FOLLOW US AS WE GO TO                FEDERAL COURT FOR 

THE CLIMATE  LAWSUIT

(1) Climate disruption is an emergency. We have until the mid-2030's or 450ppm atmospheric carbon to develop and deploy a large-scale program to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere and bring it below 350ppm. Beyond 450ppm, geologic records reveal the Earth has in the past shifted to a new normal incompatible with the survival of human civilization beyond the current century. Our grandchildren's future is not at risk - it is already lost and must be regained.

(2) We have the technology to SAFELY remove carbon already in the atmosphere. (Plans to insert reflective space junk to orbit the Earth are NOT safe and will not remove carbon in the atmosphere.) Ocean Assisted Carbon Capture & Reflection (OACC&R) utilizes liquid nitrogen extracted from existing fossil fuel emitters via new lower-cost carbon capture retrofitting. This nitrogen will be used to nurture carbon consuming emiliania huxleyi or EHUX algae in nurseries located in non-life-bearing oceans away from "limiter" populations such as phytoplankton. SPAR platforms placed around the equator (40-60 degrees latitude) will nurse and then release the EHUX which will consume carbon - as they did to form the White Cliffs of Dover. Heavily laden with carbon from air and water, at the end of their 8 day life cycle (making the project self-limiting if unforeseen negative outcomes arise) they will sink to the bottom of the ocean "sequestering" the consumed carbon safely. EHUX also turn bright white when feeding causing natural reflection of solar radiation and planetary cooling (controllable based on the depth and amount of nitrogen density at which the EHUX are farmed).

(3) Too heavily influenced by market forces governments will not embark on OACC&R without being pushed to it through the court system (www.theclimatelawsuit.com) combined with public outcry (www.rebellion.earth). As in world wars (but with much greater danger and much more positive potential) the global warming extinction threat can mobilize citizens in a common cause reducing the fractiousness of society.

(4) OACC&R will provide fossil fuel driven economies time, under the shelter of carbon capture technology, to transition to sustainable energy practices. OACC&R will also create thousands of jobs and entire new economies of scale. Truly THE win-win project, but only if we choose to make it happen.

Taking their eye for a moment off the massive and still “out of control” wildfire devastating much of Alberta, Canada has finally made its case that the top of the world flies the Maple Leaf. After years of delay and political debate, Canada has submitted its scientific argument for control of a vast portion of the Arctic seabed, including the North Pole, to the UN body that will evaluate it. Denmark and Russia have already released their own evidence that the Pole and good bits of the sea floor around it — including any resources they hold — should belong to them.

I’d suggest before we plunder all the “natural treasures”, newly exposed by global warming thanks to the plundering and burning of other profitable “natural resources”, we carve out a small area where our grandchildren can pitch their tents. This will be important for them after the rest of the planet becomes too inhospitable due to “city killer” hurricanes, dust storms, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, and social unrest (war) due to massive migration.

FR: Dr. Christian Robert Komor, Pro Se Plaintiff vs. The United States of America, et al

In United States District Court for The District Of Arizona

RE: Addendum to Summons on Docket # CV-19-00293-TUC-RCC

Dear Defendant:

Attached you will find a Summons for the Complaint I have filed in the 9th District Court.Having involved myself for a number of years in the science and politics of Climate Disruption it is my intention to see that Global Warming is addressed effectively prior to the “tipping levels” fast approaching in the mid-2030’s. This will require direct removal of carbon from the atmosphere and that is the core of this action.

It is all of our responsibilities to minimize the burden on our judicial system. Juliana v. USA, for example, has taken years of effort on the part of the United States and has only resulted in an increasingly disgruntled public and additional legal actions, such as the complaint for which you are now being served. Additionally, public pressure on your oil partners is increasing, while renewable energy products are making headway rapidly in the marketplace.

With this in mind, at the outset of this matter I am reaching out across the table with an offer. As you read through the Appendix to my complaint you will notice that the group of scientists I have been privileged to work with has innovated a method of extending for decades our ability to safely use fossil fuel products in a way that will also resolve our climate crisis. Compared to the hundreds of billions being spent attempting to clean up after climate-related disasters the process of Ocean Assisted Carbon Capture & Reflection will be a bargain.

So, before giving in to the usual adversarial reaction to this Summons, please take the opportunity to review the proposal in the Appendix. If you like this win-win solution, please contact me directly so we can discuss a settlement. I feel confident we can satisfy all our needs with wide public approval, reduced fiscal cost, protection for the oil and gas sector, and new economic potentials. Truly this could be a win-win solution for everyone.

The D-Day Allied attack at Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, cost more than 10,000 young American lives. Days before the invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was told by a top strategist that paratrooper casualties alone could be as high as 75 percent. Nevertheless, he ordered the attack. Even knowing the danger to their own children, the US military effort was strongly supported by US civilians on the home front, who provided the military personnel, the munitions, the money, and the morale to fight the war to victory. In the end World War II cost the United States an estimated $341 billion in 1945 dollars ($4.5 trillion in today's), 74% of America's GDP. Throughout WWII 39% (6,332,000) of US servicemen (and all servicewomen) were volunteers!

