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  1. #1141
    Platinum Poster Ben's Avatar
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species




  2. #1142
    Platinum Poster Ben's Avatar
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    Half of the Planet's Animals Have Disappeared in the Last 40 Years:

    http://www.telesurtv.net/english/new...0930-0090.html



  3. #1143
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    So, Ben, following the decision of the corporate giants the Rockefellers to disinvest from the fossil fuels industry, on which you have said nothing, comes this decision from the University of Glasgow. Glasgow is a large city in Scotland, the country whose 'National Party' recently based its entire economic policy on...fossil fuels....

    Glasgow becomes first university in Europe to divest from fossil fuels

    University court votes to divest £18m from fossil fuel industry in what campaigners call ‘dramatic beachhead’
    http://www.theguardian.com/environme...m-fossil-fuels



  4. #1144
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    Here's a link to a NYT article on the Rockefeller divestment. http://nyti.ms/XIPO1y
    It say's they're divesting their philanthropic organization of fossil fuel. I presume that they might still privately own stock in fossil fuel companies or own shares in non-philanthropic entities that invest in fossil fuel?


    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  5. #1145
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    It is the Brothers Fund that has disinvested, whether or not individual members of the family retain their interests in Exxon or the other firms I cannot say, and there are other Rockefeller institutions. The Brothers Fund has in any case been involved in philanthropical work since its foundation in 1940.
    I think the topical aspect of this is the claim that over the next 10 years or so the fossil fuels industry will lose $50bn worth of investments from institutions switching to alternative fuels. I don't see this is anything other than a cosmetic arrangement, given that $50bn in the petroleum industry is not a crippling sum -less than a year's revenue for most oil rich states. Symbolically it looks good, but the real benefit, if there is one will be determined by the success alternatives have in displacing fossil fuels as the primary source of energy for consumers, industry and the military.
    http://www.rbf.org/



  6. #1146
    Senior Member Junior Poster NaughtyJane's Avatar
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    doom.


    "My wife and I were happy for 20 years, and then we met." - Rodney Dangerfield

  7. #1147
    Platinum Poster Ben's Avatar
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    [QUOTE=Stavros;1537337]So, Ben, following the decision of the corporate giants the Rockefellers to disinvest from the fossil fuels industry, on which you have said nothing, comes this decision from the University of Glasgow. Glasgow is a large city in Scotland, the country whose 'National Party' recently based its entire economic policy on...fossil fuels..../QUOTE]

    It's important what the Rockefellers have done. Unquestionably.
    But as Naomi Klein has repeatedly pointed out: it's much broader than mere fossil fuels.

    Naomi Klein: Economic Model Is at War With Life on Earth:
    http://www.bloomberg.com/video/naomi...hzSV6i4qQ.html

    It's state-corporate capitalism that is, well, destroying the planet.
    Corporations, and the way they're structured, are destroying the natural world, the economy and even capitalism itself. (But needless to say we don't have capitalism; never have. So let us say: existing capitalism... or the way we perceive it.) Anyway, you won't have competition in a system governed by huge corporations.
    Corporations because they're getting bigger and bigger (we're witnessing monopoly capitalism which obliterates, say, a competitive capitalist system... but yet again we need to underscore: we've never had capitalism... which means the elimination of ALL government interference) have an institutional imperative to ruin the planet.
    I think we'll survive. But the world will be a pretty bleak place in 100 years or so thanks in large part to corporations.



  8. #1148
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    Quote Originally Posted by Ben View Post

    It's state-corporate capitalism that is, well, destroying the planet.
    Corporations, and the way they're structured, are destroying the natural world, the economy and even capitalism itself
    I think we'll survive. But the world will be a pretty bleak place in 100 years or so thanks in large part to corporations.
    Ben you must know that many of the largest corporations produce (indeed, are obliged to produce) reports on the environmental sustainability of their operations, and that they have had to adapt to environmental legislation as well as public opinion over many years -the regulation of pollution at sea of commercial vessels dates back to the 1920s, extended following the Torrey Canyon disaster in 1967, even more after Exxon Valdez in 1989. There are some offenders, it is true, but often smaller firms in logging with less accountable boards and enough money to bribe local officials.
    More worrying is your apparent refusal to admit that individuals abuse the environment, again through illegal logging or forest clearances, through an insatiable demand for fish or meat that can only be met in some places through changes to farming. The huge demand for narcotics in the USA means that in parts of Latin America and Afghanistan farmers have replaced food they can eat with the plant bases of narcotics -poppies, coca and so on which links them into a supply chain controlled by criminal gangs. Individuals have an enormous impact on the environment, from the pollution of rivers and the felling of trees, to the people who throw their used cigarette butts onto the pavement instead of putting them in a bin.

