PlanetCitizen
- Your Moment on Earth, Planet Citizen 🌎
- New Horizons, On to 2020
- New Visions of Security in a Changing World
At Home on Spaceship Earth ... See How We Fly Through the Universe
Environmental movement | Earth Science Vital Signs | Environmental protection | The Commons
○ "There is no wisdom that is not related to earth, or does not partake of its nature."
- -- Marjory Stoneman Douglas
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Visit GreenPolicy360's associate, Strategic Demands
On the Horizon / Strategic Demands
- 2020
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In Memory of Planet Citizen Konrad Steffen
Renowned climate scientist dies in Greenland ice sheet accident
In 2017, Konrad Steffen talks about the Polar Research Station, climate change and the Greenland landscape
Past the 'Point of No Return', the Tipping Point in Greenland
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- Planet Citizen Action
- Facing the Climate Crisis
- CLIMATE CHANGE and VISION
Yes We Can (Leave the World a Better Place)
- Engaged / Opinionated / Political
- Step Up, Get with the Action
Earth in Our Hands
- 198 Ways to Act, Count 'em
- Personal action... Direct action...
- Green Network, GreenLinks action
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Stepping It Up
Climate Activists & Green Organizers: California Builds Bridges to Extend International Cooperation
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In Memory of a Florida "Planet Citizen"
Nathaniel Reed, environmental advocate and co-author of the Endangered Species Act, dies at 84
Via the Tampa Bay Times / Craig Pittman
Nathaniel "Nat" Reed, 84, a Hobe Sound resident whose childhood ardor for Florida’s natural wonders led to him becoming a tireless crusader for the environment, died in a Quebec hospital Wednesday, according to his family.
In a long career spent both in and out of government service, Mr. Reed co-wrote the Endangered Species Act, helped stop the construction of the world’s largest airport in the Big Cypress Swamp, and later founded the group 1,000 Friends of Florida...
In 1966, Mr. Reed campaigned for Republican gubernatorial candidate Claude Kirk, accompanying him on barnstorming flights around the state in a DC-3. To the surprise of the state’s Democratic establishment, Kirk won, becoming Florida’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
Mr. Reed became Kirk’s dollar-a-year aide for environmental issues, a brand new position Kirk had created for reasons that were based more on personality than politics. Kirk told him: "If you want to change the things that you have been hollering about for the last 15 years in Florida, there’s a desk."
"He had no interest in conservation," Mr. Reed said of Kirk years later, "but he had an interest in whoever was lowest guy on the totem pole, and at that time conservation was the lowest thing in anybody’s mind in Florida. It was rape-and-run, avarice and greed. Make money now and do not worry about the future."
Kirk was a politician for whom the description "colorful" seems inadequate. Mr. Reed once got a late night call from his inebriated boss, who demanded he dispatch the National Guard with a howitzer to make sure a Panamanian tanker that was leaking oil couldn’t sneak out of its quarantine at the Port of Tampa.
Together, though, they took on, and angered, dredge-and-fill contractors, business-as-usual developers, and mayors whose cities were dumping sewage straight into bays and estuaries.
Their biggest success, though, was stopping the construction of the so-called "Everglades jetport," an event that kick-started the environmental movement in Florida.
President Nixon appointed him a deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, a position he held into the Ford Administration...
While working for Interior, Mr. Reed preserved more than 80 million acres of Alaska, publicized the dangers of DDT, and imposed a ban on the use of a coyote-killing poison called 10-80 that killed other animals as well.
While there, he gathered together a group of like-minded administration officials at a Chinese restaurant, and, amid the egg rolls and moo goo gai pan, they jotted down the wording for what would become the Endangered Species Act, passed by Congress in 1973 and signed by Nixon.
Among the animals protected by the act were several from Florida, including the panther, the manatee, Key deer and the American alligator. The alligator is considered one of the act’s big success stories.
"We were in uncharted waters," Mr. Reed once said of their work for the new law. But he said they were all driven by a strong opposition to "ending a life that evolved on this earth, in some cases before we did, just to satisfy ourselves."
Later, Mr. Reed would found the advocacy group 1,000 Friends of Florida to push for better management of Florida’s runaway growth and better planning to deal with its consequences. He was known for giving fiery speeches and writing equally fiery letters decrying the forces that he saw despoiling the state he loved so much.
His son said the driving force of his life was trying to "see the Everglades got a square deal from the state of Florida," but he often despaired that the effort was a losing one thanks to "the forces of evil that own and control the state of Florida." Nevertheless, the greeting he always called out to family and friends was a simple bit of two-word optimism: "Boundless love!"
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Stephen Hawking / "Planet Citizen"
"Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942 - 2018"
June 15, 2018 / More than 1,000 people gathered today for a memorial service in London for theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking whose ashes were buried between graves of Darwin and Newton at Westminster Abbey...
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A Last(ing) Editorial from Professor Hawking...
This is the most dangerous time for our planet
by Stephen Hawking
Via The Guardian
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"My perceptions of the world shifted"
Aboard the International Space Station. Ride along with Planet Citizen astronauts.
