COP(out) 26

News blues…

RIP South Africa’s F. W. de Klerk

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New political ads (and commentary): Joe Manchin (2:04 mins)
Meidas Touch: GOP Lies  (0:38 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

COP(out) 26. Another potential moment to address critical issues associated with climate change wasted. Disappointed – again - but not surprised. And, to top it off, “leading figures took to the floor for what they hoped would be the final time, to exhort each other to cooperate in the interests of people threatened by the climate crisis around the world”:

At stake is the world’s chance of holding global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the tougher of the two temperature goals in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and a “planetary boundary” beyond which the ravages of climate breakdown will rapidly become catastrophic and irreversible.
Read more >> 

We know what we face, but we cannot agree on who should make the most money from the current situation. (See Joe Manchin ad, above.)
Meanwhile… PPE and “pandemic-related plastic waste" continues to pour into our oceans:

Some 8 million metric tons of pandemic-related plastic waste has been created by 193 countries, about 26,000 tons of which is now in the world’s oceans, where it threatens to disrupt marine life and further pollute beaches….
The findings, by a group of researchers based in China and the United States, were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Concerns had been raised since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that there would be a boom in plastic pollution amid heightened use of personal protective equipment and rapid growth in online commerce. The study is among the first to quantify the scale of plastic waste linked to the health crisis.
The impact of the increase in plastic waste has been keenly felt by wildlife.
This according to a Dutch scientist-founded tracking project.

Read “The world created about 8 million tons of pandemic plastic waste, and much of it is now in the ocean” >>  

Coverage from the COP26 U.N. climate summit 

The UK’s chief scientist correctly states that “changes in behaviour are needed to tackle climate crisis.”
 Ah, the one thing most of us humans refuse to do – indeed, cannot figure out how to do: change our behaviour/behavior …

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Life in my corner of the universe is good – for now. There’s no question that my modest condo on the park and beach will suffer the ravages of rising sea levels in the future. Sure, it’ll take another decade or two, but coastal flooding is on its way. Plus side of that? The waterfowl and shorebirds, ground squirrels, opossums, raccoons, and other critters will do fine (well, as fine as they can, given the ongoing toxicity of garbage pouring into the environment).
I carried binoculars during yesterday’s beach walk. Crowds of brown and white pelicans, cormorants, gulls of all shapes and sizes, sanderlings, curlews, Marbled Godwits, bowditches, avocets, wood ducks, ruddy ducks, grebes, and the usual flocks of mallards and Canada geese; quite the scene for our feathered friends – and those who admire them.
And, yes, I regularly find PPE – particularly masks – littering beach walkways. And yes, I regularly pick up and dispose of these discards into provided plastic garbage bins, lined with more plastic. This to, y’know, ensure garbage is placed into the correct receptacle to ensure it’s placed into the formal stream of garbage before ending up in the informal Great Pacific Garbage Patch .

I’ve been commenting on our – humanity’s – unconscious attitude toward garbage for many years. Moreover, my sculpture series, “Heedlessness” address this attitude. Riffing from a line of Rumi's poetry - "Heedlessness is a pillar that sustains our world, my friend" - I researched the location and dispensation of our planet's largest landfills. The Great Garbage Patch appears to beat all human attempts to formalize landfill.
What to say?
We humans do our best. Unfortunately, as COP(out) 26 demonstrates, that’s just not good enough.

Spooky

News blues…

In April 2020, two studies on Covid-19 came out identifying obesity as a significant risk factor for serious illness and death. Doctors were scrambling to understand why coronavirus gave some people mild symptoms and left others so sick they were gasping for air.

[Many countries are ramping up action] as officials begin to recognize diet-related diseases such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes have made their citizens much more vulnerable during the pandemic. Some states in Mexico recently went as far as banning junk food sales to children— on top of the country’s existing taxes on sugary drinks and fast food. Chile was already deep in its own crackdown on unhealthy products, having imposed the first mandatory, national warning labels for foods with high levels of salt, sugar and fat along with a ban on marketing such foods to kids.
[In the US] there has been no such wake-up call about the link between diet-related diseases and the pandemic. There is no national strategy. There is no systemswide approach, even as researchers increasingly recognize that obesity is a disease that is driven not by lack of willpower, but a modern society and food system that’s almost perfectly designed to encourage the overeating of empty calories, along with more stress, less sleep and less daily exercise, setting millions on a path to poor health outcomes that is extremely difficult to break from.
Read “Diet-related diseases pose a major risk for Covid-19. But the U.S. overlooks them” >> 

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COVID-19 still rages, but some US states reject federal funds to help. As the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic burns through the rural U.S. state of Idaho, health officials say they don't have enough tests to track the disease or sufficient medical workers to help the sick. 

