Thank you Bill for all the work you still do. You're out there still, knocking on doors, getting out the vote and helping people understand the very real threat of this overheated climate in which we live. In a way I'm envious as I remember the joy of winning an election after putting in months of hard work campaigning. Now as I've reached the EOL cycle I'm practically useless. Cheers to you and your still active friends.
Thanks Bill, But I miss the good old days of knocking on doors, strategy meetings, phone banks, passing out pamphlets. Even standing for hours in shopping malls registering voters and answering questions. Made me feel useful. Today the only thing I accomplished was getting my flu and Covid shots and that exhausted me YUCK.
Bill, how much hotter, how many more deaths and disease and tragedies and anxiety and depression and marine heat waves killing billions of sea creatures and glaciers melting and the Amazon turning from a sink to a source, and the AMOC with a 50% chance of collapsing this very century destabilizing Europe and the rest of the planet not unlike a disaster movie before you come out and support an urgent equitable objective appraisal of the role that solar radiation management can play in directly quickly and inexpensively cooling the planet saving untold lives and misery and creating the time and space for emission reductions and Corbin removal to do their jobs?
How many tipping points must be activated before you will take the lead in calling for measures that safely and effectively directly cool the climate?
Bill, if only we could bottle your energy we could power 3 cities. My climate refugee sister fled the tragic wreckage of Asheville to await the restoration of electricity and water. Her Buddhist nature made me appreciate her resilience and good spirits despite the disaster she faced returning back to her home. This pivotal election will determine a livable future or hellscape ahead…
Bill, Herb took the words right out of my mouth in a single sentence—you know, I try to be succinct and precise with my brevity as well.
So I won’t repeat Herb, rather get directly to the point.
You know nuclear and other carbon-free energy sources won’t cool the atmosphere and oceans … Jim Hansen has clearly explained in ‘Pipeline’—you know—that accumulations of past excess CO2 [and CH4] legacy emissions (I call them the elephant in the room) of a couple trillion tons that form the thermal blanket that locks in the infrared heat that sunlight becomes on impact must be removed in order to reduce the rate of heating and bend the temperature trajectory down in a cooling direction. (Visual aids are posted at Bit.ly/PRAGfundamentals along with other documents all at Bit.ly/PRAGarchive.)
Also, Hansen has also diplomatically admonished us to restore the lost albedo (readers may google that) which scientists have determined plummeted dramatically since 1998 (Bit.ly/AGU29Aug21) with an accelerating rate just since 2017 (Bit.ly/arXiv30May24). It’s time to start serious research to determine whether and how to accomplish safe direct cooling … starting in a limited confined region where risks are minimized, control is maximized and effectiveness is optimal … I’ve coined the phrase “AREA SRM,” which is the intentionally descriptive acronym for Arctic Region Enhanced Albedo Solar Radiation Management. It’s one nature-based (mimicking) form of the overarching taboo-labeled collection of “geoengineering.”
Not all forms of “geoengineering” are by definition bad—some warrant close inspection.🧐
Have you ever taken a plunge into naturally hot seawater? Try south Florida’s waters in summer. Absolutely intolerable, but it wasn’t that way a few decades back. The general explanation of Florida’s hot seawater: global warming. Of course it is, but it’s only a small consequence of the unlimited environmental power that nations believe they have within their borders over the environment. That is the real culprit of Florida’s hot waters and many other environmental maladies. But there’s much more to that: global warming has now spilled and redefines the traditional definition of what countries’ sovereignty is, and how it intertwines and impacts very negatively the environment.
Let’s take the case of Brazil burning down the Amazon forest for cattle breeding and producing. According to Brazilian and International law, Brazil is not breaking any human law, but it is certainly breaking natures’ law. Brazil -and all countries- has, politically, the right (?) to ignore that the environment is a Shared World Resource that transcends national borders. We all can pull examples from all over the world. Very recently, just to mention two, out of thousands: the US approved massive lithium mining in Nevada, overriding protests. Environmentalists worry that the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project could drive a rare wildflower to extinction. Another one?: oil and gas leases in Artic National Wildlife Refuge, which only depends on the approval of one man or one woman, only one, regardless that tragic consequences could be everlasting to the world. Yes, again, just the stroke of a fountain pen of one man or one woman for the environment to go forever under.
