Interconnections

Road to Paris: Plain Talk Briefing on the UN Climate Treaty Negotiations

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, global warming, Interconnections, News , , , , , , , , ,

What:    A candid, 15 minute explanation on why the UN climate negotiations are so difficult and the likely result in Paris. Intended for a general audience.

Who:     Stephen Leahy is an independent, environmental journalist who has covered climate negotiations around the world. He is co-winner of the 2012 Prince Albert/United Nations Global Prize for reporting on Climate Change.

Where: Part of a public forum in Toronto June 2014 titled CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY.

Thanks to Peter Biesterfeld for making the recording.

“We’re facing a planetary emergency” The Road to Rio (+20 years)

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, economics, Food, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, Interconnections, News, OCEAN, Science , , , , , ,

“Humanity is facing major challenges…urgent actions are needed”

Can we act as a true community?

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 11, 2012 (IPS)

Humanity is driving Earth’s climate and ecosystems towards dangerous tipping points, requiring radical new forms of international cooperation and governance, experts say.

“We’re facing a planetary emergency,” said Owen Gaffney of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme based in Stockholm.

“We need to have a ‘constitutional moment’ in world politics, akin to the major transformative shift in governance after 1945 that led to the establishment of the United Nations and numerous other international organisations,” said Frank Biermann of VU University Amsterdam and director of the Earth System Governance Project.

“Humanity is facing major challenges…urgent actions are needed,” Biermann told IPS.

              Be a Partner in Independent Enviro Journalism

Those challenges include, but are not limited to, increasing poverty, food, water and energy security, the financial crisis, climate change, ocean acidification, the loss of biodiversity. All of these challenges and their solutions are interconnected.

Normally, the complex, mutually dependent systems of the Earth can self-correct and are remarkably stable. However, they can reach thresholds or tipping points and then unexpectedly and abruptly shift, Gaffney said in an interview.

“We need only recall how the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis nearly collapsed the global financial system,” he said.

The upcoming Rio+20 conference on sustainable development needs to be the moment in human history when the nations of the world come together to find ways to ensure “the very survival of humanity”, he said. Continue reading →

The Future of Journalism: Adopt a Muckraker

Stephen 1 Must Read, CANADA, Global Issues and Perspectives, Interconnections, Media, News, Science, sustainability , , , ,

“Should you and I pay for the kind of accurate news reporting that is needed to fill us in on what is happening to the planet?

If we’re not willing to pick up the tab to stay better informed, who will?”

Renowned Swiss journalist Daniel Wermus and Director of the Media21 Global Journalism Network in Geneva asks those questions in an April 2010 article about my launch of Community Supported Journalism in 2009. [Updated from Sept 2010] — Stephen

Frontline Earth: Adopt a Muckraker?

By Daniel Wermus

I meet international freelance journalists quite often. Most make it clear that budget cuts have made it increasingly difficult for just about anyone, especially freelancers, to get into print. It is usually the freelancers who are most willing to risk their lives to get the stories that need reporting the most. If the day arrives when they can no longer carry out their professions, we will all have a serious problem.

Muckraker: A reporter or writer who investigates and publishes reports involving a host of social issues, broadly including crime and corruption

Stephen Leahy, a Canadian, and one of the world’s best-known investigative reporters on environmental issues, has launched a challenge: if corporations won’t pay for the news, then it is up to communities and the public to fill the gap. A free society needs journalism, even if reporting the news is not commercially profitable.

Leahy’s model for supporting the news has the journalist make his pitch over the internet. The completed article can then be distributed by news agencies or magazines that are low on funds but high on public interest. That could be IPS, Reuters-Alertnet, Commondreams, InfoSud, The Essential Edge or any number of other publications and news outlets.

[edit: Wermus concludes] Continue reading →

An Awakening to the Unravelling of the Web Life – Will Action Follow?