Today we are faced with a far greater danger than the Nazi Regime. Global warming and the disruption of our Earth's life-support system threatens to end our civilization within this century. Scientists tell us by the mid-2030's our ecosystem will be too damaged to repair. The battle to save our children's future is on and there IS a plan - a way to win!

But, where are our soldiers? Where are the war funds? Where is the civilian support? Did you give $10 to an organization promising to "help the environment" that pays it's staff on average $60-$70,000 plus benefits? Perhaps you joined the National Audubon Society, the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club? Are you recycling plastic straws?

This is NOT sacrifice, this is appeasement, this is false hope - a very dangerous illusion. The TRUTH? If the United Statese does not take the lead in fielding a safe and effective program to remove gigatons of carbon from our atmosphere by the mid-2030's there will be no reasonable future for our families. The TRUTH? Carbon in the atmosphere is rising and has been rising while you have been supporting all those environmental organizations. Sorry, but it's just a fact. Thnk about it. We we need those who care for our environment, but without entering the BATTLE to save our atmosphere there will BE no environment.

This D-Day let's not join our President hyping his properties in Europe at gold-plated dinners. Instead get out those photographs of "The Greatest Generation" and think about the courage, sacrifice and heroism they gave to us.........to US. They sacrificed their sons and daughters and prosperity to save the future - a future we are just about to toss down the drain, leaving our own children and grandchildren holding the bag.

This D-Day Resolve to do something that really matters - help us remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to clear the 2030's hurdle and make it to the future. The good news - no one has to die in this "climate war". All it takes is courage - YOUR courage - to stand up and be counted at www.theclimatelawsuit.com

Who says lawsuits can't be fun and even funny. We are in the long process of serving several dozen government officials and departments with Summons through the District Court. Our process server visited the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and was told "Secret Service denied me access to the White House. I was told no one, including Mr. Trump, would accept service here." This spurred a round of jokes and laughter back here in Arizona. Where else does one send official documents to Mr. Trump - the Kremlin?

Meanwhile, The White House made a bid to stop a State Department senior intelligence analyst from discussing climate science in congressional testimony this week, internal emails and documents show. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research declined to make changes to the proposed testimony and the analyst, Rod Schoonover, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, was ultimately allowed to speak before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday. But in a highly unusual move, the White House refused to approve Dr. Schoonover’s written testimony for entry into the permanent Congressional Record. The reasoning, according to a June 4 email seen by The New York Times, was that the science did not match the Trump administration’s views. “The testimony still has serious concerns with internal components and focuses heavily on the science,” Daniel Q. Greenwood, deputy assistant to the president in the White House office of legislative affairs, wrote in an email. “Because it doesn't reflect the Administration’s position, there is no way this can be cleared ahead of the hearing,” he wrote, using government shorthand for the intelligence community.

In the past several years a number of from carbon majors”, from Exxon/Mobile to your local utility company, have found themselves embroiled in lawsuits over climate change. The public is now angry over climate change and it’s cover-up. Several of my friends and colleagues have asked, “Is that really fair to blame the whole mess on these companies?” After all we the consumers are the ones who drove the cars and used the energy!” This is true and we all carry some of the responsibility for climate disruption. But there are several reasons why a large share of the responsibility falls to the carbon majors, their lobbyists and world governments who have enabled and subsidized them.

First it has been known since almost the time of the industrial revolution that carbon emission were a problem and climate change was coming. Much was not known, but there was enough evidence that we were dealing with potentially hazardous material that precautions should have been taken. Electricity, for example, was known to be a hazard and so regulations and safeguards (expensive though they were) grew up along with the industry. The government did it’s regulatory job and today you need a license to install electric equipment. Also, various modifications (some costly) have been made to make the use of electricity safe. In the case of carbon emission, no safeguards were put in place – in fact they were actively and vigorously resisted and still are today! IN addition a energetic and expensive campaign of disinformation was perpetrated (similar to the history with tobacco where companies used disinformation to keep profits flowing 50 years beyond when they knew their product was causing illness and death on a massive scale).

Secondly, early on in the transportation industry there was an opportunity to pursue other options. Beginning with the invention of the lead–acid battery by French physicist Gaston Planté in 1859 (and it’s refinement by Camille Alphonse Faure thereafter) means for storing electricity on board a vehicle in - the manufacture of electric cars began on an industrial scale. France and the United Kingdom were the first nations to support the widespread development of electric vehicles. English inventor Thomas Parker built the first production electric car in London in way back in 1884, using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries. Parker may have been concerned about the malign effects smoke and pollution were having in London.

Production of the car was in the hands of the Elwell-Parker Company, established in 1882 for the construction and sale of electric trams. The company merged with other rivals in 1888 to form the Electric Construction Corporation; this company had a virtual monopoly on the British electric car market in the 1890s.