These ‘approvals” rests in the current general basic belief of what is considered Sovereignty in our days, a definition centuries old: "Sovereignty is the supreme power or authority of each country within its official borders admitted by the rest of the countries of the world", inspired by the over three hundred years old Peace of Westphalia in 1645. Now, in the 20th and part of the 21st century, the statement "within their official borders" is reigning in all countries of the world and there you find the reason for the bulk of environmental degradation worldwide. It allows -and has and will allow- countries to do, environmentally speaking, whatever they desire and decree "within their official borders". That will continue unless we make NOW a 180° change.
It is an undeniable fact that the environment is a global resource shared by all countries of the world. Therefore, environment transcends the political borders of countries. Nature reminds us all the time. Can the most powerful country of the world with today’s technology stop the rain or a typhoon or hurricane brewing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, aimed at central America and the Gulf of Mexico and heading directly into the USA and Canada? No, it can’t.
The solution I propose is a 180° turn. Is what I call ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY which is totally divorced from the reigning and cited notion of Sovereignty defined in the Peace of Westphalia. No, it will not stop immediately those typhoons and hurricanes but it will eventually, as sea temperatures drop to traditional level.
Again, countries take for granted that, within their borders, the environment is a legitimately attained or inherited sole property, and that, therefore, they have absolute freedom to do environmentally whatever they want within their borders (Brazil burning down the rain forest, for example, for cattle production one of the most contaminating factors of the environment). This is freely continued due to what countries call "SOVEREIGNTY", which is not. It’s BAD SOVEREIGNTY and that’s why we propose: ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY!
ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY MEANS THAT THE ENVIRONMENT
IS UNIVERSAL AND FREE, AND IS NOT DIVIDED POLITICALLY, PROPORTIONALLY OR NOT, AMONG COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
In short....
1) Countries’ borders cannot be the dominant factor that prevails over the environment. The Environment is beyond not only what countries currently call SOVEREIGNTY, but also above its three classic powers: the Judicial, Legislative and Administrative powers. It is a "Power above Powers", and it is not the Fourth Power, but the First Power. Without it, life would not exist on planet earth. It would be as barren as the moon.
2) Political authoritarianism and the inadequate application, or lack of enforcement, of laws that protect the environment as a global entity, is a detrimental factor that becomes a multiplying factor for environmental damage.
What do we propose?
Global environmental degradation will continue until the current concept of SOVEREIGNTY is reinvented and the world accepts that there are two types of sovereignty: GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, which respects the environment as a power above all powers and has only its natural limits, or BAD SOVEREIGNTY, which does not. With BAD SOVEREIGNTY, nations can do whatever they want environmentally within their borders. With GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, nations do not have that power. Until the first is removed from the face of the earth, damage to the environmental by the so- called ‘civilization’ will continue to spread as natural and inevitable. BAD SOVEREIGNTY must therefore be switched to GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, which prioritizes global environmental interest above all other interests. Constitutions must be amended accordingly. Countries cannot continue with a free hand over the environment within their legal political borders if we want to have a world to live in, a world for present and future generations.
Yes, there will be plenty of opposition from international economic interests, from autocratic governments, from political interests, from arrogance and ignorance, from fear and indifference, but facts are the facts: NATURE’S GENEROSITY OF IS NOT FOREVER.
This is my way of reaching out directly to the world. If you agree, please help me spread the word and share. Thank you
Thank you for your inspired reporting. I have helped through Third Act here in Massachusetts to get out the vote with college students, so I guess every little bit helps.
Bill should be shaking hands in trying to gin up support for Jill Stein. Her policies are not just greener than Kamala's but more humane. Reality Check Time For Joyful Genocide Excusing Liberals & Democrats “If a holocaust — which is what the United States and Israel are perpetrating — means burning or burnt offering and we just saw people being burned alive at the al-Aqsa hospital, on top of the whole year of atrocities, if that's not a line for you, nothing is.
