Category Archives: Nature

All, Environment, Health, Justice, Nature, Water

Bottled water is soooo bad – for health, environment, budgets & waste streams

1 Comment

Ban the BottlePeople have no idea how bad bottled water is – for the health of the world, their communities and their bodies. Bottled water is also a social justice issue.

Let’s start with the health issues: single use bottles contain BPA which leeches into water, especially when stored in hot temperatures. Plus, bottled water contains more bacteria than tap water. Stop Corporate Abuse explains,

Bottled water is often sold with images of snowy peaks and pristine rivers with slogans boasting the “pure fresh taste.” Through marketing that presents bottled water as somehow cleaner or safer than tap water, the bottled water industry has effectively cast doubt on the quality of America’s tap water. In 2003, a Gallup poll found that one in five people was drinking only bottled water, largely because of such doubts.

However, the “alternative” sold by these corporations is often a matter of perceived quality rather than an actual substantive difference. In reality, close to half of all bottled water is basically bottled tap water – sold back to consumers for thousands of times the price.

What’s more, bottled water is subject to far less independent regulation and oversight than our public water systems. The Environmental Protection Agency has jurisdiction over public water systems, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for overseeing bottled water quality. Both agencies use a similar set of quality standards. While these standards are similar on paper, the FDA lacks adequate capacity to effectively monitor the industry, and largely relies on bottlers to police themselves.

Next, consider the environmental impact to manufacture plastic bottles; spend the energy to put it into bottles and ship it to distributors, then transport it to stores and refrigerate it until a customer spends up to $2 to buy a bottle. Pablo Pastër of Triple Pundit calculated the natural resource cost to be close to 7 times the amount of water actually contained in the bottle, plus a bunch of fossil fuel.

Taxpayer cost: even small towns spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to buy bottled water, instead of investing in tap water infrastructure, and the management and treatment of stormwater. Is this how you want your taxpayer dollars being spent?

We’re not done yet. Empty bottles still need to be thrown out! Stop Corporate Abuse tells us that according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO),

… about three-quarters of the water bottles produced in the United States in 2006 were discarded and not recycled. Each year more than four billion pounds of PET plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter … Waste generation has a huge monetary impact on municipalities… Assuming the average national tipping fee of $35 per ton, these four billion pounds of plastic waste cost US cities at least $70 million annually, not including the costs of collection, trucking and litter removal.

Finally, people have begun to fight back against bottled water abuse.

Concord, Massachusetts has become one of the first communities in the U.S. to ban the sale of single-serving plastic water bottles … Octogenarian Jean Hill lead the charge, telling The New York Times in a 2010 interview, “The bottled water companies are draining our aquifers and selling it back to us.” She declared, “I’m going to work until I drop on this.”

And you can fight back too. Try a campaign in your own town or school. Here are some resources to get you started:
Ban the Bottle
The Water Project

All, Environment, Justice, Nature, Protection, Water

Nestlé in line for Hall of Shame Award over bottled water

3 Comments

Take back the tapNestlé hoards our world’s fresh water, marks it up 53 Million percent and spends enough on advertising to make you like paying for it. The company is highly effective in helping kill babies by means of watered-down infant formula; sucking up indigenous people’s water supplies in developing countries to bottle and sell in America for astronomical sums; and they’ve got cruel child labor practices in place that Executive VP Jose Lopez says have been company norm, “For as long as we’ve been using cocoa.”

Nestlé shamelessly carries out these acts in order to make $35 Billion profit, putting bottled water in the category of a serious social and environmental justice concern. And according to Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, that’s why Nestlé has been nominated for a 2013 Corporate Accountability International Hall of Shame Award. See for yourself: in this YouTube video, Nestle’s CEO remarks on the increasing scarcity of water.

The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs [NGOs = Non-Government Organizations], who bang on about declaring water being a public right. That means as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.

Not bad enough yet? How about throwing a GMO connection into the ring: Nestlé has one of those too. Luther reports:

Monsanto and Nestle are firmly on the same team – Nestle donated over $1 million to the campaign against GMO labeling in California and their CEO has claimed that in 15 years of consumption, no one was every harmed by eating GMOs.

While the world’s attention has been on Monsanto’s corruption of the food supply, Nestle has been quietly draining water sources around the globe and marking it up a mind-blowing 53,908,255%, while the rest of us must deal with droughts, regulations on wells and rainwater, and rising prices.

