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The Pandemic Year Marked a Turning Point in Climate Change. Must-read by David Wallace-Wells, NY Magazine (2021)

All year, a planet transformed by the burning of carbon discharged what would have once been called portents of apocalypse. The people of that planet, as a whole, didn’t take much notice — distracted by the pandemic and trained, both by the accumulating toll of recent disasters and the ever-rising volume of climate alarm, to see what might once have looked like brutal ruptures in lived reality instead as logical developments in a known pattern.

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Futurist David Brin: Be a Proxy activist ! Love this concept (and yes, I am, also)

Be a proxy activist

Brin believes everyone should be a proxy activist. That means you find half a dozen nonprofit organizations to give $50 a month to, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or others that represent your point of view. Fail to do so and “you’re a bad person,” in his view. The same way nonprofits help tackle issues of injustice, he says these organizations can help keep the sort of AI that seeks to rule humans at bay.”

Futurist David Brin: Get ready for the ‘first robotic empathy crisis’
https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/03/futurist-david-brin-get-ready-for-the-first-robotic-empathy-crisis/
via Instapaper

I kinda do that already :)
Nice meme, David 

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Thomas Piketty proposes flight tax to raise climate funds (and I’d be inclined to support it)

This makes sense to me - even thought I'd be hit hard by it, myself

“Air travel should be taxed to protect the world’s vulnerable from drought, flooding and sea level rise. A €180 ($196/£130) levy on business class tickets and €20 on economy class would raise the estimated €150bn a year needed for climate adaptation.  That is one proposal by French economists Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty to address global inequalities between high-polluting individuals and the victims of climate change.

“Taxing flights is one way to target high emitting lifestyles, especially if we tax business class more than economy class,” Chancel told Climate Home. “A tax on air tickets to finance development programs already exists in some countries. What we need is to increase its level and generalise it.”

Piketty – author of Capital, a bestseller on wealth inequality – and Chancel outline huge disparities in people’s carbon footprints across the world. One-tenth of people are responsible for 45% of global emissions. “Economic inequalities are reaching record high levels and reducing them constitutes a key challenge to policymakers in the coming decades,” said Chancel.

“It’s the same thing with carbon: another huge challenge that puts our societies at risk. If we fail to address both, our societies can collapse.””

Thomas Piketty proposes flight tax to raise climate funds
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/05/thomas-piketty-proposes-flight-tax-to-raise-climate-funds
via Instapaper


Gerd Leonhard 
Futurist, Author, Keynote Speaker, CEO The Futures Agency

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