. . . damn, ARE WE READY FOR THIS ??
UN IPCC
before the flood – more
czech video editor mirek lefou shares this
10 days after i posted dicaprio’s new preview
a much better chance to see his super work
one great movie, even if restricted under nat georgraphic’s new $$ fox-top
keeping it down past leonardo welcoming us all to see his best
so ok, we’ll all take part in sharing our planet first-class
i did buy the dvd soon as i could. you could too
or take a look instead at mirek’s better preview above
past that, david goncalve’s accurate, full version below, in portuguese subtitles
past these elections . . .
. . . before the flood
thanks moving-leo for reminding us
what’s going on beyond today’s voting triffles
to what’s here & ahead – planetwise
” Before the Flood, directed by Fisher Stevens, captures a three-year personal journey alongside Academy Award-winning actor and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio as he interviews individuals from every facet of society in both developing and developed nations who provide unique, impassioned and pragmatic views on what must be done today and in the future to prevent catastrophic disruption of life on our planet. ” ( National Geographic )
here’s posting it does just that
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
Capitalism vs The Climate
by Naomi Klein
Gotta apologize, friends of Ma, outta here this long. Can’t let it go any longer. Much of these days for wifeling, helping her recover from deep surgery. Deeper than ever we saw coming.
No, can’t leave my readers alone, having just finished Naomi’s latest –One Great Work– page by page since Sept’s Peoples Climate March, ideally released just then. Powerful, humanly – scientifically – masterly gathered. How ’bout you ? Read it by now yourself, shemovesme friend ? Hope so. If not, do get right to it. You’ll soon know why.
Wifeling hears me go on & on about the book, concluding author must be something like another Rachel Carson. Clearly Rachel herself would be cheering. Naomi’s husband Avi Lewis is making TCE into a movie. Bravo, does it ever deserve it ! But please, reader, don’t wait for it.
No, no other words for it -for what we’re facing on this beautiful planet: TCE adds up to my most basic + my most advanced education for our Ma. Last few days I’m mulling just how to write it up . . . where to start, my pages & pages of underscoring nearly as many as Naomi’s originals. Seems I’m not alone at such a pen juncture. Rob Nixon started out with a similar baffle – here’s his own NY TIMES REVIEW 11/6/14
While we’re at it, if you’re looking for more reading clues, click here for another fine interview – bk review – auth review – pub excerpt at YES MAGAZINE – THE GUARDIAN – THE NATION – SIMON & SCHUSTER
And speaking of the Times, here’s TCE’s top 20 non-fiction rating story -just #12 in its 3rd wk, #17 4th wk following release. And that’s it; since then gone. Please Ma buddies – let’s go get it !
OK back to those pages, perhaps now far enuf away to begin hearing what sticks ( as if this aging memory of mine has anything like a last word ! )
First off, Naomi, it’s your sharp, energetic, forceful approach, creatively aligned for the best of reader engagement. I’m right with you from page one. You do get right to it, those first pages blatantly topside vs. easing your way up any ladder of speel for our planet.
We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth
– p 12
This well known target ( of world climate meetings ) has more to do with minimizing economic disruption than with protecting the greatest number of people.
– p 20
Before long, it’s so evident – what a journalist ! Your research – your energy – such non-stop probing, all taking us to the very source of Ma’s debacle – unfettered corporate ideology of the market. Oh my gosh, our turn to lose what we thought we’d won in that long, cool thrash of communism so-called vs democracy so-called.
Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. A belief system that vilifies collective action and declares war on all corporate regulation and all things public simply cannot be reconciled with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reigning in of the market forces that are largely responsible for creating and deepening the crisis.
– p 48
Talk about those corp deniers. You go right to it – to them, starting your book in person at their very conference. Then to the very ones -who doesn’t think so- right with us, the biggest of our environmental friends, their size attributable -wow- to those same fossil giants.
The Nature Conservancy has been in the oil and gas business ( itself ) for a decade and a half. That this could happen in the age of climate change points to a painful reality behind the environmental movement’s catastrophic failure to effectively battle the economic interests behind our soaring emissions: large parts of the movement aren’t actually fighting those interests -they have merged with them.
