DemocracyMouse
DemocracyMouse's JournalEarth may be 140 years away from reaching carbon levels not seen in 56 million years
Source: Science Daily
A new study finds humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate nine to 10 times higher than the greenhouse gas was emitted during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a global warming event that occurred roughly 56 million years ago.
The results suggest if carbon emissions continue to rise, the total amount of carbon dioxide injected into the atmosphere since humans started burning fossil fuels could equal the amount released during the PETM as soon as 2159.
"You and I won't be here in 2159, but that's only about four generations away," said Philip Gingerich, a paleoclimate researcher at the University of Michigan and author of the new study in the AGU journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. "When you start to think about your children and your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren, you're about there."
Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190220112221.htm
This, and the UN report giving us 12 years to do something, is why millions of younger Americans want a Green New Deal.
Hey Older Folks:
Remember that line in the Buffalo Springfield song? The one that goes "getting so much resistance from behind". Why are we hippies NOT listening to this new generation? Why do we protect the status quo so much?
Australian Rat Declared Extinct Due To Man-Made Climate Change
Source: Huffington Post
The Australian government has confirmed the extinction of a small rodent native to a tiny spit of sand in the northernmost part of the Great Barrier Reef ― the first known mammal lost to human-caused climate change.
Bramble Cay melomys lived on the coral island of Bramble Cay, located in the Torres Strait between Queensland state and Papua New Guinea. The Government of Queensland initially declared the species extinct in a 2016 report, and Australian Environment Minister Melissa Price confirmed the die-off in a press release this week. The whiskered rat has been officially reclassified from “endangered” to “extinct.”
Geoff Richardson, an official with Australia’s Department of the Environment and Energy, told lawmakers on Monday that the declaration “was not a decision to take lightly,” according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Read more: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c6dca24e4b0e37a1ed47b1c
This was just announced Monday. EVERY piece of breaking news about a lost species due to OUR consumption of oil is WORSE NEWS THAN WE CAN EVEN CONCEIVE OF. Still driving around unnecessarily in gas guzzing SUVs? Please plan on going door to door for Democrats in 2020. We MUST vote out climate deniers like Trump and a majority of the Republican Party.
A dead planet costs more
The War On Climate Change Won’t Be Won Quibbling Over The Green New Deal’s Costs
The mounting damage of global warming is a crisis far greater than the deficit.
By Zach Carter and Alexander C. Kaufman
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c66285be4b01757c369e3df
...The Green New Deal is framed as a joint resolution, not a formal law, meaning even if it passed, the measure wouldn’t bind the government to any new policies. This distinction is key to understanding what the Green New Deal is — and is not — and how to usefully talk about it now. It is a major statement of the Democratic Party’s political priorities. It is not a detailed blueprint of how to get there — or how to pay for it.
The Green New Deal’s agenda, however, is clear: Dramatic action must be taken to avert a climate disaster that will otherwise render much of the world uninhabitable. This is an emergency that deserves immediate attention. Millions of lives are quite literally at stake.
Instead of extreme weather disasters, famines and wars over natural resources, the Green New Deal envisions a future in which our nation overcomes its addiction to oil, gas and coal. The federal government would need so many workers to deploy renewable energy, retrofit buildings to be more energy efficient and construct more durable infrastructure that it could guarantee a job to every American who wants one. Those jobs would pay well and offer union protections. And because climate change touches on every facet of life, the transition away from fossil fuels would happen alongside a rapid expansion of safeguards for Americans already suffering the ill effects of dirty energy, from poisoned waterways to the coal industry’s monopolistic domination of entire regional economies.
One priority the Green New Deal does not include? Balancing the federal budget. Neither the Green New Deal legislation nor an FAQ released by Ocasio-Cortez last week included a detailed set of plans about how to pay for it. This is as it should be.
This was the approach taken during the original New Deal. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw fighting the Depression and the Nazi war machine as emergencies that required immediate action. Roosevelt himself liked balanced budgets as much as the next fellow. He raised taxes on the rich repeatedly ― the top rate rose as high as 94 percent during the war. But he didn’t let a balanced budget get in the way of progress. If he couldn’t get enough money from taxes, Roosevelt borrowed it, fighting both the Depression and World War II with enormous federal debts.
Who needs a Green New Deal when you can make a big Deal of your New Green?
Daily KOS
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/1834420
What does he do during executive time? We know he obsessively watches cable news stories about himself. We know we often turns to Twitter to talk about himself or to attack others who are critical of him. We know he’s made 156 visits to Trump golf properties since taking office, at an estimated cost of $87,000,000 to taxpayers. And now we know he recently had an indoor room-sized golf simulator installed in the White House.
