Tag Archives: global climate change

THE BEADT EYE SAYS. WHAT DID THE BEADY EYE TELL YOU? COP26 WOULD TURN OUT TO BE A COP OUT.

14 Sunday Nov 2021

Posted by in Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change.

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(Three-minute read) 

WOW!

AFTER TWO WEEKS OF NEGOTIATION WE HAVE MANAGED TO PRODUCE A HAPHAZARD APPROACH TO CLIMATE CHANGE. 

It should’ve been our moment for climate action — but

wealthy nations’ leaders failed to deliver meaningfully

climate action.

 

The headline is that leaders from the countries that created and worsened climate change have failed — squandering the opportunity to take the truly transformational actions that this crisis demands.

SO WHAT NOW?

We are going to reconvene in Egypt in 2022.

When the fact will still remain that we are still far off the 1.5C target, and we will still need on-time and effective policies and legislation to make the existing but insufficient pledges a reality.

Pledges from COP26 put us on track for global warming of between 1.8C and 2.4C.

( If you want to see what a 2.4c temperature will look like see the previous post) 

As Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley said as the conference began: “How many more voices and how many more pictures of people must we see on these screens without being able to move, or are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?”

“Can there be peace and prosperity if one-third of the world literally prospers and the other two things of the world live under siege and face calamitous threats to our well-being?” 

The climate crisis threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world and could unravel decades of gains made in the fight against poverty.

The announcements the private sector made at COP26 were predictable and can be broadly lumped into three buckets: the defiant, the greenwashing, and the genuinely positive.

what are they actually talking about? is profit.

It’s vital we understand what this means in reality.

Neither they nor our world leaders grasped that there is no negotiation with the climate and  Net-zero essentially means contributing nothing to global warming.

It is not carbon neutrality.

Although that term also refers to bringing the overall emissions level to nothing, it can commonly be achieved by offsetting the equivalent amount of carbon emissions reductions elsewhere. For example, a rich country could pay for its carbon budget to be offset by a developing country. 

We cannot stop the climate crisis.

Establishing a long-term net-zero target is one thing. Properly funding it is quite another. It’s not just possible — it’s essential. 

Cop26 should have translated into immediate action if it was to have any real meaning to the planet and us.

There might be strong evidence that parallel worlds probably exist, but to have a parallel world one must have a world in the first place.  

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. NOTHING EXCEPT CO2 WILL COME OUT THE COP26.

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Cop26.

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(Ten-minute read) 

Cop26 described by the media as a “turning point for humanity” will be attended by upwards of 30,000 people, (including around 200 world leaders and thousands of press and media representatives.)

Are politicians promising real change that will prevent the world from breaching the maximum global average heating of 1.5C?

 Climate politics at COPs is complex and the stakes are high.

Even though the alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable with Global heating affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible, we will see a world fudging backed by Bla Bla with no enforceable plan that will go far enough to create a financing mechanism to support “net zero” by 2050.

On the contrary, we will see offerings of more of the same or worse. 

Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world is on track for emissions to rise by 16%. 

Will governments look beyond narrow national interests and act together for the planet and for us all?

NO

The need to create for Loss and Damage to enable poorer nations devastated by climate disasters to recover will not happen. 

The major historic emitters of greenhouse gases (mostly rich, former colonial powers) have a greater responsibility for causing climate change and should therefore bear more responsibility to decarbonize more quickly.

They should provide financial resources and share technology with the global south to help them both address the impacts of climate change and make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

So far three-quarters of this financial assistance was in the form of loans that the global south had to pay back. This type of finance increases the debt burden of the global south and makes these countries more vulnerable to financial crises.

Instead, climate justice demands that rich countries provide at least $400 billion a year in grant-based climate finance to the global south by 2030.

What’s more, there is no agreed mechanism for raising finance for loss & damage due to climate change (eg. the losses caused by more frequent cyclones or hurricanes).

This should be the guiding principle of the whole process – but too often rich countries seek to undermine it.

                                              ————-

Understanding the significance of what is being discussed is not always an easy task.

No single country can fix it on its own.

There are some developed nations and high carbon emitters that have yet to pull their weight. Australia, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Mexico are in this category.

China and the United States are the world’s two largest carbon emitters and are a special case. 

Take the host the UK’s messaging on climate change. 

  • Approving the first new coal mine in 30 years.
  •  Licensing for new North Sea oil and gas exploration.
  •  Cutting taxes on flights and supporting expansion plans at seven airports in England.
  •  Scrapping the Green Homes Grant energy efficiency scheme early.
  •  Investing £27bn investment for new roads and highways, while reducing grants for electric car buyers.

Some impacts of climate change are now inevitable and indeed are already happening.

This means that need funding for adaptation to climate change. However, climate finance from rich countries has so far heavily prioritized mitigation, with 63% of all climate-related finance globally flowing to renewable energy.

Planning for a just transition instead means that the costs of climate action should not be borne by those who have done least to cause the problem, including workers, frontline communities in the global south, and black and Indigenous communities.

.If there was a moment of true emergency in the fight to preserve our climate, it is now.  Not to be derailed by false solutions and dangerous delusions.

The cost of failure is astronomical.  It translates into many premature deaths, more mass migration, major economic losses, large swaths of unlivable land, and violent conflict over resources and food.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS THIS POSSIBALY ONE OF THE REASONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ?

