Tuesday September 30, 2014 – 11am
Posted Sep 30, 2014 02:53:56 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
11:00- Humans hardwired to ignore climate change
George Marshall, Director of Projects at Climate Outreach Information Network and Author of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
The primary argument is that the innate psychological and social mechanisms on which we depend to alert us to emerging threats are failing to engage with this issue, and that our need to convert complex issues into simplified stories is distracting and misleading us. The book also makes the following arguments that could be excerpted or developed further into stand-alone op-eds, articles or presentations. 1. POLICY- International climate policy has consistently been damaged by mistakes in reasoning. It uncritically adopted models for action from inappropriate issues, such as ozone depletion and acid rain. Policy makers then focused on greenhouse gas emissions and ignored their root causes in fossil fuel extraction. 2. THE SOUND OF SILENCE – There is a socially created ‘silence’ around climate change. It even extends to the victims of extreme weather events who often become less prepared to talk about climate change or even believe in it. 3. MORTALITY- An inability to accept or talk about climate change, or an angry defensive response to it, have strong similarities to the ways we respond to our own mortality, and may be driven by the same instincts. 4. THE ANXIETY OF SCIENTISTS – There is little recognition that climate scientists and other experts are struggling to cope with their own anxiety and despair. 5. DO WE REALLY CARE ABOUT OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE? – Research shows that people with children care less and talk much less about climate change than people without children. 6. ENVIRONMENTALISTS STEP DOWN, CONSERVATIVES STAND UP – Climate change should never have been regarded as an environmental issue and only became one because it was shaped in the image of the environmentalists who championed it. The greatest priority now is to find new ways of talking about it. 7. LEARNING FROM EVANGELICALS – Scientific facts, on their own, will not persuade people to take action. Climate change must also be understood as a social fact – a conviction that people acquire, hold and then share.
11:30- Ebola crisis in Africa
Geoffrey York, Globe and Mail African Correspondent
In his many years of medical work in Liberia, Congo and elsewhere, Dr. Omeonga has suffered bouts of malaria and has seen almost everything in tropical medicine. But nothing, he says, feels like Ebola. He was feverish, vomiting, diarrheal and unable to eat. “You can’t even get off the bed. When you get Ebola, you only think you’re going to die.” Helping him survive was ZMapp, the experimental Canadian-developed Ebola treatment. He was one of just seven Ebola victims worldwide who received ZMapp before supplies ran out. He believes that the three doses of ZMapp he received intravenously in Monrovia last month were among the keys to his recovery. The other crucial support came from his four children, three of whom live in Canada. ZMapp, a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies, was developed at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. Of the seven people with Ebola who received the treatment, two died and five lived. Because clinical trials have not been conducted, it’s impossible to say scientifically whether ZMapp saved his life, but Dr. Omeonga is convinced it accelerated his recovery. The 53-year-old surgeon feels even more certain that ZMapp was crucial in saving a Liberian health worker, Kyndy Kobbah, who was in a coma in critical condition when she received it.
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