Just remember, Nestlé’s propaganda statements are so not true. They are just empty marketing words.

The Nestle website touts the slogan: Good Food, Good Life is the promise we commit to, everyday, everywhere – to enhance lives, throughout life, with good food and beverages.

Be a smart world citizen and forget bottled water, like these plumbing shop owners have. The benefits are only a bunch of big fat lies. Drink free tap water instead and help improve our world by doing just a little bit every day to improve our environment and our water quality.

All, Environment, Justice, Nature, Protection, Water

Facebook cofounder illegally destroys Redwood forest

Leave a comment

Facebook cofounder intentionally damages Redwood forestFacebook cofounder Sean Parker decided he just had to have a fantasy wedding in the Redwood forest in California, one of the few old growth forest areas left in North America. And fantasy, to Parker and his wife, means f up nature as much as you can. Because nature is nowhere near as cool as what you can buy with $10 million dollars or so and maybe because it’s exciting to break the law. Parker was fined and paid up without complaint: apparently, that was just part of the cost of destroying natural treasures for totally selfish ends. Grist author Holly Richmond comments:

It’s hard to decide what’s most depressing about this. Is it that rich douchebags can buy their way out of anything? That you can fuck up the Earth if you can afford it? That Parker and Co. made no significant effort to limit erosion and redwood damage? That the wedding industrial complex makes people think they’re entitled to barfalicious displays of excess? Thinking about it makes me feel old and tired. I’m gonna go back inside my hobbit-hole. Which, incidentally, I didn’t pay $10 million for.

The Atlantic’s Alex Madrigal quotes the California Coastal Commission Report, which details how much damage was done to the area’s ecosystem.

The Parker Respondents did not install any erosion control measures or any BMPs when they commenced development within the campground. Structures, walls and elevated platforms have been constructed immediately adjacent to Post Creek with no setbacks employed. The Parker Respondents have recently installed temporary fencing in an attempt to reduce potential impacts to Post Creek, but most of the development occurred without any such erosion-control protections in place. Increased erosion resulting from hardscaping and vegetation removal along streams impairs riparian corridors, streams, and, ultimately, shallow marine waters by increased sedimentation. Increased sediment loads in streams and coastal waters can increase turbidity, thereby reducing light transmission necessary for photosynthetic processes, reducing the growth of aquatic plants. Additionally, structures have been built up to and around existing redwoods and vegetation within the campground (Exhibit 10). Beyond immediate physical damage to individual trees, failure to provide adequate development buffers from redwood trees can negatively impact the underground lignotubers by which redwoods clonally reproduce, thus impeding propagation. The unpermitted development has thus impacted the existing redwood forest habitat and has likely caused sedimentation of Post Creek.

You can see before and after photos in both articles and guess what. They’re all disturbing.

All, Energy, Environment, Justice, Nature, New solutions, Protection

Sierra Club did take $25 Million from frackers

Leave a comment

Fracking pipes run diagonally under earthIt’s hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys these days, so I do a lot of fact checking. After I heard from a couple friends that the Sierra Club’s silence on fracking had been bought by donations from natural gas companies, I put this item on my research list. Today I had a few free minutes and did some checking

Friends who told me this are radical lefties (which is becoming just another way to say “folk who blame everything on Obama”). In their opinion, Obama is nowhere near progressive enough. Climate change, coal pollution, fracking madness … they blame Obama for all of these environmental ills. I ask, “How can you blame Obama for things that have a history so much longer than his presidency?” They respond that first of all, Obama was a Federal Senator before he was president and had ample opportunity to screw the country back then – and did; and say that as president now, Obama could put a stop to most awful things by invoking Executive Order privilege. Not doing so to help the environment is proof he’s a terrible president and a horrible man.

People in modern days have bought into myths created and disseminated by big monied interests who place profit before any human or environmental interests. I think truths are just beginning to emerge about the state of our world, how much of nature has been destroyed and what we need to do to protect what remains and rebuild our planet’s ecosystem. At this, I think that not many are clear on what are the right ways to go about doing this.

The most correct answer I’ve heard comes from the Indigenous priest group, the Mamas of Medellin, Colombia, who at the Newark Peace Conference in 2011 said we should start treating Mother Earth like she’s really our mother, which she is. One of them asked, what people would go to their mother and tear out great chunks of her flesh? The same way we wouldn’t do that to any flesh and blood mother, we should realize that we cannot do it to our Earth Mother either, as it is she who sustains our individual lives and all life on our world.