31 Monday May 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Environment, Magnetic north., The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., What Needs to change in the World

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(Three-minute read) 

 

I am no scientist but it stands to reason if the magnetic north is moving the earth is rotating differently than in the previous hundredths of years.

As a result as with any spherical shape that rotates, it is exposing a slightly different surface, either for longer or shorter to any light shining on it such as the Sun causing a difference in temperature to the exposed portion of the sphere.  

What is causing the magnetic north to shift? 

Whatever is causing it the weight distribution on the earth has to be contributing.   

Human-made materials are now equal weight to all life on Earth.

The mass of everything people have built and made, from concrete pavements and glass-and-metal skyscrapers to plastic bottles, clothes, and computers, is now roughly equal to the mass of living things on Earth and could surpass that this year, according to research published today in Nature.

The Earth weight: 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 Metric Tons.

Freshwater. 

Every year we use a massive 4.3 trillion cubic meters of freshwater = 4,260,000,000,000 m3 / tons.

Concrete. After water the single most widely used material globally. It outweighs the combined mass of all living plants. China production of 2 billion tons alone is predicted to reach
four times the 1990 level.  2 billion
tonne quantities per year, by 2050,
concrete use 

Plastic.          –   8.3 billion tons

The world produces a million plastic bottles a minute – many for water. That’s 500 billion in a year!

Asphalt.         –       30% of the world is Land of which 2% is urban which is covered let’s say to the extent of 10%. Therefore 30%x2%x10% = 0.06% of the world covered in Asphalt. 

Sand.             –    15 billion tonnes.

Crude Oil.      –      Nearly 100 million barrels per day. The average barrel of domestic crude oil weighs 302.82 pounds. You do the maths this time. 

 The mass of earth’s life is about 1.1 trillion metric tons.  

In 2016, a team of scientists estimated the weight of the “technosphere”—including not just wholly artificial buildings and products, but also the approximate weight of the land and seafloor that we’ve excavated, modified, or trawled to build cities, plant crops, raise livestock, and catch fish.

They came up with a figure of 30 trillion tons.

Now add, for example, ( The World Steel Association estimates that for every ton of steel we produce) almost two tons of CO2 are added to the atmosphere.

Then add on all the rest of Cardon produced and the amount the whole human race emits every year is 35 billion roughly.

It is no wonder the magnet north has shifted.

To finish I invite any environmental to tell me that I am wrong.  

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 



https://youtu.be/ODyP6x4qKqA

https://www.theworldcounts.com/embed/challenges/5?background_color=white&color=black&font_family=%22Helvetica+Neue%22%2C+Arial%2C+sans-serif&font_size=14

https://www.theworldcounts.com/embed/challenges/9?background_color=white&color=black&font_family=%22Helvetica+Neue%22%2C+Arial%2C+sans-serif&font_size=14

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS: FORWARD TO THE WORLD CLIMATE CHANGE GATERING IN SCOTLAND IN NOVEMBER 2021

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Covid-19 Vaccines., Disaster Capitalism., How to do it., Humanity., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Five-minute read) 



We are coming up to another god-wobbling Climate Change gathering in Scotland which by any account will be A ZOME GATHERING because of COVID-19 on the 1 – 12 November 2021.

This one is the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).

A two-week showcase as to why the world is unable to come together to tackle the problems of climate change.  Remember that these conferences started in the 90th. 

chimney

 

This one is likely to include demonstrations of virtual reality technology; showcasing innovation helping to tackle global climate change and probably like the others will archive little or nothing. 

Why? 

Because they produce nonbinding promises without addressing the main problem of how or who is going to finance the changes needed.   

We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.

The coronavirus pandemic may lead to a deeper understanding of the ties that bind us on a global scale., and there are, to a certain degree, parallels that can be drawn between the current COVID-19 pandemic and some of the other contemporary crises our world is facing. All require a global-to-local response and long-term thinking.

All need to be guided by science and need to protect the most vulnerable among us, and all require the political will to make fundamental changes when faced with existential risks. They all need Money. 

It’s rational for an individual country not to drastically reduce greenhouse gases, given most economies are heavily based on energy resources that emit them. Yet, if all nations act that way — indeed, that’s what’s happening — most countries would eventually be worse off due to the cumulative impacts of all our emissions, not to mention the hoarding of covid-19 vaccines.  

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Covid -19 is real and that Climate Change will wreak havoc on the planet. BOTH ARE ALREADY DOING SO.

Covid-19 has brought the entire world economy to its knees in a matter of weeks during a pandemic that scientists warned us would come.

While enacting policies today to cut greenhouse gas emissions won’t have a discernible impact on global warming for decades, if not centuries. That’s because we have already locked in significant warming due to our historical emissions. Unlike other policies, climate change is cumulative. The longer we wait to address it, the bigger the problem it becomes and the harder it gets to solve, fueling a feedback loop that makes solutions ever more difficult.

Although global emissions were not as high as last year, they still amounted to about 39 billion tonnes of CO2.  Covid-19 has changed this narrative to one that involves avoiding a rebound in emissions. 

The bottom line: Big climate policy would have to offer concrete benefits outside of its impact on emissions — think jobs or energy security — to overcome this time disconnect.

The bottom line: We are the first generation of humans to start paying the price for a warmer world, and we are also the first to face costs as we try to address it.

