Jo Buchan

Exploring ways of living, learning and working that care for all and our pale blue dot

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

WE MUST ADDRESS THE CLIMATE CRISIS

The last 11 years have been the hottest 11 years on record. The last three years have been the hottest three years on record. 2026 will be one of the warmest years on record, and most scientists believe 2027 will be the warmest year in recorded history.

This past year, Europe has seen four major heat waves, including the continent’s worst heat wave ever that killed more than 10,000 people. In the United States, three extreme heat waves exposed hundreds of millions of people to dangerous levels of heat. Drought is causing some of the lowest water levels ever seen for reservoirs along the Colorado River, threatening the drinking water of 40 million people. Puerto Ricans are being forced to ration water because of extreme drought. In Europe, some of the continent’s dryest conditions have caused major rivers to run so low that ships are running aground, nuclear power plants are shutting down, and historical artifacts that were previously submerged are being revealed. South Korea is in the midst of a record heat wave — with temperatures reaching 108.5° Fahrenheit, the highest temperature in the country’s history. China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are all experiencing torrential rain and flooding.

As a result of rising heat levels, we are seeing massive wildfires across the world, including Oregon’s worst wildfire season and fires in Washington state that have forced nearly 65,000 families to evacuate. Europe, France and Spain are experiencing destructive wildfire seasons that have forced more than 330,000 people to evacuate their homes. Portugal, Greece, Italy, Albania, Turkey, Canada, Morocco and Algeria are also experiencing destructive wildfire seasons.

This summer alone,Alaska, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have all seen record rainfall events. We’ve seen 1,000-year floods in Texas, Missouri and New York. Once rare, dangerous flash flooding emergencies are now a regular part of summer for tens of millions of Americans.

One might think that, in the midst of all of this, there would be major discussions in Congress as to how best to go forward in addressing this existential crisis. Not the case. Insanely, the president of the United States continues to believe that climate change is a “hoax,” and Republican members of Congress are following their “Great Leader” over the cliff. Sadly, too many Democrats think that speaking out on climate change is “bad politics” and have remained far too silent.

That has got to change. The simple truth is that we must forcefully take on the greed of the fossil fuel industry and the stupidity of Trump.

The simple truth is that we can create millions of good-paying union jobs transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

For the sake of our kids, future generations and the habitability of the planet,that is exactly what we must do.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

One point I will always adamantly insist on is that it's entirely possible to live a joyful and exuberant life in the midst of this abusive dystopia.

There's a pervasive, unexamined notion throughout revolutionary politics that there's some kind of nobility in being miserable. If it isn't seen as noble, it's at least seen as rational, because everything is so unjust and unhealthy.

There's a widespread assumption that your level of political awareness should have an inverse correlation to your level of personal happiness, because of all the tyranny, injustice, poverty, genocide and ecocide. That it would be selfish to be happy in a world so deeply troubled.

But that's rubbish. Nobody is helped by your misery. By depriving yourself of joy, you are only depriving the world of that much joy. Being more joyful makes you more energized, more helpful, and more useful to the cause, and it brings joy to everyone around you.

Being joyful is a skill, and like any other skill it takes practice. But it's something we all have access to if we want it.

Being joyful doesn't entail hiding from the misery of the world or compartmentalizing away from the reality of what's happening; quite the opposite, in fact. It entails opening yourself all the way up to what's happening in each moment and feeling it all with the heart of a poet. It means becoming MORE sensitive, not less, because a stripped-open sensitivity is where ubiquitous beauty is found.

We always have access to joy because we always have access to beauty. Beauty is everywhere. Even in dystopia. Even in this slow-motion armageddon we now find ourselves in. Even in the exhaust fumes and the flashing screens. Even in the polluted oceans and falling bombs. Everywhere you look, everywhere you feel, everywhere you listen, an overpowering beauty shines forth.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that's false. Beauty is in everything. The FAILURE to see beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is just another word for the experience of having truly seen something. If the eye is failing to see the beauty in a given moment, the fault lies with the perceiver, not with the perceived.

You know that feeling when you're showing someone your favorite movie for the first time, and it's at your favorite part, and you look over at them to see their response, and they're missing the whole thing because they're looking at their phone?

