‘Contagion’ Connections: How Links Among Humans, Animals And The Environment May Be Spawning A New Class Of Infectious Diseases

‘Contagion’ Connections: How Links Among Humans, Animals And The Environment May Be Spawning A New Class Of Infectious Diseases.

I haven’t seen the movie, but this article provides another reminder of the complex, interlinked way that biological systems operate, and another call to encourage exchange across traditional disciplinary boundaries in research and teaching.

The Sound of a New Green Economy

From the Green for All team, a video that sums up the argument for the new Green Collar Economy:

Plan B Updates – 99: A Fifty Million Dollar Tipping Point? | EPI

A bright  bit of happy news burning through the sooty smokestack emissions:

At a press conference on July 21, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was contributing $50 million to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. Michael Brune, head of the Sierra Club, called it a “game changer”. It is that, but it also could push the United States, and indeed the world, to a tipping point on the climate issue.

It is one thing for Michael Brune to say coal has to go, but quite another when Michael Bloomberg says so.

via Plan B Updates – 99: A Fifty Million Dollar Tipping Point? | EPI.

Ripple effects from big action by such a major player could include vast reductions in GHG emissions, improved health and environmental conditions due to drops in other pollutants from burning and mining, preservation of wilderness with the reduction or elimination of mountain-top removal mining… the list of reasons to “Quit Coal” are long indeed.  Yay team!

Thirsty for Answers

NRDC: Thirsty for Answers: Preparing for the Water-related Impacts of Climate Change in American Cities

Heard about this during an episode on the Diane Rehm Show on adaptation to climate change.

One thing that impresses (and alarms) me is that there is a growing movement toward talking about how we’re going to cope with inevitable changes.  This was actually a major component of discussion in meetings to build a local Climate Action Compact for the Monterey Bay area.  Consensus is growing that we’re experiencing climate disruption now, and that there are worse impacts coming soon that we can’t avoid.

The phrase going around is to “manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable.” Things are gonna change.  How much and how bad is still, somewhat, up to us.

More importantly, change isn’t always all bad.  Another thing that’s up to us is finding ways to use this crisis as an opportunity to make our lives, our communities, our world even better for people.  There’s no guarantee we can do it, and the longer we wait, the harder it will get.

Twelve year old Severn Suzuki speaking at the UN Earth Summit (1992) « Critical Docs

Came across this on a kind-of wikiwalk… just… wow.  It’s still mostly in “Litany” mode, but I think this is getting at what I meant by the way the stories are told.

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

For more info and a transcript, see:

Twelve year old Severn Suzuki speaking at the UN Earth Summit (1992) « Critical Docs.

(and, BTW, sorry ’bout that.)

Bill McKibben’s Extreme Weather Oped

Powerful Video of Bill McKibben’s Extreme Weather Oped.

Can we definitively say that any one “freak” record-breaking event was caused by the increased concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere?  No.  It doesn’t work like that.

Can we say the pattern which connects, the simultaneity and power of these outlier, 100-year whatevers, is very much the kind of thing that we expect, given what climate models have indicated are expected outcomes from increased greenhouse gas concentrations?  ’Fraid so, well, most likely anyway.  Other explanations strain the logic of probability.  More frightening still – a lot of it is going faster than many worst-case scenarios.  Sure, our models aren’t perfect yet.  It’s science – there’s no such thing as a perfect model or 100% certainty.  But we don’t need that to get off our butts and do what we can to prevent a highly-probably, totally awful future. The foot-dragging, hemming and hawing has got to stop.