We’re paying now and later.

  • Cost No. 1: Responding to flooding, heatwaves, and other extreme weather that climate change is often making worse.
  • Cost No. 2: Enacting policies to reduce emissions, which would come in the form of higher fossil-fuel costs today.
  • Cost No. 3 will continue for decades, if not centuries, even in addition to Cost No. 2.
  • This is because of the aforementioned time disconnect: the amount of warming locked in already has also locked in associated costs — which will come in the form of not just money, but also health, lives, and nature losses.


This just might be the world’s greatest collective action problem, which is when rational, self-interested decisions of individuals make the circumstances of the group worse, and vice versa

Imagine getting taxed before you put that money into your fund and then not living long enough to reap the payoffs of your fund. That’s happening with climate change, on a global scale.

Even though climate change presents a slower, more long-term health threat, an equally dramatic and sustained shift in behavior will be needed to prevent irreversible damage.

When we eventually overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, we can hopefully hold on to that sense of shared humanity in order to rebuild our social and economic systems to make them better, more resilient, and compassionate

Joe Biden’s climate plan promises net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Biden would be pushing 110 years old when he’d have to check (likely from the afterlife) on how his policy did. I’ll be 65. How old will you be?

Essentially all organisms use weather cues to guide their lives, and when these change and fracture everyone takes a hit.

As I have said in previous posts there is only one way to finance the changes.

That is by making a profit for profit sake pay, by placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all activities that are not sustainable. ( See previous posts.)  

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S; WE ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE END GAME.

29 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Climate Change.

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(Sixteen-minute read) 

WHY?

Because there is no point any longer carry on claiming that we are a victim of world events…Climate change, Artificial intelligence, Capitalist greed etc. 

If Everyone’s Finger–Pointing, Who’s to Blame?

The answer, it seems, is someone else.

We think blaming means we get away with it.

Getaway with what?

If we stop it may become evident that this blame game is getting us nowhere and maybe, we need to look deeper at that word RESPONSIBILITY.

Could it be possible that our choices got us in the mess and our new responsible choices could get us out of the blame game forever?

The issue at hand is a vicious circle. Greed versus Common sense.

It is important that the leadership of countries are responsible for governing but does anyone remember the last time that a government actually took responsibility for their own actions?

No.

Politicians — hostage to the tyranny of short election cycles — instead wooed voters seeking instant gratification, the protection of unsustainable entitlements, and shortcuts to continued prosperity they pander to popularism. 

Its no wonder we use blame like an auto-pilot switch?

At no point do we want to think that our choices may be contributing to what is going on in our life.

The media changed our perception of so many things preventing us from coming to a consensus not only on how to dig ourselves out of this mess but also on how to prevent it from happening again.

All that has been positive is slowly being replaced with only more negative.

And so no goes the endless, useless recriminations.

The blame game, however, is a lot more dangerous than it sounds. This never-ending cycle not only diverts responsibility but distracts from coherent responses.

That has two immediate consequences.

First, it is virtually impossible to generate a sense of shared responsibility that must underpin any sustainable, effective solution.

Second, the temptation increases for each country to turn inward, significantly raising the risk of protectionism.

As the species that have taken over the planet.

The world is looking for bold leadership, and in the absence of it, dysfunction that will make 2019 merely a flesh wound risks is becoming an ever more likely reality.

There is the possibility that our struggle to halt destructive climate change is going to make most of the people around the world very conscious of changes on the planetary level that need to be stopped, and species extinction is in that category. . . .However, unless humanity learns a great deal more about global biodiversity we will soon lose most of the species composing life on Earth.

WHY?

Because we need to do one big thing that people could get together on that would solve the problem and it needs to happen politically, globally in order to fulfil this vision? 

We might have achieved many small victories in a losing war but what is immediately relevant at the present time is our collective inability to act as one. If not what we will see soon—it is on the horizon—is a second great environmental crisis, and that’s a shortage of freshwater.

It’s a shortage of fresh water that is rapidly growing, that’s causing some of the most tragic humanitarian problems . . .  and it’s going to get worse and worse.

We the grownups we have to start somewhere.

The era that we have to create ahead of us is going to have to include action and research in multiplicity.

I mean, lots and lots of people involved in order to keep the whole planet and all the plants and animals in it, in order to understand how the living world works….where life came from, where we came from, and what we need to be preserving in order to make Earth a livable, habitable place—a planet to be our home. 

Billion of us live in our technologic bubble called cities, indifference to what is taking place outside our own worlds thanks to the Smartphone. If that remains true for the next decade what is left won’t be worth saving.

Where to start?

We now face a substantial possibility of seeing a complete collapse of the ecosystem which will have an irreversible impact of human activity.

The slide toward extinction with all our efforts around the world has not slowed, nor will it in the near future. 

Like conservation efforts around the world had consisted of targeted procedures to save a species here or there or to save a habitat here or there.

Rather than point the finger of blame here a few things we could change.

Hope is after all one of the great attributes we are all ushered towards…

Profit-seeking Algorithms. Regulation

Technology leapfrogging.  Transparency.

Currency manipulator. Emerging economies gained a competitive advantage by manipulating their currencies, weakening labour standards, degrading the environment, or engaging in various forms of implicit protectionism.  Unsustainable national policies. 

Consumption.  Ban Media/TV Advertising that is promoting consumption for consumption. 