But people with less clarity look at things from different perspectives. That’s how the stupid Sierra Club ended up taking money from frackers to fund its campaign to eradicate the coal industry. The Times discovered that

… between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy — one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking — to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign … Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director since 2010, (said) “The first rule of advocacy is that you shouldn’t take money from industries and companies you’re trying to change.”

(Even) Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in 2009 that “the giant advantage of a quick conversion from coal to gas is the quickest route for jump-starting our economy and saving our planet,” and that while gas had environmental caveats, “those impacts are dwarfed by the disastrous holocaust of coal and can be mitigated by careful regulation.”

Now the Sierra Club emphatically does not support fracking and published this statement on their blog

It’s time to stop thinking of natural gas as a “kinder, gentler” energy source. What’s more, we do not have an effective regulatory system in this country to address the risks that gas drilling poses on our health and communities. The scope of the problems from under-regulated drilling, as well as a clearer understanding of the total carbon pollution that results from both drilling and burning gas, have made it plain that, as we phase out coal, we need to leapfrog over gas whenever possible in favor of truly clean energy. Instead of rushing to see how quickly we can extract natural gas, we should be focusing on how to be sure we are using less — and safeguarding our health and environment in the meantime.

The Sierra Club also decided not to take any more money from Clorox, as bleach is not an environmentally safe product either. In 2008 the Sierra Club took $1.3 million from Clorox in exchange for endorsing “the company’s Green Works brand of environmentally-friendly cleaning products.”

All, Environment, Justice, Nature, Protection

Last chance to save orangutans & habitat. Act.

Leave a comment

baby orangutanRachel Wieland frames this issue neatly: “We will lose so many species in this generation because we do not realize our small choices make a big impact. For good or bad. If you eat palm oil (especially used in candies and cookies) or use palm oil in your soaps or shampoos, this is destroying the last two remaining orangutan habitats left on the planet. Please take palm oil out of your consumption cycle…” You should know that Rachel is not exaggerating: she’s a Mathematics professor and has been trained to be very precise.

The Indonesian Government has plans to lift protections on vast areas of virgin rainforest on Sumatra island to allow commercial exploitation. Canadian mining company East Asia Minerals is ready to start tearing that rainforest to pieces as soon as Indonesia gives them the go ahead. World citizens cannot allow Eco-habitat and the environment which provides us all with clean air, water and food to be treated as less important than a gold mining operation which will benefit only a select few. Orangutans, palm trees and all of nature are part of that ecosystem and we need to protect those assets. They are yours, mine and they belong to our grandchildren as well.

I join Rachel in asking you to, “Act now! This is URGENT and it must be stopped. Please share this widely and rally up as much support as possible.”

For more information and to offer organizational, financial or other support visit sumatranorangutan.org.

Donate here
Sign petition
Get news updates
Follow on Facebook

Also see http://greenwei.com/blog/nature-v-cookie-money-lessons-for-girl-scouts/

All, At Green Drinks, Environment, Events, Justice, Nature, New solutions, Sustainable communities, Youth

April green & sustainable actions, training, events

Leave a comment

Calendar treeCheck back for updates throughout the month.

Green Drinks 3 meets in Newark, Paterson-Clifton and Hackensack

Elly faceGreen Drinks are events – not a type of drink. They’re informal gatherings where people get together and chat about green and sustainable issues in our communities. Everyone is welcome and there is no admission fee. Pay for the food and drinks you order at the restaurants where we meet.
Green Drinks Newark 1st Mondays
(01 April 2013 @ 7-9pm)
Rio Rodizio
1034 McCarter Highway, Newark, NJ
Green Drinks Hackensack 2nd Mondays
(08 April 2013 @ 7-9pm)
Choripan Restaurant
76 Main Street (corner of Bergen St. aka Bridge St.), Hackensack, NJ
Green Drinks Paterson-Clifton
3rd Tuesday Lunch (16 April 2013 12-1:30pm)
Sultan Restaurant
429 Crooks Avenue, Clifton, NJ

Bergen CC NAACP screens Half the Sky

Half the SkyTuesday 29 April @ 11:45am
Bergen Community College
400 Paramus Road, Paramus NJ
Room A-104 in the Student Center
Read about it

27th Annual Stand Up for New Jersey Conference: Fighting for Clean Water, Air & Land

Stand Up for New Jersey! Learn about the most pressing environmental issues facing New Jersey in our exciting workshop sessions. The day also includes coffee and continental breakfast, environmental awards, lunch and a wine & cheese reception.
Saturday 06 April 2013 @ 8:30am-5pm
Georgian Court University
900 Lakewood Avenue, Lakewood Township, NJ
Tickets only $25 if you register now!