Before the pre-eminence of internal combustion engines, electric automobiles held many speed and distance records. Among the most notable of these records was the breaking of the 100 km/h (62 mph) speed barrier, by Camille Jenatzy on 29 April 1899 in his 'rocket-shaped' vehicle Jamais Contente, which reached a top speed of 105.88 km/h (65.79 mph). Also notable was Ferdinand Porsche's design and construction of an all-wheel drive electric car, powered by a motor in each hub, which also set several records in the hands of its owner E.W. Hart.

The first electric car in the United States was developed in 1890-91 by William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa; the vehicle was a six-passenger wagon capable of reaching a speed of 23 kilometres per hour (14 mph).

Interest in motor vehicles increased greatly in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Electric battery-powered taxis became available at the end of the 19th century. In London, Walter C. Bersey designed a fleet of such cabs and introduced them to the streets of London in 1897. They were soon nicknamed "Hummingbirds" due to the idiosyncratic humming noise they made. In the same year in New York City, the Samuel's Electric Carriage and Wagon Company began running 12 electric hansom cabs. The company ran until 1898 with up to 62 cabs operating until it was reformed by its financiers to form the Electric Vehicle Company.

In the United States by the turn of the century, 40 percent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by gasoline. A total of 33,842 electric cars were registered in the United States, and the U.S. became the country where electric cars had gained the most acceptance. Most early electric vehicles were massive, ornate carriages designed for the upper-class customers that made them popular. They featured luxurious interiors and were replete with expensive materials. Sales of electric cars peaked in the early 1910s.

But, after enjoying success at the beginning of the 20th century, the electric car began to lose its position in the automobile market. Worldwide discoveries of large petroleum reserves led to the wide availability of affordable gasoline, making gas-powered cars cheaper to operate over long distances. Electric cars were limited to urban use by their slow speed (no more than 24–32 km/h or 15–20 mph) and low range (50–65 km or 30–40 miles), and gasoline cars were now able to travel farther and faster than equivalent electrics.

Finally, the initiation of mass production of gas-powered vehicles by Henry Ford (the unsung Father of Global Warming) brought their price down. By contrast, the price of similar electric vehicles continued to rise; by 1912, an electric car sold for almost double the price of a gasoline car. At the time carbon emissions were known to be an issue but no one was yet projecting an outcome. In the 1800s, experiments suggesting that human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases could collect in the atmosphere and insulate Earth emerged. By the late 1950s, CO2 readings would offer some of the first data to corroborate the global warming theory, but no one guessed how significant.

So we had our chance to go down a different path and certainly could have changed course later on when the horrific effects of climate change did become known. Instead companies began to cover up and whitewash the global warming crisis.

So if we were divvying up :responsibility” for climate change a large share – perhaps 40% - goes to those companies who chose a path of profit over respect for our ecosystem. Another 10% could be assigned to those consumers using the carbon producing products like internal combustion engines and cement products (the second highest producer of carbon emissions). But the lions share – the remaining 50% must go to government. It is business’ job to make profits from their products (although lying about their know dangers is not part of that charter). It is government’s job to regulate industry and this is where the great failure of the climate change emergency lies. Lobbied and pressured by business (also outside the charter of ethical business) governments of the world went along with the “carbon is good for you” hoax instead of doing their expected jobs of public protection (which in the United States constitution means legislating and regulating activities which would interfere with the life and liberty of it’s citizens. As so we find ourselves at The Climate Lawsuit – a legal action focusing on the US Government not on industry. Learn more at www.theclimatelawsuit.com

A shocking number of people have lulled themselves into a sense of complacency regarding climate change.  They tell themselves that things will be a little rough but we are "tough and can take it".   They comfort themselves with the (false) notion that minor efforts like recycling and driving hybrid vehicles will somehow magically remove the decades of carbon and other greenhouse gases now trapped in the atmosphere.  The problem is that our atmosphere is continuing to saturate with carbon and our planet is continuing to warm - and the pace is increasing.

Ancient air bubbles trapped in ice enable us to step back in time and see what Earth's atmosphere, and climate, were like in the distant past. They tell us that levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere are currently higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years. During ice ages, CO2 levels were around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during the warmer interglacial periods, they hovered around 280 ppm.  In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history. This recent relentless rise in CO2 shows a remarkably constant relationship with fossil-fuel burning, and can be well accounted for based on the simple premise that about 60 percent of fossil-fuel emissions stay in the air.

In a landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday researchers say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed, “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now,” said Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the working group on impacts. “This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”

Policymakers commissioned the report at the Paris climate talks in 2016, but since then the gap between science and politics has widened. Donald Trump has promised to withdraw the US – the world’s biggest source of historical emissions – from the accord. The first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday put Jair Bolsonaro into a strong position to carry out his threat to do the same and also open the Amazon rainforest to agribusiness.