Multilateral institutions.  The UN are only as strong as our member nations let it be.  When push came to shove, these institutions shie away from their duties, hindered by widespread representation and legitimacy deficits. Remove the Veto.

Bogus blame:  Remove False News from Social media 

All those things together intrinsic, to human instinctive behaviour?  

They could go long way to helping us remain in the game.The End Game

Politicians, of course, will say: “It’s not our fault. They are right as to do not hold them to account. 

Education. Stop educating for the market place. Children have to take out of the classroom and learn where fresh air, fresh water, fresh vegetables, fresh everything comes from. To learn true human instinct are not a Tweet, a Like, a Smartphone, a Virtual game.

And trust me — no one will want to take the blame for that tragedy.

Our evolution now is a competition, greed against all of us. 

Everyone can get it eventually, if they just think.

 All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE WORLD HAS YET TO GRASP PROPERLY THE CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM.

30 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(Two-minute read)

There is no doubt that climate change is a complex subject and is challenging us in ways we’ve never seen before.

Based on what scientists understand, the changes we are seeing today are far more rapid than anything that has occurred in our planet’s history.

How best to depict the climate emergency is down to the media to ensure that the images publish accurately and appropriately convey the climate crisis that we face.

To address Climate Change with or without an agreement is going to cost trillions.

when trying to depict what cannot always be seen.showing the direct impact of environmental issues on people’s daily lives as well as trying to indicate the scale of the impact,the effect of the reporting and how we perceive the risks. to unearth photography beyond the usual keywords of climate change, heatwave and floods.

The problem is:  No one, No country, No government, No Organisation, No economy, wants to pay for it. T

THIS ISSUE IS CRITICAL IF WE ARE TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING WORTHWHILE.

Everyone is, however, paying lip service to the problem.

Delay action will drastically increase the costs of taking action, but no one ever talks about how the funding required can be achieved.

Why?

Because the costs will not be shared evenly.

The trillions have to come from somewhere.

The world’s most powerful institutions are still engaged in a game of lethal procrastination that threatens to speed up global ecological collapse and sow chaos throughout human civilization in the decades to come.

The world’s biggest asset managers remain heavily invested in climate-polluting industries ― and do little if anything to convince those companies to change.

Forceful engagement with the companies in these sectors to hasten their transition to low carbon technologies must occur.

A Bloomberg New Energy Finance chart shows investments in new solar, wind and other non-hydroelectric power projects dropping from 2017 to 2018. (Photo: Bloomberg New Energy Finance)A Bloomberg New Energy Finance chart shows investments in new solar, wind and other non-hydroelectric power projects dropping from 2017 to 2018. (Photo: Bloomberg New Energy Finance)

Clearly, it’s not enough.

At this juncture, to meet the growing demand for green and social investments we need to have a dual focus on maximizing the potential of our current financial instruments, while also creating space for the next wave of innovations for sustainable growth.

We all know that there is already technology that exits, or that are coming on stream to tackle the problem head-on. Not in thirty years from now.

This blog as I am sure are others have been posting a solution that addresses the fair spreading of the costs worldwide. 

( See: 0.05% World Aid commission)

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE: WRITES ONE MORE OPEN LETTER TO THE DELEGATES OF THE PARIS CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE.

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Climate Change., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015

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Dear Delegate,

I am sure that there is no need to remind you of the outcomes of previous Climate Change Conferences.Afficher l'image d'origine

They all failed.

In the vain hope that any one of you might read this:

HERE IS THE REASON WHY and THE SOLUTION.

The debates that are likely to dominate the Paris talks will not be about emissions but about – Money.

If nations can meet and agree equitable goals on the climate, on economic development, on social and environmental issues, and do so in a spirit of cooperation, this alone will be a huge achievement.

That as you know this is hoping for a “miracle.”

We already know that the commitments made, and likely to be made by December, will not by themselves be enough to hold the world to no more than 2C of warming.

So far, countries have made formal emissions pledges. They cover more than 65 percent of current global emissions. The pledges vary. Some are absolute targets expressed as tons of carbon dioxide per year in 2030; others are targets measured against business as usual, or promises to reduce emissions for every dollar of economic activity.

The EU is to cut its emissions by 40%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2030. The US is to cut its emissions by 26% to 28%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2025. China is to agree that its emissions will peak by 2030.

Nations responsible for about two-thirds of global emissions have come up with their targets known in the UN jargon as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs – but some countries, most notably India.

Are the current pledges enough to keep global warming below 2 degrees C?

Nobody can be certain.

Serious doubts remain as to whether these promised cuts will be nearly enough to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.

There are too many scientific uncertainties about exactly how sensitive the atmosphere is to growing concentrations of greenhouse gases. We could get lucky, but equally there might be tipping points that could suddenly accelerate warming.

In the Unite Nations own words it is attaching a set of “sustainable development goals,”  on to the Conference which will take over from the millennium development goals that were pegged to 2015.

These will include issues such as access to clean water and sanitation, access to energy, gender equality, education and health. ” Those SDGs will have a profound effect on whether the world can meet its climate change targets, and meet them in an equitable fashion that allows poor countries to lift their citizens out of poverty while not passing climate thresholds.”

While these United Nations aspirations are essential Climate Change has to tackled without interference.

