Yes, heatwaves are a natural phenomena, but man made climate change has made them more frequent and severe, rendering many parts of the world simply unlivable. The way we have altered planetary systems also makes heatwaves more likely. As Shannon Osaka writes, “researchers have calculated that heat waves would have been virtually impossible without the 2 degrees F (1.2 degrees Celsius) that the planet has already warmed since pre-industrial times. Scientists estimated a heat wave in Siberia last year — which brought temperatures in the Arctic circle to 100.4 degrees F — was made 600 times more likely due to the warming climate.” While we brace ourselves for life on a heating planet, we need to do all we can to reduce the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. It’s about both changing personal habits, and pushing our governments to set policies that force industries to make the necessary changes! ✊🏾🌍✊🏿🌏✊🏽🌎
Single use plastic, made from petroleum, is often used for a few moments but it could take centuries to break down in landfills. For Toby Gardner, senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, a recent report prepared by the Plastic Waste Makers Index “is the first-time the financial and material flows of single-use plastic production have been mapped globally and traced back to their source. Revealing the sheer scale of the global crisis we have on our hands, it’s critical we break the pattern of inaction. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Building on the analysis published today, this is why it is so important the small group of companies and banks that dominate global production of throwaway plastics begin to disclose their own data.” These companies NEED TO BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR POLLUTING THE PLANET! 🌎🌏🌍✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽
GOOD NEWS! 🌍🌏🌎 It is indeed good news that some of the most egregiously destructive environmental policies installed by the Trump administration is being reversed by the current one. However, this is far from enough. We, especially the US citizens amongst us, must continue to demand for the protection of even more areas that are under threat. Biodiversity, the measure of variation of species, is crucial to ensuring a livable planet. The more we of the planet we relinquish from our control, the better our chances are at surviving the climate crisis!
We must take action!! ❌ A new report from the UN says that “changing rainfall patterns as a result of climate breakdown are a key driver of drought, but the report also identifies the inefficient use of water resources and the degradation of land under intensive agriculture and poor farming practices as playing a role. Deforestation, the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, overgrazing and over-extraction of water for farming are also major problems.” We know the problem, we know how to fix it, so why are we making the necessary changes?! 🌎✊🏾🌏✊🏿🌍✊🏽
Rateb al-Jabour, coordinator of the Popular Anti-Wall and Settlement Committees in Southern Hebron reported that Israeli forces led bulldozers this morning in destroying the paved roads between agricultural Palestinian communities. This is a clear case of what architect Eyal Weizman has argued as Israel’s instrumentalization of the built environment to enforce their settler colonial agenda. In the US, building a highway through a community (most often a Black or minority one) effectively destroys it, separating it from the wider urban and social fabric. In Israel, roads are employed variously for Palestinian oppression. They reach deep into Palestinian territory facilitating Israeli settlements, and as we see here, roads between Palestinian communities are systematically destroyed to break up communities and social bonds. 🌏✊🏽🌎✊🏾🌍✊🏿
Humanity has the ability to shift the entire planet from its axis. We need to meditate on what this mean, what it says about our responsibilities to the planet, and our duties to make sure the ecological collapse we caused is stopped immediately. Here at Climate Lockdown, we’re ambivalent about the term Anthropocene, or the Age of Humanity. It seems to us that centering the human experience and humanity’s needs is what got us into the climate crisis to begin with. Naming a geological era after ourselves seems like the wrong move. At the same time, when our ability to change the planet is demonstrated as dramatically as this, we think again about the necessity to see ourselves at the center - not of the world per se, but of the problem…⠀
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We all know that even though the climate crisis affects the entire planet, it doesn’t impact everyone equally. Those with means and power are able to keep the worst of it at bay. For Palestinians, whose built and natural environments are completely under Israeli control, the way they have been and will deal with the climate crisis does not look good. The occupation must end! ✊🏾🌍✊🏿🌏✊🏽🌎
Israel’s “conquest of the desert” movement since its founding has instrumentalized environmental tropes for territorial gain. The desert was not simply “conquered” - the Negev Bedouin and Palestinians are displaced. Similarly, “nature reserves” are being created ostensibly to protect the environment, but in reality, Palestinians are being displaced, again, and prevented from living on their own land. The environment must not be used to further oppress any people! Even though the cease fire has been called, these types of actions continue. This must stop! ✊🏽🌍✊🏿🌏✊🏾🌎
For those of us living in democratic countries, as our elected leaders begin to make the changes in their policies to reflect popular demand to curb greenhouse gas emissions, we must hold them accountable when they don’t fully deliver, and instead simply “greenwash” their policies to make it seem like enough is being done. As thousands in France have done, we must make our voices heard! Yes we need to consume less meat, yes we need to eliminate short flights, but we also need to go much farther in stopping industry from continuing their destructive practices! As environmental activist Camille Étienne said recently in France, for the government to not properly respond is a “betrayal” to the people!⠀
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For decolonization thinkers, the imbalances caused by colonization are the roots of the climate crisis. Colonialism posits that some people can be sacrificed, that their land and resources can be sacrificed, for the wealth of the few in power. Colonization is a fundamentally non-ecological way of thinking. Instead of hierarchies, we should see both human and more-than-human worlds as part of an ecological whole, a system in which everyone and everything plays an integral part. As many of us live through and witness colonial powers alive and well in today’s world, we must understand it as a world destroying force, a force that needs to be resisted and dismantled with the utmost urgency! 🌍✊🏾🌏✊🏽🌎✊🏿
Studies have shown that forests in indigenous areas are deforested less than half that rate of forests in non-indigenous areas. The fast dwindling rainforests of South America are the lungs of the planet, capturing CO2 and producing oxygen, but deforestation due to the cattle industry is fast changing this fact. The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed, according to a startling report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world's largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution. In order to reverse this trend, the rainforests must be returned to the indigenous populations that live there. Paying indigenous people for take care of the land is a disincentive to lease out the forest for deforestation. Keeping the forests intact, of course, will also prevent future pandemics from happening. SARS-CoV-2 lived happily in a forest before we encroached on its habitat, bringing suffering to ourselves.
As we’ve learned from the 2017 Carbon Majors Report, just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of the world’s green house case emissions since 1988. Large corporations have an outsized responsibility for the climate crisis and they really need to be pressured to do the hard work to lessen the worst effects of the crisis. For this reason it is great to see that pressure from companies do have an effect. The threat of boycott of Brazilian products from major retailers like Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Metro and John Lewis in the UK, and Norwegian pension fund KLP unless they retract a bill that would encourage deforestation has worked - for a second time. In turn, we should continue to put pressure on corporations to adopt environmentally ethical positions. That said, we at Climate Lockdown still believe in personal practice. Brazil is the biggest exporter of beef and soy, the two products that drive deforestation. We as consumers can use our purchasing power as a way to voice our opinions and politics. By avoiding beef (especially from Brazil), we are announcing our commitment to a green and equitable future!
