#let it snow and fuck climate deniers

[tombombadildos]

Grateful that global warming doesn’t exist in Animal Crossing

[tayler-environment]

Coal and Climate Change

As mentioned in the previous post, coal is a nonrenewable energy source that climate activists are advocating to phase out of use worldwide. “AUSTRALIANS FOR COAL What is your investment dollar doing?” is one of the most perfect pieces of climate satire I have seen in a long time. At first, I thought that it would be a groundbreaking video depicting a few coal company executives finally denouncing coal as an energy resource. I was wrong, but I was not entirely unhappy that I was wrong. The dark humor embedded in the coal company’s “f*ck you” campaign describes perfectly the response of many coal companies to climate change mitigation efforts. Essentially, to please their shareholders while also staying true to their morals as humans, these coal executives just say “fuck you” and pretend their morals don’t exist. The way in which this is presented is, in a good way, misleading and quite funny. I am also completely convinced that the woman is a robot. Link: https://youtu.be/tqXzAUaTUSc (Nikolakopoulos 2014). 

On the flip side, the “Coal Power'' ad, although upbeat, is frightening. This ad frames the use of coal as distinctly American, appealing to American citizens’ deep rooted nationalism to bolster their cause. The ad describes coal as our main power source and shows clips of people happily using electricity derived from coal. The only allusion to coal’s impact on the climate, however, is at the end when the words: “Clean Coal. America’s Power” appear on the screen. This to me, is an oxymoron. Coal is arguably the dirtiest source of energy. Burning coal is one of the primary causes of human-induced climate change. There is nothing clean about coal, making this ad incredibly, in a bad way, misleading. Link: https://youtu.be/a8vLDxenusE (know1intrinsic 2008). 

We already know that coal and other nonrenewable energies are causing the climate to change. But how is it changing, and what are the effects? 

A graph of the annual average mass of three glaciers from 1955 - 2015. 

A graph showing the upward trend of global temperatures since 1880. 

In the book, graphs similar to the ones above display trends of warming temperatures year after year. This quick and radical change will have the following effects as listed in Miller and Spoolman: 

Increased melting of ice and snow

Increased methane emissions from thawing permafrost

Flooding in low-lying coastal cities from a rise in sea levels

Increased ocean acidification

More severe and prolonged drought

More intense and longer-lasting heat waves

More destructive storms and flooding

Forest loss and increased forest fires

Species extinction

Changes in where we can grow food

Spread of infectious tropical diseases

Increased photochemical smog in some areas

Economic disruption

Each and every one of these effects is already beginning to take place (Miller and Spoolman 2021, 480). 

Climate change is a pretty tough issue to think about, let alone fix. It is especially difficult for the old to imagine the effects of today’s actions years into the future. For the young, however, I think that this concept is easier to grasp. My generation is already living with the effects of climate change, and has grown up being educated on the subject. It is much easier for us to imagine how and why the situation can get worse. My hope for the planet lies in my generation and those that will come after me. I don’t think that the older generations will act on behalf of the young anytime soon, because they have a much lower stake in this issue than we do. I have heard so often that the climate crisis is the crisis of my generation. For the elderly who are solely concerned with self preservation, caring for the environment may not even be a thought because they will not live to feel the effects of their inactions. 

I think that an increased volume of climate education is the first step towards building sustainable societies. The elderly are correct in saying that children are the future, so we should shape these future minds to be incredibly climate conscious. The topic of climate change can apply to any discipline because it affects all disciplines. For example, climate change can apply to a Spanish class through its effects on Spanish sh speaking countries. It also can apply to a psychology class through examining the thought process of climate deniers and studying climate anxiety. I think that climate education as pertaining to every subject is a key component in the solution to climate change. 

On a more immediate scale, in order to minimize the effects of our already changing climate, major corporations need to commit to being carbon neutral. Corporations are responsible for a hefty percent of atmospheric emissions. A way to incentivize these corporations to change their ways is to implement a carbon tax. Essentially, the more carbon output that a company produces, the more that company pays in taxes. In a society that is propelled by money and an interest in the economy above all else, I think that this proposed solution is one of the most effective that we can conceive. Large corporations will not cease harmful practices on their own. 