Stephen 1 Must Read, Biodiversity, economics, Forests, Global Issues and Perspectives, Indigenous People, Interconnections, News, sustainability , , , , ,

Youth Demand Need a Voice.  Halting Biodiversity Decline Impossible Without Economic Transformation

Analysis by Stephen Leahy 

NAGOYA, Japan, Nov 1, 2010 (IPS)

The international community has finally awoken to the other great trans-boundary challenge of our time, with a new international agreement to halt the unravelling of the web of life that sustains humanity.

The new agreement by 193 nations that are part of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity includes a commitment to reduce the rate of species loss by half by 2020, as well as the historic Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing of genetic resources.

This awakening only applies to the few early risers. The vast majority remain asleep, unaware of our utter dependence on the living things that are the one and only source of oxygen, water, food and fuel. And unaware that nature is our reality while the economy is simply a complicated game we created.

Japan imports more than 60 percent of its food and most of Europe’s ecosystems have been trashed, with only 17 percent in reasonable shape, according to a first-ever assessment. The only reason those countries haven’t collapsed is they are rich enough to help themselves to nature’s ecological resources and services like food, timber, materials from the rest of the world.

Put a glass lid over Japan, Germany or England and they wouldn’t last long.

“We exploited the biological resources abroad, especially in the South. This is why we, the people of Aichi, Nagoya, must apologise…for the deterioration of the ecosystems and biodiversity we have caused,” says a public appeal by civil society from Nagoya, the host city of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for the last two weeks of October.

The Japanese government wanted no part of this apology, says Kinhide Mushakoji, one of the organisers and a professor at the Osaka University of Economics and Law. The appeal was signed by 156 organisations in Japan.
Continue reading →

The Future of Journalism: Adopt a Muckraker

Stephen 1 Must Read, CANADA, Global Issues and Perspectives, Interconnections, Media, News, Pollution and Toxics, Science, sustainability , , , , , , ,

“I’m pretty damn angry that media companies are putting profits ahead of truth.

The media are deeply broken… That’s a real threat to democracy.”

— Stanford University climate scientist, Stephen Schneider

 

Renowned Swiss journalist Daniel Wermus and Director of the Media21 Global Journalism Network  discusses my launch of Community Supported Journalism in this article. — Stephen

“Should you and I pay for the kind of accurate news reporting that is needed to fill us in on what is happening to the planet?

If we’re not willing to pick up the tab to stay better informed, who will?”

Frontline Earth: Adopt a Muckraker?

By Daniel Wermus

“I meet international freelance journalists quite often. Most make it clear that budget cuts have made it increasingly difficult for just about anyone, especially freelancers, to get into print. It is usually the freelancers who are most willing to risk their lives to get the stories that need reporting the most. If the day arrives when they can no longer carry out their professions, we will all have a serious problem.

Muckraker: A reporter or writer who investigates and publishes reports involving a host of social issues, broadly including crime and corruption

Stephen Leahy, a Canadian, and one of the world’s best-known investigative reporters on environmental issues, has launched a challenge: if corporations won’t pay for the news, then it is up to communities and the public to fill the gap. A free society needs journalism, even if reporting the news is not commercially profitable.

Leahy’s model for supporting the news has the journalist make his pitch over the internet. The completed article can then be distributed by news agencies or magazines that are low on funds but high on public interest. That could be IPS, Reuters-Alertnet, Commondreams, InfoSud, The Essential Edge or any number of other publications and news outlets.

[edit: Wermus concludes]

Leahy observes that: “Many people tell me, we need individuals like you to get real information out.”

It may be too early to tell whether this really signals a new citizen’s approach to the need for hard information that may be crucial to society. In the best of all worlds it could bring together both consumers and media for promoting a better planet. The danger is that it could also produce yet another quagmire of holier-than-thou preaching.”

Learn more about Community Supported Journalism in the Public Interest

Adopt a Muckraker for only $10 a month

Update: Community Supported Journalism is working. However 50 people helping out has to become 500 so we all can get the crucial information we need.  Please consider becoming one of the 500. Thank you. — Stephen

 

Travel and Writer’s Block

Stephen Interconnections, News

shodou-calligraphy.gifHola from Quito, Ecuador.