The world is currently only 1C warmer than preindustrial levels. Following devastating hurricanes in the US, record droughts in Cape Town and forest fires in the Arctic, the IPCC makes clear that climate change is already happening, upgraded its risk warning from previous reports, and warned that every fraction of additional warming would worsen the impact.

Scientists who reviewed the 6,000 works referenced in the report, said the change caused by just half a degree came as a revelation. “We can see there is a difference and it’s substantial,” Roberts said.  And so we find ourselves at The Climate Lawsuit – a legal action focusing on the US Government not on industry. Learn more at www.theclimatelawsuit.com

America is no longer an information culture - we are now an entertainment culture. We have been bred to watch things on screens - including some very horrific things - and NOT react. It is no surprise, then, that is exactly what we are now doing with the global emergency of climate change. When I was working with Al Gore and writing the book "Climate Deadline 2035" a number of years ago the mission was to break through the heavy blanket of denial the "carbon majors" had placed on our minds. The blanket is now off for all but the hopelessly self-deluded. But now most of us are milling around like farm animals digesting article after news bite about the climate situation

The most serious problem, among several, that I see with this situation is that climate change itself is starting to make it difficult to find the energy and resources to do anything proactive about climate change while our government continues to sit on its collective ass and talk, talk, talk. Where I live currently it was 118°F a day ago and most days in the triple digits. (I can tell you that makes it hard to get things done!) In the Southeastern US they are busy fighting flood waters (again), and in the Northwest wildfires (again). Very soon we will be so overwhelmed with climate disruption that, when combined with our predilection to watch our screens and not ACT, we will be unable to save ourselves. (And forget about the old "suck it up and suffer" approach. I've worked Search & Rescue operations in high heat, and I can tell you at some point everyone drops no matter how motivated.

A recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that, with no action to reduce heat-trapping emissions, within a few decades:

• The average number of days per year with a heat index above 100°F will more than double, while the number of days per year above 105°F will quadruple.

• More than one-third of the area of the United States will experience heat conditions once per year, on average that are so extreme they exceed the current NWS heat index range—that is, they are literally off the charts.

• Nearly one-third of the nation’s 481 urban areas with a population of 50,000 people or more will experience an average of 30 or more days per year with a heat index above 105°F, a rise from just three cities historically (El Centro and Indio, California, and Yuma, Arizona).

• Assuming no changes in population, the number of people experiencing 30 or more days with a heat index above 105°F in an average year will increase from just under 900,000 to more than 90 million—nearly one-third of the US population.

• Countrywide, more than 1,900 people per year have historically been exposed to the equivalent of a week or more of off-the-charts heat conditions; this number is projected to rise to more than 6 million people by midcentury—again, assuming no population changes.

As terrifying as they are, what reports like this keep failing to take into account is the synergistic and exponential nature of the combined changes that are occurring in our planetary ecosystem. When you add slowing ocean currents to methane stores from under melting ice to novel, carbon-releasing microbes emerging in our largest repository of carbon (soil) the equations become exponential not linear like they have been so far. The best scientists are predicting this catastrophic synergy to begin in the mid-2030's. This means we must mount a full-on effort at atmospheric carbon removal NOW! The only way to do that is to push our governments via lawsuits like The Climate Lawsuit and Juliana v. The United States.

Colleagues of mine keep saying, "Don't compare the climate crisis to WWII. Readers will dismiss you as a hopeless exaggerator." I keep saying to them, "This situation is so much more dire and the costs of failure so complete and final it defies exaggeration." We must slap ourselves, wake up, shift out of our passive entertain-me zeitgeist and take action! What you can do? Donate to our legal fund, cut and paste our articles and get the word out in every social circle you have access to. Follow the progress of our litigation. Do it while (unlike Madison, Wisconsin and New York City recently) you still have power for your air conditioner! - Dr. Christian R. Komor

“I don’t think it will be the humans. I think we’ll go quite early on,” says Julie Gray with a laugh. I’ve just asked Gray, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Sheffield, which species she thinks would be the last ones standing if we don’t take transformative action on climate change. Even with our extraordinary capacity for innovation and adaptability, humans, it turns out, probably won’t be among the survivors. This is partly because humans reproduce agonizingly slowly and generally just one or two at a time – as do some other favorite animals, like pandas. Organisms that can produce many offspring quickly may have a better shot at avoiding extinction.

It may seem like just a thought experiment. But discussing which species are more, or less, able to survive climate change is disturbingly concrete. As a blockbuster biodiversity report stated recently, one in every four species currently faces extinction. Much of this vulnerability is linked to climate change, which is bringing about higher temperatures, sea level rise, more variable conditions and more extreme weather, among other impacts.

Even with the uncertainties, we can make some educated guesses about broad patterns. Heat tolerant and drought resistant plants, like those found in deserts rather than rainforests, are more likely to survive. So are plants whose seeds can be dispersed over long distances, for instance by wind or ocean currents (like coconuts), rather than by ants (like some acacias). Plants that can adjust their flowering times may also be better able to deal with higher temperatures. Jen Lau, a biologist at Indiana University Bloomington, suggests that this may give non-native plants the advantage when it comes to responding to climate change.