Poor nations want all the money to come from rich country governments, but those governments are adamant that they will not provide such funding solely from the public purse. They want international development banks, such as the World Bank, to play a role, and they want most of the funding to come from the private sector.

There is strong disagreement over how this should be done.

At Copenhagen, where the finance part of the deal was only sorted out at the very last-minute, rich countries agreed to supply $30bn ($20bn) of “fast-start” financial assistance to the poor nations, and they said that by 2020, financial flows of at least $100bn a year would be provided.

These pledges are already backsliding.

This is a hugely contentious issue:

Why because any core agreement, will be contested over issues such as “loss and damage”, by which developing countries want assistance on coping with extreme weather events, likely to be made worse by climate change. An agreement on this is still possible.

African countries, and others with little or no responsibility for climate change, want a separate fund to compensate them for “loss and damage” resulting from climate disasters such as extreme heat, wild weather, floods, and droughts. This would be a 21st century equivalent of war reparations — for climate crimes rather than war crimes.

This will be one of the main obstacles to a Paris deal.

While you as a negotiator will be mired in the paragraphs, sub-headings and addenda of texts thick with square brackets denoting unresolved issues, heads of government have the power to sweep aside such details and order them to agree.

What can we expect before Paris?

Most delegates believe that funding issues are the most likely deal breakers in Paris.

That would be bad for the world.

So here is the solution:

Make Profit for Profit Sake Pay;

By placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new drilling and mining Licences.

A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development and Climate Change.

This would create a perpetual Funded Fund to contributed to rectifying the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.   Greed. 

There will be one further week of negotiations, in October, before the Paris meeting agrees, so there is much work to be done on the software to make this possible.

Yours faithfully,

Robert De Mayo Dillon,Afficher l'image d'origine

World Citizen.

 

 

 

This is where you Live.

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Climate Change., Education, Environment, Natural World Disasters, Politics., Sustaniability, The Future

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The other day I was wondering how one would describe Earth to an alien or a classroom of our modern-day interconnects kids.

Where would one start.

Is it round?  Not quite it is an oblate spheroid instead of a perfect sphere. It takes the Earth on solar day to rotate upon its axis.

An alien might come to earth and attempt to understand the planet by reading the literature of the planet, or just the dictionary. Looking up the word “earth” the alien may be surprised to see the this term has multiple meanings, referring to a planet and to a substance (soil/dirt).

May be the best place to start is to give an perspective of where we are in space.

As you look outward into space, you’re actually looking backwards in time. The light you see from your computer is nanoseconds old. The light reflected from the surface of the Moon takes only a second to reach Earth. The Sun is more than 8 light-minutes away. And so, if the light from the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) takes more than 4 years to reach us, we’re seeing that star 4 years in the past. There are galaxies millions of light-years away, which means the light we’re seeing left the surface of those stars millions of years ago. For example, the galaxy M109 is located about 83.5 million light-years away.

A radio signal to travel once around Earth in 1/7 of a second.  To get to the moon from Earth, so the round-trip time is twice this or 2.46.

From the sun to earth at the speed of light  seconds.https://youtu.be/Bw-I9JimhOM

If aliens lived in those galaxies, and had strong enough telescopes, they would see the Earth as it looked in the past. They might even see dinosaurs walking on the surface.

Only a few of us have ever seen Earth from afar.  It’s mankind’s rarest view of all.

To see it without borders, see it without any differences in race or religion, we would all have a completely different perspective. Because when you see it from space you cannot think of your home or your country. All you can see is one Earth….”Earth, our home planet.

It is a beautiful blue and white ball when seen from space.  the only planet in our solar system known to harbor life.

All of the things we need to survive are provided under a thin layer of atmosphere that separates us from the uninhabitable void of space.

HERE IS HOW I WOULD DESCRIBE IT;

It was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Earth is made up of complex, interactive systems that are often unpredictable. Air, water, land, and life—including humans—combine forces to create a constantly changing world that we are striving to understand.

It is the third planet from the sun and the fifth largest in the solar system.

About 71% of its surface is covered by water; the rest by land.

It is orbited by one satellite, the Moon.

Earth’s total surface area is 196,950,000 sq. mi. The area covered by the oceans is 139,480,000 sq. mi. Total land area is 57,470,000 sq. mi.

Earth’s diameter is just a few hundred kilometers larger than that of Venus.

The Earth’s crust is about 6.5 miles thick beneath the oceans, and about 25 miles thick under the continents.

Our planet’s rapid spin and molten nickel-iron core give rise to a magnetic field, which the solar wind distorts into a teardrop shape. The magnetic field does not fade off into space, but has definite boundaries.

Our planet completes its elliptical orbit around the sun in an average solar year, 365.24219 days. Its average distance from the sun is 80,777,537.8 n.mi.

The Earth’s axis is tilted 23.45 deg away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane.

It wobbles very slightly.

The Moon orbits the Earth about once a month (every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.9 seconds) The average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 238,857 mi., about 30 times Earth’s diameter.

The Earth’s crust is about 6.5 miles thick beneath the oceans, and about 25 miles thick under the continents. The surface layer is made of rock. This outer layer formed a hard, rocky crust as lava at the surface cooled 4.5 billion years ago.The crust is broken into many large plates that move slowly relative to each other. Mountain ranges form when two plates collide. The plates move about one inch per year. About 250 million years ago, most of the land was connected together, and over time has separated into seven continents. So millions of years ago the continents and the oceans were in different positions.

