10 Best Climate Tweets | Vol. 2
We scour Twitter for the best climate crisis tweets | ISSUE 16, May 6, 2019
QUICKREAD: Here’s how to get your straws into the ocean more quickly! Plus, April 28, 2019, was a good day in global climate crisis news. Then again, maybe we are done for, extinction-wise, says gizmodo’s Earther. And if you suffer ‘eco-anxiety,’ you’re not alone. Plus, are we playing checkers as Nature is moving Knight to Queen’s Pawn via the Third Dimension? And Greta Thunberg wants you to stop calling it “climate change.” PS: Subscribe to this newsletter at changingclimatetimes.substack.com. Follow us on Twitter at: twitter.com/TimesClimate
StrawlessOcean.org wants a word with you about your straw. | Jason Blackeye photo | Unsplash.com
ONE | Straw Man Argument
Gallows humor is probably the only kind of humor that works when it comes to the global climate crisis. As in:
Now, for the rimshot in a comment to this tweet:
PS: The group StrawlessOcean—whose web page notes that by 2050 there may be more plastic than fish in Earth’s ocean—are anti-straw advocates with millennial mordant wit. The group’s home page manages to be both serious and…. well, see for yourself the group’s depiction of the long tentacles of our pollution.
PSS: I was going to use this photo to illustrate this tweet. It had everything—straw, ocean, Starbucks. But, to be fair to a billion-dollar company, they have promised to eliminate straws by 2020.
TWO | Well, that (day) went well…
In all the climate gloom, doom and algae blooms, it helps to celebrate steps in the right direction. April 28, 2019, was a good day for the planet, notes Brian L. Kahn of the gizmodo publication Earther:
PS: Read on (and, if you’re an American, be both depressed at how far behind the US lags in greening government policy. And also inspired by steps other countries are taking right now. PSS: And good on Beto. : )
THREE | Then again …
Earther is a new climate-conscious publication find for me. I see they are of the ‘don’t mince words,' school of headline writing (including words that would send my Grandma Caterina spinning in her Italian grave). I’m going to risk my status as a family-friendly provider of climate change news and views just this once, to reprint this other Brian Kahn tweet—just because the Earther headline below at first reads like something from the Onion. But, no, this shite (to quote the German, since we’re getting all international here) is getting real:
The linked article, though, is not all G-D-and-A (gloom, doom and algae blooms). After citing the usual soul-numbing, end-of-days climate catastrophes if we don’t mount a Marshall Plan to de-carbonize the Earth, it concludes:
Despite the dire picture, Sandra Díaz, a report co-chair and ecologist at Argentina’s National University of Córdoba, said that “the battle is not lost yet.” … The report identifies a number of levers policymakers could pull to get humanity back in harmony with nature. They include stronger environmental protection laws, managing natural systems to be resilient, and global cooperation towards common goals. Diaz said scenarios the researchers modeled that focus on “transformative change, including nature-friendly, socially fair climate adaptation” show that nature and humanity can co-exist.
FOUR | “Eco-anxiety”
“The Everything is Effed-Up” drumbeat in many climate crisis quarters can lead to a syndrome we climate communication curators happen upon more and more. ChangingClimateTimes will devote a future issue to the growing conversation around “eco-anxiety” (and the related, far heavier message from those who believe the human race is done for as a species, so prepare for the end with grace, mindfulness and courage).
“Eco-anxiety” speaks to the toll the climate crisis takes—when really, truly grokked—on one’s mental, spiritual and physical health. This tweet by British novelist and journalist Matt Haig describes the pushback one writer faced when connecting the dots between the climate crisis and our emotional reaction to it:
FOUR | Knight to Queen’s Pawn via the Third Dimension
With all the alarm bells about climate! climate! climate!, you don’t often hear how it fits into a larger issue— yes, there is a larger issue. Environmental sustainability. Climatologist Michael E. Mann notes how important it is that we abandon the game of checkers. Nature is playing a more complex one:
FIVE | Abandon ‘climate change’ all ye who enter here
Close readers of CCT will note I no longer much use ‘climate change,’ opting instead for ‘climate crisis.’ That’s partly because climate denialists (and their more slithery cousins, the incrementalists, who advocate for teensy, token, diversionary gestures) easily respond to the phrase by saying: “The climate has always been changing through history.” Plus, this isn’t any simple change. It’s a full-on crisis, morphing into a catastrophe, with human existence (although not the Earth’s) up for grabs. Earth, after all, will be fine without us gunking up the place.
International teen climate activist Greta Thunberg (see our profile in ISSUE 7) kicked off a fruitful conversation about what to call the climate mess, with this tweet:
Check out the conversation in response to her tweet. What do YOU think we should call the climate breakdowncrisisemergencycatastrophecrunchdilemmamess? (Let me know how that word displayed in your browser!) E-mail douglasjohnmartin AT iCloud.com
PS: Remember the Dinosaurs
Next time you read that transforming the planet-poisoning fossil fuel industrial complex (and its good buddies, the petro-states) to a renewable energy regime will be too costly and burdensome—remember the dinosaurs. Courtesy The Australian.
PSS: Pass This Issue Forward
Subscribe to the free CCT newsletter here. Follow us on Twitter: @TimesClimate. And be well and engaged. | Douglas John Imbrogno, Changing Climate Times Curator and Concierge