Thank you for your letter today. There are many at COP27 like @EJinAction who are asking that their voices be heard. Incredible requests that find it hard to cut through the capitalist rhetoric for inclusion of humanitarian pleas for equity and justice first.
As I sit working on my computer back in New Mexico, with our work group asking to change to the WHO AQI standards in Albuquerque NM, receiving push back for EHD, NMED and EPA; where current EPA AQI standards are causing >3x’s more premature deaths from PM2.5 air pollutants, causing health impacts of heart attack, stroke, chronic respiratory illness and premature death, exacerbated by drought, wildfires and flooding, millions worldwide suffering the consequences of the climate crisis, it is indeed an inconsolable loss. I find it inconceivable to normalize these numbers knowing the human toll. The environmental loss.
I am sure hundreds of people have written out what needs to be done it’s seems so simple.
WHO AQI gives us guidelines to drawdown emissions with interim targets based on health data impacts. Yet, the regulatory apparatus that allows industry a level of pollution stand in the way of our life and on saving our planet.
We must prevail. May the force of love and peace prevail for humanity. Thanks to all working towards this goal because there is no other choice.
You’ve got me wondering … so I did a order of magnitude back-of-the-envelope calculation (criticisms welcome, as Jim Hansen always says)
Agree: “legacy will last at least as long as the pyramids”
Disagree: “will come with no stark beauty”
Given: 1 pyramid: ~6 Million tons
Daily CO2 emissions: ~36 Billion tons
Legacy* CO2 emitted: ~1 Trillion tons (+/-)
Build ~167,000 beautiful new pyramids from the removed legacy CO2 (limestone) in order to restore preindustrial <300ppm atmospheric concentration AND ~6,000 additional pyramids (declining to zero) daily going forward in a Net Zero climate restoration soft landing pathway.
Thank you. Again, you say clearly, what so many of us are recognizing... while so many somehow remain blind.
This week in Minnesota, we're holding a webinar to discuss the environmental impacts of Line 3 construction. A new tar sands pipeline built in 2021 in 10 months and finishing just over a year ago, now has multiple projects across the state working - mostly unsuccessfully - at "remediating" the damages. It's not looking hopeful. Enbridge may not be able to repair these breached aquifers.
Yet, still, officials and agencies are pushing the permitting processes on two more big pipeline projects, one in Wisconsin - to re-route around Bad River Reservation (yet not out of their watershed, nor Lake Superior's...) and one in Michigan, right at the Straits of Mackinac. These places are so similar to northern Minnesota. Our lessons indicate these are not good places for Enbridge pipeline construction.
This nonsense seems unstoppable yet we work each week to share more truth with the public that the State and Enbridge are unwilling to share.
Feel free to join our Public webinars this Wednesday at noon (presentation of evidence) and 7 pm (a deeper conversation) [Central Std Time] to learn more about Enbridge's Line 3 Post-Construction Envrionmental Damages. https://fb.me/e/2dz1R7hKr
Powerful! The deeply felt sensations of loss and damage is tempered by your sharing the gorgeous glimpse of pyramids (albeit stained by slave-labor) most of us will never see; and by helping to bring us together in committed community–– our only hope. Thanks for echoing the voice of the young woman from East Africa, and for the timely shout-out for Davante Lewis (we can make calls to voters in Louisiana on Dec. 10, a couple of days after calling Georgia in support of Rev. Warnock). Because your writing is, as usual, so damned good and so eminently worth sharing, the inveterate copy-editor in me can't resist offering a few typo corrections (¶ 2: replace "ghas have" with "has/ ¶ 6, last sentence: replace "culture-the" with "culture–– the"/ ¶10, first sentence: replace "Wrold Bank" with "World Bank." )
Phew, Bill. You nailed it here: “The case [‘loss and damage’] makes itself for those who can see.” There are a lot of people running the show who can’t see.” Because…because…they are missing vital organs like, for example, hearts? Je ne sais pas. Anyhoo. I thank you for your heart and if you had a Donate button somewhere on this gizmo I would donate, on top of my puny subscription fee. I bet others would, too.
