Generational genocide

By
Dr. Luis Contreras
-
1357

The inaction of the old is killing the future of the young

Empty words and false solutions from the people with the power to stop carbon emissions are destroying the future of new generations, one day at a time. There are no excuses for the climate genocide. The future of all humanity depends on stopping carbon emissions.

Bad news: Human intelligence turned out to be an evolutionary blunder. We live in the past and ignore the future. We read about wildfires, heatwaves, and floods but it all seems unreal unless we can touch, smell, see, hear, and feel the new reality. Like children covering their eyes to make monsters disappear we can’t bear to see what is already happening and what the future will be like for everyone, unless we act now.

Carbon emissions from burning fuels have changed the physical and chemical composition of the planet and degraded the biological systems on Earth. Nation’s boundaries are irrelevant to nature. We are all sharing one hot, crowded planet. We have contaminated our air, water, and food, with nowhere to go.

We have wrecked the climate, ya’ll! For over 50 years we have postponed reducing carbon emissions and have used up most of our carbon budget. We are burning our forests and destroying our wetlands.

Needless carbon emissions

Energy comes in many forms and most is lost as heat. To bake a pie, for example, the energy to preheat the oven and the heat released after the pie is done creates additional waste when the A/C turns on to cool your house. If you eat half of the pie and forget about the rest in the fridge, additional energy is wasted.

Hemp, the fastest growing plant, can store carbon emissions in the soil and can be used as feedstock for papermills leaving forests intact. It is used for fiber, seed, medicinal CBDs, and animal feed. Hemp is used as a replacement for concrete for wall systems. Hempcrete uses the woody core of the hemp plant, for thick walls providing great insulation and thermal mass, similar to Southwest adobe walls, used in the Netherlands and China, and recently in the U.S. and Canada.

Carbon-free technologies for cement, aluminum manufacturing, and many industrial processes dating over 100 years old are now available.

No more carbon emissions

Case in point: Antarctica experienced its hottest day on record this month, 64.9°F. A massive iceberg, 116 square miles, broke off from the Pine Island Glacier. Rising sea levels could be catastrophic for millions living on the world’s coasts.

The number “zero” has a clear meaning in grade school. However, it has been used in many false ways. We don’t need a low-carbon economy, lower emissions, net-zero carbon emissions, carbon neutral wood pellets, or carbon offsets. Carbon emissions have to stop as soon as possible to have a chance to stay below the 1.5°C target.

The rules have to change

We have been free to make choices, but we are not free of their consequences. We don’t get to redo the damage. When human laws fail to provide justice, freedom, equality, and other natural rights, the laws must change. Ignoring the rights of the Earth, the largest and most beautiful organism in our Solar System, is lethal. Destroying wetlands for natural gas, for example, would no longer be allowed under the new legal framework.

The United Nations would be the ideal body to enforce the new rules, but the new generations, our youth, have the numbers and the moral power to act demanding parents and schools respond. Another resource, the elders, people with experience and time to act, can join the climate battle. I am ready.

We must stop investments and subsidies for fossil fuels, stop funding the military budget for new weapons, bring our troops home, and re-train the military for emergency climate response. Wars are major sources of emissions.

Be kind, compassionate, and happy

Hard times ahead, enjoy every day, love your friends and keep your eyes wide open. We will prevail.

Please join the Change.org petition to save the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve.

Dr. Luis Contreras

14 COMMENTS

  1. Legal challenge: climate action

    The valve turners recently listed by Homeland Security as “extremists” believe their action of shutting down 15 percent of the daily U.S. oil supply on Oct. 11, 2016 was their only option of fighting the climate crisis.

    Valve turner Ken Ward of Climate Direct Action is going to trial this spring for the third time. He is charged with burglary and sabotage. EcoWatch teamed up with Ward and his attorney Lauren Regan, the executive director and co-founder of Civil Liberties Defense Center, on EcoWatch Live to share what this trial means for climate activists and why the U.S. government is listing some of these peaceful activists alongside mass murderers and white supremacists.

    “The far right and the fossil fuel industry are spending about $30 billion in a media campaign, basically a smear campaign. It’s one of the last-ditch efforts to try and persuade Americans that their gross profits are worth more than clean water and a healthy planet,” Regan says. “As they’re gasping for their last profiteering breaths, they are pulling out all of the dirty tricks that those types of profiteering industries have used historically.”

    Such listings seem to have no relevance for climate activists, as those who engage in direct action are aware of risks such as being arrested and potentially facing serious consequences.

    Regan points to “the overt bastardization of the truth or manipulation of reality by those industries.” It’s an attempt to “frame nonviolent civil disobedience as the same type of action as Nazis who murdered humans or anti-choice zealots that murder abortion doctors. I think normal humans with thinking brains see the incredible difference between those scenarios. It really exposes the desperation of the industry in my opinion.”

    https://www.ecowatch.com/valve-turners-climate-direct-action-2645054934.html/

  2. Please join the petition to save the California Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve, thank you

    The Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve is approximately 640 acres of a mosaic of habitats – and it is under threat to be bulldozed and have more than 2 million cubic yards of life-filled soils excavated, moved around and re-sculpted, as if one can play “Frankenstein” with Nature.

    Wetlands, Grasslands, Coastal Scrub, Salt Panne and Sand Dunes are among the habitats that are planned to be destroyed for a plan the State of California was persuaded to bring bulldozers into, even though dozens of rare and imperiled species rely on this land for shelter and food.

    http://chng.it/FFRgy59MXx

  4. Ignoring the climate crisis and increasing the nuclear arsenal is criminal

    Trump seeks $46 billion for nuclear weapons programs in budget request

    Feb 10, 2020 — The Trump administration’s fiscal 2021 budget includes a major increase in nuclear weapons spending from both the Defense Department and the agency in charge of managing nuclear warheads.

