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The Green New Deal aims to get us there—and remake the country in the process. It promises to give every American a job in that new economy: installing solar panels, retrofitting coastal  infrastructure, manufacturing electric vehicles. In the 1960s, the U.S. pointed the full power of its military-technological industry at going to the moon. Ocasio-Cortez wants to do the same thing, except to save the planet.

Source: Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Is a Winning Climate Strategy – The Atlantic

This is the most exciting package of climate change policy to come from the Democrats in a long time. Great article that dives into the messaging problems that have existed in the past regarding climate change policy. I don’t know that it actually has a chance to be passed, but the clock is ticking to 2030…

THE BOLD MORAL leadership of newly elected members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has me feeling more optimistic about our collective chances of averting climate breakdown than I have in years.

Source: Video: Naomi Klein Interviews Bernie Sanders on Climate Change

Worthwhile video – we have 12 years…

The Insect Apocalypse

When his parents took him driving, he remembered, the car’s windshield was frequently so smeared with insect carcasses that you almost couldn’t see through it. But all that seemed distant now. He couldn’t recall the last time he needed to wash bugs from his windshield.

nyti.ms/2DMT70v

Great post here on the topic of changes you can make in your own lives.

A lot of people ask me how they can live more sustainably, and help combat global environmental issues like climate change in their own lives. Here’s my advice.

Knowing that people are very busy, and most don’t really want long, complicated lists of things to do, here are my suggestions…

Source: So, What Can I Do?

(No hard frost yet.)

We watched Before the Flood on friday night. Leonardo Di Caprio’s new movie on climate change. It contains some powerful imagery of the effects of climate change that are happening right now. To see the tar sands in alberta or a mountaintop removal in west virgina is staggering.

How can I take action? I think I’ve taken many of the easy (lightbulbs) and privileged (efficient cars) routes. I offset all of our airplane travel through Nature Conservancy. So what’s next?

Beef.

Beef clearly has a bigger impact on the environment than other forms of protein, and the movie presents a number of compelling examples such as the equivalency of eating a 1/2lb. burger vs. driving your prius 50 miles.

Here is one news article from a couple of years ago: Giving up beef will reduce carbon footprint more than cars

Beef’s environmental impact dwarfs that of other meat including chicken and pork, new research reveals, with one expert saying that eating less red meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars.

So, here we go…

Reducing humanity’s carbon pollution will certainly be logistically difficult, but its roots are essentially blameless – by the time climate change was a problem, nations had built their economies on cheap fossil fuel – and conceptually simple: pollute less. It’s comforting to think that, if humanity can fix Earth’s climate, nature’s problems will be also be solved.

But that’s not the case.

Source: Why we need to stop thinking so much about climate c…

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was currently digging through Countdown by Alan Weisman. It should be abundantly clear that there is so much more to protecting the earth and environment than climate change alone.

The author nails it in this final quote, we have trouble debating even the most conceptually simple problems, let alone beginning to tackle the reduction of our footprint on complex ecosystems.

This is a great list of ideas for reducing your carbon footprint from the New York Times:

Global climate: it’s complicated. Any long-term solution will require profound changes in how we generate energy. At the same time, there are everyday things that you can do to reduce your personal contribution to a warming planet. Here are seven simple guidelines on how your choices today affect the climate tomorrow.