Honest conversation about climate change in wake of storms
Why have you done this to my planet?
At least four people have died and nearly 6 million people are without power in Florida, after Hurricane Irma made landfall on Sunday on the Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane. Is this due to climate change? How about Hurricane Harvey? Democracy Now! speaks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. The Irma super-storm flooded the streets of downtown Miami, Florida, turning the city’s main strip, Brickell Avenue, into a 3-foot-high raging river. Its arrival sparked one of the largest mass evacuations in U.S. history, with nearly 7 million people ordered to leave their homes. More(Watch Full Show)
Elizabeth Kolbert award-winning journalist and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, where she has reported extensively on climate change. Her most recent piece is headlined "Hurricane Harvey and the Storms to Come." She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her 2015 book, The Sixth Extinction.
(EDU DOC) "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is a documentary that shows that the "scientific" [pure, objective, unbiased] opinion on climate change is actually influenced by funding and political factors. The film questions whether or not there's scientific consensus on anthropogenic (caused by humans) global warming. The film, made by British TV producer Martin Durkin, presents scientists, economists, politicians, writers, and others who dispute the existence of scientific consensus regarding man-made global warming. Such man-made global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times." Its original working title was "Apocalypse my Arse," but the title "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was later adopted as an allusion to the 1980 mockumentary "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" about British punk band the Sex Pistols. There is a problem -- a problem of pollution, misallocation of resources, exploitation of the poor, destruction of animals (domestic and wild), cutting down of forests, contamination of water, air, and food... Instead of addressing these, we are being fed a bill of goods. And the "solution" being suggested is CAPITALISM pure and simple. It's our world, and to save it we need real solutions.
Climate Chaos is Real Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORIAL)
This Changes Everything (Naomi Klein)
Global "climate chaos" -- which includes warming, drought, inordinate freezing, agricultural disruptions, catastrophic rains, flooding, pollution, ocean acidification, clear cutting of forests, raising grass grazing animals for meat -- is real.
No one doubts that. The only question is, Why? Are humans contributing to the problem? Yes, of course. It is not so much individuals, as we are told and badgered. It is governments colluding with vast multinational corporations (with principals going from one camp to the other, from politics to business, from business to politics).
It cannot be human doing alone because all of the planets in the area are warming up, according to David Wilcock (Edgar Cayce today, divinecosmos.com). Nature is doing it, the Earth is possibly shaking off an irritant (the human race) that is exacerbating it, but it is happening.
Debunking climate deniers. Yet the warming environment is a set up.
And instead of doing something real about it, "disaster capitalists" are capitalizing on it. That is, they are making money and polluting more.
More drilling for oil and mountain top removal for coal means more burning. With millions of cars spewing toxins into the air 24 hours a day, with the burning of coal in power plants, with the spilling of oil and killing of indigenous populations all over the world, we are destroying the planet. The great swindle is not this destruction, it is the false "solution" that will be instituted to capitalize on it.
Carbon (CO2) is not the problem. Carbon is necessary and helpful, and if the Earth had its lungs (Amazon, Siberia, and other great forests of the world that are being clear cut by capitalists and local impoverished ranchers with few options) it would not harm the planet. Far more noxious gases -- like methane -- are not being talked about.
South India flooded
Grazing cows emit methane as do peat fires can clear cutting, as do fecal matter pits involved in hog raising. More than 1,000,000 animals are slaughtered ever day in the United States to feed the few, but even then half of that prepared flesh is thrown in the trash like half the food we buy. Go vegan.
This planet has enough to meet everyone's need, but not nearly enough to satisfy anyone's greed. Fossil fuels, which are subsidized, are a money-making scheme. With the funding of more and more billionaires, the planet is going down the tubes.
Take drugs like me, kids.
We go live to COP 21 with Amy Goodman (democracynow.org) in Paris, France, where police have conveniently used the pretext of "preventing terrorism" to ban all demonstrations by those trying to save the world.
