President Obama on His Legacy, Trump's Win and the Path Forward

“Let me ask you about climate change. Trump says he's going to pull out of the Paris Agreements. Is that possible?”

U.S. President Barack Obama.

My final interview with President Obama in the White House had been scheduled for the day after the presidential election.

I had hoped to look back on what he had achieved over eight years and the issues that mattered the most to him and to the readers of Rolling Stone, hear his advice for Hillary and about the road ahead. It was to be the "exit interview," his tenth cover for Rolling Stone, our fourth interview together. Before flying down to Washington, D.C., on the morning after the staggering election results, I called and offered to postpone. This had to be one of the worst days of Obama's political life, and he hadn't had a moment to reflect on it, to be angry or to accept it.

Read Rolling Stone interview by Jans S. Wenner - “President Obama on His Legacy, Trump's Win and the Path Forward.”

Leonardo DiCaprio's crusade to save the world

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio's parents hung a painting above his crib in the grotty 1970s East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles when he was a baby. The painting wasn't an action shot of Peter Rabbit or Curious George. No, it was a reproduction of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch's three-paneled "Garden of Earthly Delights," a dystopian visual description of Eden being found and lost. It is one of DiCaprio's earliest memories.

"You literally see Adam and Eve being given paradise," says DiCaprio, his blue eyes peering above sunglasses in a Miami Beach restaurant that has somehow worked "SoHo" into its name. Underneath the table he fidgets his feet in and out of canvas loafers. He drifts away for a moment. DiCaprio just finished shooting an interview for a -climate-change film he's making. (Original working title: Are We Fucked?) He's already been to India flood plains and the Antarctica polar cap, and now he's not far from Miami playgrounds where he once reputedly left a nightclub with every woman from his VIP section. All, according to DiCaprio, could be washed away.

Read the Rolling Stone story - “Inside Leonardo DiCaprio's Crusade to Save the World.”

Teenage hip-hop artist tackles climate change

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ecently, on the east side of Manhattan, there was a dignified gathering to discuss the end of the world.

At the U.N.'s high-level event on climate change, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticized what he called the snail's pace of the last negotiations before the COP21 – the major climate conference coming up later this year in Paris. Anote Tong, the president of Kiribati, delivered a mournful report on the massive relocation of his drowning island nation.

And then, a relative unknown took the mic. Dressed in a donated suit, with dark hair skimming his waist, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the youth director of Earth Guardians, issued a brief prayer in both Spanish and the Nahuatl language. As befuddled U.N. staffers reached for headphones, seeking translation, he began an extemporaneous speech on the folly of climate dithering.

Read the Rolling Stone story - “Meet the Teenage Indigenous Hip-Hop Artist Taking on Climate Change.”

The worst predicted impacts of climate change are already happening

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he worst predicted impacts of climate change are starting to happen — and much faster than climate scientists expected, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

The magazine said: “Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington State's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.”

Read the Rolling Stone story by Eric Holthaus - “The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here”.

Our trees are feeling the heat

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he world’s trees are feeling the heat.

Rolling Stone magazine says: “For decades, all over the planet, heat-aggravated droughts had been killing trees: mountain acacia in Zimbabwe, Mediterranean pine in Greece, Atlas cedar in Morocco, eucalyptus and corymbia in Australia, fir in Turkey and South Korea.”

It says that by the end of the century, the woodlands of the Southwest of America will likely be reduced to weeds and shrubs. And scientists worry that the rest of the planet may see similar effects.

The story - “The Fate of Trees: How Climate Change May Alter Forests Worldwide” – says droughts whose severity was unequalled in the "last few centuries" and documented "climate-driven episodes of regional-scale forest die-off."

The dilemma of making your point about climate change

Those concerned about climate change and who understand the causes of trapped in a strange dilemma.

They know the burning of fossil fuels worsens the situation and yet they also know that those concerns can be best demonstrated through gathering in a central place; a gathering whose success is almost wholly dependent upon fossil fuels.

Writing in Rolling Stone in a story headed: “A call to arms: an invitation to demand action on climate change” activist, Bill McKibben has invited people to visit New York City.

In encouraging people to join him, Mr McKibben said it was “An invitation to anyone who’d like to prove to themselves, and their children, that the give a damn about the biggest crisis our civilization has ever faced”.

“My guess is people will come by the tens of thousands, and it will be the largest demonstration yet of human resolve in the face of climate change.

“Sure, some of it will be exciting – who doesn't like the chance to march and sing and carry a clever sign through the canyons of Manhattan? But this is dead-serious business, a signal moment in the gathering fight of human beings to do something about global warming before it's too late to do anything but watch. You'll tell your grandchildren, assuming we win”.

Mr McKibben urged people to note the dates September 20 and 21 on their.

Obama's actions suggest we don't really care about climate change

Do we care about climate change? No, most definitely no!

Do we value a human habitable planet? No, most definitely no!

Are our concerns more about short-term gains and profits than making decisions and acting appropriately to ensure the long-term societal welfare, health and contentment? Yes, most definitely yes!

Does this disparity of views proliferate in our society filtering through every stratum? Yes, most definitely yes!

As an example, U.S. president Barack Obama has made many comforting comments and observations, but his behaviour throws doubt on his true intentions, or are those intentions beholden to the rich and powerful fossil fuel lobbyists?

Questions about those intentions are discussed in the Rolling Stone article written by climate change advocate, Bill McKibben.

The article headed: “Obama and climate change: the real story” points out that while the president has said many of the right things, he has given the green light to more drilling for oil and digging up more carbon than ever.

Critical discussions Beneath the Wisteria

Bill McKibben.

How Local Government can be encouraged to address, practically, sustainability will be discussed at Saturday, July 28, gathering Beneath the Wisteria.

Supporter, John Pettigrew, said: “This sounds an innocent topic, but with what's happening at the moment around CBD rates (in Shepparton) and an election later in the year it could become political”.

John said: “I am confident we can keep to the "high ground" and rationally discuss avenues or options either individuals or groups could consider”.

There is, however, a certain urgency about reaching the City of Greater Shepparton council (or any other Local Government body) as the reality of climate change and the difficulties it brings are becoming more pressing with each passing day.

In fact it was back on October 2011 that Jeff Goodell wrote in the Rolling Stone magazine about "Climate change and the end of Australia".

A friend of Goodell’s had said to him before he visited Australia that it was the “petri-dish of climate change”.

The “kicker headline” on the Rolling Stone's story said: “Want to know what global warming has in store for us? Just go to Australia, where rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent”.

Author, educator and environmentalist, Bill McKibben, who is also the founder of the grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, wrote in the 2012 July issue of Rolling Stone about “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Maths” pointing to the alarming numbers that worryingly confirm the rapid unfolding of climate change.

The July 28 gathering Beneath the Wisteria will be held at the northern end of Shepparton’s Maude St Mall starting at 11:30am. Some seating is provided, but those planning to attend are urged to bring along a folding chair.