Featured Speaker: State Senator Barbara Buono

Workshop Sessions

  • Occupy Main Street, Occupy State Street with Tracy Carluccio of Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Clean Water Action’s national board chair David Tykulsker.
  • Climate Change Hits Home with Dr. Laumbach, MD of EOHSI and Dr. Kennish, PhD of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University.
  • We All Live Downstream with Brick and Jackson Township Municipal Utilities Authority.
  • NJ’s Green Energy Future with Stephanie McClellan of the Atlantic Wind Connection.
  • Sustainable Water & Green Infrastructure with Meishka Mitchell from the Camden SMART Initiative and Cooper Robertson’s Earl Jackson, IV and William Kenworthey.
  • Zero Waste with zero waste consultant Priscilla Hayes and Laura Petit of New Paltz, NY.
  • “Just Say No” Environmental Justice workshop with Henry Rose of the NJ Environmental Justice Alliance and Dylan Hawkins, Senator Weinberg’s legislative director.
  • Sustainability Tour of Georgian Court University (GCU) with GCU’s Director of Sustainability Dr. Louise Wootton and the Bus for Progress.

Statewide immigration reform rally at Jersey City State Park

Brothers and sisters Come with us, join us, and send this message to the President and the Congress “that we are united workers fighting for a Humane Immigration Reform that keeps family together! There will be a march on Liberty State Park in Jersey City to make our collective voices heard, this means that all New Jersey will be participating. Working People of NJ, from East and West, around North and South, all will be marching to demand that President Obama and Congress act quickly and pass a fair immigration reform package this year. We must make a single voice and stay strong to win this fight.

Saturday 06 April 2013 @ 12pm
Jersey City State Park
Directions by public transportation:
PATH subway to Pavonia/Newport or Hoboken.
Then take the Light Rail to Liberty State Park.

For more information
Elizabeth NJ: Rev. Ramon Collazo 908 209 0335 | Maritsa Loaiza 848 203 4310
Morristown area: Morris County Hispanic-American Chamber of Commerce 973 818 2666
SEIU NY & NJ

Strategy meeting for actions to stop Tennessee Gas Pipeline

Join Food and Water Watch Bergen/Passaic Group and our allies for the next meeting to stop the Tennessee Gas Pipeline! We’ll be discussing important campaign updates, planning next steps and continuing to build our local movement for a livable future. New members are always welcome!
Sunday 07 April 3:30-5pm
St. Mary’s Church, 25 Pompton Ave, Pompton Lakes NJ (Ground Floor of the School Building)
Who: You, your family, friends and neighbors!

For more info contact Matt Smith, North Jersey Organizer of Food & Water Watch 201.321.1967

Film: 
The Highlands Rediscovered

Presented by the New Jersey Highlands Coalition and the League of Women Voters of Ridgewood
Thursday 11 April 2013 @ 7-8:30pm
Lester Stable, Maple Avenue, Ridgewood
Free and open to the public!

This informative 30-minute documentary, shot beautifully in high-definition, explains the history of the Highlands region and why it became the source of clean drinking water for more than half of New Jersey’s population. The film shows how the ecological functions of the Highlands forests cleanse rain as it percolates into underground aquifers and ultimately, out into surface reservoirs. It also speaks about the challenges the Highlands region faces to retain forests so essential to the state’s health under great pressure to develop the land.
 
Following the film, Erica Van Auken and Elliott Ruga of the NJ Highlands Coalition will host an audience discussion and answer questions. For more information contact: Erica Van Auken 973-588-7190 or erica@njhighlandscoalition.org

State controlled school district advocates hold public meeting

The attack on public education is serious locally,statewide and nationally. Until we all come together and work collectively to stop school closings and gain local control and elect individuals who’s number one agenda is to strengthen and empower the community. Come and join Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Camden along with other cities. Together we can and will make a change. Light refreshments served.
Saturday 13 April 13 2013 @ 10am-1pm
Africana Institute or Essex County College
303 University Avenue, Newark, New Jersey 07102