A fitting honor to the few who died here in Paris and the many (the uncountable) victims of climate change and climate chaos, would be a fair, ambitious, and binding agreement at the climate summit. [The United States, one of the grossest polluters, must sign -- then pressure can be placed on China, Russia, and India to follow suit.] LISTEN
WARSAW - Negotiations at the U.N. climate summit COP 19 have entered
their final scheduled day. Deep divisions remain between rich and
poorer nations. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries have been meeting
for the past two weeks trying to lay the foundation for a new global
climate treaty to be agreed on at talks scheduled for Paris in two years. Yesterday, more than 800 members of various environmental groups disgusted with the lack of progress staged
an unprecedented walk out of the talks.
Questioned by Democracy Now!
host Amy Goodman hours later, the U.S. special envoy for climate change
and lead climate negotiator, Todd Stern, rejected calls for reparations
to poor countries damaged by the carbon [methane, and other] emissions of the world’s biggest
polluters.
What is the state of the talks? Guests Martin
Khor, executive director of the South Centre, and Nitin Sethi, senior
assistant editor at The Hindu discuss it. Sethi was responsible for leaking U.S.
briefing papers on the climate negotiations before the summit began,
revealing how U.S. negotiators at the climate talks are opposing efforts
to help developing countries adapt to climate change.
US: We're not paying them damages!
According to the
internal memo, the U.S. delegation is worried the talks in Warsaw will
"focus increasingly on blame and liability" and that poor nations will
be "seeking redress for climate damages from sea level rise, droughts,
powerful storms, and other adverse impacts."More
Translation by Pa Auk Sayadaw, preeminent noble living Buddhist scholar-practitioner, from his compendious The Workings of Kamma, edited by Wisdom Quarterly
In the "Seven-Suns Discourse" (Satta-Suriya Sutra, A.VII.vii.2) the Buddha gives a detailed account of this world-system’s eventual destruction.
"Inconceivable is the beginning, disciples, of the round of rebirth. A first point is not known of beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving rushing on and running about [from life to life in samsara]."
The Buddha then explains how, in the distant future, the world-system will come to an end. This possibly settles a question made famous by the American poet Robert Frost:
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
THERE WILL COME A TIME
First the great ocean dries up: "There will come a time, disciples, when the great ocean dries up, evaporates, and is no more.
"In the distant future the world will be destroyed in one of three ways [16]: destroyed by fire, by water or by wind" [20]. Here, the Buddha describes what happens when the world is destroyed by fire [21]. "First of all, a 100,000 years beforehand, certain sky-devas [literal beings from space] will appear before people with disheveled hair, and pitiful faces, wiping their tears with their hands [22].
They will announce the end of the world and urge people to develop the four Divine Abidings (Brahma Viharas): loving-kindness (metta), compassion, joy in others' joy, and impartiality (equanimity) up to the level of absorption (jhana). And they will advise people to look after their parents and respect their elders. Most people will take these words to heart and practice loving-kindness towards each other. In this and other ways they accomplish wholesome karma.
Those who are able will develop the meditative-absorptions. Those who are unable to develop [any of the eight] absorptions will, because of their past profitable karma, be reborn in the deva world. Then as devas they will develop absorption.
Dependent on ignorance and craving, the karmic potency of their absorption causes all of these beings to be reborn in the brahma world [23]. [This is the result of the weighty good karma of absorption held at the time of dying.]
(FULL LENGTH MOVIE)
After a long period, a great cloud appears, and heavy rain falls throughout the hundred thousand million world spheres. People sow crops, but when the crops have grown high enough for an ox to graze, the rain stops [24]. With no more rain, plants dry up and are no more. Soon there is famine. Human beings die and also earthbound-devas (bhumma-deva), for they live on flowers and fruits.
Owing to their past profitable karma, they are reborn in the deva world. And as devas they develop absorption using meditative disks (kasina). Again, dependent on ignorance and craving, the karmic potency of their absorption serves as the cause of rebirth in the brahma world.
