Healthcare Institutions across U.S. Treating Climate Change as a Top Priority

The Cleveland Clinic started thinking “green” more than a decade ago, as sustainability and energy efficiency were just starting to gain traction in serious conversations about climate change. Since then, the Ohio medical center’s environmentally conscious practices have become part of its culture, with everyone getting involved.

They are recycling, turning off lights and computers, planting trees in the community, and buying Energy Star-certified equipment, from MRI and ultrasound machines to kitchen appliances. They are reducing water usage through low-flow fixtures, cutting waste, and controlling operating room air to ensure it’s clean and fresh during surgery, but not squandered when the OR is empty.

Equally impressive: the facility aims to become carbon neutral within the next ten years. They hope to accomplish this by increasing their renewable energy sources, and expanding all of their existing efficiency and emission-reducing programs.

Read the Nexus Media story by Marlene Cimons - “Healthcare Institutions across U.S. Treating Climate Change as a Top Priority.”

Our decisions will decided the future of the species - Noam Chomsky

Writing in “Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy” Noam Chomsky, interviewed by David Barsamian, said: 

“We can’t overlook the fact that we’re at a moment of human history that is entirely unique. For the first time in human history, the decisions we make will determine whether the species survives. That has not been true in the past. It’s very definitely true now”.

Why I think there's still hope for the climate in 2017

Optimism has always been in short supply in conversations about global warming. Only for the briefest window – after the Paris climate agreement was reached in December 2015 – did the words “climate” and “hope” look reasonable next to each other in headlines. Then came 2016.

A defiant mood has emerged in response to
countless setbacks. Illustration: Sarah Walsh.

And yet, in spite of these past 12 months, I remain optimistic.

Yes, I know that Donald Trump – a man who has dismissed global warming as “very expensive … bullshit” – was elected president of the world’s second biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. His actions since his inauguration have only confirmed his intentions to halt progress to reduce the vast emissions produced by the US. 

And I know that in the UK there’s yet more cause for concern. A series of U-turns has transformed the UK from a world leader to a world let-down. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has been scrapped. The country is expected to miss its 2020 climate targets. And the weakening of the European Union, caused by the Brexit vote, may jeopardise climate action across the continent.

These are serious developments, but I’m not convinced they’re big enough to unsettle progress.

Read Adam Levy’s story on The Guardian - “Why I think there's still hope for the climate in 2017.”

How Cory Bernardi was inspired to push climate denial from US conservative groups

Cory Bernardi addresses the Senate as he
announces his defection from the Liberal
 party on Tuesday. 

If the dissident conservative senator Cory Bernardi’s new political party shares the views of its founder, then we can chalk up it up as another fringe party firmly in the climate science denial camp.

Ignoring mountains of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry carried out over many decades, Bernardi has for a long time chosen to listen instead to fake experts pushing talking points that walk like zombies through barbecue conversations across Australia.

A Bernardi-led party would join One Nation, Family First, the Liberal Democrats and Rise Up Australia in rejecting the evidence for action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Read Graham Readfearn’s story in The Guardian - “How Cory Bernardi was inspired to push climate denial from US conservative groups.”

Euroa 'conversations' to focus on water - 'everyone has valid concerns'

E

uroa’s Castle Creek has been empty more often than full and with the Seven Creeks totally drying up for the third time in 10 years - everyone has valid concerns about water.

Subsequently, water will be the subject for the next “2015 Euroa Environmental Seminar Series” on Saturday, May 30 “conversation”.
A brace of speakers will discuss the lack of rainfall, the reduced creek-flows, the proliferation of mega dams, and the plight of fish populations.

Chairing discussions aimed at considering social, economic and environmental impacts in Euroa and downstream will be Christine Forster from the Environmental Farmers Network.

Also at the May 30 discussions at the Old Flour Mill Gallery, Kirkland Ave, Euroa, will be Murray Darling Basin Authority representative, Bill Johnson and Janet Pritchard; the Chair of Water Stewardship Australia, Michael Spencer; along with Fern Hames, who will bring a wealth of knowledge about fish and Geoff Earle and Chris Norman from the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority (GBCMA), who will discuss future challenges and possibilities.

The May 30 conversations start at 10:00am and continue until about 2:30pm, Lunch is included in proceedings.

People can book by visiting the Strathbogie Voices.

'Conversations' now turn to Local Government and Sustainability

Climate change and the Strathbogie region was the subject for the first of the “Conversations” staged recently by Strathbogie Voices and the Euroa Environment Group.

