Americans thinking about global warming

 From Yale's Climate Communications, What do Americans think is the Biggest threat from Global warming?

62% of those surveyed (n=1,037) answered the open ended question, which researchers gathered into these categories. For more on what each one really signifies, go to the original article.

They then break it down between the political parties...with no surprise there. Democrats are concerned, more Republicans either deny it or think weather change isn't related.

I really appreciate that they describe their methods. The scientific methods need to be known by all of us.

Hope you all have a great weekend. We're due for rain on Friday (when you're reading this) so I put all the outside plants out to get some last good watering. 

And for a smile:

Frederick Stanley's art on Saturday Evening Post cover, 1935.

Children impacted by climate chaos already

 CNN published that 20,000 children per day were displaced from effects of climate change, according to UNICEF.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/06/world/children-displaced-floods-fires-unicef-climate-intl/index.html

"More than 43 million children have been driven from their homes by floods, storms, droughts and wildfires over the six years between 2016 and 2021, according to new data from UNICEF. That works out to 20,000 children displaced every single day due to extreme weather fueled by climate change.

"...East Asia and the Pacific have been particularly affected. In 2020, Cyclone Amphan led to 1.5 million child displacements across India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan. In 2021, Typhoon Rai caused 1.5 million child displacements across the Philippines, Palau and Vietnam.

"By overall numbers of displacements, three countries dominated: the Philippines, India and China, where a total of 23 million children were forced from their homes and schools across the six-year period."

And how many of us think from our privileged position in the west, that "At least those aren't Our Children!"

OMG!

We're all neighbors on this one green and blue ball of the earth.

Just think of the people we've considered more our neighbors after wars have begun in Israel, and earlier in the Ukraine. 

Those 20,000 children per day are ours. 

When Afghanistan recently had 3 earthquakes, I thought of the refugee families who still have relatives living there. Though they are now new Americans, they still are very connected to their home country. And yet, many people in my own community in North Carolina have been instrumental in their new lives, their safety.

Yes this is how it will happen. The Climate Crisis will hit the poor, those living close to the edges of life, and they will be the first to suffer. We cannot just distance ourselves from them. We are just a day or month or two away from the same circumstances.

I got a kick out of Biden saying on "60 Minutes" the other night, "We are the damn United States of America!" in response to whether we could help Israel. He believes in our might, our power. 

But he's not thinking of using it against the forces that will really undermine our civilization, and may end human existence on this dear earth.

Links to NPR on Climate Change

I love streaming NPR classical radio here on my laptop...with a set of better speakers plugged in as well. But you may have noticed I sometimes share an article that they've posted...

These are links to audio files, pretty short, but since they all relate to the damage from the Climate Chaos to historic places and ways of life, it's a different approach for me to share. If you don't listen to links, I understand completely.

 NPR's Chloe Veltman is covering the connection between climate change and heritage. Her special series, Protecting Cultural Heritage in a Warming World, looks at communities threatened by wildfire, sea level rise and more. She says she wanted to explore both urban and indigenous communities. "Cultural heritage isn't just old buildings with plaques on them — it's ways of life," she says.

Take a look at the many ways the shifting climate has changed our world: 

 The canals that carry Venice's famous gondolas are putting the city at risk. UNESCO says Italian authorities aren't doing enough to protect the city's historic buildings from sea level rise, extreme weather and overtourism.
 In San Francisco, officials are considering raising the landmark Ferry Building by 7 feet to protect the city's waterfront from the sea.
 The Oak Fire that burned in California last summer devastated the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. They're fighting to keep their traditions — like cultural burning — alive.
 Paramount Ranch has been on the silver screen for almost a century in shows like Klondike Annie and Westworld. After the 2018 Woolsey Fire incinerated most structures, workers must decide what to save and what to let go as they rebuild.

Want more of Chloe's coverage? Keep an eye out for a bonus installment in the series during NPR's Climate Solutions Week, starting Oct. 2. 

You may have seen this photo before on a blog about Sepia Saturday. I still laugh when I see it, wondering what the song may have been...

Today's quote:

Gratitude will be the doorstop that keeps the door to your heart open. Peace and humility will be its gatekeeper. Cherish your heart, for it is from that place that you live.

NICKY MORRIS

 

Collaboration instead of competition!

 The following excerpts are from a Facebook posting as advertising. But whether it's just blarney, it's good ideas. And for Harvard Business Review (HBR) to publish such, is a good sign of working against Climate Chaos.

