Well done Big Issue for raising a topic hardly ever covered 'Local Housing Allowance', which caps how much Benefits will cover the rent, leaving Claimants to find the money or more common go into arrears. LHA frozen since 2020 and is limited theoretically to the lowest 30% of properties in a local area. A huge source of homelessness as Benefits not covering the full cost of rents unless you get lucky and find one low enough.
Greenpeace activists climb Deutsche Bank building to protest against investment policies
#ClimateEmergency #pollution #ecology #environment #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe #climate #ClimateStrike #Frankfurt #Germany
I've been thinking about clothes pegs and the vast superiority of wooden pegs. We dry our clothes on a clothes line and have a box of wooden and plastic clothes pegs.
The plastic pegs degrade in sunlight and eventually break. They'll fill a landfill or break into microplastics. Meanwhile, sunlight keeps rot off the wooden pegs and with regular use they may out last me. If they break, the wood can be tossed in the garden to rot.
Why are plastic clothes pegs even a thing?
This spells disaster for any hopes of having a large network of charging stations accessible to all #EVs anytime soon. And it's pitiful to leave the charging connector standard up to Elon and his whims instead of a standards committee.
Fossil bones found in Laotian cave are oldest evidence for modern humans in mainland South-East Asia, say scientists - ABC News https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-06-14/oldest-evidence-for-modern-humans-in-mainland-south-east-asia/102471990
They say the bones, some of which are dated up to 86,000 years, are the oldest examples of modern humans (Homo sapiens) found in South-East Asia, pushing back the known arrival time of our species in the area.
George Soros propaganda is heavily on display at the Miami courthouse today. A good opportunity to remind #MAGA that #GeorgeSoros disinformation is Russian, antisemitic propaganda that's been around for decades.
Usually hard to spot in the forests of northern Scotland, the Red Squirrel is famous for being shy, except for this sub species. The rare show-off Circus Squirrel, captured here pretending to be in a tight rope act.
#Nature #Wildlife #Highland #Scotland #Photography #Forest #Wood #Wild #Loch #River #Island #Mountain #squirrel #funny
The #Antarctic sea ice departure has actually grown in the last few days.
Summary of the related atmospheric drivers, like the Amundsen Sea Low, can be found from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2023/06/springing-into-summer/. Interannual variability is very large!
Data from: https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index
More graphs: https://zacklabe.com/antarctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/.
More media coverage: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-31/antarctic-sea-ice-hits-another-record-low/102391534 and https://www.wired.com/story/antarctic-sea-ice-is-at-record-lows-is-it-an-alarming-shift/
The unsustainable lifestyles of the successfully wealthy.
Imagine if a government encouraged people to live sustainable lifestyles.
This would be in stark contrast to the current neoliberal sociopolitical and socioeconomic paradigm that has encouraged unsustainable lifestyles in the name of economic growth. Ways of living that are based on increasing the amounts of resources society consume (e.g., bigger cars, houses and not sharing products)
"Consumerism" is an umbrella term. However, the most ecologically damaging aspect of consumerism is due to a "free" (where products are not free) market economy where business activities have not been linked to sustaining the planet's life support systems.
A market trades products and services. In other words, supply and demand. Therefore, to critically evaluate a business's environmental impact, the supply and demand environmental impacts of the businesses' and end consumers' activities must be analyzed.
Let's take a worst-case example of an extremely unsustainable lifestyle.
A Fuel Company Executive (FCE) who relatively receives a high income (e.g., millionaire +). The FCE managers business activities that use various methods to extract "fossil" fuels (Coal, crude oil, gas). "Fossil" fuels are Carbon Based Fuels (CBF). These industrial activities degrade (damage & pollute) or destroy natural habitats so as to extract the CBF (or metal, etc) that are under the ground (on land or the seabed). These extraction activities also use machinery that burns CBF (combustion engines. e.g., diesel) to extract the CBF, and transport and process the CBF (e.g., crude oil refineries > fuel stations). At the end of all these power and resource-consuming activities, the final product is incinerated (to fuel machinery). That's a linear-based economy that is burning finite materials. That's an unsustainable economy.
