Bella Gaia

A unforgettable video by director and composer, Kenji Williams, compiling views from NASA and other sources of the Bella Gaia, the beautiful Earth.


The video was supported by NASA, the Baum Foundation, the Foundation for Global Community, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and is a production of Remedy Arts, LLC.

Please share this wonderful and unique view of the Earth and its environment.

Paradigm Shift: Oil Companies Required to Cut C02 Emissions by Court and Shareholders

Royal Dutch Shell Headquarters

A judge has ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut their emissions by 2030 to reduce planet warming carbon emissions by 45% from the 2019 level.  On the same day, shareholders at Exxon and Chevron backed more emission cuts, as well, in some cases, against the wishes of their C-Suite executives. 

"The court orders Royal Dutch Shell, by means of its corporate policy, to reduce its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 with respect to the level of 2019 for the Shell group and the suppliers and customers of the group," Judge Larisa Alwin

On the same day, Exxon and Chevron faced shareholder rebellions over emissions after Exxon failed to stop a coup by a climate-activist hedge fund, Engine 1, that successfully took over two seats on its board. Just prior to Exxon's course change, a majority of Chevron's shareholders (61%) voted for a measure from a Dutch activist group, Follow This, to cut their emissions, going against the wishes of their C-Suite. 

"US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron have suffered shareholder rebellions from climate activists and disgruntled institutional investors over their failure to set a strategy for a low-carbon future [...] The activist win against Chevron was the third successful insurrection coordinated by Follow This against the boards of US oil companies after it forced through votes to cut emissions at ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 earlier this month." Jillian Ambrose at The Guardian

Climate activist, Bill McKibben, watching the announcements in succession, remarked on Twitter: "Wow, wow, wow," and then followed with this tweet summarizing the day's events:

 

While this does not guarantee the IPCC target for reductions in emissions by 2030 will be met, it does mark a significant change in legal and shareholder requirements toward corporate social responsibility in the industry that is the cause of major emissions that contribute to climate change. 

  

Assessing "Dangerous Climate Change": Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature

This paper, by an international team of scientists, points out the clear and present danger that today's children may be handed a deteriorating climate with consequences out of their control. 

Dr. James Hansen

by James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Frank Ackerman, David J. Beerling, Paul J. Hearty, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Shi-Ling Hsu, Camille Parmesan, Johan Rockstrom, Eelco J. Rohling, Jeffrey Sachs, Pete Smith, Konrad Steffen, Lise Van Susteren, Karina von Schuckmann, James C. Zachos

We conclude that the widely accepted target of limiting human-made global climate warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level is too high and would subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel use must be reduced rapidly to avoid irreversible consequences such as sea level rise large enough to inundate most coastal cities and extermination of many of today's species. Unabated global warming would also worsen climate extremes. In association with summer high pressure systems, warming causes stronger summer heat waves, more intense droughts, and wildfires that burn hotter. Yet because warming causes the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which is the fuel that drives thunderstorms, tornadoes and tropical storms, it also leads to the possibility of stronger storms as well as heavier rainfall and floods. Observational data reveal that some climate extremes are already increasing in response to warming of several tenths of a degree in recent decades; these extremes would likely be much enhanced with warming of 2°C or more.

We use evidence from Earth's climate history and measurements of Earth's present energy imbalance as our principal tools for inferring climate sensitivity and the safe level of global warming. The inferred warming limit leads to a limit on cumulative fossil fuel emissions.

It is assessed that humanity must aim to keep global temperature close to the range occurring in the past 10,000 years, the Holocene epoch, a time of relatively stable climate and stable sea level during which civilization developed.

Read more here →

10/10/10 Global Work Party

STARTING NOW, people at 7347 events in 188 countries are getting to work on the climate crisis.

The invitation—10/10/10 - from Bill McKibben and 350.org:

Dear World,

It’s been a tough year: in North America, oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico; in Asia some of the highest temperatures ever recorded; in the Arctic, the fastest melting of sea ice ever seen; in Latin America, record rainfalls washing away whole mountainsides.

So we’re having a party.

Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar. That’s the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.

We’re calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both 'work' and 'party'. In Auckland, New Zealand, they’re having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they’re putting up solar panels on the President’s office. In Kampala, Uganda, they're going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they’re installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic. Continued...