It’s difficult to do research and write articles while traveling and holidaying (not to mention the challenge of finding a good internet connection). And it is a challenge to write articles while sitting on a bed or at a cafe where kids are trying sell you scarfs, hats and Ts in rapid Spanish where my comprehension is near zero.

This is why no new stories have been posted recently although I am working on several presently. Difficult to predict when they’ll be done since we are moving around quite a bit — tomorrow we move on to the Galapagos Islands. Tough I know but someone’s got to do it.

Adios.

US Social Forum – Atlanta

Stephen Interconnections

For the first time ever in the US a huge range of public interest groups are coming together for a networking conference in Atlanta starting June 27. Similar social forums have been held in various parts of the world for several years. While it may seem a bit vague, the idea is to build linkages and relationships between grassroots organizations. I can’t attend but am sure it would be very interesting and perhaps the start of something special.

Artists Desperately Needed to Inspire Change

Stephen Interconnections

franke-my-suv-sml.jpgKnowledge does not often inspire action. Feelings like compassion and anger do. Good art generates passion.

Here’s a relevant excerpt from an article written by an artist in recent issue of SEED magazine:

The point is that the artists’ view is invaluable precisely because they are not experts and do not have the authority granted by science. They are only as persuasive as their images. As nonexperts—though interested and knowledgeable—they stand in for the view of the everyman. This reflects the nature of urban and natural systems. They transcend boundaries; they transcend borders, disciplines, issues, and expertise. With art, the viewer knows that she has a license to interpret, to critically evaluate the work, that her opinion matters.

copyright franke jamesToronto artist Franke James exemplifies this in a series of beautiful and powerful visual essays on environmental topics on her website. Franke has a very personal and thoughtful take which brings home some of the dry and terrible facts of climate change. Highly recommended.

 

Also be sure to check out Franke’s timely visual essay that has been featured in newspapers and likely to become a classic:

My SUV and Me Say Goodbye

Hurricane Katrina Only Cat 1/2 When It Hit New Orleans – NOAA

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Hurricane, Interconnections

hurricane-rita-noaanasa.pngAfter a recent trip to New Orleans an environmental expert was astonished to learn that Hurricane Katrina was not a powerful hurricane when it struck New Orleans in 2005

While not widely covered by the mainstream media the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its final data analysis in late Dec 2005 that Katrina was only a Cat 1 or 2 on landfall.

In an overview written for IPS on Jan 11/06 I wrote:

Hurricane Katrina was the worst U.S. natural or environmental disaster ever, and a new analysis of the storm by NOAA’s National Hurricane Centre released in late December reveals some chilling, overlooked details. Perhaps most stunning of those is that more than 4,000 people are still missing nearly four months after Katrina’s landfall in late August. The official death toll is 1,336 people.

But the most worrisome is that Katrina was not a particularly powerful storm on landfall. While it was of Category 5 strength briefly while out in the Gulf of Mexico, new data reveals that its winds were in the Category 1 or 2 class when it struck New Orleans. What Katrina did generate was an enormous storm surge topping 27 feet, sweeping inland some six miles in places. Katrina’s “tsunami” is what resulted in the flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans, and massive destruction along the Gulf Coast.
Such storm surges are bound to worsen with rising sea levels.

See More Unnatural Disasters on the Horizon for rest of story.

Steve’s Hurricane Handbook 2008
25-page eBook a collection of the best bits from 4 years of articles on science of hurricanes and global warming. Arranged chronologically, the scientific story about hurricanes and climate change becomes increasingly evident. Colour pix of hurricane devastation.

Get links to my latest articles once a week.

See other hurricane stories:

First Ever: Two Hurricane Landfalls on Same Day – Pix

Hurricane Felix Category Five — Pix

Flying Blind Into a Monster Hurricane Season

New Data Erases Doubt on Storms and Warming