toward a just and sustainable world
1. What Needs To Be Done: January 26, 2021 Climate scientist Danny Harvey provides the answer. A dynamic U of T Professor of Geography, he has written two textbooks on climate science, three books on solutions, over a hundred scientific papers relating to the climate problem and has co-authored reports for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on … Read more The Climate Crisis Series
November 2021 VISION: A PEACE/ECOLOGICAL MANIFESTO The goal of a peaceful world ultimately depends on building global cooperation and achieving human security for all, within the regenerative limits of our finite planet. But humanity currently faces two existential threats to its existence: nuclear annihilation and ecological collapse, the latter arising mainly from global warming and … Read more STRATEGIC VISION FOR THE DECISIVE DECADE AND BEYOND
Thirty-three years ago climate scientist James Hansen and other climate scientists testified to a U.S. Congressional Committee and to a Senate Panel. They presented conclusive evidence of anthropogenic climate change and warned that “planning must begin now for a sharp reduction in the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that release carbon … Read more COP26 Dangerous Omissions: Amplifying Feedbacks, Human Fatalities
What first comes to my mind about “boat people” are families in rickety boats fleeing from Vietnam in the last days of that war, and now the climate and war refugees in capsizing boats, drowning in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and other oceans and seas. And emergency comes to mind reading about the climate and … Read more Deconstructing Boats on the Eve of Glasgow COP26
Today we face at least three overlapping, existential crises: militarism, the climate crisis and the collapse of biodiversity. While interrelated in many complex ways, these are separate threats, in that solving one will not eliminate the others. Climate change is certainly exacerbating the decline of species in countless ways. However, stopping climate change (if … Read more Science for Peace in the Decisive Decade
Emissions of greenhouse gases by automobile internal combustion engines and thermal electric power plants could be largely eliminated by moving over to wind and solar power sources, with storage provided by lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries. This move is partly underway. In 2019, sales of electric cars, nearly all of them powered by lithium-ion batteries, … Read more Climate preservation with lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries
Greenhouse Gases. The atmospheric CO2 concentration in 2020, worldwide, was almost 50% above the pre-industrial concentration (412 ppmv vs 280 ppmv, a 47% increase), the CH4 concentration was almost three times the pre-industrial concentration (1875 ppb vs 675 ppb, a factor of 2.78 increase), and the N2O concentration about 20% larger (330 ppb vs … Read more 10 Essential Facts about the Climate Crisis
Jim Morrison observed that you don’t get outta here alive. Though Morrison had a point, Kim Stanley Robinson sketches an optimistic scenario in which we – or many of us – do get out of the climate emergency alive. Robinson, in a book of 530 dense pages entitled The Ministry for the Future, mixes … Read more Climate Emergency: Getting Out Alive
Thomas Homer-Dixon, Commanding Hope, The Power We Have To Renew A World In Peril, Alfred A. Knopf, Canada, 2020. This book by Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon presents a startling description of several major problems that humanity now faces and suggests changes in the planetary mindset that have a significant probability of leading to an … Read more Commanding Hope: A Review