"... The global food system is facing the imperative to produce more with less, balancing the need to feed a growing population with the need to protect the environment and address climate change.

At the same time, business leaders face pressure from shareholders, regulators, and consumers to demonstrate progress on sustainability goals while continuing to meet financial targets.

Most organizations are taking on these challenges the traditional way: individually and competitively, seeking their own solutions as fast as they can. But there is growing realization that given the scale of the environmental issues society faces—including climate change, deforestation, and plastics pollution—this may not deliver the wide-scale change needed at the speed needed.

That’s why some future-forward leaders are using a different approach: collaboration. Working together offers the potential for organizations to expand capacity, share the costs of innovation, decrease risk-trialing multiple approaches, and increase the chance of finding solutions and adapting much faster.

The farmed-salmon sector has used this approach for the past decade, illustrating how a model of collaboration can enable change at speed and scale. Could this be the sort of transformation model the food sector needs to implement so it can address the vast nutrient and climate risks it faces?"

"... In 2013, CEOs of salmon aquaculture companies from around the world formed the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) to make the industry more sustainable. Recognizing their responsibility to advance the environmental performance of the sector, they chose to work together to pool their knowledge and resources to directly tackle the primary environmental challenges they faced."

"...Within the GSI model, members continually return to the foundation of aligned data and knowledge sharing to support changes in operations. With their commitment to working with the widely acknowledged “gold standard” for certification in aquaculture—the Aquaculture Stewardship Council—and in monitoring the impacts of a changing climate on fish welfare, GSI’s model of bringing companies and CEOs together is to find the common sustainability issues where each company is dependent on improving a shared ecosystem. At its core, this is an intuitive model that other sectors facing shared environmental challenges could easily replicate.

GSI’s model is founded on the premise that if you convene technically adept leaders, give them sufficient data, and allow them to discuss and share ideas, they are likely to find a solution—or at least open the door to new approaches.

One intended consequence of the GSI model is that collaboration doesn’t stop at industry walls. Other stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations recognized GSI for its model of working together and setting clear goals with pragmatic plans by acting as a united voice and inviting both supporters and critics to guide GSI in the right direction. GSI has built partnerships with groups, including World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to develop industrywide improvement programs that strengthen the sector’s environmental performance and credibility. Not all sectors succeed at using this multi-stakeholder approach, but the scale of current global challenges makes collaboration among industry, academia, environmental groups, and policymakers crucial in supporting sectors prioritizing the right initiatives and everyone working off the right information. The salmon sector has not always had many allies in different sectors, but GSI shows that through a commitment to open dialogue and partnership, it is possible to unite groups on a sustainable journey.

Embrace Pre-Competitive Collaboration

GSI calls the collective insight-sharing strategy of its salmon-farming member companies “pre-competitive collaboration”—a term that seems to be gaining traction in the aquaculture sector following the work of GSI. But now the question is how the benefits of collaboration can be expanded in other sectors.

Pre-competitive collaboration is especially effective in industries whose companies use shared resources or face shared challenges. “The private sector can’t just say, ‘I’m doing my part and in my silo,’ without realizing they’re part of a global system,” says Jason Clay, SVP, markets, and executive director, Markets Institute at WWF.

In a time when the global food system is facing mounting pressure, natural resources are being exhausted, and climate change is reaching critical mass, the planet can’t afford to inch toward sustainability one enterprise at a time. Organizations need to embrace collaboration not as an idealistic buzzword, but rather as a critical strategy to make their businesses thrive for the long term.

If more organizations in more sectors embrace the pre-competitive collaboration model that’s succeeding in salmon aquaculture, there is a stronger chance that humanity can make massive strides in our ability to feed the world with nutritious, climate-resilient food."

---

Learn more about GSI’s work.

SOURCE: Harvard Business Review posted on Facebook

I still purchase wild-caught salmon rather than farmed. Just my choice. Pay a bit more.

Someone posted this great shot of a roadrunner. I'm reminded my car is the Blue Ridge Roadrunner! We need to be running up there again soon!

Climate Justice as the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication gave a new report on Sept. 12, 2023.

