[Coral-List] Combating the Climate Crisis

Chelsie Counsell chelsiew12 at gmail.com
Tue Mar 10 23:42:05 UTC 2020


It is crazy that we've been talking about increasing remote access to coral
reef research meetings for at least 20 years - kudos to Mark Spalding for
making this part of the conversation then and reminding us all now. A small
team of us has been working to set up globally interconnected local meetings
for Coral Reef Week this July. Check out our website, coralreefweek.org to
find a meeting near you or to get in touch with us about organizing a
meeting in your location.



Also, can we please stop fighting about what path is the best for combating
the climate crisis? Because we didn't take action decades ago when climate
scientists were presenting the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions to
congress, we are now in an alarming position of needing unprecedented
societal change. For the future of this planet and everything on it, we
need to do everything we can, as much as we can.


I agree with Luis that we should vote and do all we can to encourage
regulatory change. We should also eat vegan diets, bike to work / carpool /
use public transit, and work to not be the continuous consumers of
manufactured products that the capitalistic market encourages us to be. We
should also fly less. The 3% of emissions number is a really ridiculous way
to justify our addiction to air travel since a very small proportion of the
global population ever gets on a plane, with an even smaller proportion
responsible for multiple long distance flights each year. The 3% disregards
the transportation used to get to / from the airport and the massive
infrastructure of airports. It does not include the water vapor emissions
or the altitude at which the engine pollutants are directly placed into the
atmosphere. Air traffic currently accounts for three times more emissions
than the total emissions of a country like France, and it is projected to
double by 2030. Minute per minute, air travel is the fastest way for an
individual to contribute massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. For
many of our personal carbon emission footprints, flying makes up a much
larger percentage than 3% and should not be ignored as an option to cut our
personal contributions to the climate crisis. Learn more at
https://noflyclimatesci.org/ - check out their Resources page for lots of
great sources.

~ ~ ><> ~ ~ ~ ><> ~ ~
Chelsie Counsell, Ph.D.
Quantitative Community Ecologist
Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology
chelsiew12 at gmail.com


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