Victory for mankind or empty promises to humanity?

Published originally in December 2015 By Mawutodzi Kodzo Abissath of Accra, Ghana (the full piece was also published on the Ghanaian government site here).

A funny African proverb says something to this effect: “A ram that is suffering from diarrhea messes up its own hind legs but boasts that it is soiling the pathway for commuters.”

Fellow citizens of the world, at long last, the much-touted UN Climate Change Summit 2015, dubbed Paris COP 21, has come to an end! And “Mother Earth, our Common Home” is free forever! Hopefully.

Trust the international civil servants with their legalese and romantic use of the English language when it comes to UN-sponsored events. But as a layman and for the purpose of this article, I intend to try as much as possible to break down the technical terms so that our own Junior High School graduates can understand the basic import of the Agreement that was adopted in Paris. After all is not the Agreement for future generations?

 

Adoption of the Paris Agreement

On Monday, November 30, 2015, the Conference of the Parties’ twenty-first session in Paris (COP 21) took off in Paris, France. The jaw-jaw exercises ended on Friday, December 11, 2015. The protocol (legal instrument) that was adopted is known as the Paris Agreement. It is under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), simply referred to as “the Agreement.”

Even before I elaborate on the Paris Agreement, let me inform my fellow citizens of the world that the said Agreement has only partially been signed.

After the UN Secretary-General has signed the document (which he did in April of 2016), he, in turn, invites the rest of the member states of the world body,


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One comment on “Victory for mankind or empty promises to humanity?

  1. Thank you MAWU for a very clear assessment of what inadequate diarrhea that conference actually has produced….too little too late…uh oh….

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What happens when you lacto-ferment hashish?

Originally posted February 14, 2016 by Zayaan Khan at Apocalypse Pantry

(Editor’s note: British-origin colonial spellings have been changed to USAmerican-origin colonial spellings, so as to not confuse my U.S.-centric brethren and sisteren.)

Lacto-fermentation:  Lactic-acid bacteria thrive in an anaerobic environment and when food is involved they will ferment it into the most beautiful salty textures and flavors. It is supremely good for the gut, which is a solid basis for whole body health – from irritable bowel syndrome, dermatitis, curing anal fissures (common ailment women suffer, perhaps also why she won’t let you in the back door) to fixing your resting bitch face.  It’s also a preserving method, keeping your foods going for much longer.  A quick rinse and you can cook ‘em up or eat ‘em raw to get all the microbial muti.[1]

So here is a batch of purple carrots pre-ferment.  The whole-r you keep them, the easier it is to keep ‘em closer to their “raw” state if you want to cook them out of season – a superpowered preservation.  Whether you chop it big or chop it small, 1% of the weight needs to be salt and the rest clean water, not tap water, not chlorinated water, not funky water.  Sweet water is even better (here in the Cape, the water that the mountains sponge up seeps and weeps out as sweet waters).  Submerge your food: the whole process must be anaerobic.  A good idea is to spice the water; I used fennel seed, cloves, cinnamon, and a sizeable block of hashish.

A word on fartichokes:  Topinambur / Jerusalem Artichokes / Sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus if you speak Latin) is a fucking great vegetable except it leaves you very gassy.


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Sick My Duck Elon Musk or The Chasm of Difference Between Apocalypse Optimism and Anthropocene Optimism

Originally published March 17, 2016 by Heather Thompson at Apocalypse Pantry

For most of us the Apocalypse is set in our mind to commence at a future date, one conveniently scheduled for a time just past the threshold of our personal experience on Earth.  We at Apocalypse Pantry are of the belief that the Apocalypse is happening now and that the attempt to date and name the Anthropocene is a confirmation of those beliefs, albeit a deeply disturbing one.

The hypothesis advanced by Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and ecologist Eugene Stoermer in 2000 proposed that the Anthropocene eclipsed the Holocene at the onset of the Industrial Revolution; that the man-made changes to the Earth’s geophysical and biophysical systems from that point forward did not share the same geological epoch as anything that came before it.  Recently Lewis and Maslin proposed an even more specific start date for the onset of the Anthropocene: 1610. In that year, after 50 million indigenous North and South Americans died from European colonization, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit its lowest point.  The carbon levels reflected this erasure of human activity from the planet by plummeting along with the population. European colonialism irreversibly altered the course of the planet’s future, in its transfer of plants, animals, diseases and technologies. The ethnically and ecologically transformed landscapes of the Americas were horrific initiations—to which the Industrial Revolution and the “Great Acceleration” are mere logical conclusions.

The official naming of human impact on the geological record sits like that deep sick feeling you got as a kid when you did something bad. Not the kind of bad that got you a smack you could brag to your friends about later but the kind of bad that disappointed the people who loved you. 


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