Experience the Whole Earth and see our home planet through their eyes...
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Planet Citizen on a Spacewalk
Mike Massimino
"This is what heaven must look like... I felt like I was looking into a paradise" ... He sounds dramatic, religious, maybe Italian like his name.
Or maybe a green evangelical environista'.
Floating high, Starchild...
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NASA / In the beginning, big ideas required big rockets. Now, we can launch satellites that fit in the palm of our hand.
Discover how by watching this video
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Orphans No More, Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Conservation Policies vs. Hunting 'Trophies', Poaching, and Destruction of Species
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- February 22, 2018, the beginning of a SpaceX planet-network
- SpaceX's ultimate goal is to provide gigabit broadband worldwide
- "Starlink, Planet Internet"
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- HelloEarth ○ Earth 'Dailies' via DSCOVR-EPIC
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Planet Citizens, Digital Rights @GreenPolicy360
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- Tintin A & B ... “hello world”
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U.S. Signals Nuclear Arms Are Back (Again!) in a Big Way
"Surviving Victory":
Moving Away from "Perpetual War"
Shifting from Fossil Fuel Causes of Conflict to Renewable Energy Alternatives
"Strategic Demands, a 21st Century Vision"
New Definitions of National Security
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International Climate Conference Updates
United States only country to refuse climate change agreement
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Changes/Turnarounds at the US Energy Department
Via 'The Hill' / Resisting the Trump-Perry Agenda
Technological change and market forces are making clean energy competitive with dirty fossil and nuclear energy, helped along by small tax credits (which are nonetheless dwarfed by much larger fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies).
Coal-fired power generation capacity has decreased, nuclear capacity has stagnated, and even natural gas capacity has barely ticked upward — while solar and wind capacity have grown by double digits. Plus, according to Perry's own department, wind and solar now employ hundreds of thousands more Americans than older industries like coal.
Together with impressive advances in energy storage and smart grid technology, those trends are reducing the need for a large baseload capacity by making it possible to store renewable energy and distribute it wherever it's needed.
Renewable Energy @ GreenPolicy
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National Geographic:
Deconstructing Environmental Protections
Time to Act as US President Says No to the International Climate Agreement
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Continuing Cutbacks at US Environmental Protection Agency
Update
Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the US EPA, Resigns
Citing the Bible, the EPA Just 'Blew Up' Its Science Advisory Boards
Fire Scientists, Shut Down Advisory Panels, Remove Data
Environmental Protection Agency Open Being 'Data-Edited'?
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The Physics of Climate Change/Global Warming
You Can Run from the Facts, but the Facts Are What They Are
March to Support Science: Facts Matter
Stats - Green Research & Science
Carl Sagan, Planet Citizen, Lecture Notes for Astronomy 490 Class at the Smithsonian Museum
The 'Pale Blue Dot'
- https://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000110/ (Recording)
March for Science
New Definitions of National Security
Scientists Fear Climate Data Gap as Trump Aims at Satellites
Radiant Earth Project
Open geospatial data for positive global impact, and improved decision-making
Industry experts said over the past five years the number of operational satellites has jumped 40%, and nearly 1,400 now orbit the Earth.
This number could more than double over the next five years as satellites become smaller, lighter and more affordable.
Satellites collecting data and monitoring the Earth
Applications are far reaching - from tracking plant health through chlorophyll to gauging the impact of natural disasters and the surveillance of illegal logging.
India recently participated in the launch of 104 satellites — 101 of them for foreign companies and agencies - in a single mission as part of its strategic bid for a bigger share of the $300 billion global space industry.
Experts at the Seattle summit said the multiple launch, described as a world record by its space agency, was also significant because 88 were shoebox-sized Dove satellites launched by Planet, a San Francisco-based private satellite operator founded by former NASA scientists.
The constellation of small satellites will, once settled into orbit in six months' time, will photograph the entire Earth every day.
"Satellite imagery might be one of the most powerful and unbiased tools to tell people what is going on with the planet", explains Albert Lin, Research Scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
The key, he said, lay in finding ways to translate enormous amounts of information into something that can be understood by everyone.
This means finding ways of sorting and interlinking the trillions of bits of data sent to Earth and re-construct them into readable, digital and sometimes 3D models.
In some cases, data can be analyzed with the help of communities of "citizen scientists sitting alone at their computers all over the world."
"This is a wake-up call that satellite imagery is not just about questions and insights but also about engaging the entire planet in observing the planet, together."
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:New_Space
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Earth_Observations
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Science_Research_from_Space
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Earth_Science
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_Imaging-New_Space
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Micro-satellites
"New Definitions of National Security"
"Look at how thin our atmosphere is"
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Press Release / March 23, 2017
Actions to Protect Earth Science/Climate Data
Records Requests Seek to Preserve Hundreds of Data Sets on Wildlife, Oil Industry, Climate Change, Sea-level Rise
WASHINGTON — The Center for Biological Diversity, along with noted conservation biologist Stuart Pimm and the Center for Media and Democracy, launched an effort today to prevent hundreds of environmental data sets on government websites from being removed by the Trump administration.
