmy to have approval of the neighboring regions and to gain as much knowledge as possible about living out in this land. When 2012 comes along, word about Kalu Yala begins to spread beyond just Panama. Google offers to host meetings from New York about Kalu Yala, helping the idea spread. In this year (2012), Jimmy speaker at his first Tedx In Mexico, asking a simple question, "How would our neighborhoods be different if they were owned by the people who lived in them?" This question leads to one of the main key concepts of Kalu Yala and that is localized ownership, something I  believe to be very important.

2013 brings together artist, entrepreneurs, chiefs, farmers, students and interns from around the world to gather at Kalu Yala. Experiencing the off the grid, jungle like, simplistic living life style..

"Biology interns were the first to set up camp in the jungle, analyzing the environmental challenges and, essentially, learning how to survive. They made every decision, composed all research and pitched projects, such as building composting toilets and running water showers. They built "ranchos" — two-level structures made from milled fallen wood and thatched roofing — sleeping on the top level and working below".- Kalu Yala.

As 2014 and 2015 roll along Kalu Yala has continued to grow, exponentially. Stice really only plans to build no more than twenty houses a year. Keeping the community small, but also growing. The blueprint is coming to life. Designed to house institute dorms, hotels, 2 bars, a fancy restaurants, hostel etc. Kalu Yala has also started their first farm-to-table culinary program, but instituting its first company, Kalu Yala Farms (where the first product was called Ambiente, a lemongrass and cranberry hibiscus tea. Tea is very important to the Kalu Yala individuals, medicinal gardens are planted in many areas on the land.

As you can see Kalu Yala started off as an idea and has grown into something that I have only imagined about, and I believe something that many of us have imagined about. Especially those like us, who have taken a class like Environmental Ethics. Kalu Yala follows a lot of the same ideas that Ecotopia had described, and a community that many of us dream about. I wonder if Jimmy has read Ecotopia, (i'll have to ask, if and when I decide to Facebook message him one day).  Coming into this class, Environmental Ethics was not something I seemed very aware about, although I never once disregarded that the way humans are living on this earth right now has an extremely negative impact on our environment and for the future generations to come. Believing this way in the beginning of the semester, I believe was because I did not see how change was going to be made. But, something I have learned is that change does not just happen over night, it is a process, just like everything else in life. As college students we know that change is not easy, but yet we strive for change in so many different aspects of our lives. The comfortability that we live in day to day is something we take deep pride in as humans. I could not imagine a world that was stripped down, left to where we are defending for ourselves, and that view saddens me deeply. Seeing the disconnect of humanity in this day in age, especially with the rise of so much technology many of our focuses are so inward instead of looking outward (where we need to be looking). We need people like Jimmy Stice, a leader and not just a dreamer, someone to stand up and take stance in what they believe and to lead others with them, to the life we want to live. I can honestly say that because of this class I am now much more consciously aware of the environment, and will play my part day by day to be the best that I can to our mother earth.

**Here is a youtube vide of 2014 summer interns here at Kalu Yala. Keep in mind (as I posted in my first blog post), Kalu Yala can visited 50$ a day. **


"You arrive in panama not being able to predict how your passions will fit into the big picture, but quickly you realize that it's really more about passion itself. The Kaly Yala organization believes that if you love an idea and show that is can be impactful in some way, then together we can figure out how to turn it into a project that you are proud of" (goabroadblog.com).

If we all dream big together, and put these dreams into practice, we have no choice but to change the world in which we live.

Works Cited:
Facebook.com/JimmyStice
Goabroad.com. A Day In the Life of a Kalu Yala Business Man. 2014.
Kaluyala.com. About- Kalu Yala
Vimeo.com. Building a New World in the Panamanian Jungle. 2015
Maskable.com. Building the Worlds Most Sustainable City 2014
google.com/images/Kalu-Yala


Comments on others installments: 
https://envirojpo.blogspot.com/2016/12/before-flood-discussion-pt-1.html Madeline
https://envirojpo.blogspot.com/2016/11/my-first-installment-i-will-be.html Erika