Scientists had previously concluded that the Earth was slightly older than 4.5 billion years old, but had not found a piece of the Earth’s primitive mantle.

The solid shell that is between the Earth’s crust and the outer core makes up about 84 percent of the Earth’s volume. Until recently, researchers generally thought that the Earth and the other planets of the solar system were chondritic. This means that the mantle’s chemistry was thought to be similar to that of chondrites, some of the oldest, most primitive objects in the solar system. Chondrites contain certain isotope ratios of the chemical elements of helium, lead and neodymium.

Sixty-five million years ago it looked quite different than it does to-day.

There are about 300,000 plant species and about 1,400,000 animal species on Earth.

In the next 6.4 billions of years it will be eating by it nearest star the Sun which is 149,597,891 kilometers away.  It will take a little more than 8 minutes before we realized it is time to put on a sweater. It takes Sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.

It weighs 5.9736×1024kg.  That is about 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (or 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms).

80% of its fresh water is in its polar ice caps. Fresh water exists in the liquid phase only within a narrow temperature span (32 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit/ 0 to 100 degrees Celsius). The surface is unique from the other planets because it is the only one which has liquid water in such large quantities.

Its greatest present day threats come from humanity which is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice.

Evolution, the Big Bang, and climate change are all things that were first proposed as hypotheses long ago.

Climate change is not. What are we doing about it. The same as always. Turn it into a product for profit.

One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, ‘Let’s just go on as usual and see what happens.’ My guess is, if we take that latter choice, yes, humanity is going to survive, but we are going to see some effects that will seriously degrade the quality of life for our children and grandchildren.

The ongoing wars, the distortions of truth we have witnessed, the widening gaps between rich and poor disturb us more than we can say; but we have had so many reminders of powerlessness that we have retreated before the challenge of bringing such issues into our classrooms of our brains.

The best effort so far is the creation of an Earth Day this year.  One day!

Population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation. No one knows how close Earth is to a global tipping point, or if it is inevitable.

Life on Earth is constantly changing and only the fittest organisms survive.

Every few of us appreciate how thin our little atmosphere is that supports all life here on Earth. So if we foul it up, there’s no coming back from something like that. The dictionary offers a firm set of definitions for this term, but no single definition, which leads to a sense of complexity. The complexities of perception are, in part, what post-modernism is all about.  I describe it as pure insanity.

The Earth system now includes human society, Our social and economic systems are now embedded within the Earth system. In many cases, the human systems are now the main drivers of change in the Earth system. Earth system changes, natural or driven by humans, can have significant consequences without involving changes in climate. Global change should  not be confused with climate change; it is significantly more. indeed, climate change is part of this much larger challenge.

Throughout history human societies have had to confront and adjust to climatic and environmental hazards. A long-term perspective that draws on such experiences must inform today’s climate policies. I argue that climate policies aimed at mitigating and adapting to hazards should be informed by our knowledge of past human experience.

In today’s globalised world our food tends to take a long route from farm to table, relying on international trade routes that pass through several bottlenecks. Sudden disruption of such delivery systems – via climate change or political volatility – can severely affect the food security of particular regions.

Large-scale governance is unavoidable in today’s world where hazards are regional and often transcend political boundaries, unfortunately at the moment we are relying on out of date World Organisations that are incapable of putting the  Earth First!

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/32001208″>EARTH</a&gt; from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/michaelkoenig”>Michael K&ouml;nig</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/79771046″>Climate Change &mdash; The state of the science</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/anthropocene”>WelcomeAnthropocene</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

 

Take a trip into the unknown.

https://youtu.be/YzMrNFd4oOk

The Beady Eye, Looks at Our Common Future Under Climate Change.

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in Climate Change., Environment, The Future

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The hope of the twentieth century rests on its recognition that war and depression are man-made and needless as is so with Climate Change.

Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel.

All can be avoided in the future by turning from … nineteenth-century characteristics … and going back to other characteristics that our Western society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding an increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self-discipline.

We now know fairly well how to control the increase in population, how to produce wealth and reduce poverty or disease. We may, in the near future, know how to postpone senility and death but to what avail if we continue to deny Climate Change.

It certainly should be clear to those who have their eyes open that violence, extermination, and despotism do not solve problems for anyone and that victory and conquest are delusions, as long as they are merely physical and materialistic.

Our problem is that capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest.

Money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact.

Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt.

You would think that policymakers with the dark future of Climate Change ahead would be addressing a new set of existential questions.

Such as: Should Economics that grew wealth bear more of the burden to stop climate change.  Another words developed countries should take the lead allowing less developed countries to maintain emissions.

As we all know to date no international mitigation and abatement efforts have taken place on a large enough scale to freeze emissions. We don’t see any intense geopolitical cooperation. Countries will not do anything on behalf of other that requires them to sacrifice their own interests.

Off course when you introduce future generations into the question democracy as it stands is not equipped to represent the interests of future generations never mind the here and now. Humans that don’t exist have no say as to what will it mean to live a meaningful life in a world that has eliminated all wildness, and forms of life from the planet.

So here we are poised to become agent of the greatest catastrophic events ever to hit our planet which could have to support over 10 billion people by 2050.

We are currently on a trajectory to warm the planet 4°C. In such a 4ºC world most of us will not be able to adapt never mind our natural systems.