To preserve or resurrect what has already been removed by the administration, the centers and Dr. Pimm submitted three separate Freedom of Information Act requests for data sets to eight federal agencies: the Army Corps of Engineers, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the departments of agriculture, commerce, energy and interior.
Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), when federal agencies receive requests for the same records three or more times, they must make the records freely available to the public on their websites, a rule known as “the Beetlejuice provision.”
“By removing or hiding hundreds of data sets [PDF] containing critical information about the climate, wildlife and the health of our oceans, Trump and his cronies are blatantly trying to conceal the truth from the American people,” said Amy Atwood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Thankfully our scientists have the Freedom of Information Act to keep this vital information in the light of day.”
Today’s legal requests seek hundreds of data sets on energy usage, renewables, oil and gas projections, coal reserves, climate data, sea-level rise, human population, environmental justice and the status of scores of endangered and threatened species and other wildlife. More specifically, they seek information relating to conservation of aquatic systems, residential energy consumption and Endangered Species Act “Section 7” consultations, a step taken by federal agencies to avoid jeopardizing listed species.
Media outlets have reported on the loss and vulnerability of federal data relating to some of today’s most pressing environmental issues, pointing out the disappearance of data sets from agency websites under the Trump administration and documenting scientists’ efforts to save them.
“The U.S. government produces and maintains some of the most important information that scientists use in their research,” said Dr. Stuart Pimm, a Duke University professor and research scientist — and a founder of conservation biology — and the second requester of data. “Along with the Herculean efforts of volunteer scientists around the country, I’m doing what I can to protect this information because it’s critical these data remain available to academic institutions for scientists and future generations.”
Challenges: Of Course and We're Taking Them On
To Andrew Revkin, a True 'Planet Citizen' as Dot Earth Signs Off and Andrew Moves on to ProPublica
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Planet citizen Bill Mollison, who presented a gift of Permaculture globally
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Memories of George Brown, a Planet Citizen Who Envisioned an Environmental Renaissance
Remembering the 'start-up' of the environmental movement and the first US environmental laws... founding legal precedents many of which came from forward-looking green visionaries like your GreenPolicy siterunner's friend and mentor, George, who passed away suddenly in 1999.
George's decades of work in Congress in air quality/clean air, water and the founding of the EPA highlighted the era's achievement... George was out in front in "big science" -- his profound accomplishments are esp missed now as anti-science positions threaten in the current US Congress
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- Astronauts Sam Cristoforetti, Ron Garan, and "Overview Effect"
Yes, to Italian "Astro Sam" and her #HelloEarth views and messages to us here on the home Planet.
And we greatly appreciate the newest from Astronaut Ron Garan as his interactive project "Orbital Perspective" is published this week. Some 45 years ago, near the end of December 1968 and beginning of an auspicious 1969, we began seeing the Apollo 8 mission's first-ever images of our "whole earth". It's not overstating to say - these images from above changed everything. These pictures from space looking back at Earth, taken as Apollo circled around the moon, carried realizations with the images -- that together we are planet citizens.
We welcomed a perspective that no human had ever had.
January 1969 was an eye-opener as the images of Earth were broadcast. We celebrated the images and our place in the cosmos even as we, the planet and our populations, were in the midst of violent war and troubled times.
Today, the famous Earthrise photo rekindles our memory, and the serendipity of how the Apollo 8 crew was lucky that day as, looking out their window, the Earth suddenly came into view. There was no "mission plan" to take Earth photos and the astronauts scrambled to get to a camera, put in film and shoot a few frames. They were in awe, they said, and fortune was in play that day. There we were, us, Earth. In the Earthrise images our space traveling planet citizens captured a realization of our wholeness, connectedness, and our shared future as together we spin thru space.
Later, the Apollo 17 mission, as the program was coming to its end, brought home the "Blue Marble" photograph, the first complete 360° image of our planet, a high-res Earth described as the most reproduced photo in history. It is the first photograph taken of the whole round Earth and still is only one of the whole earth ever snapped by a human being. Of the two living astronauts, Cernan and Schmitt, who believe they were the photographer who took the photo, here is how one describes his view.... Whichever astronaut of the three aboard Apollo 17 who snapped the picture, what is most memorable is Earth360:
"You have to literally just pinch yourself and ask yourself the question, silently: Do you know where you are at this point in time and space, and in reality and in existence, when you can look out the window and you're looking at the most beautiful star in the heavens -- the most beautiful because it's the one we understand and we know, it's home, it's people, family, love, life -- and besides that it is beautiful. You can see from pole to pole and across oceans and continents and you can watch it turn and there's no strings holding it up, and it's moving in a blackness that is almost beyond conception."
The sense of awe, an Earth point of view, has continued to be communicated by astronauts since and has continued to be shared, more recently with high tech ways to see and experience our Earth as planetary citizens as we see from the International Space Station. The term "Overview Effect" begins to share the experience.
