Global climate call

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The Dalai Lama meets Greta Thunberg and calls for action

Last Saturday, The Mind and Life Institute live-streamed a conversation on the climate emergency with millions of people from all over the world joining the event.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, spoke of the moral imperative of taking action, to think deeply about the problems caused by people and the need to join together to find solutions and solve problems. Greta spoke of the young activists who have heard her call to act. His Holiness said Greta, “his younger sister,” will lead new generations demanding change from people in power.

Planetary perspective

The New York Times, January 7 reports, “U.S. Disaster Costs Doubled in 2020 Reflecting Costs of Climate Change,” was based on estimates from Munich Re, a company that provides insurance to other insurance companies. The report says $95 billion in damages came in a year marked by a record number of storms, and the largest wildfires recorded in California, at double the cost. Hurricane Laura made the top of the list in 2020 with $13 billion in damages.

“We can’t, as an [insurance] industry, continue to just collect more and more money, and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild in the same way. We’ve got to place an emphasis on preventing and reducing loss.” This is a distorted view of reality. NYT readers would think we have an insurance emergency that will be solved with higher insurance rates.

The NYT report gives a narrow view of the climate emergency. It does not mention the hottest temperatures recorded in the Arctic, the ice melting or thawing of the permafrost. It ignores the impacts of flooding on crops and people, the losses in the animal population, and destruction of the soil and forests.

Natural solutions

There are many simple natural solutions. Repairing the soil, protecting the forests, and safeguarding the oceans and waterways are needed to preserve the cycles of nature. Let nature heal itself.

Regenerative agriculture is one of the more promising wide-scale environmental farming solutions for building healthy soils over time. The organic matter in the soil can capture 10 tons of carbon per acre!

Old-growth forests capture more carbon than clear-cutting a forest to create a tree plantation. Burning wood pellets for electricity must stop immediately.

Plastic waste and wastewater are contaminating our waters and killing marine life, coral reefs, freshwater fish. We are using our oceans as garbage dumps. Reinstating all the environmental protection for air, water, and land should be done immediately.

Feedback loops

The Earth’s climate system can’t be explained with simple cause and effect relationships, for example, burning fuels (cause) creates carbon emissions (effect). To understand what happens next, over time we need to dig deeper and look for the consequences triggered by human behavior. The heat-trapping gases raise the temperature, with self-perpetuating warming loops. The more we burn, the hotter it gets.

This is explained in five great videos created by the Mind and Life Institute website – available free of charge.

The Introduction to the Feedback Loop Climate videos, says “Fossil fuel emissions from human activity are driving up Earth’s temperature — yet something else is at work. The warming has set in motion Nature’s own feedback loops which are raising temperatures even higher. The urgent question is: Are we approaching a point of no return, leading to an uninhabitable Earth, or do we have the vision and will to slow, halt, and reverse them?”

An uninhabitable Earth is a difficult concept for Americans. At this time, the people living in the Arctic and the U.S. Marshall Islands, and two million nomads in the Sahara Desert, are relocating to survive. Others will follow.

Learn and participate, this is a global emergency

“Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg, and Scientists discuss the crisis of climate feedback loops,” Dalai Lama Facebook page.

Feedback loop videos available at FeedbackLoopsClimate.com.

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations David R. Montgomery.

Symbiotic Planet, Gaia and symbiosis provide a planetary view of the world from bacteria to humans, Lynn Margulis.

Dr. Luis Contreras

6 COMMENTS

  1. Cycles of Nature are at high risk

    Nature’s cycles have to do with how the earth renews itself.

    The living things within an ecosystem interact with each other and also with their non-living environment to form an ecological unit that is largely self-contained.

    Sometimes this renewal process is gradual and gentle. Sometimes it is violent and destructive.

    Nevertheless, ecosystems contain within themselves the resources to regenerate themselves.

    https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/biogeochemical-cycles/a/introduction-to-biogeochemical-cycles

  2. Protecting and building the soil is a natural climate solution!

    Sequestering atmospheric carbon (CO2) in the soil helps to offset greenhouse gas emissions, such as the carbon dioxide emitted by cars, power plants and other burning of fossil fuels.

    The soil has significant potential to store carbon3 and to mitigate the effects of climate change.

    Farmers, scientists and policymakers across the globe are particularly interested in the potential contribution of agricultural practices, like cover crops, to the sequestration of carbon in the soil.

    https://www.wglt.org/post/glts-grow-dirt-soil#stream/0/

  3. US Disaster Costs Doubled in 2020, Reflecting Costs of Climate Change

    Jan. 7, 2021

    The $95 billion in damage came in a year marked by a record number of named Atlantic storms, as well as the largest wildfires recorded in California.

    Those losses occurred during a year that was one of the warmest on record, a trend that makes extreme rainfall, wildfires, droughts and other environmental catastrophes more frequent and intense.

    “Climate change plays a role in this upward trend of losses,” Ernst Rauch, the chief climate scientist at Munich Re, said in an interview. He said continued building in high-risk areas had also contributed to the growing losses.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/climate/2020-disaster-costs.html/

  4. January 6, 2021

    The Alliance of World Scientists (13,700 strong) delivered a biting report, “Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points.”

    https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu

Comments are closed.