There is a deadly challenge we all face, the solutions have been known for over 10 years, but we have ignored the problem and the solutions.
Someone replied to the challenge question saying “Raging climate change is the obvious answer, as it affects all of us for generations, possibly thousands of years. It is preventable, but not fixable.” Raging climate change is the issue. The consequences of inaction are disastrous. Severe flooding in 2017 was due to high sea temperatures. Puerto Rico has not recovered, and many refugees are not going back. On Memorial Day weekend, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama declared a state of emergency ahead of subtropical storm Alberto.
Unless we act, we have a few decades left under unbearable living conditions. If we have the courage to act now there are many solutions.
Climate warming is all about CO2: 200, 280, 410, …
While the Earth’s atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide fluctuated between 200 ppm and 280 ppm for hundreds of thousands of centuries, man-made emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased CO2 to 410 ppm as of April 2018. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for decades and we add more every day. To avoid going over the cliff we need to stop burning fossil fuels and remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Carbon free technologies are available.
ExxonMobil knew the effects of burning fossil fuels 35 years ago but hid the evidence and hired lobbyists to mislead the public. ExxonMobil was driven by greed. The cat is out of the bag and it’s time to pay the piper.
Negative carbon dioxide emissions
Climate experts say we have time if we act now, but we are reaching a point of no return. This is an important fact based on science. The battle is unlike anything we have tried before but the alternative is unthinkable. We are here for a reason, we have been chosen to right the wrongs and no one will be allowed to stand in our way. Which side are you on?
Dr. James Hansen, our leading climate scientist and activist, and other experts got together last week in Sweden for the first international conference on effective ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in the ground.
Seeing the forests under the trees
Forests are massive carbon dioxide vacuum systems. A single tree can sequester one ton of CO2. Left in the forest, most of the carbon remains locked in the ecosystem. The crumbling trunk is slowly broken down and stored deep in the soil where rainwater transforms the carbon into humus. Soil is the real treasure. Selling forests at stumpage prices of $6 per ton is a crime against nature. When you see a 40-ton logging truck entering a wood mill to transform a tree into fiber, someone sold out for only $240. The cost of harvesting and hauling the trees, a source of carbon emissions and pollution, exceeds the pieces of silver paid to the forest owner.
Nothing matters until shareholders jump ship
An investment report last week, “Exxon Mobil Becomes A Political Battleground,” tells shareholders the financial impact of having New York and San Francisco suing the five largest investor-owned companies for climate damages. NY is divesting its $5 billion pension funds in fossil fuels. Coastal cities can see the rising tides, and a lawsuit was filed in Colorado against ExxonMobil and Sunoco for climate reparations.
Climate Kids legal initiatives
Two exceptional non-profit organizations are taking legal action to protect their future based on constitutional rights. Our Children’s Trust is leading a global human rights and environmental justice campaign. Earth Guardians is a worldwide organization with youth chapters on five continents working to protect the Earth.
Last week, a U.S. District Court Judge issued an order denying Trump’s motion for a protective order in Juliana v. United States, the constitutional climate lawsuit brought by 21 young plaintiffs. The Administration sought the protective order to avoid all discovery in the case and further delay the October 29, 2018 trial.
Let’s make this happen.
Dr. Luis Contreras
As the Trump administration charges forward with its war on science by canceling a “crucial” carbon monitoring system at NASA, scientists and climate experts are sounding alarms over atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) that just surpassed a “troubling” threshold for the first time in human history.
“The reading from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii finds that concentrations of the climate-warming gas averaged above 410 parts per million [ppm] throughout April,” Chris Mooney wrote for the Washington Post. “The first time readings crossed 410 at all occurred on April 18, 2017, or just about a year ago.”
May 20, 2018
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts
As long as Dr. Contreras heats his home, drives a car, and reads books (printed on paper from $240 trees), he has lost his argument before it even starts. If society as a whole cared about “climate change” it would pay to get it fixed. It doesn’t care and won’t pay. Sorry about that.
April 19, 2018 – A lawsuit filed in Colorado state court by the counties of Boulder and San Miguel and the city of Boulder seeks to force ExxonMobil and Sunoco to be financially responsible for the costs they will bear in the future as the result of climate change.
Others have sued fossil fuel companies in the past, but this is the first time a legal challenge has been mounted by communities not located in coastal areas.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/19/colorado-communities-sue-exxonmobil-suncor-for-climate-change-costs/
Juliana v. U.S. Youth climate lawsuit
May 25, 2018 – “Exercising my ‘reasoned judgment,’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” – U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken.
Youth filed their constitutional climate lawsuit, called Juliana v. U.S., against the U.S. government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in 2015. Earth Guardians is also an organizational plaintiff in the case. Their complaint asserts that, through the government’s affirmative actions that cause climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources. Trial set on October 29, 2018
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/