Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in it's "Doomsday" report in 2018 said we must, MUST cut back CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 and completely by 2050. To dramatize we post the countdown below.
2024
Will the Moon be Our Next Trash Heap? - New York Times - January 21
We’ve Likely Already Passed 1.5 Degrees. Here’s What To Do About It - Forbes magazine
Once Alarming, Now Going Past 1.5 is Normalized - David Wallace Wells
2023
Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn - The Guardian
Rewilding: Letting nature take over - Sunday morning CBS
A Summer Spectacle Where Fireflies Are the Guiding Light - July 29
English Countryside a place of Profound Inequality - July 29
What is a Plant-Based Diet- NYT Food writer, Melissa Clark, July 27
Rewilding - Let Nature Take Over - CBS TV news
The articles of David Wallace Wells in the New York Times
Biofuels are Land-Grabbing Bad News June 6
If You Stop Mowing This May, Will Your Lawn Turn Into a Meadow? May, NYT
Even a Half-Trillion Dollar Plan Not Enough to Fix Hanford Nuclear Waste Dump - June 1
ICC: Earth on Track to Go Over 1.5 Degrees in Early 2030's - March NYT
2022
How to Fall Out of Love With Your Lawn (Awesome New York Times video)
There’s a water crisis. Why do we still have lawns?
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is NOT a climate bill - Indigenous Environmental Network
I've Seen the Future and it Works (Electrically) - video
Carbon Capture Still Doesn't Make Sense - Robert Bryce
Every Dollar Spent on This Climate Technology Is a Waste Charles Harvey and Kurt House (NYT)
Can You Even Call Deadly Heat ‘Extreme’ Anymore? - David Wallace-Wells
After Visiting Both Ends of the Earth, I Realized How Much Trouble We’re In
Collection of articles about polluting small gas engines
To Take Climate Change Seriously, the U.S. Military Needs to Shrink - Alejandro De La Garza - Time
We're being wrapped in Poison the situation in northern Oklahoma
2021
Don't Burn Forests to Make Energy
Panel on Cryptocurrency - System Change Not Climate change
Cryptocurrency: A New and Dangerous Climate Disruptor - Maura Stephens
A Failing Planet: Country by Country - NYT 12/14
Yuk! State Officials [in CT] See Nuclear Plant as Key to CT Energy Goals
'Luxury carbon consumption' of top1% threatnes 1.5C global heading limit - the Guardian
No accountability for US [military] carbon bootprint
After Cop26 the Time for Law-Abiding Demonstrations is Over - Andreas Malm
Final Document COP26 - Nov. 13
Naomi Klein's "Let Them All Drown" - London Review of Books (first printed in 2016)
It Seems Odd That We Would Just Let the World Burn - Ezra Klein, New York Times
Three Books Offer New Ways to Think About Environmental Disaster
Billionaire Space Race and the Winner is: Greenhouse Gases
We Don’t Need Supersonic Travel - Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs -The Guardian
Review by David Wallace Wells of "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" - London Review of Books
The Climate Movement Must Disrupt the Normal Routines of Fossil Capital - Andreas Malm in Jacobin
European Floods Are Latest Sign of a Global Warming Crisis - NYT
from 2010 - Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth
2020
The End of Meat is Here - Jonathan Safran Foer, NYT
America's Killer Lawns - Margaret Renki NYT
Water Discharge, Another Reason to Worry - Tennyson Benedict
Australia is Committing Climate Suicide - Richard Flanagan, Australian author
2019
Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050 - NYT
Literal Gaslighting - Bill McKibben, New Yorker, Oct 9, 2019
Dare to Declare Capitalism Dead - George Monbiot
Greenland Has Lost 11 Quadrillion Pounds - The Atlantic
Earth at 2° hotter will be horrific. Now here’s what 4° will look like. David Wallace-Wells
Fukushima - Immense Cost of Cleanup - Washington Post
An Indigenous-lead Green New Deal – Democracy Now
Indigenous Support and Critique of AOC/Markey Resolution on the Green New Deal
Alexander Ocasio-Cortez in the New Yorker
Richard Smith says we Must Nationalize All Fossil Fuel Companies
Stanley Heller interview with Richard Smith
Kim Stanley Robinson – Sierra Club Magazine
A Green New Deal vs. Revolutionary Ecosocialism - Wayne Price
from the program of the Green Party USA
Time to Panic - New York Times 2/17/19
Attenborough Warns of Collapse of Civilizations
Killing of Millions of Native Americans Caused Climate Change
An Ecosocialist Path to Limiting Global Temperature Rise to 1.5°C – Richard Smith
Beneath Your Feet They Live in Octillions – JoAnna Klein
2018 and earlier
G.W. Bush, Pelosi Pushed Palm Oil. It’s a Climate Disaster – New York Times Nov. 26, 2018
The Known Unknowns are the Tipping Points - the Guardian
This is Where the Last Arctic Sea Ice Will Remain – National Geographic January 2018
We’re Seeing the Largest Loss of Sea Ice in the Last 1,500 Years – Vox
Cashing Out From the Climate Casino Bill McKibben Dec 12, 2017
No Fracked Gas in CT – Dragonfly Climate Collective June 13, 2016
Newest Climate Warnings from McKibben and Hansen – Stanley Heller
Global Warming’s Terrible New Chemistry – Bill McKibben
A Bridge to Nowhere: Methane Emissions and the Greenhouse Footprint of Natural Gas – Robert Howarth
Will a New Methane Burning Power Plant Be Under Water?
