How's everyone enjoying their "Global Warming"?

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How do you like the Global Warming so far?

This sucks like all get out!!!!!!!!!
15
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Mildly annoying
4
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Who cares, it's only weather
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This is kinda okay
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'Querida Amazonia': Commentary on Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation [In-Depth]
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Splendor, drama, mystery: with these three words Pope Francis offers to the people of God and all persons of goodwill his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia (Beloved Amazon), on the special synod for the Amazon, which took place in Rome, October 6-27, 2019.[1]

With this synod, held at the heart of catholicity in Rome, the Church set out in search of prophecy, shifting its center of gravity from the Euro-Atlantic area and looking to a land full of gigantic political, economic and ecological contradictions.

Francis is seeking solutions that consider the rights of the original peoples, and that defend the cultural richness and natural beauty of the earth. And he seeks to support Christian communities with suitable pastoral solutions. In this regard, the engine of the exhortation -- we immediately anticipate -- is in the tenth paragraph of the fourth chapter, entitled "Expanding Horizons Beyond Conflicts." When there are complex issues, the pope asks us to go beyond contradictions. When there are polarities and conflicts, we need to find new solutions, to break the impasse by looking for other better ways, perhaps not imagined before. Transcending dialectic oppositions is one of the fundamental action criteria for the pontiff. It is always good to keep this in mind.

[...]

A text that accompanies the reception of the synod

Let me say straightaway that Querida Amazonia is a unique text. I will try to highlight why.

This is the first time that a document of such magisterial importance explicitly presents itself as a text that "accompanies" another one, namely, the synod's Final Document, The Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology.

The pope immediately wishes to affirm a posture, that of listening and discernment. He writes that he listened to the interventions during the synod and read with interest the reports of the discussion groups. He states: "In this exhortation, I wish to give an echo of what this process of dialogue and discernment has caused within me. I will not go into all of the issues treated at length in the final document. Nor do I claim to replace that text or to duplicate it. I wish merely to propose a brief framework for reflection that can apply concretely to the life of the Amazon region a synthesis of some of the great concerns that I have expressed in earlier documents, and that can help guide us to a harmonious, creative and fruitful reception of the entire synodal process" (No. 2).

The exhortation therefore does not go beyond the Final Document, nor does it simply intend to give it its seal. Francis accepts it entirely and accompanies it, guiding its reception within the synodal journey, which is in progress and certainly cannot be said to be concluded. The pope has written this because he wants to give an impetus to the synodal process. Indeed, Francis decides this time not to quote the document at all because that would give the impression of a selection of contents. Instead, his aim is to invite a complete reading so that it may enrich, challenge and inspire the Church: these are the very three verbs used by the pontiff.

[...]

Contemplation and poetic 'logos' in the pontifical magisterium

Another important note: the exhortation has a specific contemplative slant. This call to contemplation and to have an aesthetic gaze resounds seven times in the document. In one section Francis speaks of the "prophecy of contemplation." He asks, in particular, to learn from the indigenous peoples and to take on this gaze in order to avoid considering the Amazon only a case to be analyzed or a theme to be engaged with.

There is a precise recognition of a "mystery" that translates into a "relation" of respect and love, which is proper to contemplation. The Amazon as a land is a "mother" with whom to enter into communion. Thus "our voices will easily blend with its voice and become a prayer: 'as we rest in the shade of an ancient eucalyptus, our prayer for light joins in the song of the eternal foliage'" (No. 56). The quote is from Sui Yun (Katie Wong Loo), an Amazonian poetess of Chinese origin.

This is how the contemplative gaze is translated: into poetry. This exhortation is intertwined with poetic quotations because poetry preserves meaning and draws it -- especially in this case -- in a peculiar way from experience. The pope considers it indispensable and thus mentions in his exhortation as many as 17 writers and poets, most of them Amazonian and popular: Ana Varela, Jorge Vega Márquez, Alberto Araújo, Ramón Iribertegui, Yana Lucila Lema, Evaristo de Miranda, Juan Carlos Galeano, Javier Yglesias, Ciro Alegría, Mario Vargas Llosa, Euclides de Cunha, Pablo Neruda, Amadeu Thiago de Mello, Vinicius de Moraes, Harald Sioli, Sui Yun, Pedro Casaldaliga.

