Majorityrights News > Category: Pervasive Ecology

What it’s like to argue with a bracket and why ‘American founding fathers constitutionalism’ is too complicated and flawed a premise to defend White nationalism.

When asked why she wanted to exclude certain people from White Nations…

Tara experiences what it’s like to argue with a virulent bracket and why defending White America (let alone White Nations generally, of course) on the basis of the U.S. Constitution, founding fathers, exceptionalism, etc., is not the best angle.

If you mean to defend White Nationalism, defend White Nationalism, not American Nationalism of the Founding fathers, their constitution and not I.Q., as Tara does. The intentions of the founding fathers, what their text say, matters of I.Q. and the accomplishments (or lack of certain kinds of misdeeds) of White Nations can provide rebuts to fallacious counter arguments, but are not effective as a premisary thesis for defending White Nationalism.

MR’s platform takes rather a premise of deep systemic, pervasive ecology and biodiversity ... to be deliberately coordinated among human and pervasive ecology; and to be distinguished from Hitler’s ‘ecology’ which was more like Darwinism and absent the sufficient human and humane aspect of praxis.

Perhaps we should let Tara find out the hard way - she has been warned (as Mancinblack noted). There are reasons to be critical of her: she has associated with some pretty bracketed individuals, such as the guy promoting the Jewish alternative payment set up (I’ll find the link a little later); in addition to going along with the fundamentally right wing and Jewish aligned platform that is the Alternative Right.

Breitbart, “Anti-Mass Migration Central European Nations Volunteer €35 Million To Reinforce EU Borders”, 15 Dec 2017:

The four central nations that comprise the Visegrad group (V4) have set aside 35 million euros to help European Union (EU) member states protect the political bloc’s external borders against illegal mass migration.

The four countries that make up the Visegrad group, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, have all agreed to donate the money to protect the EU external border in an announcement this week. All four countries are attending a EU conference to discuss migration issues beginning Thursday AP reports.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico commented on the move saying, “if we will see good projects in the future, first of all, projects that are effective, we are ready to spend even more money because we really want to show solidarity.”

Mayor Laszlow discusses overwhelming success of Hungary’s border fence - “instituted because we’re ‘normal” - the fence cut migration to Hungary by 99%

Some of the countries in the V4 group have been accused of a lack of solidarity by some in EU leadership. The Hungarian government has been particularly critical of those in Brussels who have argued about solidarity.

Breitbart London @BreitbartLondon

EU Dismisses Hungarian Request for ‘Solidarity’ over Border Controls, ‘We Won’t Support Fences’http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/09/04/eu-dismisses-request-border-securitty/ 10:00 PM - Sep 4, 2017

EU Dismisses Hungarian Request for ‘Solidarity’ over Border Controls, ‘We Won’t Support Fences.’

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs replied to the EU elites in September writing, “The distorted narrative that is spun from Brussels attempts to convince European citizens that somehow European solidarity should be connected to accepting migrants, many of whom have crossed illegally into the territory of the EU.”

Kovacs also argued that Hungary had funded EUR 883.2 million from its own budget in order to protect the EU external borders.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has consistently argued against mass migration, said Thursday that the new injection of cash will also go toward helping control illegal migration from Libya.

The EU, along with Italy have funnelled money into Libya to help train coastguard recruits and some allege that the Italians have even paid local warlords to stop the influx of migrants.

All four Visegrad group countries continue to refuse to participate in the EU’s migrant redistribution scheme with Prime Minister Fico noting, “Quotas do not work, they are ineffective, the decision on quotas really divided the European Union.”

The Spirit Lives, by Roy Harper

“Where once were men but now are sheep
- a fiction and far cry,
From planet Earth’s proud animal
- who would be you and I
Alas, our forebears drank the cup of poisoned alibi
And made excuses far and wide,
And made God in the sky.