What You Can Do About Climate – Seven Personal Actions 12/2
Twisting the Dragon's Tail - A Review - Stanley Heller
The Myth of Carbon Capture and Clean Coal
Short Answers to Hard Questions
Hurricane Sandy Storm Surge in Bridgeport Was 9.8 Feet
A Simple Explanation of Storm Surge
Surging Seas Risk Zone Map – Updated – Climate Central
Obama Should Let Fossil Fuels Lie 11/11/2015
Indonesia Fires Pouring More CO2 into Air Than Entire U.S. Economy – Monbiot
How World Can Go Fossil Free by 2050 – National Geographic
Foreign CO2 Measures Already Saved U.S. $200 Billion
China Burns Much More Coal Than Reported, Complicating Climate Talks
Despite Efforts We’re Headed for 6 Degree (F) World Temperature Increase
EPA: Rising Sea Level, Storm Surge to Cost $5 Trillion through 2100
Study Finds Methane Leaks Negate Climate Benefits of Natural Gas
At this Rate We’ll Go Over 2 Degree Increase in 2036 – Michael Mann – Scientific American
10 Images Show What Will Happen to Cities After Sea Level Rise
CO2 Levels Rising at Dramatically Faster Rate
Will Human Survive the Sixth Great Extinction? – National Geographic
Greenhouse Gases Growing – Draft of UN Report
World Banks about 4 Degree Celsius Warmer World by 2100
Game Over for the Climate – James Hansen 2012
Connecticut’s Last Coal Fired Power Plant is in Critical Financial Condition
Greenpeace Activists Climb Bridgeport’s Coal Elevator at Bridgeport Plant
Coal Blooded (NAACP report) 2016
Coal Fired Plants Virtually Extinct in New England (Scientific American) 2013
[ published in the CT Hearst papers 12/2/2021 ]
By Stanley Heller
It seems the warnings by climate scientists grow ever more grave. To prevent widespread climate collapse they told us three years ago that we have to cut back on the carbon we throw into the air nearly 50% by 2030. This year during the COP26 climate summit, Carbon Action Tracker published a report saying that “even with all new Glasgow pledges for 2030, we will emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5°.” A rise of 1.5° is considered the limit for a climate that’s safe for human society.
So, we have to go beyond the COP26 promises and take drastic action worldwide. Now some argue that we should put a big tax on products that spew carbon dioxide and gradually make the tax bigger and bigger. The argument is that this will give people incentive to cut back on products powered by fossil fuel. In other words ration fossil fuel by price. Working people and middle class would have to cut back. The rich would squawk, but in truth they’d barely feel it.
The organization I work for, Promoting Enduring Peace, is calling for a different kind of rationing, rationing by need, the kind that was done during World War II. Then you had cards that you had to present when you bought gasoline and fuel oil. Today we have computers and apps that could do the job. The first priority would be to get people to work and to heat their homes. Travel for fun would be a far lower priority and supersonic jets and space jaunts for billionaires would be in last place.
Rationing by need is just one part of what we think needs to be done. Another is for a popular takeover of fossil fuel industries to speed their gradual elimination. Also necessary is forest preservation (like Remington Woods in Bridgeport) and rewilding of a tremendous amount of land with trees. Mature trees are the best carbon capture “devices” on the planet.
Those are all far reaching measures. We also propose something smaller, the ending of the use of gas-powered off-road engines. A law to that effect was passed in California in October and over 100 cities in the U.S. have their own laws on the subject. The climate effects of leaf blowers, hedge trimmers and lawn mowers, etc. are quite substantial. An EPA report in 2015 found that these engines produced 4% of the carbon dioxide sent into the air in the U.S. a year. That may not sound like much, but in our desperate battle to cut back CO2 emissions that 4% is important.
All kinds of other pollution come out of those machines. One reason is that they don’t have catalytic converters and the other anti-pollution devices found in cars and trucks. Back in 2011 the car site Edmunds studied the matter and found that “hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a [Ford]Raptor.” Their work hasn’t been refuted.
Lawn care workers suffer the most harm. For hours a day they breathe in aerosolized fuel, butadiene, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and fine particulates, a stew of toxic and cancer-causing agents. Many of these workers wear noise ear protectors from sound that can be as loud, according to a Harvard study, as a jackhammer, but seldom do you see a worker with even a face covering to protect against particles. Homeowners don’t face as much danger because they use the machines just a few hours a week, but many towns have outlawed leaf blowers because of the noise effects alone. Quiet afternoons shouldn’t be considered some luxury just for the 1% and quiet is actually a necessity for the growing numbers who work from their homes.
When the California law was passed Rep. Joe Gresko, D-Stratford, told Hearst Connecticut Media reporter Ed Stannard that the “Environment Committee he co-chairs has no plans to adopt any new law limiting small-engine use.” He implied it was a local problem. It is not. It’s a danger to workers, to homeowners and to the earth’s climates. The Environment Committee should think this over again and it should look into the idea of exchanging gas-powered machines for free electric ones. The issue is that critical.
Stanley Heller is Administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a group that was founded in Connecticut in 1952. He can be reached at Stanley.heller@pepeace.org gr
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