We celebrate our Planet Citizens who bring home messages how we can collaborate to make a difference, to make the world a better place.
Ron Garan: "You don’t need to be an astronaut to have the orbital perspective"...
"When we look down at the earth from space, we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile... Anybody else who's ever gone to space says the same thing because it really is striking and it's really sobering to see this paper-thin layer and to realize that that little paper-thin layer is all that protects every living thing on Earth from death, basically. From the harshness of space."
"The Goal is to bring people along on our space missions not as spectators but as fellow crew mates." -- http://www.rongaran.com/gallery/
"It is truly moving to look at Earth from space. And when we do – we also have the privilege of sharing this orbital perspective with people back on our planet. We are all riding through the universe together on this spaceship we call Earth, we are all interconnected, we are all in this together. We are all family."
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Planet citizen Naomi Klein, "This Changes Everything"
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Bill McKibben, founder of www.350.org, planet citizen, and former advisor to our GreenPolicy new venture.
https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Bill_McKibben,_planet_citizen
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GreenPolicy360 highlights Rebecca Moore
Rebecca envisioned setting up "Google Earth Outreach", she envisioned it, presented the idea, and, as a citizen of the planet, she took a great idea into reality!
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Pope Francis, the first Catholic pontiff to name himself after the patron saint of the environment
Catholic pontiff speaks of the environment
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Winona LaDuke, Native-American environmentalist, economist, ecofeminist and writer.
In 1996 and 2000, Winona ran for Vice President as the nominee of the Green Party of the United States, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader.
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Rebecca Solnit
- "There are really only two questions for activists: what do you want to achieve? And who do you want to be? And those two questions are deeply entwined...
- Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style. That is the small ongoing victory on which great victories can be built, and you do want victories, don't you?"
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- January 2017
Green Stories of the Day, Become a Planet Citizen, Join with Planet Citizens Around the Globe
GreenPolicy360 Stories of the Day
The US and Russia, Exxon and Rosneft, Attempt Political Drive to Launch Historic Gas/Oil Drilling in the Arctic
Consequences and Costs Only Beginning to Be Estimated
Visit GreenPolicy's Arctic Page for Updates
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December 2016
Hear ye, Hear ye
- A 'Planet Citizen', California Governor Jerry Brown steps up at the AGU to deliver a speech for the times
All Hands on Deck
Eyes open, stay sharp, on alert
- America’s science community is getting organised as never before to hold the new administration and Congress to account
To Andrew Revkin, 'Planet Citizen Reporter' as he signs out at Dot Earth & moves on to ProPublica
Andrew Revkin to Join ProPublica as Senior Reporter on Climate Change
November 2016
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Elon's a planet citizen with energy powering up the vision
October 2016
The Military and Climate Security Budgets Compared
The U.S. military’s latest National Security Strategy says that climate change is “an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water.”
What they don’t say is that the overall balance of U.S. security spending should be adjusted to fit that assessment. And we know less about how much we are spending on this urgent threat than we used to, since the federal government hasn’t produced a climate security budget since 2013.
In this new report, Combat vs. Climate, the Institute for Policy Studies steps in to provide the most accurate climate change security budget currently available, drawing data from multiple agencies. And it looks at how these expenditures stack up within the overall 'security budget.'
Report: Combat Vs. Climate
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- Planet Citizens in Action: Update: 2018, Leonardo DiCaprio
- To gather a more comprehensive understanding of the condition of global reef ecosystems, we need a way to assess and monitor them on a large geographic scale.
- The Reefscape project aims to improve our understanding of the condition of coral reefs worldwide, while simultaneously developing spectral libraries needed to advance the development of a new satellite mission.
- New satellites, such as those from Planet (formerly Planet Labs), are, as of 2017, able to capture near-daily imagery of coral reefs worldwide. Planet’s high-resolution imagery of reef locations provides new imaging, science and understanding of the composition and extent of shallow, horizontally oriented reefs.
Planet Citizens & Bioneers
- Fellow Planet Citizens-Bioneers / Leo's close friend, Oren Lyons, Chief of the Onondaga Iroquois
- Oren Lyons - "We Are Part of the Earth" (Video / 7:38)
- Speaking to the Seventh Generation
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Remembering Rachel, Planet Citizen
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September 2016
"Eco-nomics" for the 21st Century
- A Necessary Challenge to Neoliberal Economics
- A Shift from Short-term Profits to Resilient, Sustainable Economies
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Stephen Hawking on ITV (and PBS)
- "Runaway climate change... A rise in ocean temperature would melt the ice-caps... with catastrophic effects." #AGW #CAGW
Often referred to as an Einstein of our current era, Stephen Hawking points to "runaway climate change" as a profound threat to global security. In the same (labored) breath, he communicates a profound warning re: the other existential threat he sees -- nuclear weapons. At Strategic Demands the escalating threat of nuclear weapons is revealed and tracked -- as Cold War 2.0.