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Slideshow: link

Don't Fly, Levitate: German Maglev as a Travel Alternative in the U.S.

by Bonnie J. Gordon

Cross-posted on IBS

Short-haul flights, usually defined as flights of 500 miles or less, are the wallowing pigs of carbon emissions from transportation. Pretty much the only worse alternative over that distance is 250 Hummer drivers going it solo. Unfortunately for most Americans, unlike the Europeans and Japanese, there is no congenial third way to travel - like, for instance, high-speed rail.

But the silver lining is that we Americans don't have to replace an aging steel wheel infrastructure like the rest of the developed world does. We can just build a new network for the most advanced surface transportation technology available: magnetic levitation rail, or "maglev" for short.

Maglev has come a long way since it debuted for most average Americans at Disney World's Tomorrowland. There are several U.S. maglev projects in the advanced planning stages, almost all of them based on a German system called the Transrapid (www.transrapid.de).

Taking the Transrapid from Atlanta to Orlando would be just as fast as flying, if you include getting out to the airport and check-in time. And traveling via maglev would produce a fraction of the carbon dioxide emissions.

"Rail has gone as far as it can go," says Phyllis Wilkins, chairperson of the U.S. Maglev Coalition and executive director of Maglev Maryland. "If you want to take it to the next level, you have to go to maglev."

Wilkins has been working on the Baltimore-Washington Maglev Project (www.bwmaglev.com) for more than 15 years. The Transrapid-technology project would connect downtown Baltimore with the District of Columbia, stopping at Baltimore Washington International Airport on the way. Ideally, the BW Maglev line would eventually become part of an expanded route stretching from Boston to Charlotte, stimulating the creation of more efficient travel and housing patterns, making tourism more convenient and affordable, and chopping a few heads off the air and highway pollution hydra in our country's most densely-populated region.

That would be nice. Meanwhile the BW Maglev project has been waiting for the funding to complete its final environmental impact statement for three years, says Wilkins. In 2005 Congress appropriated $90 million for seven maglev pilot projects nationwide, but because of technical problems with the bill the money was never delivered. The bill was rewritten, and finally passed a few weeks ago. Wilkins says that once the funding arrives, the planning phase for the BW project can be wrapped up in about six months.

"Europe and Japan have a well-developed transportation infrastructure because they made the decision generations ago not to be dependent on foreign energy," she adds, "while Americans are only now realizing that we have to link transportation issues and environmental issues. All of us in transportation are becoming optimistic that we are finally being heard."

But ears start closing when officials hear the budget estimates associated with creating a national maglev infrastructure from the ground up. The Baltimore-Washington maglev project alone will require an investment of $3.7 billion in 2002 dollars - and that's for one of the shortest legs of the envisioned Northeast Corridor route.

The Transrapid has all but ground to a halt in Germany itself, where massive political pressure stirred up by the Green party in Munich recently killed plans to build a commercial line connecting the Bavarian capital's central railway station with the city's airport.

Corporate Plea for Climate Legislation Ignored

by Janet Ritz

Cross-posted on The Huffington Post, Reuters

Eleven corporations have issued an open letter to the Senate urging the passage of the Climate Security Act (S. 3036), stating that it "represents a real effort to establish the regulatory framework that we need."

The June 2nd plea by: Allianz of America; Catalyst Paper Corporation; FPL Group, Inc.; JohnsonDiversey, Inc.; Johnson & Johnson; Levi Strauss & Co.; National Grid, Nike, Inc; Novo Nordisk; Tetra Pak; and Xanterra Parks & Resort, working in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund, fell on deaf ears, as Senate Democrats fell short of the 60 votes required to overcome a Republican filibuster.

President George W. Bush has consistently opposed any economy-wide cap-and-trade plan and had vowed to veto this bill if Congress approved it.

Senate leaders opposed to the bill used a variety of tactics during weeklong debate on the Senate floor, including a rare maneuver by Republicans that forced clerks to read an updated version of the 491-page bill aloud. That took 10 hours.

The bill sought to require business to reduce emissions by 19 percent before 2020 escalating to a ~70 percent reduction around 2050 along with a carbon trading scheme to help with transition and costs.

The gamesmanship involved with this bill has been overt. Specifically with actions taken by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), labeled as "stonewalling" by Senator Reid, after McConnell forced a complete reading of the ~500 page bill on the senate floor, a process that required over eight hours to complete.

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