– p 208
But nowhere is it about anything like hate, as my own lens knows so well, this most authentic movement for our mother. It comes from the most natural love of her beauty, you two remind us . . .
I believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
– quoting Rachel Carson herself ( 1954 ); TCE p 355
And speaking of our mother and what’s most authentic, the one time you seem to abandon a journalistic stand-off here you are connecting our planet’s fertility mission to your very own !
Finally what sticks is who you tab as earth’s best activists, known in your land as America’s first-nation folk, not only for their most natural affinity to our mother, but -admittedly most surprisingly- for such very real leadership from taking on their own land debacles to exiting courtrooms the winners. No wonder they were the very ones leading the rest of us down Broadway.
These victories add up: they have kept unaccountable millions of tons of carbon and other greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Whether or not climate change has been a primary motivator, the local movements behind them deserve to be recognized as unsung carbon keepers, who, by protecting their beloved forests, mountains, rivers, and coastlines, are helping to protect all of us.
– p 371
Naomi, I have to say in these final days of mine, presence at last is taking over. Here maine-coon Abby nestles beside me, dawn by smiling dawn, life itself so brightly in place, past any clouded yesterday. So it needs be.
I’ve always looked to Canada as America’s grounded northern conscience. Now, even as tarsands pulls your country down our lowest of corp undertakings, here you bring us home
to what’s happening, gifted planetwise;
to what’s so needed for our here & now.
lima climate deal a good deal ?
yes & no . . . vox writer brad plumer adds it all up – what the world’s national environment reps meeting in peru this month were able to prep for next year’s big paris climate summit.
yes, we’re talking at last, given what’s at stake.
no, hardly on the same page, taken who’s pounding.
≈
lima climate deal: every single country now plans to tackle emissions. sort of.
Updated by Brad Plumer on December 14, 2014, 12:10 p.m. ET@bradplumer / brad@vox.com
coal-fired cottam power station in retford, nottinghamshire, uk.
What the new UN climate deal does (and doesn’t do)
1. UNDER A NEW UN DEAL on climate change agreed to in Lima, Peru, every single country has agreed to submit a plan next year for addressing their greenhouse-gas emissions.
2. That’s a first. Past climate deals only targeted the emissions of wealthier nations and exempted fast-growing countries like China and India.
3. But there are huge caveats. The plans will all be voluntary — countries can promise to cut as much or as little as they want. And there’s no rigorous outside review. (The US wanted one, but this was opposed by China and India.)
4. Experts warn this deal isn’t enough to prevent significant global warming: the world IS STILL ON PACE for temperature increases of 3°C (5.4°F) or more by 2100. Which means how to adapt to warming has become an equally large part of these talks — especially for poor nations.
Lima Climate Action High Level Session, taken December 11, 2014. (Ministerio del Ambiente/Flickr)
At this year’s UN climate conference in Lima, Peru, representatives from 196 countries AGREED TO A DEAL that could eventually commit every nation to slow the growth of its greenhouse-gas emissions.
Over the next six months, each nation will be required to submit a plan for how it will address future emissions. These plans will form the basis of a MAJOR NEW CLIMATE AGREEMENT to be negotiated in Paris at the end of 2015 and take effect by 2020.
The actual content of each country’s plan, however, is entirely voluntary. In principle, countries are supposed to pledge to do more on climate than they’ve already been doing. But there are no rules about how emissions actually get restrained or what the timetable should be. (See items #10 and #14 HERE
Some countries have already put forward pledges:
The Obama administration HAS PLEDGED that US greenhouse-gas emissions will be 26 to 28 percent lower in 2025 than they were in 2005.
The European Union plans to reduce its emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
CHINA ALSO INTENDS TO STOP its emissions from rising past 2030 or so — and plans to ramp up its share of renewable energy.
You’ll notice that not all pledges are equal. This is by design. As part of a US-China DEAL STRUCK BEFORE THIS CONFERENCE , the United States agreed to cut its emissions immediately, whereas China’s emissions wouldn’t peak until 2030. The idea here was that China is poorer and should get more leeway to grow.
That principle was enshrined in this latest UN deal, which notes that national pledges should take into account “different national circumstances.” A country like India — where 400 million people still lack electricity — shouldn’t have to cut as quickly or as deeply as Germany. Countries are merely encouraged to explain how their pledges are both “fair” and “ambitious.”
