An inspiring TED talk from Simon Sinek, motivational speaker and author of Start With Why about how leaders inspire action, starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” This video should be required viewing for climate activists who want to communicate with others about why climate change is the pivotal issue of our times.
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Scientists Uncover Evidence Of Impending Tipping Point For Earth
Carbon Targets Need Strong New Measures, Panel Argues
The evidence continues to pile up: humanity’s uncontrolled appetite for slashing, burning, and polluting is rapidly pushing the earth’s ecosystem to a tipping point that will have disastrous consequences for our children and grandchildren:
A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.
“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal Nature. “The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.”
…Co-author Elizabeth Hadly from Stanford University said “we may already be past these tipping points in particular regions of the world. I just returned from a trip to the high Himalayas in Nepal, where I witnessed families fighting each other with machetes for wood – wood that they would burn to cook their food in one evening. In places where governments are lacking basic infrastructure, people fend for themselves, and biodiversity suffers. We desperately need global leadership for planet Earth.”
The authors note that studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions. This situation typically is accompanied by species extinctions and a loss of biodiversity.Read the full story at UC Berkeley’s website.
Now, take a big breath into your heart space, and think about what you love, and what you would defend fiercely. Now is the time to do all three of those at the same time – breathing/loving/protecting – in and out, over and over. It’s the “great turning”; humanity has the chance to grow up; we are alive in an extraordinary time. We – you, and me, and each one of the people alive today – have the opportunity to take a huge evolutionary step towards living cooperatively with each other, and realizing the sacredness of each life on earth, of “all our relations” as the Anishinaabe say, and of the earth herself. “Hope isn’t something you have, it’s something you do,” says eco-philosopher Joanna Macy. Go to JoannaMacy.net for more information on, and tools for, on The Great Turning.
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The Earth leads the news again. Fire & flood across continents. The nation-states are only supporting actors. What matters is people and our relationship with all of life. The nations and corporations and religions are losing their position. The Times says “Climate change has actually arrived.” No, at long last the Earth takes over completely.
The paragraph above from Reverend Billy Talen’s Facebook page today. Talen, founder of the Church of Life After Shopping, is a modern-day prophet, visionary, and performance artist who has been pointing out the dangers of the North American over-consumptive lifestyle in creative, attention-grabbing ways since 1996.
My scientist husband compared this summer’s weather to an experiment done in Chemistry class. Supersaturation occurs when a solid is added to a liquid and appears to be dissolving without visibly changing the liquid until the liquid becomes so saturated that, just by lightly tapping the side of the flask, the dissolved solid immediately crystallizes and sinks to the bottom. The earth is close to her “supersaturation point”, as the extreme weather events demonstrate. This analogy can also be extended to include the possibility that the number of weather catastrophes around the globe this summer, combined with the ecological and economic disaster of the BP oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico, could crystallize in people’s minds the reality of climate change and the limits of our finite planet. This shift in understanding needs to happen now, before we are any further down this planet-destructive, and ultimately self-destructive, path. Could this be the summer? Or, as someone commented on Rev Billy’s page, “I think we are being voted off the planet”.
More links:
In Weather Chaos, a Case For Global Warming
Reinventing Repower America: Our Only Hope For Winning the Climate Battle in America
Sonnenschiff Solar City Produces 4 Times The Energy It Consumes