CREATION CORNER, Sept. 2019: Faith, Science & Progress; Books; Solidarity; Of Note; etc.
A 2019 "Faith and Science" tour, made possible by Interfaith Power & Light (IPL/ "A Religious Response to Global Warming", Susan Hendershot, president) with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS/ "Science for a Healthy Planet and Safer World"), is taking place in southern U.S. churches. UCS president Ken Kimmell writes about this in the current summer 2019 UCS Catalyst newsletter, saying that science demonstrates the urgency of the climate change problem, and that faith provides the moral propeller for action.
“What If” Progress: Among UCS proposals for progress, in the "if only" category, are:
1. If a family of four eats half as much meat, they avoid as much CO2 as not driving a car for 6 months.
2. If everyone in the U.S. reduced emissions by 20%, that's like shutting down 200 mid-sized coal plants (one-third of the nation's total).
3. If air leaks were caulked and sealed in every home in a small city, it would cut as much CO2 as conserving 1.6 million gallons of gasoline each year.
4. If everyone in the U.S. improved their homes' energy efficiency by just 10%, it would cut as much CO2 as taking some 25 million cars off the road.
5. When you cut your emissions by 20%, you save more CO2 than you would by turning off your electricity for one year.
6. If 20 friends stop drinking bottled water, soda, and juice, the avoided plastic would cut as much CO2 annually as a car would emit driving nearly halfway around the equator.
Your individual choices can make a difference for the climate. Scale It Up!
Real Progress:
Coal Power in 1998 comprised 52% of the U.S. electricity mix; by 2018, its share dropped nearly in half, to 27% (source: UCS).
Renewable energy employed 11 million people worldwide by the end of 2018 (source: Sierra magazine).
Renewable energy generated more than coal did, for the first time in the U.S., in April 2019 (source: Sierra).
U.S. Wind and Solar electricity generation increased sixfold between 2008 and 2018, and now accounts for more than 8% of our nation's power supply (source: UCS).
Today the fastest-growing job in the nation is a wind turbine technician. Number two? Solar installer (source: Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington state).
Potential Progress:
The Climate Witness Project is an effort of the Office of Social Justice, Christian Reformed Church in N. America.
Deep Green Faith: Holy Forest Kinship is a project of The Beecken Center (Shaping Faith Into Action).
The American Humanist Association Environmental Response Effort can be seen at
www.HereForClimate.org. Environmentalism is one of their "Ten Committments". Others are critical thinking, ethical development, peace and social justice, service and participation, altruism, humility, global awareness, responsibility, and empathy.
Of Note:
Beyond Carbon Campaign, Beyond Coal Campaign, both initiatives of former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (New York State) addresses and mitigates the effects of climate change by cutting Greenhouse Gases, moving to a greater reliance on renewable energy sources, and will create green jobs to promote environmental justice. It is said to be the most ambitious legislation of its kind in the United States. New York City also has its own comprehensive version.
Extinction threatens 1 million species of plants and animals due to human activity (source: Sierra Magazine).
Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), following that of prior technologies of steam, the combustion engine, and computing, consists of technology-driven experimental systems of sensors, robotic automation, streaming data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, blockchains, the Internet of Things, and other "disruptive technologies" etc. that are being deployed within transport, healthcare, agriculture, defense, energy, water, production, retail, etc., that may re-edit our genomes, hack our weather systems, and transform our food systems, our bodies, and our democracies. See the autumn issue of
Earth Island Journal.The Fourth National Climate Assessment report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
The Great Acceleration (definition): Our age of disorienting ecological, social, and technological change.
Greenest schools of 2019 as ranked by the Sierra Club: see list at
sc.org/coolschools.
July 2019 surpasses July 2016 as the hottest month in recorded history.
KeepCup: World's first barista standard reusable coffee cup, available in glass or BPA, BPS-free plastic. Replaces disposable cup.
Low Technology Institute: For nonindustrial/subsistence technology.
Low-Tech Magazine.
Microplastic ingestion of 5 grams each week (the potential world average per person) is equivalent of eating a credit card.
Web site for 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, and film, is at
survivalinternational.org/uncontacted.
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Books
Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Timothy Mitchell (2011).
The Democracy of Suffering: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, Philosophy in the Anthropocene. Todd Dufresne (2019).
Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future. David Grinspoon (2016).
Eating Animals. Jonathan Safran Foer.
The Green Cure: How shinrin-yoku, earthing, going outside, or simply opening a window can heal us. Alice Peck (2019).
Green Homes: New Ideas for Sustainable Living. Sergi Costa Duran..
Ground Truth: A Guide to Tracking Climate Change at Home. Mark L. Hineline (2018).
The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World. Rowan Jacobsen (2009).
Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Gregory Cajete.
October, Or Autumnal Tints. Henry David Thoreau.
On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. Naomi Klein (2019).
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. Elizabeth Rush (2019)
Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Change. Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas. 2019.
Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland. Rowan Jacobsen (2011).
Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything. Robert M. Hazen (2019).
The Thinking Person's Guide to Climate Change. Robert Henson (new edition, 2019).
The World Without Us. Alan Weisman
A Year with Nature: An Almanac. Marty Crump (2018).
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The following five entries are reviewed in The New York Review of Books for Sept. 26, 2019 in an article by Jonathan Mingle, "Our Lethal Air."
The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution---and How We Can Fight Back. Gary Fuller.
Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. Beth Gardiner.
Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution. Tim Smedley.
Integrated Science Assessment for Particulate Matter (External Review Draft, 2018), US EPA.
Letter to EPA Administrator on the EPA's Integrated Science Assessment for Particulate Matter, April 11, 2019, Review by the Chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
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Climate Lit(erature)
10:04. Ben Lerner.
After the Flood. Kassandra Montag.
MaddAddam trilogy. Margaret Atwood.
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Films re: Reconnecting with Nature
Go to Nature-Rx.org for Dream Tree Film series (Justin Bogardus, writer-director).
Global Warming Destruction Film:
The Day After Tomorrow (2004).
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Solidarity: An Important Contrast
Bryan Walsh, author of the book End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World (2019), suggests our reluctance to act now to reduce the effects of climate change is due to how our brains react to thoughts of the future: "If we view our own selves in the future as virtual strangers, how much less do we care about the lives of generations yet to be born?" (source, "A lack of urgency", Time magazine, Sept. 2-9, 2019, p. 30).
Compare that with the article "One For All", suggesting that "to avert global catastrophe, we urgently need to resurrect the ancient ideal of solidarity" (not charity, not philanthropy, not empathy or benevolence, not 'helping others', not private, spontaneous gestures of kindness, not allyship, not altruism, not generosity, not identity politics).
Solidarity: the ways we are bound together, and how we can act, in concert, to change our circumstances; a reciprocity rooted in the acknowledgment that our lives are intertwined; a collective indebtedness and obligation; shared responsibility, shared risk, shared sacrifice, shared reward; a state of interdependence and mutual aid; carrying one another's burden; a transcendence of our own limited personal experiences and then building bonds and diverse coalitions; an expression of the intrinsic debts we have to one another, to humanity; a social ethos; answering the call to one's conscience; a response required by an understanding of one's own unacceptable complicity.
"One For All", by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, may be seen in the September 2019 issue of The New Republic, pgs. 24-29.
