[MCN] "Despairing about the Climate Crisis? Read This." Earth Island Journal

[Lance Olsen]

Despairing about the Climate Crisis? Read This. <https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-03/despairing-about-the-climate-crisis-read-this/>
By Laurie Mazur, Susanne Moser, Earth Island Journal

So we’re having to deal with completely new environmental conditions, and we will be changed by that. Can we imagine that? No. Can we try to imagine that we’re not just clobbering each other over the head or blowing each other up? I can imagine something different.

October 3, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-03/despairing-about-the-climate-crisis-read-this/ <https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-03/despairing-about-the-climate-crisis-read-this/>

Excerpt

"Yeah, that’s a really good question. Certainly, for me, one of the reasons to get out of bed is that we really haven’t tried everything. Having done miserably at communication, having done miserably at policy, having done miserably at market responses to climate change gives us a ton of hope, because we could do so much better.

The other thing is we’re short-sighted human beings on many counts, and yet our species has managed to build cathedrals that took 300 years apiece. So it’s not like we can’t. The future isn’t written yet. It is still open in terms of how it’s going to be shaped.

Still, what we have to realize — and what’s dawning on many people now — is that we have put a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere that won’t just come out tomorrow. That’s why we have to make space for grief, fear, and all the rest of it in public spaces and in our private lives.

We have set so many things in motion that if you tried to control it right now, you couldn’t. We have sailed a ship, and the question is, are we going to keep blowing wind into its sails and sending it off into even more troubled waters, or are we going to do what we can to smooth out the waters, and make sure the opening to the harbor is wide enough for everyone?

There is a ton of space left in terms of what we can do. We can’t just do anything we want, because of the things we have already set in motion, but we can stop making it worse, and there are so many options to deal with the challenges and to make life much less miserable for the vast majority of the world’s people.

So I think it’s a matter of priorities and values, and reckoning with what we have done. In the public sphere, it’s called political work. In the private sphere, there is deeply personal transformational work that needs to be done.

End excerpt, full article here https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-03/despairing-about-the-climate-crisis-read-this/ <https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-03/despairing-about-the-climate-crisis-read-this/>


$$$  Who’s the richest ? $$$

We're All the 1 Percent – Foreign Policy
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/ <https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/> <https://www.google.com/search?q=%2434%2C000+1%25&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS737US737&oq=%2434%2C000+1%25&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.27159j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#> <https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yapyloaVjVoJ:https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>
Feb 27, 2012 - But the global average is about a fifth of that. So by global standards, America's middle class is also really, really rich. To make it into the richest 1 percent globally, all you need is an income of around $34,000, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic.
Half the world's richest 1% live in the United States - Jan. 4, 2012
https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm <https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm> <https://www.google.com/search?q=%2434%2C000+1%25&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS737US737&oq=%2434%2C000+1%25&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.27159j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#> <https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hBEabNzxQO8J:https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>
Jan 4, 2012 - The United States holds a disproportionate amount of the world's rich people. It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world. ... The rest are mainly scattered throughout Europe, Latin America and a few Asian countries.
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"The big challenge is still to deliver emissions reductions at the pace and scale needed, especially in a world where economies are driven by consumption.”

Sonja van Renssen.The inconvenient truth of failed climate policies. Nature Climate Change  MAY 2018

Published online: 27 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4 

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