RSVP to Sharon Smith Ssmith@Pulsenj.org or Johnnie Lattner Jlattner@Pulsenj.org

Kokokidz Latino Youth Peer Empowerment Group Meetings

Kokokidz meets once or twice a month in north Jersey. If you’re a Latino student junior high school through college age, Kokokidz will help empower you to make positive change happen in your school and community. Young Latinos support each other in the areas of career, education, applying for scholarships, civic engagement, sustainability practices and cultural preservation. We’re also seeking mentors who can interact with Kokokidz members and provide career and education advice.
Kokokidz General Meeting
Sunday 14 April 2013 @ 6-8pm
Villa de Colombia
12 Mercer Street, Hackensack, NJ
The group will choose an Earth Day activity and look at scholarships, summer internships.
Kokokidz Meets with Mentors and Gets A Finance Lesson
Sunday 28 April 2013 @ 6-8pm
Location TBA
Dennis Bedoya of 1st Jersey Federal Credit Union will give a half-hour presentation about money management and why credit unions can do more for our communities than traditional banks. Mentors will get to know the Kokokidz members.

Kokokidz Contacts
Ivan Wei 201-688-0036 @ivanwei
Luis Ariel Lopez Wei @lalwei

Mentors Needed!
If you’re available as an adult mentor please contact our advisor Kimi Wei via Facebook or Twitter to chat about volunteer opportunities.

Community Service We are looking at different types of community service opportunities. If you have a cause or event you’d like Kokokidz to engage with please share details.

Kokokidz is helping with the movement to Close New Jersey schools on Martin Luther King Jr. Day https://www.facebook.com/pages/Close-NJ-Schools-on-MLK-Jr-Day/276810379041778

Film: Food, Inc. in Paterson

Watch Food, Inc. and learn if Big Ag is putting profits over people
Wednesday 17 April 2013 @ 5pm
Paterson Free Public Library
250 Broadway, Paterson NJ

All, Fun, Nature

Wild gorillas meet man in Uganda

Leave a comment


What if you were a baby gorilla in Uganda, wandering peaceably around the jungle with your Silverback Daddy and the rest of your gorilla family … and happened upon a bunch of concrete steps making a pathway going up and down through the jungle, and discovered on those steps small troops of humans walking around. And one of those humans happened to be sitting down at just about your eye height and he had the oddest, silver hair. What would your baby gorilla mind tell you to do? Obviously, you must check this fellow out thoroughly. You must groom his hair a bit, lick him, and then climb up a small tree to see him better from a top view.

Gigantic Daddy at one point, grabs junior to move him on, but the little one isn’t ready to leave yet, and his fascination has attracted several of his brothers and sisters, who mill about next to the man together with junior. So Daddy Silverback walks a few feet behind the man and plunks himself down to sit and watch casually while his children, and then two female gorillas as well, examine this man thoroughly by touching his upper body, head and hair. Eventually, the family has seen enough and amble away. When the smaller gorillas move on, so does gigantic Daddy. They leave one very amazed man still sitting, keeping his head well down while the gorillas are in motion so as not to appear threatening or confrontative to them in any way. Clearly, the same benign Daddy who looks on with only moderate interest while his children swarm around the silver haired man, could very easily tear that man into several pieces if he was of a mind to do it.

This is a beautiful little vignette. Watch it if you have five and a half minutes to spend on a bit of pure enjoyment, observing the intersection of nature with the world of man.

The silver haired subject of the gorilla examination was visiting the Bwindi National Park wildlife preserve as an eco-tourist. Eco-tourism provides substantial revenue to the people of Uganda.

All, At Green Drinks, Events, Fun, Nature, New solutions, Protection, Sustainable communities

Green Drinks 3 (eco chats) March 2013 Schedule

Leave a comment

Calendar treeGreen Drinks 3 logo

Green Drinks are about the environment, sustainability, community empowerment, saving the net & happiness
At Green Drinks we are working on building healthy food systems and clean, safe communities. We’re chatting about . . . combatting climate change, composting, biking, kids walking to school, protecting public education, solar energy, alternate fuel cars and better public transit. Each of these is a sustainability topic.

Expert social and environmental justice advocates come out to spend the evening with the community discussing these issues. The point of Green Drinks is to spark conversation about integrating sustainability activities and environmentally friendly practices into our lives and neighborhoods!

WHO’S WELCOME?
You are! We have interesting and lively discussions, and meet at restaurants that serve good, inexpensive food. If you have information to contribute, or just want to learn, you’ll be welcome at Green Drinks. Feel free to bring a friend.