Most people live their whole lives that way. Missing all the best parts while fixating on empty nonsense. Keeping their attention wrapped up in their mental monologues of judgement and worry. In their endless search to distract themselves from the present moment. In their doomscrolling and other addictive behaviors.

They're missing moment after moment of radiant, electrifying beauty, and they're trading it all for so very, very little. They're going to look back on their lives from their deathbeds and realize that they weren't really there for it. That they missed all the best parts while chasing their goals, running away from their aversions, and trying to distract themselves from the tedium of it all.

The best parts that get missed are the parts our minds tend to dismiss as boring and unworthy of our attention. The daily commute. The wait in the elevator. The kitchen cleanup. The hanging of laundry. The sights outside the window. The sounds inside the room. The feeling of the floor under the feet and the air in the lungs. Every single moment of this is packed full of staggering beauty.

I insist that this is true. Insist on it. If we were fighting holy wars over this principle, I would happily die on the front lines defending it. There are very few things in life that I hold a rock-solid uncompromising view on, but the fact that there is beauty in everything is one of them. Anyone who disagrees is simply wrong, and I will tell them so with great vehemence in my voice.

Don't waste your precious time here missing the beauty of each moment. This is more important now than ever, because we don't know how long humanity's adventure on this miraculous blue world will last. Tomorrow has never been guaranteed to any of us, but these days it's not even guaranteed to our species.

We are all going to die. Maybe we will die one by one, or maybe we will all die together in one frightening moment. In either case, we owe it to ourselves and to our world to try our very best to deeply appreciate every moment of every day of the time that we have left.

Just keep bringing your attention back to what's here and now, and keep looking for the beauty in it. I swear to you it's there. It's there in the feelings in the body. It's there in the sights, sounds and smells of everyday living, no matter what else is happening in your life or in our world. Keep looking for it, and you'll get better and better at seeing it.

That's how life becomes more joyful. Not by chasing the highs or running from the lows, but from learning to relish the beauty that's inherent in terrestrial sensory experience every single moment of your life, no matter what else happens to be occurring.

Learn to do this, and you can live the rest of your life knowing that even if it all comes crashing down one day, at least you'll know you tried your very best to make sure you didn't miss the miraculousness of your time here.

[Zeke Hausfather @hausfath]

I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

[Fr. Cassidy Stinson @TheHappyPriest]

Look, I'm still not the kind of priest to say things like "they're putting demons in the robots," but the chainsaw-wielding black drones with eyeball horns are making it harder to argue my case

[Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) 🪬 @DoctorVive]

++BREAKING++

The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight:

"[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life."

(h/t @LeoHickman)

[Prof. Peter Strachan @ProfStrachan]

'The climate alarm is blaring, from every direction,' UN climate chief warns

"Around the world, climate-driven disasters are reaching nightmare proportions, as the costs of humanity’s addiction to burning coal, oil and gas keep spiraling upwards"

"What needs to be done is equally clear: leave #coal, #oil and #gas behind faster, scale up renewables, and protect people where the impacts are already hitting hardest"

Simon Stiell, UN’s Climate Chief

#WildFires #ClimateCrisis

https://t.co/2kEoNlHapb

[Jo Buchan @weweia]

@GuyWinch Enjoy! It’s wild and beautiful and keep an eye out for the wandering spiders…

[All day Astronomy @forallcurious]

NASA has released one of the most detailed visualizations ever created of Earth’s ocean currents.

Using data from satellites and advanced ocean models, the map reveals massive rivers of moving water, swirling eddies hundreds of miles wide, and the powerful Gulf Stream carrying warm water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic.

[Prof Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann]

We actually did the math: https://t.co/wozp1qtvHC

[Jo Buchan @weweia]

Why its so hard to agree on what counts as true:
https://t.co/3cRlBmSkJH

[Prof. Katharine Hayhoe @KHayhoe]

How much is Canada responsible for the wildfire smoke reaching the U.S.?

Right now, nearly 900 wildfires are burning across Canada. Last week, Toronto's air quality was the worst of any major city in the world. But as the smoke spread south to the U.S., many politicians began blaming Canada for poor forest management.