This boogaloo’s now round the world
- bad trips for everyone.
No more the man of paradise
Or the Celt of Albion
They queue like burning moths to spread
- the all time viscous lie
You Christians destroyed our tribe
- I’ll fight you till I die….”

“The Spirit Lives” - Roy Harper

        “I can see no reason at all to change these lyrics” - Mancinblack

Michael Gove in an information pod at the WWF Living Planet Centre in Woking. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The Ecologist, “Michael Gove has it in his gift to make this a green Christmas”, 7 Dec 2017:

The restoration of life and the end of extinctions. Good land management plans for every country. The end of ocean plastics. No more pesticides. Is all this too ambitious for a Christmas wish list? Ruth Davis of the RSPB does not think so.

So now is the moment for a new generation of green campaigners to come to the table.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has in the last few months repeatedly said that he wants our country to be an environmental leader – and has signalled his seriousness by banning bee-harming pesticides, and laying out plans for a new green watch-dog. 

Whatever your politics, this is exciting. It could also be globally significant. Because to put all his plans into action will require a revolution in environmental thinking, involving not just protection but renewal – an approach which could spearhead an international plan to save nature. 

And it is this international plan that we must demand, to tackle the spiralling environmental crisis. Nothing else will do.  So if I was to writing to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) today, I would include these things in my Christmas list..

Earth and seas

Bold new goals to restore life on earth - its abundance, its diversity, the amazing places where it still thrives, and the areas where it can return. Human-driven extinctions must end, as must the destruction of our last, precious intact natural ecosystems.

Land for life. Each country should have its own plan for good land management, driving investment into the ecological innovation and know-how needed to re-boot modern agriculture, and safeguard long-term food security. Governments should reward farmers for restoring soils, protecting natural stores of carbon and supporting wildlife.

An end to oceans plastics, and protection of the ‘blue commons’.  We must champion global efforts to defeat the monstrous problem of plastic in our oceans.  At the same time, we must set aside much larger areas where marine life can recover, building on the ambition of the Blue Belt.

Much tighter regulation of pesticides.  The neonicotinoid ban is great news – but we need to rethink how we use chemicals in the environment.  My old friend Nigel Bourne, of Butterfly Conservation, said it first and said it best – next time, we shouldn’t have to face a crisis before we consider a ban.

Help for people to shape the places where they live.  In talking internationally, we often forget that change happens locally. To achieve more, we need to involve more people; rebuilding local economies around a shared vision for the environment, investing in industries and businesses that repair, rather than damage, the earth and seas around us.

Ordinary people

You might think this list is preposterous – too long, too ambitious -  when the country has so much else on its plate. But what’s the point of Christmas, if you can’t think big?  And although I am fifty this year, I have begun to feel the child-like sense of adventure that comes when something amazing is about to happen – when a movement is being born.

We are re-thinking what it means to eat well, both for our own health, and within the limits of the land available - since this land is also home to the rest of life on earth.  A new generation is wondering anew about our responsibility towards animals held in captivity, and to the wild creatures trapped in the debris of our lives.

The manacles of plastic around the feet of sea-birds appall us; the heaps of elephant carcasses killed for body parts are images that will last a life-time, a silent call to action for the conservationists of the future.

But anger and grief alone are not enough. To change things for the better also takes hope and purpose. And hope is alive, not least because of the steadfastness of the climate movement. Many will claim that today’s shift away from fossil fuels was inevitable – the result of technological evolution, rather than the efforts of campaigners. But They will be wrong.

The change was catalysed by ordinary people, who succeeded in getting a few governments to listen to them when it seemed we were destined to burn every last lump of coal in the ground.

Demanding laws

As a result, the next generation of environmentalists understands that campaigning energy, coupled with disruptive technology, can challenge the status quo.  They value the potential for human ingenuity to turn problems inside out – to replace rare metals in batteries with material made from apple-cores; to build homes that are also vertical farms and hanging gardens.

This is modern magic, and because of it, the future need not be more of the same. 