From the Washington Post:
President Trump has installed a room-sized “golf simulator” game at the White House, which allows him to play virtual rounds at courses all over the world by hitting a ball into a large video screen, according to two people told about the system.
......
Interesting to note this golf simulator was installed “during the last few weeks.” Donald Trump signed the stopgap funding bill on Jan. 25, 2019. When exactly was this simulator installed? Was this work going on during the shutdown of the federal government? The public deserves to know.
Would you be angry to learn this was installed during the shutdown?
Yes 92%
No 7%
Republicans, the party of zero solutions, skewer Democrats' 'fringe' ideas
Source: Daily KOS
As they gear up for 2020, Republicans are resurrecting their go-to campaign strategy: fearmongering. They didn't have to spend any time dusting it off after grinding it home on immigration throughout the 2018 midterm elections, which did not end well for them. So what's the scary demon emerging in 2020? "Socialism" and a supposed compendium of Radical Left-ness that threatens to swallow the republic whole. Gasp!
.....
Republicans are so giddy over the wellspring of aspirational ideas from Democrats, they can't wait to put them on trial. Yep. After failing to have a fresh thought since the Reagan era, the GOP is allergic to newness. The struggle is real, folks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who panned taking "pointless" show votes on government funding last month, now wants to put the squeeze on Democrats by forcing them to vote on the Green New Deal, which is a nonbinding resolution. "We're going to be voting on that in the Senate to give everybody an opportunity to go on record," McConnell gleefully told reporters Tuesday.
Absolutely, let's do that, Mitch. Let's get Republicans on record for the do-nothing policies of yesteryear that landed our planet in this hot mess in the first place.... Democrats shouldn't bat an eye. The Green New Deal is a 13-page document with the apparently controversial goal of achieving “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.” And thank goodness Democrats are refocusing the nation's attention on a problem that the U.N. is warning will have dire, potentially irreversible consequences unless a major course correction is undertaken in the next 12 years.
The fact of the matter is, the broad policy goals behind most of these "fringe" ideas enjoy popular support.
Read more: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/1834539
Rep. Liz Cheney Goes On 'Hooey' Rant About The Green New Deal
Source: Huffington Post
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, falsely claimed Tuesday that the Green New Deal seeks to “outlaw” airplanes, cars, gasoline and “probably the entire U.S. military.”
Cheney’s comments, which came during a congressional hearing on climate change, parroted a tweet that President Donald Trump posted last week....To be clear, the Green New Deal says nothing about eliminating airplanes, cars or the military. Instead, the non-binding resolution ― introduced last week by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) ― outlines lofty goals of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, building climate-resilient infrastructure and reversing income inequality by creating high-wage green jobs.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), one of nearly 80 co-sponsors of the resolution, said Cheney’s line of questioning was “based on absolute hooey” and that no supporter wants to ban air travel.
“That’s absolutely crazy,” Huffman said.
Read more: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c63469ee4b03de942968b77
Please stop calling it "pro life"...
Language and imagery have more sway than most folks realize. If we were a nation who understood this we would treat the arts and entertainment more seriously, pay the creative community the same rate as lawyers to transform ghettos and strip malls into beautiful places, and we wouldn't let companies like Spotify and Ticketmaster screw musicians.
That said, if you want to stop Republicans from stealing your rights, start thinking like a Bob Dylan, a Kurt Cobain or NWA.
To wit:
"Pro life" is out.
"Forced maternal labor" is in (and just as bad as it sounds).
"Rich and poor" is out.
"Overpaid and underpaid" is in (and the solution to the problem is now embedded in the terms!)
"Socialism vs capitalism" is out.
"Infrastructure for a civic economy" is in.
"Left vs Right" is out.
"Rational vs irrational" is in.
...and if you're ready to push forward into a new Renaissance:
"God and goddess" are out.
"O Magnum Mysterium" is in!
Be forewarned: privatizing the military was abandoned for a reason
When the rumblings about privatizing and outsourcing the US military cycle back to a fever pitch (think Betsy De Vos’ opportunistic brother, Erik Prince and murderous/shamed military contractor Blackwater), remember that the British ABANDONED privateering for a reason back in 1604 at the Treaty of London (try “fake newsing” THAT history you Trumpian devils and spawn of Putin!)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer
In practice the legality and status of privateers historically has often been vague. Depending on the specific government and the time period, letters of marque might be issued hastily and/or the privateers might take actions beyond what was authorized by the letters. The privateers themselves were often simply pirates who would take advantage of wars between nations to gain semi-legal status for their enterprises. By the end of the 19th century the practice of issuing letters of marque had fallen out of favor because of the chaos it caused and its role in inadvertently encouraging piracy.
