The Zika virus foreshadows our dystopian climate futureMcKibben notes, "Eventually, of course, the disease will reach these shores – at least 10 Americans have come back from overseas with the infection, and one microcephalic baby has already been born in Hawaii to a mother exposed in Brazil early in her pregnancy." We'll likely survive the invasion, since our resources are so great, but many of the poor will not, since most people with the infection have no symptoms. (Watch the video at the link for more.)
The mosquito-borne disease shows that pushing the limits of the planet’s ecology has become dangerous in novel ways
I’ve spent much of my life chronicling the ongoing tragedies stemming from global warming: the floods and droughts and storms, the failed harvests and forced migrations. But no single item on the list seems any more horrible than the emerging news from South America about the newly prominent Zika disease.
Spread by mosquitoes whose range inexorably expands as the climate warms, Zika causes mild flu-like symptoms. But pregnant women bitten by the wrong mosquito are liable to give birth to babies with shrunken heads. Brazil last year recorded 4,000 cases of this “microcephaly”. As of today, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant....
support the presidential candidate they believe is best-suited to stop the Bakken Pipeline and lead a full-employment, WWII-scale mobilization to rapidly retire all fossil fuel infrastructure, drive the U.S. economy to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, and restore a safe climate for humanity.Care to join them? Care to support them? If you're in Iowa already (caucusing for Bernie Sanders, the most climate-friendly candidate in the field, I hope), you can attend and hear former Senator Tom Harkin and Keystone hero Jane Kleeb speak, and party with others like you. The press release is below.
MEDIA ADVISORYMore here.
11:30 a.m. CDT, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016
Contact:
Ed Fallon at (515) 238-6404 or FallonForum@gmail.com
Ezra Silk at (860) 916-8964 or Ezra@TheClimateMobilization.org
Iowans to hold Climate Emergency Caucus to push presidential contenders toward WWII-scale climate mobilization
Former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and “Keystone Killer” Jane Kleeb to Speak
DES MOINES — Hundreds of Iowans will stage a model caucus Friday, Jan. 29 to support the presidential candidate they believe is best-suited to stop the Bakken Pipeline and lead a full-employment, WWII-scale mobilization to rapidly retire all fossil fuel infrastructure, drive the U.S. economy to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, and restore a safe climate for humanity.
The caucus will take place from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Central Campus at 1800 Grand Avenue in Des Moines. Speakers will include Tom Harkin, a U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015, and Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska activist who fired up the national effort to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline and was subsequently dubbed the “Keystone Killer” by Rolling Stone, will speak. The caucus will be hosted by Ed Fallon, the Iowa progressive talk-show host and former state lawmaker who hosted the 2011 Occupy Des Moines People’s Caucus that aired on C-SPAN and received national media attention.
With representatives from all of the Democratic campaigns scheduled to appear, the Climate Emergency Caucus is set to be the strongest intervention into presidential politics yet made by America’s nascent “Climate Emergency Movement,” which calls for WWII-scale emergency action to save civilization from catastrophic climate change and ecological decline. The model caucus has been organized by the national grassroots group The Climate Mobilization, in conjunction with a growing list of sponsors, including Citizens’ Climate Lobby Des Moines, Iowa 350.org, Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Sierra Club’s Iowa chapter.
Following speeches from Fallon, Kleeb, and the leaders of The Climate Mobilization, model caucus-goers will suggest climate and pipeline planks for their respective political party’s platforms and discuss the presidential candidates’ positions on the Bakken pipeline and climate change. Finally, they will break into preference groups to support the presidential candidate they believe can best lead America through the growing climate emergency. ...
Fallon and the growing climate emergency movement expect the caucus will make clear to the presidential candidates and the American public that the time for “carbon gradualism” has expired and the need for emergency action to save civilization has arrived.