Sunday, December 8, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec.08 2024

 If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

- Matthew 15:14


Saturday, December 7, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec.07 2024

 Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

- Jawaharial Nehru


Friday, December 6, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec.06 2024

 In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that any one else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force.

- Mahatma Gandhi


Thursday, December 5, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec 05. 2024

 Never ask of money spent

Where the spender thinks it went

Nobody was ever meant

To remember or invent

What he did with every cent.

- Robert Frost


Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec. 04 2024

 Every Father expects his boy to do the things he wouldn`t do when he was young.

- Kin Hubbard


Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec. 03 2024

 Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

- Mark Twain






What’s Gone is Gone: The Utter Futility of COPs in Saving Our Planet

When it comes to climate change, the debate is about how humanity survives on Earth. But when it comes to biodiversity, the stakes are even starker: whether humanity can survive at all.

 

That was the dire reality at play during the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the World Wildlife Conservation Treaty in Cali, Colombia. The slogan? “Peace with Nature.” The reality? Open warfare.

 

The natural world is collapsing at a breathtaking pace, and humanity responds with little more than a shrug.

One million species are at risk of extinction. The web of life is fraying, and the consequences are staggering.

 

Over half the global GDP is directly endangered by nature’s decline, warns the World Economic Forum. The collapse of insect populations threatens crop production valued at $235 to $577 billion annually.

 

Food systems—employing 35% of the global workforce—are teetering. Worse, climate change and environmental destruction could force up to 700 million people into migration by mid-century.

The solution? Immediate action to curb humanity’s impact. The result? Empty promises.

Take the Montreal COP two years ago. World leaders proudly announced a “historic” agreement to protect 30% of Earth’s land and oceans by 2030.

 

They pledged to slash ecologically destructive subsidies and pump $700 billion annually into biodiversity preservation. Headlines hailed it as a triumph of multilateral environmental diplomacy.

Two years later, the results are laughable: an increase of just 0.6% in protected land (now at 17.6%) and 0.2% in protected oceans (8.4%). As for the promised billions? A mirage.

 

Most funds were supposed to flow from the resource-hungry Global North to the Global South, where biodiversity is richest—and most imperiled. That money? Missing in action.

So, what does biodiversity loss mean for us? Everything.

 

Our natural ecosystems provide food, clean water, fiber for clothing, raw materials for medicine, and protection from floods and storms. These "ecosystem services" are worth an estimated $16 to $64 trillion annually, according to the IUCN. Yet we are eroding these foundations of life with astonishing indifference.

COVID-19 should have been a wake-up call, highlighting the link between ecosystem destruction and pandemics. Instead, the world’s leaders continue their endless rounds of conferences and negotiations—accomplishing nothing.

Consider the goals of the Montreal COP: by 2030, protect 30% of all ecosystems, curb plastic pollution, reduce agricultural pollution, and ensure fair sharing of profits from genetic resources. It sounds noble. But the truth?

 

It’s déjà vu. Back in 2009, the world’s governments set the “Aichi Targets” for biodiversity. By the 2020 deadline, not a single one was fully met.

The brutal reality is this: while climate change is an enormous challenge, it’s one with technical solutions. Renewable energy, seawalls, carbon capture—we can adapt.

 

But biodiversity loss? It’s irreversible. Ecosystems are too complex for a quick technological fix. When species disappear, they’re gone forever.

What’s gone is gone. And conferences like COP? They’re little more than expensive talking shops, where politicians congratulate themselves for meaningless progress while the planet burns.

 

If we’re serious about saving the natural world—and ourselves—it’s time to stop the charade.


 

 

Monday, December 2, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec. 02 2024

 Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.

- A. Sachs



The Deadly Divide


Since 1900, life expectancy in Switzerland has nearly doubled. Material wealth, a more balanced diet, advancements in hygiene and medicine, and improved education have significantly extended lifespans for both genders. 

However, the gap in life expectancy between men and women has narrowed. In the 1980s, it was as much as seven years; today, it stands at around four. 

In 2022, Swiss women lived an average of 85.4 years, while men reached 81.6. Globally, the trend mirrors this: women lived an average of 74.4 years, men 69.1, with a gender gap of 5.3 years.


