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Yesterday, in his inaugural address, President Biden asked the nation to come together “join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature” in an effort to address the crises before us. He asked for a baseline of reality and a true acknowledgment for the challenges ahead, saying that: Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a […]
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This year has been indelibly shaped by the COVID pandemic — it literally changed everything. What has become clear as a result is that environmental injustice was exacerbated by the pandemic, and if we don’t repair our relationship with the natural world we are going to face more deadly pandemics in the future. For the […]
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Last week in the UK, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) continued their protests, this time targeted newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. The police arrested “more than 70 environmental activists who blockaded two British printing plants, disrupting the distribution of several national newspapers,” as the Associated Press reported.
Why This Matters: While many figures in the UK, according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, quickly condemned the XR act as an attack on the free press, freedom of speech extends to protests too.
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Climate change, clean energy, and green jobs and infrastructure were mentioned numerous times during the evening — they came up right off the bat in the “chorus” of bright stars in the Party who delivered the opening Keynote address. It received many additional mentions in the numerous short speeches and testimonials about the Vice President.
Why This Matters: The COVID crisis, health care, and national security were the issues of the night. But climate change made it into the discussion.
Continue Reading 447 wordsEven if we stop emitting greenhouse gasses, it is too late to reverse the damage done — the Greenland ice sheet is beyond saving, according to a new study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment last Thursday, based on a review of more than 30 years of satellite data.
Why This Matters: The perfect metaphor for the climate crisis. We have fallen off the first step and we can’t stop, but we don’t know how bad it will feel as we keep falling, and falling, and falling. The bottom line is that Florida and other coastal areas are going to be under water and there is no stopping that — we must adapt.
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Late last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its annual update on this year’s outlook for tropical hurricanes and they are now predicting the conditions are ripe for a huge season, with 19-25 named storms with sustained winds over 39 mph or greater, and even worse, 7 to 11 are expected to become hurricanes with winds of 74 mph or greater.
Why This Matters: Hurricane season really gets serious only now, so the worst is still ahead of us. And the revised forecast is a big increase over what had been forecast at the beginning of the season when NOAA said it there was a 70% chance of 13 to 19 named storms.
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