CLIMATE CHANGE = EXTREME WEATHER DISRUPTION

Extreme weather from the great climate disruption will rule our lives. I cover current heat waves in Australia, California, Brazil/Argentina, Alaska and Siberia, plus the UK floods.

Then author/activist Deborah Frieze on book & movement to "Walk Out, Walk On", and Dr. Jochen Hinkel on the huge cost of rising seas.

Normally on Radio Ecoshock, my expert guests do the talking, while I listen and learn along with you. But this week there are major developments here on Earth that are not coming through to you clearly, or not reported at all.

See the detailed note below, and by all means, listen to this program, to get the big picture.

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

WALK OUT WALK ON - AUTHOR DEBORAH FRIEZE

Maybe you see our way of living is in big trouble, starting to self destruct it's economy, and even the whole world ecosystem. You don't want to be part of that, but what can you do?

Maybe you should Walk Out and Walk On. That's the title of a book, and a movement, co-authored by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze. The web site linked above is more than a book promo. It's also central to a world-wide movement, with lots of inspiring examples and resources.

Part of the reason I called Deborah is the future of climate change and extreme weather events. It looks like millions, maybe billions of people will find themselves in an environment that is no longer liveable. Climate refugees may be in coastal cities that flood over, in valleys where hill-sides collapse or burn.. Others will be hit by persistent long-term drought that kills off agriculture. Many of us will have to judge when it is time to just walk out.

In the meantime, Deborah's book is really helpful at the personal level. It offers guidance and examples of people who have left the untenable to find lives that really matter. That works for those of us in the developed world who have choices. But the idea actually came from India, where the example of high school dropouts was found to be people who went on to form whole new lives.

I ask Deborah how this movement differs from the counter-culture of the late 1960's, when Timothy Leary advised us to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out"? She says the days of protest are not what she's talking about. Almost like David Holmgren on Radio Ecoshock a couple of weeks ago, our guest suggest withdrawal from a deadly system, to create a living and sustainable one instead. Perhaps "play" is a better answer than protest, she suggests. I'm not so sure.

Deb herself dropped out of the high tech industry in 2001, to become an alternative lifestyle teacher, then head of the Berkana Institute for some years. Now living in Boston, Deborah is deeply involved in forming local community there, and supporting other resilient community efforts around the world. Find her web site here.

Walk Out Walk On was written with Margaret (Meg) Wheatley. I wrote to Meg, but found she is on a two month retreat of silence, completely withdrawn from the world.

Listen to/download this interview with Deborah Frieze (25 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

And please pass those links on to anyone you think would be interested. All links posted in this blog are permanent. People download these interviews for years.

THE COMING SUPER COST OF RISING SEAS - DR. JOCHEN HINKEL

As great storms pound the British coast, after other massive storms washed over the Philippines and New York City, we can only wonder what the costs and damage from sea-born flooding will be, as this century goes on. A new paper published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal tries to calculate just that.

The paper is titled "Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise". This global projection was created by a team of scientists from Germany, several from British Universities and the Tyndall Center, with more from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria.

The Press Release for this report is here in English

and here in German

From the Berlin offices of the Global Climate Forum, I'm pleased to welcome the lead author of that paper, Dr. Jochen Hinkel.

We discuss the critical problem of estimating sea level rise. The paper suggests a big range of possibilities by the year 2100, from 23 centimeters, say 10 inches, all the way to 123 cm, or four feet. Why such a big difference in projections? Mainly because no one is certain how fast the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets will melt.

We also know the sea is not level. For various reasons, water tends to pile up in some regions, and not others. Dr. Hinkel agrees.

The problem of rising seas has two major dimensions: 1. the seas will rise due to climate change and 2. hundreds of millions more humans are moving toward the sea coast (and so becoming more exposed to things like high storm surges as sea levels go up).

We may think that European or American countries, or at least major cities, will defend themselves from sea flooding for several decades. But if Asian cities, that have become the factories of the world, don't make it, we still all suffer the economic consequences. Does this global problem of sea flooding force us to into some sort of global response?

The paper estimates sea level rise will cause 100 trillion dollars damage EVERY YEAR by the end of this century. Rising seas, the authors find, could be the most costly aspect of climate change.

Hinkel warns: "if we do not reduce greenhouse gases swiftly and substantially, some regions will have to seriously consider relocating significant numbers of people in the longer run."

That can be reduced if countries take some action now to build things like big protective dikes, and tide gates for major cities. Dr. Hinkel and the Global Climate Forum are pushing governments to take such adaptive actions.

Is there a point where the costs of defense, like tide gates or maintaining sea dikes - coupled with the impacts of some storm damage - will be too great to maintain major cities near the sea? Can we try to project such a tipping point?

All this makes me wonder, could a major and long-lasting economic depression come out of this problem alone? We don't get that deep, but you can find out more from this new scientific paper.

Web link for this paper on rising seas.

The full text of this PNAS article is here.

Listen to/download this 15 minute interview with Dr. Jochen Hinkel in CD Quality (only)

ALEX - THE MEANING OF GLOBAL EXTREME WEATHER

We humans were not made to comprehend the whole globe. Our DNA interprets the forest or plains around us. Lately, the Brits must think we are drowning, the Aussies are burning with heat, and Americans feel like the Ice Age has returned.

Buried in all that, and in the places major media ignores, is a very serious development. It's simply this: climate disruption has arrived much sooner than anyone, including the gloomiest scientists, and the doomiest doomers thought possible. The beast is here, now.

We must expect a bumpy ride. So called normal years may return to some places for a year or three, but we are entering a period of severe climate disruption that may extend for the rest of your life, and that of your children.

The ultimate destination may be a much hotter world, where the Arctic sea is tropical, and the skies placid, but we have a long road before that comes. It is the great disruption.

Before we consider what that means, I'd like to tie up some reporting from parts of the world that big television networks and newspapers ignore, or bury in the back pages.

To start with, if anyone tries to sell you on the myth of global cooling, just because of snow-storms on the East Coast, or relentless cold in Wisconsin or Winnipeg, the planet is much too hot in other places. I'm not going to cover the big storms hitting the North east. Major American media have flooded the world with that stuff, or you lived it personally, so you know. I do cover a bit about the amazing heat wave in California this winter.

DEATHS IN AUSTRALIAN HEAT WAVE

In past weeks, I've told you about Australia. Day after day over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 38 degrees Celsius. Nights that don't get much cooler. The resulting bushfires spread became so big they created their own weather systems complete with dry lightening storms, causing more fires - a positive feedback effect of the worst kind.

Newspapers admit at least 400 people have died from this recent heat wave, with more to come. Heat is now a leading cause of death in Australia. That this could happen in a developed country should be no surprise. Estimates for the number of people killed in the European heat wave of 2003 range from 40,000 to 60,000 dead.

There are two lessons there.

1. Climate change will kill a lot of us directly.

2. Yes those most vulnerable, kids, the elderly, and people with existing medical conditions die first. But before that comforts you remember that sooner or later that will include you.

Before we leave Australia, there's one bit of good news. Despite that country digging in to flood the world with coal, solar power is really picking up in Australia's sunny south. A new report by the Australian Energy Market Operator says the power from roof-top mounted solar panels saved residents from the blackouts that usually accompany a gush of air-conditioner use. In 2009, Australia had those blackouts. But just four years later, there was enough solar power to shift the peak demand, and save the system.

It just makes common sense to install solar in a hot, sunny country. Why isn't Arizona listening?

RECORD HEAT IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL

But let's move on to a heat wave that is hardly reported. I'm talking about the monster heat striking southern Brazil and Argentina during December 2013 and January 2014.

It's a pathetic commentary on the news machine that when I searched Google news for reports on the South American heat wave, most of the reporting was about how it would affect the price of your coffee. It's all about markets for us, isn't it?

You have reason to be jittery about the cost of coffee I suppose. The drought in Brazil has already raised wholesale prices. The other major supplier, Indonesia, has the opposite problem. They are drowning in near record rain.

Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo experienced its warmest January on record with a daily average maximum of 31.9 °C (or 89.4 °F) . Normal is about 28 degrees C for that time of year. Then it got hotter in Feburary, around 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35 degrees C every single day for the first week. That's before you figure in the high humidity which made it all unbearable.

In Buenos Aires, it was above 30 degrees C, at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit, every day of December, and most days of January. With the humidity, it felt like the mid-40's, or 113. In late January the temperature adjusted for the humidex reading was 47 degrees, or 116.

Only Al Jazeera TV got right down into Buenos Aires Argentina to document what it's been like for people there.

Al Jazeera clip

Here is a short video on this heat wave from BBC.

It isn't pretty. Listen to grandmothers liking on the 15th floor, after the electricity went out for a couple of weeks during big spikes of demand for air-conditioning. Her elevator isn't working, so climb all the way with groceries and water.

For me, that's an important lesson for the future. How will you cope with heat when the power goes out? Just a few solar panels could at least keep the fans running that could save your life.

Of course whether you are in a hot zone, or prone to ice storms, don't live higher than you can climb with groceries and supplies. James Howard Kunstler figures that is the seventh floor for most people, lower for seniors. If you live higher than that now, you may want to consider moving, preparing for the coming disruptions to our energy grid.

And finally from South America, the well known fact that over-heated humans get grumpy and socially unstable. Just look at the violent riots in Rio de Janairo over a hike in transit fares. Sure South America has a reputation for some riots. But I think we can presume the heat stokes emotions and discontent even higher.

If we experience a relatively sudden jolt in temperatures, and in a few minutes I'll explain how that could happen, you should expect social unrest as a consequence.

SIBERIA, THE ARCTIC AND ALASKA

Now we'll travel to the least expected, least reported places experiencing record high heat. If the temperature is below zero, can we call it a heat wave? We can if we are talking about the Arctic circle in winter.

You probably heard it was warmer in Homer Alaska one day in January than it was almost anywhere in the lower 48 states. The same Polar Vortex that brought snow storm after storm to the central and eastern part of North America - kept a big sweep of Hawaiian air running over Alaska.

World-known dog sled races were cancelled or shoved somewhere else. Forget about snow-mobiling in Alaska. A series of avalanches - that's melting unstable snow in January - closed down major highways. Places like Nome, Seward, and Homer hit all-time record highs. Kids all over Alaska were out in shorts. Backyard barbecue parties returned. That's nutty stuff that could only happen during climate change.

That was all part of the same weather system that delivered the drought to California, and oh yeah, another series of record high temperatures there. San Francisco was more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January. On the 15th and 16th, the temperature rose to 73 degrees, 22 C. Sacramento set more record highs in January 2014 than at any time in it's history.

It was the same in January on the other side of the world.

For this I thank Christopher C. Burt, weather historian for the wunderground blog, posted February 12, 2014.

"All-time-record monthly warm temperatures have been observed at many sites in the Siberian states of Yakutia and Kamchatka. In what is normally the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth, Oymyakon (various spellings) saw its temperature rise to a February record high of -12.5 °C (9.5 °F) on February 9th."

On Feburary 7th, Oymyakon rose to 2.9 degrees C, or 37 degrees F - the "first time this site has ever risen above freezing during the month of February." That is mind-blowing. Put that in your mental calendar. Consider what that may mean for extra permafrost melting, and even more methane into the Arctic atmosphere, if this kind of weather action continues.

Christopher Burt goes on:

"The normal high temperature at this time of the year should be around -48 °C (-55 °F). Oymyakon also holds the world record (along with Verkhoyansk) for the coldest temperature ever measured on earth at an inhabited site: - 67.7 °C (-90 °F) set on February 6, 1933 (almost exactly 80 years ago)."

This is the key to whatever nasty weather you have been experiencing. The world has not warmed by much, as a global average. But the poles have warmed way more than anywhere else. When there is a smaller difference between the poles and the equator, there is less to drive the Jet stream from West to East.

Instead the Jet Stream takes huge bends, almost blowing north to south. It gets stuck in those bends. Depending on which side of the stream you are, your weather gets stuck in a pattern which could be record warmth and drought, or record cold and snow. Lucky you, but it's all due to climate change, no matter what Rush Limbaugh or any net idiots tell you.

GREAT BRITAIN

Before I wrap up with my main point, we can't leave this extreme record report without talking about Great Britain. I've seen satellite photos that make my jaw drop. One huge single storm just swept over the whole of the islands, burying England, Scotland and Ireland in a wild pool of grey. Another satellite photo shows a series of giant lakes where the southern English countryside used to be. Then that system connected with the whole giant storm in Eastern North America, making a half-global, intercontinental storm. I warned about that several years ago.

You can imagine, or if you live there don't need to imagine, the mental costs to the average person. Day after day of gray wet skies, the worry of floods, the reality of floods. It must affect the economy as well.

Right now I'd like to point out a single aspect. The intense storms, with high winds and record-setting storm surges, are changing the British Coast line forever. Just a couple of weeks ago, an amateur fossil hound uncovered the remains of 200 year-old diosaurs, formerly embedded in a sea side cliff.

It was just last year evidence was found on the coast of humans living in Britain at least 800,000 years ago. Two weeks later, after those footprints were collected, the rising tides swept even that away.

The interesting sidelight on that discovery is the ancient climate was quite different as well. At 800,000 plus, it would have been quite cold, begging the question whether humans that early had managed to capture fire. But at the 700,000 year mark, people there would have experienced a climate hot like the Mediterranean. In my mind, that discounts theories raised lately that humans will go extinct soon. It may be possible we'll experience a major die-off, especially due to our overpopulated dependence on fragile global food supplies. But humans have and will adapt to big changes in the climate. It would be awful, but not necessarily extinction.

I'll have more to say about the coastal damage in future shows.

The British coasts are tumbling into the sea as these storms track into Britain, as they have done for the last half dozen years. Winter storms, and soggy summers, may be the new future of England all during the long period of climate disruption.

Everyone from Dame Julia Slingo, chief scientist for the UK Met office, to economy whiz Lord Stern acknowledges Britian's turn toward awful weather is driven by climate change. Lord Stern warns such destabilization applied to the whole world may well lead to military conflict.

In another amazing development, the British government has thrown in the towel, admitting that no government can cope with such massive storm damage. They apprently propose to abandon parts of the coast and inland to flooding, and will spend what little money they have protecting major cities like London. That's a song you will hear in many parts of the world.

Our whole landscape could change. River floodplains may expand. Other lakes could disappear due to lack of water. Major cities will go underwater. The Canadian and Russian north have already seen major geologic-level changes as permafrost melts.

NEW SCIENCE AND THE COMING HEAT

All this disruption of the weather and human lives is before the major change which scientists expect.

I know a couple of weeks ago I worried out loud that lower sunspot activity could mask the heat until a new period of high solar storms. Since then I've been advised by listeners that the sun is not so quiet as the mainstream media has been reporting. Anyway, I went back and listened to a couple of previous Ecoshock interviews to remind myself that the amount of solar activity is not the primary driver of what happens here on Earth. Our emissions are.

This week I came across two new scientific studies which show that we may very well be setting ourselves up for not just a gradual increase in global temperatures, but for a series of heat waves around the world.

No doubt you've heard some climate scientists have been puzzled why Earth isn't hotter already, considering the physics of the gigatones of greenhouse gase we've stuffed into the atmosphere, at an ever-increasing rate. We should be hotter than we are.

What caused this so-called "haitus"? - as dangerous as our current levels are, as we've just seen.

From sweltering Australia, and the University of New South Wales Climate Research Centre, scientist Matthew England just published a study that explains a lot. Dr. England was a Radio Ecoshock guest in 2011.

It boils down to this. The Trade winds blow across the Pacific Ocean, from East to West. These winds have been stronger than usual in the last decade. They have roiled the ocean surface, burying more carbon than we expected into the ocean.

