Quaker-ex and Sustainability

I am a lapsed quaker, lapsed meditator, lapsed marathon runner, but I still think and feel like one. Quakerism flourished in England at an apocalyptic time in late 1700s. We are face-planted now in the mother of all apocalypses: the Climate Emergency. I muse here what quakerism as a way of life and movement could contribute to transition through social disruption created by energy scarcity, social injustice and above all, climate emergency.

20150224

Climate news getting more disturbing

A friend passed on some of his fav blogs and websites monitoring climate news, eg the Arctic and methane, drought and desertification, severe weather events.
For instance, methane explosions in remote Siberia happening this winter, leading to concern about a crescendo of volcanic like activity in areas where there is significant oil and gas infrastructure, all set to be broken up and of course spilling hydrocarbons. https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/arctic-methane-monster-shows-growing-eruption-number-of-global-warming-induced-craters-now-estimated-at-20-30/

Should we bother to stay current on developments in the  polar regions, as laypersons at least? I find it tempting, like watching a catastrophic event unfolding before your eyes, mesmerizing. What will happen next? Will I die? Will we avoid the worst and count our blessings?

http://cci-reanalyzer.org/Forecasts/ is a site to see the WHOLE Earth's weather in one animatable view. Very cool; the sort of thing that makes me say thankyou for the internet. (except that Big Brother is also watching me and all I read/post too).

I post a weekly column at my farm site, www.old99farm.locallygrown.net to try and bring some of this important information to about 200 families, who are mostly not inclined to read it. No one thanks you for being the bearer of bad news. However some people will take steps to reduce their personal contributions to global climate weirding and also to make lifestyle choices that could make their future more livable. More power to them, so I keep doing the 'rubbing salt in the wound' perverse thing.

This week I said:
Furthermore, about 10 percent of the world’s food is produced by overpumping groundwater. In essence, we are using tomorrow’s water to meet today’s needs — a theft from the future likely to grow as droughts worsen and spread. [due to climate change, says National Geographic]
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/17/climate-change-poses-existential-water-risks/

Is there too much ‘apocalyptic climate news’ and is it counterproductive? Joe Romm at ClimateProgress has tackled that one several times. He says no, and shows why here: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/22/3617410/oscars-doomsday-climate-messages/, “The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive.” In fact there is not nearly enough information getting out to the public (that would be us_) for informed policy action.

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