The young climate activist Greta Thunberg says she will donate all of the $1.14 million she won this week for the Gulbenkian Prize to various causes, including to a group fighting coronavirus in the Amazon. According to CNN, "she'll donate $114,000 to SOS Amazônia, an environmental organization working to protect the rainforest that also works to fight the pandemic in indigenous territories of the Amazon through access to basic hygiene, food and health equipment."
I believe that the connection between the pandemic and global climate change may hold the key for overcoming the immediate crisis while we also formulate a coordinated strategy to address the larger existential threat facing us as a species.
One element of that strategy clearly will be converting our energy production system to green, sustainable technologies like wind and solar and away from diminishing fossil fuel reserves like oil and coal. Frankly, that is already long overdue. It will lead to new jobs that are needed given the severe economic damage wreaked by Covid-19.
In the process, as highlighted by Thunberg's Amazon gift, we urgently need to save the indigenous tribes that are being even harder hit by the new virus than the rest of us. Just as the common cold and the flu have wiped out native people in the past, the same tragedy is re-occurring in our time.
The good news is that this time we have a chance to get things right.
When we lose indigenous people, we lose centuries of knowledge about how to preserve critical parts of the ecosystem, such as the Amazon. Unless that vast rainforest is healthy, the planet will not be. So there is no choice in this matter.
The same goes for preserving and repairing the health of the oceans, including our coral reefs. We can't sustain life without them.
In this way, the environmental movement that started emerging in the 1960s in the U.S. with books by Rachael Carson, John Storer ("The Web of Life"), Wendell Berry, Anne Morrow Lindbergh ("Gift From the Sea") and others, has been providing warnings for decades that all too often have gone unheeded.
Now is the time for renewed action, as young leaders like Thunberg understand. And there are signs that big corporations are listening. Apple announced that its devices will be carbon-neutral by 2030. The company promised that “every Apple device sold will have net-zero climate impact.”
As to how it would accomplish this goal, Apple said it "aimed to reduce emissions by 75 percent in its manufacturing chain, including by recycling more of the components that go into each device and nudging its suppliers to use renewable energy. As for the remaining 25 percent of emissions, the company said it planned to balance them by funding reforestation projects. The company also said it planned to improve energy efficiency in its operations." (New York Times)
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are other big tech companies also announcing plans recently to cut their carbon footprints and engage in the battle for climate change. All of this is cause for hope, as are the reasons behind the changes.
It's just good business to be able to say they are eco-friendly, because that is the way they will be able to sell their products to the new generations that are gradually taking power.
Meanwhile, the old generation that is actually in power at the moment is splitting at the seams. Trump finally called on people to wear masks, roughly 140,000 deaths too late. Better late than never? Maybe.
But as his poll numbers tank, and Biden assumes a double-digit lead among registered voters, Trump's campaign is releasing dark ads depicting Democratic-run cities as dystopian nightmares. As a longtime resident of one of those cities, the one that has produced political leaders like Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown, I can attest that it hardly a nightmarish place to live.
But Trump's campaign is desperate. He has failed to protect the country from Covid-19 and the economy is in ruins. Unemployment is at historic highs and there is no end in sight for the shrunken lifestyles Americans are being forced to endure.
It would be unfair to blame Trump for the virus; he didn't create it, but his failure has been to not have been able to limit its impacts, as leaders in many other countries have done. If he loses in November, that failure will have done him in.
***
Tomorrow marks the beginning of baseball season. America's pastime is returning, allegedly, for an attenuated season -- 60 games rather than the customary 162. Not to worry, for sports fans this represents a bonanza. We are checking our cable packages to make sure we can watch as many games as possible, since the sport has devolved into a made-for-TV only mode.
The fabulous "Hunger Games" books and movies presented a future world where everything revolved around a television show. It's hard to resist the impression that what we like to call "real life" is following suit, and not just with baseball.
I've long considered the Hunger Games to be a metaphor for global climate change. After all, the young are pitted against each other in a fight to the death in a world where limited resources mean only the strongest (or richest) will survive.
The young competitors need sponsors to have any chance of winning. Think Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon selling their green products if you will indulge my drift.
If all of this computes, there is then one huge question hanging over us all. Where is our Katniss Everdeen?
Greta Thunberg?
-30-
As to how it would accomplish this goal, Apple said it "aimed to reduce emissions by 75 percent in its manufacturing chain, including by recycling more of the components that go into each device and nudging its suppliers to use renewable energy. As for the remaining 25 percent of emissions, the company said it planned to balance them by funding reforestation projects. The company also said it planned to improve energy efficiency in its operations." (New York Times)
Amazon, Microsoft and Google are other big tech companies also announcing plans recently to cut their carbon footprints and engage in the battle for climate change. All of this is cause for hope, as are the reasons behind the changes.
It's just good business to be able to say they are eco-friendly, because that is the way they will be able to sell their products to the new generations that are gradually taking power.
Meanwhile, the old generation that is actually in power at the moment is splitting at the seams. Trump finally called on people to wear masks, roughly 140,000 deaths too late. Better late than never? Maybe.
But as his poll numbers tank, and Biden assumes a double-digit lead among registered voters, Trump's campaign is releasing dark ads depicting Democratic-run cities as dystopian nightmares. As a longtime resident of one of those cities, the one that has produced political leaders like Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown, I can attest that it hardly a nightmarish place to live.
But Trump's campaign is desperate. He has failed to protect the country from Covid-19 and the economy is in ruins. Unemployment is at historic highs and there is no end in sight for the shrunken lifestyles Americans are being forced to endure.
It would be unfair to blame Trump for the virus; he didn't create it, but his failure has been to not have been able to limit its impacts, as leaders in many other countries have done. If he loses in November, that failure will have done him in.
***
Tomorrow marks the beginning of baseball season. America's pastime is returning, allegedly, for an attenuated season -- 60 games rather than the customary 162. Not to worry, for sports fans this represents a bonanza. We are checking our cable packages to make sure we can watch as many games as possible, since the sport has devolved into a made-for-TV only mode.
The fabulous "Hunger Games" books and movies presented a future world where everything revolved around a television show. It's hard to resist the impression that what we like to call "real life" is following suit, and not just with baseball.
I've long considered the Hunger Games to be a metaphor for global climate change. After all, the young are pitted against each other in a fight to the death in a world where limited resources mean only the strongest (or richest) will survive.
The young competitors need sponsors to have any chance of winning. Think Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon selling their green products if you will indulge my drift.
If all of this computes, there is then one huge question hanging over us all. Where is our Katniss Everdeen?
Greta Thunberg?
-30-
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