A Fuel Company Executive (FCE) generally works in an office. These office blocks or skyscrapers also burn Carbon Based Fuels (CBF) & use electricity generated by burning CBF (e.g., for construction, maintenance, heating, air conditioning, etc). Wealthy FCE live lifestyle (including personal business activities) that burns a relatively high amount of CBF and uses a relatively high amount of resources in general (e.g., large car, regular trips on Jets, etc).
Generally, people that are living lives that are only taking (e.g., consuming materials) and polluting (e.g., burning fuels) can not be sustained (evidently).
Imagine if a government encouraged people to live sustainable lifestyles. "Government" is fundamentally management. For a government to promote ecological #sustainability it must understand the relevant subjects such as #ecology and #climatology. It must also have a long-term plan (e.g., hundreds to thousands of years). Generally, for a population of people in a democracy (e.g., in a country) to develop a sustainable culture the general population must have a form of intelligence that understands how the Planet's ecosystem functions (based on the evidence of the science of ecology). Also, the government must align with the voter's motives to live sustainable lifestyles (e.g., not greenwash the public as has been the norm with many governments. e.g., the UK's Conservative Party tend to greenwash the voters that they will mitigate the environmental problems in twenty years or so. Rather than dealing with them now by developing the appropriate fast-acting environmental policies now (they've been greenwashing the voters for decades)
Fundamentally, because a sustainable lifestyle is practically possible - https://qoto.org/@Empiricism_Reloaded/110511036586999020
- the fundamental problem that is causing ecological degradation, therefore, climate change is political. More broadly psychological (e.g., uneducation, misinformation, corruption, disinformation, greed, vanity, ideologies, delusions, etc)
The Planet's biosphere (e.g., weather or more broadly in time and space climate) is the regulator of all human lives and activities. As human activities degrade (e.g., pollute) components of the Planet's biosphere, this is causing ecological negative events (for humans) such as climate change. These events will increasingly regulate human activities.
Consider a spectrum (e.g., more or less of a variable). The variable is human activities. On one extreme of the spectrum is the Fuel Company Executive (or the millionaire or billionaire lifestyle). These are the people that are evidently living High Ecological Impact Lifestyles (HEIL). At the other end of the spectrum are people that are living Low Ecological Impact Lifestyles (LEIL). For example, those people that have incorporated sustainable living into their lifestyle (their thinking). In fact, in practice, LEIL can repair the damage that the HEIL has historically caused to natural habitats by restoring the local ecosystems (whilst also growing food & providing other goods and services to the local economy)
Further reading and guidance about Low Ecological Impact Living. https://qoto.org/@Empiricism_Reloaded/110511036586999020
The European Commission is launching a public consultation to gather people’s views on the EU’s intermediary #climate target for 2040.
You can answer the public consultation here. https://climate.ec.europa.eu/news-your-voice/news/have-your-say-eus-climate-target-2040-2023-04-04_en
Share your trade perspective on climate action policies.
We'd love to hear from you. 👇💚
RT @EUClimateAction: What 🇪🇺 climate policies do you want to see for the future?
Now 𝗬𝗢𝗨 can have a say, and help us set our next climate target! 🌍
Join our open public consultation and make your voice heard!