More than 100 people were at Euroa’s Kirkland Avenue historic flour-mill for the first of this year’s sessions in February, which featured the Professor in Atmospheric Science at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, David Karoly.

Professor Karoly is an internationally renowned expert on climate change and a key spokesperson on this topic.

This short Youtube clip illustrates the essence of that first session and people can now look forward to the second “conversation” to be held on Saturday, March 21 entitled: “Local Government and Sustainability”.

The March 21 “Conversations” will feature Winsome McCaughey, Mike Hill (formerly Mayor Moreland City Council), Lorna Pitt (formerly councillor Melbourne City Council), and Janet Bolitho (former chair of the Local Sustainability Accord with the Labor Government (State).

Bookings can be made by visiting the Strathbogie Voices website.

Nature cares little for what it is we procrastinate about

Those at the Lima climate talks seem oblivious that nature cares little for what it is they procrastinate about.

It simple knows that the constituents of earth’s atmosphere are out of balance and only an immediate and world community-wide response will set about restoring the necessary equilibrium.

If we (the nations of the world) fail to make significant decisions at Lima in the lead up to Paris next year, untold trouble awaits.

The mindset that brought on the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, took the Western powers into a decade long conflict in the Middle East, and has allowed privately corporations to become among the richest and most powerful entities in the world is alive among those at Lima.

Until we are prepared to relinquish and abandon the greed driven individualism that proliferates in the developed world, conversations such as those at Lima will always stall and simply produce nothing more than aspirational and so unenforceable targets.

Considering that, it was interesting to note The Guardian story that pointed to “scant progress”.

The story headed: “Scant Progress As UN Climate Talks Enter Final Stretch” said U.N. global warming talks seemed set to spill over into the weekend.

Avoiding the most difficult - we need to 'speak the words'

The obvious is being conveniently avoided by most in ongoing conversations about how we mitigate and address the damage we are doing to our climate.

The amazing and palatial
BMW Edge theatre.

Necessary changes are so extensive, dramatic, demanding, confronting and contrary to the contemporary understanding of the imagined good life that no one appears game to speak the words.

Many allude to what is needed in subtle ways, but fearing alienation from the mainstream or worse, a social shunning by most they avoid the direct spelling out of the urgent and needed action.

Let us be clear - everyone needs to stop doing anything that is the outcome of burning fossil fuels.

Melbourne’s February SustainableLiving Festival was wonderful and on show was a powerful exhibition of peoples’ innovative nature and skills, along with a fascinating array of speakers, films and demonstrations all aimed at helping us better understand how we could live in quieter and less energy intensive manner.

The festival, despite all the wonderment and energy it brought to the conversation about addressing climate change, would not have been possible, at least on that grand scale, with the input of fossil fuel powered energy.

Just on a personal sense, let’s consider my debt to fossil-fuels:

Journey to and from Melbourne by diesel powered train;

Travel within Melbourne on trams using electricity from fossil-fuel powered generators;

Food and drinks from establishments relying entirely on electricity;

Business cards, brochures and various handouts (some of which I brought home) were all available because of a finite resource;

The palatial beauty of the BMW Edge theatre (the venue of many presentations) was an exhibition of the power of fossil-fuels;

Many of those who spoke at the festival, or were exhibitors or worked on an exhibit, were able to participate because of energy derived from fossil-fuel;

In fact, most everything in sight, including the well-manicured plants and grass, existed because of fossil-fuel.

My trip, enjoyable and rewarding as it was, was made possible because of energy from fossil-fuels. That process, in itself, is not sustainable.

Clearly, if we are to slow the damage to our atmosphere and so slow climate change, we need to end our dependence today, not tomorrow, on fossil-fuels.

That, I know, is an unrealistic call, but the intent of the innovation on show at the Melbourne festival needs to be redirected from solving a particular problem, as important as that is, to rather helping the broader community understand how it can emotionally deal with a revolutionary change to their lifestyle.

Our way of living, even that of the Sustainable Living Festival, is predictably and scientifically impossible to sustain and so rather await the catastrophic collapse of society we should be devoting time, energy and effort to understanding an alternative.

The alternative is about close knit, resilient,  multi-use communities with a grasp on their governance, in which the basic method transport is walking or cycling, basic foods are available locally, and neigbourhoods, in which sharing is a way of life, are about people, rather than machines.

Arriving at that point will only happen with a significant “bottom-up” push accompanied by an equally courageous “top-down” leadership.