In this sense, alongside the stories and testimonies, the pope includes the poetic and symbolic logos as an integral part of the magisterial text. Between reality, thought and poetic vision there seems to be no caesuras. In fact, some things -- for example, the notion of "quality of life" -- can only be understood "within the world of symbols and customs proper to each human group" (No. 40), which have the capacity to connect. The Amazon, on the other hand, "has become a source of artistic, literary, musical and cultural inspiration" (No. 35). The various arts, and especially poetry, have been inspired by water, the jungle, life, as well as cultural diversity and ecological and social challenges.[4]

Popular poets, in particular, are the guardians of this wisdom because, the pope writes, they fell in love with the beauty of the earth and water, and tried to express the life it gives them as in a dance.[5] But they "lament the dangers that menace it. Those poets, contemplatives and prophets, help free us from the technocratic and consumerist paradigm that destroys nature and robs us of a truly dignified existence" (No. 46).

The operation carried out by Francis is stronger than it may appear. Giving voice to the poets, he challenges the technocratic, consumerist and "efficiency-ist" approach to the Amazon and its great questions.

Consequently, Francis presents his arguments by articulating them not in four themes or arguments, but in four dreams, which correspond to the five conversions in the Final Document.

A dream combines a warm, affective and inner connotation with issues that are sometimes thorny and complex. He writes: "I dream of an Amazon region that fights for the rights of the poor, the original peoples and the least of our brothers and sisters, where their voices can be heard and their dignity advanced.

"I dream of an Amazon region that can preserve its distinctive cultural riches, where the beauty of our humanity shines forth in so many varied ways.

"I dream of an Amazon region that can jealously preserve its overwhelming natural beauty and the superabundant life teeming in its rivers and forests.

"I dream of Christian communities capable of generous commitment, incarnate in the Amazon region, and giving the Church new faces with Amazonian features" (No. 7).

[...]


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Standing Rock Sioux celebrate 'significant legal win' in DAPL fight
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Several hundred people took part in a prayer walk on Sept. 14, 2016, from the Oceti Sakowin camp near Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to the site up the road where Dakota Access began digging over Labor Day weekend for construction on a nearly 1,200-mile pipeline project. Construction temporarily has been halted. (AP/RNS/Emily McFarlan Miller)


A federal judge has ordered a new environmental review for the Dakota Access Pipeline in what the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is celebrating as a "significant legal win."

In his ruling last week, Judge James E. Boasberg agreed with the Standing Rock Sioux that "too many questions remain unanswered" regarding the impact of the pipeline, which runs from North Dakota to Illinois.

Most notably, it runs beneath Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, where, from 2016 to 2017, thousands of people gathered in prayer camps to stop its construction.

In a written statement released by Earthjustice, which is representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, tribal chairman Mike Faith celebrated the ruling as an inspiration for climate advocacy.

"It's humbling to see how actions we took four years ago to defend our ancestral homeland continue to inspire national conversations about how our choices ultimately affect this planet. Perhaps in the wake of this court ruling the federal government will begin to catch on, too, starting by actually listening to us when we voice our concerns," Faith said.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Native American nations with reservations in the area have not just objected to the pipeline for environmental reasons, but also for religious reasons.

"The Tribes now rely on the waters of Lake Oahe in myriad ways, including for drinking, agriculture, industry, and sacred religious and medicinal practices," according to the ruling.

They have fought its construction not just in court, but also spiritually.

"We're fighting the pipeline with prayer," tribal councilman Dana Yellow Fat told Religion News Service in 2016.

Along the way, they have gotten support from several Protestant Christian denominations, including the United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Oil has been flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline since 2017.

[...]


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Catholic leaders urge governments to protect indigenous during pandemic [In-Depth]
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An indigenous man from the Pataxo ethnic group is seen in Sao Joaquim de Bicas, Brazil, March 25, 2020. (Credit: Washington Alves/Reuters via CNS)


LIMA, Peru -- As the coronavirus spreads through South America, Catholic Church leaders are calling urgently for governments to protect indigenous people.

Many indigenous people, especially in the Amazon basin, live in remote areas far from medical facilities or in precarious housing on the edges of urban areas, often without water and sewer service.

"We are in a situation that reveals the deep inequalities in the country," said Ismael Vega, director of the Amazonian Center for Anthropology and Applied Practice, a nonprofit organization that supports the Catholic Church in the Peruvian Amazon.

Indigenous people are at particular risk because many live in remote communities where travel by river to the nearest hospital could take days, Vega told Catholic News Service. Some villages have small health posts, but they are staffed by nurse technicians who are not prepared for the coronavirus outbreak and often lack basic medicines, he said.

[...]

In Brazil, the Catholic Church's Indigenous Missionary Council, which works with Amazonian peoples, suspended its activities with communities and encouraged indigenous people to stay in their villages and to avoid allowing outsiders to enter, Archbishop Roque Paloschi, council president, told CNS.