Great passionate writing but I'm in a contrarian mood today, and suggest that the 3rd World is busily taking away our 1st World guilt by pouring in the excess children which will make most climate activism useless if these 3rd World big-family-addicts don't cure their addiction.. Why uncongenially focus on that? -- partly because the ever-powerfully -- even overwhelmingly -- knowledgeable McKibben is my go-to source for the total overview of planet. Age 77, so I'm a grouch, and so what!
Good column except for the fact that untold exploited laborers died building those amazing pyramids. How can something that is built with immoral use of labor be beautiful?
And how is Alaa? His life is the wordless tribute to all you have struggled to express for us. Your words bring a lump in my throat for all that cannot be put into words. Blessings to you and to Alaa.
This text sounds a little more tired and sad than usual - perhaps even self-defeating. Remember your work is appreciated and valued, Bill, every little bit of emission you've helped to stop directly or indirectly counts.
Powerful stuff, and I thank you for the opportunity to read this despite my inability to support your efforts. I wonder why no one discusses the two "uncomfortable" issues you rightfully touched upon here: morals and ethics. I'm sure that for most of us these issues are boring and have no relevance in real life, but people who willingly and actively destroy their own home in pursuit of other priorities clearly have a problem in this regard. Say what you want about religion – they provide guidelines by which such behavior is unthinkable. In a perfect world that is, the way the original prophets envisioned it...
Thank you, your writing is heartbreaking and true. I weep for our children and grandchildren and those who did nothing to create this horrible situation.
From the post: "Clearly the costs of climate change will be in the tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars. And clearly they will fall hardest on the people who have done least to cause them.
"The closest we’ve come to attempting this moral mathematics travels under the name “loss and damage,”..."
As long as we continue to frame the situation as "carbon emissions are driving climate change", we will continue to see the problem as a moral failing, for which the corrective actions are morally righteous: virtuously managing our carbon footprint; virtuously racing to net-zero; virtuously compensating for loss and damage. Virtue expressed through social shaming and legal compulsion: regulation in the absence of self-regulation.
If we allow ourselves to expand our framing, to "energy extraction from hydrocarbons is diminishing the habitats on earth that humans can inhabit", then we give ourselves permission to see a deeper and more difficult transactional problem, that calls for a larger and more difficult transactional solution. We have made and continue to make a choice of energy technologies to power our economy that is having unintended consequences on our future. We need to change that choice. Not morally. Transactionally.
We need to rapidly redesign and restructure our entire global energy economy, replacing energy extraction from hydrocarbons and retiring those hydrocarbons from commercial energy uses. So, we have to have something to replace hydrocarbons with. And the money to pay for that replacement, sized and timed to the retirement of hydrocarbon technologies.
We cannot do that morally. We cannot manage our carbon footprint to a new global energy economy. We cannot Net-Zero our way to a new energy economy. We cannot Loss and Damage our way through a global replace-to-retire strategy, at climate scale and in climate time.
We have to do that transactionally.
Transactions cost money. These transactions are going to cost lots and lots of money.
Where are we going to get that money?
That's a transactional problem. It's not just about amounts. It's also about quality. We need money that has the quality of financing enterprise that is maintaining stabilized cash flows, but not necessarily growing the scale of those cash flows. Replacement is not growth. Retirement is not growth.
Retirement is, however, the purpose of the Pension Promise. And the Pension Promise has already been funded with tens of trillions in society's shared savings that are saved specifically to provide for a dignified and secure future.
Right now, we have all that money mobilized for Growth (which is making the climate crisis worse).
Would we ever consider mobilizing it for Sufficiency, beginning with financing a rapid replace-to-retire strategy for curating a new energy economy of social equity and habitat longevity, for living our best life in the 21st Century?
Thank you for your letter today. There are many at COP27 like @EJinAction who are asking that their voices be heard. Incredible requests that find it hard to cut through the capitalist rhetoric for inclusion of humanitarian pleas for equity and justice first.