We also can look to history as a guide. The fossil record contains signs of how species have coped with previous climatic shifts. There are genetic clues to long-term survival too, such as in the hardy green microalgae that adapted to saltier environments over millions of years – a finding only made in September 2018 by Fatima Foflonker of Rutgers and colleagues. Importantly, though, the uniquely devastating nature of the current human-made climate crisis means that we can’t fully rely on benchmarks from the past. “The climate change that we see in the future will differ in many ways from the climate change that we’ve seen in the past”, notes Jamie Carr, an outreach officer for the Climate Change Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

The historical record does point to the tenacity of cockroaches. These largely unloved critters “have survived every mass extinction event in history so far”, says Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, a soil biogeochemist at the University of California, Merced. For instance, cockroaches adapted to an increasingly arid Australia, tens of millions of years ago, by starting to burrow into soil. This shows two characteristics, says Robert Nasi, the director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR): an “ability to hide and protect in buffered conditions (e.g. underground)” and a long evolutionary history, as in general “ancient species appear more resilient than younger ones”. These are among the traits that, Nasi says, are linked to surviving large catastrophic events which triggered major changes in climate. Cockroaches also tend to not be picky eaters. Having broad diets means that climate change will be less of a threat to the food sources of species that are not too fussy about their food, such as rats, opportunistic birds, and urban raccoons.

Jessica Hellmann, who leads the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota states, “For example, deer (in the US) are common in suburban areas and thrive where forests have been removed or are regularly disturbed.” Species that Carr calls “mobile generalists”, which can move and adapt to different environments, are likely to be more durable in the face of climate change. While this adaptability is generally positive, it might come at a cost to other parts of an ecosystem. Invasive species like cane toads, which are poisonous, have led to local extinctions of other species like quolls (carnivorous marsupials) and monitors (large lizards) in Australia. And Hellmann says that the versatility of invasive plant species “leads to the worry that, in addition to losing vulnerable species, a warmer world will be a weedier world”. The weeds typically found along roadsides may be especially long-lasting in comparison with other plants.

Of course, many organisms are intrinsically less mobile. Most plants will be unable to move quickly enough to keep pace with rapid heating, although they’ve done so in response to the slower climatic changes of the past.

The good news is that some specialized species might have a buffer known as climate change refugia: areas that are relatively protected from climate change’s consequences, such as deep-sea canyons. Although deep-sea zones are heating up and declining in oxygen concentrations, Jonathon Stillman, a marine environmental physiologist at San Francisco State University, suggests that deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems, specifically, might be one bright spot in an otherwise mostly bleak situation. “They are pretty much uncoupled from the surface of our planet and I doubt that climate change will impact them in the least,” he says. “Humanity didn’t even know they existed until 1977. Their energy comes from the core of our Earth rather than from the Sun, and their already extreme habitat is unlikely to be altered by changes happening at the ocean surface.” Similarly, Douglas Sheil, a tropical forest ecologist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, suggests that “at some point in the future the only vertebrate species surviving in Africa might be a blind cave fish deep underground”. As in the deep-sea hydrothermal vents, “many species remain undiscovered and thus unknown – Europe’s first cave fish was only found in Germany in 2015.”

Thermophiles (heat-adapted organisms) living in extreme environments like volcanic springs are also likely to be less affected by surface temperature changes. Indeed, the organisms best able to live in severe circumstances are microbes, as noted by many of the scientists I’ve surveyed. Computer modelling suggests that only microbes would be able to survive increasing solar intensity. Soil biogeochemist Berhe says of archaea, one of the major types of microbes, “these critters have figured out how to live in the most extreme of environments”. Not quite as tiny but also nearly indestructible are tardigrades, commonly known as water bears. Environmental physiologist Stillman enthuses: “They can survive the vacuum of outer space, extreme dehydration, and very high temperatures. If you are a Star Trek fan, you have learned about them in a sci-fi setting, but they are real creatures that live across most habitats on Earth.” The future will have not only more extreme environments, but also more urban, human-altered spaces. So “resistant species would likely be the ones that are well attuned to living in human-modified habitats such as urban parks and gardens, agricultural areas, farms, tree plantations, and so on”, says Arvin C Diesmos, a herpetology curator at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History.

CIFOR’s Nasi sums it up. “The winners will be very small, preferably endotherms if vertebrates, highly adaptable, omnivorous or able to live in extreme conditions.” In the words of the IUCN’s Carr, “It doesn’t sound like a very pretty world.”

Rebels all over the world watch heartbroken as fires devastate the Amazon. Known to many as ‘the lungs of the Earth’, the rainforest is a vital organ of our living planet whose health hangs in the balance.

The record-breaking fires are casting a shadow on over half the area of Brazil and are visible from space. On Monday, Sao Paolo was plunged into an unnatural ash-filled darkness in the middle of the day, and the ash cloud has now reached Peru.

