climate change

climate change

Anita Otilia Rodriguez * Amazing Artist * Adobe Contractor * Community Leader

My daughter, Shemai, and I have been on perhaps a thousand construction sites between us as professional contractors. Back in those days two beautiful women in coveralls, tape on hips, knee pads and sassy attitudes was way against the rules in a super-macho trade. Simply to make a living in an extremely competitive business we learned to “read” construction sites with psychic accuracy.

Working with this crew was a first for both of us.

We are more than impressed, we are honored to know Vets Off Grid and the volunteers who supported their leadership. Vets off Grid are deep, beautiful, humble, authentic, thoughtful, highly skilled people. I VOTE THEM THE BEST NON-PROFIT IN TAOS, and if I were not 83 none of them would be safe.

What they did was like a choreographed homage to team work, to community in action – making art, sanctifying the revolutionary and primordial process of building together. A dance, a prayer.
Watching them I realized that the present construction industry conquered and colonized the natural, organic RIGHT to build as a united community. We have been robbed of the natural process of creating architecture according to one’s culture, ecosystem, and locally available materials.


Like the deadly touch of Midas, the profit motive permeates our entire system, and vernacular building (building by the people, for the people) has become a for-profit industry that is responsible for 37% of global pollution, and holds us hostage as captive consumers.


Everyone in this group picture understands that building together is a deeply revolutionary act of spiritual de-colonization on the most practical and essential of levels. More than a right – building together is part of surviving in the biosphere – even oysters, bees, bears and moles have housing!


But there is more, a backstory behind this work of art still in process. I am the alleged leader, it was my idea. On June 25 I got up to pee, passed out and woke up in a puddle of blood. ER, then 10 days in intensive care at Holy Cross, then to Odelia re-hab in Burque, while the foundations, Hyper-adobe and counter pouring are going on at the STAKEOUT, I have been moved to 8 beds in less than a month.
From the frying pan to the fire and back to the pan, 8 times, from one hospital unit to another, never, ever coming home to roost with what I longed for more than anything else – peace and quiet in my own space.

After the accident, family and friends undertook to remodel my house, replace the beautiful sunken tub with a safer shower, put in ramps, and is still in process. The pinche insurance company kicked me out of Odelia for being too healthy but before the remodeling is finished! Thanks too for the titanic efforts of my son-in-law from heaven, John Fernandez. It has taken a team of about 7 family and friends to keep me alive, organized by my daughter who is ALSO running the CASA construction site, AND taking care of me – 24/7.

https://www.veteransoffgrid.org – Veterans Off-grid

https://www.facebook.com/VeteransOffgrid.org

As the planet warms, the insurance industry finds itself at a crossroads

Nirmal Jivan Shah •
Bad Ass Elder. Speaking Truth to Power

“As the planet warms, the insurance industry finds itself at a crossroads, entangled in a paradox of its own making. On one hand, insurers bear the immediate brunt of climate change through increased claims from natural disasters. On the other, they perpetuate the crisis by backing the fossil fuel projects driving global warming. This duality not only exposes a glaring hypocrisy but also raises fundamental questions about the role of insurers in our collective future.

Even as insurers withdraw from climate-vulnerable regions, they continue to invest in and insure fossil fuels ― the very industry at the heart of the climate crisis. This omission points to a larger, uncomfortable truth about the insurance sector’s complicity in the crisis of our time, leading us to an uninsurable future.

In May, State Farm — the largest insurer in California — stopped accepting new applications for homeowners insurance due to “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.” In June, Allstate followed suit. In July, Farmers stopped offering home and auto policies in Florida, forcing 100,000 ratepayers to find new insurance. In October, Nationwide canceled policies for 10,500 homeowners in coastal North Carolina.

As the pool shrinks and risks increase, insurance prices rise for everyone else. Nationally, homeowners insurance premiums are up 21% from a year ago and 35% from two years ago, according to the 2023 Policygenius Home Insurance Pricing report.

Despite increasing climate risks, insurers prop up risky oil and gas projects that, without their backing, would struggle to find the financing and insurance required to proceed. Moreover, they’re sinking billions into these climate-polluting fossil fuel companies, embedding the sector deeper into the fabric of our economy.”

Brilliant article by @CathyCowanBecker

Insurance industry’s hypocrisy: Warning about climate change, backing fossil fuels
https://www.greenamerica.org/blog/insurance-hypocrisy-warning-climate-change-backing-fossil-fuels

SIDS4 in Antigua & Barbuda is a decisive event for the future of islands🏝

Anger is growing in New Caledonia over France’s plan to let more French residents vote in provincial elections, which some fear will dilute the indigenous Kanak vote. The archipelago has 270,000 people. Check out the full story to learn more about the unfolding controversy.

https://islandinnovation.co/news/we-will-fight-until-kanaky-is-free-how-new-caledonia-caught-fire/?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_little-text-block

Banks have given almost $7tn to fossil fuel firms since Paris deal, report reveals | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

The world’s big banks have handed nearly $7tn (£5.6tn) in funding to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions, according to research.

In 2016, after talks in Paris, 196 countries signed an agreement to limit global heating as a result of carbon emissions to at most 2C above preindustrial levels, with an ideal limit of 1.5C to prevent the worst impacts of a drastically changed climate.

Many countries have since promised to reduce carbon emissions, but the latest research shows private interests continued to funnel money to oil, gas and coal companies, which have used it to expand their operations.

(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/13/banks-almost-7tn-fossil-fuel-firms-paris-deal-report)

An Endangered Planet

An Endangered Planet


To be a man is to be limited and mortal. To be on earth is to live within a finite and restricted environment. Life is sustained by a thin belt of atmosphere above a skin of earth crust. The life-support system based on air, earth, and water is delicate, subtly intertwined, and remarkably intricate.
The Need for Limis. The rise of the industrial state, and with it, science and technology, has led us to overlook these conditions of finitude and fragility. We have come to accept theories of progress and of inevitable development that look toward an indefinite improvement of the human condition by continuous economic growth made possible by an endless sequence of technological improvements. We have identified growth and expansion with progress, and we have not acknowledged the existence of any limitations on progress. The decline of an active religious consciousness in our century has reinforced this habit of inattentiveness toward the limits and contingencies that surround our individual and collective presence on earth. In earlier periods of history the active presence of religious thought helped keep alive the distinction between the finite and the infinite.

This Endangered Planet