"'The Most Extreme Fires We’ve Ever Seen': Record Climate-Fueled Wildfires Engulf Australia in Smoke" Democracy NOW! at COP25

Jan. 14, 2020 Update: "An Australia in flames tries to cope with an ‘animal apocalypse.’ Could California be next?" is a front page Los Angeles Times story by Joseph Serna and Susanne Rust with a two-minute video on attempts to save koalas as "50 to 80% of [their] habitat" was destroyed by recent fires.The article notes "Scientists estimate that, so far in Australia, fires have killed from hundreds of millions to more than 1 billion native animals."

January 3, 2020 BBC News Update on Australia's Fires

In the above Democracy NOW! video Bill Hare, Australian environmental scientist and director of Climate Analytics, coordinator of Climate Action Tracker, said “I’ve seen more tears at this COP [2019 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Madrid, Spain] than I’ve ever seen in the previous 24 COPS. This is the crying COP. We’re having people coming from small island states whose islands are going under absolutely devastated, almost panicking about the state of the threat they face. [. . . .] The Great Barrier Reef [. . .] on the west coast [. . .] and north [is] going under from coral bleaching. We’re seeing enormous problems happening with biodiversity. We have 400 kilometers of dead mangroves of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The scientists in my community are saying we’re beginning to see ecosystem collapse.”

In a previous post I wrote "U. S. winter is Australia's summer so it's vital to watch what is happening in Australia 'with summer yet to start' according to Nine News Australia to preview the trend of possible U. S. climate impacts June through September 2020. The 40.9 C Melbourne's 'hottest November day on record' equals 105.6 F."

The slowness of meaningful COP response is like being at a party inside a house on fire where so-called leaders are fighting over the last bag of chips.  I recall a Shell CEO told Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research), "The climate problem is real but it is completely intractable. You can not solve it. So, let's get rich quick before the world ends, huh?'" In addition, see my August 29, 2018 post Schellnhuber: "Rising Seas Could Affect 1.4 Billion People by 2060."

Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef spoke in 2013 about what a sane global economy would look like. The start of his 5 min. video notes "five postulate[s] and one fundamental value principle." He said "The value principle I propose is that no economic interest whatsoever, under any circumstances, can be above the reverence for life. And I say life meaning much more than just human beings -- life in all its manifestations of which we are one example."