Tag: environment

How the US Military is Preparing for Climate Change – The Green Line – Ep 1

How the US Military is Preparing for Climate Change - The Green LineWhilst debates around Climate Change still rage on US TV, the US Military has been quietly preparing for the now inevitable. Planners are now acutely aware of just how quick Climate Change is coming down upon us, and how dramatically it will change the geopolitics of the planet. What wargames are the military running in preparation for this? Which theatres do they project to be the most impacted? and is the US ready for a worst-case scenario? We ask our panel of experts. On the panel this week: – Sharon Burke (Ecospherics/Fmr White House) – John Conger (Center for Climate and Security/Fmr White House) – Larry Wilkerson (Fmr Chief of Staff to Colin Powell) This is Part 1 of our special 5-Part Series focusing on The Geopolitics of Climate Change This Production was Brought to you by The Red Line and Mission Climate Project

LINKS:

https://theredline.libsyn.com/how-the-us-military-is-preparing-for-climate-change-the-green-line-ep-1

https://www.theredlinepodcast.com/post/how-the-us-military-is-preparing-for-climate-change

Global wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970, WWF report finds

The Amazon pink river dolphin population has dropped drastically in 22 years.
The Amazon pink river dolphin population has dropped drastically in 22 years.

The world’s wildlife populations plummeted by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018, a dangerous decline resulting from climate change and other human activity, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned in a report Thursday.

LINK: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/world/wwf-living-planet-report-2022-climate-intl-scli-scn/index.html

Living in the Time of Dying

Living in The Time of Dying is an unflinching look at what it means to be living in the midst of climate catastrophe and finding purpose and meaning within it. Recognising the magnitude of the climate crisis we are facing, independent filmmaker Michael Shaw, sells his house to travel around the world looking for answers. Pretty soon we begin to see how deep the predicament goes along with the systems and ways of thinking that brought us here.

Featured in this documentary are Professor of Sustainability and founder of the Deep Adaptation movement Jem Bendell, award winning journalist and author of “The End of Ice” , Dahr Jamail, Dharma teacher and author of Facing Extinction Catherine Ingram and Stan Rushworth, a Native American Elder, teacher and author who brings an especially enlightening viewpoint to these questions.

While it becomes clear that catastrophic climate change is now inevitable it also opens up a whole new set of questions: How exactly did we arrive at this point? What new choices can we make now re how to live our lives and what actions make sense at this time. The people interviewed in the documentary, all highly regarded and well known spokespeople on the issue, argue it’s too late to stop what is coming but in no way is it too late to regain a renewed, life giving relationship with our selves and our world.

Bruno Latour’s ‘Facing Gaia’ with Tim Howles

Bruno Latour's 'Facing Gaia' with Tim HowlesTim is Junior Research Fellow in Political Theology at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and Researcher Director at the “Laudato Si’ Research Institute”, a new institute conducting academic research in the field of ecology and social change. He is also an ordained Priest in the Church of England. In this episode we discuss Bruno Latour’s text ‘Facing Gaia’.

 

LINK: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bruno-latours-72594262

These Trees Are Spreading North in Alaska. That’s Not Good

White spruce trees are expanding into the Arctic tundra with stunning speed, with potentially serious consequences both for the region and the world.

These Trees Are Spreading North in Alaska. That’s Not Good
IN THE SUMMER of 2019, Roman Dial and his friend Brad Meiklejohn hired a single-engine bush plane out of Kotzebue, on the northwest coast of Alaska. Even those wings could only get them within a five-day hike of where they wanted to be: deep in the tundra, where Dial had noticed peculiar shadows showing up in satellite images.

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More than 1,700 environmental activists murdered in the past decade – report

Figures likely to be an underestimate, says Global Witness, as land defenders are killed by hitmen, crime groups and governments

Climate activists hold up portraits of slain Philippine environmental defenders during a climate justice protest last November. Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Climate activists hold up portraits of slain Philippine environmental defenders during a climate justice protest last November. Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

More than 1,700 murders of environmental activists were recorded over the past decade, an average of a killing nearly every two days, according to a new report.

Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, figures from Global Witness show, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.

The NGO has published its report on the killings of land and environmental defenders around the world every year since 2012, after the murder of Chut Wutty, a Cambodian environmentalist who worked with the Global Witness CEO Mike Davis investigating illegal logging. Killings hit a record of 227 in 2020 despite the pandemic.

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‘Forever chemicals’ detected in all umbilical cord blood in 40 studies

Studies collectively examined nearly 30,000 samples over the past five years in ‘disturbing’ findings

‘Forever chemicals’ detected in all umbilical cord blood in 40 studies
Biobank, tube containing umbilical cord stem cells. Photograph: Bsip Sa/Alamy

Toxic PFAS chemicals were detected in every umbilical cord blood sample across 40 studies conducted over the last five years, a new review of scientific literature from around the world has found.

The studies collectively examined nearly 30,000 samples, and many linked fetal PFAS exposure to health complications in unborn babies, young children and later in life. The studies’ findings are “disturbing”, said Uloma Uche, an environmental health science fellow with the Environmental Working Group, which analyzed the peer-reviewed studies’ data.

“Even before you’ve come into the world, you’re already exposed to PFAS,” she said.

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Arctic System Collapse? Devastating new research.

Prog-215-Arctic-Sea-Ice-transcript download
The arctic region is a key driver of global climate patterns. In the summer of 2022, three peer reviewed research papers were published, all of which showed the systems that have kept the arctic stable for thousands of years are now collapsing far more quickly than previous analysis and modelling had suggested. A fourth paper, published at the same time, shows us what the consequences are likely to be. This video assesses all four.

Project Unabom

Project Unabom

Decades after Ted Kaczynski was caught, society is still asking some of the same questions about him: Is Ted a genius who went astray? Or simply a madman who murdered three people in cold blood? Project Unabom takes an in-depth look back at the Unabomber saga and Ted Kaczynski’s legacy from the perspective of FBI agents who worked to solve the case, his brother who turned him in, and Ted’s very own writings. New episodes out every Monday. Project Unabom is an Apple Original podcast, produced by Pineapple Street Studios. Listen and follow on Apple Podcasts.

Download all episodes here.

https://www.audacy.com/podcasts/project-unabom-149264

What will actually happen when the so-called ‘Doomsday Glacier’ disintegrates?

Has the word ‘doomsday’ lost all meaning?

Ice entering the ocean might look like this. Credit: Getty / Posnov
Ice entering the ocean might look like this. Credit: Getty / Posnov

As many climate change activists are pointing out lately, the “doomsday” implied in the term “Doomsday Glacier” — the nickname given to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica — may be coming soon. But what will that day actually be like?

As noted in a scary new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by geological oceanographer Alastair G. C. Graham, the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica may be closer to a major disintegration event than previously thought.

Here’s what’s new in our understanding of this situation: This new study involved analyzing ridges on the sea floor. These rib-like formations reveal strong evidence of the glacier’s location for centuries as the tide nudged it each day. This is different from previously gathered data about the glacier, which was pulled from satellite maps of the ice as it edges further and further toward a total (or near total) collapse into the ocean,

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