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Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Where Should I Live? [1]

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Date: 2023-08-17  

It is always comforting to read Bill McKibben because he always holds onto a sense of optimism when writing about global warming. Even now, when monumental floods earlier this summer devastated parts of his home state of Vermont (causing the closure of roads into his county), and despite the depth of his understanding of the climate crisis and the tipping points we have already surpassed, he manages to elicit hope.

Just this week in the column Where Should I Live in his The Crucible substack, McKibben discusses the questions he routinely answers at talks he gives, and notes that after his talks he is privately and invariably asked by someone “Should I have a child?” or “Where should I move?” McKibben doesn’t go into his response to those asking about giving birth, but he does go into great detail about how we can handle adjusting to the smaller “size of the board on which humans can play the game of life.”

McKibben writes:

It’s easier, actually, to figure out where not to live. Phoenix may be the fastest-growing big city in the country, but anyone who moves there after this summer is not paying attention: 31 straight days over 110 Fahrenheit, and emergency rooms filled with people who burned themselves by…falling on the sidewalk. But it’s not just obvious places, like the middle of the desert. Last week, at four thousand feet in the Andes the temperature topped 95 degrees—in winter. (Weather historian Maximiliano Herrera described it as “one of the extreme events the world has ever seen”). Or take Athens is one of those places we like to call a cradle of western civilization, but two years ago the city’s “chief heat officer” was already warning it might be becoming uninhabitable; last month, during the longest heatwave in the city’s history, authorities closed the Acropolis to tourists in the afternoons. (Snip) … a recent study found that every time the temperature rises another tenth of a degree Celsius, another 140 million humans find themselves living outside what scientists call the “human climate niche,” the zone with temperatures where our species flourishes

Discussing how his community worked together during this summer’s floods, he notes: “Neighborliness accompanied by skill in backhoe operation seems like a good combination for our moment in history. We may be “in a mess” but working together offers the best chance we have of coming out the other side of it.

Al Gore: Ted Talk: What the fossil fuel industry doesn’t want you to know 350.org this morning sent out this email with tips on how to talk about climate change From record breaking temperatures in Europe, to wildfires all across the Americas, to alarmingly warm oceans, we are seeing the impact of the climate crisis in every corner of the world. However, the media is still not connecting the devastating climate impact we see with the real reason they’re happening: the greed of the fossil fuel industry. While fossil fuel companies are racking up billions in profit, people around the world are struggling with extreme weather, losing their lives and livelihoods to the rapidly changing climate. Deborah, this is not fair. We need to change the narrative, and call out those responsible. It all starts by talking to our friends and family. To help you start the conversation, we’ve prepared a list of talking points and ways to approach the conversation for you. All you have to do is to sign up.

My inbox these days is inundated with climate listservs whose tone is becoming desperate in the need to force officials to act now to address the climate crisis. Case in point commentary on an August 14 article by James Hansen et al Uh-Oh. Now What? Are We Acquiring the Data to Understand the Situation?

Abstract . Global temperature in June and July (Fig. 1) shot far above the prior records for those months for the 140 years of good instrumental data. Early indications are that warming exceeds expectation based on only the long-term trend due to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) plus the emerging El Nino. Three additional mechanisms will have a near-term effect, with a result that the 12-month mean global temperature likely will pierce the 1.5°C warming level before this time next year. Uncertainties in present analyses draw attention to the inadequacy of and the precarious state of crucial global observations. -snip- [Political leaders at the United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) meetings give the impression that progress is being made and it is still feasible to limit global warming to as little as 1.5°C. That is pure, unadulterated, hogwash, as exposed by minimal understanding of Fig. 6 here and Fig. 27 in reference 6. It is important that the remarkable observations that allowed construction of Fig. 6 are continued and improved – which is a greater challenge than governments may be aware of. Precise observations are needed from space and throughout the global ocean.]

This September, during Climate Week in New York City, which is punctuated by the UN Climate Ambition Summit on the 20th, join the March to end fossil fuels on the 17th. The march begins at 1 pm. Busses and trains will be leaving from various locations across the country.

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