This new accord is a conceptual break from the past. The last climate treaty, the 1997 KYOTO PROTOCOL , required only wealthy nations to cut emissions. Developing countries like China and India were exempt. There was some logic to that at the time. But nowadays, developing countries make up the majority of global carbon emissions — and excluding them doesn’t make sense:
global carbon project
So this new deal will take a different approach. Each and every country will have to pitch in to help constrain global emissions — although it’s up to them to determine how much.
The Lima deal still has a lot of question marks
There’s still a lot that’s very hazy about this climate agreement. For one, these national climate pledges are UNLIKELY TO PROVE LEGALLY BINDING in any way. That’s something that Europe had been pushing for, but was opposed by both China and the US. (it’s unlikely that Congress would ever ratify a formal treaty).
That means countries can propose whatever climate action they feel like. World leaders that submit weak plans (or fail to follow through on their pledges) won’t face any sanctions or punishments. Progress will mainly depend on peer pressure between countries.
Even monitoring the plans themselves could prove difficult. During the Lima conference, the United States tried to insist on a minimum standard for what emissions pledges must look like. It also pushed for rigorous outside review of all national plans after they were submitted. But these items were strongly opposed by China, India, and others. (India was reportedly ready to scuttle the whole deal if these items were included.)
Instead, THE FINAL LIMA DEAL simply says that countries “may include” detailed information on how and when they intend to cut emissions. (Or they may not!) There will be no formal assessment of each country’s plans. All that will happen is that, in November 2015, the UN will tally up all the national pledges and estimate how they stack up to the broader goal of preventing morethan 2°C of global warming. Otherwise, there’s little monitoring or verification.
The Lima agreement also encourages countries to come up with ways to help poorer nations adapt to the impacts of global warming, like sea-level rise or droughts. But this, too, is vague. The US and Europe have long opposed any deals that would require wealthier nations to compensate poorer countries for “loss and damages” caused by global warming (say, low-lying islands that vanish under the rising seas). So this will continue to be a point of contention.
In the meantime, wealthier nations have pledged to provide (voluntary) climate aid. Under a separate deal, nations AGREED TO RAISE $100 BILLION PER YEAR from public and private sources to help poorer countries adapt and adjust to a hotter planet. It’s still unclear where this money willcome from, however.
The deal isn’t enough to prevent significant global warming
global carbon project
Back in 2009, the world’s leaders agreed on how to define “dangerous” global warming. Basically, they said, we shouldn’t let global average temperatures rise more than 2°C (or 3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels. Otherwise, the risks from rising temperatures, extreme weather, and sea-level rise would be too great. (Here’s a MORE IN-DEPTH LOOK at how this target came about.)
Right now, however, the world is on pace to blow past that 2°C limit. And it seems unlikely that this Lima goal will avoid this fate. ONE RECENT ANALYSIS by MIT researchers looked at what was realistic to expect from countries in terms of short-term emissions pledges. (This was based on “national communications, discussions with observers of conditions in various countries, and — by necessity — a good deal of guesswork.”) Their conclusion? The 2015 pledges would fall well short of the cuts needed to stay below 2°C of global warming.
At the conference in Lima, Secretary of State John Kerry put it bluntly in a speech: “We’re still on a course leading to tragedy.”
Other onlookers have been somewhat more sanguine. Even if the latest talks won’t be enough to meet that 2°C goal, they note, building forward momentum on climate action is worthwhile in its own right. Over at Dot Earth, ANDREW REVKIN HAS MADE THE CASE that this newer, “softer” approach to climate negotiations may prove more effective than previous approaches that tried to impose hard emissions limits on countries.
Similarly, Robert Stavins, a Harvard economist who studies global climate talks, PUT IT THIS WAY : “What is mostimportant is long-term action. Each agreement is no more than one step to be followed by others. And most important now for ultimate success later is a sound foundation, which is what the Lima accord provides.”
IN AN AUGUST ESSAY , Michael Liebreich, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, noted that conditions are more favorable for climate action than they have been in the past. Many low-carbon energy sources — like wind, solar, and electric cars — are advancing faster than expected. (Others, however, like nuclear power and carbon capture for coal plants, have stalled out.) Clean-energy financing has grown to more than $250 billion per year. A climate deal could, at the very least, help nudge those trends forward.
