I just read this on the BBC website. I'm not computer savvy enough to be sure I can link you there or that the article will stay up for long so I am including both the link and the text of the article.
It is all becoming clearer, more definite, undeniable. I look forward to learning what we will do, how we will change, what life will look like. I look forward to contributing all the old-time knowledge and skills I have and learning new ones, based in science and innovation.
But it is scary. It is.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7098902.stm
IPCC to warn of 'abrupt' warming
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Valencia
The IPCC says more heatwaves are very likely in the future
Climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts, the UN's climate advisory panel is set to announce.
Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed a summary of its landmark report during negotiations here.
Discussions were said to have been robust, with the US and other delegations keen to moderate language.
The summary will be officially launched by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.
It brings together elements of the three reports that the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC has already released this year, on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for mitigating the problem.
Among its top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.
IPCC PROJECTIONS
Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
Increase in heatwaves very likely
Increase in tropical storm intensity likely
Climate change: The evidence
The synthesis summary being discussed here in Valencia strengthens the language of those earlier reports with a warning that climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts.
Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.
"Climate change is here, it's impacting our lives and our economies, and we need to do something about it," commented Hans Verolme, director of the climate change programme with the environmental group WWF.
"After this report, there are no politicians left who can argue they don't know what climate change is or they don't know what to do about it."
Local witnesses
At a news conference, WWF presented testimonies from "climate change witnesses" in various parts of the world.
Speaking by video link, Australian scientists and fishermen spoke of the changes they were seeing on the Great Barrier Reef. And Olav Mathis Eira, a Sami reindeer herder from Norway, said that his communities are seeing weather patterns unprecedented in their oral history.
"Winter is one and a half months later than it used to be," he said. "We observed birds and insects that do not have a name in Sami."
The 20-page IPCC synthesis summary is due to be accompanied by a longer, more detailed document, following discussions here.
The findings will feed into the next round of negotiations on the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol, which open in Bali on 3 December.
Friday, November 16, 2007
a good story - told late
Sitting with a co-worker today she began to tell me some of her Katrina stories. Those in FEMA who worked on that disaster all have stories, many of which include frustrations and barriers that prevented them from doing what they saw needed to be done. But this woman had two wonderful stories about her time working in San Antonio, Texas where thousands of evacuees were re-located. I want to share these stories because I had never heard them or anything like them. And on this rainy morning they inspired me, so I pass them to you.
When the Mayor of San Antonio was asked what to call the folks who were coming from New Orleans; were they victims, evacuees, refugees? He responded that he liked to call them "future residents of San Antonio." So welcoming to a group of people that many cities reluctantly received. Then the City sent workers over to the old military warehouses where the shelters were going to be set up and installed hundreds of showers, toliets, and baby washing stations. All of this was done over a long weekend to make the best possible short term shelter for the people arriving. San Antonio was one of the few places where the Red Cross didn't have to advertise for volunteers, in fact some days they had to cut off the line responding to the desire to serve this population and ask them to come another day. When the annual holiday party that is thrown by the City for the residents came along, the City extended the invitation to all the folks housed in the multiple shelters. But since these shelters were mainly on the military bases the people had no means to get to the event. So the City sent buses out to the shelters to provide the folks an opportunity to party with everyone else. The response of this City was gracious and generous. Sadly we never heard any of this here in New England and I would guess anywhere else in the country. Good news doesn't travel much at all.
The second story is also from San Antonio. The Mexican government had sent in a unit of the Mexican Army, which is the resource that government uses in time of disaster. They were trained as search and rescue but the US authorities didn't use them. Perhaps it was the bravado of the big rich country not wanted to take assistance from the poorer country. Or perhaps it was just bureaucratic red tape that kept these volunteers from Mexico being used. The Red Cross was leaving the kitchen they had been staffing so the Mexican army unit took the job of cooking for the sheltered people. They cooked all the food for those thousands of people everyday. On Sunday, when perviously it was catch as catch can, the Mexican cooks set up meats to cook on the outside grills. They were joined by some of the men and women from New Orleans who would stir up pots of jambala or dirty rice to go with the roasting meats and other foods that were being cooked. All in all for 6 weeks or so the Mexican Army cooked for and with the displaced people of New Orleans. What a missed photo opportunity!
I sometimes wonder if there is more potential for human kindness than we can ever imagine. I wonder if we are getting ready to learn the capacity each of us has to be generous. I wonder if the answers to many of the hideously huge questions that are hanging over this culture might not be simply answered through innovative, unusual, and unexpected means we have yet to see. It is a cause for hope. And so I hope, I hope that we will each tell the good stories we hear and keep our eyes open for the unexpected gifts life is going to give us as we face global warming, environmental decline, and economic collapse. There are answers and solutions I can't imagine. I hope.