Word count: 865

Question: Will actions taken today be successful at stopping the direct effects of climate change, or is it too late?

Works Cited

Nikolakopoulos, Yannis. “AUSTRALIANS FOR COAL. What Is Your Investment Dollar Doing?” YouTube. YouTube, February 28, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqXzAUaTUSc. 

know1intrinsic. “Coal Power.” YouTube. YouTube, February 21, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8vLDxenusE. 

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. Living in the Environment. 20th ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning Inc, 2021.

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 6: Iasi- Grumble Warning

Ok, so, I've fallen a bit behind on posts and the one I was working on just deleted itself in a fit of selfishness, so I plan, over the course of today, to upload three mini-updates of significantly reduced length, in an effort to not send myself mental, trying to catch up. Don't worry. You won't be missing much.

So, let's speed through day 6; for the first time on the trip I had managed to let myself wake up naturally, without my alarm or (despite their best, snore-laden efforts) room-mates prematurely rousing me. Consequently, I slept until 12 and had managed to waste a good portion of my first full day in Iasi.

I shared my room with an odd Romanian man, who we will get to later and another, eerily quiet, fairly creepy man who had sat stock still, the previous night, not moving, even to check his phone when it went off, save for one incident, where he sauntered directly over to my bunk to thrust a piece of melon into my face, to ask if I wanted some. I did not. Melon is gross. By the time I had woken up, however, both men had vacated the room, with my melon based assailant seemingly having done so permanently. I was very glad of this fact.

After a genuinely infuriating experience of trying to drag my incredibly low-end laptop through the relatively demanding experience of trying to book accommodation for Cluj-Napoca; my next destination, through AirBnB, who had also arbitrarily decided that I, all of a sudden, needed to scan my passport into the website in order to make any further bookings, for some mad reason, I finally managed to get out into Iasi, to explore the city properly. Sort of.

The sky was badly overcast, meaning, that once again, despite it being pre-sunset, my jaunt into the surrounding area would be undertaken essentially in darkness. Regardless, I pressed on to my first objective of the day; to hoover up souvenirs, like a mad tat-vaccuum.

I stopped, for what I hoped would be a flying visit, though actually ended up taking up a good portion of what remained of my day, at a gift shop I had spied on my way in to the hostel, the previous day. A timid little man greeted me upon my entry and asked what I was looking for, for whom and what my budget was. I told him and he considered for a moment, before demonstrating at wearying length each piece of stock he felt fit the bill, which, as it turned out, was nearly every piece of stock he owned. After an awfully long time, he stopped talking and I picked the piece of tat I most felt would make an appropriate gift and attempted to pay. He insisted on gift-wrapping it, despite the fact that I told him I did not need it gift wrapped, nor did I expect the structural integrity of the wrap to hold up, during my flight home. But, no. He did it anyway.

I left and, after a quick stop at a nearby mall to pick up a fridge magnet, upon which my demanding (though still nice) girlfriend insists I bring back for her, I was finally ready to explore the city. Like, for real this time.

I sat in a nearby park and pulled out the comically huge map I had been given by the hostel

I mean LOOK at it...

before feeling a bit embarrassed and putting it away, after taking a quick photo of it to take note of the highlighted areas of interest. I decided, in lieu of a better plan, to saunter between them, despite the fact that most, if not all of them just seemed to be old churches.

The walk was nice enough, with my podcasts filling my ears to distract me from the low-key mundanity and creeping cold that was setting in, though probably not of any huge interest to the blog, as it can be summed up in the single sentence “I saw some churches”. I nearly went to a museum which featured exhibits on life in the area at around 4000BC, which sounded interesting, but by the time I had arrived, it was getting close to its closing time, and so I did not.

I ended up, instead, in a nearby park, which my giganto-map had told me, I my memory served, had inspired numerous romanian poets to create their best work. It was, however, by the time I arrived, a little after sunset, and so I was only really inspired to leave.

Finally, I made a quick stop at LIDL to buy far, far, far too many pastries to make my nine hour train ride the following day, less shit.

