miscellany

We need to stop regarding the climate emergency as a stand-alone environmental problem. Global heating, although ruinous, is not the sole symptom of our present struggling Earth system but is only one of the many facets of the accelerating environmental crisis. Policies to alleviate the climate crisis or any of the other threatened planetary boundary transgressions should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth (Rockström et al. 2009).*

That there was cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That there could again be cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That we can survive the use of nuclear weapons is a myth. That there is cause to produce and arm nuclear weapons even though you’ll never use them is too stupid even to be a myth. And that we can forever survive possessing and proliferating nuclear weapons without someone intentionally or accidentally using them is pure insanity.*

"Why do U.S. history teachers in U.S. elementary schools today — in 2021! — tell children that nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan to save lives — or rather “the bomb” (singular) to avoid mentioning Nagasaki?" https://t.co/1qF9SifYjV

— ScheerPost.com (@Robert_Scheer) August 5, 2021

“Our power, then, has the grave liability of rendering our theories about the world immune from failure. But by becoming deaf to easily discerned warning signs, we may ignore long-term costs that result from our actions and dismiss reverses that should lead to a re-examination of our goals and means.”

These are the words of Henry Hyde, chairman of the House international relations committee and a Republican congressman, in a recent speech. Hyde argues that such is the overweening power of the US that it may not hear or recognise the signals when its policy goes badly wrong, a thinly veiled reference to Iraq. He then takes issue with the idea that the US can export democracy around the world as deeply misguided and potentially dangerous. He argues: "A broad and energetic promotion of democracy in other countries that will not enjoy our long-term and guiding presence may equate not to peace and stability but to revolution ... There is no evidence that we or anyone can guide from afar revolutions we have set in motion. We can more easily destabilise friends and others and give life to chaos and to avowed enemies than ensure outcomes in service of our interests and security."*

“key driver for the [thorium] molten salt reactor (TMSR) …that China would become carbon neutral by 2060”

reactors in the west to “provide a clean, stable electricity supply to the densely populated east in combination with wind and solar power plants”https://t.co/W6I8BwoBE8* pic.twitter.com/WFDfciLZXk

— George Atherton (@notrehta) July 24, 2021

Something is going very, very wrong. Haywire. It’s hotter in Washington, DC and New York than it is in Lahore, Pakistan. London got more than a month’s worth of rain in a few minutes. Entire regions of Germany are flooded. California’s burning — again. Parts of Canada rivalled the hottest places on earth — and went up like tinder.

Something is very wrong. Not just wrong in a usual way, but wrong in a weird, off-the-charts way. These are “extreme events” which scientists have long feared. But they’ve even shocked scientists with how suddenly extreme and frequent they are.

Don’t take it from me.

“The far north of Europe also sweltered in record-breaking June heat, and cities in India, Pakistan and Libya have endured unusually high temperatures in recent weeks. Suburbs of Tokyo have been drenched in the heaviest rainfall since measurements began and a usual month’s worth of July rain fell on London in a day. Events that were once in 100 years are becoming commonplace. Freak weather is increasingly normal.”*