As I sit working on my computer back in New Mexico, with our work group asking to change to the WHO AQI standards in Albuquerque NM, receiving push back for EHD, NMED and EPA; where current EPA AQI standards are causing >3x’s more premature deaths from PM2.5 air pollutants, causing health impacts of heart attack, stroke, chronic respiratory illness and premature death, exacerbated by drought, wildfires and flooding, millions worldwide suffering the consequences of the climate crisis, it is indeed an inconsolable loss. I find it inconceivable to normalize these numbers knowing the human toll. The environmental loss.
I am sure hundreds of people have written out what needs to be done it’s seems so simple.
WHO AQI gives us guidelines to drawdown emissions with interim targets based on health data impacts. Yet, the regulatory apparatus that allows industry a level of pollution stand in the way of our life and on saving our planet.
We must prevail. May the force of love and peace prevail for humanity. Thanks to all working towards this goal because there is no other choice.
You’ve got me wondering … so I did a order of magnitude back-of-the-envelope calculation (criticisms welcome, as Jim Hansen always says)
Agree: “legacy will last at least as long as the pyramids”
Disagree: “will come with no stark beauty”
Given: 1 pyramid: ~6 Million tons
Daily CO2 emissions: ~36 Billion tons
Legacy* CO2 emitted: ~1 Trillion tons (+/-)
Build ~167,000 beautiful new pyramids from the removed legacy CO2 (limestone) in order to restore preindustrial <300ppm atmospheric concentration AND ~6,000 additional pyramids (declining to zero) daily going forward in a Net Zero climate restoration soft landing pathway.
* including emissions from your Plymouth
Thank you. Again, you say clearly, what so many of us are recognizing... while so many somehow remain blind.
This week in Minnesota, we're holding a webinar to discuss the environmental impacts of Line 3 construction. A new tar sands pipeline built in 2021 in 10 months and finishing just over a year ago, now has multiple projects across the state working - mostly unsuccessfully - at "remediating" the damages. It's not looking hopeful. Enbridge may not be able to repair these breached aquifers.
Yet, still, officials and agencies are pushing the permitting processes on two more big pipeline projects, one in Wisconsin - to re-route around Bad River Reservation (yet not out of their watershed, nor Lake Superior's...) and one in Michigan, right at the Straits of Mackinac. These places are so similar to northern Minnesota. Our lessons indicate these are not good places for Enbridge pipeline construction.
This nonsense seems unstoppable yet we work each week to share more truth with the public that the State and Enbridge are unwilling to share.
Feel free to join our Public webinars this Wednesday at noon (presentation of evidence) and 7 pm (a deeper conversation) [Central Std Time] to learn more about Enbridge's Line 3 Post-Construction Envrionmental Damages. https://fb.me/e/2dz1R7hKr
Miigwech. Thank you.
And if you can't make it... we'll be posting the videos at our Waadookawaad Amikwag YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQpEkKX9mRvCDYst5Qxvd7g/videos
Powerful! The deeply felt sensations of loss and damage is tempered by your sharing the gorgeous glimpse of pyramids (albeit stained by slave-labor) most of us will never see; and by helping to bring us together in committed community–– our only hope. Thanks for echoing the voice of the young woman from East Africa, and for the timely shout-out for Davante Lewis (we can make calls to voters in Louisiana on Dec. 10, a couple of days after calling Georgia in support of Rev. Warnock). Because your writing is, as usual, so damned good and so eminently worth sharing, the inveterate copy-editor in me can't resist offering a few typo corrections (¶ 2: replace "ghas have" with "has/ ¶ 6, last sentence: replace "culture-the" with "culture–– the"/ ¶10, first sentence: replace "Wrold Bank" with "World Bank." )
Phew, Bill. You nailed it here: “The case [‘loss and damage’] makes itself for those who can see.” There are a lot of people running the show who can’t see.” Because…because…they are missing vital organs like, for example, hearts? Je ne sais pas. Anyhoo. I thank you for your heart and if you had a Donate button somewhere on this gizmo I would donate, on top of my puny subscription fee. I bet others would, too.