The Trade Winds rise up now and then, it's just a natural cycle. But then they quiet down. When they do, all that heat energy buried in the upper Pacific waters will rise up, possibly in a period as short as a year, or a few years. We'll taste all the warming our emissions really add up to. More people will suffer and die. I'll have a lot to report on.

Here is Professor Matthew England, a guest on Radio Ecoshock in January 2011, talking about his new work:

[England video, audio in the show]

Professor England's study has been tested against climate models, and indeed just the trade winds could account for the missing heat. When those winds go quiet, you better have your living situation ready, if you can. It's going to get even wilder.

Finally, the tipping point for me this week was a fairly quiet release of another scientific paper from Germany. Armin Bunde and colleagues of Justus Liebig University predict 2014 could be a record-hot year, again. How do they know? It comes down to whether we have an El Nino or not. The Eastern Pacific ocean has an oscillation between the cooler La Nina, which we had for the past few years, and the heat-generating El Nino, which brought the last record setting heat monster of 1997-98.

Until very recently, no one could predict when an El Nino would come. It's an important thing to know. By studying weather and ocean patterns, the German researchers and their Chinese counterparts realized it all hinges on the connection of two regions in the eastern Pacific. If connections are made, and the atmosphere behaves in a certain way, there is a 75% chance an El Nino will come.

The scientists say we crossed that threshold in September 2013. That gives us a 75% change, pretty high in science terms, that 2014 will see an El Nino.

That paper is titled "Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming" published in the journal Nature Climate Change in January 2014.

And if the trade winds go quiet in the same year, Earth and it's inhabitants of all kinds could experience a jolt of heat from all our past emissions. We don't know what the trade winds will do this year. There is a 25% chance El Nino won't come.

But sooner or later, these and other boogies like melting methane clathrates and a whole series of positive feedback loops, could bring on the big warming jolt, decades before those predictions made just a few years ago by the IPCC scientists. Scientists are already suggesting 2014 will be the hottest year ever.

Hang on to your hats for that.

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

I'm Alex. Please support this program at our web site ecoshock.org - and download all our past programs as free mp3s.

Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock.

Tough Transition

From "The Farm" in Summertown, Tennessee, deep green thinker and activist Albert Bates on Tough Transition. Then one of the pioneers of localization and sustainable community, Dr. Mark Roseland. Alex reports on new ocean/climate movie to save... us. Rob Stewart's film "Revolution". Radio Ecoshock 121003.

Download 1 hour program in CD Quality (56 MB)

or faster download/lower quality Lo-Fi (14MB)

Radio Stations: Ecoshock 121003 Part 1 29 min and Part 2 29 min

This week we're still talking about social change to save the environment and ourselves. From "The Farm" in Summertown, Tennessee, deep green thinker and activist Albert Bates on Tough Transition - how to make a local community work - even if people can't agree on why it must.

Then we're going to one of the fathers of movements like Transition and localization, Dr. Mark Roseland in his 1992 book "Toward Sustainable Communities" became a handbook for local and regional politicians, non-profits, and citizen groups. Now it's out in a Fourth Edition, with a goal of providing, quote "Solutions for Citizens and Their Governments."

We'll get a call for Revolution from the maker of the movie Sharkwater. Rob Stewart says the species we need to save now is us. I've just seen his new film "Revolution". It's the ultimate challenge, literally our do or die time to save ocean life, and all life, from mass extinction. Our coverage of the dying oceans continues.

All coming your way this week, on Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

ALBERT BATES - TOUGH TRANSITION

Just like organisms, there are simple people. Others, like Albert Bates, are complex. He's a former attorney, a designer, bio char expert, author, speaker, and an international and local organizer. Albert has lived at the famous intentional community called "The Farm" in Summertown, Tennessee since 1972. His book "Climate in Crisis" was published back in 1990, with more following, like "The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook" in 2006, and "The Biochar Solution" in 2010.

In last week's program, we heard from successful Transition Towns in New England. That's easy enough with progressive voters. Albert, can it be done in a conservative "Red State" like Tennessee?

I've called up Albert to ask him about forming a Transition community in the rural Republican South.

When "The Farm" began in 1971 - it was part of the hippie movement. Bates tells us when the collection of school buses arrived from Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, in rural Tennessee - to local residents it seemed like Martians landing. Over the course of a generation, there has been a general acceptance and interaction between The Farm and its surroundings.

You can learn more about "The Farm" in Albert's book "Voices from The Farm" (1998) co-authored with Rupert Fike.

TRANSITION IN A RED STATE

One sign of that was when Hohenwald Tennessee became the 25th Transition Town in America. That was accepted by all the local politicians, County Commissioners and so on - even though, as Bates tells us, practically none of the locals accepted the human-induced climate change or Peak Oil.

So how did they do it? The Farm organized a regular film and speaker night. Sure they showed "An Inconvenient Truth", but one of their most successful nights (garnering 130 people from a population of 4,000) was about "Financial Permaculture". In a very hard economy, people wanted to know how to improve their financial situation, and learned about permaculture almost as a side subject.

In fact Hohenwald had many Swiss settlers from the late 1800's. The Transition organizers were able to draw on a common community value of "frugality". It's frugal not to waste things, and so recycling and other ways to avoid waste are acceptable. It's a fantastic lesson: find out what your community values, and help deliver that as a road to transition.

In a bit of humor, one of their speakers was David Bloom, who explains how to make your own alcohol for energy and other uses. That was quite popular in rural Tennessee, where moon-shining is traditional. But the Transition group also brought in the Republican speaker Catherine Austin Fitts, who is quite aware of things like the energy decline.

Albert wrote an excellent book on the subject "The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook".

In Lewis County Tennessee the Transition group set up a community kitchen and a business incubator. Bates suggests it's better to fund local small business with funds raised in the area, instead of depending on big banks headquartered far away. They initiated their first local currency, namely "Chamber Bucks" which could be spent at any business that was a member of the Chamber of Commerce.

Now with Peak Oil and a rotten economy, we're seeing a surge of very different folks, some with guns and deep basements. Is "the great change” going to work with such different actors? Even the publishers of Mother Earth News have noticed an increase of survivalists and preppers in their readers. They want to grow their own food and make things themselves, in preparation for collapse.

ECOVILLAGES VERSUS TRANSITION TOWNS

I ask Albert Bates about the relationship between the Eco village Network, where he has been a leader, and Transition Towns.

First, let's look at what Wiki says about Albert and the Eco village Network:

"Bates has played a major role in the Eco village movement as one of the organizers of the Global Eco village Network (GEN), and served as GEN's chairman of the board (from 2002 to 2003) and president (from 2003 to 2004). He was also the principal organizer of the Eco village Network of the Americas and served as its president (from 1996 to 2003). In 1994 he founded the Eco village Training Center, a "whole systems immersion experience of Eco village living."[1] He has taught courses in sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and technologies of the future to students from more than 50 nations."

Bates is one of the teachers in Eco village training at The Farm, as well as teaching at Gaia University.

Essentially Bates suggests the Eco villages are like living laboratories. People experiment with ways to live together, sharing skills, learning how to produce locally. Some of the valuable lessons from those social experiments are applied more broadly in Transition Towns.

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Albert is one of the first to point out there are no islands of security, even in an intentional community. If the rest of the society is falling apart, or even suddenly starving, they will come to take what you've got. It's a long-time point of discussion, which Bates labels the "Zombie Apocalypse" problem.

When I lived in a community of back-to-the-landers in the early 1980's, we often talked about what to do with starving city refugees. One local intentional community - a group of Russian Catholic nuns, decided they would put away lots of extra food and clothing, to welcome people who arrived.

For what it's worth, the historic record in Soviet Russia in the early 1930's, when the cities were starving, didn't work out that way at all. Instead, the army sent out trucks to take away all the grain, including the seed stock for the following year, plus any livestock and food they could find, hauling it back to the cities. The farmers and rural communities starved to death by the millions. It's in the Robert Conquest book "The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine" published in 1986.

