
Recognition that we human beings are all on a spaceship rose to the consciousness of greater humanity over 45 years ago, by two events in 1969. In March that year, R. Buckminster Fuller published his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, which was noticed by only a few people then. Dr. Bruce Hector was a student of Dr. R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller more than 40 years ago. By July of that year, most of the world saw the Earth as a small blue globe against the black background of space with the moon’s surface in the foreground. As Fuller noted then: “We’re Still on Spaceship Earth and Still Without a Dashboard.” The image of the Earth starkly contrasted with the heretofore held belief of humans as isolated tribes, communities, states, nations leading us to realize we are all alone together in space have no where else to go.
This was part of the stimulus to make us recognize the need to care for our spaceship leading to the Clean Air and Water Acts a few years later under Republican President Nixon. Recently Dr. Hector was rereading Dr. Fuller’s small book of 120 pages and discovered that there are two dominant themes from it that directly apply to the world today. In Operating Manual Fuller notes that humans were provided a wonderful life support regenerative system unknown anywhere else in universe. However, the Creator provided no operating manual and left it to humans to learn the principles operative in the universe and use them to fulfill our material needs.
Fuller also noted that the human “nest” was equipped with millions of years of fossil fuel reserves to power our success until we are self-generating but that we have used a large portion of those fossil fuel reserves in a miniscule 150 years. These were the fuel reserves to serve ALL HUMANKIND for ALL TIME, not just a few generations. The book urged humans to mature on this planet, transfer to renewable energy sources identifying many of the numerous opportunities that have since been proven capable of meeting man’s needs. Hence my (Woodrow Clark) book The Green Industrial Revolution documents the current concerns today and what the solutions are. Fuller was aware of the pollution created by fossil fuels though he is also famous for saying, “Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting,” indicating this too is simply a design failure on human being’s part.
A second important point “Bucky” Fuller makes is that while humankind has been extremely successful as a species growing from about 1.5 billion in 1900 to more than 7 billion now, and expected to reach 9-10 billion by mid-century, we still have not evolved an accounting system for monitoring the impact of our activities. He bemoaned our failure to measure scientifically or in many cases even recognize the impact of our industrial activities because these events often occur outside the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum our senses can perceive. Most of the activity of the universe is unseen by humans but well known to be questionable by corporations and governments. Ninety-seven percent of companies fail to provide data on key sustainability indicators
Earth Accounting is the effort of a dedicated but as yet small group to create this real world activity accounting system and present it to people in a form useful to consumers who are responsible for 70 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This presentation will allow consumers to use their purchasing power to promote sustainable industrial development. When refined it can also allow each consumer to monitor his “footprint,” empowering him to reduce his environmental impact. Who knows, perhaps one day humanity may even recognize that it is more important to tax a person’s planetary impact than his monetary income? Getting accurate and validated information on products, goods and services will help consumer awareness and then consumption. The result will be a dramatic result and change lowering greenhouse gases, carbon emissions and pollution.
For example, recently, in the December 2104 issue of Nutrition Action Letter, Executive Director Michael F. Jackson wrote a memo article titled “Good Luck” which noted five issues the FDA has authority to resolve but is unlikely to do so quickly: 1) setting regulations for food borne illness, 2) reducing antibiotic use in livestock; 3) banning partially hydrogenated oil; 4) setting standards for sodium intake; and 5) compelling food chains to note the calories of their menu items.
After each Jackson notes the lack of progress concluding that if consumers feel they will be protected—“Good Luck.” The public overwhelmingly wants this information, but government appears to be impotent to compel industry to provide it to us. Or “influenced” by companies to “not care.” With this history about something as important as the food we eat, one can imagine how long it will take for government to show appropriate concern about the impact of industrial processes on our Spaceship Earth!
Everyone should recognize these sad facts, which is another reason for the creation of the consumer-empowering app, EarthTouch being developed by Earth Accounting. We consumers must create the tools we need and history indicates neither industry nor government is likely to do so. We welcome your participation in this truly market driven approach to sustainability. For more information click here.
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By Peter Giger
The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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