"If an indigenous person becomes infected, the virus could spread throughout the entire community because of a lack of health care personnel to control the situation," he said.

[...]

Traditionally, a community struck by disease would have relocated to protect its members. As recently as 30 or 40 years ago, that might have helped community members survive, Vega said, but encroachment by mining, logging and oil operations make it virtually impossible now.

COVID-19 could have an especially devastating impact if it reaches areas inhabited by semi-nomadic indigenous people who shun contact with outsiders. Some are descendants of people who fled disease and abuse by rubber barons, loggers and other outsiders over the years, according to anthropologists.

The largest number of isolated indigenous people in the world lives in small groups in dense, remote forests along the border between Brazil and Peru, but even those scattered groups are at risk, Paloschi said.

Territories inhabited by isolated people are officially off limits to outsiders in Brazil, although invasions by loggers, hunters and gold miners are not uncommon. On March 17, the Brazilian government issued a decree that would allow officials to enter territory inhabited by isolated people during the pandemic if their work is "essential to the survival of the isolated group."

Paloschi fears the decree is another step toward a change in official policy in the government's indigenous affairs agency, where a former evangelical minister now heads the office responsible for protecting isolated people and those in recent contact.

[...]


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Isnt the above in the wrong thread?
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SoulBiter wrote:Isnt the above in the wrong thread?
It was a coin-flip.


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For the single post, I am not going to bother moving it--the indigenous tribes have a lot of overlap between "climate change" and other issues because of their general locale.

Many researchers note that periodic/seasonal flu strains are less active or virulent during warmer weather, so it is actually in our best interest for the planet to warm up some.
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The fierce urgency of Earth Day [In-Depth, Opinion]
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If the coronavirus teaches us anything, it is not only that we live in a wholly interdependent cosmos, but that this historic moment offers an opportunity to question and, more importantly, change the rules of the game -- the modern/colonial world-system that devours all of life. We cannot and ought not return to "normal" as former Vice President Joe Biden and his advisers recommend.

Living the (im)possible possibility of the Gospel, I believe, means questioning, disobeying and changing the rules of modernity/coloniality -- the entire colonial matrix of domination that ravages lives, communities and indeed, the fragile interdependent web of life that is this planet. We need the Spirit to enkindle in all of us the fierce urgency of now so we may discern new ways of living that renew the face of God's creation this coming Earth Day.

I wholly agree with Franciscan Fr. Daniel Horan that we need a shift from a myopic pro-life stance focused on only one issue to "embracing the seamless garment," that "requires that our concern for and protection of life be shaped by an integral ecology, which recognizes that 'everything is connected' and nothing is meant to be treated in isolation."

There is a deeper problem, however, to the myopic pro-life stance of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference: the neoliberal economy and market democracy by which we live is killing all of us and the planet. The entire system under which we struggle to live is constituted by what St. John Paul II termed a "culture of death" in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

Yet the U.S. Catholic Church and society proceeds as if the current system by which we live supports the conditions of the possibility for all human and non-human kin to thrive.

If we are going to engage a way of life that hears and responds both to the cries of people and of the earth, as Pope Francis exhorts in Querida Amazonia, we North Americans need to begin with (un)learning how coloniality lives inside of us.

[...]


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(Unsplash/Louis Reed)


[...]

Indeed, the coronavirus stimulus package reveals that the incessant gravitational pull of our political system is oriented toward saving "the business of business" rather than a "people's bailout" to direct transformational change that cares for the most vulnerable of our human and non-human kin.

The coronavirus exposes the weaknesses, vulnerabilities and inequities of a health care system oriented to profit over people. On many metrics, the U.S. health care system is the worst among so-called developed countries. A large portion of our population lacks health insurance. Too many suffer medical debt. More Americans die from preventable causes and a preventable gun epidemic.

The sickening reality is that 70% of low-wage workers must work through an illness with no paid sick leave. The death-dealing reality is that, to quote Vox, "the United States rations care in a simple, cruel way: If you can't afford it, you can't get it."

While restaurant workers lose their main source of income or hours are cut, for nearly 5 million home health care workers the coronavirus is a war on multiple fronts that includes surviving at minimum wage if they can maintain full-time hours and not get sick.

[...]

Exposing the lie of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's mission that "life is our life's work," as Nicholas Rose argues in The Politics of Life Itself, we have been reduced to biological citizens who must "undergo perpetual assessment, continual incitement to buy, constantly to improve oneself, to monitor our health, to manage our risk." No form of life escapes commodification.

