From Katharine Hayhoe's newsletter, "Talking Climate"
In late April, in the coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia, something remarkable happened. Representatives from 57 countries from across the globe gathered for the first-ever conference dedicated to transitioning away from fossil fuels.
After three decades of UN climate negotiations and still-rising emissions, many countries have had enough. As COP30 in Belem wrapped up last November, Colombia and the Netherlands announced they were co-hosting this new conference to provide a kind of practical reckoning: what does leaving fossil fuels behind actually look like, and how do we collectively get there?
The conference was inspired by the Fossil Fuel Treaty, a concept developed by my fellow Canadian and lifetime climate advocate, Tzeporah Berman. She explains it here so perfectly, you’ll wonder why everyone doesn’t see it as a no-brainer!
“We decided not to resign ourselves to an economy built on the destruction of life. We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete, political and collective endeavour,” said Irene Vélez Torres, chair of the talks and Colombia’s environment minister. “When people look back on us from the future, they will remember whether or not we rose to the challenge of our time.”
The countries who showed up represent over half of global GDP, roughly one-third of energy demand, and about 20% of fossil fuel supply. They describe themselves as the “coalition of the willing” and all pledged to develop voluntary roadmaps for drawing down their fossil fuel use.
Next year’s conference will take place in Tuvalu co-hosted by Ireland, and participating countries have been asked to have drafted their roadmaps by then.
Tuvalu is an archipelagic country in the Polynesian sub-region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.
Tuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5° and 10° south and between the longitude of 176° and 180°. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2022 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,643, making it the 194th most populous country, exceeding only Niue and the Vatican City in population. Tuvalu's total land area is 25.14 square kilometres (9.71 sq mi).
Today I'm sharing a far-off bit of environmental interest. Not exactly far-out as we hippies used to say.
In my own life I'm moving toward dependence upon the real people in my life, sorry blogger friends. Yes you are definitely important, but when I need a ride, or help deciding what to pack, or even packing, or definitely how to get from here to there...I need people who are walking around within my own region. Not Tuvalu-ans. Not bloggers who I know and love, but only interact with a few minutes a day. Sorry guys and gals.
So if I'm missing in making comments, just know I'm reading as many blogs as this defunct program posts...and if I don't even post daily, I'm still here! I now understand how and why so many bloggers have backed slowly away.
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My steadily improving health is somewhat remarkable. Before pneumonia I would at times be a bit light headed, and walked around holding onto furniture inside. Outside I'd get out of breath easily. I spoke to several doctors/nurses about this, and one prescribed an anti-nausea drug, which also can make one sleepy (Meclizine)
I've learned sleepy side effects mean this is a central nervous system depressant, which is not good for my breathing needs. So that's put away for now.
And after sitting around the first 4 weeks post hospitalization, I am now having consistent 93 pulse ox readings, no matter what I'm doing. I'm not using the oxygen for moving around any of the daytime. I don't get out of breath walking across the parking lot to the mailboxes most days. There are still some ups and downs.
Bronchiectasis may not go away, and I still will continue to encourage the healthy coughing to clear my lungs with various devices and drugs. Yet having days with minimal coughing means my energy can be used in other pursuits!
The other day I dusted my bedside table and lampshade. Whew, did they need it. Since I don't have a regular cleaner, I am doing what I can when I can. Baby steps.
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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. |
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. |
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What if, when we write we are participating in Earth’s generativity—the same exact process that creates trees and insects, clouds and flowers—creativity itself?
To some writers, words seem to come from above. When Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, was asked about how he began writing a new work, he said: “I don’t understand the process of imagination—though I know that I am very much at its mercy. I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon.” Similarly, the novelist Henry Miller thought artists were people who had antennas attached to their heads that were hooked up “to the currents which are in the atmosphere, in the cosmos,” and that all the elements that go into a great novel or poem “are already in the air” just waiting for us to give them voice.
For me, writing is a gesture of the body, a gesture of creativity, a working from the inside out,” wrote Gloria Anzaldúa in Light in the Dark / Luz en lo Oscuro. “The material body is center, and central. The body is the ground of thought. The body is a text. Writing is not about being in your head; it’s about being in your body.”
Of course, what happens beneath our skin and inside our skulls is connected to everything else. Our bodies need water and the energy from glucose to function, glucose that ultimately comes from photosynthesis: the miracle of plants pulling sugar out of sunlight in the sky.
IT’S TEMPTING TO ASSUME, especially when we use misleading terms like “the cloud” to describe digital storage, that ChatGPT generates words out of thin air. But AI is just as industrial as car manufacturing and mechanizes the written word to the point of absurdity. Like our human bodies, ChatGPT requires water, earth, minerals, and electricity. Once, I asked my students to spend five minutes writing about the internet as a place. None of them described, or even imagined, data centers.
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