Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The Paris Accord was truly historic in its having gotten 195 nations to agree to it. In this day and age getting any agreement between nations on a matter as politically sensitive as climate change ranks as a minor miracle. Getting everyone of the nations to live up to the agreement is quite another matter.
We speak with Kevin Anderson, professor in climate change leadership at Uppsala University’s Centre for Environment and Development Studies, and 15-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg about the drastic action needed to fight climate change and the impact of President Trump on climate change activism.
Coming from a pacifist background, and obsessed with linguistics, I’ve grown uneasy with the way war shapes our words. The thought struck me earlier this year: By pitting one group against another, do war metaphors undermine our ability to address the complex problem of climate change, the biggest global crisis we face?
Blue carbon is increasingly being championed by organisations and governments as a tool for climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as addressing multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What is blue carbon, how much potential does it actually have, and how could we use it?
Okay, folks, the people at the IPCC tell us that the world has twelve years to cut carbon emissions in half. Sounds like you and I need a plan. So, here’s a Climate Warrior’s Calendar.
Drawdown was a major collaborative effort involving 70 research fellows from 40 countries. It’s not so much a cohesive plan as a list of partial solutions: 80 that are tested and in use at least somewhere in the world, and another 20 that are speculative.
That’s the point of the Extinction Rebellion. To make us all stop and think – to ask the simple question: Am I really paying attention? To what I know, to what we all now know?
Tinkering with improvements to our current ways of life is futile. We must each of us change how we live, or else be changed forever by our own effects.
My main take-away from the 2018 IPCC report is that there may still be time, but only if we can bring about a deep reimagining of what the world could be and how it might work. As Daniel Aldana Cohen put it, “we are only doomed if we do nothing”.
But what if the dual challenges facing renewables and negative emissions could be tackled together? In a recent paper, published in Earth’s Future, we find that there is considerable potential for combining a renewables-reliant electricity system with Direct Air Capture.
Climate challenges do not affect all people equally. House by house, block by block, there are huge differences in vulnerability based on geography, health status, income level and other factors. Such differences are not always visible to decision-makers. F
Permaculture is much more. It is a regenerative design science. It teaches you to think ecosystemically: no waste; cyclical; nourishing body and soul; steady state.