It is time to notice, as the U.N.'s environment chief Inger Anderson cautions, that nature is sending us a clear message that humanity is putting too many pressures on the natural world.


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(Unsplash/Nikola Jovanovic)


Reflecting on 60 years working for global conservation, Jane Goodall recently told NPR's Science Friday that she suddenly realized, nearly 50 years ago, that the habitats of the equatorial forests across Africa and the Amazon were "being destroyed as human populations grew, as the Western world got more greedy and wanted more and more stuff, as the economy" creates "goods that are going to be self-destructive in so many years, where people go on buying and buying, wasting and wasting. It's a vicious cycle."

Unless we break that vicious cycle, Goodall warned that "it's absurd to think that you can have unlimited economic development in a planet with finite natural resources."

[...]


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Blah blah blah... socialism good. Capitalism bad. :roll:
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'Apocalyptical hope' is essential for living in the heart of a pandemic [In-Depth, Opinion]
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Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis prays in front of the Blessed Sacrament at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul March 27. Earlier he blessed the city off in the background. (CNS/The Catholic Spirit/Dave Hrbacek)


Martin Buber, an existential philosopher, asks us a question that seems inescapable in these times of pandemic:
We ask ourselves about hope for this moment. With this, those of us who question ourselves perceive it not only as extremely distressing, but also as a moment where no different perspectives appear, where the future is not presented to us as a time of clarity and elevation. And yet, precisely because we seek a better perspective, we speak of hope.
With his first letter, Peter reminded the early Christians in Asia Minor to "always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope" (3:15). So in the face of this current coronavirus outbreak, what reason for hope do we give as believers in Jesus?

[...]

The perspective of hope must be the essential element of any look at our situation of living in the heart of this pandemic. That doesn't mean naivety or an idealized view of a non-existent reality. Instead, it's hope in the certainty of knowing we're called to be participants in providing a firm and consistent response toward conversion, and according to times, places and persons -- each key to discernment in the tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola. We are called to make ourselves aware that our actions will be part of the journey to overcome this crisis in a communitarian way, and with an unavoidable option for the most vulnerable and excluded of our societies in the time of this pandemic and beyond it.

We must associate our hope with the discontent and denouncing of situations of structural sin that become more visible in this growing crisis: in the midst of obscene planetary inequality, and in the poverty and opportunism of many supposed civil servants at so many levels and in so many spaces. Hope for these times must be strengthened by the ability to overcome the predominant throwaway culture, which is sustained by an individualistic vision for one's own benefit and well-being. If we are to get out of this situation, and we have no doubt that we will, it will be together and by opening new unseen pathways.

Above all, our hope cannot be naive, sustained by a childish faith that puts everything in the hands of a quasi-magical God, or a God who acts as a cruel judge who's alien to our passage through the valley of death, saving some while discarding others.

Rather, our hope must be rooted on the certainty of the mystery of a God who is acting and present in our reality, despite our inability to understand or perceive it. A God whose presence comes to life in the smallest and most unexpected gestures of solidarity and encounter. A God whose presence makes the difference between life and death every day: in the daily honest expressions of love that emerge in spite of uncertainty, in the decisions that make a difference for those who most need a presence or a comforting word, in the ability to recognize the need to stay at home so as not to be the cause of further spread of the virus, and from there to the most transcendental structural actions for the care of life of all, and especially the most vulnerable.

At the end of this journey, each of us must ask ourselves how this experience has transformed us from within, and in the depths of our being, to be new women and men in so many explicit and credible ways. With that, we must also assume the task of reconfiguring our lives and societies in coherence with this call to profound conversion, so that how we live has a meaning beyond simply surviving. A way of living that is more than predominance of the strongest or remaining in the sensation of failure due to so many irrecoverable and irremediable losses that result from injustice, inequality, violence and a lack of fraternity so often naturalized in us.

God's promise assures that evil and unjustified death will never have the last word, no matter how much it seems to have reached the top. God's promise in the apocalypse is the culmination of the Gospel in which the commitment of an all-loving Father assures us that he is with us until the end of time, and that we will encounter light and hope, so by no means can this be an end.

The coronavirus pandemic is an invitation to believe irremediably in this creator God, and in his promise to accompany us as we assume our own role as co-creators until we come out of this situation through and with hope.

[...]


