The climate has always changed. What do you conclude? Probably everyone has heard this argument, presented as objection against the findings of climate scientists on global warming: “The climate has always changed!” And it is true: climate has changed even before humans began to burn fossil fuels. So what can we conclude from that? A quick quiz Do you conclude… (1) that humans cannot change the climate? (2) that we do not know whether humans are to blame for global warming? (3) that global warming will not have any severe consequences? (4) that we cannot stop global warming? The answer Not one of these answers is correct. (1) The opposite conclusion is correct: if the climate had hardly changed during the course of the Earth’s history (despite variable incoming solar radiation and changing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere), then we would conclude that there are strong stabilizing feedbacks in the climate system. Paleoclimatologists determine the climate sensitivity from data from the Earth’s history. (2) Imagine there has been a forest fire.
Verso il 2020 senza illusioni Riflessioni sul nostro futuro partendo dal fallimento della COP25. Di Luca Pardi Il fallimento della COP25 non è arrivato, almeno per me, come una sorpresa. Da anni, e in modo accelerato in questi ultimi mesi, si sente parlare di transizione energetica, verde, ecologica, sostenibile ecc. Tutte formule che finora si sono rivelate vuote. Per mettere in crisi la posizione negazionista basta evocare il tema dell’esaurimento delle risorse non rinnovabili: minerali ed energetiche. «La produzione globale di petrolio convenzionale ha superato il picco nel 2008 a 69,5 milioni di barili al giorno e da allora è diminuita di circa 2,5 milioni di barili al giorno.» Il picco produttivo globale della categoria di petrolio più conveniente, il convenzionale appunto, è avvenuto nel primo decennio del secolo (come previsto, peraltro, da Colin Campbell e Jean Laherrere) e questo segna il passaggio allo sfruttamento di categorie di petrolio più difficili e costose da estrarre. "Mi piace":
Will the Collapse of Civilization Begin With Global Corporatist Totalitarianism? I‘ve just finished reading Dmitry Orlov’s new book The Five Stages of Collapse. It made me realize that I have probably been making two fundamental errors in my thinking about how our civilization culture will collapse, and what we should do to become more resilient in the face of that collapse (taking steps like learning new personal and collective capacities, and re-learning how to create communities). My two errors were the failure to recognize: The Need to Stop Collapse at Stage 3: I have been thinking that there is only one type of collapse, one ‘end game’, though there are many different scenarios about how it will play out. But let me take a step back and start with a brief overview of The Five Stages of Collapse. If you look at the Signs of Collapse in the table above, it is not hard to conclude that the first three stages — Financial, Commercial, and Political Collapse — are already upon us, and we just haven’t recognized them yet. After us, the dragons.
The Collapse of the Modern Western Empire. What Future for Humankind? These notes are not supposed to disparage nor to exalt an entity that has a history that goes back to at least a couple of millennia ago. Like all Empires, past and present, the Modern World Empire went through its parable of growth and glory and it is now starting its decline. There is not much that we can do about it, we have to accept that this is the way the universe works. On this subject, see also a previous post of mine "Why Europe Conquered the World " For everything that exists, there is a reason and that's true also for that gigantic thing that we call sometimes "The West" or perhaps "The American Empire," or maybe "Globalization." As someone might have said (and maybe someone did, but it might be an original concept of mine), "geography is the mother of Empires." Like all empires, though, the Roman one carried inside the seeds of its own destruction. In this way, the Europeans created a gentle and sophisticated civilization. But things never stand still.
Etica della reciprocità L'etica della reciprocità o regola d'oro è un valore morale fondamentale che "si riferisce all'equilibrio in un sistema interattivo tale che ciascuna parte ha diritti e doveri; la norma secondaria della complementarità afferma che i diritti di ciascuno sono un dovere per l'altro"[1]. Essenzialmente si tratta di un codice etico in base al quale ciascuno ha diritto a un trattamento giusto e il dovere e la responsabilità di assicurare la giustizia agli altri. L'etica della reciprocità tra individui è il fondamento della dignità, della convivenza pacifica, della legittimità, della giustizia, del riconoscimento e del rispetto tra individui, delle religioni civili. La "reciprocità" sintetizza con viva autenticità in sé le parole "libertà" e "uguaglianza". La regola d`oro ha radici in molte culture diverse. Filosofia greca antica[modifica | modifica wikitesto] La regola d'oro, nella sua forma negativa, era un principio comune nella filosofia dell'Antica Grecia. ^ Marc H.
If we want to stop the climate breakdown, we need new words to communicate it - Kinder World The end of the year is a popular time to give to charity. Historically, Americans have made 30% of their annual donations in December. Many of them get a head start on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving during the global online fundraising campaign known as Giving Tuesday. But no matter what time of year it is, donors want help deciding which charity to support. Because I conduct research about nonprofit evaluation methods, I’ve been studying the approach of ranking charities depending on how much of their budgets they spend on everything from paperclips to insurance. A dangerous obsession Known as the overhead ratio, this metric encompasses expenditures that might appear to be unrelated to work that advances a charity’s mission. Nonprofits typically have overhead ratios of around 20%, meaning that they spend about 1 out of every 5 dollars on fundraising expenses, accounting, publicity and everything else needed to operate. Fortunately, five large foundations have realized this.