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- August 2016
- Renewable Energy: Beyond Tesla with #PlanetCitizen
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- July 2016
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Climate Change Denial in Motion
- Defenders of Fossil Fuel Business-as-Usual Push Defense
August 31, 2016 - The chairman of the House Science Committee has announced a hearing next month into the refusal by two state attorneys general to comply with subpoenas seeking information on their investigations into ExxonMobil...
US House Science Committee Acts to Defend ExxonMobile Against Attorneys General
ExxonMobile Faces Multi-state AG Investigation
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Politics: US Democratic Party Platcom Meetings
Democratic Party environmental positions voted into platform
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August 3, 2016 -- This (year), on current trends, will be the hottest year ever measured. The previous record was set in 2015; the one before in 2014. Fifteen of the 16 warmest years have occurred in the 21st century. Each of the past 14 months has beaten the global monthly temperature record. But you can still hear people repeating the old claim, first proposed by fossil fuel lobbyists, that global warming stopped in 1998. Arctic sea ice covered a smaller area last winter than in any winter since records began...
If you blinked you would have missed the reports, but perhaps the most striking aspect of the Democratic platform (the party’s manifesto) approved in Philadelphia last week was its position on climate change. Hillary Clinton’s campaign now promises a national and global mobilisation “on a scale not seen since World War II”. She will seek to renegotiate trade deals to protect the living world, to stop oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic, and to ensure the US is “running entirely on clean energy by mid-century”.
There are some crashing contradictions in the platform. To judge by one bizarre paragraph, the Democrats believe they can solve climate change by expanding roads and airports. It boasts about record sales in the car industry and promises to cut “red tape”, which is the term used by corporate lobbyists for the public protections they hate. But where it is good it is very good, reflecting the influence of Bernie Sanders and the nominees he proposed to the drafting committee.
Donald Trump, on the other hand – well, what did you expect? Climate change is a “con-job” and a “hoax” that was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”.
His manifesto reads like a love letter to the coal industry. Coal, it says, “is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource”. He will defend the industry by rejecting the Paris agreement, stopping funds for the UN’s climate change work, ditching President Obama’s clean power plan and forbidding the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide.
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Warning Signs: The Great Barrier Reef
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Earth Day / Countries Signing Climate Action Plans
Via Mother Jones - Something Genuinely Good for the Earth Is Happening on Earth Day
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Solar Energy / EVs / ZEVs / NextGen Trans
Going Green 
'Planet Citizen' Elon introduces the Model 3
Elon Musk: The car represents the culmination of a long-held dream to bring affordable, zero-pollution vehicles to the world's highways...
With CO2 levels and global temperatures at record highs, the Model 3 will help bring engineering solutions to the climate change problem.
EV - Electric- and Zero-Emission Vehicles Corridors -- As of April 20, 2016 - 20,823 Alternative fuel stations mapped in the United States
A Question of Questions
A multi-language 'Thank You' to Planet Citizens: ~ Sylvia Earle, ~ Bill McKibben and ~ Elon Musk
Planet Citizen/Climate Citizen News
Polls: Planet citizens & global citizenship
BBC: 'Global citizenship' on Upward Trend
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After a Year in Space, Scott Kelly Says: I'm an Environmentalist
"The Earth is a beautiful planet. It's practically everything to us. It's very important to our survival, and the Space Station is a great vantage point to observe it, and to share our planet in pictures," Kelly said during a press conference on his return from the International Space Station.
His photos earned him a wide social media following as he gazed down on everything from smog-choked cities to spiraling hurricanes and typhoons.
"You notice how the atmosphere looks and how fragile it looks," Kelly said. "It makes you more of an environmentalist after spending so much time looking down at our planet."
Kelly now holds the NASA record for the most days in space as an American astronaut and is currently undergoing a battery of medical tests along with his twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly in order to help NASA learn more about how the human body changes throughout long-duration stays in space.
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Back in the USA: Climate Politics
"US Supreme Court's order blocking President Obama’s plan to cut emissions from coal-burning power plants is unprecedented step and one of the most environmentally harmful decisions ever made by the nation’s highest court"
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- "A single kind of blue-green algae in the ocean produces the oxygen in one of every five breaths we take"
- ~ from "The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One" by Sylvia Earle
- Visit GreenPolicy360's new site, proposed and co-designed by 14 yr old Olivia Schmidt
- Oh Phyto!! -- the Zooplankton Keep On Hanging On & Drifting Along with You!!
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- Remembering an Astronaut who was one of the first to look back at Planet Earth and our thin, fragile atmosphere
- Astronaut Mitchell telling us how profoundly beautiful -- and in danger -- our world was from his 'Planet Overview'
- February 4, 2016 ... In memory of Edgar Mitchell
- One of Mitchell's last interviews -- "In the big picture... we are stardust, this was a wow experience...