“If you say yes, genocide ‘but what about this’ or ‘what about that’, there is no ‘but’ with genocide. That's like saying, yeah, Hitler murdered millions of Jews, but he made the trains run on time. I mean, it's morally reprehensible. And I have no fondness — I would say, have nothing but contempt — for Donald Trump, and he did terrible things in office, including continuing the wars in the region that have caused and continue to cause so much devastation.
“But they try to fearmonger that, ‘oh well Donald Trump will do all these terrible things to you and he will be even worse to the Palestinians’. The simple fact is that you have to be unwilling to face facts if you can't say that there is nothing Donald Trump did in his four years in office that is even remotely as horrifying and criminal and murderous as this genocide; that is fully supported by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“Or is as murderous and horrific as the illegal aggression and invasion of Iraq which killed and displaced and destroyed the lives of millions of people, which was done by Dick Cheney, who is now on ‘Team Joe Biden’ and ‘Team Kamala Harris’.
“If you can't see that, you have no integrity whatsoever.
Thank you for all you are doing. Knocking doors here in Georgia and just went to the Kamala Obama Bruce rally yesterday. It is astonishing how brilliant and amazing our candidate is and yet, it is so close. But, like you said, we have seen a lot, and giving grace is so important. Will keep doing what we can here in Georgia to keep it BLUE. Safe travels to your doors. It's gonna take all of us for sure, but we will win.
Thank you Bill for all the work you still do. You're out there still, knocking on doors, getting out the vote and helping people understand the very real threat of this overheated climate in which we live. In a way I'm envious as I remember the joy of winning an election after putting in months of hard work campaigning. Now as I've reached the EOL cycle I'm practically useless. Cheers to you and your still active friends.
Moral support counts too!
Thanks Bill, But I miss the good old days of knocking on doors, strategy meetings, phone banks, passing out pamphlets. Even standing for hours in shopping malls registering voters and answering questions. Made me feel useful. Today the only thing I accomplished was getting my flu and Covid shots and that exhausted me YUCK.
Faye, like Bill McKibben, you have contributed so much in your life, and still do in the discussions. I admire you.
Thank you
Bill, how much hotter, how many more deaths and disease and tragedies and anxiety and depression and marine heat waves killing billions of sea creatures and glaciers melting and the Amazon turning from a sink to a source, and the AMOC with a 50% chance of collapsing this very century destabilizing Europe and the rest of the planet not unlike a disaster movie before you come out and support an urgent equitable objective appraisal of the role that solar radiation management can play in directly quickly and inexpensively cooling the planet saving untold lives and misery and creating the time and space for emission reductions and Corbin removal to do their jobs?
How many tipping points must be activated before you will take the lead in calling for measures that safely and effectively directly cool the climate?
I do hope you’ll answer this question.
I can’t think of a more important one
Bill, if only we could bottle your energy we could power 3 cities. My climate refugee sister fled the tragic wreckage of Asheville to await the restoration of electricity and water. Her Buddhist nature made me appreciate her resilience and good spirits despite the disaster she faced returning back to her home. This pivotal election will determine a livable future or hellscape ahead…
Bill, Herb took the words right out of my mouth in a single sentence—you know, I try to be succinct and precise with my brevity as well.
So I won’t repeat Herb, rather get directly to the point.
You know nuclear and other carbon-free energy sources won’t cool the atmosphere and oceans … Jim Hansen has clearly explained in ‘Pipeline’—you know—that accumulations of past excess CO2 [and CH4] legacy emissions (I call them the elephant in the room) of a couple trillion tons that form the thermal blanket that locks in the infrared heat that sunlight becomes on impact must be removed in order to reduce the rate of heating and bend the temperature trajectory down in a cooling direction. (Visual aids are posted at Bit.ly/PRAGfundamentals along with other documents all at Bit.ly/PRAGarchive.)