Anyway, unless there is a massive solar flare knocking out the grid, I don't expect Western civilization to collapse that quickly. It's far more likely our over-extended system will decline more slowly.

THE FARM AND CLIMATE CHANGE

As Bates knows all too well, the American South is experiencing record numbers of super-hot days, and recurring droughts. I ask what is the The Farm doing to prepare for a changed climate?

Albert describes the various ways they are collecting water, and more importantly, preparing their soil to hold more water and use it intelligently. This includes experiments with the Keyline system of agriculture, and using bovines to enrich both soil and water following the ideas of Allan Savory. It's also called "Mob Grazing". To learn more, listen to my 24 minute interview with Allan Savory in 2011 here.

The Farm is expecting 50 or more days where the temperature climbs above 100 degrees each summer - the range where plants stop growing and just go into a defensive dormancy. In the future, the Farm may see 5 or 6 months without rain. They are trying to get ready for all that, for the plants, the animals, and themselves.

Bates does travel around. He speaks at a lot of green fairs, to conferences, and international gatherings. Albert learned about global warming when he was researching deep injection of chemicals into the ground, in his former incarnation as an attorney. He spoke to his young Senator for Tennessee, one Al Gore, and then published his book "Climate in Crisis" in 1990, making Bates another of the pioneers of climate change.

To offset some of the carbon produced in traveling, way back in 1985 he established The Albert Bates Forest.

GETTING MORE BATES

In general, Albert thinks the Transition Town movement in America has been held back by media fog and mistaken ideas of making everything "American" instead of learning from other parts of the world. There are many more Transition Towns and Eco Villages in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world than in the U.S. It appears Sri Lanka alone has more Eco villages than the U.S.A.

Follow Albert Bates on Twitter @peaksurfer and his blog is peaksurfer@blogspot.ca.

You can find a lot more Albert Bates links, including some of his fascinating past writing and interviews, here.

--------------------------------

TOWARD SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES - DR. MARK ROSELAND

We've been talking about Transition, from Europe through New England to the American Deep South. There is more to come, we can't stop talking about what to do, except to get busy doing it.

This wave has been building since at least 1992. As we'll hear, the few expert pioneers have become a big network of community builders, around the world. I'm going to challenge you to tune in, with a slightly different language, with new ears, to one of the pioneers of localization and sustainable community, Mark Roseland.

It's a messy world. We are bombarded by negative stories. Big governments fail to make our lives better, or save us from threats like climate change.

Many of our Radio Ecoshock guests say only local governments are worth your political attention. That's why you need to hear Mark Roseland. He's been advising local governments how to build on a human scale, for cities that can keep going through many challenges.

Dr. Mark Roseland is Director of the Simon Fraser University Centre for Sustainable Community Development, and he is a Professor in the Resource and Environmental Management Program.

Roseland came to world attention back in 1992 with the release of his best-selling book, "Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and Their Governments." That book is being released in a Fourth Edition by New Society Publishers in September 2012.

Mark Roseland on You tube

RIO +20 ROSELAND PROJECTS

IS ROSELAND PART OF A U.N. PLOT FOR WORLD DOMINATION?

We talk for a minute about the strange resistance to becoming more sustainable. Unbelievably, in rural America, and even a few people in the Occupy movement in the United States, are afraid any move toward sustainability is just part of a United Nations plot to take over the world. They think everything is part of "Agenda 21" which came out of the first Rio Conference in 1992.

I ask Dr. Roseland point blank: "Are you part of a plot to take over the world?"

Then we both laugh. It's such a weird distortion. The United Nations has hardly managed to do anything, except a lot of good charitable work in the poorest countries. There is no U.N. army ready to conquer the world. In fact, in some U.N. sanctioned military actions, it's the U.S. Armed Forces in command.

That doesn't stop fringe talk show hosts like Alex Jones from drumming it into weak minds that the U.N. is out to take their liberties and the environmentalists and "sustainability" is out to take away their freedom.

One of the alleged villains is something called the ICLEI - the International Council For Local Environmental Initiatives. That is a vehicle where local governments can talk to one another to find out what works. Perfect for localization, and yet some Americans who allegedly want independence have convinced their governments to stop paying for membership!

I think some paranoid Americans are missing a chance at their best allies. They attack Transition Towns as a communist plot. But the same people call for local action, participation in local governments, and prepping for disasters.

Roseland knows where this attack on sustainable communities is coming from: the Tea Party movement (partly funded by the notorious fossil fuel billionaires the Koch brothers) and the Republican Party itself. Back in January 2012 the Republican Party targeted ICLEI as villains to be defunded and fought off if they are elected. It's a political ruse, working against the best interests of America and Transition.

SUSTAINABILITY IS NO LONGER A PIONEER MOVEMENT

When Roseland published his book "Toward Sustainable Communities" back in 1992, it quickly became THE handbook for local governments, NGO's and interested citizens. There were only a few academics and institutes working on sustainability.

Now in unstable economic times, topped up with rampant energy costs and climate disruption, there are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of non-profits, local governments, academics, college-level courses, and resources of all kinds on making sustainable communities.

Roseland realized the movement was so big, and growing so fast, no resource book could hope to keep up. That is partly why at the Rio+ 20 Conference he announced PANDO. That's a kind of combined database and network for the sustainable community movement. Find it here.

PANDO is named after a giant community of aspen trees in Colorado that are all linked as one big organism by their joint root systems. It may be the largest single organism on land, and it's quite resilient.

UNIVERcity

As a long-time Professor at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby Canada (part of Greater Vancouver) - Mark Roseland has been a guiding light in the redevelopment of the mountaintop where that university is situated. Amid some controversy, the University decided the system of staff and students living elsewhere, requiring giant parking lots, needed to be converted to a livable and sustainable community.

Now there are residences, a school, and other services right around the University, called "Univercity". Mark tells us about one day-care center which is not just net zero, but actually contributes more to the environment than it takes. Is that more expensive? No, it cost less than a conventional building.

There is a lot more to this interview. It's not in the usual activist language you hear on Radio Ecoshock, but it cuts exactly to what we are all really trying to accomplish in the real world: creating sustainable communities.

Look for Mark's new Fourth Edition of his classic "Toward Sustainable Communities: Solutions for Citizens and Their Governments." from New Society publishers.

REVOLUTION - THE FILM

During this show I play brief clips from Neil Young's song "Rumblin'" that's from his 2010 album "Le Noise", and earlier clips from Brian Eno's instrumental "The Big Ship", in the album "Green World".

There is a rumbling'. That kind of low noise of something big coming, but we can't quite tell what. The mass media news is one big distraction. As the headlines scroll by, I have this creepy feeling there are big stories not being told.

One of them is pretty simple. We have built a consumer machine that is chewing up the planet, spitting out toxic waste. Most of the greenhouse gases we pour into the sky are being sucked back into the ocean. Radio Ecoshock guests like paleoclimatologist Peter Ward have made one thing clear. The ocean makes the oxygen we breathe, the ocean determines the weather, and in the big picture, the state of the ocean dictates the big biological clock of abundance or mass extinction.

FROM SHARKWATER TO REVOLUTION

Today, I saw more graphic evidence the ocean is far more disturbed than our weather. Rob Stewart set out to save the sharks from the lunacy of shark fin soup. His audience, and then the ocean experts, told Stewart he's missed the big story.

Despite the success of his first film "Sharkwater" Stewart had to battle to make his second. He spent another four years travelling to the biological hot spots of the ocean, and to the dead zones. What he learned inflamed him. Stewart found out what we all know in our hearts: we need a big fast change in our economy, culture, and hearts to save not the sharks, not the polar bears, but ourselves. He's calling for nothing less than Revolution. That's the title of his new film.

The movie has just been released at the Toronto Film Festival, and again at the Vancouver Film Festival. It's a full-length bundle of astounding underwater photography, followed by a quest to find out who can stop our civilization from self-destructing.

