Over the past month, I have been speaking to women in Canada and the American Midwest about a powerful force that discriminates against us. I am not talking about the glass ceiling or sexists bosses, although we all know those still exist. I am talking about climate change.
You might think that a force as sweeping as global warming would be an equal opportunity threat: that it would endanger men and women alike. But the fact is climate change exacts a heavier toll on women.
Women produce up to 80 percent of the food in the developing world. Drought and unpredictable rains brought on by climate change will make this work far more precarious. Women will have to labor harder and longer to ensure their families have food, fuel, and water.
Our role as caretakers puts us at even greater risk in times of extreme weather. Studies have found that women are 14 times more likely to die as a result of storms and other extreme weather than men.
Fourteen times! Why? Because women often look after the children, the elderly, and the sick, and that means we have less mobility in a flood or wildfire.
The good news is that we can help women change this.
If you ask people the tools we need to stop climate change, most talk about wind and solar energy, fuel efficient cars, and biofuels. But there is another solution that is not so widely known: empowering women.
Right now, hundreds of millions of women are denied basic education, are married off too young, or lack access to adequate health care. The leading cause of death for girls between the ages of 15 and 19 is medical complications from pregnancy.
Most women and girls want more control over how and when they build their families, and most development organizations support that aim. Now researchers also recognize that what is good for women is also good for the planet.
Two groundbreaking studies, one from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and one from the Futures Group, found that simply by meeting women's existing needs for voluntary family planning, we could reduce carbon emissions by between 8 and 15 percent.
That is the equivalent of stopping all deforestation today.
This is an extraordinary proposition. Empowering women to make critical decisions in their own lives can help solve the biggest environmental and humanitarian challenge of our time.
This opportunity exists not only in developing nations, but here in America as well. Millions of women in the U.S. lack access to family planning. Giving them and their sisters around the world the education and health care they want will make enormous improvements in their lives.
This is a very promising finding. But in no way does empowerment take the place of government action on climate change. Developed nations in particular must do our part. We have released the lion's share of global warming pollution into the atmosphere. It is our moral obligation to power our economies in cleaner, safer ways.
Yet in the face of so urgent a crisis, we must fight with every weapon we have. Improving women's lives while curbing emissions offers another arrow in our quiver.
So in addition to what you may already be doing to protect the environment, I encourage you to also support organizations that empower and educate women here and around the globe.
And tell your lawmakers that the government's paralysis on climate change must end. It's embarrassing how many members of Congress continue to deny the existence of global warming, and it's shocking how many potential candidates for the 2012 presidential race have retracted their previous support of climate action. As some are saying in the media, these deniers are the new birthers.
To break through this willful ignorance, we must press our leaders in government and business to change how we produce energy and transport ourselves. Yet at the same time, we can also engage the world's women as a potent force of change.
Rabbi Michael M. Cohen: The Solar Field and the Mezuzah
Mike Richter and Sage Rosenfels: Solar Energy: Time for New York to Get in the Game
How to Leave the Planet
Phone NASA. Their phone number is (731) 483-3111. Explain that it is very important that you get away as soon as possible.
If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the White House - (202) 456-1414 - to have a word on your behalf with the guys at NASA.
If you don't have any friends at the White House, phone the Kremlin (ask the oversees operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They don't have any friends there either (at least no one to speak of), but they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try.
If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible.
If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that its vitally important that you get away before your phone bill arrives.
Escape guidelines are from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Do you have any other talking points?
So, on your football field, what is the TOTAL thickness of ALL the noncondensing GHGs that keep the Earth from being a frozen ball of rock and ice? It's about an inch, isn't it?
Does that make any difference to your analysis of how important an additional 3/8ths of an inch might be?
It should.
Here's a rule of thumb: You can't judge whether or not something is important by how big the number is that represents it. If that were true, botulinum toxin wouldn't be lethal at doses of a few parts per billion. But it is.