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Advocates call attention to pandemic's wrath on 'essential' farmworkers [In-Depth]
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Migrant workers clean fields near Salinas, California, March 30. (CNS/Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)


Washington -- As those working from home escalated their complaints or jokes on Twitter about Zoom meetings, the United Farm Workers of America offered a reality check March 20 in the form of tweet: "You can't pick strawberries remotely."

"The people who put food on our table do not get to telecommute," the labor organization said in a mid-March statement calling attention to the plight of the country's more than 2 million farmworkers.

There may be toilet paper shortages in U.S. supermarkets, but the country's supply of fruit and vegetables and other staples such as meats and dairy produced by the labor of farmworkers -- many of them migrants -- remains steady thanks to those essential workers. Yet many of them toil without basic protections, their supporters say.

Even while facing lack of access to adequate health care or wages and immigration woes stemming from the H-2A visa program that allows some of them to work legally in the U.S., the largely unseen workers have kept, until now, the country's food supply moving.

"The irony is that (now) they're saying they are essential. They've always been essential," said Carlos Marentes, founder and director of the Border Agricultural Workers Center in El Paso, Texas, in an April 14 interview with Catholic News Service.

They're considered so essential that on April 15, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a temporary easing of immigration regulations to allow businesses to employ them faster and for longer periods of time than before -- an unusual move for an administration that has sought to curtail immigration.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the temporary changes would help U.S. farmers who employ foreign farmworkers "avoid disruptions" in employment and "protect the nation's food supply chain."

No matter how important they are to the nation, however, there's always been a "historical abandonment" of farmworkers, Marentes said, and this is a time to go beyond "sentimental blackmail" -- offering praise for what farmworkers do, without also calling for protection for their rights.

Even though they're considered essential workers, a looming threat some farmworkers are facing are efforts to lower their salaries at this critical time. Last year, the Trump administration proposed changes in how wages are calculated for those who use the H-2A visa program, essentially lowering their pay.

The H-2A program is a guest worker program, which allows agricultural employers to bring workers from other countries -- primarily Mexico -- to the U.S. to work on their farms, said Ashley Feasley, director of policy for Migration and Refugee Services at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"The workers who produce our food are essential workers (roughly 2.5 million agricultural laborers total), and they have been declared so. Yet there are announcements from the White House about reducing the wages of guest workers," she said in an April 14 email to CNS. "This is unjust to further exploit a population that is working to put food on people's tables at this time."

[...]


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Agricultural workers labor in a Marina, California, field March 30. (CNS/Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)


[...]


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Melting Glacier reveals lost mountain pass.
But years of warm weather have now melted much of that snow and ice, revealing a mountain pass that mere mortals traversed for more than 1,000 years and then abandoned about 500 years ago.
Global cooling screwed them out of their mountain pass!!! Finally its uncovered after some Global warming. In the scheme of things, this wasn't that long ago.
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+JMJ+
SoulBiter wrote:Melting Glacier reveals lost mountain pass.
But years of warm weather have now melted much of that snow and ice, revealing a mountain pass that mere mortals traversed for more than 1,000 years and then abandoned about 500 years ago.
Global cooling screwed them out of their mountain pass!!! Finally its uncovered after some Global warming. In the scheme of things, this wasn't that long ago.
Prescinding from the surety of your apparent conclusions, a pretty cool story nonetheless. 👍

============================================================================================================================================================================================================================

Creation is sacred gift deserving respect, care, pope says on Earth Day [In-Depth]
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Pope Francis holds his weekly general audience April 22, 2020, in the papal library in the Apostolic Palace. Marking the celebration of Earth Day, the pope dedicated his audience talk to urging people to protect the earth and its inhabitants. (CNS/Vatican Media)


Vatican City -- Humanity has failed to take care of the earth and its inhabitants, sinning against God and his gift of creation, Pope Francis said.

Celebrating Earth Day, which fell during the "Easter season of renewal, let us pledge to love and esteem the beautiful gift of the earth, our common home, and to care for all members of our human family," he said during his livestreamed weekly general audience from the Vatican.

The pope dedicated his catechesis April 22 to a reflection on the human and Christian responsibility to care for the earth, humanity's common home. The day marked the 50th Earth Day, which was established in 1970 to raise public awareness and concern for the environment and its impact on people's health and all life. This year also marks the fifth anniversary of the pope's encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home."

In his catechesis, the pope said Earth Day was "an occasion for renewing our commitment to love and care for our common home and for the weaker members of our human family."

"As the tragic coronavirus pandemic has taught us, we can overcome global challenges only by showing solidarity with one another and embracing the most vulnerable in our midst," he said.

[...]