A privateer is similar to a mercenary except that, whereas a mercenary group receives a set fee for services and generally has a formal reporting structure within the entity that hires them, a privateer acts independently with generally no compensation unless the enemy's property is captured.
First major policy paper advocating for Green New Deal
Any time I mention the phrase “Green New Deal” I get a strong reaction. There’s a lot of heat being generated about it’s origins, but the truth is, we have 10 years to put a tourniquet on carbon emissions.
Luckily a serious policy think tank has just issued a major paper on what an environmentally responsible New Deal would look like. It’s getting coverage everywhere.
Policy paper by Data for Progress:
https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal/
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c47a004e4b025aa26be00c9
“The heart of the proposal is a call for 100 percent carbon-free electricity before 2030, the date by which United Nations scientists said the world must halve global emissions or face cataclysmic global warming. But the paper goes beyond that goal, proposing lifting the geographical limitations on the TVA to create what would essentially function as a national power company....”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/proposal-aims-legacy-fdr-works-110028891.html
“In May 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act establishing the nation’s largest public utility and setting in motion an ambitious New Deal policy to provide electricity and jobs to some of the poorest Americans in the midst of the Great Depression.... Nearly 86 years later, a new proposal aims to sharpen the Tennessee Valley Authority into the speartip of a so-called Green New Deal...”
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/426493-economic-reasons-for-a-green-new-deal
Let’s start with economic reasons for a Green New Deal. The global economy is creating half a million new jobs yearly in renewable energy and employs more than ten million people. In the U.S. we’ve created a hundred thousand new solar and wind jobs annually, 12 times faster than in the rest of the economy. Green energy is putting people to work.
Green power is also increasingly cheaper. Here at Stanford, we just signed a long-term contract to buy solar power for less than 2.5 cents a kilowatt-hour. That’s extremely low. Remarkable things are happening in wind power, too... Other countries are transforming even faster. A third of the cars consumers bought in Norway last year were electric, up 40 percent from the year before. The transition lets them couple zero-pollution vehicles with clean hydropower. China’s investing $360 billion in renewable power in their current five-year plan, creating 13 million new jobs. Their Green New Deal is here.
A Green New Deal also makes sense because we’re paying the costs of climate change today. We suffered $306 billion in damages from hurricanes, fires and other U.S. disasters in 2017, the last year data are fully available, a hundred billion more than ever before.”
FDR's (Democratic) New Deal now has a new, green wonky think tank
Any time I mention the phrase “Green New Deal” I get a strong reaction. It’s either “About time!” or “That’s just too new for anyone to grasp” or “Everyone is taking credit for that!” or “Was FDR a Democrat?” (he was).
Never mind. We have 10 years to put a tourniquet on carbon emissions and a serious policy think tank has just issued a major paper on what an environmentally responsible New Deal would look like. It’s getting coverage everywhere.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c47a004e4b025aa26be00c9
“The heart of the proposal is a call for 100 percent carbon-free electricity before 2030, the date by which United Nations scientists said the world must halve global emissions or face cataclysmic global warming. But the paper goes beyond that goal, proposing lifting the geographical limitations on the TVA to create what would essentially function as a national power company....”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/proposal-aims-legacy-fdr-works-110028891.html
“In May 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act establishing the nation’s largest public utility and setting in motion an ambitious New Deal policy to provide electricity and jobs to some of the poorest Americans in the midst of the Great Depression.... Nearly 86 years later, a new proposal aims to sharpen the Tennessee Valley Authority into the speartip of a so-called Green New Deal...”
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/426493-economic-reasons-for-a-green-new-deal
Let’s start with economic reasons for a Green New Deal. The global economy is creating half a million new jobs yearly in renewable energy and employs more than ten million people. In the U.S. we’ve created a hundred thousand new solar and wind jobs annually, 12 times faster than in the rest of the economy. Green energy is putting people to work.
Green power is also increasingly cheaper. Here at Stanford, we just signed a long-term contract to buy solar power for less than 2.5 cents a kilowatt-hour. That’s extremely low. Remarkable things are happening in wind power, too... Other countries are transforming even faster. A third of the cars consumers bought in Norway last year were electric, up 40 percent from the year before. The transition lets them couple zero-pollution vehicles with clean hydropower. China’s investing $360 billion in renewable power in their current five-year plan, creating 13 million new jobs. Their Green New Deal is here.
A Green New Deal also makes sense because we’re paying the costs of climate change today. We suffered $306 billion in damages from hurricanes, fires and other U.S. disasters in 2017, the last year data are fully available, a hundred billion more than ever before.”
Policy paper by Data for Progress:
https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal/
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Name: Mouse de la SoulGender: Do not display
Hometown: New Jersey
Home country: USA
Member since: Sat Dec 9, 2017, 01:41 PM
Number of posts: 2,275