We are introduced to creatures hidden below the waves. Like a relative of the Octopus that is smarter than your house cat. Crazy and adorable animals that only Nature could dream up.

Their world is dying. The ocean is becoming acidic. It's getting hotter, and it's filling up with plastic and chemicals. The single biggest threat to all sea life, greater even than deforestation, is the way we dump fossil carbon into the atmosphere. Estimates range from 33 up to 50% of all the carbon dioxide we emit goes into the ocean. Everything that makes a skeleton, from tiny plankton through coral to all fish and sea mammals, are endangered by ocean acidification. If we can't control our emissions, quickly, we can't save life in the sea.

Stewart rediscovers what I found out in 1990: the oceans campaign is the climate campaign is the oceans campaign.

So the shark man ends up at two U.N. climate conferences. Both fail miserably. Dependent on consensus, with a negotiations wrecker like Canada, out to promote the dirty Tar Sands oil, the talks go nowhere.

You and I aren't changing much either, even though we know. Stewart glumly tallies up his own carbon pollution, and it's too much. Just like me.

Who isn't invested in the climate death machine? The children. They will bear the ruined climate. Child activists are springing up all around the world. Stewart tirelessly reaches out to them, informing, warning, inspiring youth as our best hope.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK ON RADIO ECOSHOCK

Next week I'll bring you a full interview with Rob Stewart underground film-maker, and unlikely revolutionary.

We'll also hear from Lester Brown of the Earth-Policy Institute. He's got the facts on rising food costs at home, and food-less days abroad.

And we'll continue our Transition series, as guest Wes Regan describes food localization in the poorest neighborhood.

We opened Radio Ecoshock this Fall with Gareth Renowden. He and co-host Glenn Williams have managed a new edition of "The Climate Show" bridging the time gap between London and rural New Zealand. Check out the new program at theclimateshow.com

Another tip from the film Revolution: only you can educate yourself. Sorry, whatever school you went to didn't teach what we all need to know. The government won't tell you. Media plans to distract you.

As the hard facts roll away the delusions of a mass suicide pact, I encourage you to dig, dig, dig. You can get college level knowledge free in You tube and Google lectures. Watch the TED talks. Bulk up your list of blogs that tilt toward natural reality.

You can find every back show of Radio Ecoshock on our web site at ecoshock.org. Please tune in, and spread it around. Use those links, Facebook, Twitter, everything. Hand out copies to neighbors or on the street. Talk it up.

Some of the world's best experts teach us. We have to strip away layers of ignorance and greed. We need to know the truth, and then we need to act on it. Nothing else will save a livable future for our descendants. That IS the big story.

I'm Alex Smith. This has been Radio Ecoshock. Join us next week.

Go Green Media

Welcome. This week on Radio Ecoshock, we go green media. You'll hear an interview with Bryan Welch, publisher of the Mother Earth News and the Utne Reader. Then off to the D.C. Environmental Film Festival, to talk with directors and producers of the energy film "Switch" and previews of the Blue Planet North America Expedition.

Radio Ecoshock correspondent Gerri Williams is joined in our Washington Pacific studio by Alexandra Cousteau, and film-makers Robert Cole and Harry Lynch.

BRYAN WELCH - ALTERNATIVE PUBLISHER AND HOMESTEADER

Let's go to Bryan Welch - why is he so optimistic, in these difficult times?

He's the publisher of some of the only magazines I still read: Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, and Grit. Starting as a journalist, Bryan is now a successful businessman - and still a homesteader in Kansas.

I begin by admitting Radio Ecoshock may be the most depressing program on radio. We have scientists, oil experts, and economists explain our coming doom. Bryan has written a book saying there may be a better way.

It's called "Beautiful and Abundant, Building the World We Want".

Abundant? What about peak oil, climate catastrophe, reduced consumerism? I ask Bryan to explain.

He begins by pointing our humans have gone through periods of extreme creativity. For example, in a 15 year period around the turn of the century we invented bicycles, cars, airplanes, radio, and many other things. In that same time, Einstein developed a theory of light, energy, and the universe itself.

As the need becomes apparent, we may experience a new burst of creativity to help solve our problems, Welch says.

But these technical accomplishments require a "grand vision" of how humans could be sustainable in the long term on this planet. For this Welch suggests 4 criteria for sustainability (and he uses these in the operation of his various business ventures as well.)

FOUR CRITERIA OF SUSTAINABILITY

Number one: does it create beauty? That might not be intuitive as first on your list. But Welch says humans are attracted to beauty, and it motivates them in powerful ways. A new technology, or even a political movement, needs an inherent beauty to be communicated, to be successful.

Number two: does it create abundance? In the oil industry, we expect any worthwhile source to create much more energy than goes into producing it. Investors expect more than just a meager return. Perhaps this expectation of abundance, especially in planet-saving technology, is a requirement. Especially if it must help billions of people. Small thinking need not apply.

Welch also thinks capitalism, properly and honestly applied, is still the best system. Again, abundance is required, because we need an excess, known as "capital" to develop still more innovation.

Number three: is it fair? This is kind of a balance to the requirement of abundance. It's not enough to make a few people rich, and certainly that isn't sustainable if the technology ruins the commons all humans and other life forms need to survive. There are cases in capitalism where everyone seems better off, through the innovation and production, Welch thinks. There is a lot more to this one, which helps guide the way business should operate to be sustainable, and the way communities and whole societies need to think things through.

Number four: is it contagious? What good is the best idea or tech if nobody really wants to spread it around? Especially if our time is limited (it is) - changes need to move fast to succeed, and that means motivating people.

THE LIMITATIONS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

Given the above, Welch thinks greens have not been effective communicators. Enviros don't talk enough about beauty, abundance, fairness, and contagious thinking to reach the mass public. Bryan, who includes himself as a long-term environmentalist, says we have alienated a lot of people, by not using effective communication strategies.

As an aside, Radio Ecoshock has probably turned some people away, with our serious warning of dire challenges, but I feel we all have our role to play. I don't plan serious changes to the program, although I am always looking for solutions I can believe in, or methods our listeners can use to cope with the stress of knowing things are not going well for the planet.

When I question Welch on how abundance is possible, given limited resources and growing billions who want to consume more - he answers we can choose our future, by choosing our population numbers. If we can control population, we can plan for vast areas of wilderness, and there should be abundant resources for a sustainable lifestyle.

HOMESTEADING IN KANSAS

Bryan helps to balance his own consciousness, and experiments with things you might find in The Mother Earth News, on his 50 acre homestead in Kansas. He raises chickens, goats, cattle, and I presume vegetables. Welch thinks a daily engagement with nature on some level helps to keep us more sane.

Homesteading also helps make Welch more optimistic. He sees nature solving problems, and meets others working on the land, that seems to make people happier, and more hopeful of finding solutions.

THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT?

Let's face it. Bryan Welch is now a multi-multi millionaire. While he's retained a kind of common-person's state of mind, willy-nilly he is part of the 1 percent. So I ask him: what does he think of the Occupy movement?

"We're really at a watershed moment for business, as well as for humanity in general."

After saying Capitalism is pretty new, only known for a couple of centuries, he sees the need for a new variation which expects benefits for all people and for nature. There is no reason this could not be done, Welch says.

He likes the Occupy movement, and particularly the version he saw in Occupy Fayetteville Arkansas. Occupy people set out to help their communities, finding practical things that need to be done, while calling for a new vision for the system.

Bryan thinks the real opportunity to change corporate practices that are harmful is through consumer demand, and consumer action. Welch says corporations "turn on a dime" as soon as they see a tide of consumer reaction. If we keep buying sustainable products, and move away from corporations that are damaging the planet, that will reshape society, he tells us.

PRINT VERSUS ONLINE?

I ask this major alternative publisher how print magazines, like the Mother Earth News, or the Utne Reader, can survive the onslaught of Net publishing and free information?