It's true that local and regional forestry practices matter. Leafy deciduous trees hold moisture and can act as natural fire breaks; so clearing them for conifer monocultures can leave forests at higher risk to burn. But fire suppression, a big issue in the dry forests of the western U.S. where putting out frequent fires let fuel pile up, isn't a major factor here. Canada's remote boreal forests already burn naturally, in less frequent but higher-intensity fires.

The single biggest reason for the record-breaking *increases* in the area burned by wildfires that are causing all this smoke isn't land management. It's human-caused climate change.

As the world warms, winters are no longer cold enough to kill off tree-eating beetles. Their populations explode, leaving millions of acres of dead trees ready to burn. Warmer winters also mean less snowpack, so soil dries out earlier and the fire season runs longer. And climate change has more than doubled the frequency of hotter, drier fire weather across Canada and increased the frequency of the lightning strikes that spark most fires in northern Alberta and BC.

Every one of those four dials is being turned in the same direction by the same thing: the heat-trapping gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. And that's where the numbers start to tell a different picture.

The United States has emitted more carbon than any country in history: around 435 billion tonnes since the 1800s. That's close to a quarter of all the carbon humans have ever put into the air, 12 times Canada's total and still 50% more than China's 285 billion tonnes.

Look at it by company instead of by country, and 88 of the world's largest fossil fuel producers are responsible for the emissions that led to more than a third of the forest area burned across western North America since 1986. At the top of that list is Saudi Aramco, followed by US companies Chevron and ExxonMobil. The first Canadian company, Suncor, doesn't appear until number 76 ... but that could change, as Canada is building more pipelines!

Bottom line? If politicians want to clear the smoke from our skies, tell them the most effective place to start is by cutting the emissions that are driving these fires - no matter which side of the border we're on.

Sources, I'm a scientist so you know I have them: Doubled fire weather risk (World Weather Attribution, 2023). Fire suppression near communities (Parisien et al. 2020, Nature Communications). Climate-beetle-fire connections (e.g. Woo et al. 2024, Ecosphere). Climate-driven lightning increases in northwestern Canada (Burrows et al. 2024, Atmosphere-Ocean). Cumulative CO₂ by country (Our World in Data). 88 producers behind 1/3+ of western N. American area burned (Dahl et al. 2023, Environmental Research Letters). Company ranking (Carbon Majors). And for an exhaustive review of how we know human emissions are driving climate change, see the next post in this thread.

https://t.co/Spedt9SMaI

[Prof. Peter Strachan @ProfStrachan]

‘No one wants to be right about this’: #ClimateChange scientists’ horror and exasperation as predictions play out

 "It’s as if the human race has received a terminal medical diagnosis and knows there is a cure, but has consciously decided not to save itself"

#ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis
https://t.co/gAHUlAqAjO

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

Amazing what people and government can do when they have a working moral compass.

[Alex Turner @Turn_Trout]

I resigned from Google DeepMind bc it broke its founding promise by selling AI to the military without restrictions against killer robots or mass spying.

For months, I worked to stop this but watched powerful ethicists and institutions choose silence.

Here's what happened. 🧵

[Jo Buchan @weweia]

The world's best press photos has been shared with you from RNZ
https://t.co/NsRRctho97

[Jo Buchan @weweia]

Fotofestiwal: the international festival of photography in Łódź – in pictures https://t.co/yeekBphZSb

[The Elders @TheElders]

STATEMENT ON CLIMATE | Protecting the planet from irreparable harm will not be easy. A UN Planetary Council could be a path towards progress.

https://t.co/7DRxMExMEh

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water.

Equipment taxpayers already bought and paid for, removed right as record temperatures and a possible collapse of Atlantic currents have scientists alarmed. There is no savings analysis. The gear is already paid for. And the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea, destroying the only tools that could measure the damage.

They are smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.

[Jo Buchan @weweia]

‘Most famous tree in the world’: Sherwood Forest’s 1,000-year-old Major oak dies https://t.co/fz3U7U1V1T

[Jo Buchan @weweia]

Warming winters are changing NZ’s landscapes, bringing insect pests, smaller fruit and carbon loss https://t.co/erzKoYzywR