#climate-summit

An article by Jane C. Hu about the story behind the new-ish extinction or climate action symbol. Excerpt:  

As the Amazon burns, North American birds disappear, and scientists anticipate that by 2050, extreme, once-a-century storms and flooding will be more likely to happen once a year, concern about climate change has spurred a flurry of demonstrations across the world. Marching down the streets from Los Angeles to Berlin, people hold signs with messages like “There is no planet B,” each adorned with a symbol: two triangles inside a circle.

That circle represents the Earth, and the two triangles represent an hourglass, which “serves as a warning that time is rapidly running out for many species,” according to the extinction symbol’s website. The symbol was created in 2011 by a London street artist who goes by Goldfrog ESP and seems reluctant to give media interviews. But in a conversation with Ecohustler, he says he was inspired by the history of symbols. “I was making protest art about the declines of various individual species for awhile, but it felt quite inconsequential in relation to the scale of the problem,” he told Ecohustler. “I was thinking about how the environmental movement didn’t really have a well known [symbol] of its own.”

“I am not a climate change denier,” confesses novelist Jonathan Safran Foer early in his new nonfiction book, “but it is undeniable that I behave like one.” Chances are, you do too, at least by the standards that Foer puts forth in the just-released We Are the Weather, a manifesto for meat reductionism. Given the outsize role that animal agriculture plays in global greenhouse gas emissions—estimates range between 14.5 percent and 51 percent of emissions, with the latter figure considering meat production’s role in deforestation—refraining from consuming animal products, argues Foer, is one of the most significant actions individuals can take to help prevent global warming, along with driving less, flying less, and having fewer children. “We must either let some eating habits go or let the planet go,” he writes. “It is that straightforward, that fraught.”