Welch isn't at all concerned. In fact, they get more print subscribers from their web sites, than from any other sources. Plus, like all publishers, they are moving more content to the Net. Now thirty percent of all their revenues come from digital content.

Still, Bryan asks, why is there a Wired Magazine? Even the most committed Net people still want some of their information in print form, obviously. As a personal aside, I would want a stack of Mother Earth News magazines, in print, at my homestead, or even in a "city-stead" - because if the power goes out, or gets too expensive, or some super-bug or solar storm takes down the Net (could happen!) - I want my tips on how to get extra cucumbers to be available to my grubby hands.

The main company, Odgen Publications, is also experimenting with more video content.

At the same time, The Mother Earth News hopes to connect more people on a face-to-face level. The Mother Earth News Festivals may expand from 2 per year to more events. The next one is in Pallyup Washington on June 2n and 3rd. Since that is near me, I am toying with the idea of going, and maybe doing some interviews and research on new products there.

Read Bryan's blog here.

You can download a CD quality version of just this 23 minute Bryan Welch interview here, or a faster-downloading Lo-Fi copy here.

FROM GREEN MAGAZINES TO FILM: THE D.C. ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 2012

From the Washington DC studio of WPFW Pacifica radio, Radio Ecoshock correspondent Gerri Williams takes us to the D. C. Environmental Film Festival.


"SWITCH" TO FUTURE ENERGY

The first film interview is with Harry Lynch, the Director of the new film "Switch".

Download this interview by Gerri Williams here.

The basic story line: Texas scientist and energy Professor Scott Tinker sets off around the world, to find out what can possibly power our planet in the future.

The result is film footage you have probably never seen. They go to Iceland, and look at perfectly clean geothermal energy, tapping natural steam. Of course not everyone has that easy resource.

Tinker looks at big solar and wind installations in various parts of the world. Then he calculates how many of them we would need to power a modern society.

The fearsome part comes as Tinker meets with various experts, who add the energy needs of China and India to the mix. All of a sudden the problem of SCALE comes up. Things that work on a small scale, may be next to impossible for the world as whole, the film suggests.

They look at fossil fuels, including footage at giant offshore oil rigs normally not allowed, and ditto deep in coal mines.

Nuclear power plants, and their economics, are part of the film.

In a twist, Dr. Tinker decides to measure his own energy imprint, as he travels about. It's not just about air miles, but all the products you and I use on a daily basis. He calculates it all, and the numbers are pretty frightening. Now multiply that by a billion, and our energy plans fall apart.

Global warming, and the need to slash emissions, are not left out of the film. Neither are they central to it. Tinker does acknowledge fossil fuels will need to be phased out, for various reasons, and he's looking for the big fix.

Gerri and I want to add one caution about this film "Switch". The film-makers seem to take for granted our continuing massive use of energy. There is no talk of energy descent, or economic collapse. The need to decarbonize is acknowledged, but the film-makers, especially Dr. Tinker, seem comfortable with a 30 year transition period, which includes nuclear and fossil fuels like natural gas.

Fukushima in my opinion showed nuclear power can destroy a big region, if not a whole country. Climate scientists warn we must act now, within the next ten, not thirty years, or risk catastrophic climate change.

You should know that Dr. Scoot Tinker is totally connected to the oil industry. His bio reads, quote:

"Dr. Tinker worked in the oil and gas industry for 17 years in research, exploration, and development, prior to coming to The University of Texas at Austin in 2000." He is a past President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists."

We might find it unlikely a man of his background will suggest we decentralize using totally renewable energy, - very, very quickly. But I won't speak for Dr. Tinker. You need to make your own conclusions from the film.

Teachers who plan to use this film, backed by the industry-friendly American Geosciences Institute, should be ready to encourage students to learn from the breath-taking shots of big power operations, but to question our continued dependence on them.

Director Harry Lynch also describes an innovative use of film on the web site. The plan to offer short (3 to 5 minute) clips that can be assembled in various ways according to your interests. Say you just want to learn about renewables: fine, make your own movie! It's a good concept.

Find out more at the "Switch" web site.

BLUE PLANET NORTH AMERICA EXPEDITION

Our next interview with Gerri Williams is less controversial. Let's get back to the studio, to find more from the D.C. Environment Film Festival 2012.

In her next interview, Gerri has two guests: Alexandra Cousteau, and Robert Cole.

Yes, Alexandra Cousteau is the granddaughter of the famous underwater film maker Jacques Cousteau. Alexandra learned to dive at age 7. She's just finished a tour, and a film, about the magic and the sad state of American Rivers.

For example they interviewed and filmed along the Colorado River, which has been robbed of waters before it can reach the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Other rivers have been heartlessly polluted or built-up - but Alexandra maintains some optimism. Other rivers are much cleaner than they were 30 or 50 years ago. (Perhaps that is a mix of Clean Water legislation, and the deindustrialization of America.)

Also joining Gerri, is Robert Cole. More than twenty five years ago, Cole made a documentary about the river flowing into the nation's capital, the Potomac. It is called "Potomac American Reflections", expressing what the damage to the river says about American society. Now that film is being reshown again.

Robert Cole is less optimistic. He sees progress as lamentably slow, even for a river which flows through Washington D.C.

I like these interviews. There is a good exchange, and lots to learn about more than rivers. Who are we? What do we want and what will we tolerate? Do rivers have rights to exist on their own? How can film and radio help that discussion?

That's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. My thanks to our D.C. correspondent Gerri Williams. Be sure and join us again next week.

Alex
Radio Ecoshock

CORRUPTION OR TRUE ENERGY?

In this week's show, we hear about another huge rain disaster in Pakistan, Dengue fever panic, and how that tropical disease is coming to America, thanks to climate change. I've included a few survival tips for you.

Then a full 45 minute speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the long-time "green Kennedy" and former host of the "Ring of Fire" show on the Air America network. Whether he's talking the evils of coal, or the stranglehold of corporate media on our news, Kennedy pulls no punches. It's a raw speech, delivered at the Commonwealth Club of California last June. I thought you should hear it.

"EXTREME PRECIPITATION EVENTS" - OR CALL IT RECORD-BREAKING RAIN

The team of hurricanes and tropical storms working up the East Coast set a bunch of records.

Binghamton New York had an extreme rainfall event higher than ever recorded. The whole Susquehanna River flooded all the way down through Pennsylvania into Maryland. Spring floods? Sure we expect that. Now we have fall floods?

A couple of weeks ago, it was wet, wet, wet all around the D.C. area. As the Chief Meterorologist for the Capital Weather gang reported, the rain in the first and second week of September was just off the charts.

How about September 8th, at Fort Belvoir, the Army base in Fairfax County, Virginia. The National Weather Service reported 7 inches of rain in 3 hours, quote "off the charts above a 1000-year rainfall."

There was a one in 50 to 100 year rainfall near Elliott City, Maryland. 5.47 inches in 3 hours near Franconia in Virginia - a once in 500 years rainfall event. The whole DC Baltimore metro area rainfall hit levels that might be expected every 10 to 25 years.

Joe Romm at the Climate Progress blog reminds us of Nashville's "Katrina" - the one in 1000 year crazy flooding there last year. And Coastal North Caronlina experienced a second one in 500 year
rainfall, two in just the last 11 years!

Don't forget that deadly flood that hit Queensland Australia in January 2011 - after a long, long drought. People, cars, and buildings were washed away. The barely reported floods in China this year. And record flooding in Rio de Jainero last year. I've already mentioned one fifth of Pakistan went under water in 2010 flooding.

These are called "extreme precipitation events". We need a better popular name. How about "drowners"?

We have changed the atmosphere. Globally warmer air now holds 4% more water vapor. That doesn't sound like much, until it falls on your head and home.

Likely it's a similar amount to the entire contents of the Mediterranean Sea being added to the atmosphere. That's not a scientific statement, just a wild example from me, trying to wrap my head around what 4 percent more water in the air means. And it will keep going up, as the atmosphere warms. Maybe it won't be rising seas that drown civilization first - it could be rain falling from the sky.

