Schellnhuber: "Rising Seas Could Affect 1.4 Billion People by 2060"

Schellnhuber: "Were not talking about a million people seeking refuge from Syria. We talk about hundreds of millions of people who will have to be displaced on this planet.  How will we do it? [ . . . . ] Planet Passport for Climate Refugees? Global Green Card? [ . . . .] Think about what will happen with two meter sea level rise. These [island] nations will be gone. They will be homeless actually. [ . . . ] Now, there are two ways. You could say 'Top down, you will just relocate those people. Give them money to move to California or Switzerland.' That will not happen. [ . . .] Or [ . . .] empower these people. Give them the freedom of mobility. [ . . . .] Why not [create] a climate passport [or Nansen Passport 'to enter at least about 50 countries']? [ . . .] Give them to all those people who can not live anymore in their original [places] which gives them access to all the countries who destroyed their home like the United States. [ . . .] I'm serious about it."  I recently saw Ai Weiwei's Human Flow (trailer below), and recalled words of Walt Whitman watching sad faces of slaves auctioned in New Orleans in 1848, "That could be me."

"In Germany we should focus everything on the phase out of coal." -- Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research)

This May 4th, 2018 discussion is clear-thinking, revealing, and wise.  Here are some memorable parts:

1) clear-thinking: "In Germany we should focus everything on the phase out of coal";

2) revealing: "It's all about agency, about who could turn this crisis into a solution. [ . . . .] The CEO of Shell once told me '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?'";

2) wise: "Of course we need disruptive change in order to still save the climate [ . . . .] What about if we would have an immersive communication technology where you would be beamed into this village [. . . in India where people were dying in a dust storm] immediately and you would see children dying and so on. [ . . .] It's terrible to even think about it but couldn't we turn into something like a collective subject which feels the pain of the Earth everywhere, and the pain of our fellow human beings everywhere, and in every instant?"

Recent Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2 (Stop adding major carbon releases now.)

July 2018:    408.71 ppm
July 2017:    407.07 ppm

For updates, click here.  This is simple.  As CO2 rises, the heat-trapping blanket over Earth thickens, and traps more heat. I don't think humans have a collective "death wish," so nonviolent political action is needed.  350.org, as the name says, wants this number at 350 ppm, or lower.  350.org is sponsoring a September 8, 2018, global RISE FOR CLIMATE.  What have I done?  Everything here, and more.

August 20, 2018, Update from Dahr Jamail: "I’ve spoken to prestigious scientists both on and off the record who believe that sooner rather than later, global population will be reduced to around 1 billion humans." (at truthout.org)

SOURCE TO SEA: The Columbia River Swim by Christopher Swain

Tonight I watched this excellent 2006 film about ancient and recent Columbia River History, and Christopher Swain's "13 month swim down it's 1243 mile length" to alert the public to the need to remove dams, clean up Hanford Nuclear Site, and preserve the river, and salmon, for future people.  This film should be required in all Pacific Northwest high schools.

Here is a quote, "Immediately upon the salmon's return, alcoholism and suicide rates among teenage Umatilla tribal members began to drop. The beating heart of Umatilla culture had returned."  Swain, and others, argue for removal of The Dalles Dam to bring back Celilo Falls.  I'll repost my poem about Celilo below, and a Timeline video below that.  It was interesting to hear the voice of Jim Martin in SOURCE TO SEA which I recognized from my salmon activist days in Newport and Depoe Bay, Oregon, about 30 years ago.

The Analog Sea Review -- AN OFFLINE JOURNAL

I was enjoying this new journal so much, I recently took it instead of my laptop to the coffee shop. It's the best literary journal I've read in years, maybe ever, and I've read hundreds from 13 countries. I read it from cover to cover.

The  excerpt "They Would Always Touch the Earth" by Trebbe Johnson, "Persistience of Memory" by Carl Sagan, interview / work by filmmaker Patrick Shen ( In Pursuit of Silence trailer below), and "From the Editor" note by Jonathan Simons elevated the journal to the top of my morning list. I'm grateful to have a poem in this inaugural issue alongside work by Mary Oliver, Leonard Cohen, Thomas Merton,  E. M. Forster, Antonio Machado, and others. South Korean-born German author and philosopher Byung-Chul Han's essay "Vita Contemplativa" will spark thinking in my Honors Climate Change Poetry Seminars.  Han wrote, "Thinking, in the emphatic sense, cannot be accelerated at will. That is where it differs from calculating or from the pure use of the understanding. It often moves in roundabout ways [ . . . .] Calculating does not look around either. For it, a detour or a step back do not make sense." As Leonard Cohen said, "Amen."