Natural Language – George Monbiot If we want people to engage with the living world, we should stop using such constipated terms to describe our relationship to it. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 9th August 2017 If Moses had promised the Israelites a land flowing with mammary secretions and insect vomit, would they have followed him into Canaan? Though this means milk and honey, I doubt it. So why do we use such language to describe the natural wonders of the world? Even the term “reserve” is cold and alienating – think of what we mean when we use that word about a person. Our assaults on life and beauty are also sanitised and disguised by the words we use. Words possess a remarkable power to shape our perceptions. Words encode values, that are subconsciously triggered when we hear them. The catastrophic failure by ecologists to listen to what cognitive linguists and social psychologists have been telling them has led to the worst framing of all: “natural capital”. Those who name it own it. www.monbiot.com
Bubbles Are Brutal Asset bubbles are brutal. The most difficult time to remain centered and focused is during their last stages as everyone around you is going nuts. Logic has been tossed out the window, sentiment is manic, and every narrative – the stories we hear and use to make sense of our world – is thoroughly ungrounded. After a decade of price deformation — such as UBER being valued by the ““markets”” at $45 to $50 billion despite having no viable path for ever making a profit — it seems that practically everyone has lost the ability to perform even basic math or reality checks. For example, this week — for what must have been the 42nd time — the Trump administration has proclaimed a massive victory in the China Trade Deal. The narrative being sold to us is that along with the immediate roll-back of tariffs (which is Trump caving, not ‘winning’), China will buy $50 billion of US agricultural products in 2020. Huge excitement in the global equity markets has greeted this news. Now, about that…
New Normal (business) New Normal is a term in business and economics that refers to financial conditions following the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the aftermath of the 2008–2012 global recession. The term has since been used in a variety of other contexts to imply that something which was previously abnormal has become commonplace. The term arose from the context of cautioning the belief of economists and policy makers that industrial economies would revert to their most recent means post the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The 2010 Per Jacobsson lecture delivered by the head of PIMCO, Mohamed A. El-Erian, was titled "Navigating the New Normal in Industrial Countries".
Jason W. Moore – Antropocene o Capitalocene? Scenari di ecologia-mondo nell’era della crisi planetaria [Introduzione e cura di Alessandro Barberi, Emanuele Leonardi ombre corte, Verona 2017] – S&F_scienzaefilosofia.it Il saggio di Jason W. Moore si chiude con un richiamo allo stesso tempo chiaro e perentorio per tutti coloro che si occupano di scienze umane e sociali: «è giunto il momento di aprire un dibattito serio su come forgiare una visione radicale che assuma come proprie premesse la totalità organica della vita, la biosfera, la produzione e la riproduzione» (p. 142). Si tratta, insomma, di un progetto allo stesso tempo teorico e pratico che abbia al centro la pensabilità e la costruzione di pratiche politiche volte al superamento di quell’insieme discorsivo e politico formato da un lato dalla razionalità riflessiva moderna, fondata sulla distinzione (foriera di ibridazioni autoritarie) tra natura e cultura, e dall’altro – e in maniera determinante – da quella che, all’interno del saggio, viene definita ecologia-mondo capitalista. Jason W. Il Capitalocene è, secondo Jason W. Per Jason W. Delio Salottolo S&F_n. 21_2019
Anthropocene - The Encyclopedia of Earth Introduction The Earth at night, demonstrating the global extent of human influence. The Anthropocene defines Earth's most recent geologic time period (Anthropocene) as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans. The word combines the root "anthropo", meaning "human" with the root "-cene", the standard suffix for "epoch" in geologic time. Origins of the term Anthropocene is a new term, proposed in 2000 by Nobel Prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen. Evidence for the Anthropocene Geologic epochs are distinguished from one another based on geological observations, such as the composition of sediment layers and other tools of paleoclimatology. When did the Anthropocene begin? Human alteration of land surfaces. However, as yet, there is no official start date for the Anthropocene. See also Notes (Anthropocene) Further Reading Crutzen, P. External links
Planetary boundaries - Stockholm Resilience Centre For press inquiries about the planetary boundaries, please contact Johannes Ernstberger johannes.ernstberger@su.sePhone +46 (0) 76 496 0903 Key publications Richardson, J., Steffen W., Lucht, W., Bendtsen, J., Cornell, S.E., et.al. 2023. Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J. & Cornell, S.E., et.al. 2015. Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., et.al. 2009. Rockström, J., W. Download illustrations The illustrations are free to use in publications, scientific or otherwise, describing the planetary boundaries concept. Download the 2023 Planetary Boundaries illustration (Credit: Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023.) Attribution: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 If you need access to older versions of the Planetary Boundaries illustration, please contact us at: info@stockholmresilience.su.se
Welcome to the Anthropocene | Planetary Boundaries The Planetary Boundaries concept identifies nine global priorities relating to human-induced changes to the environment. The science shows that these nine processes and systems regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth System — the interactions of land, ocean, atmosphere and life that together provide conditions upon which our societies depend. Four of nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed as a result of human activity: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen). Two of these, climate change and biosphere integrity, are what the scientists call "core boundaries".
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