"We have failed to care for the earth, our garden-home; we have failed to care for our brothers and sisters. We have sinned against the earth, against our neighbors and ultimately against the Creator, the benevolent father who provides for everyone and desires us to live in communion and flourish together," he said.

It is imperative that people restore "a harmonious relationship" with the earth and with the rest of humanity, he said.

It requires a new way of looking at the earth, not as a "storehouse of resources for us to exploit," but as a sacred gift for sustaining all of humanity.

The pope said so many natural tragedies "are the earth's response to our mistreatment."

"If I ask the Lord now what he thinks, I don't think he will tell me something very good. We are the ones who have ruined the work of the Lord!" the pope said.

"In today's celebration of Earth Day, we are called to renew our sense of sacred respect for the earth, for it is not just our home but also God's home. This should make us all the more aware that we stand on holy ground!" Francis said.

An "ecological conversion," which stems from a loving and respectful contemplation of the earth's beauty and leads to concrete action is needed, he said.

Because the world and all its people are interdependent, the pope said, the whole international community must cooperate in the protection "of our common home."

For this reason, the pope urged leaders to "guide the preparations for two important international conferences" -- the COP15 on biological diversity to be held in Kunming, China, and the COP26 on climate change in Glasgow, Scotland, both of which have been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The pope said he supported the many forms of cooperative action on national and local levels.

"It will help if people at all levels of society come together to create a popular movement" from the grassroots, much the same way Earth Day was founded, he said.

[...]


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Wosbald wrote:+JMJ+
SoulBiter wrote:Melting Glacier reveals lost mountain pass.
But years of warm weather have now melted much of that snow and ice, revealing a mountain pass that mere mortals traversed for more than 1,000 years and then abandoned about 500 years ago.
Global cooling screwed them out of their mountain pass!!! Finally its uncovered after some Global warming. In the scheme of things, this wasn't that long ago.


Prescinding from the surety of your apparent conclusions, a pretty cool story nonetheless. 👍
Yep. Just showing that contrary to naysayers, climate is in a constant state of change. As little as 500 years ago, this pass was traversed by humankind. Then it was covered in snow and ice for a few centuries and now it is passable again. It is very possible that if we do NOTHING, in a hundred years we will think the earth is cooling again. But I still like the idea of cleaner air and water. So lets keep finding ways to get affordable clean energy out there. But lets do it in a smart way. Not the AOC way.
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Post by Hashi Lebwohl »

SoulBiter wrote:Yep. Just showing that contrary to naysayers, climate is in a constant state of change. As little as 500 years ago, this pass was traversed by humankind. Then it was covered in snow and ice for a few centuries and now it is passable again. It is very possible that if we do NOTHING, in a hundred years we will think the earth is cooling again. But I still like the idea of cleaner air and water. So lets keep finding ways to get affordable clean energy out there. But lets do it in a smart way. Not the AOC way.
As I have said before, the climate is supposed to change so what is everyone worrying about? I would be more concerned if it did not change.

WTIC closed in negative territory last week because the Russia/Saudi spat and the dramatic reduction in driving/flying right now. Texas could be leading the nation--almost the world--in wind and solar production if the energy companies would just do it. Do you know how much available land there is in West Texas?
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SoulBiter wrote:But I still like the idea of cleaner air and water. So lets keep finding ways to get affordable clean energy out there...in a smart way.
Can't argue with that.

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If you look at things from the perspective of geological time (never easy), we're currently in an unusual temperate lull between extended ice ages.
Bill Bryson in A Short History Of Nearly Everything wrote:Even less well understood are the cycles of comparative balminess within ice ages, known as interglacials. It is mildly disconcerting to reflect that the whole of meaningful human history - the development of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of mathematics and science and all the rest - has taken place within an atypical patch of fair weather. Previous intergalcials have lasted as little as eight thousand years. Our own has already passed its ten thousandth anniversary.

The fact is, we are still very much in an ice age; it's just a somewhat shrunken one - though less shrunken than many people realize.

...

The current ice age - ice epoch, really - started about forty million years ago, and has ranged from murderously bad to not bad at all. We live in one of the few spells of the latter. Ice ages tend to wipe out evidence of earlier ice ages, so the further back you go, the more sketchy the picture grows, but it appears that we have had at least seventeen severe glacial episodes in the last 2.5 million years or so - the period that coincides with the rise of Homo erectus in Africa, followed by modern humans.

...

At all events, with the oceans and continents arranged as they are now, it appears that ice will be a long-term part of our future. According to John McPhee, about fifty more glacial episodes can be expected, each lasting 100,000 years or so, before we can hope for a really long thaw.

