At a visit to Bonaventure Cemetery in #Savannah, Georgia, the woman at the visitor's centre handed us a map and asked us not to talk to the graves. Can anyone explain? :/
P.S. If anyone is interested in cemetery statues and interesting gravestones (from an artistic, historical and architectural perspective) - I strongly recommend the blog Gravely Speaking
Peter Kalmus (The Guardian)
A film about a comet hurtling towards Earth and no one is doing anything about it? Sounds exactly like the climate crisis.
The movie Don’t Look Up is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it’s also the most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I’ve seen. (...)
The scientists are essentially alone with this knowledge, ignored and gaslighted by society. The panic and desperation they feel mirror the panic and desperation that many climate scientists feel. (...)
But this isn’t a film about how humanity would respond to a planet-killing comet; it’s a film about how humanity is responding to planet-killing climate breakdown. We live in a society in which, despite extraordinarily clear, present, and worsening climate danger, more than half of Republican members of Congress still say climate change is a hoax and many more wish to block action, and in which the official Democratic party platform still enshrines massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry; in which the current president ran on a promise that “nothing will fundamentally change”, and the speaker of the House dismissed even a modest climate plan as “the green dream or whatever”; in which the largest delegation to Cop26 was the fossil fuel industry, and the White House sold drilling rights to a huge tract of the Gulf of Mexico after the summit; in which world leaders say that climate is an “existential threat to humanity” while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production; in which major newspapers still run fossil fuel ads, and climate news is routinely overshadowed by sports; in which entrepreneurs push incredibly risky tech solutions and billionaires sell the absurdist fantasy that humanity can just move to Mars. (...)
There may only be five years left before humanity expends the remaining “carbon budget” to stay under 1.5C of global heating at today’s emissions rates – a level of heating I am not confident will be compatible with civilization as we know it. And there may only be five years before the Amazon rainforest and a large Antarctic ice sheet pass irreversible tipping points.
The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed. (...)
A lack of technology isn’t what’s blocking action. Instead, humanity needs to confront the fossil fuel industry head on, accept that we need to consume less energy, and switch into full-on emergency mode. (...)
The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed.’ Photograph: Niko Tavernise/Netflix/PA.
Tags: #movies #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #global_warming #climate_science #amazon_rainforest #deforestation #savannah #antarctic_ice_sheet #tipping_points #fossil_fuel #fossil_fuel_industry #fossil_fuel_ads #cop26 #oil_companies #klimaat #klimaatverandering #klimaatcrisis #film #ocean_level
The Guardian
Campaigners say draft regulation contains many loopholes, including exclusion of Cerrado and Pantanal.
The fragile Cerrado grasslands and the Pantanal wetlands, both under threat from soy and beef exploitation, have been excluded from a European Union draft anti-deforestation law, campaigners have said, and there are many other concerning loopholes. (...)
The long-awaited draft regulation, expected to be published in December, will be limited to controlling EU imports of beef, palm oil, soy, wood, cocoa and coffee, according to a report seen by the Guardian. (...)
Campaigners said the EU risks getting it wrong. They criticised the exclusion from the proposals of rubber, leather, maize and other kinds of meat, linking pigs and chickens to “embedded deforestation” through the use of soy as animal feed. (...)
The Together4Forests campaign called for the regulation to ensure protection for all kinds of ecosystems, not only forests. (...)
Other ecosystems will be excluded, even though the EU document concedes that stricter rules to protect the Amazon rainforest “have already been shown to accelerate conversion of Cerrado savannah and Pantanal wetlands for agricultural production”. It also notes that the Cerrado is “a critical region for storing carbon”, a source of water, vegetation and abundant plant life, but concludes that including such ecosystems would make it more difficult to monitor forests. (...)
The document also reveals that the law “will not specifically target the financial sector”, a blow to campaigners who argued that European banks play a role in fuelling deforestation through their lending. (...)
An endangered giant otter in a lagoon in western Pantanal – which is one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands but is not covered by the draft law. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy.
Tags: #environment #eu #european_union #brazil #brasil #brazilie #bolivia #paraguay #cerrado #pantanal #wetlands #savannah #peatlands #cattle_farming #soy #beef #soy_plantation #palm_oil #palm_oil_plantation #deforestation #rubber #maize #wood #cocoa #coffee #plantation #coffee_plantation #maize_plantation #agriculture #Together4Forests