As we move beyond the stable state we are already well beyond the zone of uncertainty.  The risk for all species – including ours- grow and grow.

planetary boundaries

We need to start thinking in terms that we are just not used to thinking of as a human species.

Will it be left to the market to decide.  With businesses as hubs for democratic engagement this could unfairly shift costs onto either consumers or taxpayers.

I’m not convinced.. that we’ve ended up with a society that’s really able to harness the innovation potential of business.

Climate change challenges democracy. But climate change also needs democracy.

We live in a carbon dependent world. And for the most part, we are loath to forego this somewhat cosy arrangement. Carbon dependency is promoted in part by technology which gives us many good things on the cheap: electricity, personal mobility, affordable consumer goods, cooling and warmth. It is also encouraged by governments which promise easy options to low-carbon outcomes, without delivering these options. And for the most part, we do not seem to care, as the goodies continue to arrive.

We all know in our hearts that this is a cop out: we are duped but we connive in the deceit. Democracy is not a system that forces us to face up to these contradictions. We want to live in a sustainable society but the political system does not reward or support the innovators and entrepreneurs who would guide us to it.

Political institutions manipulate us, as do the power brokers who shape political opinion and guide policy.  Democracy shuns the long-term.

The goal of equipping democracy to mitigate and adapt to climate change is not a one-time endeavor but a continuous process.

Today, the formerly contented European middle classes, sitting in the gap between the rich minority and the poor majority, for the first time in living memory cannot be sure their children will be better off than they are. Confronted by this austere prospect, this group – the natural allies of climate stability – will become unsettled.

The world’s nations are desperately looking for guaranteed techno-fixes to climate change. Democracy around the world has suffered as governments seek to lean on eco-technocrats to cut back on investment in education and health and invest instead in technology for climate mitigation and adaptation.

I really do believe that people can provide the answers – if only we could unleash the real power of that creative potential. Environmental innovation has to be about much more than technology. I’ve realized that, and I’m going to make it my business to ensure that as many other people as possible do too.

So where best to start than requesting your Television Stations to highlight Climate Change in their Weather Forecast.   Join me. This is a war against no enemy other than ourselves.

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough.

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Politics., Sustaniability, The Future

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A society that holds out for the younger generation prospects that are worse than those held out to their parents and grandparents is a society that has ceased to progress and begun to regress—one that has lost any claim to historical legitimacy even if it is technologically advanced.

The common experience for millions of young people is permanent economic insecurity.

Youth unemployment in the European Union stands at more than 23 percent, while in Spain it is 56.1 percent and in Greece 62.9 percent. There are 26 million young people in the “developed world” who are classified as not in employment, education or training (NEETS). Poverty and homelessness have become mass phenomena.

While the world may not be one big village in terms of lifestyle, it shares an image of “the good life” that’s proffered in movies, TV, and the Internet. That’s what teenagers in Afghanistan have in common with teenagers in England; they’ve been fed the same image of success in the global community and they know it’s inaccessible. They are angry and, ultimately, their anger has the same target — multinational corporations (and the governments that support them).

The political implications of these social transformations are far-reaching – ISIS.

Capitalism as we know it today—is an amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and profligate disregard of long-term consequences—is an unsustainable system. Only today five of the biggest banks are fined Billions for fixing the Foreign Exchange Market.

Capitalism must change itself, from the inside. This kind of change will require a radically new leadership ethic, one driven by a new set of motivations and a broader understanding of wealth.

With global population rapidly marching toward 11 billion and with it the demand for food, health services, energy and security, we need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.

There are far better men than I to undertake this reexamination.

The word “capitalism” was coined by the socialists and has historically described a system of state-granted privilege and plutocracy.“

Free market capitalism may be viewed as a system in which individuals make voluntary arrangements involving the exchange of capital.

Free market” implies voluntary arrangements, whereas “capitalism” has become (rightly so)  known as a system in which business and coercive state forces collude to serve whatever arbitrary interests may be lobbied for by the businesses or championed for reasons of power by the politicians.

If it’s a free market, it’s not capitalism. And if it’s capitalism, it’s not a free market.

So why bother trying to apologize for “capitalism” when “free markets” are what you (and I) really wish to obtain?  That is, if you really do believe in “free markets”, then you should probably distance yourself from the word “capitalism”.

The modern world is ruled by multinational corporations and governed by a capitalistic ideology that believes:

Corporations are a special breed of people, motivated solely by self-interest.

Corporations seek: to maximize return on capital by leveraging productivity and paying the least possible amount for taxes and labor. Corporate executives pledge allegiance to their directors and shareholders. The dominant corporate perspective is short-term, the current financial quarter, and the dominant corporate ethic is greed, doing whatever it takes to maximize profit.

Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism.

There is no better evidence of this than- The “recovery” of 2009-10 ensured that “too big to fail” institutions would survive and the rich would continue to be rich. Meanwhile millions of good jobs were either eliminated or replaced by low-wage jobs with poor or no benefits.

We’re living in the age of corporate dinosaurs that take the path of least resistance to profit; they’ve swallowed up their competitors and created monopolies, which have produced humongous bureaucracies.

There achievements are far to numerous to list here, but here are a few in no particular order.

