Green-notebooks - Untitled

I'm kinda meh about roof gardens/ grass roofs bc they can accumulate a lot of weight and collapse/ cause leaks

But living walls? Mighty sexy

They provide natural insulation, which not only keeps the heat in during cold days, but keeps the heat out during hot ones. It's better planned and maintained than vines (depending on the plant ofc).

Flooding in urban areas can be reduced since the roots and the growing medium will hold in moisture. Air can be purified, and heat can be reduced because of evaporation.

I just love living walls

'Deep Democracy' — A Cure For Climate Change And Economic Inequality?

October 21, 2017, Marin Country, CA.—Why has society not been able to solve the climate crisis? How can the crisis be an opportunity to reduce econ...

McGhee attributed the nation’s failure to solve climate change to those who have been in power for the past 40 years and used a culture of racism to foster national divisions along racial, religious, economic, and gender lines.

That fact that a full-blown climate crisis has been allowed to develop, she said, “in full view for over a generation, is as clear a sign as any that we do not have a functioning democracy where the public interest can prevail.”

“Only in a broken democracy,” McGhee declared, “can big fossil fuel companies be allowed to put their next quarter’s profits ahead of the next generation’s existence.”

“Capitalism is writing the rules for democracy,” she stated, “and not the other way around.” According to McGhee, “Climate change is the result of social, economic, and political inequality.”

إنسانية 🕊️

‏نزعت الخطاف من فم احد القروش وعند مشاهدة القروش الاخرى لذلك صارت القروش تأتي لنفس المكان لنزع الخطاف من فمها علما ان هذه القروش لا تحب ان يلمسها احد.

هذا في البهاما والغواصة ،خلال الـ 15 سنة الماضية ، أزالت 250 خطاف.

Rising Seas Are Going to Drown Way More Cities Than We’d Thought: Study

In a low-warming scenario, we expected rising tides to cover areas currently occupied by 37 million people. The real number is closer to 150 million.

But none of the challenges posed by our warming climate has loomed larger in the popular imagination than sea-level rise. With global populations and wealth heavily concentrated in low-lying coastal cities, humanity has been preoccupied by the prospect of the oceans reclaiming the high points of our civilization. And for good reason: The best available models suggest that 37 million people currently live in places that will be below high tide by 2050 — in an optimistic low-carbon-emissions scenario.

Or rather, that’s what such models suggested before this week. On Tuesday, a new study revealed that those alarming statistics — which had gotten so many of us all worked up about our favorite cities’ impending doom — were wildly inaccurate.

The actual impacts of sea-level rise are going to be much, much worse.

Listen, folks, few understand the enormity of what is happening, nor how fast it’s occurring, and, look, I don’t count myself among those few. 

The rest of us do not realize the catastrophe that is happening right now. 

Maybe that’s not fair to say: the people of California probably understand all too well. Even if their home is not on fire, certainly they see the hellish red glow in the sky and cannot avoid the acrid smell of wildfire smoke.

For sure, the indigenous folk who subsist on whale meat understand the crisis, since the bowheads they hunt have not appeared. None of them. They are way out to sea, trying to avoid the warming oceans and underwater heat waves. 

The people of Key West, who have endured a “king tide” flooding their city streets for 60+ days straight, probably think there’s a big problem. Some of them, no doubt, are hanging on to the foolish belief that this tide is going to subside – it’s not – it’s rapid sea level rise. 

It’s not our fault though, that we do not know … did not know, because, everything we have been told, the stuff that has made it out of the media in the past decade or so, has all been based on these same “optimistic low-carbon-emissions scenarios.”

This is not the world we live in. We live in the high-emission catastrophic scenario. We were shown these, when we were shown anything at all, but we were told these catastrophic emission scenarios would never, ever – couldn’t possibly – ever be so. 

Yeah, well, we were wrong about.

Cleaning the oceans one step at a time

Two Australians created this container that collects plastic, paper, oil, fuel and detergent floating in the ocean. They want to implement it the middle of next year to clean up the sea worldwide. It seems a great idea. The only “but” as always is money, so they are raising funds to get to their goal. You can see their project and donations here.

for all of you guys getting anxious about the environment and pollution

y’all deserve to hear the good news too, and yes i fact checked these.

7 miles of habitat for bees will be planted in london

the biggest coal plant in north america has been converted to solar panels

roads in edinburgh will close once a month to help pollution

maine has banned styrofoam

new york city and los angeles have both made “green new deals”

The london marathon replaced 200,000 single use water bottles with seaweed water pods

the bees in notre dame survived the fire, and the roof could possibly built in a more eco-friendly way.

the population of flightless kakapos (a cool bird) is rising

the carbon emissions in the uk are the lowest they’ve been since 1998

Another large bee habitat (.5 mil acres) has been created

there is a robot that delivers young coral to help repopulate the great barrier reef

portugal plans to stop using plastic on fruit, vegetables, and bread by 2020

106 new species of bees have been discovered in australia since 2010

a group of Sikhs plan to plant 1,000,000 trees as a gift to the earth

disney has made a mickey-shaped solar farm

Morgan freeman turned a 124 acre ranch in mississippi to a bee habitat

China plans on making a “forest city” to help clean up their air

An increasing amount of countries and states are beginning to ban single use plastics.

A couple replanted a whole forest in brazil (2.7 mil trees) in 20 years, and the animals have come back to live there

The hole in the ozone layer is repairing itself more each year

China plans on spending 360 billion dollars to improve renewable energy and has scrapped plans for coal powered plants that were going to be built.