Great passionate writing but I'm in a contrarian mood today, and suggest that the 3rd World is busily taking away our 1st World guilt by pouring in the excess children which will make most climate activism useless if these 3rd World big-family-addicts don't cure their addiction.. Why uncongenially focus on that? -- partly because the ever-powerfully -- even overwhelmingly -- knowledgeable McKibben is my go-to source for the total overview of planet. Age 77, so I'm a grouch, and so what!
Good column except for the fact that untold exploited laborers died building those amazing pyramids. How can something that is built with immoral use of labor be beautiful?
Aryay Kalaki
And how is Alaa? His life is the wordless tribute to all you have struggled to express for us. Your words bring a lump in my throat for all that cannot be put into words. Blessings to you and to Alaa.
This text sounds a little more tired and sad than usual - perhaps even self-defeating. Remember your work is appreciated and valued, Bill, every little bit of emission you've helped to stop directly or indirectly counts.
Powerful stuff, and I thank you for the opportunity to read this despite my inability to support your efforts. I wonder why no one discusses the two "uncomfortable" issues you rightfully touched upon here: morals and ethics. I'm sure that for most of us these issues are boring and have no relevance in real life, but people who willingly and actively destroy their own home in pursuit of other priorities clearly have a problem in this regard. Say what you want about religion – they provide guidelines by which such behavior is unthinkable. In a perfect world that is, the way the original prophets envisioned it...
Thank you, your writing is heartbreaking and true. I weep for our children and grandchildren and those who did nothing to create this horrible situation.
From the post: "Clearly the costs of climate change will be in the tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars. And clearly they will fall hardest on the people who have done least to cause them.
"The closest we’ve come to attempting this moral mathematics travels under the name “loss and damage,”..."
As long as we continue to frame the situation as "carbon emissions are driving climate change", we will continue to see the problem as a moral failing, for which the corrective actions are morally righteous: virtuously managing our carbon footprint; virtuously racing to net-zero; virtuously compensating for loss and damage. Virtue expressed through social shaming and legal compulsion: regulation in the absence of self-regulation.
If we allow ourselves to expand our framing, to "energy extraction from hydrocarbons is diminishing the habitats on earth that humans can inhabit", then we give ourselves permission to see a deeper and more difficult transactional problem, that calls for a larger and more difficult transactional solution. We have made and continue to make a choice of energy technologies to power our economy that is having unintended consequences on our future. We need to change that choice. Not morally. Transactionally.
We need to rapidly redesign and restructure our entire global energy economy, replacing energy extraction from hydrocarbons and retiring those hydrocarbons from commercial energy uses. So, we have to have something to replace hydrocarbons with. And the money to pay for that replacement, sized and timed to the retirement of hydrocarbon technologies.
We cannot do that morally. We cannot manage our carbon footprint to a new global energy economy. We cannot Net-Zero our way to a new energy economy. We cannot Loss and Damage our way through a global replace-to-retire strategy, at climate scale and in climate time.
We have to do that transactionally.
Transactions cost money. These transactions are going to cost lots and lots of money.
Where are we going to get that money?
That's a transactional problem. It's not just about amounts. It's also about quality. We need money that has the quality of financing enterprise that is maintaining stabilized cash flows, but not necessarily growing the scale of those cash flows. Replacement is not growth. Retirement is not growth.
Retirement is, however, the purpose of the Pension Promise. And the Pension Promise has already been funded with tens of trillions in society's shared savings that are saved specifically to provide for a dignified and secure future.
Right now, we have all that money mobilized for Growth (which is making the climate crisis worse).
Would we ever consider mobilizing it for Sufficiency, beginning with financing a rapid replace-to-retire strategy for curating a new energy economy of social equity and habitat longevity, for living our best life in the 21st Century?