Stress-Free in the Monastery


Interestingly, one group has shown remarkable longevity: monks, particularly those with lower educational attainment. 

Studies consistently show that people with less education live shorter lives compared to their more educated counterparts. 

A sociological theory attributes this to unequal access to resources such as knowledge, money, influence, prestige, and beneficial networks, which makes it harder for those of lower socioeconomic status to manage health risks and maintain their well-being.

In monasteries, however, these disparities are eradicated. Resources are distributed equally: monks eat the same meals, live in identical conditions, have equal access to medical care, and enjoy the same autonomy over their time. 

The monastery life eliminates the external socioeconomic factors that, in the outside world, create dramatic life expectancy gaps between different income and education levels.


A Global Funeral Pyre


But outside the monastery’s walls, inequality runs rampant, nowhere more so than in America—a country that self-destructively worships at the altar of corporate greed. 

Americans are grieving for their mothers, sisters, and daughters who die from a lack of basic health care. They grieve with Black friends and neighbors who endure overpolicing, environmental racism, and glaring health care disparities.

This isn’t just a slow decline; it’s a full-blown Reign of Terror. The death toll mounts in real-time. 

Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security lead to untreated illnesses, malnutrition, starvation, and the crimes of desperation. 

A potential bird flu pandemic would likely be met with ignorance by health departments led by conspiracy theorists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Extreme weather events will claim lives as FEMA stumbles under inept leadership, NOAA is dismantled, and NASA’s budget is gutted—unless the funds are funneled to Elon Musk for vanity space projects.


A System Built to Kill


America’s government doesn’t serve its people; it serves corporations. Look no further than the FDA, which deliberately ignores epidemics of obesity, chronic diseases, and opioid addiction, refusing to issue meaningful advice to change dangerous habits. 

Your nation incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other on Earth. Your crime rates are astronomical.

Public education is an abysmal failure, trapping the disadvantaged in perpetual servitude to the elite while pushing others into crime and incarceration. 

The wealthy live in fear, barricaded in gated communities, while the rest scramble on their hamster wheels in a dystopia you dare to call “freedom.”

America has engineered a nightmare from which escape seems impossible. Yet, blinded by arrogance, you fail to see the dystopia you’ve created. 

History will judge you—not kindly—for building a machine that grinds its own people to dust, in service of profits, ego, and an illusory freedom.


Sincerely,

Adaptation-Guide

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec.01 2024

Perfection is attained by slow degrees;  it requires the hand of time.

- Voltaire


Friday, November 29, 2024

Famous Last Words...Nov. 2024

 History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

- Edward Gibbon


Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Nov.27 2024

 A man´s feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

- George Santayana



A Requiem for a Fallen Dream

They built a pyre of truth and trust,
And let it crumble into dust.
A beacon once, now lost to flame,
The land of freedom knows no name.

The voices raised to warn and plead,
Were drowned by greed, by hate, by creed.
A tyrant crowned, with lies embraced,
The pillars cracked, the dream erased.

The dead lie silent, cold and still,
Their lives the toll of power’s will.
A million gone to callous hands,
Their cries absorbed by barren lands.

The earth weeps under poisoned skies,
As oceans rise and forests die.
No savior comes, no justice reigns,
The ash is all that now remains.

The mothers mourn, the children stray,
Their futures stolen day by day.
A nation broken, heartstrings torn,
What hope survives when truth’s forlorn?

Yet in the dark, faint whispers call,
“Stand firm, rebuild, though kingdoms fall.”
For though the past is writ in stone,
The seeds of change are often sown.

But mourning lingers, deep and vast,
A shadow cast by failures past.
Democracy, a ghostly shade,
Its epitaph in tears is laid.

"Here lies the dream, both bright and brief,
Slain by deceit, by pride, by grief.
Let history tell, let ages learn,
How fragile fires of freedom burn."

Sincerely,
Adaptation-Guide 
Happy Thanks...

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, Dec.08 2024

  If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. - Matthew 15:14 Merkel-Song: "Oje, Angela!" | extra 3 | NDR Why, ...