Oceans/Seas

The film Disruption, produced and directed by Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott, executive producer, Jon Warnow is a prelude to the People’s Climate March, which, according to 350.org, will be the “largest climate march in history,” scheduled for September 21st at Central Park West/NYC between 59th and 86th streets, beginning at 11:30 am.
The People’s Climate March will be conducted prior to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s UN Summit on the Climate Crisis scheduled for September 23rd.
The world will be watching.

Sir David Attenborough (b. 1926) has been the face and the voice of natural history for 60 years. Some of his public television specials include: Life in Cold Blood (2008), Life on Earth (1979), The Private Life of Plants (1995), The Life of Mammals (2002), and Planet Earth (2006).

Natural gas is falsely promoted by the Obama Administration and energy corporations as a “bridge fuel” that will allow American society to continue to use fossil energy over the coming decades while emitting fewer greenhouse gases than from using other fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
On this basis, President Obama is providing total support to a massive expansion of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for natural gas within the U.S. He seeks sufficient quantities to last for many decades, allowing the U.S. to export liquefied natural gas and oil throughout the world.

According to the Assessment of Southwest Climate Change (Arizona Institute of the Environment), the five decades from 1950 to 2000 were the warmest in over 600 years. The report predicts that reduced snowfall and increased evaporation from global warming will lead to more droughts over the next 90 years.

Over hundreds of millions of years, Earth and all living things have tolerated five mass extinctions, one of which wiped out over 90% of living things. You might say that such happenings are part of natural processes and beyond the control of Earth’s occupants, but humankind’s ascendency over what is seen as our kingdom defies, maybe even defiles, that judgment.

The major issues of the world include the recovery of economies from the Great Recession and regional wars for control of territories, like Iraq. Whereas, first and foremost, the leaders of the world should really be focused like a laser on the attendant risks of a complete meltdown of the Arctic, which is the canary in the mineshaft for the entire planet.
Territorial fighting in the Middle East and the Ukraine, when compared to an Arctic meltdown, is equivalent to playing with tinker toys.

For years now prominent scientists have warned of the dangers of global warming and a concomitant tipping point for the Arctic. Because of abnormal heat, things are not looking good. Arctic sea ice is in a vertical free-fall. But, the melt season only just started!
This makes Obama’s call for regulation of coal-burning power plants look like a fanciful ephemeral wish list, too little, too late.

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, famously said: “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only paranoid survive.”
Grove’s sage advice hopefully rings a bell with advocates of the climate change issue. They should take heed, stop and listen to what is said, because they may be inadvertently breeding complacency when paranoia is needed more so than ever before.

Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us about Our Future by Peter D Ward, is a chronology of the paleontological research linking mass extinction events with prehistoric episodes of global warming caused by high atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. Ward explores the likelihood that current, unprecedented increases in both greenhouse gasses will lead to a new mass extinction.

No longer dominated by the traditional “Big Green” groups that were taking big donations from corporate polluters, the new environmental movement is broader, more assertive and more creative. With extreme energy extraction and climate change bearing down on the world, environmental justice advocates are taking bold actions to stop extreme energy extraction and create new solutions to save the planet.  These ‘fresh greens’ often work locally, but also connect through national and international actions.