Also, Hansen has also diplomatically admonished us to restore the lost albedo (readers may google that) which scientists have determined plummeted dramatically since 1998 (Bit.ly/AGU29Aug21) with an accelerating rate just since 2017 (Bit.ly/arXiv30May24). It’s time to start serious research to determine whether and how to accomplish safe direct cooling … starting in a limited confined region where risks are minimized, control is maximized and effectiveness is optimal … I’ve coined the phrase “AREA SRM,” which is the intentionally descriptive acronym for Arctic Region Enhanced Albedo Solar Radiation Management. It’s one nature-based (mimicking) form of the overarching taboo-labeled collection of “geoengineering.”
Not all forms of “geoengineering” are by definition bad—some warrant close inspection.🧐
Well, so much for curt, concise and clear.
I'm glad our subscription money is helping your canvassing. Thank you for doing that important work, and for your account of it.
Me too!
Have you ever taken a plunge into naturally hot seawater? Try south Florida’s waters in summer. Absolutely intolerable, but it wasn’t that way a few decades back. The general explanation of Florida’s hot seawater: global warming. Of course it is, but it’s only a small consequence of the unlimited environmental power that nations believe they have within their borders over the environment. That is the real culprit of Florida’s hot waters and many other environmental maladies. But there’s much more to that: global warming has now spilled and redefines the traditional definition of what countries’ sovereignty is, and how it intertwines and impacts very negatively the environment.
Let’s take the case of Brazil burning down the Amazon forest for cattle breeding and producing. According to Brazilian and International law, Brazil is not breaking any human law, but it is certainly breaking natures’ law. Brazil -and all countries- has, politically, the right (?) to ignore that the environment is a Shared World Resource that transcends national borders. We all can pull examples from all over the world. Very recently, just to mention two, out of thousands: the US approved massive lithium mining in Nevada, overriding protests. Environmentalists worry that the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project could drive a rare wildflower to extinction. Another one?: oil and gas leases in Artic National Wildlife Refuge, which only depends on the approval of one man or one woman, only one, regardless that tragic consequences could be everlasting to the world. Yes, again, just the stroke of a fountain pen of one man or one woman for the environment to go forever under.
These ‘approvals” rests in the current general basic belief of what is considered Sovereignty in our days, a definition centuries old: "Sovereignty is the supreme power or authority of each country within its official borders admitted by the rest of the countries of the world", inspired by the over three hundred years old Peace of Westphalia in 1645. Now, in the 20th and part of the 21st century, the statement "within their official borders" is reigning in all countries of the world and there you find the reason for the bulk of environmental degradation worldwide. It allows -and has and will allow- countries to do, environmentally speaking, whatever they desire and decree "within their official borders". That will continue unless we make NOW a 180° change.
It is an undeniable fact that the environment is a global resource shared by all countries of the world. Therefore, environment transcends the political borders of countries. Nature reminds us all the time. Can the most powerful country of the world with today’s technology stop the rain or a typhoon or hurricane brewing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, aimed at central America and the Gulf of Mexico and heading directly into the USA and Canada? No, it can’t.
The solution I propose is a 180° turn. Is what I call ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY which is totally divorced from the reigning and cited notion of Sovereignty defined in the Peace of Westphalia. No, it will not stop immediately those typhoons and hurricanes but it will eventually, as sea temperatures drop to traditional level.
Again, countries take for granted that, within their borders, the environment is a legitimately attained or inherited sole property, and that, therefore, they have absolute freedom to do environmentally whatever they want within their borders (Brazil burning down the rain forest, for example, for cattle production one of the most contaminating factors of the environment). This is freely continued due to what countries call "SOVEREIGNTY", which is not. It’s BAD SOVEREIGNTY and that’s why we propose: ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY!
ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY MEANS THAT THE ENVIRONMENT
IS UNIVERSAL AND FREE, AND IS NOT DIVIDED POLITICALLY, PROPORTIONALLY OR NOT, AMONG COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
In short....