- as we were coming home... where you see things in their natural state... a feeling of oneness"
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Climate Agreement In Paris
Renewable Energy Investment Growth
"Toward a Renewable Energy Future:" Implementing the 'INDCs'
GreenPolicy's list of Countries & Climate Action INDC Plans
Moving Beyond the Goals in Each Nation's INDC-Climate Plan
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A Generation's Challenge
Renewables ---- 'Decarbonizing' ---- Transitioning to Clean Energy Globally
In Paris for the Climate Summit
Paris Climate Agreement: Moments
Falling Short on Climate in Paris
What the Paris conference on climate change can do for planet Earth
Chris Mooney/Washington Post after the Paris Agreement
November
Road to Paris
Global Climate March - News/Actions
Paris marches rescheduled -- 2,000+ worldwide climate change events ready-to-go ... 175+ Countries
Events/Locations 350.org #ClimateMarch
Paris Climate Summit, Opening Nov 30 - Information Hub
Agenda -- Meetings -- Schedule
Important: Legal forms for Paris climate agreement
Join In, Act, Follow, Be Out in Front
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Eco-disaster viewed from satellite
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DSCOVR/EPIC New Site Goes Live
- Visit EarthPOV for Latest News
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"Northern Lights over Alaska"
- --- 2015, photo by Astronaut Scott Kelly from the International Space Station
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Environmental Security: a Planet Citizen Vision
Climate Summit / Road to Paris
UN / Climate Plans "Synthesis Report" -- Oct 30
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2020 Update: From Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac
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Christiana Figueres @CFigueres
- Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
UN Climate Action @UNFCCC
- October 19, 2015
- Opening plenary of the latest @UN climate negotiations
- #ADP2 session... steps toward Paris... Focus!
Follow @UNFCCC
- #COP21 #INDCs #climatechange #climateaction
UN Conferences / Eyes on the Future
- - Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard climate science director
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ClimateCentral (@ClimateCentral)
- Oct 20, 2015
- 150 countries representing approx 90% of world’s carbon emissions have filed pledges
@ GreenPolicy, Review Climate Action National Plans/INDCs
Which Countries Are Doing the Most?
@ GreenPolicy, 2015 UN Climate Change Conference
The International Climate Conference in Paris
We Mean Business on Climate Change
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Historic Earth Images from the DSCOVR Mission
GreenPolicy assists the NASA mission team
December 2015
First images of Moon and Earth from DSCOVR-EPIC
July 2015
Planet Citizens, DSCOVR and the New Blue Marble
Planet Earth, the first whole Earth image since the original Blue Marble image taken by Apollo 17 in 1972.
DSCOVR-EPIC images will begin to be made available by September.
GreenPolicy will assist in the release of these historic online views of Earth, made available in near real time, in coordination with Dr. Szabo and the NASA/NOAA DSCOVR project team.
"The high quality of the EPIC images exceeded all of our expectations in resolution," said Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The images clearly show desert sand structures, river systems and complex cloud patterns. There will be a huge wealth of new data for scientists to explore."
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-satellite-camera-provides-epic-view-of-earth
- #Earth360 Updates
Planet Citizen will be assisting in delivering NASA/NOAA DSCOVR/EPIC data and imagery
The Planet Citizen site will be expanding to highlight the new DSCOVR products and EPIC whole earth images
In addition to a new NASA DSCOVR/EPIC website in development and a selection of #Earth360 images planned to be made available online daily beginning in August, there will be unprecedented accompanying data/imagery made avail for #EarthScience and climate/atmospheric monitoring.
The following is from a NASA Goddard communication, March 11th to us @PlanetCitizen, discussing additional calibrated data products to come from DSCOVR...
>The individual 10 different wavelength EPIC data will be served from the Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) at Langley (https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov) Once we will be active, on the left side of this page DSCOVR will appear as a project. Clicking on it will give you a list of available products...
The DSCOVR satellite with its EPIC cam, PlasMag & NISTAR instrument package... is on a million mile journey and in approx four months, DSCOVR will "light up", be tested, and begin delivering data to Earth. In its historic mission, DSCOVR and its EPIC imaging system will begin sending near real-time images of the whole Earth... it has been many years since whole Earth images have been readily available...
It's been decades since December 7, 1972 when the only picture ever snapped by a human of the whole earth was captured -- our iconic "Blue Marble" Planet Earth. NASA engineers named the historic image -- AS17-148-22727'
As we have been recalling the history, we haven't had returned to us a 'whole earth' image since 1972. Today, the Associated Press reports Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, pointing out from Washington that there hasn't been a "full, sunlit picture of the Earth since Apollo 17 in 1972 - NASA's last manned moon-landing mission". Subsequent images "have been stitched together", the Senator explained, for composite shots. The Florida Senator has an exceptional point of view re: this amazing fact, as he was an astronaut who flew on the Space Shuttle from Florida's "Space Coast". In January 1986, Nelson spent six days orbiting Earth as a payload specialist aboard space shuttle Columbia. His NASA bio adds "The experience gave him a new perspective on the Earth’s fragile environment and a greater appreciation of the importance of our nation’s space exploration program."
The DSCOVR satellite launches into deep orbit with multiple missions -- to monitor space weather and, due to the satellite's orbital distance from Earth (1 mil miles), DSCOVR will be sending back daily images of the whole earth via its EPIC image-taking system and via its NISTAR system measuring earth's earth's temperature, our "radiation balance" ("albedo").
