Changing Climate Times Newsletter Douglas John Imbrogno

The Amazon Rainforest Fires and the Hamburger Connection | ISSUE 22-p (for podcast), Aug. 23, 2019 | Podcast Episode 4
NOTE: The following text contains some content not featured on the podcast above, plus links and longer excerpts to articles mentioned. The podcast script is adapted from Issue 22 of Changing Climate Times. Thanks to Kyle Vass for primo podcast coaching. (Check out his work at exchange.prx.org/user/kylevass)
INTRODUCTION | ‘As the World Burns’
What you’re hearing on this podcast is the sound of a thunderstorm last night that broke overtop the roof of my house. I used to love the sound of thunderstorms. Still do. But if you’re like me, if you’re tuned into the latest, greatest news about climate change, you can’t help but wonder every time you hear a storm.
Especially a big one.
Is this storm more extreme than the ones I used to love as a kid? Is this yet another crazy weather event, juiced by our drastically changing climate? A climate which according to an overwhelming majority of climate scientists has turbocharged forest fires, hurricanes and floods? 
Dammit, you can’t even enjoy a nice crackling thunderstorm without wondering if it’s a signal of the climate End Times, come to your neighborhood!
Now, I don’t know if last night’s thunderstorm was just your average thunderstorm. But what IS clear, according to people who study such things for a living, is that the forest fires currently raging in the Amazon rainforest are most certainly NOT your average forest fires.
Which brings us to this special edition of Changing Climate Times podcast titled “As the World Burns.”
CHAPTER ONE | House Fire
My friend, Ryan Hagan, also publishes a climate change newsletter. It’s called Crowdsourcing Sustainability. There was something that caught my eye in his most recent issue last Friday. He wrote:
“Civilization’s house is on fire and needs to be put out ASAP.” 
Of course, what Ryan was talking about is the Earth at large. But within days of writing those words news of fires in the Amazon rainforest caught the world’s attention.
The Amazon rainforest is so big it includes 10 percent of the world’s biodiversity and produces 20 percent of Earth's total oxygen. That’s why it is called "the Lungs of the World." 
Just to visualize its size, if we were able to relocate the Amazon to America, it would be as big as the 48 contiguous United States, minus Alaska and Hawaii. 
It sprawls across almost half the entire South American continent. The current fires are so widespread they can be seen from outer space. Here’s a time-lapse video of the fires created from NASA satellite imagery over 90 days by Joaquin Beltran:


Those blood-red flares that leap up all across the heartland of South America are showing us something. 
Or telling us something. 
To borrow my friend Ryan’s phrase: ‘Hey, Civilization! Our house is on fire!!’
And what if I were to tell you that we’ve set our house on fire because we want a cheeseburger. 
CHAPTER TWO | Would You Like Fries with That?
You’ll hear pushback from climate deniers that such fires are seasonal in the rainforest. But as Greenpeace forest campaigner Juman Kubba told the BBC in this audio piece, “Why Is the Amazon Burning?” and in this BBC article, the politics of Brazil and corporate supply lines that feed the maw of fast-food chains, play a key role in torching the Amazon.
Kubba said there has been a 145 percent increase in fires in 2019 compared to last year, with the rise to power of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. As the BBC piece notes:
Forest fires are common from July to October. But activists say Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s policies have encouraged farmers to clear land for crops or grazing—resulting in an increase in fires.
“The scale of this is new,” says Kubba. “The rate which were seeing fires is unprecedented. That’s incredible growth … This is the lungs of the planet that are on fire.

QUICK/READ: What world do you hope to save from the devastating impacts of climate change? Changing Climate Times posted that question to Twitter a while back. We got answers from an Irish artist, an online climate denial warrior and iconic climatologist Michael E. Mann, among others. Me, I’m trying to save the kick-up-your-heels world shown in the photo below. Not to mention pawpaw ice cream from seeds once shat out by a wooly mammoth. For all the answers we got, listen to podcast 3, issue 21 of Changing Climate Times. Or read the transcript below, if that’s more your thing. If this issue was forwarded to you, subscribe to the newsletter & podcast at: changingclimatetimes.substack.com | Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and wherever you listen to podcasts. | Follow us on Twitter at @TimesClimate
Be well. | CCT Curator, Concierge and Host Douglas John Imbrogno | PS: Thanks to Kyle Vass for his primo podcast coaching!
ONE | Introductions Are in Order
I am trying to save a world in which my Italian grandmother dances the Tarantella with her youngest son at her 50th wedding anniversary at the American Slovak Club in Lorain, Ohio.
Like a lot of journalists these days, I got washed out of a job last year. My editor handed me  a white envelope in the newsroom to let me know my 30 year news career was kaput. I was a feature writer and editor for that newspaper for a long time.
One of the ways I've spent my time—lots of time—since being laid off is publishing a free climate change newsletter and companion podcast called The ChangingClimateTimes.
Free as in, like, no-money-at-all free.
Every day, I scour world media and social media for the latest news and views on the unfolding climate crisis. I offer my commentary or that of climate scientists, activists and communicators.
I try to steer a course—as the newsletter's pitch puts it—"between the dire news and what to do.” I also add homemade climate memes and climate-themed cartoons to spice the mix.