The LIDL, though quite nice, had the curious flaw of not having any baskets for me to use, hanging around. People had trolleys, but I had no idea from where they originated. Instead, I was forced to just sort of fill my pockets, tuck under my arm and otherwise clutch onto the not insubstantial amount of things I wanted to buy. It was awkward and uncomfortable and for some time afterwards, my hands more resembled talons, but I powered through, little soldier that I am, and made my pleasingly cheap purchases. I remembered to buy a bag for the walk home.

I returned to the hostel and set about my evening bibble before being interrupted by my strange Romanian room-mate, whom I had previously mentioned. He stumbled into the room.

“...Deed you see the city?”

“Sorry?”

“...Deed you go and look at thee ceety?”

“What, today?” I asked, feeling vaguely affronted, like he was judging me for being in the hostel so often, when I could be outside exploring this gloriously mundane town. “Yes, I just got back.” I challenged, adding “I was out walking around for like five hours”, just to make him feel like a real piece of shit.

He seemed to drop the subject and wandered over to the window.

“You know eet was snoweenk earlier?” he said, desperate to prove that I wasn't paying enough attention to the outside world, apparently.

“Oh” I replied. “No, I didn't.”

“Yeah, its stopped now, theenk you meesed it”

Oh, fuck off.

“Ah, well, there'll always be more snow...” I said, philosophically.

“Who knows, man” he answered back, also philosophically, but at the same time, stupidly. “Weenters are getting warmer, you know”

“Yeah, true...” I mumbled back, out of politeness

“When I was a keed, always such huge snow in weenter, but nowadays, not so much”

“Well, that's global warming for you...”. My stock reply to people talking about weather I'm not interested in.

“...I don't believe so much in global warmeenk”

...Oh, no.

“Oh?” I queried, knowing full well that I was getting dragged down this rabbit hole, whether I wanted or not.

“Yeah, I mean it maybe happens, but its effect is like a drop in the ocean, compared to the governments weather controlling”

“...Wat.” I thought, and also accidentally said out loud.

“You know, chemtrails etc, you know government controls weather right?”

I wanted to just nod and smile, but I couldn't bring myself to. I had never actually come face-to-face with someone who harboured such a stupid belief. You hear about climate change deniers, flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers, but you don't honestly believe they exist. They're like Santa, or happiness.

“...I actually think that's a very dangerous opinion to hold, let alone spread. There's literally no evidence or science behind it, whatsoever.”

“Ah, you know science isn't always right? These scientists theenk something and then, a few years later, eets replaced by a new thing”

“Yes, but it's always replaced with more science...not just a wild, mental guess”

I don't remember exactly what he said after this, but ��I recall it being stupid. Something to the effect of “oh yeah? Then why do we have less snow now?”

I decided, at that point, just to drop it and be angry.

We talked a short while longer, before he vanished back into the common room to study for the university course he was undertaking while living here, which was also weird. Psychology, if you're interested, because of course it was. I have know idea what kind inperceptible mentalist lure has lodged itself at the heart of that subject, but, my god, it is there.

I bibbled a while longer, before sauntering down to finally use the shit, hostel kitchen to make some sandwiches; both for tomorrow's trip and tonight's dinner.

The climate change denier was in the kitchen, talking to some girl wearing a rough, loose fitting jumper, with her hair pinned up in neat dreadlocks.

“Oh, wow.” I thought to myself. The conversation I'm walking into is going to be fucking ridiculous.

“...You know why you're not supposed to eat fruit after a meal?” the man, let's call him Mental Andrei, said.

“Yeah, of course...” the girl replied, seemingly trying to make herself seem knowledgeable about a subject which was categorically mental and had no underpinning in facts.

“Because” Andrei continued “the food is already in your intestines and so the fruit goes straight through the stomach and go to the other food and it ferments and makes you feel sick. Maybe even make you vomit!”

I wanted so badly to tell him that what he said was fundamentally ridiculous; that a) food does not move from the stomach to intestine immediately after you eat it, that b) adding more food afterwards doesn't immediately mean that that food bypasses the stomach, like there's a big open plug-hole going straight through to your colon, which slowly closes again several hours after a meal and most crucially c) that humans have been eating and drinking fermented fruits for probably thousands of years, however, I kept tight-lipped, reasoning that to correct them would at best be a waste of breath and at worst, be an inescapable portal into their conversation.

