Living Through India’s Next-Level Heat Wave

…This March was the hottest on record in India. The same was true for April. On the afternoon of April 26th, Bhalswa caught fire. Dark, toxic fumes spewed into the air, and people living nearby struggled to breathe. By the time firefighters arrived, flames had engulfed much of the landfill. In the past, similar fires had been extinguished within hours or days, but Bhalswa burned for weeks. "The weather poses a big challenge for us," Atul Garg, the chief of the Delhi Fire Service, said, nine days after the fire began. "Firefighters find it difficult to wear masks and protective gear because of the heat." A nearby school, blanketed by hazardous smoke, was forced to close. In the end, it took two weeks to extinguish the blaze. The charred bodies of cows and dogs were found in the debris...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/01/living-through-indias-next-level-heat-wave

Passing the torch

 Returning to MTSU, Fall 2022- 

Environmental Ethics 

PHIL 3340

If you're concerned for the health and future of "the only home we've ever known," consider registering for PHIL 3340, Environmental Ethics - TTh 2:20, JUB 202. The theme this semester: passing the torch to a new generation of environmental citizens.

We’ll read and discuss, among others…

Wendell Berry. Perhaps most known for his 1977 bestselling book, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, the writer and farmer has served as a moral beacon to Americans for half a century, warning of the dangers of consumerism, industrial agriculture, and the dissolution of rural communities. Now, as we face the greatest environmental crisis in history and grapple with deep polarization, his impassioned arguments on subjects ranging from industrial farming to technology have taken on a new urgency... Michael Pollan, “Wendell Berry is still ahead of us”

Paul Hawken. In Regeneration Paul Hawken has flipped the narrative, bringing people back into the conversation by demonstrating that addressing current human needs rather than future threats is the only path to solving the climate crisis… Regeneration contains an extraordinary array of initiatives that include but go well beyond solar, electric vehicles, and tree planting to include such solutions as marine protected areas, bioregions, azolla fern, food localization, regenerative agriculture, forest farms, and the #1 solution for the world: electrifying everything.

Bill McKibben. Author/activist, cofounder of 350.org. The Climate Crisis: Annals of a Warming Planet. “Bill McKibben is such a heroic and consequential leader in the fight for the climate on behalf of all humankind, it's easy to lose sight of his humanity. As usual, this book is a thoughtful critique of wrong turns America has taken, but this time refreshingly and revealingly intertwined with his personal story. As a fellow former suburban boy who has also tried hard to figure out ‘what the hell happened,’ The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon was like listening to a wise old pal preach.” —Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire and Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America

Kim Stanley Robinson. Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry For The Future is the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.

The Sunrise Movement. The Sunrise Movement is a youth movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. We’re building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.

More info at http://envirojpo.blogspot.com/, or email phil.oliver@mtsu.edu.

Is Climate Change a Prisoner's Dilemma or a Stag Hunt?

"...in the tragedy of the commons, exploitation of a resource inevitably makes the resource scarcer. In this case, the resource is not land or coal, but the sum of the ecosystem itself, which degrades in time as it is exploited and polluted. The payoff of exploitation diminishes to zero and protection becomes increasingly attractive. So eventually there will be a point—near environmental collapse—where every actor will get it together and actually protect the environment. In game theory, this scenario where coordination is clearly dominant over defection is called a "stag hunt." Only, in this absurd scenario, that point would come fairly close to when the environment was already gone…" --Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/climate-change-game-theory-models/624253/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

How Much Should I Spend to Keep My Elderly Dog Alive?

We don't always think rationally about our pets in relation to our humanity.

…The quality of the life of a dog or a cat is a matter of the quality of its moment-to-moment experiences. They have no projects to complete; their lives have no narrative arc that matters to them. They do not fear death in the way we do: As far as we can tell, they do not have the concept of death. That's why the sorts of reasons a person might have for going on even after existence has become a source of pain don't apply to them…

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/magazine/pets-euthanasia-ethics.html?referringSource=articleShare

"The solution is to offer a vision of a better future"

How to Talk About 'Extreme Weather' With Your Angry Uncle
What if everybody else is just as terrified to discuss climate change as I am?

NASHVILLE — Articles on how to talk about the warming planet with climate skeptics always thrust me into a state of mild anxiety. I live in Tennessee, where the governor professes not to understand what's causing the country's extreme weather. Right-wing pundits on the airwaves and right-wing trolls on social media dominate what passes here for public discourse on climate. Republicans funded by obscene oil profits keep doing the industry's bidding.

In this context, it's easy to assume that climate skeptics are everywhere. Even in the country as a whole, only 1 percent of voters identified climate change as the most important issue we face.