    Overall spending on nuclear modernization by the Pentagon sits at $28.9 billion in the request, while funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration comes in at $19.8 billion, an almost 20 percent increase for the semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy from FY20 numbers.

    Of that funding for NNSA, $15.6 billion is for the weapons accounts.

    Another $1.7 billion goes to the naval reactors account, 2.2 percent above the FY20 enacted level. That supports three modernization efforts: the Columbia-Class Reactor System Development, the Land-based S8G Prototype Refueling Overhaul, and the Spent Fuel Handling Recapitalization Project

    Combined, the Trump budget requests almost $46 billion for nuclear weapons programs.

    https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federal-budget/2020/02/10/trump-budget-requests-46-billion-for-nuclear-weapons-programs/

  5. Ignoring the climate emergency is a crime

    When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a study that included plans for a sea wall to protect New Yorkers from sea-level rise and catastrophic storms like Hurricane Sandy, Trump mocked it as ineffective and unsightly.

    Now, six-weeks after plans for a sea wall drew the President’s derision, the federal government abruptly decided to halt the project, according to The New York Times.

    The sudden announcement from USACE to indefinitely postpone plans for a sea wall surprised some of its own officials, local politicians and environmental activists, all of whom see a mounting threat to New York City from the climate crisis, as The New York Times reported. The USACE official in charge of the project said it was very unusual to lose funding after more than three years of work on the project and millions of dollars spent.

    https://www.ecowatch.com/nyc-sea-wall-2645284172.html

  6. Extinction Rebellion says: We demand the US Government:

    1) tell the truth about the climate and wider ecological emergency, it must reverse all policies not in alignment with that position and must work alongside the media to communicate the urgency for change including what individuals, communities and businesses need to do.

    2) enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It must cooperate internationally so that the global economy runs on no more than half a planet’s worth of resources per year.

    3) a Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the changes, as we rise from the wreckage, creating a democracy fit for purpose.

    4) a just transition that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and indigenous sovereignty; establishes reparations and remediation led by and for Black people, Indigenous people, people of color and poor communities for years of environmental injustice, establishes legal rights for ecosystems to thrive and regenerate in perpetuity, and repairs the effects of ongoing ecocide to prevent extinction of human and all species, in order to maintain a livable, just planet for all.

    https://extinctionrebellion.us/

  7. Sunrise Movement says:

    We’re building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.

    We are ordinary young people who are scared about what the climate crisis means for the people and places we love.

    We are gathering in classrooms, living rooms, and worship halls across the country.

    Everyone has a role to play. Public opinion is already with us – if we unite by the millions, we can turn this into political power and reclaim our democracy.

    https://www.sunrisemovement.org/about

  11. Net Zero, Carbon Neutral, and other metrics are used to deceive.

    EPA decided burning wood pellets from US forests in the UK is carbon neutral. EPA is destroying our environment and the future of life. EPA is a federal agency for environmental pollution.

    The following Net Zero equation ignores the timeline of events is accounting falacy:
    Carbon emissions – Carbon capture = 0
    Emissions in 2020 are not compensated by trees removing carbon in 2035.

    BP with a new CEO promises to be net-zero by 2050. This is an empty promise, anything after 2030 is too late. BP will continue selling oil and gas, trying to off-set their emissions.

    https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/bp-commits-to-net-zero-by-2050/

  12. The climate emergency is increasing from the feedback loops.

    For example, as temperatures rise and glaciers melt, the seas get warmer. Snow and ice reflect heat, dark water absorbs heat, the albedo effect.

    If you place an ice-cube on a table at room temperature it will melt leaving a puddle of water. Ice sheets breaking up from Antarctica and snow melting in a few days from high temperatures near 65 F, are destroying the glaciers

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/12/world/iceberg-breaks-off-antarctica-glacier-scn-intl/index.html

  13. “Needless carbon emissions” is a key concept ignored in most climate reports.

    Massive emissions are hidden in waste and inneficiency. Waste creates more waste.

    Example: “In the U.S., up to 40 percent of all food is tossed in the garbage. It’s more than just the uneaten food you scrape off your plate. Food waste happens at every stage of production, from vegetables rotting on the vine to dumpsters full of unsold fruit and meat at your local grocery store.”

    The energy used to grow, clean, process and transport the food tossed in land fields creates carbon emissions, where it decomposes creating methane. By eliminating food waste, the energy, and the corresponding emissions are reduced.

    Obesity in the U.S. is a serious problem, getting worse. Health benefits are part of the package.

    When you travel to the Netherlands, for example, the prices of food are very high and the portions are very small. There is little waste. No superzing is available. Coca-cola is sold in small cans.

    The Feb. 16, 2020 article below, “Can the U.S. Slash Food Waste in Half in the Next Ten Years?” shows the problem and some of the solutions.

    https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-solutions-2645167874.html/

  14. Carbon budget to keep global warming at 1.5 C, and below 2C, the UN Paris Agreement target,

    The video below shows the atmosphere as a “bucket” filling with greenhouse gas pollution, from 1870 to 2019 and the sources of emissions, mostly from the industrial revolution started in England.

    The contributions of EU, US, China and other countries are shown … 10 years left unless we stop emissions now
    https://youtu.be/V-RcQixZs6E

Comments are closed.