“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” – Wangari Maathai
With these powerful words Wangari Maathai at her acceptance speech for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, called the people of the world to heal the wounds of the planet and each other. Maathai was born in rural Kenya where she saw the destruction of the forests and the natural world. She was a biologist and a champion for women.
Before the arrival of European Missionaries, Mount Kenya was considered a sacred place, the source of rain and life. People had a strong connection to the soil and land. They built mud huts and shared their habitats with domestic animals. Then, they were forced by the newcomers to believe in an invisible God who lives in the clouds, and commercial logging and farming. All in the name of progress.
Maathai spent decades working with the Green Belt Movement helping women in rural Kenya plant and sustain more than 30 million trees and restore soils and watersheds. With their hands in the dirt, these women were empowered and respected.
Restoring the forests
Dr. Thomas Crowther, a 32 year-old genius and global ecosystems ecologist, mapped all the forests in the world and found 3.04 trillion trees. He says there is room to grow an additional 1.2 trillion trees across the planet, the best way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The total would be 4,240 billion trees!
U.S. Fracking Ban
The total cost of fracking for the U.S. economy is around $60 billion per year. This includes onshore and offshore shale drilling. Fracking started out as a toxic brute force method that polluted clean water with massive amounts of sand and chemicals, and it got worse digging deeper with increased pressure. The cost per barrel of shale exceeds its price! Please read Amity and Prosperity, the fracturing of America.
U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) describes fracking as an American innovation. In 2011 Boozman endorsed deep water offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, where wells have gone from 1,000 feet to more than 10,000 feet deep, with massive toxic wastewater dumped in the ocean.
Paul Müller received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for discovering DDT. Like fracking, DDT seemed to be an amazing discovery, but in reality, was killing people. DDT was banned in 1972.
Energy Imbalance
The massive greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and other industrial activities have altered the climate, and not in a good way. A simple way to understand what has happened since the Industrial Revolution is the energy imbalance. The thermal energy from the Sun exceeds the thermal radiation to space from the Earth.
Please take a bag of microwave popcorn. Set the timer at 5 minutes. Hit the start button and count every 10 seconds, recording what you observe. For the first 60 seconds the kernels inside of the bag are getting warm but there is no popping. At some point you will see the bag moving and you may hear the first kernel popping at around 90 seconds. There will be some random popping, and finally silence, around 200 seconds. Let’s pretend the time scale of the experiment is years, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, around 1820, and the starting point for the microwave radiation. Each pop is an extreme weather event. By 1880, the 60-year mark, all seemed good but there was more heat coming in than going out. By 2020, the popping will continue even if the greenhouse gas emissions stop. Please see 350.org/science/ for details.
Time is running out
In 1936 Winston Churchill warned England of the German threat. He said, “The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now.”
Time to act!
Dr. Luis Contreras
Great news today, UK bans fracking to heal the planet!
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2019/519.pdf
There is a glut of oil in the market, and 60 percent has been produced by U.S. frackers since 2008
A Forbes 2018 report says, “Of the 10.3 million barrels per day of new oil production since 2008, the U.S. supplied 6.2 million barrels per day, or 60%”
What? How much is that?
The math is easy, if you like math. One barrel equals 42 gallons. An Olympic swimming pool is 164 feet in length, 82 feet in width, and 6 feet in depth. One pool holds 660,253 gallons in volume.
U.S. frackers have extracted 6.2 million barrels of oil per day, equivalent to 400 olympic swiming pools of oil per day.
Homework problem: what are CO2 emissions per day produced by U.S frackers?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/22/how-the-fracking-revolution-broke-opecs-hold-on-oil-prices/#89cd32448efd
Seems like ur the only person allowed an opinion on here as our comments never make the page u are fake news incarnate
Everyone is welcomed to comment, the editor has someone review opinons to avoid spam.
I post links for references on my articles since most of the readers use the print copy.
What is your question?
I would be happy to respond. Climate is NOT a partisan issue, and is clearly the most important threat we have for life on the planet.
Please look at my new oped. The deadline to cut emissions in half, is 2030. Every day counts.
Peace
Ignorance and arrogance run free in the U.S. Senate.
“Children as young as 7 reminded Senator Feinstein that their generation will be most impacted by the effects of climate change and that she must stand with her constituents.
The Senator responded by asking for their ages, stating: “Well, you did not vote for me.”
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Feinstein says in the video. “You come in here and say it has to be my way or the highway. I don’t respond to that…I know what I’m doing. Maybe people should listen a little bit.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/02/22/everyone-needs-watch-democrat-dianne-feinstein-explain-children-why-she-wont-back
This is what the Trump EPA says about climate:
“Thanks to President Trump’s regulatory reform agenda, the economy is booming, energy production is surging, and we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions from major industrial sources,” said EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
“These achievements flow largely from technological breakthroughs in the private sector, not the heavy hand of government. The Trump Administration has proven that federal regulations are not necessary to drive CO2 reductions. While many around the world are talking about reducing greenhouse gases, the U.S. continues to deliver, and today’s report is further evidence of our action-oriented approach.”
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/data-shows-decrease-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-during-trumps-first-year-office
Trump called a Presidential study on climate change to oppose the findings of the February 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, clearly stating the planetary crisis from burning fossil fuels threatens our nation: rising seas, refugees, floods, wildfires, …
He said to himself, why not have another study prepared by my climate deniers?
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/430788-new-white-house-national-security-climate-panel-to-include-climate
Please join the legal efforts to have the U.S. goverment protect the constitutional rights of our youth.
Juliana vs. The U.S. — the Climate change lawsuit is under attack by the Administration, trying to stop the case before it is heard in court. Thank you.
https://www.joinjuliana.org