...

For a long time it was thought that we moved into and out of ice ages gradually, over hundreds or thousands of years, but we now know that this has not been the case. Thanks to ice cores from Greenland we have a detailed record of climate for something over a hundred thousand years, and what is found there is not comforting. It shows that for most of its recent history the Earth has been nothing like the stable and tranquil place that civilization has known, but rather has lurched violently between periods of warmth and brutal chill.

Toward the end of the last big glaciation, some twelve thousand years ago, Earth began to warm, and quite rapidly, but then abruptly plunged back into bitter cold for a thousand years or so in an event known to science as the Younger Dryas ... At the end of this thousand year onslaught, average temperatures leapt again, by as much as 4 degrees Celsius in twenty years, which doesn't sound terribly dramatic but is equivalent to exchanging the climate of Scandinavia for that of the Mediterranean in just two decades.

Locally, changes have been even more dramatic. Greenland ice cores show the temperatures there changing by as much as 8 degrees Celsius in just ten years, drastically altering rainfall patterns and growing conditions.
Bear in mind that the sudden, rapid and drastic climate changes described above - and all scientifically evidenced - have happened anyway, without the slightest input or effect from any of humanity's actions.

As Hashi quite rightly says, over much longer timescales than we can get our heads easily around, the Earth's temperature shifts - and often quite violently. It may well be another demonstration of the height of human arrogance to suspect that we currently have - or even could possibly have - much of a hand in these cycles and shifts at all.

Completely separately, can I heartily commend Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything to pretty much everyone here. It's a simply brilliant book.
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I don't think there is any doubt that we are contributing to the rate at which these changes happen.

They happen due to environmental (and largely atmospheric) conditions, and we have merrily spent the last 100+ years affecting those thanks to our emissions.

Would it happen anyway? Also without doubt, because that's the result of changing conditions.

Every previous great extinction has resulted in the death of 99% of all life then extant.

The surviving 1% subsequently became the progenitors of all species that were extant at the next extinction, etc.

99% of all life that has ever existed on earth is currently extinct. :D

Of course it is the height of arrogance to think that the world orders itself for our benefit. The fact that we happen to have evolved in a temperate period (in fact, that may be one of the reasons we evolved in the first place) makes us think that this is normal and as it should always be.

In the geological reality, we are inhabiting a tiny slice of the lifespan of the planet, which cares nothing for you or I or the falling sparrow.

Like with giant meteorites, climate change is a question of "when" not "if."

What we should really be doing is throwing everything into being able to colonise other worlds, because that's the only guarantor of survival for the human race. :D

--A
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+JMJ+

Climate crisis will deepen the pandemic; A green stimulus plan can tackle both [In-Depth, Opinion]
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Solar panels on the roof of SunPower Corporation in Richmond, California, seen March 18, 2010 (Reuters/Kim White)


[This story, originally published by The Guardian, is a part of Covering Climate Now's week of coverage focused on climate solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.]

==============================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

[...]

Climate change is about to supercharge the coronavirus emergency. In April, California's wildfire season will start. Restrictions on work caused by the pandemic will make it harder for firefighters to conduct controlled burns that steer fires -- and smoke -- from homes. Californians' lungs could face COVID-19 and unusually intense smoke at the same time. A third of the country also faces serious flood risk through the spring. And in summer and fall, forecasters predict "above average probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States". We're already seeing this catastrophic convergence elsewhere: In Ecuador, a muted government response to flooding in indigenous communities, for fear of spreading the virus; in Fiji, devastated by Cyclone Harold this week, 19 confirmed coronavirus cases are casting doubt on how to rebuild.

Here too, we will need to find ways to do the needed relief work without deepening the pandemic. Amid all this suffering, the case for bold moves to tackle the miseries of inequality, COVID-19, and climate at once will get clearer.

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Moreover, green stimulus is the only option for a smooth transition to the 21st century green economy. The era of dirty energy is ending. Even the conservative CBNC analyst Jim Cramer has warned investors that oil stocks are no longer safe investments, as society is increasingly repudiating fossil fuels. Giant investors like Blackrock are gradually winding down their investments in carbon. And at the European level, and in countries like Germany and South Korea, a green stimulus-based recovery is becoming the consensus choice, with investments in efficiency and clean energy seen as obvious drivers of economic reconstruction.

Here in the US, green stimulus is easily the best way to create good jobs through public investment. According to a 2011 World Bank study, $1 million invested in the oil and gas in the United States creates just five jobs, compared to 17 jobs per million dollars invested in energy-saving building retrofits, 22 jobs for mass transit, 13 for wind, and 14 for solar. Kammen's research and that of other institutes all concur that investment in a modern green economy is a more efficient job creator than the fossil sector.