Though I write often about the environment, and specifically about climate change, I almost never discuss the subject with across-the-aisle friends and family. Just thinking about it makes my heart speed up... Margaret Renkl

Look up

	CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 ⁦‪@CBSSunday‬⁩ The effects of climate change are being felt more quickly than we thought possible, but the Academy Award-winning director says there are actions we can take now to deal with this existential threat cbsn.ws/3OEePEY pic.twitter.com/XQbgRZpdcp   7/24/22, 9:04 AM

Is a rational American response to climate change still possible?

Climate Change Is Not Negotiable

President Biden's best course is to take the same regulatory path Barack Obama was forced to follow.

The American West has gone bone dry, the Great Salt Lake is vanishing and water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two great life-giving reservoirs on the Colorado River basin, are declining with alarming speed. Wildfires are incinerating crops in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, while parts of Britain suffocated last week in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yet the news from Washington was all about the ability of a single United States senator, Joe Manchin, to destroy the centerpiece of President Biden's plans to confront these very problems... nyt

Keeping it light

A clip from Don’t Look Up, and then a real TV interview that just happened pic.twitter.com/CokQ5eb3sO

— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) July 20, 2022

This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End

"It's a false assumption," argues Herman Daly, "to say that growth is increasing the standard of living in the present world."

I get a lot of criticism in the sense of "I don't like that; that's unrealistic." I don't get criticism in the more rational sense of "Your presuppositions are wrong" or "The logic which you reason from is wrong."

Growth is the be-all and end-all of mainstream economic and political thinking. Without a continually rising G.D.P., we're told, we risk social instability, declining standards of living and pretty much any hope of progress. But what about the counterintuitive possibility that our current pursuit of growth, rabid as it is and causing such great ecological harm, might be incurring more costs than gains? That possibility — that prioritizing growth is ultimately a losing game — is one that the lauded economist Herman Daly has been exploring for more than 50 years. In so doing, he has developed arguments in favor of a steady-state economy, one that forgoes the insatiable and environmentally destructive hunger for growth, recognizes the physical limitations of our planet and instead seeks a sustainable economic and ecological equilibrium. "Growth is an idol of our present system," says Daly, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, a former senior economist for the World Bank and, along with the likes of Greta Thunberg and Edward Snowden, a recipient of the prestigious Right Livelihood Award (often called the "alternative Nobel"). "Every politician is in favor of growth," Daly, who is 84, continues, "and no one speaks against growth or in favor of steady state or leveling off. But I think it's an elementary question to ask: Does growth ever become uneconomic?" (continues)

The time traveler

 

Trees

Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?

To fight climate change, companies and nonprofits have been promoting worldwide planting campaigns. Getting to a trillion is easier said than done.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/magazine/planting-trees-climate-change.html?referringSource=articleShare

Ezra Klein podcast: KSR

...Kim Stanley Robinson is one of our great living science fiction writers. And one thing that makes him great book after book is the way geology is a character and a context in his work, whether that is the terrain of Mars, the coastal structure of New York, or the glittering mountains of California. And Robinson’s attention to land in his fiction turns out to be rooted in his attention to land in his life.

He has this new book, an unusual foray into nonfiction for him, which is about his lifelong relationship — and I mean that in the more human sense of the term — with the Sierra Nevadas. And it’s right there in the title, “The High Sierra, a Love Story.” This is his love story, but it’s also a lot more than that. It’s an exploration of what he calls psychogeology, the way the places were in shape the ways we think. And this conversation, too, is an exercise in psychogeology, in his, in mine, maybe, when you listen to it, we’re going to see some of yours. And hopefully, through here, one day, all of ours. What would a politics that was more attentive to the place we lived in, the place we get to experience, look and feel like? (continues)

LISTEN

The Supreme Court’s E.P.A. Decision Is More Gloom Than Doom

The most profound effect of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency may ultimately be cultural.

...This is all terrible. But it isn't much changed by West Virginia v. E.P.A. either. U.S. emissions are not likely to rise. The powers the judgment restricts were never actually exercised under the Clean Power Plan. The Affordable Clean Energy Rule, devised by former President Donald Drumpf as a fossil-fuel-friendly alternative to the C.P.P., is not in effect either. And American emissions have fallen faster without a cap-and-trade program and without the C.P.P. than advocates of either suggested was possible under those programs.

That's not to say that where things stood yesterday is an encouraging place to be, or that the decision is meaningless. It could well prove a significant setback in the years ahead, though presumably only under a more aggressive or more empowered Democratic administration than this one.

For the time being, it probably changes more about the way we might imagine possible climate futures than anything about the one we are actually building today through inaction. But when it's all hands on deck, you don't want one hand tied behind your back. Which is why, for those keeping a close eye on the ever shortening timelines for action, today probably feels considerably more restrictive still — a handcuffing. nyt