I set about making my sandwiches, which were awful. Normally, I'd do a long description about how they were like someone throwing up into my nose and me snorting it into the back of my throat then swishing it around my mouth and that's what they tasted like, but because I'm trying to be brief today, I will simply say eating these sandwiches was like being kicked in the mouth by a shoe made of rotten meat. It was a sad, dry, gristly affair and I did not like it. Good thing I had just made four of them for tomorrow.

I then turned in to bed, eager to sleep, which which I did, after tossing and turning for a while, for at least an hour or so, before some absolute thundering prick decided the following things constituted acceptable behaviour; checking in at 3am; having a tour of the room and its amenities by the receptionist at this time; switching the room's lights on while he put took his stuff in; loudly and clumsily putting all his clothes away on /hangers/, directly next to the bed of someone, whom, for all intents and purposes, he could have happily assumed was still asleep; leaving the room, lights still on to have a shower, in the bathroom located directly through the wobbly cardboard wall from my bed and finally, coming back to bed to sit up, lights still on for a good hour or so afterwards, loudly coughing, turning the pages of his book and chuckling to himself.

It was a good thing I didn't have anything strenuous to do the next day.

...Oh, wait.

[coldrealitycampaigns]

Some Good News: We are all crew on this voyage

Greenpeace ship Esperanza on her route towards Antarctica in a Force 10 storm.

About a month ago, Deutsche Welle journalist Irene Quaile AKA Iceblogger wrote, in a piece titled Some Arctic good news – not #fakenews!

“With the environment and climate under constant fire from the actions of President Trump, it is great to end the week with a little piece of good news”.

“One thing that made me smile was the announcement that the famous cruise ship operator Hurtigruten had signed the Arctic Commitment, calling for a ban on the use of marine heavy fuel oil (HFO) in the Arctic.”

“So let’s go into the weekend with a round of applause for the tireless campaigners for a clean Arctic. It is hard for an environment journalist to be optimistic in these difficult times. But every little helps. And winning over the cruise ship industry which so many people associate with holiday expeditions into remote areas with intact nature and spectacular wildlife would be a great way to get a wider public “on board” for the voyage to protecting the icy regions of our warming planet.”

We’re about to enter another weekend, when tired campaigners for human rights, civil rights, animal rights, and the environment try to sleep a bit later than usual. Unless they have small kids. But while they try to rest, the nihilistic free market economics machine rumbles machine, and its detrimental impact upon the world continues. The current chapter of the Dakota pipeline protest is closing, but this could be the start of something remarkable, not the end. The New York Times tell us that President Trump is taking aim at the environment and all manner of scary stuff being predicted for the North Atlantic. So on a Friday afternoon I find myself harking back to Irene’s comments.

As someone who works as a communications advisor to environmental campaigns, I like to tell myself that I’m not just a “PR guy” peddling #AlternativeFacts. I work to promote and protect a brand, and that brand is Planet Earth.

One of the organisations I work with, the Clean Arctic Alliance, is campaigning to get heavy fuel oil out of Arctic shipping. Last month, in Tromsø, Norway, we launched the Arctic Commitment, calling on the international community to sign up, and thereby contribute to protecting Arctic communities and ecosystems from the risks posed by the use of HFO. Read more: This is How You Make an Arctic Commitment.

By burning HFO, ships sailing in the Arctic – and anywhere else –  harmful emissions of air pollutants, including sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide, particulate matter, and black carbon. When emissions from HFO are deposited on Arctic snow or ice, the climate warming effect from the black carbon is at least three times more than when emitted over open ocean – leading to even more accelerated melt. So, it’s crucial that the global shipping industry start shifting away towards a fossil fuel free future – something that may be hastened by last week’s EU vote to include the shipping industry in Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

There’s more. Next week, the European Parliament will is expected to pass its Arctic resolution, a broad document that, amongst other things, includes a recommendation to a ban on heavy fuel oil from the Arctic. In July, we’re expecting member countries of the International Maritime Organization to start the ball rolling on eventual ban, thanks to unprecedented interest in the issue.

