Two interesting articles here. China has always been capable of long-term planning, and more recently with creating rapid change (e.g. building a new city a month). So if these stories are correct, then well done to China. That also begs another question: why is Tony Abbott’s government in Australia stiil so keen on massive new coal mines?
Early warning here. I imagine the report itself, once released, will be illuminating. There are several other links off the Guardian article below.
This cyclical weather phenomenon has apparently finally arrived. NOAA said it started in March 2015, although few of the physical signs appeared. The link below shows Australia, Japan and NOAA all agreeing … we’ll soon find out. What the article does not say is that the 1997-98 ENSO saw roughly half of the world’s corals die. In the face of global warming the corals and seagrass beds absorb a huge amount of CO2 during their photsynthesis. We’re talking similar levels of carbon-fixing to tropical rain forests; so if we get more major coral bleaching events then we are likely to be in a mess.
Here’s a story to twist your mind in many different directions 🙂 🙁
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
…with assumptions and with ignorance of potential risk and consequences.
I can understand the biased ardour of The Guardian’s Keep it in the Ground team towards the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as they also funds the Guardian’s global development coverage.
What I can not understand is the lack of understanding the causative relationship between Climate Change and the global economical and financial system of which Bill Gates is one of the best representative figure.
The system in which he believes so fanatically and which allowed him to pile up his wealth is determined to destroy the biosphere of this planet for the shier personal interest of figures like Gates.
According to Forbes, the 1,826 members of the billionaires club owns “an aggregate net worth of $7.05 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion a year ago” possessed by 1,646 people. These guys are interested only in increasing their wealth further by taking as mach as possible and as quickly as possible from the biosphere, either directly or indirectly.
During the same period of time the population on Earth grew by more 80,000,000 people. Wast majority of them has literally nothing but they wear. To reduce the growth of human population which is the major and most fundamental reason of the climate change is not the interest of billionaires and of the current incarnation of capitalism.
In my view, The Guradian’s Keep it in the Ground team should have chosen a person to lead this campaign more wisely. They should have chosen someone who is committed to protect this planet rather than to make his profit from it.
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Image: Image from MacMillan New Zealand World Atlas, p. 48
People in the industrialised world often don’t understand why climate change might be of any concern. Too often they frame their viewpoint in terms of how it affects their wage packet, or maintaining their daily lifestyle; that is understandable. It’s the only reality they might know.
But people on the other side of our planet have a very different understanding of reality. This is something we would like to share with you. Climate change is real, our weather patterns have changed; sea levels are creeping up, sometimes substantially. The salt affects what will grow in our already-poor soil; and may well kill the food crops that are already producing fruit. Now you might not care: you just go to the supermarket and shop … we often have no shops. Even if there is a small store the food has to come from very far away, adding further to greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn’t work.
The consumer world’s activities may well cause us to lose our homelands and the burial grounds of our ancestors. Please wake up. Thanks. 🙂
Image: blogs.worldbank.org: Incense stick production in Hue, Vietnam. The country could be one of the biggest winners of a potential Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Source - Austronesian Expeditions.
As TTIP came up recently in Mike’s post, I made a search and found plenty of writings discussing all the potential dangers on the horizon resulting from these trade negotiations. This article TPP & TTIP: More Questions Than Answers on the World Bank’s website is an especially good one for comparing the two.
As many of us already know the most precious resource on Earth is drinking water ~ life soon collapses without it. Not only do we use it very unsustainably, but we have a passion for polluting much of the rest. Oh well 🙁
Image: Four oil palm plantations connected to the Palmas del Espino company are proposed in the northern Peruvian Amazon. Photograph: David Hill/David HillFour oil palm plantations connected to the Palmas del Espino company are proposed in the northern Peruvian Amazon. Photograph: David Hill/David Hill
Although this is potentially dire for the Peruvian Amazon ~ I’m very encouraged to read about the approach of some administrators. We can see normal political trickery in approving the destruction just before going out of office. All too often nothing would have been done about that & it would remain the status quo. This time though folk are saying ‘hang on, that’s not right’. Even more interesting is that they will investigate previous permissions to see if they honoured the law. They have my support for that approach. Mike 🙂
Image: Marriage equality support in US
First I was really disappointed to see that this topic is important enough for the blue-chips to spend effort on it. But soon after I realized that actually it is indeed a very good initiative. It could be very helpful to help the efforts against overpopulation 🙂
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google team up to support marriage equality