If the local weather is cold enough, the extreme moisture falls as snow. Not that anybody on the East Coast and Washington would remember last winter's unusually heavy dump. Only the idiots who deny climate science thought it was a sure sign of "global cooling".

We'll hear the truth from someone living it in Pakistan.

But first, a little blast from the past, as Radio Ecoshock reaches back to a program called "The Unknown Climate" on April 9th, 2010 warning listeners about "global wetting" - the new hard rains predicted by science. In fact, as you'll hear, we asked American climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh about extreme precipitation way back in 2007.

From the 2007 Radio Ecoshock show "Hard Rain Gonna Fall":

Alex Smith: "And in 2005, your team released one of the most detailed climate predictions for North America. Can you tell us about that?"

Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh: "We found that elevated greenhouse gas concentrations substantially increase the frequency of extreme precipitation events, and also the contribution of those events to the total annual precipitation.

So, not only do the heaviest events become more frequent, as greenhouse gas concentrations rise, but they also represent a larger fraction of the total precipitation that comes during the year."


Maybe you saw Dr. Diffenbaugh on Al Gore's "24 Hours of Reality" broadcast last week. If you missed that, just go to climaterealityproject.org.


Now that many Americans have been washed out, and a few drowned, by extreme rainfall - it's a good time to understand this under-reported story coming out of Pakistan. And yes, there is plenty to learn about what can happen here or anywhere.

You remember the TV footage from 2010, when about one fifth of Pakistan simply went underwater, and stayed that way for over a month? Over 2,000 people died. About 20 million of the poorest people on Earth were left homeless. Aid was difficult and slow. The country has not really recovered even yet.

There are still an estimated 800,000 people homeless from that flood.

Now it is happening again. Monsoon rains, pumped up by climate change, have flooded the Southern part of the country, the Sindh area, next door to India's Punjab.

I didn't really hear about this in the mainstream media. It broke into an email discussion I was having with a Radio Ecoshock listener in Karachi, the port city at the very south of Pakistan. Thanks to the magic of podcast and download, we have listeners all over the world.

FROM MANGROVES TO THE DELUGE

Eco-activist Khalid Hasan wrote me about a new documentary, the first green documentary released in Pakistan. It is called "Murder of Mystic", and shows another disaster: the fast disappearing Mangroves.

As in most places of the world, the weathly people, and the top Middle Class, want to build new houses on oceanfront. So they chop down the Mangrove "swamps" to create a clear view and maybe some beach front.

The land grabbers in Pakistan just hack down these low-lying trees of many roots, which are the spawning grounds of loads of marine life, including the fish supporting some of Pakistan's poorest people.

Mangroves also deflect the first signs of rising seas, because they buffer the coast. They help hold the coastline intact during storm surges.

A mangrove forest does a much better job protecting the shore than somebody's lawn and palatial home. The irony is: millionaires, (who produce so much more carbon emissions than the rest of us), will lose all that valuable oceanfront first, as the sea rises.

In the film "Murder of Mystic" by Outfield Productions, we also learn that Mangroves are very tough to replace. After the real estate moguls hack it down, along come well-meaning environment groups to "replace" them. There was even a contest in the Sindh area of Pakistan, and nearby India, to replant the most number of Mangroves, for the Guinness Book of World Records.

Few of those plantings survived. Mangroves take years to establish themselves, and Nature is complex. Mangrove forests cannot be easily "replaced". The best way is to save what exists. But that kind of anti-real estate activism can be dangerous in Pakistan. We need to keep a careful eye on the
safety of those who speak out.

Find a few brief clips from the film "Murder of Mystic" on You tube.


A HARD RAIN'S GONNA FALL

While Khalid and I discussed this, he wrote with amazing news: the streets of Karachi were flooding as never before! Sure, it is common for some flooding during Monsoon Season. But this was something else.

The whole Southern state of Sindh was just coming off a punishing twelve month drought. The Monsoons were hoped for as a relief.

Torrential rains started in August, and got worse in September. On September 14th rains beyond belief descended.

Hundreds drowned. At least two million people are homeless in Sindh and Baluchistan provinces. The United Nations is again appealing for aid, even as 800,000 people remain homeless from last year's floods.

Karachi is Pakistan's largest city, with somewhere around 25 million people in the greater metropolitan area. It was more or less shut-down by flooding. Schools and government buildings closed, along with the shops. The lights went out in many places. Transit stopped.

Then the refugees from the drowned rural areas came in a human flood toward the city.

Find the latest news at www.dawn.com


IT IS CLIMATE CHANGE, SCIENTISTS SAY

Pakistan's greatest weather and climate scientists have no doubt this latest extreme flooding is another result of climate change.

We find this quote from an article September 18th, by M. Waqar Bhatti.

"'Rains in Sindh are the highest ever recorded monsoon rains during the four weeks’ period. Sindh this year received 270 percent and 1,170 percent above-normal monsoon rains, respectively in August and September,' he said, adding that in just four weeks, the otherwise dry, arid region received rainfall which was close to what it got normally in five years.

'Though sometimes it is difficult to relate extreme weather events to climate change, if we look at the frequency and the trend of the extreme weather events happening in Pakistan during the last two decades, it is easy to find its connection with climate change,' said Dr Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, Adviser Climate Affairs and Vice-President of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Asia Region, on Thursday."


DENGUE FEVER AND YOU

And now the kicker, which warns everyone of the many nasty side-effects of climate change. Dengue Fever has hit the flood victims of Pakistan.

You may not know about Dengue Fever. This formerly tropical disease is hovering around the Southern United States. There have been 12 cases this year in Florida and a few more in Texas. The Bahamas has an outbreak of Dengue Fever right now.

If you need a dose of celebrity news, singer Rihanna's father was just hospitalized with Dengue Fever, picked up at Rihanna's home in Barbados.

On September 15th, the Los Angeles Times reported the tropical mosquito that can carry Dengue Fever, (as well as West Nile Virus and Yellow Fever), - was found in the San Garbriel Valley, right near Los Angeles, California.


You might want to take a minute to learn to recognize this bug. The scientific name is "Aedes albopictus". Most people call it the "Asian Tiger Mosquito". It's a "Tiger" because the more you swat it, the more it attacks. And this one bites in the middle of the day, not in the early morning or evening as most Northern mosquitos do.

Those are two of the signs: aggressive, and bites in the daytime.

This insect is easy to identify. It is a smaller mosquito, but the legs and body are black with white patches or stripes. If you see little white markings on the legs of a mosquito, you've found it.

In the recent Pakistan floods, in Karachi and all around, extending even to Lahore, there is panic now that Dengue Fever has set in. Trying to cut down the mosquitos, the government has ordered all public fountains and swimming pools to be emptied. But with flood waters all around, it's a hopeless task.

That's a disease you'll want to learn about, as our climate heats up.

Dengue fever has been called "bone-break" fever. It hits very hard. People feel like they are dying.

So they flock toward medical help, toward the hospitals.

Here is a short news clip from Al Jezeera September 15th, on the Dengue panic in Pakistan.

[news clip][hundreds flooding a Lahore hospital, fearing they have Dengue fever. The rumor in the country was that thousands were dying from it. Only 17 out of over a hundred patients tested had it.

The hospital was overloaded, and perhaps could not handle other injuries....]


Part of the point is most victims do NOT die of Dengue fever. Although you can die, most people survive, after a violent illness. Keeping hydrated, lowering the temperature with Apirin or Tylenol, that is the treatment.

Remember, antibiotics do not work on a virus, only on diseases caused by bacteria.

We can expect a similar panic if Dengue fever breaks out for real in North America or Southern Europe, where people are fearful of this unknown tropical disease.

If there are mosquitos in the hospital itself, as happens in some less developed countries, then those flocking to hospitals may be at greater risk.

