Environmental Herisies

Thursday, March 5, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Patapsco Room of the Miller Library (directions)
This meeting has been cancelled due to bad weather

The Bain Center will be closed for the first week in March and possibly longer. So for at least the next meeting, we will meet at the Miller Library Branch. Please note that the library does not open until 10am. We will NOT meet if the Howard County School closes or is delayed due to bad weather, even if the library stays open.

Rather than just having an open session, I tried to find a topic that would be worthwhile for you to travel the extra distance. I think that this TED Talk by Stewart Brand will fit the bill. It ties together the themes of climate change and sustainability by reexamining controversial solutions from the perspective of an old environmentalist who gained wisdom through age, someone who we may identify with. The talk covers solutions to overpopulation, clean energy, food supply and catastrophic climate change. The solutions offered are squatter cities, nuclear energy, genetic crops and climate engineering. There should be plenty to talk about.

Because we will not be at the Bain, we will not show the video at the meeting. So please watch the video before you come. If you have to watch the video before you decide if you want to come, please watch the video now. I will be on travel and Norm will lead the meeting. It takes work to prepare to lead the discussion, so please let us know if you plan to attend as soon as possible.

Update: We have a quorum. We will have the meeting, weather permitting. Thank you for your early response.

Winter "Break"

Thursday, February 26, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Avalon Room of the Miller Library
This meeting has been cancelled due to bad weather

Because of the unusual circumstance, the meeting will be informal and will be open to any topic of interest. For starters, we can talk about the crazy weather or the Academy Awards which will be held this Sunday. We should also discuss what you want for future topics.

Water Management

Thursday, February 19, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)
This meeting will be rescheduled when the Bain Center reopens after the water damage is repaired

Tim will fill in for me while I am on travel. The meeting will continue the discussion on water, with the focus on water management. The dis cushion will be based on the book, The Big Thirst.

I found a video on water management on YouTube which can provide some background information. Note that this video will not be shown during the meeting.

Water, Water

Thursday, February 12, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

The theme for February will be Sustainability, addressing food and water shortages due to population growth and environmental damage. Sustainability is a problem even without climate change, and climate change will make matters far worse. Here is a TED Talk which calls this problem, The Other Inconvenient Truth.

For the next two meetings, we will focus on water. Tim will lead the discussion.

Can National Governments Fix Climate Change?

Thursday, January 29, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

We have seen how the capitalist model can create climate solutions, but it can also lead to increased inequality. Naomi Klein said that a climate solution based on capitalism cannot be trusted and called for a people's movement to force bold government action. But can government, particularly at the national level, really fix climate change?

When Obama took office in 2009, there was massive federal spending on clean energy as part of the stimulus bill. According to this 60 Minutes episode, thing did not work out as advertised.  But was this because government is inherently inept, or was it because the US federal government is broken? We may find the answer in this talk by Al Gore about China's energy policy.

-------------------------------- Update 1/31/15 ----------------------

1) Here is a link to Al Gore's website, 24 Hours of Reality, where you can find videos of the other 23 reasons for hope on Climate Change.

2) Here is a link to the video that was shown at the meeting about China's conventional nuclear power program.

3) Here is an article about China's research into the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor, TMSR. China is funding the research, but US scientists are participating. This may be the best hope yet that there is a solution to Climate Change.

Climate Change Activism

Thursday, January 22, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

In our last meeting, McKenzie Funk provided several disturbing examples of businesses that will profit from the misery of climate change, but he avoided making any conclusions. In our next meeting, we will hear from Naomi Klein, who concludes that capitalism is fundamentally incapable of solving climate change. She recasts climate change as yet another example of social inequality. Here is a quote from her book, This Changes Everything:

For a long time, environmentalist spoke of climate change as a great equalizer, the one issue that affected everyone, rich or poor. It was supposed to bring us together. Yet all signs are that it is doing precisely the opposite, stratifying us further into a society of haves and have-nots, divided between those whose wealth offers them a not insignificant measure of protection from ferocious weather, at least for now, and those left to the mercy of increasingly dysfunctional states.

Klein not only attacks capitalism, but also the billionaires and scientists who are proposing technical alternatives to stalled efforts to reduced carbon emissions. She rails against these "self-appoint saviors" in this 2014 pep-talk to other climate change activist.

As a bonus, here is a Naomi Klein 2010 TED Talk which places climate change in the broader context of risky behavior. The women in our discussion group will be please to discover who she blames.

-------------------------------- Update 1/22/15 ----------------------

Here are the links to the websites and videos shown during the meeting:

1) Virgin Earth Challenge, Richard Branson's $25M prize for a technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

2) Video on why Naomi Klein disagrees with James Hansen on nuclear power.

3) Video on Naomi Klein being interviewed by Bill Moyers

Surviving and Profiting from Climate Change

Thursday, January 15, 2015, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

We will discuss adaptation to climate change which is unavoidable. The first TED Talk covers how we have adapted after climate disasters, like storms and heat waves, to minimize the damage from future events. The second TED Talk covers how some enterprises are planning to profit from climate change (and I don't mean renewable energy).

-------------------------------- Update 1/15/15 ----------------------

Here is a link to the book that was mentioned in the second talk above, Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming. In this book, McKenzie Funk uncovers plans to profit from the misery of climate change. As with his talk is is quite disturbing and he proposes no solutions.