
350.org
By Phil Aroneanu
Have you been wondering if you should join an Occupy Wall Street (OWS) event in your city?
In the last few weeks, OWS has grown from a small encampment in downtown New York City to a global movement, with thousands of occupations popping up everywhere from icy Fairbanks to sunny Tallahassee.
I’ve heard from hundreds of people in our network who are taking part in events. People in the 350 movement around the world are helping facilitate discussions, funding bicycle generators at encampments and making the connection between the crimes on Wall Street and the pollution in our atmosphere.
For those of you who haven’t yet visited or joined an occupation, I want to encourage you to join the 99 percent and support this growing movement. To help out, we've put together some resources, fact sheets, sign ideas and a list of occupations.
Click here to find an occupation near you.
You don’t necessarily need to camp out to help support this movement. You can also attend the daily general assemblies, take part in discussion groups, donate supplies or money, or put your unique artistic, media or culinary skills to work. If you’ve been with 350.org for a while, this open-source approach probably feels familiar. It's more like a potluck where everyone brings a dish than a dinner party with a single host.
Remember, all of these OWS events are being organized by a unique, crowd-led, consensus-based process. There will likely be some parts of your local occupation that you love, and other things you might want to change. There's no way to know exactly what each local event will look and feel like, so I’ve been encouraging everyone I know to approach each event with an open-mind and a good deal of flexibility.
Why should people who care about the climate join the OWS movement? Here’s one answer—for years, Wall Street has been occupying our atmosphere, backing the huge oil, gas and coal corporations that have polluted our air, water and communities with impunity. And time and again, these members of the 1 percent have blocked the clean energy and climate legislation that would benefit the other 99 percent of us.
Take the Keystone XL pipeline that 350.org has been working to stop. It’s a classic example of this cronyism at work. First, we found out that the pipeline company’s chief lobbyist was a former campaign manager for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Next, it turned out the consultants the State Department hired to conduct an environmental impact statement for the pipeline were recommended by the pipeline company itself. Is it any wonder they concluded Keystone XL would have no environmental impact? Now, we’re learning that the Koch Brothers are among those who stand to benefit most from the pipeline’s construction.
It’s time to take the pollution out of politics, and the OWS movement has opened a door to do just that. Now it's up to all of us to walk through it.
Whether you join an OWS event this week or join the big Keystone XL protest at the White House this Nov. 6, this is a unique time in the movement for change. Let's shape it together.
For more information, click here.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.
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Spring is coming. And soon, tree swallows will start building nests. But as the climate changes, the birds are nesting earlier in the spring.
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