Earth optimism – a confidence that solutions are possible and that we can and will renew the fabric of our tattered world – is a heady force. But it will need political action to give it wings.

So now is the moment for a new generation of green campaigners to come to the table. It is also the moment when we are deciding what sort of a country we want to live in; and when Mr Gove is making the environment front page news.

After Brexit, we will inherit laws from the European Union which have helped safeguard wildlife and tackle pollution. We must grasp this legacy, but we must also build on it - demanding laws and policies that will not just ‘stop the rot’, but begin to renew the tattered fabric of our living planet.

The game’s afoot! as Holmes used to say to Watson. Let’s play.

This Author

Ruth Davis is deputy director of global conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

The Guardian, “Michael Gove: from ‘shy green’ to ‘full-throated environmentalist’?”, 12 Nov 2017:

Michael Gove has transformed from a “shy green” into a “full-throated environmentalist”, according to close allies who have said the Conservative MP has been heavily affected by his latest ministerial brief.

Howls of protest made by green groups, commentators and political opponents when Theresa May decided, in June this year, to elevate the high-profile Brexiter to environment secretary were slowly being proven wrong, they claim.

Woodland Trust, “Shocking declines in large old trees worldwide”

There has been: a ban on ivory sales; bigger penalties for animal cruelty; questions raised over farming subsidies; action on plastic bottles; CCTV in slaughter houses; a ban on bee-harming pesticides; and now the promise of a post-Brexit “green revolution” with a new independent watchdog as the centrepiece reform.

And yet when he was appointed to the role, former energy secretary Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, said it was like “putting the fox in charge of the hen house”.

He argued that Gove had even tried to remove climate change from the geography curriculum – advisers have hit back to say he only wanted to move the subject to science.

UK will back total ban on bee-harming pesticides, Michael Gove reveals

Others were concerned that an MP whose bullish manner as education secretary alienated large parts of the teaching profession, would be ready to strip back environmental protections in the Brexit process.

But one Tory minister has told the Guardian they believe the opposite has happened – suggesting that Gove had instead undergone a conversion inside the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

“He is greener than Zac Goldsmith and best mates with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF,” the sources said, referring to a Tory MP known for environmental views. “Fox in the chicken coop in reverse.”

Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven said there was no doubt “Gove has defied many people’s expectations on the environment” with a strong stance on issues like bee-harming pesticides, single-use plastic bottles and the future of the internal combustion engine.

But he said air pollution moves had fallen well short and it was one thing to promise a green Brexit and another to deliver it. “The proof will be in the pudding, especially with the forthcoming agriculture and fisheries bills. But so far the starters are quite good.”

A friend insisted that Gove’s interest in the environment was not all new, pointing to a 2014 speech in which he told the Conservative Environment Network: “I was one of those characters we call ‘shy green.”

But the ally admitted that the MP had become much more passionate. “He is interested in policy and politics and if he is given a subject he will throw himself into it. Hence the ‘shy green’ is now a full-throated environmentalist.”

Even George Monbiot, the environmental campaigner and Guardian columnist, who was highly critical of the MP in previous roles, has claimed: “This is amazing. One by one, Michael Gove is saying the things I’ve waited years for an environment secretary to say.”

He joked that if this environment secretary ever met his former self at education, they’d hate each other.

Michael Gove ‘deeply regrets’ Trump’s approach to Paris climate agreement

And it is no wonder. The pleasant surprise of the green lobby is a far cry from the view of teachers and heads when Gove was in charge of the country’s schools. One union leader, Mary Bousted, called him “possibly the most contentious and divisive education secretary ever”.

And yet from environmental groups – that were deeply concerned by Gove’s promotion – there is some surprising praise.

Tanya Steele, who is chief executive at WWF, said the minister had hit the ground running with a “broad and ambitious agenda”, although she also set out the scale of the task facing him.

“A lot more needs to happen if we are to address major threats to our environment and the global crisis of biodiversity decline,” she said, calling for a 25-year plan with clear milestones.

