THREAD: Understanding pivot. Growing pressure from world population life-style will reach a point where it is damaging the capacity of Earth systems to an extent where life support will be challenged. It is simply a question of at what stage governments act. 1/X

Pivot is the same at each point 1-4. I use the STOP acronym. a) Stop, or halt, all increase of extraction/drawdown. b) Think, plan measures that will restore Earth system capacity and keep delivering basic services. c) Organise, re-work old regulations and agencies and then 2/x
Proceed to act. Notice that pivots are different depending on where measures are set in. It is MUCH harder to change when carrying capacity is challenged to an extent where people are dying. However, the pivot idea is a useful decision framework as you will see in 3/x
Pivot planning will be informed by three different criteria:
-which societal services and Earth systems are involved?
-how well is the societal system performing now?
-what drawdown stage has been reached? For example: 4/x
Water: FAO identify five levels of water extraction stress. Measures introduced in the light green countries will be far different than those in high stress areas. That is one dimension for pivot but not sufficient. The other level is societal performance. 5/x
800 million people today lack access to clean water at all, and 2 billion have to use water that has at least some fecal contamination. So we are talking two sevenths of the world's population that need a pivot in service level. That brings us to four basic pivot strategies. 6/x
The diagram presents four strategies depending on the situation:
-Stewardship of current societal and Earth systems
- Increase societal performance whilst stewarding systems
- regenerate Earth system whilst ensuring society system continues to perform
- Full pivot 7/x
Four pivot strategies require democratic and economic pivots too. Main two: gradually increasing fees on extraction until market responds including a citizen pay-back (environmental dividend) and raising and redistributing tax surcharges (Economic stabilisation, #UBI #MMT) 8/x
Several urgent and drastic pivots must happen. I hope we can continue to push for them during 2021 @PeterHeadCBE @ProfSteveKeen @JKSteinberger @jasonhickel @GretaThunberg @jembendell @RogerHallamCS21 @BespokePanic @burning2learn @bbaue @aheadahead1 https://t.co/NbDNS5IRI9

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JUST ONE PERSON—UK 🇬🇧 scientists think one immunocompromised person who cleared virus slowly & only partially wiped out an infection, leaving behind genetically-hardier viruses that rebound & learn how to survive better. That’s likely how #B117 started. 🧵 https://t.co/bMMjM8Hiuz


2) The leading hypothesis is that the new variant evolved within just one person, chronically infected with the virus for so long it was able to evolve into a new, more infectious form.

same thing happened in Boston in another immunocompromised person that was sick for 155 days.

3) What happened in Boston with one 45 year old man who was highly infectious for 155 days straight before he died... is exactly what scientists think happened in Kent, England that gave rise to #B117.


4) Doctors were shocked to find virus has evolved many different forms inside of this one immunocompromised man. 20 new mutations in one virus, akin to the #B117. This is possibly how #B1351 in South Africa 🇿🇦 and #P1 in Brazil 🇧🇷 also evolved.


5) “On its own, the appearance of a new variant in genomic databases doesn’t tell us much. “That’s just one genome amongst thousands every week. It wouldn’t necessarily stick out,” says Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at Oxford.

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