• Large majorities of registered voters support a variety of policies (see chart above) that promote climate justice goals, including:

  • Creating more parks and green spaces in low-income communities and communities of color (81%)
  • Strengthening enforcement of industrial pollution limits in low-income communities and communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by air and water pollution (77%)
  • Providing federal funding to make residential buildings in low-income communities more energy efficient (76%)
  • Developing a national program to train people from low-income communities and communities of color for new jobs in the renewable energy industry (75%)
  • Developing a national program to train people who work in the fossil fuel industry for new jobs in the renewable energy industry (75%)
  • Increasing federal funding to low-income communities and communities of color who are disproportionately impacted by air and water pollution (70%)
  • Transitioning the U.S. economy (including electric utilities, transportation, buildings, and industry) from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050 (69%)

The full report includes many other important results, including Americans’ perceptions of which groups are harmed most by global warming, their support for making climate justice a federal priority, and their willingness to participate in a campaign to urge elected officials to take action on climate justice.

Sad photos of Maui

 Reality hits us over our heads sometimes. COVID did that.

 Climate chaos is another.

Wildfires in Hawaii seem far away from my North Carolina life. But wait, a new acquaintence I met working for Climate Change is from Maui. 

When  I tried to post on FB some articles from BBC they didn't get posted.  I made a comment about it, and a friend said she could see them. So there was just a lag time of about 15 minutes. Strange.

So here is a NPR link for some amazing before and after photos. Satellite images before and after.

And here's the link to the relevant article from BBC, interviews with visitors from Kansas who had to spend 4 hours in the ocean, and a local resident of Lahaina. Survivors describe.

My new friend's FB post did go out, listing places where shelters are open, where gasoline is available. Even a list of names accounted for and still missing. That really brings it home to me. Real people's addresses, which have probably been destroyed. Somehow this is more touching than the war in Ukraine. At least to me.

Sorry, I'm stuck with just links, and the short clips shown on the broadcast news.

This is Climate Chaos....in my humble opinion. So sad to read about the loss and suffering. But talking about it is the way I accept the shock, and acknowledge my feelings.

Today's quote:

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

JOSEPH ADDISON

Climate Chaos is all around us!

 

THis comes to my mailbox a day late...somehow. Perhaps it's published after I go to bed! Heather Cox Richardson said this July 26, 2023

"Yesterday a team of international researchers confirmed that human-caused climate change is driving the life-threatening heat waves in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has broken more than 2,000 high temperature records in the past month, and it looks like July will be the hottest month on Earth since scientists have kept records.

Another study published yesterday warns that the Atlantic currents that transport warm water from the tropics north are in danger of collapsing as early as 2025 and as late as 2095, with a central estimate of 2050. As Arctic ice melts, the cold water that sinks and pulls the current northward is warming, slowing the mechanism that moves the currents. The collapse of that system would disrupt rain patterns in India, South America, and West Africa, endangering the food supplies for billions of people. It would also raise sea levels on the North American east coast and create storms and colder temperatures in Europe.

On Sunday and Monday, the ocean water off the tip of Florida reached temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), the same temperature as an average hot tub. According to the Coral Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Florida’s Key Largo that works to protect coral reefs, the hot water has created “a severe and urgent crisis,” with mortality up to 100%. The Mediterranean Sea also hit a record high this week, reaching 83.1 degrees Fahrenheit (28.4 Celsius).

An op-ed by David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times today noted that more land burned in Quebec in June than in the previous 20 years combined; across Canada, more than 25 million acres burned. And most of Canada’s fire season is still ahead.

Professor Ian Lowe of Australia’s Griffith University told The Guardian that he recalled reading the 1985 report that identified the link between greenhouse gasses and climate change, and worked to draw public attention to it. “Now all the projected changes are happening,” he said. “I reflect on how much needless environmental damage and human suffering will result from the work of those politicians, business leaders and public figures who have prevented concerted action. History will judge them very harshly.”

Former vice president Mike Pence, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, today unveiled his economic proposal. It calls for eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Biden administration’s incentives designed to address climate change.

In that, he is in line with Republican lawmakers. Earlier this month, Mike Magner in Roll Call noted that at least four of the bills released so far by the House Appropriations Committee for 2024 include cutting funding to address climate change that Congress appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act. Project 2025, which has provided the blueprint for a Trump presidency, says “the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding,” and calls for more use of fossil fuels.

A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Columbia University says that court cases related to climate change have more than doubled in five years. Thirty-four of the 2,180 lawsuits have been brought forward on behalf of children, teens, and young adults."

Letters from An American