Themes from The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2024

The themes that have emerged for me from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024  are:

1. The earth is getting warmer and having negative consequences for the ecological balances which we humans have become accustomed to.
2. This climate warming is having negative consequences up to and ending in death for many living things.
3. A small group of under-supported scientists are studying what's happening and their findings are largely ignored or dismissed by the decision makers except in a few instances.
4. Science journalism is one way of informing and educating people about what is happening to them which is outside their level of awareness because the changes are insidious except when they culminate in catastrophic weather events.

Some observers have noted that because of these four things social anxiety and tension has risen contributing to political polarization and the rise of autocracies exemplified by the "strong man" leader who promises to "fix everything" and make people safe and more secure. This political solution is delusional because it doesn't address the underlying problem which is human caused climate change.

What will help? A correct diagnosis of the problem causing the rise in anxiety and plans that are effective in addressing the creation and maintenance of the problem. This requires cooperation, collaboration, and joint efforts around the planet. Isolation and nationalism will not help, but only maintain and increase the problem. There needs to be a shift from the emphasis on private wealth and profit to a sharing and creation of health giving commons. This is a huge shift in values especially in the richest country in the world, the US. What will bring this shift in values in the US population? The worsening of circumstances until people have to find a better way to live if they are to survive. And then a transformation into cooperative, collaborative, mutually satisfying democratic processes.

PS - The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 is the August 2024 selected read of the Allnonfiction Book Discussion Group. If you are interested in joining the Allnonfiction Book Discussion Group you can find more about it here.

More Americans are understanding that climate change is real

From New York Times on 01/22/19 by John Schwartz

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"A record number of Americans understand that climate change is real, according to a new survey, and they are increasingly worried about its effects in their lives today.

Some 73 percent of Americans polled late last year said that global warming was happening, the report found, a jump of 10 percentage points from 2015 and three points since last March.

The rise in the number of Americans who say global warming is personally important to them was even sharper, jumping nine percentage points since March to 72 percent, another record over the past decade."

For more information click here.

Editor's note:
It is a sign of hope that more Americans are becoming "reality based" instead of being duped by "fake news" and false beliefs promulgated primarily by politicians who have been elected due to financial support from fossil fuel companies into believing lies, fabrications, equivocatons, and disengenuous nonsense.

Exxon Mobile and other fossil fuel companies have known for years that the carbon emissions created by the burning of their products is affecting the climate of the planet earth. These companies, fearing a negative impact on their financial revenues, have kept this information not only secret, but have propogandized the American public and their elected policy makers into believing the opposite.

With the awareness of the American citizens rising to the truth of the matter, we can hope, working together, that we can mitigate the problem of carbon emissions and other climate destroying practicies we have created and participated in.

The truth can set us free but it takes more that just consciousness, we need to bring our awareness into application by changing climate damaging policies and practices. This means many things but perhaps the most sigfniciant for positive change at the macrosystemic level will be electing policy makers who are not afraid of the truth and who will act on it. It does no good to simply speak truth to power if power has no use for the truth. It is time to change those whom we give our power to who will do the right thing to enhance the well being of our planet and all the things that abide here.