Another recent piece of good news – widely reported, then swept away by all the bad news was a story from my homeland, Ireland. A bill introduced by member of parliament (TD) Thomas Pringle for Ireland to divest from fossil fuels to the Dáil Eireann, the Irish parliament, passed 90 to 53 votes. This means that’s the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund will no longer invest in any fossil fuel related activity. Ireland is the first country to take such a bold move. Even the apparently squeaky clean Norway, which has been divesting like crazy from its mammoth sovereign pension fund, is still up its elbows in generating revenue directly from the sales of oil.

To be, this Mr Pringle’s achievement is historic and incredible. Ireland has been lagging behind on its climate change obligations for some time, overplaying the “sure we’re only small what difference do we make” card, along with the agricultural version of Norway’s Arctic oil card “Our beef industry has relatively low climate impact, so if we stop doing it, someone else will replace us and be more carbon intensive”. My hope is that this helps change the narrative for Ireland, and instead of being a heavy per capita user of carbon-based fuels, that we take a cultural leap of faith, and use our punch-above-our-weight influence to good for the global climate. Nice move, Ireland, now do better.

After reading Irene’s blog, and the news from Ireland, I read Naomi Klein’s article for The Nation, Trump’s Crony Cabinet May Look Strong, but They Are Scared. Klein points out that the likes of Exxon’s Tillerson on Trump’s staff of evidence of a desperate fossil fuel industry in its death throws. In fact, I believe that they are so scared that this is how they’ve fought their way – capitalising on the complacency of others – into the Oval Office.

“And no one has more reason to fear ascendant social movements than Tillerson. Because of the rising power of the global climate movement, Exxon is under fire on every front. Pipelines carrying its oil are being blocked not just in the United States but around the world. Divestment campaigns are spreading like wildfire, causing market uncertainty. And over the past year, Exxon’s various deceptions came under investigation by the SEC and multiple state attorneys general. Make no mistake: The threat to Exxon posed by climate action is existential. The temperature targets in the Paris climate deal are wholly incompatible with burning the carbon companies like Exxon have in their reserves, the source of their market valuation. That’s why Exxon’s own shareholders were asking increasingly tough questions about whether they were on the verge of being stuck with a whole bunch of useless assets.”

As that weekend passed, climate-change denier and Trump advisor Myron Ebell, inadvertently endorse Klein, when he declared that the green movement was the ‘greatest threat to freedom’.

What Ebell meant, of course was that the actions of those wish to protect the planet are a great threat to his personal freedom to do whatever the fuck he wants, even if that means screwing up the planet for the sake of the paltry dollars he would like to accumulate (by way of Exxon) before he pops his clogs, like all of these rich stupid old white men. Ya can’t take it with ya, Myron.

Of course Exxon is desperate to drill. That’s why, back in December, the new US secretary of state AND Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson declared that Exxon will head back to the Arctic once Russia sanctions are lifted.

Maybe there’s some light showing through in the dark. It’s been impressive to see the mass mobilisations and protests against Trump in the US, and the bulwarks of the rule of law pushing back at his every move. In Europe, we need to wake up, and maybe we’re starting to. In France, it looks like politicians of reasonable, but different shades are cooperating to ensure that the appalling Marine Le Pen gets defeated in the forthcoming presidential elections. A Le Pen win in France, would be bad news for a post Brexit-EU, and the knock on environmental effects are at best unclear right now.

The reason these oil drillers and right wingers and climate deniers are manipulating and lying, twisting the truth and attacking is that they don’t care about you. They care about what they care about, and what they care about is preserving an idea of world order that either never existed, or if aspects of it ever did then they are way past their sell by date. They think that they can afford to cling to these shreds of nonsense and get away with it, and that be setting us against one another, they can distract us so that they can pursue their ridiculous zero sum game.

We can’t afford to humour them. We should abandon them their dangerous populist fantasies, and work together, as pluralists, to at least agree that we have a hell of a lot of work to do, and that we need to work together, as countless people do already worldwide to strive for a better, safer, cleaner society. In her blog, Irene talking is about getting “a wider public ‘on board’ for the voyage”. As environmentalists, activists, politicians, teachers, journalists , parents, friends, that’s what we need to do. As Marshall McLuhan wrote,

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”

You can follow Irene on Twitter at @iceblogger

Some Good News: We are all crew on this voyage was originally published on Dave Walsh