HAPPINESS & SAVING THE INTERNET
Recognizing your blessings is a game changer, so we discuss happiness. Protecting the free and open internet is ESSENTIAL to being happy and empowering communities, so we discuss this too.

CHEERS FROM YOUR HOSTS
Kimi Wei, Ivan Gomez Wei, Angenett Washington & Sally Gellert

MARCH GREEN DRINKS 3 SCHEDULE
Newark 1st Mondays (04 March) 7-9PM
Hackensack 2nd Mondays (11 March) 7-9PM
Paterson-Clifton 3rd Tuesdays (19 March) 12NOON
Visit http://greendrinks3.org/ for other location addresses

Check our list of upcoming events, actions & training

All, Energy, Environment, Justice, Nature, New solutions, Protection, Water

Is Climate Change real?

1 Comment

It is, according to more politicians, academicians, public figures and the United States Government: the EPA predicts coastal sees to rise and extreme weather events like Hurricanes to become more frequent.
US EPA carbon emisisons data
Bloomberg.com reports

Here’s what we know: an overwhelming majority of scientists tell us that the Earth’s climate is heating largely due to rising greenhouse gas emissions, which, in turn, is driving more extreme weather and climate events. The underlying changes–warmer oceans, more intense precipitation events, and rising sea levels–are significant contributors to storms like Sandy…

U.S. politicians’ silence on climate change is not only out of step with the rest of the world, but also with the American people, the vast majority of whom are concerned about climate change.

The human and economic costs of Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events are abundantly clear. In 2011, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there were 14 extreme weather and climate events of more than $1 billion in the United States, totaling approximately $55 billion. Looking at the bigger picture, a recent report found that the failure to act on climate change is likely to cost the world economy 1.7 percent of GDP, approximately $1.2 trillion per year in the near term, with the figure expected to double by 2030.

Shifting to clean energy opens new economic opportunities, including taking advantage of the $2.3 trillion global clean energy market expected to emerge in the next decade (pdf).

CNN seems to have become a believer since Sandy, too, and they’ve brought in heavy hitting guest writers to tell the public about it. MacArthur Fellow, Stony Brook University professor and president of Blue Ocean Institute, Carl Safina, writes as a CNN special guest

Reporters share their photos with CNN Obstacles and challenges after Sandy Mom can’t get help; two sons die NY mayor: Marathon won’t hurt recovery Search for gas gets more desperate
Sea levels are rising. They’ve been rising since the last ice age and that rise has been accelerating since the Industrial Revolution. We’ve had fair and continual and increasing warning. And yet, small coastal communities and cities as large as New York have done essentially nothing to prepare.
Over decades, we filled many wetlands that are the natural buffers to floods. Shrinking the area of our wetlands has left adjacent areas more prone to flooding.
As the world continues warming, the warming tends to intensify storms. New York has been hit with two hurricanes in two years. That’s unusual. And since at least Katrina, scientists have warned that hurricanes take their strength from the heat of the ocean’s surface.

And Chris Field, Global Ecology Department Chair of the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-chair of a working group tasked with assessing climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), writes as another CNN special guest,

Climate change is occurring now. We see its consequences in hotter temperatures, higher sea levels and shifted storm tracks. In many parts of the world, we are also seeing an increase in the fraction of rainfall that comes in the heaviest events. When it rains, increasingly it pours.
Climate change over the next couple of decades is already largely baked into the system, but changes beyond that are mostly in our hands. As we learn more about the links between climate change and extreme events, it will benefit all of us to think hard about the opportunities and challenges of getting a handle on climate change, so we control it and not vice versa.

Van Jones (as yet another special CNN contributor) proposes a solution that won’t only address climate change, but will improve the United States financial outlook too:

We have just the answer. It’s not a new idea, but as the two parties face off over the federal budget, it could be the path forward. There’s a tool we can use to answer the public’s call for more jobs – without cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security: a carbon tax.

One analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says a moderate, $20-per-ton tax on carbon emissions could raise $1.25 trillion over 10 years. And the savings don’t stop there. For decades, the oil and coal industries have passed along their costs to the rest of us, in the form of asthma treatment, emergency room visits, doctor bills and missed days of school and work. Combined with droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and severe weather events like Superstorm Sandy, rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere cost our nation an estimated $70 billion each year.

Everybody has to make up her own mind about what to believe, but I have no problem all believing that climate change is real, and making changes in my living habits to reverse global warming, and I want my government and business to do the same.