Has there been an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? Yes. What they haven`t told you is that it has only increased a tiny amount. They`ll show you a graph of increaseing carbon dioxide that looks like the slope of Mount Everest or a hockey stick. But here`s the reality. Carbon dioxide has only increased from 316 parts per million to about 376 parts per million. Sixty parts PER MILLION is the total increase. Now, that is such a small change in our entire atmosphere that it is hard to imagine. How can we visualize that?
Imagine the composition of the Earth`s atmosphere as a football field. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen. So, starting from the goal line, nitrogen takes you all the way to the seventy - eight - yard line. And most of what`s left is oxygen. Oxygen takes you down to the ninety - nine - yard line. Only one yard to go. But most of what is left is the inert gas argon. Argon brings you to within three and a half inches of the goal line. That`s pretty much the thickness of the chalk stripe. And how much of that remaining three inches is carbon dioxide? One inch. That`s how much CO2 we have in our atmosphere. One inch in a hundred - yard football field.
As a hockey stick or a mountain?
Your nitrogen (78 yard line), oxygen (99 yard line), and argon (99 yards 32.5 inch line) all have nothing whatsoever to do with keeping us warm. They are transparent to outgoing radiation, allowing surface heat to simply escape back into space. They are completely irrelevant in this context; they might as well not be there at all.
That last 3.5 inches is all the keeps the surface of the Earth warm enough for life as we know it to exist. Without that thin stripe, we would not be here to write these comments.
So, thank you for giving us a way to visualize exactly why a 40% increase in the thickness of that stripe is such a big deal. I'm not sure this is what you had in mind, but thanks anyway.
As the article says above, empowering women to decide their own reproductive capacity is an important part, but burning fossil fuels is the largest single factor.
The top selling GM product is the Silverado 15 city / 20 highway.
The top selling Chrysler product is the RAM pickup 14 city / 20 highway.
Without the bailout, you would not be able to buy a Chrysler or a GM anymore. THose companies would have a Chinese name by now.
If the vehicle matches the usage, there is no problem.
The global warming cause deflects billions of dollars away from investment is useful projects that would help all of humanity.
Demographics of Farm Workers in the United States
The agricultural labor force is largely foreign-born Hispanics of which 81% are foreign born, 77% are from Mexico,[6] and it is estimated that 98% of all farm workers immigrated to the country illegally.[7] They are usually young, married males.[8] Every year many of these farmworkers leave their homes and families to cultivate, harvest, and package fruit, nut and vegetables in the U.S., while others work in the fishing, meat packing and dairy industries.[6] In the past, the rise in immigration to the U.S., usually of unauthorized workers, has increased the population of migrant farmworkers. However, in the 1990s, a new trend began with the development of more year-round production methods resulting in a larger population of settled farmworkers.[5]
Culled from "Farmworker" on wikipedia with footnotes and references
Sorry that makes mo sense. I guess the men are drinking beer at the bar?
Seems pretty self-explanatory. How doesn't it make sense to you?
risk my well being to do that job.
Women in this country get paid very well to do menial jobs, while men are being screwed over doing jobs that women won't do for equal pay.
Like a bright one posted earlier... find the problem not another symptom.
May I also surmise that natural disasters and war are typically gender neutral in regards to their discrimination typically on average at a 1:1 ratio(barring soldiers in war... strictly civilian casualties).
Is there really any purpose for articles like this other than to misinform and divide and compel some of us to sit back and watch it all burn down? It probably won't, but sure helps feed the apathy gremlin with waxy ears.
It is true that we need to work toward empowering women, and recognizing their strengths. But I would like to remind everyone that we cannot simply step in and force family planning and other modern developments on people who do not neccisarily want that. Socieites have existed for centeries without "modern" developments, and it is in recent years with colonization first, and then world organizations "help" that has lead to the increasing failure in other countries. We have to be careful that we do not continue colonization under a new label.
Agreed, that is why the goal is empowerment rather than an external decision.
Green technology will put people back to work. How expensive is it that you don't think it can be afforded?