Compiled by Dick Bennett.
OMNI’s War and Warming Newsletter (jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com)
Veterans for Peace
Jake Bittle. The Great Displacement. Bittle has been writing and fact-checking for Popular Science since 2018. Kirkpatrick Sale. “The Dangerous Contrivance of ‘Climate Change.’”
Sale has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology.
David Suzuki.. “There’s Still Time to Avoid Climate
Catastrophe.” Suzuki is a science broadcaster, and environmental activist with a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago.
GROWING RECOGNICATION OF DANGEROUS CONVERGENCE OF THE TWO EXISTENTIAL THREATS TO CIVILIZATION AND PLANET: NUCLEAR WAR AND GLOBAL WARMING
VETERANS FOR PEACE 2023 Convention opened with a panel on the Climate Crisis and Militarism
Jake Bittle. The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Simon & Schuster, 2023. Reviewed by
Leah Aronowski. “It Only Gets Worse.” The Nation (8.7-14.23). “Climate change and the displacement that will remake North America.”
“Bittle takes us to seven different places and chronicles the stories of individual Americans who are already navigating displacement and attempting—often unsuccessfully—to rebuild their lives.” Bittle focuses especially on racism, economic inequality, and the “real estate state” against regulation. He offers several remedies and the general principle of the “universal right to shelter.”
KIRKPATRICK SALE. “The Dangerous Contrivance of “Climate Change.’” CounterPunch. AUGUST 24, 2023.
The Dangerous Contrivance of “Climate Change” – CounterPunch.org
It’s time to put an end to this whole “climate change” contrivance.
In the first place, “climate change” is meaningless jargon. Of course climate changes, that’s what seasons are for. What the U.N. IPCC reports are all about is global overheating, that’s the problem—and its attendant problems, a decrease in the reflective albedo effect, ice melting at the poles and mountains, oceans rising and overheating, excessive moisture and altered weather patterns, and excessive heat on the earth, seriously affecting both humans and rainforests. And that leaves out non-attendant problems like ocean acidification and coral reef destruction, and the extinction of species on an unprecedented scale.
In the second, the problem of global overheating is so acute and pervasive that no amount of meliorative efforts that may be made now has any chance of halting it or reining it in. For all the talk of limiting carbon dioxide emissions, these have increased steadily for the last two decades and show no signs of slowing, and world temperatures have increased steadily as well, with the hottest years since 1850 coming in the last five years. There are no actions by humans underway now or even contemplated in the next decades that, even if efficiently undertaken and carried out—which is problematic—have any chance of changing that in any serious way. The Paris limit of 1.5 Celsius overheating will be passed within a year.
And in the third, all the talk about “climate change” directs the world’s attention away from what is the real central problem: the effect of unmitigated capitalist growth ravaging the resources and systems of the earth and its atmosphere. Once understood as the problem, it becomes obvious that nothing whatsoever that is being talked about under the silly rubric “climate change” will come close to pointing us in the direction of a solution. Indeed, once understood, it is doubtful that there is any “solution.”
Solar energy captured non-mechanically, wind power used at a human scale, and water power in limited circumstances might well prove to be the best energy sources for a modest environmentally adjusted human society. But what is going on now is the attempt to use those sources to replace a massive global superstructure built on fossil fuels, without any diminishment of high-tech lifestyles or the consumption and consumerism it entails. It cannot be done. It is the high-tech lifestyles that must be changed.
The Dangerous Contrivance of “Climate Change” – CounterPunch.org
Common Dreams provides items on climate frequently:
David Suzuki. “There’s Still Time to Avoid Climate Catastrophe.” Common Dreams (5-7-23). If we fail to reach the goal of reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030, it won’t be for lack of options.