The longer-term vision of the green stimulus is a more rewarding, lifelong career of dignified green work. We should also invest in STEM education for all children and create apprenticeship programs in vulnerable communities, matched with new careers for workers to enter. And by directly investing in frontline communities, following best practices in California, we can bring technologies like solar and battery storage to neighborhoods that have been scandalously left out of the clean energy boom so far. Plus, these same nimble, local solutions make neighborhoods more resilient to extreme weather. Local storage and nested microgrids make the power system, including healthcare facilities, more reliable during disasters. We'd be making environmental, economic, and social improvements in the same places, at the same time.

[...]

It seems counterintuitive, but the timing for such a Green Stimulus is perfect. Bridge-loans and advance payments on public green purchases of goods like solar panels and electric vehicles for public use would stabilize firms' and workers' finances. Announcing initiatives like a Climate Conservation Corps would give young people eager to work jobs to apply for, and plan to start. And desk workers across the economy could get on Zoom and do paperwork to make green projects shovel-ready the minute it's safe to break ground. (Indeed, a major reason the 2009 Obama stimulus faltered was months wasted on paperwork.)

Each of us has lived through climate-fueled disasters -- in Cohen's case, Hurricane Sandy, and in Kammen's, last year's devastating wildfires. We agree with the environmental justice advocates who argued then that disaster recovery shouldn't be about trying to bounce back to how things were before the disaster. We don't want to bounce back to a January 2020 economy when half the country lived paycheck to paycheck; unchecked carbon pollution endangered our future; and racial inequalities made people of color so vulnerable to disease. Rather, by deploying a Green Stimulus that centers workers and communities, we can bounce forward together.


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Post by Hashi Lebwohl »

No, it won't.

Next topic.
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Laudato Si' at five: Dioceses embrace pope's call for care of the earth [In-Depth]
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A cormorant is seen on the Anacostia River April 26, 2020, near Bladensburg, MD. Dioceses and other organizations around the world are planning to mark the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis's encyclical on care for creation with online events and prayers during Laudato Si' Week May 16-24, 2020. (Credit: Chaz Muth/CNS.)


CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis is "greening."

So are the dioceses of Stockton, California; Joliet, Illinois; and others across the United States.

Participants in diocesan environmental ministries credit Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," for raising awareness and motivating Catholics and others to act in countless ways to protect creation.

"The pope's encyclical lays out the scene very well and is something we can have an impact with," said John Mundell, an environmental consultant and a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis, who is a leader in the archdiocese's creation care ministry.

"Besides the environment being part of our faith, there's a resurrection (in the encyclical) of some of the core values we should have. It is living the Gospel, living simply, loving your neighbor. It's all part of Catholic social teaching. That's the core," he told Catholic News Service as the encyclical's fifth anniversary neared.

A weeklong church-wide observance is planned to mark Pope Francis' signing of the encyclical May 24, 2015. Laudato Si' Week, set for May 16-24, will include a number of online workshops. The week, sponsored by the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development, ends with a day of prayer May 24, a Sunday, at noon local time.

"It's a time for Catholics around the world to pray, reflect and prepare to build a better world together," said Anna Wagner, director of network engagement for the Global Catholic Climate Movement, which is working with RENOVA+, an Argentine Catholic organization promoting the encyclical, to facilitate the week with the dicastery.

A website -- laudatosiweek.org/ -- includes a video message from the pope and other resources for observing the week.

[...]

Despite the stay-at-home orders and social-distancing guidelines around the world, the pandemic has not halted plans to celebrate the encyclical's anniversary.

Laudato Si' Week is perhaps the highest-profile church-sponsored event. The week "launches a yearlong journey of transformation, as we grow through the crisis of the current moment by praying, reflecting and preparing together for a better world to come tomorrow," the dicastery said.

The May 24 day of prayer will allow Catholics around the globe to be united in spirit, said Wagner of the Global Catholic Climate Movement. "That's a really special opportunity to pray together for a more just future, to pray for our shared home and be united in a wave of prayer," she said.

The daily online workshops will discuss ecological spirituality, sustainability and social justice advocacy, Wagner added.

"We hope this moment can be a time for reflection and remembering what's important, which is our humanity and our common home, and that we can be a part of creating a more just future and creating more care for our common home coming out of Laudato Si' Week."

Joining the effort is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Climate Covenant.

[...]


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