The Sunrise Movement If you want to understand the red-hot cutting edge of the state of climate change activism, you can do no better than to read the article Not Dark Yet from the New Yorker magazine. I got the March 7, 2022 issue in the mail today. I just read the entire 8 page article by Andrew Marantz. The subtitle is The Sunrise Movement wants to revolutionize climate politics . Oddly, the online version accessible from the link in the paragraph above has a completely different title and subtitle. Bleeding edge! The New Yorker magazine often carries articles from the best climate journalists, like Elizabeth Kolbert and Bill McKibben. I've been a subscriber for years. My mother told me that I learned to read from looking with her at her albums of New Yorker cartoons. You can get various introductory subscriptions here . I don't know Andrew Marantz yet, but he may be the next generation. In fact, the article conveys the idea that the generations o...
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Bill McKibben Bill McKibben is a climate writer, educator and activist who teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont ( Bill's website ). I have only 3 of his 17 published books. I have his latest, Falter , 2021, and I really need to get and read his first environmental book, The End of Nature , 1989, published a year after Dr. James Hansen testified on global warming before a U. S. Senate committee. Besides his books he has written notable articles published in many magazines, including, of all places, Rolling Stone Magazine. As far as I know, McKibben is a science journalist specializing in climate change, not a scientist. This is similar to Elizabeth Kolbert , Naomi Klein , David Wallace-Wells . And as I said, he is also an activist, founder and long-time leader of 350.org , which he founded in 2008 with Middlebury College Students. Interesting fact: in 2008, the parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere was already 385.83 according to Mauna Loa da...
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group 3 When I wrote yesterday's post about the IPCC AR6 Working Group 2 report, I had a thought. I almost included it in the post, but for some reason left it out. It was basically this: the report discussed adaptations to risks, that is, actions to minimize the damage from expected risks or after-the-fact actions to cope with damage from risks that had actually happened. But the report did not mention the partner word to adaptation, mitigation . Mitigation is the climate change buzzword for prevention , i.e., what can and should and might be done to keep the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere in the first place. It seemed a huge and obvious omission to me, given the subjects covered by this report. This just goes to show how much I am learning by doing this blog. After I put up yesterday's post, I asked myself, "Hmmm, I wonder what Working Group 3 is about?" [Tremolo violins indicating foreshadowing o...
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group 2 For the scientific community, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, is a major face of climate change. Especially for those hundreds of otherwise uncelebrated scientists who work hours and hours contributing to these definitive documents. The IPCC has been producing Assessment Reports (AR) on the state of world climate and climate change since 1990. As far as I can tell, the current numbering system began with AR4 in 2006 and 2007 (each round produces 3 reports over the course of 2 years); AR5 was in 2013 and 2014; the current AR6 began with a report in 2021. In addition to the three working group reports, a round may produce additional special reports. So the gap between AR5 and AR6 has been about 8 years. The first of this round's 3 working group reports came out in August of 2021, The Physical Science Basis . This is where the most knowledgeable climate scientists in the wo...
Paul Kingsnorth Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist was well profiled in the New York Times magazine of Sunday, April 17, 2014, in an article entitled It's the End of the World As We Know It, and He Feels Fine ( link , behind a paywall). At that time I had a good understanding of climate change but not a lot of active participation in anti-climate-change activism. Here was a guy who had been very active for decades, and seemed intelligent, and was saying there was essentially no hope. All the work, all the effort, and no progress, just falling behind farther and farther. According to the article he came under a fair amount of fire from the remaining legions of activists. My daughter read the same article and said it was "just too sad" to accept what Kingsnorth said. She has become active in Extinction Rebellion and The Climate Mobilization. I followed up by reading Kingsnorth's article The Witness in Tri...
Introduction It was a big deal when I turned 70 last July. Recently I realized that I am closer to my 71st birthday than to my 70th! I was about to write, "I guess it never stops," but I instantly realized, uhhh, yes it does. That's the point. 70 is definitely an age when you realize you don't have forever left. And even less time left with your full health and full mind and whatever skills you have accumulated and whatever people you are close to. It was clear to me that there are two areas I want to devote as much time as possible to in my remaining years. The first is playing music and singing. I play several instruments, none at a very high level, and I sing along with my own guitar and ukulele accompaniment. I want to play much more; to recover certain songs I used to play with ease; and to add to my repertoire and my skill as much as possible; and to play much more with others. I may start a separate blog on this subject. The s...