    We are all in this together, and there are many ways in which the world would be a cleaner and safer place if we showed it more respect. It is about attitudes as well as capital.


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  9. #1149
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    From the Guardian's obituary of Tony McMichael (full link at the end)

    Tony McMichael obituary

    Australian public health researcher who established the link between climate change and disease

    The scope of epidemiology has expanded dramatically over the past 150 years, from its origins seeking to understand the causes of epidemic diseases, through the role of specific risk factors in non-communicable diseases, to the really big, and complex, questions facing humanity, and in some cases threatening its very survival. Tony McMichael, who has died aged 71, after complications of pneumonia, pioneered this third strand, showing how epidemiological techniques could be applied to global environmental change.
    Although, by the 1980s, he had long been concerned about what he termed "planetary overload" (later the title of one of his bestselling books), whereby the Earth is no longer able to sustain its expanding population with its increasing desire to consume natural resources and degrade the environment, it was not obvious how the debate could be shifted from speculation to empirical evidence.
    Tony developed conceptual models of the global ecosystem, refined the methods needed to understand it and analysed an array of data to quantify the effects on human health of climate change that many suspected but that could not yet be measured. These included the impact of changes in the seasonal variation of deaths among older people in temperate climates and the distribution of insect vectors of diseases, such as Ross River virus in his native Australia.
    Although this emerging understanding of the complex links between global ecology and human health involved various academic and research institutions, Tony was the most senior health expert in the team and, by virtue of his personality, powers of persuasion and, especially, his highly respected status in epidemiology, he was able to legitimise this topic as a field of research.
    He was an obvious choice to chair the committee assessing health risks for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1993 and 1996, during which time he moved to the UK, becoming professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1994. In 2001 he returned to Australia to take over as head of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. There, he added greatly to understanding of the complex interaction between climate and infectious disease, researching topics such as the association between the El Niño phenomenon and the pattern of dengue fever in Thailand.
    This research subsequently informed the 2013 report of the World Health Organisation's tropical diseases research programme on the combined climatic, environmental, agricultural and nutritional influences on the emergence of infectious disease, which he chaired after stepping down as director of the centre in Canberra in 2007.
    Although Tony's arguments were based on solid research, he also recognised that publications in peer-reviewed journals, of which he published more than 300, would not in themselves lead to action. He was on the board of several NGOs, was a tireless advocate for action on climate and health and, just before his death, was a lead author of an open letter to the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, calling for climate change and health to be placed on the G20 agenda. Given the hostility to such a move among the few people who, for whatever reason, still refuse to accept the international consensus on the causes of climate change, he was amused when one accused him of being a scurrilous fascist, and another, a socialist lackey.
    http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...tony-mcmichael



  10. #1150
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    Default Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

    Interesting article on the impact of man-made adaptations and climate change on the disappearing south of Louisiana. Might be best to call it a day, abandon the south and move New Orleans further north...

    Lost Louisiana: the race to reclaim vanished land back from the sea

    World’s fastest submerging state is looking to nature in an ambitious plan to turn back the tide, and to BP to fund it – but will it work?

    The GPS showed David Morgan still on dry land – but the waves bumping beneath his boat revealed the reality of this lost Louisiana landscape. Rising seas have obliterated 30 points on the map in the last three years at Plaquemines Parish where Morgan lives.
    Sugarcane fields, citrus groves, backwoods – all gone. “This was all land here when I was a kid. There was no water anywhere,” said Morgan, 57, slowing the boat to pass oyster beds. “I used to hunt rabbits there with my dog,” he said.

    Louisiana is losing land to the sea faster than anywhere else in the world.

    full article here:
    http://www.theguardian.com/environme...k-from-the-sea



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