Going from straight feature writing to advocacy has been a real change-up for me. 
At my old newspaper, I’m still (in)famous for writing the paper’s longest-ever feature. More than 100 inches! It concerned the—I will still argue—fascinating history of the ancient pawpaw tree and its custardy fruit, “How the Pawpaw Was Found, Got Lost, and Was Found Again.” 
(Don’t get me started. Did you know old-timers hung roadkill in pawpaw branches since their flowers are pollinated by flies and…)
What’s do pawpaws and flies have to do with this climate crisis?

TWO | Count to One Million
Image from 11/27/18 New York Times article “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here.”

Maybe you’ve heard about the recent United Nations report. It stated one million species are at risk in decades ahead from an overheated Earth. 
That number would likely include pawpaw trees and their delicious banana-mango-flavored fruit. And that list of one million species? Probably the average fly, too. The pawpaw fruit is born from flies pollinating the flowers. And flies are in the cross-hairs of the  ‘insect apocalypse,' a pretty scary phrase that refers to the collapse of insect populations from a climate going haywire.
Last year, the New York Times ran an article, “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here. What Does It Mean for the Rest of Life on Earth?”
An insect apocalypse. The effects of this apocalypse are noticeable in our own backyards, as we sit on our porches gazing into the dark and wondering “Where did all the fireflies go?”
As the conservation site firefly.org notes:
“Fireflies are disappearing from marshes, fields and forests all over the country—and all over the world. And if it continues, fireflies may fade forever, leaving our summer nights a little darker and less magical.”
Pause a second to absorb that United Nations report number: 1,000,000, in all its zeroes. That is a pretty impressive screw-up by one species—to do to so many other species.
If, that is, we

Welcome to Episode Two of the new Changing Climate Times podcast. This episode describes the back-story behind five climate change memes our Climate MemeWorks released into the social media-verse recently. The episode is inspired by ISSUE 20 of our newsletter, “5 Climate Memes Worth Sharing.” Below are the memes, which you’re are welcome to borrow, steal and release into the wild. One role CCT aims to fill is to sort through the dizzying amount of climate change coverage. And to lift up essays, articles, quotes and work worth a longer look. Our memes quickly highlight important points in the evolving climate crisis. They are also pointers to deeper content.
Missed Podcast Episode One?
CHANGING CLIMATE TIMES PODCAST 1 :“The Big and the Little of Climate Change”
SUBSCRIBE to the Changing Climate Times newsletter and podcast: changingclimatetimes.substack.com. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: @TimesClimate
BE WELL. And save the world. Not the big one—the one in which you live and love.
Changing Climate Times Concierge and Curator Douglas John Imbrogno | douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com 
ONE | “We cannot be radical enough”
TWO | ‘The Power Is Not Yours But Ours’
THREE | The Game of Pretend

FOUR | Who’s the Extremist Here?

FIVE | Go Global, Strike Local
PS | You Promised Cartoons




This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changingclimatetimes.substack.com

View of Mount Everest from Base Camp, Khumjung, Nepal | Martin Jernberg, unsplash.com
WELCOME: This is the debut podcast of Changing Climate Times, a free newsletter that curates and comments on the latest news and views on the climate crisis. We steer a course between the dire news and what to do. This first episode of our new podcast, hosted by Douglas John Imbrogno, actually picks up with Issue 19 of the newsletter, which launched November 2018.
ISSUE 19: Who you gonna trust on the climate crisis? How about a Sherpa who has ascended and descended Mount Everest 21 times? “Less snow and more rocks,” and “glaciers all over the mountain … melting,” he says. | And ‘tick-tick-tick’ is the sound of a pandemic time-bomb of tick-borne disease, fueled by a warming climate. | Plus, the Trump Administration considered as the world’s greatest climate threat (next to its partner in climate-crime, the fossil-fuel industrial complex.) | Subscribe at changingclimatetimes.substack.com. Follow on Twitter at @TimesClimate.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changingclimatetimes.substack.com