I like the editors' idea of sending people offline as a healthy balance in our increasingly techno-lives. The journal is carried in bookstores in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and here in the United States so even though it's offline, it gets noticed.  You can write to get one at the Austin, TX or Freiburg, Germany addresses below, or find one in these bookstores:

Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore
413 Main Street
Middletown, CT 06457

Kramerbooks & Afterwords
1517 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036

Potter’s House
1658 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009

Amherst Books
8 Main Street
Amherst, MA 01002

Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard Street
Brookline, MA 02446

Grolier Poetry Bookshop
6 Plympton Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA 02140

Milkweed Books
1011 Washington Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55415

Square Books
160 Courthouse Square
Oxford, MS 38655

RiverRun Bookstore
32 Daniel Street
Portsmouth, NH 03801

Buffalo Street Books
215 N. Cayuga St
Ithaca, NY 14850

McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012

Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

Burke’s Book Store
936 South Cooper Street
Memphis, TN 38104

BookPeople
603 North Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703

I left a copy in the office of my amazing healer / chiropractor Dr Nao at Holistic Family Care in Wilsonville, Oregon.

Editor / Publisher Jonathan Simons wrote "You are welcome also to include our Austin mailing address and to invite your readers to send us a letter should they want us to post to them a copy of our current bulletin."

Analog Sea
PO Box 11670
Austin, TX 78711
United States

Analog Sea
Basler Strasse 115
79115 Freiburg
Germany

Bigger Trouble Now: "Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene" Published by National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

Click here for a 3-minute video about the report.

Click here for the report.

Click here for Rolling Stone contributing editor Jeff Goodell's article about this.

Click here for The Guardian article about this.

Part of the abstract notes "We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a 'Hothouse Earth' pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. [ . . . .] Collective human action is required [ . . . ]  Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values."

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS)' Website notes the organization "is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Nearly 500 members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research." 

Trouble Now

This Spiraling Salmon by Jim Demetro is on Salmon Run Bell Tower in Vancouver, WA. 
I hope future kids don't ask "What's that?"

This morning, passing my wife, I said, "I almost forgot the most important thing!" She puckered up for a kiss, but I stepped by and grabbed my fishing rod.  If climate change doesn't get me, maybe that will.

Oxford Climate Physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert Calls Scientists' "Hail Mary" Idea "Barking Mad"

Read Joel Achenbach's August 8, 2018, Washington Post article here. Excerpts include:
"[Pierrehumbert added] It’s just a lunatic idea to think [use of 'sunlight-blocking aerosols']
is a good thing to have in our portfolio of responses to global warming [ . . . . ] If there is a sudden termination, then it’s like being hit by a heat wave without having made the adaptations.”

Other quotes from the article include: "To replenish the supply of sunlight-blocking aerosols, future generations would have to be fully committed to the project without interruption. Otherwise the planet's temperature would spike virtually overnight."

"The technology doesn't even exist yet. Planes that spew sulfur dioxide exist only in PowerPoint presentations."

"It might be done with a large fleet of planes flying at something like 70,000 feet. The fuel in the planes could be modified to burn a high percentage of sulfur, though the planes would probably use special furnaces to burn sulfur and spew it into the air, Pierrehumbert said."

"A better idea, said Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, is to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. [par break] 'We all know the solution to global warming is — stop using the atmosphere as a sewer for our greenhouse gases,' he said."

Three Reasons to Fight Climate Breakdown: Wife, Rivers, Fish. What Are Yours?

Thanks to visitors this month from United States, Russia, Germany, Portugal, Ukraine, France, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Romania.

My Reply to Nathaniel Rich's NYT Magazine Article "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change"

Sometimes, the best reply is an 11 minute film:


Text by Derrick Jensen, Film by Jore


Nathaniel Rich quotes: "crimes against humanity" and "moral vision of industry . . . [is] obviously sociopathic"

19-year-old Victoria Barrett to Scott Wagner, Pennsylvania candidate for governor who called someone like her "Naive": "You're the naive one."

Barrett's open letter in yesterday's Guardian is here.  Two quotes regarding climate change are: "My understanding is that to be naive is to show a lack of experience, a lack of judgment and a lack of information. You are the naive one. [par break] You don’t have the experience to imagine a life harmed by your decisions to cater to fossil fuel interest, you don’t have the judgment to consider people you choose not to see and you ignore the information necessary for you to make the right choice."