FROM this week’s news ON: the climate crisis, environmental issues, and nuclear threats/issues [Note: Content Warning - links to distressing reports on this topic. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

Froom this week’s news on the climate crisis, environmental issues, and nuclear threats/issues (note: I may continue to add links for a few days, possibly up to a week, after these are published), noting that at least some issues will not have made it into the news that I see: 

• “Move to sustainable food systems could bring $10tn benefits a year, study finds”   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/29/sustainable-food-production-economic-benefits-study   “Existing production destroys more value than it creates due to medical and environmental costs, researchers say”   

 

• a The Guardian exclusive reports that   “Australia’s black summer bushfires ripped billions from the tourism industry. Is global warming making the cost of natural disasters worse?”   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/31/black-summer-bushfires-australia-tourism-industry-impact   “Exclusive: The impact on businesses was widespread, even in areas relatively unaffected by the disaster, study finds”   

• “What if Humans Are NOT Earth's First Civilization? | Silurian Hypothesis”   https://youtu.be/vyEWLhOfLgQ?si=DezbXVIr_XVCMzab   from the PBS Space Time channel   https://www.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime   “In general this points to a bit of a paradox: a civilisation which perished due to climate change would leave such a narrow record it might be invisible. On the other hand, a much longer lived and so presumably environmentally sustainable advanced civilization might produce minimal ecological disruption over millennia, and so would similarly be almost invisible”   Also, most - not all - of the earth’s crust is recycled through subduction processes around every ½ billion years or so   

• “How [a social media platform] is profiting from a new kind of climate change denial”   https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2024/01/29/youtube-climate-denial   This was also covered in   “Imran Ahmed on CNN about the New Climate Denial”   https://youtu.be/MRdmXRiGvvM?si=1SEu2H4idMqYvGn5   which I included in https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2024/01/from-this-weeks-news-on-climate-crisis_27.html   and points out the broader scope of the problem   Also,   “Carmakers ‘grossly under-reporting’ emissions as Australia starts real-world tests”   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/31/carmakers-grossly-under-reporting-emissions-as-australia-starts-real-world-tests   and   “‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show | Fossil fuels | The Guardian”   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/30/fossil-fuel-industry-air-pollution-fund-research-caltech-climate-change-denial    

• “Oil Firms Forced to Consider Full Climate Effects of new Drilling after Landmark Norwegian Court Ruling”   https://www.juancole.com/2024/02/consider-drilling-norwegian.html    This is good news - especially if influences other nations, as the article suggests  
  

• “To avoid the worst of climate change we have to change how we travel”   https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2024/01/29/air-travel-climate-net-zero   I recently wrote about this in   “Post No. 2,693 - A thought on public lotteries (and air travel)”   https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2024/01/post-no-2693-thought-on-public.html  
  

 

• “How Trees and Forests Heal us and make for Well-Being”   https://www.juancole.com/2024/01/trees-forests-being.html   A good article which mentions sources I respect   See also   “Post No. 131 - Forest Bathing”   https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-came-across-new-term-recently-forest.html   

 

• “Research funders must join the fight for equal access to medicines”   https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00237-y   “Pandemic treaty is a rare opportunity to ensure pandemic-related technologies are accessible and affordable to all”   
  

 

My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/