Ultimately, however, slowing down global warming WILL REQUIRE A MASSIVE SHIFT in how the world uses energy — requiring huge changes in how we fuel our cars, power our homes, heat our buildings. At best, this deal is only a very modest step in that direction.
Further reading
HOW TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING IN 7 STEPS .
HERE’S WHAT THE WORLD WOULD LOOK LIKE if we took global warming seriously.
Past UN climate talks have failed. WILL THIS ONE BE ANY DIFFERENT ?
A GRAPHICAL LOOK at the deep divisions between rich and poor countries on climate change.
UN’s IPCC sets it out yet again- got to change it all !
on the way to next global power gathering in paris -one year away
world scientists put it to them -and us- as clearly as possible
as UN leader ban ki-moon summarizes
leaders must act; time is not on our side
YESTERDAY’S GUARDIAN MUST-READ REVIEW OF THE IPCC REPORT
… AND HERE’S BILL MCKIBBEN’S REVIEW OF THAT REPORT, ALSO IN THE GUARDIAN
illuminate it – how UN itself prepared for climate summit
couldn’t tell it any bigger or better !
( best seen full-screen )
UN’s turn today in manhattan . . .
WHAT’S POSSIBLE
today’s opening film to UN general assembly at UN CLIMATE SUMMIT
produced by earth day network
stop wars, stop the war on mother earth
Beautifully done by peace & justice hub of upcoming people’s climate march
wars on ma & one another must stop 
STOP THE WARS, STOP THE WARMING!
We are at a crossroads, faced with a climate crisis that threatens to end our world as we know it.
The signs of climate change are all around us. They include—increasingly severe weather everywhere (floods, heat waves, droughts, cyclones and wildfires), as well as melting polar ice and glaciers, rising acidic oceans, and thawing of the Siberian permafrost, which threatens release of huge, devastating, methane gas emissions.
If we pursue business as usual we face a world of food shortages caused by drought, increasing disease and deaths, and displacement from vast areas of flooded and uninhabitable terrain. We must do all in our power to stop greenhouse gas emissions, counteract the effects, and prevent the increase of global warming.
Stop the War on Mother EarthBut the developing climate emergency does not exist in isolation. And we must understand and confront the social and economic context that produced and accompanies it: war and unlimited military expenditures, corporate globalization, vast social inequality and racism.
* The US military is the single greatest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world.
* Wars by their very nature destroy the environment and burn and release massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Recent military mobilizations are pouring huge amounts of new carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
* The vast expenditures now consumed by military machines are the very resources needed for a crash program to rapidly create a renewable energy infrastructure and put millions of people to work in green jobs.
* Wars and military buildup are in large part dedicated to controlling the fossil fuel energy resources on which our present model of global economic development and endless growth depend. Resort to armed conflict is increasing as fossil fuels become more expensive and difficult to extract, transport and produce.
* Nuclear weapons, like climate change, threaten to destroy the world. There are nine nuclear-armed nations and estimated 16,400 nuclear weapons in the world. With ten wars and 34 limited conflicts now occurring, the chance of any one of them escalating to nuclear war and its unthinkable human and environmental impact is an ever-present specter. Nuclear power is not a green alternative energy. It produces large amounts of radioactive nuclear waste, poses the risk of catastrophic accidents, and contributes to the global proliferation of nuclear weapons.
* Corporate dominance and extreme social inequality are intrinsic to our expansionist global economic model.
* The UN Millennium Development Goals in conjunction with other forces have begun to lift the poorest billion of humanity out of extreme poverty. The damage now coming as a result of climate change threatens to erase and even reverse whatever progress has been made.
* The people most affected by climate change are those with the fewest resources to deal with it. With increasing environmental destruction, droughts, floods, and famine, there will be massive displacement of impoverished and desperate people leading to forced migration and regional hostilities. Within the U.S., the people most affected include the poor, those in prison or nursing homes, the disabled and others who don’t have the freedom or ability to leave when disaster threatens or strikes.