But the most traumatic effects are undoubtedly felt by those who call this forest home, and for whom this is only the latest offensive in a long war promoted by agribusiness and the Brazilian government, waged against indigenous peoples and the environment alike. Click Here to read more.

Recently a friend of mine visiting from another first world country observed, "In America it seems like people are very interested in what they think they need and not what they can give." Climate Change is teaching us the danger in always wanting more. The human demand for food, meat, clothes, and warmth now consumes at least 25 percent of the net product of photosynthesis on land. The free-wheeling, far-reaching maw of our material metabolism—that thing we normally call the global economy—devours as many as one out of every three sugar molecules made by dirt-bound plants, on net. Plants are one of the few things in the universe that can work this magic, as far as we know. And we have roughly hooked one out of every four of them into our planetary system of consumption and speculative exchange.

This isn’t scary, necessarily, but it is strange. Whatever that kind of arrangement is, it doesn’t seem constrained by economics or agriculture or ecology. And this is the most daunting aspect of the new report. For the scientific community, this document is a milestone because it assumes that land is scarce and precious. Climate researchers, for decades, have sometimes talked about land as if it is a limitless global sponge capable of cleaning the worst mess in human history. A recent high-profile study, for instance, cheerfully suggested soaking up most of the planet’s carbon pollution by planting 1.2 trillion trees across 2.2 billion acres worldwide. It was impressive research, but it was immediately sold to the public as The Solution to Climate Change. And there’s a problem with that. Those 2.2 billion acres—an area roughly the size of the continental United States—are already in use. They comprise, in large part, the planet’s most productive farmland! And in the decades to come, that farmland is going to be essential if we hope to feed the 9.8 billion people who will soon reside on the planet.

If the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has an overarching theme, it’s that land is extremely scarce, we need it for everything, and we are already using most of it. More than 70 percent of the planet’s ice-free land is already shaped by human activity, the report says. As trees are felled and farms take their place, this human-managed land emits about a quarter of global greenhouse-gas pollution every year, including 13 percent of carbon dioxide and 44 percent of the super-warming pollutant methane. Brazil's government, for example, seems intent on fostering Armageddon by turning carbon absorbent rain forest into agricultural crops and grazing land for cattle.

But unlike other sources of pollution—such as the burning of fossil fuels, which must be quickly reduced globally—land can’t just be shut down. It must be made into a tool in the climate fight. The report’s more than 100 authors, hailing from 51 countries, say that this will require immediate action from farmers, bankers, conservationists, and policy makers worldwide. And to really succeed, it will require hundreds of millions of affluent people in the Northern Hemisphere to change their diet, eating many more plants and much less meat—and especially much less red meat—than they do now.

These changes must happen fast, because land problems have a pesky way of metastasizing. Louis Verchot, a scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and an author of the new report, described the cascading consequences of warmer air temperatures at a press conference this week.

“As the biosphere gets warmer, we increase evaporation,” he said. “And as we increase evaporation, ecosystems dry out and burn when they normally wouldn’t do that. And when soils get dry due to increased evaporation, we get longer heat waves.” And longer heat waves, of course, make the biosphere warmer still, starting the cycle again.

Around much of the world, this cascade has already begun. Heat waves worldwide have gotten longer, hotter, and more common, according to the IPCC. Deserts are expanding toward the poles, while zones of colder weather are shrinking. Dust storms are kicking up more often. And evidence suggests that every year from 1961 to 2013, an additional 1 percent of the world’s drylands slipped into drought.

These were the “really complex political issues” at the center of the IPCC talks. “Land can’t, at the same time, feed people, and grow trees to be burned for bioenergy, and store carbon,” Stabinsky said. “That conflict of what’s going to take priority as we face greater and greater climate challenges” defined the talks, she said. “There’s going to be more and more desire to try to use land to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, and that’s going to interfere with food production.”

In a way, this process previewed the more consequential negotiations—and, God forbid, conflict—to come. And the report tries to anticipate some of these. The authors conclude that some land must be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere through a process called BECCS, or bioenergy carbon capture and sequestration. BECCS involves growing vegetation, burning it for energy, capturing the exhaust before it reaches the atmosphere, and burying both the exhaust and the charcoal underground. But very little land should be used for this, the report says. Otherwise it will start to induce food shortages in poor countries.

6. Even if the authors mumble about the future, they can clearly denounce the present crisis: That system of 52 million is already badly damaged.

The planet’s land absorbs carbon pollution today only because of a great “natural subsidy,” said Louis Verchot, the report co-author. The 70 percent of ice-free land surface managed by people actually produces five gigatons of greenhouse gases a year. The remaining land surface—the 30 percent in nature’s control—sucks up 11 gigatons. So, while the land surface absorbs about six gigatons of carbon on net, this has nothing to do with people.

“The land is out of balance in areas that we are managing,” Verchot said. “The biosphere is offsetting the carbon emissions, but that’s not a reason to call the land in balance.” He called this absorption an “additional gift of nature,” but it may be more apt to call it the final gift of nature. And at some point, in the coming century—as more forests are felled and as demand for beef grows—this gift could become a curse, and the land will spew greenhouse gases into the air as ferociously as humanity does today.