Climate Change. Inequality of Opportunity, Stock Exchanges, Poverty, Wars, Lack of Fresh Water, Sovereignty Wealth Funds plundering the finite Natural Resources for short-term profit, Corruption, Privatization, People Trafficking, Drugs, ect  You could say without fear of contradiction that conditions are far worse today than at any time since the 1930s.

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, then to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

Corporate executives don’t care about the success or failure of any particular country, only the growth and profitability of their global corporation.

Global corporations are ruining our natural capital.  Four of the top 10 multinational corporations are energy companies, with Exxon Mobil leading the list. Global corporations have ravished the world and citizens of every nation live with the consequences: dirty air, foul water, and pollution of every sort. The world GDP is $63 Trillion but multinational corporations garner a disproportionate share — with banks accounting for an estimated $4 trillion (bank assets are $100 trillion). Global black markets make $2 trillion — illegal drugs account for at least $300 billion.

The past five years have demonstrated the impossibility of changing anything within the existing political system. Inequality has grown enormously. The stock market is booming, the Forbes 400 are richer than ever, yet the conditions for youth and workers are disastrous. War continues without end.

However the historical bankruptcy of capitalism does not bring about its automatic collapse as it will if not already doing so turn Climate Change into profits.

 It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense.

So what if anything is to be done.

At the start of this post I said that Capitalism must change itself, from the inside.

Is this possible. Yes but only by making it pay for our values. By putting humanity back into human.

We needed to make the private enterprise economy work better in a redistribution of wealth and income toward greater equality.

This can only be done by placing:

A World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange transactions (over$20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. 

A capitalist economy is inherently unstable” It is one thing to recognize the instability of capitalism, but another to show that an alternative to it is possible.

Clearly no one has got a clue” about what might replace it.

What ever it is we can not going on tolerating a world … in which the needs of the many come before the greed of the few. It is time to recognize that “ Like what, exactly?” is an honest and profound question that demands straight and worked-out answers. And it is time to start working out those answers. I am not advocating abstract revolutionism here.

When questions about the future are bound up so intimately with day-to-day struggles, a new human society surely cannot emerge through spontaneous action alone. To transcend this impasse, people need to know not just what to be against, but what to be for, not just “ what is to be done,” but what is to be undone— what is it exactly that must be changed in order to have a viable and emancipatory socialism?

Unfortunately, this issue received almost no attention throughout most of the last century.

So it is only in recent years that any significant attention has been paid to whether another world is possible. But now, when the future of capitalism is a live issue, it seems to me that this issue needs to be understood as the central problem of revolutionary thought today.

The younger generation is “lost” not just in the sense that it has no future under capitalism, but also in the sense that it is increasingly “lost” to the ruling class and its political establishment. The forms through which the bourgeoisie seeks to maintain political control are losing their hold. Their conscious political experience has been dominated by unending economic crisis, war, the dismantling of democratic rights, political gangsterism and corruption.

And if that not bad enough The global economy is splintering with new and devastating trade agreements like the TTP.

If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter try to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

It would be disastrous merely to call for socialism while ignoring the problems of mass unemployment. This brings me to the notion of developing socialism within capitalism, enlarging the space of the commons or whatever. Unfortunately, it cannot be done. It has been tried (for instance, in the Israeli kibbutzim ) and it does not succeed. The economic laws of the larger system will not allow it. If you buy from the capitalist world “ outside,” you also have to sell to it in order to get the money you need to buy from it, and you will not sell anything if your prices are high because your costs of production are high. And if you have debts, you have to repay them.

So it appears there is only the one option as I suggest : Make Global Capitalism contribute by a World Aid Commission.

We live in interesting times. The stakes are high. The time has come to face the future with sober senses. The good news is we’re witnessing the failure of global corporate capitalism. The bad news is we don’t know what will replace it.

Financial inequality in the 21st century is on the rise, and accelerating at a very dangerous pace turning into a conflict between billionaires.

Complete change will not happen overnight. It will not be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur. It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.

Neither of these categories (Investor-Innovator) makes or produces anything but their wealth, which is really a super-wealth that has broken away from the everyday reality of the market, which determines how most ordinary people live.

Worse still, they are competing with each other to increase their wealth, and the worst of all case scenarios is how super-managers, whose income is based effectively on greed, keep driving up their salaries regardless of the reality of the market. This is what happened to the banks in 2008, for example.

So when you look at Climate change what you see is that it is true that it will take time to roll out the infrastructure and technologies to get off fossil fuels, and we will burn a lot of fossil fuel in the process.

What explains our collective failure on climate change? Why is it that instead of dealing with the problem, all we seem to do is make it worse?

Here’s is the inconvenient truth: when you tell people what it would actually take to radically reduce carbon emissions, they turn away.

What would it take to radically reduce global carbon emissions and to do so in a way that would alleviate inequality and poverty? The World Aid Commission.

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough. We have to reinvent our economy from the ground up if we are to successfully address these challenges.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS GOING TO CHALLENGE EVERYTHING THAT CAPITALISM OR ANY SOCIAL SYSTEM STAND FOR.

What we need is “ethical capitalism,” Business leaders must become servant leaders, leaders who serve not just themselves and share holders, but leaders who serve employees, customers, the community, the planet, humanity, future generations, and life itself.

Science has made huge steps, society has not.

The sooner we fix Capitalism the sooner we move to the future we imagine.

If anyone has a better idea, I would be all ears.