Craig Bennett, CEO of Friends of the Earth, said that despite initial alarm at the appointment of Gove, which he said was fair enough given previous comments on EU regulations, “he has been making all the right noises and he’s started to make the right action”.

He added: “To his credit, the moment he got the job he reached out and definitely went beyond the normal pleasantries to engage, listen and debate.”

Bennett said the minister’s speech on soil fertility was one that the green lobby had been waiting and hoping that every environment secretary would deliver.

But Bennett sounded a serious note of caution. He described preparations for Brexit in time for spring, 2019, as an “impossible task” and said it was hard to see how the minister could keep to his promise to maintain environmental regulations after the UK leaves the EU.

Michael Gove calls for views on setting up plastic bottle deposit return scheme

“They say they are going to cut and paste environmental regulation – but when you cut and paste often the formatting goes awry and you lose fundamental things and that is our fear,” he said, arguing that leaving the EU would not be good for the environment.

“It will be one of the biggest shocks to environmental protections in years. And that is not to question [Gove’s] good intentions.”

Molly Scott Cato, a Green MEP for the South West England electoral region, insisted that she would keep Gove the environmentalist in “special measures”.

For example, despite the positive move to ban neonicotinoid pesticides, she said he was still allowing limited use under emergency authorisations, which could be damaging.

“I believe Gove is posturing on a series of environmental cheap wins merely to establish himself as a sheep, before revealing himself as a wolf,” she said.

Gove’s friend admitted that Gove’s time inside Defra had impacted on the minister’s views on Brexit – in particular making him embrace the idea of a two-year transition period to help cope with the complexity of preparations.

And he has taken on his cabinet colleague, Liam Fox, by insisting that Britain will not compromise on standards in order to do a trade deal with the US, for example by accepting chlorinated chicken.

But asked if environmental responsibility had made the minister regret his hefty support for Brexit, the ally responded: “Not in the slightest – he believes in it. In particular, he thinks it creates huge opportunities in Defra, what he calls a ‘green Brexit’.”

Daily Telegraph: Britain’s record-breaking trees identified: tallest, biggest, oldest and rarest trees have been identified in a new study.

Michael Gove demands end to Sheffield tree-felling programme.

It is not the first time Gove has received a reaction of pleasant surprise while heading a government department. After a rough ride at the education department, his plans to offer prisoners more freedoms and boost learning in prisons were well received when he was justice secretary.

One difference, according to a source, is that Gove had spent years in opposition drawing up his plans for the country’s schools, but when he was moved to justice and environment, briefs he knew less well, he turned to the experts for advice.

Rebecca Pow, MP, on board of the Conservative Environment Network, said her colleague’s time listening to green groups had resulted in him deciding the Tories would “go up a gear” on environmental issues.

She said he had taken bold decisions, and argued that there were signs of his interests in the environment in previous roles, including making sure primary school children could name a variety of animals including amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles.

Bennett, of Friends of the Earth, said Gove was not the first politician to be affected by the role of environment secretary, pointing to former Tory MP John Gummer, whose work while in the cabinet had him branded a “green guru” by one newspaper. He said the same had happened with David Miliband.

Related Stories at MR:

Occupy Hambach forest, another step toward pervasive ecology

Monsanto accused of “buying science” to save glyphosate

Bayer offers buy-out of Monsanto -  use of pesticide glyphosate contaminates majority of Germans

Jonathan Porritt, author of The World We Made, feels the Green Party must still discuss population.

The Ecologist, “Jonathon Porritt calls for progressive case for taking control of EU immigration”, 7 Dec 2017:

JONATHON PORRITT, author of The World We Made, joined the Green Party four decades ago. At that time the party keenly debated population growth, and the impact this would have on the environment. Today, Porritt argues, the referendum and anxiety around immigration means progressives still need to discuss this hotly contested issue.

These increasingly significant deficits are not caused by high levels of immigration: they’re caused by wretchedly inadequate economic and fiscal policy.

