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People struggle through flooded streets in Dhaka, Bangladesh after heavy rains this month. Photo by Sumit Ahmed / Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Kaitiakitanga: Seeking To Save the World With Words and Pictures and, Hopefully, Action

Facing "a code red for humanity," world leaders gather next week at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to try to save a planet we've been fouling and stripping and plundering for decades. In a special update reflecting the "now or never" moment, the Oxford English Dictionary said it now lists "climate crisis" for the first time - also "eco-anxiety," referenced 565% more this year - and a climate non-profit released a series of visualizations showing how far underwater your city could be to emphasize the pivotal issue: "Do you choose Door A or do you choose Door B? Here's what they look like."

Facing "a code red for humanity," leaders of about 200 countries will gather next week at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to try to save a planet we've been heedlessly fouling and stripping and plundering for decades. Themeeting is the 26th Conference of Parties to 1992's UNFCCC, or U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which marked the first time nations acknowledged the need to control greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change; it's also a sorry reminder the world has now dithered and stumbled for 26 years to land at what John Kerry calls "the last best chance" to avoid ecological catastrophe. In the 2015 Paris Agreement that updated the original treaty, countries set the goal of limiting global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) and preferably 1.5 degrees (2.7 F) in order to cut emissions to zero by 2050 - a holy grail that, given our record to date, invites "cynicism, or at least wariness."
The remaining window to act, of course, has been inexorably narrowing, with experts long issuing dire warnings; in 2018, in a piece titled, "Time To Panic," a U.N. official described the rate of climate change as "a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen." This month, the growing urgency was reflected in a special dispatch from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the "definitive record of the English language" and a sort of linguistic Nirvana for word nerds, announcing the debut of several key terms. Tracking the history of naming what we've done to the only planet we have, editors noted usage has moved from "global warming" to "climate change" - still the most common - to their launch of "climate crisis," now included for the first time; they said "climate emergency" is also apt. In a world where millions are confronting unprecedented weather extremes - rising seas, floods, fires, heat - they also added "eco-anxiety," which according to Google Trends saw search interest soar 565% in the last year. In other fraught signs of the times, they also added or revised: net-zero, climate strikes, food insecurity, ecocide, over-consumption, unsustainable, tipping point and mass extinction.
Words are one tool to make the world respond to that piercing smoke alarm in the kitchen; images are another. Seeking to highlight "the big picture" in time for Glasgow, the non-profit Climate Central has released a series of visualizations of cities around the world showing the long-term consequences of "unremitting sea level rise that we set in motion depending on what we do." Thus, if global temps rise 3 degrees, by the end of the century the water from melted ice sheets will cover land holding 10% of the world's population, including 43 million people in China; a rise of 4 degrees could severely threaten or destroy 50 major cities, and many small island nations. Using inter-active slides to move water over specific locales - see the Lincoln Memorial become an island - CEO Benjamin Strauss notes, "It's as simple as, do you choose door A or do you choose door B? Here's what they look like...There's a real choice here, and how we're going to be remembered in the history books." Amidst the (increasingly) bad news, the fact of that choice matters. In 2018, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the Maori concept of kaitiakitanga, a human duty of environmental stewardship based on the deep kinship between humans and the natural world, as the key to combating climate change. Agreeing, the OED added the word this year. May it be in time.
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Facing "a code red for humanity," leaders of about 200 countries will gather next week at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to try to save a planet we've been heedlessly fouling and stripping and plundering for decades. Themeeting is the 26th Conference of Parties to 1992's UNFCCC, or U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which marked the first time nations acknowledged the need to control greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change; it's also a sorry reminder the world has now dithered and stumbled for 26 years to land at what John Kerry calls "the last best chance" to avoid ecological catastrophe. In the 2015 Paris Agreement that updated the original treaty, countries set the goal of limiting global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) and preferably 1.5 degrees (2.7 F) in order to cut emissions to zero by 2050 - a holy grail that, given our record to date, invites "cynicism, or at least wariness."