Even before that reversal, this report confirms that the ill effects of climate change will arrive faster than scientists once thought. Under 1.5 degrees Celsius of planetary warming, Earth will face a high risk of food shortages, mass thirst, and rampant wildfires. Remember that land warms faster than the planet: A 1.5-degree-Celsius-warmer world would in fact be 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.1 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter on land.

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at NASA and an author of the report, warned this week of “multiple bread-basket failure,” in which crops die across several major agricultural regions at the same time. She noted that crops in Europe had already suffered this summer under successive heat waves. Farmers in the midwestern United States, meanwhile, have been hammered by spring and early-summer floods.

Avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is a very aspirational if. While it’s not too late to stop our current course, humanity must put in extraordinary effort to hold warming to such a manageable level. If every car, pipeline, and power plant around today were allowed to keep operating until it broke down, and no other new fossil-fuel infrastructure was built, they would still lock in enough carbon emissions to shoot Earth well past 1.5 degrees of warming, according to a recent study.

At the same time, climate policy may do more than we realize. Timothy Searchinger, a land scientist at Princeton who was not involved in the new report, told me that the IPCC may undercount the benefits of land policy specifically. The panel does not always assume that farmers, for instance, will get better at capturing carbon if paid to do so, even though technology almost always improves in such circumstances, he said.

Read: How climate change could trigger the next global financial crisis

But on our current trajectory—and on any trajectory, frankly, where the United States does not adopt a serious climate policy—it’s far more likely that the planet will warm at least 3 degrees Celsius (5.1 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. That means that average land temperatures will be 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than they are today.

The IPCC warns that people who live on such a planet will face a “very high risk” of famine, water scarcity, and mass vegetation die-offs. Some of the people who will see that planet have already been born.

7. Let’s return to that one astonishing fact: that humans have integrated as much as one-third of photosynthesis on land into the global economy. This statistic captures not only the rice or broccoli or carrots on your plate, but the coffee in your mug, the cotton fiber in your socks, the oak heartwood in your kitchen table, and the linseed oil in your linoleum floor.

What’s incredible about this fact is not only the scale of economic production that it entails. It’s that photosynthesis isn’t even the energetic part of the economy. What we call “the energy sector” still mostly consists of fossil fuels: oil, coal, and natural gas. Those three fuels generated 80 percent of the energy used in the United States in 2017, at least by a traditional accounting. Of course, fossil fuels are themselves just concentrated sunlight: The Permian oil basin in Texas is so named because it holds the gloopy product of photosynthesis made during the Permian period, more than 251 million years ago. And there’s a view of climate change as a massive spending spree, the end result of humanity spending down its 600-million-year inheritance.

But that’s not my point. To address climate change, we will need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, and replace energy generated in the past (by long-dead plants) with energy generated today (by wind turbines, solar panels, and uranium atoms). But, this report adds: We must do all that in a house of only 52 million rooms, the majority of which already serve as someone’s bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. And those 52 million rooms must stage not only the unending drama of the human family, but also—as far as we know—every other living thing in the universe.

This is one reason why Ocean Assisted Carbon Capture & Reflection is such an important project to pursue. Where we have very little land available to help with the climate change problem, we have much more water! We need to begin right now to talk about that! More than 30 years after climate change first became a political issue, it feels like we are still figuring it out. This report gets us closer. It makes clear that climate change isn’t only about coal-fired power plants, or gas-guzzling cars; and it’s definitely not about littering or—God help us—recycling. It’s about the profound chemical and physical specificity of human life. You and I are not free-floating minds that move around the world through text messages, apologetic emails, and bank deposits. We are carbon-based creatures so pathetic that we need a lot of silent plants to make carbon for us.

Climate change requires us to alter the biogeochemical organism that we call the global economy on the fly, in our lifetimes. Such a task should command most of the time and attention of every economist, agriculturalist, investor, executive, and politician—anyone who fancies themselves a leader in the physical workings of the economy, or whatever we call it. It is our shame, and theirs, that they don’t.

The current consensus is that many aspects of climate change are happening at a rate corresponding to the upper end of predicted models, and that goals previously set for 2050 should now be pulled forward to 2040. Children growing up at the present time are going to be facing massive impacts. Click Here to read more.

In 2017 those of us working with Al Gore worried that people either weren’t talking about climate change or were still debating if global warming was “a hoax”. Late that year I wrote the book Climate Deadline 2035 (2017). Within a few months everyone was taking climate change seriously, but unfortunately not the deadline. Most thought we had plenty of time to let solar power and recycling save us. (That ship sailed in the 1970’s.) In 2018 I ran for Governor in Arizona talking about global warming as an emergency that needed to be handled before the mid-2030s. A few months later the UN Secretary General was calling climate change an “emergency” and “the fight for our lives”. Now, in 2019, we need to move to the next step – moving beyond debate and research to a process for safely, and rapidly removing the overload of carbon already in our atmosphere.

