
EcoWatch
Voting with your dollar has never been easier.
"Have you ever wondered whether the money you spend ends up funding causes you oppose?" Thanks to the new Buycott app, you can organize your consumer spending to support causes you care about, and oppose those that you don't—all by using your smart phone.
The program encourages you to join campaigns organized around goals that you share and issues you care about, then commit to actively supporting the companies on your side of the issue, while avoiding those that oppose your position, according to the developer's website. Buycott offers a variety of contact data for companies and brands, so you can easily inform them of your decision to support or avoid their products.
Using the app, consumers can scan the barcode of any product and Buycott will show the ownership structure of that product, tracing it all the way back to its parent company with an interactive family tree diagram. It will then cross-check the product owners against the companies and brands included in the campaigns you've joined, in order to tell you if the scanned product conflicts with one of your campaign commitments.
For example, if you belong to the Demand GMO Labeling campaign on Buycott, when you scan the items in your grocery cart, it will tell you whether those products were made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.
Users can also create new campaigns through Buycott's website. Each campaign must have a goal and a list of companies that it aims to either support or avoid (buycott or boycott).
According to the website, while Buycott has a rich knowledge base of corporations and products, if you scan a barcode that the app doesn't recognize, it will seek information on what it is and who owns it. If it can't determine the owner of the product, it will ask you for help in identifying the product name, brand name and company name. Users will also be able to add contact and background information for existing companies and vote on the accuracy of information that's already been added. The most active users will have the ability contribute more types of data to the Buycott database.
Buycott was featured yesterday in an article on Forbes, explaining that the app is the work of Ivan Pardo, a 26-year-old freelance programmer based in Los Angeles, who spent the last 16 months developing Buycott.
“I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo in the article. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think its Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”
Buycott provides some timely and much-needed information to consumers who understand what it means to vote with their dollar.
The mobile application Buycott is now available to download onto iPhone, iPad and Android phones through iTunes and Google Play, respectively.
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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)
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