The remaining window to act, of course, has been inexorably narrowing, with experts long issuing dire warnings; in 2018, in a piece titled, "Time To Panic," a U.N. official described the rate of climate change as "a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen." This month, the growing urgency was reflected in a special dispatch from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the "definitive record of the English language" and a sort of linguistic Nirvana for word nerds, announcing the debut of several key terms. Tracking the history of naming what we've done to the only planet we have, editors noted usage has moved from "global warming" to "climate change" - still the most common - to their launch of "climate crisis," now included for the first time; they said "climate emergency" is also apt. In a world where millions are confronting unprecedented weather extremes - rising seas, floods, fires, heat - they also added "eco-anxiety," which according to Google Trends saw search interest soar 565% in the last year. In other fraught signs of the times, they also added or revised: net-zero, climate strikes, food insecurity, ecocide, over-consumption, unsustainable, tipping point and mass extinction.
Words are one tool to make the world respond to that piercing smoke alarm in the kitchen; images are another. Seeking to highlight "the big picture" in time for Glasgow, the non-profit Climate Central has released a series of visualizations of cities around the world showing the long-term consequences of "unremitting sea level rise that we set in motion depending on what we do." Thus, if global temps rise 3 degrees, by the end of the century the water from melted ice sheets will cover land holding 10% of the world's population, including 43 million people in China; a rise of 4 degrees could severely threaten or destroy 50 major cities, and many small island nations. Using inter-active slides to move water over specific locales - see the Lincoln Memorial become an island - CEO Benjamin Strauss notes, "It's as simple as, do you choose door A or do you choose door B? Here's what they look like...There's a real choice here, and how we're going to be remembered in the history books." Amidst the (increasingly) bad news, the fact of that choice matters. In 2018, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the Maori concept of kaitiakitanga, a human duty of environmental stewardship based on the deep kinship between humans and the natural world, as the key to combating climate change. Agreeing, the OED added the word this year. May it be in time.
Facing "a code red for humanity," leaders of about 200 countries will gather next week at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland to try to save a planet we've been heedlessly fouling and stripping and plundering for decades. Themeeting is the 26th Conference of Parties to 1992's UNFCCC, or U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which marked the first time nations acknowledged the need to control greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change; it's also a sorry reminder the world has now dithered and stumbled for 26 years to land at what John Kerry calls "the last best chance" to avoid ecological catastrophe. In the 2015 Paris Agreement that updated the original treaty, countries set the goal of limiting global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) and preferably 1.5 degrees (2.7 F) in order to cut emissions to zero by 2050 - a holy grail that, given our record to date, invites "cynicism, or at least wariness."
The remaining window to act, of course, has been inexorably narrowing, with experts long issuing dire warnings; in 2018, in a piece titled, "Time To Panic," a U.N. official described the rate of climate change as "a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen." This month, the growing urgency was reflected in a special dispatch from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the "definitive record of the English language" and a sort of linguistic Nirvana for word nerds, announcing the debut of several key terms. Tracking the history of naming what we've done to the only planet we have, editors noted usage has moved from "global warming" to "climate change" - still the most common - to their launch of "climate crisis," now included for the first time; they said "climate emergency" is also apt. In a world where millions are confronting unprecedented weather extremes - rising seas, floods, fires, heat - they also added "eco-anxiety," which according to Google Trends saw search interest soar 565% in the last year. In other fraught signs of the times, they also added or revised: net-zero, climate strikes, food insecurity, ecocide, over-consumption, unsustainable, tipping point and mass extinction.
Words are one tool to make the world respond to that piercing smoke alarm in the kitchen; images are another. Seeking to highlight "the big picture" in time for Glasgow, the non-profit Climate Central has released a series of visualizations of cities around the world showing the long-term consequences of "unremitting sea level rise that we set in motion depending on what we do." Thus, if global temps rise 3 degrees, by the end of the century the water from melted ice sheets will cover land holding 10% of the world's population, including 43 million people in China; a rise of 4 degrees could severely threaten or destroy 50 major cities, and many small island nations. Using inter-active slides to move water over specific locales - see the Lincoln Memorial become an island - CEO Benjamin Strauss notes, "It's as simple as, do you choose door A or do you choose door B? Here's what they look like...There's a real choice here, and how we're going to be remembered in the history books." Amidst the (increasingly) bad news, the fact of that choice matters. In 2018, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the Maori concept of kaitiakitanga, a human duty of environmental stewardship based on the deep kinship between humans and the natural world, as the key to combating climate change. Agreeing, the OED added the word this year. May it be in time.
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