A national park has been built in the amazon (3.3 mil acres in peru) to preserve the rainforest

Ireland and the uk have declared a climate emergency

The guy who played aquaman (jason momoa) has spent 31,000 dollars to help clean up plastic

South korea is now recycling 95% of food waste

There is a cleanup campaign being planned for mt. everest

Puerto rico wants to use all renewable energy by 2050 and is setting official goals for that

Some schools have special water bottle fill-up stations that encourage you to use refill and reuse plastic bottles rather than throwing them out after one use, these are becoming more common.

9 endangered species are thought to make a comeback this year

20 countries in africa are planning to make a “green wall” of trees and plants that will span the width of africa to stop desertification

recently, a lot of volunteers and organizations are planting a ton of trees.

Awareness about the environment and climate change is growing super fast right now among people and countries, which will only help us

Most pollution is caused by like 100 companies, but a few of those (like pepsi) are trying to cut down on that.

if this stuff keeps happening things will get even better, and the only thing stopping us really are those big companies who don’t want to pay the money to switch to more eco-friendly energy sources. i know the media tends to cause fear and stress about this stuff for a lot of people, but there really is hope.

easy things we can do: 

Recycle 

Plant gardens in your yard for bees if you can

Participate in community volunteer things that plant trees and gardens

Theres this search engine called ecosia that plants a tree for every 45 searches you make, it has almost 2 mil users. 

Pick up trash if you see it when you’re at the beach or in nature

If you have a fair amount of money, consider donating some to trustworthy environmental organizations

Start using a reusable water bottle (like those ones at target) rather than relying on single use plastic ones.

Cut the plastic rings on plastic milk bottles. You know, the little spiky plastic ring near the cap. Birds get those things stuck around their neck and die, so cut them so that they can’t get stuck on a neck.

If you can afford it, get some of those reusable grocery bags and sue those. most grocery stores have them, and it saves a lot of waste.

But seriously, when we got our property, it was all just…grass. A sterile grass moonscape, like a billion other yards. With two big old maple trees. Just grass and maples, that was it. 

But then I got my grubby little paws on it, and I immediately stopped fertilizing, spraying, and bagging up grass clippings and leaves. I ripped up sod and put in flowers and vegetables. I put down nice thick blankets of mulch around the flowers and vegetables. 

When I first was sweating my way through stripping sod, I saw a grand total of 1 worm and 0 ladybugs. The ground was compacted into something that would bend shovel blades. 

Now, six years later, I can’t dig a planting hole without turning up fourteen earthworms, and there are so many ladybugs here. Not the invasive asian lady beetles; native ladybugs. They winter over in the mulch and in the brush pile. I see thousands of them. 

The soil is soft and rich. There are birds that come to eat, and bees of many sorts.

Like this is something that you, yourself, can absolutely change. This is something that you, personally, can make a difference in.

Honestly if your response to "I dont have many skills that would be useful in a post-capitalist society" is "so I guess I'll just be pursuing my intellectual hobbies as my contribution to my community" instead of "so I guess I'll be doing dishes in the cafeteria/janitorial work/manual labor" you should really reconsider how you come at the very concept of work and society as a leftist. Is socialism no longer appealing if you have to do the work you previously took for granted? Is the liberation of the proletariat not worth it if you have to contribute something besides your dream job in academia or leading support groups? Are you really "too good" for "that type" of work, even if it is for a world where no one starves?

we will still have hobbies/run d&d/learn other languages under socialism - in fact, we would likely have far more time to pursue them than under capitalism - but when we think of our future labor, we ought to consider the "menial" tasks that keep society running; loading boxes onto trucks, cooking in a factory kitchen, packaging medical supplies for distribution, building new homes as a worker and not an architect. these jobs will never disappear, and to assume that someone else will do them while you lead workshops or go to school to become a trained professional is to announce your continuing loyalty to petite bourgeois ethics. The dream of socialism is not a fantasy where you continue to do the exact same thing you want to do under capitalism, but now with a clear conscience about it. It's to build a better world as one global movement, to lift up the most oppressed and downtrodden from the muck; a task which requires, above all else, heavy and thankless work that we must be prepared and happy to undertake if we ever hope to succeed.

I really want an environmental revolution to happen soon. Gardens everywhere, herbal wisdom flourishing, intelligent environmental policies, aggressive fighting for plants, straying away from reliance on shady food industries and growing our own to help our own and nurture our own, we see everything, how it’s made and who it goes to cause it’s ours typa shit. I really want this.

Direct air carbon capture is the most egregious bullshit green capitalism has tried to come up with and the fact that anyone who's taken a middle school science class falls for it is astonishing to me

Like, let's just imagine we can build magic carbon capture machines that are made of children's wishes and run on pixie dust and are 100% efficient. It pulls off the scheme carbon capture companies are going after - taking carbon out of the air and turning it into fuel, which is then burned, releasing the carbon back into the air. Even this impossible version of the technology is, at best, carbon neutral

But in the real world, carbon capture needs to use materials, energy, and infrastructure that actually exists, which means that it will always, unavoidably be carbon positive. Unless it breaks the laws of thermodynamics, it can literally never be a solution to the problem

And no matter what kinds of excuses you come up with, no matter how eloquently you argue for different forms of carbon capture and how good you make them sound, none of it fucking matters because we don't need to invent carbon capture. The best way to sequester carbon is to utilize the systems that are doing that already, by restoring ecosystems, restoring soil, and composting. We simply cannot ever be more efficient than nature

But nobody profits off of dirt or prairies, so they've gotta sell you machines that do it instead