Again and again and again we're asked to fine tune our capacity for discernment by following the money and knowing the integrity or lack of integrity of our sources of information. Being an informed populace has never before been this important. There is an imperative that we individually and collectively assume responsibility for standing with all who are engaged in this fight of our lives. And as one of my wise friends affirms, "Fundamental change or imminent collapse. We need a realistic response, at scale." And we need to understand this in our deepest selves: that everything we love and cherish is at stake. — Molly
Contrary to what the New York Times recently suggested, Bernie's plan is the only one put forward by a major candidate that represents a level of ambition that matches the scale of the unprecedented crisis in which humanity now finds itself deeply entangled.
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On November 14th, the New York Times published an article which discussed the Green New Deal as proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, claiming to speak for ‘experts,’ and framing the article around what readers were led to believe were authoritative opinions. As Common Dreams reported, the Times—without input from a single climate scientist or relevant academic—instead based their article on opinions from “an adviser to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a business professor and maxed-out Hillary Clinton donor, and a Democratic strategist who does public relations work for the chemical industry.” This assembled cast took a predictably dim view of Sanders’ massive, dual-purpose environmental and economic plan which, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s original New Deal, aims to fundamentally reshape the social and economic fabric of the United States, this time in an ecological, as well as pro-worker, direction.
The Times piece also implied that the extent of Sanders’ plan, which proposes to spend $16 trillion over ten years, and which goes much further than any other in the Democratic primary field (Senator Warren’s plan, the next largest, aims to spend $2 to $3 trillion), is “unrealistic” and largely functions as a political ploy to enliven his base. In making this implication, the Times went so far as to compare the Green New Deal to Donald Trump’s abortive border wall.
One of us (Read) had the good fortune to meet Sanders in Washington D.C. way back in the 1980s, and commend him to his face for his impressive work seeking to rewrite the map of U.S. politics. Senator Sanders has consistently been raising the alarm on global overheat for decades now—and is mirrored in his concerns by every relevant individual and organization which has assessed the threat posed by climate breakdown and ecological collapse. The narrow window in which we will have any ability to blunt the worst of the climate crisis is rapidly closing—if it has not already closed. It is clear that more and more people feel an unimaginable threat to themselves, their children, and to all life on this planet looms just over the horizon—and for many is already here.
Activists in major cities willing to face arrests by the thousands, children striking from school, crying and excoriating assembled world leaders at the United Nations, are only the most visible bubbling-up of a collective fear and trembling felt by hundreds of millions, and particularly by young people, who, unless fundamental change begins immediately, face a century of nightmares and the likely collapse of global society. Yet corporate media outlets such as the New York Times and their allies in the major political parties—while paying lip service to the threat posed by climate breakdown and ecological collapse—continue by and large to undermine any real attempts at critical action. Had the Times actually consulted the experts, they would have recast the issue along the following lines:
Global CO2 production is increasing rather than decreasing. The year 2018 saw a 3 percent increase in emissions from 2017. And 2019 will see an even larger increase. Feedback mechanisms are already kicking in which could doom even the most vigorous attempts conceivable to halt climate breakdown and ecological disintegration. The oceans, which have absorbed more than 90% of the heat caused by greenhouse gases—and as a result are acidifying at ten times the rate seen in the last 300 million years—may well be nearing the end of their ability to do so, the likely proximate cause of the rapid uptake in warming since 2014. We await, within years, the first ever ice-free Arctic summer in our history, known as the Blue Ocean Event, and with it the loss of the albedo effect. Ice deflects 90% of incoming solar energy, water absorbs almost all of it: the same amount of energy which will turn solid, frozen ice at 32°F into liquid water at 33°F, when applied to the same water at 33°F, will heat that water to 176°F. Methane release, the most feared of the feedback mechanisms, is beginning to bubble up from Arctic permafrost. It is totally unknown to what extent methane could cause further warming; there is estimated to be the equivalent of 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 locked in the permafrost, two times that which we have released since the Industrial Revolution.
It is entirely within the realm of possibility that, even if all man-made carbon emissions ceased today, the feedback heating resulting from methane release and loss of the albedo effect could still send the planet hurtling into a “Hothouse Earth” scenario. We already have at least another half degree of warming ‘baked into’ the global climate system, pushing us right up to 2°C of warming and perhaps making the initiation of feedback loops, to the extent which they haven’t already been triggered, inevitable. To maintain an even vaguely stable climate, we not only need to cease all emissions, we must actively draw down atmospheric carbon as quickly as possible, through restoration of biodiverse ecosystems including mass non-monocultural reforestation.
It is no exaggeration that every day which goes by brings us closer to an abyss.
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