© Angela Magara 2008
When the Mayor of San Antonio was asked what to call the folks who were coming from New Orleans; were they victims, evacuees, refugees? He responded that he liked to call them "future residents of San Antonio." So welcoming to a group of people that many cities reluctantly received. Then the City sent workers over to the old military warehouses where the shelters were going to be set up and installed hundreds of showers, toliets, and baby washing stations. All of this was done over a long weekend to make the best possible short term shelter for the people arriving. San Antonio was one of the few places where the Red Cross didn't have to advertise for volunteers, in fact some days they had to cut off the line responding to the desire to serve this population and ask them to come another day. When the annual holiday party that is thrown by the City for the residents came along, the City extended the invitation to all the folks housed in the multiple shelters. But since these shelters were mainly on the military bases the people had no means to get to the event. So the City sent buses out to the shelters to provide the folks an opportunity to party with everyone else. The response of this City was gracious and generous. Sadly we never heard any of this here in New England and I would guess anywhere else in the country. Good news doesn't travel much at all.
The second story is also from San Antonio. The Mexican government had sent in a unit of the Mexican Army, which is the resource that government uses in time of disaster. They were trained as search and rescue but the US authorities didn't use them. Perhaps it was the bravado of the big rich country not wanted to take assistance from the poorer country. Or perhaps it was just bureaucratic red tape that kept these volunteers from Mexico being used. The Red Cross was leaving the kitchen they had been staffing so the Mexican army unit took the job of cooking for the sheltered people. They cooked all the food for those thousands of people everyday. On Sunday, when perviously it was catch as catch can, the Mexican cooks set up meats to cook on the outside grills. They were joined by some of the men and women from New Orleans who would stir up pots of jambala or dirty rice to go with the roasting meats and other foods that were being cooked. All in all for 6 weeks or so the Mexican Army cooked for and with the displaced people of New Orleans. What a missed photo opportunity!
I sometimes wonder if there is more potential for human kindness than we can ever imagine. I wonder if we are getting ready to learn the capacity each of us has to be generous. I wonder if the answers to many of the hideously huge questions that are hanging over this culture might not be simply answered through innovative, unusual, and unexpected means we have yet to see. It is a cause for hope. And so I hope, I hope that we will each tell the good stories we hear and keep our eyes open for the unexpected gifts life is going to give us as we face global warming, environmental decline, and economic collapse. There are answers and solutions I can't imagine. I hope.
© Angela Magara 2008
Friday, November 2, 2007
The time has come
On Halloween night, Samhain, I called upon the women, dead and many unknown, of my blood and bone. I called these allies because they are the ones who gave me my fierce faith and my relentless will to survive. They are the source of the many abilities and instincts that guide me, protect me, and inform me in ways that only marginally reach my awareness. I need them now. We need them.
Each of us carries within us the genetic material of women and men who have survived massive global climate change, plagues, wars, and assaults on the fabric of life. I carry the accumulation of all that strength, all those immunities, all that wisdom in my bones, in my blood. We all do. Can you feel it? Take a moment and listen, open to the voice in your bones and blood.
With that kind of inheritance how can we fail to find the ways to survive this catastrophe? With access to that crafty and proven ability, each of us can hope to be part of the answer to the over-whelming problems of climate change, rising fascism, corporate domination, and human over-population. We have no idea what solutions we could devise, if we opened to the possibility. If we seized the opportunity.
So as I begin this new year, I am opening to the possibility that there are answers, there are solutions, for all these problems. I invite each of you reading this to open to the wisdom of your cells, to the knowledge within your blood. And beyond opening to it, which I am sure many of us have done. I invite us to believe it is enough. To believe that the simple steps, one upon another, will lead us together out of the darkness of this time.
Our ancestors are ready to assist. They are ready to look at the world through our eyes and give us the benefit of millennia of accumulated wisdom. They are ready to give us their songs to shape reality and change it.
We will change the world this year. I will change it this year. The time has come.
© Angela Magara 2008
Each of us carries within us the genetic material of women and men who have survived massive global climate change, plagues, wars, and assaults on the fabric of life. I carry the accumulation of all that strength, all those immunities, all that wisdom in my bones, in my blood. We all do. Can you feel it? Take a moment and listen, open to the voice in your bones and blood.
With that kind of inheritance how can we fail to find the ways to survive this catastrophe? With access to that crafty and proven ability, each of us can hope to be part of the answer to the over-whelming problems of climate change, rising fascism, corporate domination, and human over-population. We have no idea what solutions we could devise, if we opened to the possibility. If we seized the opportunity.
So as I begin this new year, I am opening to the possibility that there are answers, there are solutions, for all these problems. I invite each of you reading this to open to the wisdom of your cells, to the knowledge within your blood. And beyond opening to it, which I am sure many of us have done. I invite us to believe it is enough. To believe that the simple steps, one upon another, will lead us together out of the darkness of this time.
Our ancestors are ready to assist. They are ready to look at the world through our eyes and give us the benefit of millennia of accumulated wisdom. They are ready to give us their songs to shape reality and change it.
We will change the world this year. I will change it this year. The time has come.
© Angela Magara 2008
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