#changing environment

[politijohn]

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[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

[hope-for-the-planet]

The Climate Change Superfund Act makes major fossil fuel companies financially liable for damage due to extreme weather events and other dangers related to climate change. The amount these companies are responsible for paying depends on their contributions to emissions since 1995.

Money collected from fossil fuel companies will be used to mitigate the health impacts of climate change and improve public infrastructure.

[daveinediting]

The idea I'm trying to get on its feet has a lot of rabbit trails attached to it, among which are the questions What are we optimized for? and What are we being optimized for?

Now of course each of us can exist in different environments that require us to be optimized in different ways in order to succeed in those environments  Let's just say the modern world imposes specific pressures, requirements, and incentives on the humans who exist within its influence. Whether that environment is toxic in any way to human beings is an interesting question. Whether the pressures, requirements, or incentives cause us to live in such ways that aren't optimal for our bodily health and mental health now and in the future is another. Whether any of this is a sustainable, desired path forward...

Yeah.

I point this out because the trait that singles us out among all other species is our ability to think, the sapiens in homo sapiens being latin for wise or rational. It's our distinguishing trait, the defining characteristic of modern human beings.

Thinking.

Wise.

Rational.

Here's another one: adaptable.

That's also a comment about our big bad brains, by the way. Our brains, the engines of our success that face ever changing, increasingly changing, more rapidly changing environments during the course of our modern existence. Right now. This very moment.  This very moment during which our brains are tasked with adapting and navigating rapid and sweeping change and to do that in a way that's sustainable, in a way that's healthy for both the mind and for the body. In a way that fulfills a hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943 https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html) that enables us not only to survive...

But to thrive.

One more time:

That enables us.

Not only to survive.

But to thrive.

That's my frame.

Your frame?

Yeah. Because if I'm gonna assess the path forward and, while I'm doing that, try to accurately identify what helps me thrive versus what causes me to become a lesser version of myself then yeah.

Context context context.

I've gotta set a bar somewhere so that I can acknowledge when I'm clearing it and when I'm not. I've gotta set objective expectations for my abilities, what I want to, what I should be able to do with style. 😉

It's important to consider who we want to be before assessing how enabling or not, how toxic or not, is the rapidly changing environment in which we exist.

In other words, is outsourcing our mental tasks an objective, qualitative benefit to us...

Or is it really really not.

[logorrhea5mip]

Sorry for the bad photo quality, Tumblr doesn't like posts this long.

[demaparbat-hp]

Hey, Spitfire! Try not to kill your brother ahead of time!

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Looking for Ursa right after being banished had some...wildly unexpected results. One: Zuko actually found her. Two: she wasn't alone. Three: leaving her children behind in order to protect them was, apparently, just something she did.

Looking at the bright side, Zuko now had a three-year-old younger brother to look after. Looking at the dark side, Zuko now had a three-year-old kid he needed to parent while also keeping him a secret from his father because—may Agni help him—the Fire Lord would have to go through Zuko first if he dared to even look at Lu Ten II.

(AKA an AU in which Zuko is a good big brother and doesn't want another kid to grow up like he did.)

[whats-in-a-sentence]

To prevent extremists from staying one step ahead of the curve, we need to become better at predicting future trends in a rapidly changing environment.

"Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists" - Julia Ebner

[rednblacksalamander]

PS: for entertainment purposes only, of course

PPS: actual Washington Post quote

[us-enviro-comments]

The Public Comment Process (+ how to write effective public comments)

The US federal rule-making process is founded around the right to comment: the public's opportunity to publicly address the agency responsible for a decision. This right is enshrined by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946 and reinforced by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, which both require that citizens be able to take part in pre-decision communication with a federal agency.

Public comments are important for a number of reasons:

Agencies must consider all new information received during the comment period and address that new information before publishing the final rule; this includes revising the proposed rule.

A good comment can be the basis for a court challenge. If the agency does not adequately address the new information in the comment, they can then be sued and the rule placed on hold until the issues raised by the new information are resolved.

Advocacy groups and journalists often scour public comments to get ideas for their own comments and campaigns, and to contextualize proposed rules.

Submitting a public comment on proposed federal rules and regulations is not like commenting on social media, though. Substantive comments that require agency response are those that contain information pertinent to the actions proposed in the regulation, such as community impacts, scientific evidence, or other data. Non-substantive comments ("I don't like this!") don't require any response beyond maybe a "Comment noted."

Here's a brief set of tips from the Public Comment Project:

“The most valuable public comments are unique, fact-based, and succinct. The agency will have to sort through many identical form letters and expressions of personal opinion.  

Your comment can report on scientific evidence that opposes or supports the theory behind the regulation. Providing additional supporting evidence helps strengthen the agency's position by creating a stronger scientific foundation for their action.

Use an opening sentence to establish your credibility. State who you are and summarize any of your experiences that are relevant to the topic of the proposal.

You do not have to come to a conclusion or judgement regarding the entirety of the regulation, but you do have to clearly communicate the implications of the research you present. Avoid leaving it up to the agency to infer how research or data relates to the regulation. 

Check out the agency's mission statement and any statutes relevant to the regulation. Federal agencies' actions are driven by their mission and held to the standards dictated by statutes, so make your comment stronger by explaining how your information contributes to their mission.”

You can also find templates here: https://publiccommentproject.org/comment-templates

Sources:

The Public Comment Project https://publiccommentproject.org

Democracy in Practice: Public Participation in Environmental Decisions, Beierle and Cayford 2002

Union of Concerned Scientists https://www.ucs.org/resources/participating-federal-rulemaking

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

For moment, you are home.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[politijohn]

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Historic wildfires blaze through LA months after the Democratically-run city cut fire service funds.

News headlines rhetorically ask us to consider what happens when CA inmates - working as firefighters for roughly $6 per day - cannot contain unprecedented fires.

Billionaires drain the already water-starved state of its supply as hydrants dry up when needed most.

This system has to go.

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[hope-for-the-planet]

Amazon deforestation fell over 50% in 2023 and as of August 2024 it was 46% lower than this time last year.

The Brazilian government has pledged to end Amazon deforestation entirely by 2030 and their current efforts have deforestation approaching the lowest it has been in the last six years.

[wachinyeya]

published Apr 2, 2025

Published on 01/04/2025

[mindblowingscience]

The world's wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two-thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said on Wednesday. How the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heatwaves and drought, they reported in the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events. "We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts," lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at ETH Zurich, told AFP.

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