When I joined the Green party in the mid-1970s population was a big issue, regularly debated with enthusiasm and intellectual rigour. People joining the Green party today would have to wait a long time before even hearing the word mentioned – and then might easily find themselves ‘warned off’ from this no-go territory.

I just don’t get this. In a world where overall population growth projections are rising, and where global migration is still on the rise, it’s a complete dereliction of all environmentalists’ duty to protect the planet (particularly members of the Green party) to continue to ignore population growth and not to campaign for its reduction. Without such a reduction, all solutions to other aspects of ecological and social concern are made far more difficult to deal with.

A couple of weeks ago, myself and Colin Hines published a paper entitled The Progressive Case for Taking Control of EU Immigration – and Avoiding Brexit in the Process. This case is simple: Brexit could still be reversed; hard Brexit can certainly be avoided.

Population growth

But this won’t happen unless Labour, the Lib Dems and the Green Party stop dickering around and come up with some serious ideas about more effectively managing immigration into and between EU countries. Without that, many of those who voted Brexit will cry out in rage at the referendum result being seen to be ‘set aside’, given that concern about immigration was paramount in their minds at that time.

Uncomfortable though this might be for contemporary greens – and indeed for all progressives – high levels of population growth and immigration go hand-in-hand. If net migration continues at around recent levels, then the UK’s population is expected to rise by nearly 8 million people in 15 years, almost the equivalent of the population of Greater London (8.7 million).

At least 75 percent of this increase would be from future migration and the children of those migrants. As already indicated, future population growth would not stop there. Unless something is done about this growth, it is projected to increase towards 80 million in 25 years and keep going upwards.

It’s important to be completely logical about this. For instance, the UK is already struggling to maintain critical infrastructure, to meet housing demand, and to invest sufficiently in education, healthcare and social services.

As Colin and I unhesitatingly pointed out in our paper, these increasingly significant deficits are not caused by high levels of immigration: they’re caused by wretchedly inadequate economic and fiscal policy, going back at least a couple of decades. But continuing population growth clearly exacerbates those deficits.

Resolutely defended

The UK’s Total Fertility Rate has not been above 2.1 children per mother since 1972, but ‘population momentum’ (increase in numbers of births when babies born at peak of population growth reach reproductive age), plus net immigration, has led to a population increase of nearly 10 million people since 1972.

And these challenges can only get worse. We know, as a matter of increasingly painful inevitability, that the lives of tens/hundreds of millions of people (particularly in Africa and the Middle East) will be devastated by the effects of climate change.

We know that many of those people will have no choice but to leave their homes and communities if they are to have any prospect of survival, let alone a better life. And we know that many of them will seek to come to Europe, as the place that offers the best possible refuge in an all-encompassing storm not of their own making.

How can anyone suppose that an ‘open borders’ positioning is an appropriate response to that kind of backdrop? How can most progressives stick to the line that the EU’s principle of ‘freedom of movement’ should be resolutely defended, especially after resurgent right-wing populism has had such a negative impact on elections this year in France, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria?

All I can do, therefore, is to urge all environmentalists to open up their minds again and re-think the whole population/immigration nexus – from a radical, genuinely progressive perspective. 

This Author

Jonathon Porritt is an environmentalist and author.

The New Observer, “Netanyahu: Race-mixing to Destroy Liberal Jews”, 3 Dec 2017:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly predicted that racial mixing between liberal Jews and non-Jews will wipe out Reform Judaism in America by 2070—and that as a result, the Jewish ethnostate must prepare itself for survival without being supported by the US.

The comments, first reported by the Hebrew-language Makor Rishon daily newspaper in Israel, have highlighted two important facts: firstly, that Netanyahu is acutely aware of the threat to racial identity posed by racial mixing of any sort; and secondly, that the liberal Jews in America are behind the support that country provides to Israel.