"DSCOVR will be beaming back a steady stream of images of our home planet from space... with the images expected to be available online the next day."
"They'll be posted on a website for the public to see," said Steven Clarke, director of NASA's Joint Agency Satellite Division. "I think it will be an inspiration for people to see the sunlit disk of the Earth."
"Most impressive from DSCOVR will be the images of us, Planet Earth 360°. To see and to experience #Earth360 daily, it's going to be a spectacular re-reminder of our place in the cosmos..." - Steven Schmidt
Scientists will soon get a steady stream of data about how both the Earth and the Sun are doing, for years to come.
The livestream of our planet will inform, immerse and inspire. Online the images from DSCOVR and EPIC will deliver majestic new visions of our home planet.
For many Earth scientists, the centerpiece of the satellite is the National Institute of Standards Advanced Radiometer, or NISTAR, named for the Maryland-based government laboratory that designed it. The apparatus was built to shed light on Earth’s “radiation balance”—the radiation we receive from our sun minus the radiation we reflect back into space. The difference is retained by our planet as heat, and is calculated by measuring Earth’s reflectivity, called the albedo. Data showing whether Earth’s albedo is decreasing, meaning the atmosphere is retaining more heat because of greenhouse gases or other reasons, could be a significant piece of the climate puzzle.
What is revolutionary isn’t the basic technology for tracking albedo — it is measuring it from the million-mile perspective out at L1. Most satellites circle the planet at about one-thousandth of that distance, so their readings encompass only a small slice of land, a view that shifts rapidly as they circle the planet every two hours or so. Different climate zones — ice caps, deserts, tropical forests—have different reflectivities, independent of the atmosphere, which needs to be factored in to the overall measurement; it’s virtually impossible to create a whole-Earth portrait from a deck of low-orbit snapshots. “By the time you stitch together all the separate bits of data, the margin of error is too large to be useful,” Dr. Asrar at NASA says.
DSCOVR is "like having a thermometer for the whole planet.” It’s not a perfect gauge, NASA’s Dr. Adam Szabo cautions. “Earth is… a sphere that reflects light in all directions. So a measurement from any one point will not be the final word. But it will still be very important for the conversation about climate change.”
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- New Ways to See and Experience Planet Earth
How Beautiful Planet Earth Is
EARTH FROM ORBIT / VIDEO IN HD
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View the 'Thin Blue', Earth's Life-enabling Atmosphere
Watching Earth Roll By: On the International Space Station
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Earth Viewing Live via UStream
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Visit Google Earth's 10th anniversary:
Journey with Voyager +
Introducing Voyager & Earth View
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- Planet Labs 'Doves' fly from the ISS
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Planet Citizen: Elon
Consider how years ago now, NASA put out a call about launching services for the DSCOVR mission -- Guess who was one of those who replied? A young visionary dreaming of what could be, even before his SpaceX was ready to go... Elon Musk, becoming a planet citizen. He spoke of how the iconic whole earth "Blue Marble" photo of Earth had inspired him to dream and to move his technology plans toward a space & earth connection.
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- Overview and Perspective
See and experience the Earth in new ways
January 2015
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- #Earth360: The Overview
As the New Year Dawns, Earth from Space
With appreciation ~ for the space experience and the wisdom of the Overview Effect
Planetary --- Planetary, trailer, pre-release March 2015
From Above, beauty and awe...
Settings: FULL Screen, 1080p, Room lights off, Music up, Lean back and fly
Set FULL Screen 1080p, lights off, Audio up. Adjust YouTube setting for HighDef 4K, 2160p
Astronaut Alex Gerst: A 'Planet Citizen's' view of Earth...
Set FULL on HD 4K, 2160p... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNwWOul4i9Y --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ifjaOHHO98
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- "Game changer"
Historic Orbiting Carbon Observatory Satellite Sends Back Most Detailed CO2 View Ever / Dec 18, 2014
OCO-2 begins to measure atmospheric CO2 levels with unprecedented science
The 'Initial Level 1 round' of data was made available to the public on Dec 30, 2014.
A full set of CO2 data is available in March for scientists and public "planet citizens" to download and explore
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For #PlanetCitizen gazing, visit the "Blue Marble" Collection
November 2014
Earth's Observation's new website
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Earth: How are you?
About Planet Citizen
#PlanetCitizen #EarthPOV
SJS/GreenPolicy360 Siterunner:
In the 1960s in the US and globally a modern environmental movement was being created as first-ever visions of Planet Earth were sent from Apollo missions. The images of the Whole Earth in space changed perceptions in every nation. A realization of a common, shared home -- and responsibility to care for our home -- was born.
Soon political leaders stepped up, both looking backward and forward. A new field of science, earth science, began to spring up. In the US Congress, leaders like George Brown were saying no to war in Vietnam and Asia, and the Mideast, and no to nuclear weapons, while saying yes to a first generation of NASA earth science missions.
This was called 'Big Science' by some and 'its a critical mission' by others.
Rep. George E. Brown was out in front.
