Attention to the Unseen

Sara Nelson writes: “Pretty much everyone on the plane threw up” is not a sentence most travelers want to hear. But that’s a direct quote from the pilots’ report after United Express Flight 3833 operated by Air Wisconsin hit extreme turbulence on approach to Washington, DC, in 2018. Extreme turbulence is on the rise around the world. It isn’t just nauseating or scary — it’s dangerous. In June 2017, nine passengers and a crew member were hospitalized after extreme turbulence…

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The Guardian reports: With Extinction Rebellion making headlines and Sir David Attenborough broadcasting The Facts on BBC One, climate change has gone mainstream this Easter. A nation has been watching protesters glue themselves to trains, turn London’s roads into gardens and actively invite arrest in their hundreds. As a media strategy it is working. How did glueing yourself to a train highlight climate change, Radio 4’s Today presenter Nick Robinson asked Dr Gail Bradbrook, an Extinction Rebellion co-founder. “It gets…

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What if we actually pulled off a #GreenNewDeal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated and co-written by Rep. @AOC and illustrated by @mollycrabapple. https://t.co/zAMLAizbN7 pic.twitter.com/PywCR0jPUl — The Intercept (@theintercept) April 17, 2019

The Guardian reports: The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has chided EU leaders for holding three emergency summits on Brexit and none on the threat posed by climate change. In a clarion call to Europe’s political leaders ahead of European parliament elections in May, the founder of the school strike movement said if politicians were serious about tackling climate change they would not spend all their time “talking about taxes or Brexit”. In a typically blunt speech, she said politicians…

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George Monbiot writes: By throwing up our hands about the calamities that could one day afflict us, we disguise and distance them, converting concrete choices into indecipherable dread. We might relieve ourselves of moral agency by claiming that it’s already too late to act, but in doing so we condemn others to destitution or death. Catastrophe afflicts people now and, unlike those in the rich world who can still afford to wallow in despair, they are forced to respond in…

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The New York Times reports: The farmer stood in his patch of forlorn coffee plants, their leaves sick and wilted, the next harvest in doubt. Last year, two of his brothers and a sister, desperate to find a better way to survive, abandoned their small coffee farms in this mountainous part of Honduras and migrated north, eventually sneaking into the United States. Then in February, the farmer’s 16-year-old son also headed north, ignoring the family’s pleas to stay. The challenges…

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Newsweek reports: New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter on Tuesday to highlight one of the driving factors behind global migration that, more often than not, goes ignored by those seeking to quell it: climate change. “The far-right loves to drum up fear & resistance to immigrants,” said Ocasio-Cortez, whose own Green New Deal proposal aims to address climate change and economic inequality. “But have you ever noticed they never talk about what’s causing people to flee their homes…

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