In the original report, Netanyahu said that Reform Judaism—which, according to Pew Center estimates, represented 35 percent of American Jews—“would disappear within two generations due to assimilation.”

The publication of the report in Makor Rishon caused an uproar amongst Jews in America, and Netanyahu’s office issued an oblique denial in a tersely-worded statement which said that the report was “inaccurate and do not reflect the Prime Minister’s views.” It was significant that the statement did not specifically deny using those words, a tactic often employed by politicians as a way of publicly backtracking from comments.

Makor Rishon’s diplomatic correspondent, Ariel Kahana, however, confirmed that Netanyahu repeated the assessment several times in private talks, and that Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, has been heard making similar projections.

According to Kahana’s reports, Netanyahu spoke of the scenario of the demise of Reform Judaism as a threat to Israel, saying the Jewish state needs to prepare for a day when it would no longer enjoy the base of support provided today by the Jewish community in the United States.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency pointed out, Netanyahu has been criticized by leaders of Reform Judaism “in the United States and beyond” over his government’s refusal to implement a compromise that enlarges the space devoted to allowing Jewesses to pray at the Western Wall, as well as its support for a bill that would give the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate formal control over conversions—which would further cement Israel’s ban on marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

The JTA makes no reference to the real reason for the split between “left” and “right” wing Jews, namely on how best to present Israel to the outside world.

The JTA also ignored the other elephant in the room—the fact that the Jewish lobby in America and European countries still all support Israel and its racial policies—while vehemently attacking any white people who dare to say that they seek to emulate Israel’s plans to protect itself from being overrun by racial aliens.

Netanyahu’s assessment that liberal Jews in America will disappear due to racial mixing is based on reportedly high intermarriage rates with non-Jews amongst that community.

This is however unlikely to affect the power of the Jewish lobby, because the Conservative and Orthodox branches of American Jewry—together the majority of Jews in the US—still maintain their Jews-only marriage policies, and will not disappear.

In fact, it is precisely the Orthodox Jews who wield such strong influence over the Donald Trump administration, which is proof in itself that the disappearance of Reform Jews will not dramatically affect the power of the Jewish lobby in America.

As the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported in April 2017, the “New Jewish Elite of the Trump Age” are the “ultra-Orthodox and pro-Israel Hawks.”

Haaretz reported that “among many moves aimed at reversing his predecessor’s policies, President Trump recently decided not to make public the White House visitors logs.

“Had they been open, the lists would reveal the profound change 100 days of a Trump administration had brought about to the Jewish community’s power structure.

“The atmosphere has changed, at least for us. There’s a sense of familiarity and greater receptivity and that makes a better atmosphere,” said Abba Cohen, vice president for federal affairs at Agudath Israel of America, a group representing the ultra-Orthodox stream.”

The real threat to Jewish power in America will only come when—and if—America tips majority nonwhite, because the Jewish Lobby’s power is directly linked to the presence of a majority white electorate—as controlling the electoral choices of a majority nonwhite population will prove much harder to do.

I’ve published this full article by The New Observer in order to allow the article to build up to this last - crucial - paragraph:

“The real threat to Jewish power in America will only come when—and if—America tips majority nonwhite, because the Jewish Lobby’s power is directly linked to the presence of a majority white electorate—as controlling the electoral choices of a majority nonwhite population will prove much harder to do.”

It makes a point, inadvertently in all likelihood, and it is a chief point that Kumiko has become vigilant about - that non-Whites who are aware of the JQ, its power and destruction to ethno-nationalism, are being compelled where they are observant, to oppose White advocacy in general (just as the Jews would have it via controlled reaction to cultural Marxism) because it (right-wing reaction) has become engrafted with Jewry and their agenda. The Alt-Right is no relief from this fact; quite the opposite, it is the ultimate in crypsis as it basically has a quid pro quo relation with Jewry’s right wing position upon its full ascendancy (approximately following the 2008 American housing bust).