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The Lincoln Project: Anti-American  (1:10 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Will COP cop to climate-related challenges? Or will it be just more blah, blah, blah?  …

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There Is No Reason To Trust Brazil’s Climate, Deforestation Pledges 

The U.S. has held on-again, off-again talks with [Brazil’s] Bolsonaro government over climate and deforestation since the beginning of the Biden administration, which sees its attempts to bring Brazil back to the table on environmental concerns as a centerpiece of its efforts to reestablish the United States’ own leadership role in global climate efforts.
But Brazil’s “new” pledges are far less ambitious than they seem at first glance, experts say.
The emissions goal is “just a correction” to a previous policy that far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government outlined in December, said Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of São Paulo-based Climate Observatory.
The 2020 target would’ve allowed Brazil to emit 400 million additional tons of carbon than it would have under pledges the country made in 2015. The new pledge merely puts Brazil back on the same path it had already plotted six years ago, when then-President Dilma Rousseff signed the country onto the Paris Climate agreement.
“They just aligned the numbers to have the same emissions pledges for 2030 that the country already had in 2015,” Astrini said. The Bolsonaro government, he added, is “running to the past while the world is no longer the same, the climate emergency has [worsened] and countries are being called to look to the future.”
…
There is little, if any, reason to trust that the Bolsonaro administration is serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions or stopping the razing of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. Much like former President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has turned his nation into a global pariah on climate issues. He didn’t even show up for COP26 in Glasgow.
Read the article  >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

As mentioned in an earlier post - Alaska has high rates of vocal anti-vaxers… and high rates of Covid-19 infections - among the highest rates in the US.
A family member who lives in Anchorage – fully vaccinated with three doses and masked when in public – reports Sunday night’s neighborhood Halloween party was hosted by a man infected with Covid-19. He was inside the house while party goers cavorted outside… and the party was well attended.

Gear up for COP

News blues

More than 400 international health organisations and professionals, representing two-thirds of global healthcare workers, have signed an open letter calling on politicians to consider the health benefits of climate action ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
“We know that climate change is impacting people’s health, this is increasingly visible around the world. We also know that many solutions to address climate change offer tremendous health co-benefits,” said Dr Jeni Miller of Global Climate and Health Alliance, the organisation which drafted the letter. “The health community is really seeing that if we don’t step up and call for action on climate change, we’re failing the patients and the communities that we care for.”

Read more >> 

Even Pope Francis is worried about political and corporate will, lack of focus, and inaction on climate change. Recently, 84-year-old Pope Francis told lawmakers to get their act together: “We owe this to the young, to future generations….” 

COP 26 information >> 

What is Cop26 and why does it matter? The complete guide and many things you need to know about the Glasgow conference seeking to forge a global response to the climate emergency.

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The Lincoln Project - and other media
Glenn Will Not Replace Us  (0:55 mins)

Quote: Patient Zero, if that person is ever found, will tell us how the current pandemic arose, but the search will also uncover the many ways dangerous diseases emerge. If the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is natural, then we can expect recurrences, as the processes that led to its interaction with humans — climate change, intensive animal farming, the encroachment of civilization into natural preserves, smuggling and consumption of exotic species — have only increased. If the virus was created in a laboratory, for whatever purpose, then it is a reminder that science is engaged in experiments that invite catastrophe with the smallest slip. In either case, Covid-19 is a harbinger.

— The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid
     Lawrence Wright

Healthy planet, anyone?

Creative thinking and doing….

In Nigeria, a country heavily reliant on revenues from its oil exports, entrepreneur Ifedolapo Runsewe has identified another type of black gold: used car tyres.
She has set up Freetown Waste Management Recycle, an industrial plant dedicated to transforming old tyres into paving bricks, floor tiles and other goods that are in high demand in Africa’s most populous nation.
“Creating something new from something that will otherwise be lying somewhere as waste was part of the motivation,” Runsewe said at her factory in the city of Ibadan in southwestern Nigeria.
“We are able to create an entire value chain about the tyres,” she said, holding a paving brick that is one of the company’s best-selling products.

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

No longer in the daily grind known as the commute, but I’m busy, nonetheless. More on that tomorrow…