https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2023/08/omni-climate-memo-mondays-142-august-28.html
Earth Overshoot Day
Jeff Goodell. The Heat Will Kill You First
TED HAMILTON. Beyond Fossil Law: CLIMATE, COURTS, AND THE FIGHT FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.
Earth Overshoot Day
We busted Earth’s budget! By the Numbers 2022 . an
Calculate your personal Overshoot Day
Our mobile-friendly calculator is now available in eight languages. You can use it to measure your Ecological Footprint and determine your personal Earth Overshoot Day. The tool helps users learn about solutions so we can all tread more lightly on the Earth.
Earth Overshoot Day is an estimate, not an exact date. . . . .It’s not possible to determine with 100 percent accuracy the day we bust our ecological budget. But every scientific model used to account for human demand and nature’s supply shows a consistent trend: We are well over budget, and that debt is compounding. It is an ecological debt, and the interest we are paying on that mounting debt—food shortages, soil erosion, and the build-up of CO₂ in our atmosphere—comes with devastating human and monetary costs. See Climate Footprint.
| Jeff Goodell. THE HEAT WILL KILL YOU FIRST: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, by |
Publisher’s Overview
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times • A Next Big Idea Book Club Selection • The New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
Jeff Goodell’s “masterful, bracing” (David Wallace-Wells) investigation exposes “through stellar reporting, artful storytelling and fascinating scientific explanations” (Naomi Klein) an explosive new understanding of heat and the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet. “Entertaining and thoroughly researched,” (Al Gore), it will completely change the way you see the world, and despite its urgent themes, is injected with “eternal optimism” (Michael Mann) on how to combat one of the most important issues of our time.
“When heat comes, it’s invisible. It doesn’t bend tree branches or blow hair across your face to let you know it’s arrived…. The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed at you.”
The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable. It’s up to us. The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open.
The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event— one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic.
To read more about the book, here’s a review via NPR: https://www.wypr.org/2023-07-03/the-heat-will-kill-you-first-how-extreme-heat-will-change-the-world
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE for a new law of climate justice
TED HAMILTON. Beyond Fossil Law: CLIMATE, COURTS, AND THE FIGHT FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.
Beyond Fossil Law: Climate, Courts, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future answers a pressing question for the future of the planet: why is it legal for companies to pump dangerous gases into the atmosphere but illegal for regular people to stop them? Reviewing the current state of “fossil law”—the rules and regulations that allow the disruption of the global climate system—the book explains how financial interest, colonial power, and outmoded legal ideas block efforts to prevent global warming. Moving from a historical account of the origins of fossil law to ongoing battles to criminalize climate activism, the book reveals how courts, prosecutors, and police enforce the dominance of the fossil fuel industry.
But people are fighting back. Beyond Fossil Law tells the story of the Valve Turners, a group of climate activists who successfully stopped the flow of tar-sands oil to the United States in 2016. Their courtroom battles to justify an act of civil disobedience were a major step forward in crafting a new, democratic law of climate justice. Ted Hamilton examines similar efforts to dismantle fossil law, from the rights of nature movement in Latin America to groundbreaking lawsuits against governments in the United States and Europe. He shows how climate legal activism is closely linked to grassroots campaigns against government and industry abuse, and offers strategies for crafting a new law of climate justice. 240 pages