And so, while David Duke, KM, TRS, Mark Collett et al. will continue to make excuses for (((Trump’s administration))); some Alt Right tents will bolster their JQ cred by apologetics for Nazi Germany; but generally they will wield the anti-social stigma that Jewry will encourage among Whites; while other tents among their big tent will be in their circuit ready to express their “compassionate side” by running apologetics with and for Lauren Southern, John K. Press, Mike Enoch and Faith Goldy…. in their broader sphere will be Stephan Molyneux, Breitbart, Fox etc.

That is to say, the Alt Right and its perspective against “the left” has been and remains a Jewish trick at the most fundamental, epistemic level of (against) praxis; a trick which non-White and White ethnonationalists alike cannot afford to ignore. For it is the anti-social right, bereft of social accountability in propensity for naturalistic fallacy and unhinged idealism that has precipitated wars catastrophic for everybody except for the ultimate benefit of YKW.

Frontline, “A Dispatch From Bonn: “1.5 To Stay Alive”, 18 Nov 2017:

Faith Debrum, 12, is pictured near her home on the Marshall Islands. The island nation is part of an international coalition fighting to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius. (Michelle Mizner/FRONTLINE)

BONN, Germany — One of 12-year-old Faith Debrum’s favorite hobbies is diving off the seawall in front of her house and swimming to a nearby reef in search of interesting fish. When asked how climate change might affect that hobby, she had a ready answer: “1.5 to stay alive!”

It was a phrase that my reporting partner and I heard again and again while we were in the Republic of the Marshall Islands earlier this year speaking to children like Faith about the risks climate change pose to their country’s future. “One-point-five” refers to the degrees Celsius (2.7 F) that scientists believe world temperatures can afford to rise by 2100 without making life on low-elevation island nations like the Marshall Islands nearly impossible. Researchers believe it would also keep the number of new heatwaves and heavy rains globally in check.

Beach house in Arno Atoll

“In the seminal 2015 Paris Agreement on climate, the world committed to holding global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 – but also “pursuing efforts to limit” warming to 1.5 degrees. That additional proviso was added under pressure from a “high ambition coalition” of 100 nations, which had spent years advocating for a 1.5-degree goal to be included in the agreement, and, against political odds, succeeded.

By all accounts, staving off the extra half-degree of warming will require radically new efforts – and soon. Climate experts say every year that passes without significant action will make it harder to reach the 1.5 target.

Already, temperatures have risen 1.1 degrees Celsius (2.0 F) since pre-industrial times. And, even with the Paris accord in place, temperatures are on track to surge by 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 F) by the end of the century. One study published this year pinned the planet’s odds of achieving 2 degrees at just 5 percent – and of achieving 1.5 at just 1 percent.

Despite seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, those who advocated for 1.5 degrees in Paris were once again advocating for it at this year’s United Nations climate negotiations in Bonn, while preparing for another major push at next year’s conference in Katowice, Poland.

The half-degree between 1.5 and 2 may seem minor, but for low-lying coastal areas, it is imperative: According to climate models, it likely means an extra 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) of sea level rise, perhaps more. Those extra inches are critical for places like the Marshall Islands, where the mean elevation is six feet above sea level.

Researchers and environmental groups insist the goal is achievable.

The train has not left the station,” said Andrew Jones, co-director of the nonprofit climate research group Climate Interactive. “It’s leaving, though, and we need to run faster than we ever have in our lives to catch it.”

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Again, while the source of this news story, unfortunately, is the anti-White Democracy Now, the protestors “look huWhite to me”; and their protests should not be at odds with the survival and protection of European peoples; quite the opposite, they are a part of pervasive ecology.

This open coal pit is nearly as big as Cologne, which is the next city here, where over one million people live.

Basically, 90 percent of the forest is destroyed already because of the coal mining ...and we have less than 10 percent of the Hambach forest left.

...and we are trying to protect this last ten percent of the Hambach forest.

We will take you to the occupation of the Hambach forest…

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