https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/27/joe-biden-climate-emergency-peter-kalmus
Excerpts: I’m terrified by what’s being done to our planet. …
I’ve dreaded this depth of Earth breakdown for almost two decades, and, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been trying to warn you. As hard as I could. Now it’s here. …
I only feel fury at those in power, and bottomless grief for all that I love. We are losing Earth on our watch. …
Fossil fuels are causing this damage. Therefore, the only way out of this heat nightmare is to end them. No amount of tree planting, recycling, carbon offsetting, or wishful carbon-capture thinking will ever change this. The longer we allow the fossil fuel industry to exist, the more irreversible damage to Earth the people who profit from it will continue to knowingly cause. …
I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists – and those who chose to stand with them – will, in the future, be considered criminals. …
Each minute the fossil fuel industry exists, each drilling permit, airplane flight, gallon of gas, fossil fuel ad, lobbyist’s email, takes us further into irreversible heat catastrophe, socially and physically. …
Using executive orders and federal agency rules, and without needing to involve this failure of a Congress, Biden could end new drilling leases on federal lands and waters, block new pipelines and effectively ban fracking. He could unleash a historic education program to counter fossil fuel industry disinformation, using the bully pulpit to build awareness and support. He could prohibit government financing of overseas fossil fuel infrastructure, end energy department fossil-fuel financing programs, ban new fossil-fuel vehicle sales by 2030, prosecute violations by fossil fuel polluters, commit to veto laws granting immunity to such criminals, and more. …
Declaring a climate emergency would unleash additional powers such as banning oil exports and further accelerating renewable energy buildout on a scale not seen since the mobilization for the second world war. It would send an unmistakable signal to investors still living in the past, to universities that have been shamefully slow to divest, to media outlets that have failed to connect the dots, to all the dangerously lagging institutions of our society. And it would be a desperately needed win for climate activists. …
Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Tragically, this opportunity has now almost certainly been squandered. …
The planet is desperate for policy that creates an equitable transition away from fossil fuels, and into climate emergency mode as a society.
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Flashback: Meet Peter Kalmus, the ‘dumpster diving’ NASA climate scientist who warns it’s ‘end of life on Earth as we know it’ & it’s ‘freaking out in my brain’– ProPublica profile of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab climate scientist Peter Kalmus: – “A climate scientist spent years trying to get people to pay attention to the disaster ahead. His wife is exhausted. His older son thinks there’s no future. And nobody but him will use the outdoor toilet he built to shrink his carbon footprint.” …
Peter had been pleading, begging for people to pay attention to the global emergency. “Is this my personal hell?” he tweeted this past fall. “That I have to spend my entire life desperately trying to convince everyone NOT TO DESTROY THE FUCKING EARTH?”
Jane Pauley: “Searing heat, massive wildfires, catastrophic flooding. Unequivocal evidence the United Nations says that climate change is real and that human activity is its primary cause. So how bad can it get?” Pauley asked. “According to some scientists, the possibility of worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction isn’t out of the question. It’s a harsh warning to say the least.”
Jane Pauley features NASA scientist Peter Kalmus who declares “I do want people freaking out.” on climate.
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab climate scientist Peter Kalmus: “Here’s why race justice and climate justice are one & the same: The oppressive extractive plutocracies that colonize and kill black bodies and colonize and kill our planet are one and the same.”
Business Insider:Two climate scientists were kicked out of a major science conference in Chicago on Thursday. NASA’s Peter Kalmus and Rose Abramoff went onstage to urge other researchers to take climate action. They told Insider the American Geophysical Union told them they’d be arrested if they returned. …
NASA’s Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, shouted during his onstage disruption: “Our science is showing that the planet is dying. It’s terrifying. Everything is at risk. As scientists, we have tremendous leverage, but we need to use it. We can wake everybody up.”
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2022: UK Independent: Nasa climate scientist Peter Kalmus breaks down in tears at protest after chaining himself to doors of JPMorgan Chase – Peter Kalmus and others were later arrested after blocking the entrace to a JP Morgan-Chase building in LA – His protest in LA involved scientists chaining themselves to the doors of a JPMorgan Chase building…“We’re going to lose everything,” Kalmus said in a video of the moment. “And we’re not joking, we’re not lying, we’re not exaggerating.” Dr Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, was participating in a protest organized by Scientist Rebellion as part of a global day of action by scientists around the world. His protest in LA involved scientists chaining themselves to the doors of a JPMorgan Chase building.