* Two examples of long-term-drought-induced Climate Wars are the tragedies in Somalia and Syria. In the latter case, a five-year drought was one of the contributors to an ongoing civil war. Somalia has been at war for twenty years, and that conflict has also embroiled neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia.
* Rather than taking emergency measures to address climate change and the needs of those impacted now, our military is preparing to control these displacements to protect “US interests”.
We who have opposed the toxic, polluting, life- and earth-destroying wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the existential threat of nuclear weapons are in total support of the People’s Climate March and its vision of a world without fossil fuels and the fires of war. We will march, we will demand divestment and fight denial, we will battle the pollution of Big Money, and we will join in demanding that the Obama administration step forward to achieve a 2015 global treaty to phase out greenhouse gas emissions.
We call on all who want to preserve our planet to join the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21st and to form a Stop the Wars, Stop the Warming Contingent. We are organizing under the following principles:
* We can’t effectively address climate change without ending war and militarism;
* We can’t end war without ending the fossil fuel energy system;
* We can’t address social injustice unless we stop using war to safeguard an economic infrastructure (based on fossil fuels) that produces and requires vast social inequality.
* We can’t end war unless we address the systemic inequality and corporate domination that requires and produces it.
* We must insist that the transition to a sustainable economy and green jobs not be accomplished at the expense of those now employed in the fossil fuel and military sectors and the communities in which they work and live. Energy and armament corporations should bear the lion’s share of the social cost to make that transition a just one.
We call on our government to –
* Undertake an emergency program to make all our cities energy efficient and to create a new energy grid based on renewable energy sources.
* End federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industries—coal, gas, oil and industrial biomass
* End the 2005 “Cheney exemption” to the Clean Water Act for gas hydraulic fracking, which threatens clean water supplies to people in some 23 states. Strictly enforce the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of 1970 in all energy production.
* Stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure, including the Keystone pipeline project, and rapidly end fracking projects and the awarding of any new offshore drilling contracts.
* Build a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy future and end subsidies for nuclear power. Implement a financial transaction tax to fund the new solar, wind, hydro, and efficiency programs we need globally and to help clean up the toxic mess of fossil and nuclear destruction.
* Join with all nuclear powers to abide by their treaty commitments and to move quickly toward mutual abolition of all nuclear weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
* Re-direct military spending to the creation of millions of green jobs and to research and develop a rapid but just transition from fossil fuels to non-polluting energy sources.
* Stop the military protection of fossil fuel interests in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.
* Bring all our troops home now from Afghanistan and Iraq, reject military attacks in Iraq, Syria and Iran, and use the billions saved to invest in energy efficient mass transit and other public infrastructure, schools, affordable housing and sustainable union-standard jobs.
* Redefine the mission of U.S. military forces as defense of the United States instead of achieving “Full Spectrum Dominance” in the service of global corporations, the fossil fuel industry, and the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against, thereby also allowing closure of most of our 1,000 or more foreign military bases.
* Stop blocking the proposals for effective international action on climate change put forward by the Group of 77 and other developing countries, starting at the UN on September 23, 2014. All countries must do something, but the countries which are most responsible for carbon emissions have the larger responsibility to commit resources to achieve an 85% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050. The wealthier developed countries should provide $100 billion to an international fund for green industrial development in less developed countries.
We can’t afford the greenhouse gas emissions arising from the way we live and from war and preparation for war. And we can’t afford the climate of mistrust and non-cooperation that military threats and intervention foster.
To successfully avert worst-case climate disaster we will need international agreements and cooperation on a scale not seen in the past; we need new approaches in order to demilitarize US foreign policy and humanize domestic policy.
We believe that most Americans will welcome these positive changes. Working together, peace, climate and social justice activists can help make this happen.
We see September 21st as the coming together of the peace, climate and social justice movements and the beginning of a groundswell of public involvement in the creation of a more peaceful, sustainable and just world.
JOIN US!
Issued by the Peace and Justice Hub of the People’s Climate March
CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL PCM POSTING, WITH CONTRIBUTOR LINKS
ma’s scientists put it to us again
Impacts of global warming to be severe, pervasive, irreversible
READ BBC’S REPORT OF UN’S LATEST IPCC STUDY RELEASED TODAY
she moves me 