1) Countries’ borders cannot be the dominant factor that prevails over the environment. The Environment is beyond not only what countries currently call SOVEREIGNTY, but also above its three classic powers: the Judicial, Legislative and Administrative powers. It is a "Power above Powers", and it is not the Fourth Power, but the First Power. Without it, life would not exist on planet earth. It would be as barren as the moon.
2) Political authoritarianism and the inadequate application, or lack of enforcement, of laws that protect the environment as a global entity, is a detrimental factor that becomes a multiplying factor for environmental damage.
What do we propose?
Global environmental degradation will continue until the current concept of SOVEREIGNTY is reinvented and the world accepts that there are two types of sovereignty: GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, which respects the environment as a power above all powers and has only its natural limits, or BAD SOVEREIGNTY, which does not. With BAD SOVEREIGNTY, nations can do whatever they want environmentally within their borders. With GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, nations do not have that power. Until the first is removed from the face of the earth, damage to the environmental by the so- called ‘civilization’ will continue to spread as natural and inevitable. BAD SOVEREIGNTY must therefore be switched to GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, which prioritizes global environmental interest above all other interests. Constitutions must be amended accordingly. Countries cannot continue with a free hand over the environment within their legal political borders if we want to have a world to live in, a world for present and future generations.
Yes, there will be plenty of opposition from international economic interests, from autocratic governments, from political interests, from arrogance and ignorance, from fear and indifference, but facts are the facts: NATURE’S GENEROSITY OF IS NOT FOREVER.
This is my way of reaching out directly to the world. If you agree, please help me spread the word and share. Thank you
Jorge Partida A
soberanía.ambiental.global@gmail.com
jorgepartidas@gmail.com
VENEZUELA
Thank you for your inspired reporting. I have helped through Third Act here in Massachusetts to get out the vote with college students, so I guess every little bit helps.
Bill should be shaking hands in trying to gin up support for Jill Stein. Her policies are not just greener than Kamala's but more humane. Reality Check Time For Joyful Genocide Excusing Liberals & Democrats “If a holocaust — which is what the United States and Israel are perpetrating — means burning or burnt offering and we just saw people being burned alive at the al-Aqsa hospital, on top of the whole year of atrocities, if that's not a line for you, nothing is.
“If you say yes, genocide ‘but what about this’ or ‘what about that’, there is no ‘but’ with genocide. That's like saying, yeah, Hitler murdered millions of Jews, but he made the trains run on time. I mean, it's morally reprehensible. And I have no fondness — I would say, have nothing but contempt — for Donald Trump, and he did terrible things in office, including continuing the wars in the region that have caused and continue to cause so much devastation.
“But they try to fearmonger that, ‘oh well Donald Trump will do all these terrible things to you and he will be even worse to the Palestinians’. The simple fact is that you have to be unwilling to face facts if you can't say that there is nothing Donald Trump did in his four years in office that is even remotely as horrifying and criminal and murderous as this genocide; that is fully supported by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“Or is as murderous and horrific as the illegal aggression and invasion of Iraq which killed and displaced and destroyed the lives of millions of people, which was done by Dick Cheney, who is now on ‘Team Joe Biden’ and ‘Team Kamala Harris’.
“If you can't see that, you have no integrity whatsoever.
Thank you for all you are doing. Knocking doors here in Georgia and just went to the Kamala Obama Bruce rally yesterday. It is astonishing how brilliant and amazing our candidate is and yet, it is so close. But, like you said, we have seen a lot, and giving grace is so important. Will keep doing what we can here in Georgia to keep it BLUE. Safe travels to your doors. It's gonna take all of us for sure, but we will win.
The vote of that 10am-tallboys while-working-on your-car guy counts exactly the same as yours.
You are truly amazing. INSPIRATIONAL.
THANK YOU.
So much to admire in this man's life. But we shouldn't stop at admiration, we should walk in his footsteps or by his side. Do something,
I thought the knocking on doors was an excellent idea, and apparently with good results. How can I get involved to do the same? Thanks.
Join the Third Act.