After a long time, the water in the world begins to evaporate. Fish, turtles, and other creatures that live in the water die. Owing to their past profitable karma, they are also reborn in the deva world, where as devas develop absorption. Dependent on ignorance and craving, the karmic potency of their absorption causes them to be reborn in the brahma world.
According to a "law of nature" (niyama), the beings residing in hellish planes also escape from hell and are reborn in the human world [25]. They develop loving-kindness and are reborn in the deva world, where as devas they develop absorption. Dependent on ignorance and craving, the karmic potency of their absorption causes them to be reborn in the brahma world.
But the beings who were reborn in the [lowest worlds, the eight great] hells as a result of holding persistent wrong views (niyata-miccha-ditthi) [26] do not escape: Dependent on ignorance and craving, the karmic potency of their persistent wrong view causes them to be reborn in an interstitial hell (loka-antarika-niraya,see e.g., "The Darkness Discourse," Andhakara Sutra,S.V.XII.v.6), one of the unfortunate destinations situated in the space between world-systems [27]. Thus, even though the world system is coming to an end, the continued rushing on and running about of beings does not come to an end.
The Buddha goes on to declare [28], "Not even then, disciples, is the suffering of beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving (who rush on and run about) brought to an end, I declare.
"After a long period without rain, by the time all beings have been reborn elsewhere, a second sun appears [29]. As one sun sets the other rises, so there is no more telling night from day: The world is continuously scorched by the heat of two suns. Streams and smaller rivers dry up.
"After yet another very long period, a third sun appears, and now the great rivers dry up [30]. Then after yet another very long period, a fourth sun appears, and the great lakes that were the source of the great rivers dry up [31]. After yet another very long period, a fifth sun appears, and the seas dry up. There is not enough water left to wet a finger [32]. Again, after yet another very long period, a sixth sun appears. Now the great Mount Sineru [33] and the very Earth itself begin to burn and give off clouds of smoke.
"Eventually, after yet another very long period, a seventh sun appears. Now all bursts into flames, into one great sheet of flame. Great Mount Sineru and the Earth burn and disintegrate. Powerful winds carry the fire right up to the brahma worlds [high in space]. And just as burning ghee [creme de la creme] or oil leave no ashes, so the burning Mount Sineru and Earth leave no ashes [34].
"Even so," the Buddha explains, "there is no end to the rushing on and running about of beings in the round of rebirth [35].
"There will come a time, disciples, when Sineru, King of Mountains, is burned, destroyed, and is no more. Not even then, disciples, is the suffering of beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving (who rush on and run about) brought to an end, I declare.
"There will come a time, disciples, when the great Earth, is burned, destroyed, and is no more. Not even then, disciples, is the suffering of beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving (who rush on and run about) brought to an end, I declare."
Having explained how beings continue to rush on and run about in the round of rebirth (samsara), the Buddha then discusses why. More (p. 23) plus footnotes
(VIDEO WCNC) Storage tankers across the globe may be brimming with oil that no one is buying because of the global economic downturn, but the traditional laws of supply and demand don't always apply to oil prices. Drivers have faced rising prices at the gas pump in recent months, as investors and oil-producing countries hoard supplies in anticipation of a global economic recovery later this year.
The 12 member countries of the OPEC cartel voted in Vienna on Thursday to maintain output at current levels rather than increase supplies in order to bring some relief to consumers, particularly in the gas-guzzling West. More>>
A cow grazes in front of wind turbines on the day of the inauguration of a new $550 million wind farm project in La Ventosa, Mexico, located on the narrow isthmus between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, 1/22/09. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon inaugurated one of the world's largest wind farm projects as the nation looks for alternative energy, in part to compensate for falling oil production (AP Photo/Luis Cruz Hernandez).
Researchers in the UK say cows with names make 3.4 percent more milk in a year than cows that just feel, well, like cows.
There seems to be more than just names involved, however.
The study, involving 516 dairy farmers and published online Tuesday by the journal Anthrozoos, found that "on farms where each cow was called by her name the overall milk yield was higher than on farms where the cattle were herded as a group," write researchers Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University. More>>
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