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5 Sep, 11 tweets, 4 min read
40%-60% of Earth's trees and other plants including crop species face extinction due to a combination of today's for-profit industrial agriculture, logging, road-building, construction, mining, etc, etc, and current & near-future abrupt climate change.

Where is the media frenzy?
1. The living world is being wrecked by for-profit agriculture and the global economy as a whole.

Technology is useless when ecosystems permanently collapse.

2. I cannot imagine capitalism protecting forests in a meaningful way. It's much easier for me to imagine necessary alternatives to capitalism.

We must now create a Postgrowth economy.

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3. Media focus on the corporations responsible for forest destruction is extremely rare.

You can find articles on deforestation easily enough (though the framing always distorts reality) but corporate power won't be challenged by corporate media.

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4. Media are silent on the immediate threat to grass/crop species vital for agriculture.

Thread with helpful articles:

5. There are huge gaps when it comes to our knowledge of plants which means it is entirely possible that 40% of plants facing extinction is an underestimate.

See article in this thread which also hints at food system dangers:

6. We appear to be heading for catastrophic declines in crop yields by the 2030s / 2040s.

However, it will never be too late to strive for system change action to achieve a more just world and limit the damage and suffering.

Keep going. 🕊️

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7. The rapid, spiraling destruction of Earth's major carbon-sucking ecosystems by the global growth economy means we need profound system change within years for any hope of a chance at decent survival.

Media?

Silent, naturally.

We can change.

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8. The more corporate media focus on climate change, the less they explain that changes are abrupt and not just about climate or caused by the fossil fuel industry.

Capitalism is inherently destructive. Corporate media's job is to distort that reality.

news.sky.com/story/up-to-a-…
9. The ecosystems needed for life on Earth to survive decently are now in a phase of collapse due to industrial capitalism. Spineless media confirm it's 'human activity' according to scientists, without explaining which humans (a tiny elite) are to blame.
ecowatch.com/biodiversity-e…
10. So what do we do as emissions rise towards record levels by 2023 and resource use explodes?

The answer is political transformation.

Is it 'too late'?

We'll never be able to know, so the answer remains the same: political transformation. 💚

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More from @ClimateBen

Ben See Profile picture
15 Sep
BREAKING: abrupt climate change will more than triple thе proportion of cropland affected by drought by the 2040s
Analysis of corporate media is essential with much useful information to be found.

But a basic reality is omitted: we're heading for >460 ppm of atmospheric CO2 and 2°C horror by 2036-2045.

Fair emergency action to protect everyone may yet be achieved. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
'BREAKING' is ironic as we've known for years that crop yields will be negatively affected by climate change much earlier than once expected:

'we will see, on average, an increasingly negative impact of climate change on crop yields from the 2030s onwards'phys.org/news/2014-03-c…
Read 4 tweets
Ben See Profile picture
13 Sep
BREAKING: Earth's 8.7 million species call for immediate system change
60% of primate species are threatened with extinction, 75% are declining.

Main threat: habitat destruction due to logging/agriculture.

Hunting, road construction, oil & gas extraction, mining, pollution, disease, and climate change are also key threats. theconversation.com/60-of-primate-…
40-60% of tree species are threatened with extinction.

dumptheguardian.com/environment/20…

more than half of species are only found in one country, suggesting vulnerability to potential threats, such as deforestation from extreme weather events or human activity.

bbc.com/news/science-e…
Read 20 tweets
Ben See Profile picture
12 Sep
Dr James Hansen, climate scientist, 2008:

"If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice - that's a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a guaranteed disaster".

Our trajectory: 450ppm by 2032.
1. "if we follow business as usual I can't see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century."

That wrecks coastal cities.

Corporate media like Gdn are now silent on 450ppm.
dumptheguardian.com/environment/20…
2. Rapid transition to a postgrowth economy via careful, emergency, climate justice action is required now. It'll be extraordinary if we avoid 2C by 2035-2050 but we must try to limit the damage and protect everyone. Today's growth economy must go.

Thread:
Read 6 tweets
Ben See Profile picture
12 Sep
Editors and journalists are shamefully silent on the scientific projections that show without action on inequity billions of people exploited in poverty will face multiple high level food, water and energy risks from 2026-2035 due to ecological collapse and abrupt climate change.
1.
State-corporate media are busy protecting today's ultra-destructive global growth economy of which they are a key part and so only occasionally pay lip service to crucial ideas of climate justice.

It's not too late for fair, radical system change.

⬇️
2.
To limit the damage and suffering requires profound system change.

Read 4 tweets
Ben See Profile picture
11 Sep
Until all of us - our families, friends, and acquaintances - are aware that global warming of 2°C could cause major dislocations for 'civilization', and that this looks increasingly likely to happen by between 2036 and 2045, there will be no action to try to protect everybody.
Global warming of 2°C may cause 'major dislocations for civilization' climatenewsnetwork.net/2c-rise-will-b… and this looks likely to happen 'by 2045' nature.com/articles/d4158… and in fact 'at our present pace of fossil fuel burning we will, by 2036, exceed the 2°C limit' theconversation.com/amp/limiting-g….
Is this 'civilization' ..?

(2°C probably means 2.5°C becomes inevitable.)

Read 4 tweets
Ben See Profile picture
5 Sep
Seagrass meadows can bury carbon in underwater sediments 40 times faster than tropical forests bury it in soil, providing one of the greatest contributions to the total carbon buried in ocean sediments. They are being destroyed at a rate of around 7% each year.
1. Kids deserve to be educated properly. Where is the explanation of capitalism's obvious role in the destruction of species and ecosystems?

kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…
2. '10 of the 72 known seagrass species (14%) are at an elevated risk of extinction, while 3 species qualify as endangered', however, though 'researchers listed 48 species (67%) in the "Least Concern" category, most of these species..are declining'

(2011)sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/…
Read 4 tweets

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