Lifeboat Foundation

If you are a Lifeboat subscriber or have been reading these pages for awhile, you may know why it’s called “Lifeboat”. A fundamental goal of our founder, board, writers and supporters is to sustain the environment, life in all its diversity, and—if necessary—(i.e. if we destroy our environment beyond repair, or face a massive incoming asteroid), to prepare for relocating. That is, to build a lifeboat, figuratively and literally.

But most of us never believed that we would face an existential crisis, except perhaps a potential for a 3rd World War. Yet, here we are: Burning the forests, killing off unspeakable numbers of species (200 each day), cooking the planet, melting the ice caps, shooting a hole in the ozone, and losing more land to the sea each year.

Regading the urgent message of Greta Thunberg, below, I am at a loss for words. Seriously, there is not much I can add to the 1st video below.

Information about climate change is all around us. Everyone knows about it; Most people understand that it is real and it that poses an existential threat, quite possibly in our lifetimes. In our children’s lives, it will certainly lead to war, famine, cancer, and massive loss of land, structures and money. It is already raising sea level and killing off entire species at thousands of times the natural rate.

Continue reading “Greta Thunberg: Most Important Message Ever” »

For millennia, our planet has sustained a robust ecosystem; healing each deforestation, algae bloom, pollution or imbalance caused by natural events. Before the arrival of an industrialized, destructive and dominant global species, it could pretty much deal with anything short of a major meteor impact. In the big picture, even these cataclysmic events haven’t destroyed the environment—they just changed the course of evolution and rearranged the alpha animal.

But with industrialization, the race for personal wealth, nations fighting nations, and modern comforts, we have recognized that our planet is not invincible. This is why Lifeboat Foundation exists. We are all about recognizing the limits to growth and protecting our fragile environment.

Check out this April news article on the US president’s forthcoming appointment of Jim Bridenstine, a vocal climate denier, as head of NASA. NASA is one of the biggest agencies on earth. Despite a lack of training or experience—without literacy in science, technology or astrophysics—he was handed an enormous responsibility, a staff of 17,000 and a budget of $19 billion.

In 2013, Bridenstine criticized former president Obama for wasting taxpayer money on climate research, and claimed that global temperatures stopped rising 15 years ago.

Continue reading “NASA director reverses on climate change, after 1 month” »

Point discussed at 1:31 in the video: https://youtu.be/VJ_qtKf64Is?t=1m3s

From the conference text at: https://www.academia.edu/34323947/Mont_Order_July_2017_Conference_Text

• “Climate change not likely to be stopped, likely to result in a crisis. No resources may be left for next generation.“
  • “Crises occurred in the past, and the 1% lost the most. The 99% are likely to survive climate change by struggling through anything (droughts, resource shortages, food shortages, economic crashes etc.) whereas the 1% could lose everything.”
  • “If the elite crack under pressure as Donald Trump does, this supports the above. The future of the 1% during a climate change crisis could be a larger scale version of the insanity that grips people who suffer a financial loss and become homeless after a relatively normal life.”
  • “As above, the Great Depression did not impact average person, but drove stockbrokers and other wealthy people to ruin or suicide.”

“Bloomberg, an entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City, and Pope, a lifelong environmental leader, approach climate change from different perspectives, yet they arrive at similar conclusions.”

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“In an exclusive interview on his legacy, President Obama speaks to The Times’s Mark Landler and Coral Davenport on climate change while visiting Marine Corps Base Hawaii.”

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“Inevitably, the compromises of the Paris Agreement make it both a huge achievement and an imperfect solution to the problem of global climate change.”

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Continue reading “Seeing daylight | The Economist” »

As everyone is pointing out, 2015 is a crucial year for sustainable development, with three critical international meetings in the calendar starting this month. But what role do science, technology and innovation play in these processes?

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