only 2 U.S. cities are in the top 80

Although Americans often focus on our own nation as if it were the "center of the universe", in fact the rest of the globe is proceeding without equally focusing on us.

Among the world's top 80+ cities by population,
 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population
only 2 U.S. cities are in the top 80 in that list:
New York is #27 and Los Angeles is #63
Reflecting on this list may be good for one's perspective.

Chongqing, the world's largest "city proper"

forests and climate change

"Improving management of the world’s forests is a “no regrets” mitigation strategy that is also important for adaptation and the Sustainable Development Goals."

Read the information on forests and climate change at the World Resources Institute's website, listed under

Forests in the IPCC Special Report on Land Use: 7 Things to Know: https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/forests-ipcc-special-report-land-use-7-things-know

 

Ph by J M Miller

ecology and liberation

A new paper in The Trumpeter by Simon Appolloni, entitled

Eco-Tethered Liberation: A New Spirituality for the Anthropocene

 takes us to some important realizations. 

“While poverty and oppression continue to afflict the majority of the human world population,

anthropogenic global environmental degradation is increasingly plaguing the planet. These

realities mark our epoch, labelled by many as the Anthropocene. The situation before us could

be defined by what theologian Cynthia Moe-Lobeda aptly labels ‘complex webs of

exploitation’: they defy easy characterization and resist ready solutions. One of the major

reasons for this predicament, I suggest, is the multi-layered and interrelated nature of these

exploitations: environmental and social, individual and collective, local and global. The result is

that we can no longer compartmentalize an ethical approach to problems in our search for a

just and sustainable world. “

See more at http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/1594/1747 

Poem, for Wendell Berry

In our recent lives

We've seen so many times

When we've allowed things to be trashed.

Selling off pieces of our birthrights

Of earth's gifts, and the dignity of men and women, institutions

That once served the good.

We've watched, so often dumbstruck

As brutality reigned

Lies masqueraded as truths.

Mr. Berry, far senior to me

Holds his tongue no longer

Lets his words enact the moment.

Read on, see truth unvarnished

He's tired of waiting

Prods my consciousness awake.

                             

                                             wpm; 4-17-19

Now, read the poem "Questionnaire", by Wendell Berry, at:

 https://reflections.yale.edu/article/money-and-morals-after-crash/questionnaire

up-ending science, and news from montane glaciers

Two pieces of scientific work and the journalism linked to them are worthy of your attention:

EPA Science Panel Considering Guidelines That Up-end Basic Air Pollution Science

"Several members of a powerful science panel for the Environmental Protection Agency expressed doubt at a hearing Thursday about the long-established scientific consensus that air pollution can cause premature death."

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707166015/epa-science-panel-considering-guidelines-that-upend-basic-air-pollution-science

In another discipline, we have had some information concerning melting montane glaciers and how they contribute to sea-level rise, but a new study takes a deeper view into "how much - and how quickly they're melting":

Photo by Wikim. Commons: Frankeman

Melting glaciers contribute a third of sea-level rise

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/world-mountain-glaciers-melting-sea-level-rise/

See the paper being discussed, in Nature:

Global glacier mass changes and their contributions to sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1071-0