From the mid 1960s until his death in 1999, his work in Congress was instrumental in proposing, shaping, and protecting Big Science - Earth Science.
Our new era of #Earth360 exploration, using the tools of the digital age and Internet connectivity, is making it possible to see and experience a connected, Planet Earth 360 and to begin studying life-enabling systems (and life-threatening changes) with means never before possible.
Space- and earth-based observation platforms are delivering "intelligence reports" in effect, strategic insights that can broaden our knowledge and perceptions of who we are and how we respond to our global, common future.
In unprecedented ways, intelligence about our planet's systems can be shared and networked via the worldwide web and a larger Internet, linking us together wherever our community and whatever our nation.
We look out at a critical, developing field of #EnvironmentalSecurity as a generation of Planet Citizen voyagers.
- Planet Citizens and GreenPolicy hold a simple value proposition:
- Cleaner air and water and food is a good thing. Reducing pollution is a necessary thing. Health of our environment is a vital thing.
- Science is essential to 'measure and manage' #PlanetEarth in sustainable, productive, life enhancing ways.
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An API for the Planet
#PlanetLabs @Open Source Conference
With the Planet-Lab Platform, Connect to our Planet as Citizens of the Planet
Mission: Democratizing Access to Information About the Changing Planet
Launch of new Flock of Dove Satellites to Image Earth
Planet Labs 'Dove' micro-satellites
"Rapid cadence imagery, like Planet Labs is developing, helps us become better, more sustainable stewards of Earth."
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Environmental Security @Strategic Demands
A realization that "Security is indivisible" is on the horizon and security definitions are changing as a result of the dynamics of interactive networks.
The sharing of information is creating a new science of networking. Information is being looked at as never before and #earthscience data is now being collected by networked computers across an interconnected world. In historic ways, open data is being publicly distributed far beyond the restrictive policies of previous times and closed-loop systems.
Today #earthsciences are at the cusp of a rich new world of information. As we share these new realizations, images, data, experiences and understandings, we can be certain of a new, growing awareness of our planet and our 'citizenship' together.
Even now, we have inklings of what is coming. Let's look at one called OCO-2. With the launch of OCO-2, a "game changer", in the summer of 2014, the data of #Earth360 will grow in unprecedented ways as this first orbiting observatory of global warming conditions takes to space and begins to report home - I am OCO-2
Although the Orbiting Carbon Observatory is just the beginning, the future of #earthscience from space is here as we see in new ways and observe our environment with new information never before accessible. Space-imaging is opening up amazing views, with 3D and big-screens and home theaters. Coming soon will be views beyond IMAX as companies like Virgin and SpaceX carry citizen travelers into orbit. Educational and scientific information about our communities is being shared, and linked to, and distributed around the Net. From space, the earth is borderless and with vision of the planet and common-good #biosphere and #ecosystem comes responsibility for our shared security.
On to first steps... We are all connected and wherever we are, geographically, nationally, we share common-ground and common-atmosphere. Let's look at our home and, with an "overview" from space, see the 'Big Picture' and let's look at the details, let's manage and sustain our earth resources and, as we go, look to our shared quality of life on the "only home we've ever known."
Here's to our future and future of #Environmental Security
The Big Picture: Earth from Space
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Our world of is in flux.
The term "New Space" and "Democratization of Space" have come to represent a first generation of earth research and study from space by start up companies designing, building and launching small, mini- and micro-satellites.
New visions of Earth and new players are challenging the old system of governments that spend billions to explore, commercialize and militarize space.
Barriers to entry are being broken and young companies are launching flocks of satellite birds into space. Earth monitoring is going planetary and a next generation is at the forefront pushing to address threats to the environment.
Let's go there to this new world, not a "new world order" but a world that is being connected and is sharing, linking and seeing the bigger picture. The way we observe and 'feel' about our planet is changing in one generation.
Beginning with the first Whole Earth pictures relayed from the Apollo voyages to the Moon, we have for the first time in history experienced a vision of our planet from afar -- we are, we realize, a 'blue' oasis in space.
Now, nearly five decades after the original awe-inspiring Earthrise images from Apollo 8 were revealed, we find everyday citizens in every nation realizing our commonalities.
The Apollo mission helped us open our eyes and today we are seeing our planet and our place in the universe in new light, with new missions and and new possibilities to secure our environment for ages to come.
We are citizens of our common home, planet Earth.
Add your talent to the grand project of planet citizenship, of seeing with an EarthPOV so that we can make informed decisions and policy...
Observe, consider, act. NextGen #earthscience in an era of #climatechange and #globalsecurity challenges and opportunities...
Make a difference, join with GreenPolicy360's global work. In every community there are green groups at work.
Visit and use our GreenLinks to see a multi-colored, deep and diverse range of resources and friends of GreenPolicy.
It's time, your time to Go Green!
Citizens of Planet Earth
Arise, Look Up, Around, Outward and Inward
Planet Citizen, Forward-looking Vision
Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists
Earth Observations, Strategic Missions
Environmental Security - Global/National
New Definitions of National Security
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