IT ONLY TRAVELS THROUGH MOSQUITOS - DOESN'T PASS DIRECTLY THROUGH PEOPLE

Dengue fever is transfered by mosquito bites, and cannot otherwise pass from person to person.

Close the windows, or put up screens, and you are safe to treat your loved one.

Learn to recognize the mosquito and the disease. Avoid panic.

The real solution, is to limit the amount of climate change we cause. Maybe we can prevent tropical diseases from arriving. That is our goal at Radio Ecoshock - to limit the climate crisis.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. - BLOCKBUSTER SPEECH

Did you know your body is already toxic with mercury from coal plants? why doesn't the media tell you the truth about climate change? Get ready for a blockbuster speech from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., courtesy of the Climate One project at the Commonwealth Club of California.



Find more at commonwealthclub.org.

The Commonwealth Club of California invites special guests and let's them speak their minds. Check out their Climate One series, it's excellent. In this talk from June 16, 2011, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulls no punches about the dirty coal industry, and the outright failure of corporate media to inform the public about the dangers of climate change.

But he does have a vision to get us into a sustainable future.

Here are just a few quick quotes from the speech (which is packed full of notable quotes):

"Coal claims to be cheap, but actually it's probably the most catastrophically expensive way to boil a pot of water that has ever been devised."

He describes his 6 week jury trial in West Virginia on mountain top removal mining. He won "the biggest judgement in the history of the state." Of course that's in Appeal now.

Just one of those costs: many roads in West Virginia have 22 inches of asphalt - the taxpayers have to build super roads to support all the heavy coal trucks, which weigh 90,000 pounds.

COAL POISONS FRESHWATER FISH IN AMERICA - and ALL THE PEOPLE TOO!

RFK Jr.: "Last year the National Academy of Sciences said that - a ten year study that they completed showed that every single fresh water fish in America now has dangerous levels of mercury in its flesh.

That mercury is coming from coal-burning power plants.

One out of every six American women now have so much mercury in her womb, from eating those fish, and from other vectors, that her children are at a grim risk for a grim inventory of diseases - autism, blindness, mental retardation, heart, liver, and kidney disease.

I have so much mercury in my body, I got my levels tested recently. I fish a lot, I eat the fish. My levels are ten times what EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency] considers safe.

I was told by Dr. David Carpenter, who is a national authority on mercury contamination, that a woman with my levels of mercury in her blood would have children with cognitive impairment, with permanent brain injury.

Today, according to the Center for Disease Control, there are 647,000 children born into this country every year who have been exposed to dangerous levels of mercury in their mother's womb.

That a cost on our country, that they don't tell you about when they say 'Oh, it's just 11 cents a kilowatt hour.'"

MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL MINING

RFK Jr.: "They've flattened an area of Appalachia larger than the state of Delaware.

If you filled twenty five feet of a Hudson River stream, we would put you in jail. If you blew up a mountain in the Sierras, or in Utah, or in Colorado, or the Berkshires, or in Appalachia, you would go to jail, or you'd be put in some place for the criminally insane.

But in Appalachia, they are able to cut down five hundred mountains, and it's all illegal.

They are able to bury not 25 feet of stream, but 2500 miles of rivers and streams. And they do it by subverting Democracy... and by hiding what they're doing from the public."

There's much more on coal.

OTHER COUNTRIES GOING AHEAD WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY

R.F. Kennedy Jr. takes us on a tour of other countries who are developing sustainable energy rapidly.

They will leave America behind, he thinks, since once these plants are built, there is no need to buy dangerous and poisonous energy, like coal and oil.

Fossil fuels, he argues, only continue in America because of the huge subsidies still given to the coal and oil industry (and gas as well). That keeps going, because RFK says fossil fuels, along with the nuclear industry (he calls all these old fuel corporations "the incumbents") - have openly bought off both the Congress and the Senate. Corruption is keeping America polluted and backward, Kennedy tells his audience at the Commonwealth Club of California.

Otherwise, the U.S. would invest in a new energy grid, and renewables on a massive scale. Kennedy outlines how this could be done, even in very tough economic times. Instead of wasting trillions on foreign wars, build a new green energy system at home - and create millions of jobs.

Even though major investors want to build wind farms in North Dakota, there is no efficient way to get that power to the Mid-West (where it could replace coal), Kennedy says. That is just one reason a new national power grid is needed.

The new grid could also avoid the most expensive part of power, supply during peak demand periods.

A smart grid could cycle off millions of hot water heaters, for just 15 minutes, and save building a peak demand coal plant, for example. It would also democratize power development, since even you and I could mount solar panels and sell the excess electricity into the grid.

Kennedy is an investor and a principal at one of America's biggest green investment companies, Vantage Point Capital Parners.

Among other things, they are promoting a big solar thermal plant in California, through investments in a company called Brightsource Energy.

However, I have since read in the news that the solar thermal idea is being dropped, because new photovoltaic cells are coming in much cheaper now (especially from China). So the project may become a solar panel farm. I'm not sure where it stands.

Kennedy also mentions an online service called "Cha Cha" which lets mobile phone users dial just those letters, ask any question, and get an answer within one minute.


He thinks this is an example of how information has become rapidly free and democratized. He says energy will go the same way, being virtually "free forever" from the Sun, wind and geothermal - instead of making wealthy oligarchs who pervert our politics and our media.

I'm not going to try and cover the rest of the speech, which is loaded with a combination of bitterness and hope, in my opinion.

Kennedy is very critical of current politicians, saying they have been bought off, that Democracy is on it's last legs, especially after the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to pour millions into politics. That was the "Citizens United" case. "...corporate wealth is now flooding into the political
process, and is going to dictate the direction of this country..." Kennedy says.

THE CHALLENGE OF PROGRESSIVE RADIO

From a radio perspective, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was co-host on a popular show called "Ring of Fire" on the lefty Air America network. He says that network went broke not because they couldn't draw an audience (their ratings were good, even in the Republican strong-hold of San Diego for example) - but because the network could not get any major corporations to advertise.

Air America was more or less boycotted by big companies, leaving the lowest type of advertising as the only option. This reminds me of Betsy Rosenberg, the former host of "Ecotalk" having to hawk "green" kitty litter, trying to save one of America's few environment radio shows.

It gets worse.

Kennedy notes that Canada has a law prohibiting lying on television news. He says that is why there is no Fox News in Canada (and why Canada did not join in the Iraq war).

BIG PHARMA CONTROLS YOUR NEWS

Kennedy: "The pharmaceutical industry has under its control all the news organizations. Seventy percent of advertising on network news now comes from pharmaceutical companies.

Do you think that they are going to support something that damages their interests?

The rest of advertising is coming from the automobile industry and the oil industry."

My comment: funny, I have noticed all those pills for ills I never suspected I had. And the big trucks with even bigger motors. That's why I seldom watch network propaganda, - I mean "news".

LET US ENTERTAIN YOU (while the world goes to Hell)

RFK: "They are now serving their shareholders' interests. They do that not by telling us the issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a Democracy, but rather by entertaining us.

By appealing to the prurient interests that all of us have in the reptilian part of our brains for sex and celebrity gossip. So we know a lot about Charlie Sheen. And we know a lot about Brittany Spears gradual emotional decline.

But we know very little about what's happening in Appalachia, or about global warming, or about the things we need to know.

We're the best entertained, least informed, people on the face of the Earth.

We cannot keep our international leadership, or our Democracy, if we don't have an informed public that is capable of recognizing all the milestones of tyranny, and capable of telling the truth from fiction."

That is just part of this speech from Robert F. Kennedy Junior, at the Commonwealth Club. My thanks to their Climate One project for permission to rebroadcast it. Find a longer version, with audience questions, at their site, by clicking on the "Play Now" button under "Related Podcasts".


Please note that just because I run a speech, that doesn't mean I agree with everything in it. Our guests and presenters speak for themselves. Still, I found it refreshing to hear a member of the wealthy class speak so candidly about the corruption and killing of the Earth.

Over and out, from me, Alex Smith.

Radio Ecoshock




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