Now, I am not saying that I alone catalyzed these progressions in climate change awareness, though I am sure I had some role. I am not saying, that I have some marvelous special insight into climate change. I am searching for a reason you should listen to what I am saying now about the need for emergency atmospheric carbon removal – and the best reason I can think of is I have been 100% on-target so far. You have far more to lose if you don’t listen now and I am on target again than if you don’t and I am wrong! We must manually remove vast amounts of carbon from our atmosphere before we reach 450ppm (which we will in the mid-2030’s or sooner) triggering a cascading interaction between ecological factors we have pushed off track through global warming. So, we are dealing with both the long-term need to shift to sustainable ways of living on our planet AND the emergent need to rapidly remove carbon already in the atmosphere.

While future generations may uncover even more elegant methods of removing atmospheric carbon, currently there is only one method for rapidly removing atmospheric carbon that will also not be resisted for decades by government and industry, or potentially cause drastic harm to the environment. Ocean Assisted Carbon Capture & Reflection (OACC&R) was painstakingly designed by a group of senior scientists in the United States who began their work shortly after Al Gore’s first climate movie came out. (I am no longer affiliated with this group in order to keep my message conflict free.) OACC&R works with nature and the current energy infrastructure to remove carbon from the atmosphere. OACC&R uses byproducts from carbon capture filtration at energy and other major carbon-emitting plants to nurture short-cycle EHUX algae in non-life-bearing oceans. EHUX algae consume carbon from the air and water, then die and sink harmlessly to the ocean floor. (They created, for example, the White Cliffs of Dover.) To read one of the many scientific articles describing OACC&R click HERE. In the process, we will create thousands of jobs, new energy resources, and a unifying social focus so desperately needed in our divisive and fractured world. Most importantly, OACC&R can be deployed rapidly enough to avoid the fast-approaching climatary point of no return in the mid-2030’s. Gretta Thornberg and others are right when they warn that when the interaction between the various effects of global warming shift to an exponential rate of growth human beings will no longer have the ability to keep pace. Already people are dying from heat waves, floods, fires and storms. At that point living conditions for our children and their children will become increasingly horrible to the point where most of the human population will join the other species who have gone into extinction. But 15 years or so there is still hope! This is a time for the courageous and caring to fight for survival – even hard then during past world wars! Please join us today!

BENEFITS OF OCEAN ASSISTED CARBON CAPTURE & REFLECTION

1) OACC&R will save billions of lives by repairing global warming and reversing much of climate change

2) Once brought online will produce rapid results

3) Highly safe and controllable – can be made neutral in 8 days if unintended consequences emerge

4) Works with natural systems to augment, not interfere with global ecosystem

5) Carbon is sequestered at bottom of non-life-bearing (oligotrophic) oceans where it is least likely to cause future problems

6) Creates vast advantages rather than disadvantages for government and energy industry

7) Provides carbon emitting industry decades to transition to renewable processes

8) Will develop whole new economies and create thousands of jobs

9) Will bring together our fractured elements of society into a common cause

10) Gives people and organizations who are feeling helpless, overwhelmed or frightened a way to do something about climate change

11) Will save trillions of dollars in mitigation and infrastructure repair costs.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY IN THE FIGHT TO ESTABLISH OCEAN ASSISTED CARBON CAPTURE & REFELCTION (OACC&R)

1) Contact your House Representative HERE and your US Senator HERE to ask them to appoint a committee to explore OACC&R as a safe, rapid and effective solution to global warming.

2) Make a donation HERE of $25, $50, $75 or $100 to support the effort to promote OACC&R.

3) Cut and paste the information here and share about OACC&R on all your social media networks. If you have an email list of friends and family send them. (So many people today are feeling hopeless and fearful regarding climate change. You will be doing a great service letting those you care about know there is something they can do to solve the problem.)

4) Write and article, blog or letter to the editor for your workplace or social group or even your local newspaper.

5) Visit our sister site at www.oaccr.com or click HERE to get bumper stickers, baseball caps and other OACC&R merchandise.

6) If your already involved with environmental organizations let them know about OACC&R. Many still mistakenly believe recycling programs and alternative energy will be enough to get us past the current emergency.

7) Extinction Rebellion (XR) has emerged recently as an important climate change organization that needs to hear about Ocean Assisted Carbon Capture & Reflection. If you have access, share what you have learned!

8) If you have contact with a high-visibility individual (a movie or recording artist or another famous person) talk to them about what they can do to promote OACC&R and or refer them to talk with our team.

* We suggest you sit down with those close to you and brainstorm ways of assisting with Ocean Assisted Carbon Capture & Reflection. No contribution is too small or too large in this time of world crisis. If you need ideas contact us.

Peace in Your Heart and Fortune in Your Steps,

Dr. Christian R. Komor, Climate Repair Advocate

Author, “Climate Deadline 2035”