Answer the survey 👉 https://climate.ec.europa.eu/news-your-voice/news/have-your-say-eus-climate-target-2040-2023-04-04_en
#EUHaveYourSay #ClimateChange https://t.co/x3tfNT0moJ
🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/Trade_EU/status/1668549920482029576
📣 Cool Job Alert 📣
Our friends over at EcoAgriculture Partners are hiring:
Director of Innovation in Landscape Management, EcoAgriculture
Basically, a role that promotes communities using the Integrated Landscape Management approach.
https://ecoagriculture.org/job/director-of-innovation-in-landscape-management/
#jobs #JobOpportunity #job #agriculture #conservation #sustainability
“Since the Neolithic Revolution, an assortment of farming systems in Europe that relied heavily on monocultures and a handful of finicky staple crops often ended abruptly and violently. The diverse forest gardens of peasants, however, have quietly shrugged off ten thousand years of turbulent changes. This article is a look at the little-known history of these systems and their innovative strategies for survival.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-08/the-lost-forest-gardens-of-europe/
#Agriculture #Agroforestry
“Climate action is the number one priority for major European cities, with 55% of mayors selecting it in new research – more than double any other category.”
“Eurocities, a collaborative network for European cities, surveyed 92 mayors in 28 European countries for its first annual Pulse survey.”
“After climate action, mayors ranked mobility (23%), economic recovery (20%), fighting inequalities (18%), and housing (15%) as most urgent.”
https://cities-today.com/climate-action-ranked-as-top-priority-for-european-mayors/
#Urbanism #Climate
24 hours of Earth's rotation, with the camera locked to the sky instead of the ground. We're all hanging out on this spinning rock.
Brilliant video by Bartosz Wojczyński. https://artuniverse.eu/gallery/190705-rotation24h #nature #wonder #earth
Whenever I see someone on one of these, I imagine they started out with a much larger vehicle and their journey has been riddled with a series of mishaps
#OldMememesNeverDie
Often, the use of a common word in #science has been incorporated into the layfolk lexicon, but has a different meaning.
E.g., when layfolk hear scientists say, for example, "theory", they perceive that a theory is just an idea (because that's how they use the word. E.g., "l have a theory"). Some scientists use the term theory when in fact the concept they're discussing is a hypothesis (I.e., not a sufficient amount of supporting evidence for it to be a theory)
The #theory of #evolution !
They do like to talk ideas to death.
However, #evolution by natural selection had no foresight. Therefore, evolution can't be deterministic.
We certainly could use some fresh thinkers in the social media evolution \ #philosophy academia scene.
But, Incorrect ideas tend to die out over a generational time frame (bad habits & incorrect ideas die out [in the scientific social scene])
The Dissenter: #787 Kennon Sheldon - Freely Determined; The New Psychology of the Self, and How to Live
Conservation Biologist. Tooting about #science #ecology #sustainability #evolution #psychology & whatever subject takes my interest.
Empiricism aims (intentions) are to promote accurate evidence-based information. The general theme of this account is related to promoting #sustainable development. Sustainable development requires mitigating ecological degradation therefore also mitigating #ClimateChange & its associated drivers such as pollution & habitat degradation. This account will not “sugar-coat” the required level of changes needed for humanity to reverse the trend of human-caused ecological degradation.
Historically, & presently, climate change is mitigating humanity (e.g., increases in the frequency & intensity of heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, sea level rise, flash floods, pathogen outbreaks, etc)
Since no one person be informed of all the scientific literature, if a reader thinks that Empiricism makes a statement that is not backed up by the general scientific literature, please refer Empiricism to the relevant peer-reviewed science publication (e.g., paper or website)
Because a Mastodon instance can close down without warning or a Mastodon admin can suspend an account without warning - Empiricism regularly backups the “follows” & “followers” lists. Therefore, if Empiricism can not access this account (e.g., a suspension means the account can’t be moved to another instance), Empiricism will open an account on another Mastodon instance & re-follow the follows list and contact (e.g., direct message) the follower's list (e.g., requesting if people would like to re-follow)
I use The Empirical Perspective blog on WordPress as a digital signature - so that people can be more confident that it’s the same “Empiricism”
Here is the link to Empiricism digital signature https://empiricalperspective.home.blog/2023/06/04/empiricism-on-mastodon-verification-post/
#music #nature #wildlife
#science #climate #ClimateChange #CleanAir
#sustainability #ecology #AgroEcology
#psychology #SocialPsychology #EvolutionaryPsychology
#justice #AntiBigotry