Wearing Our Sweaters While Melting the Ice in Our Hearts

Two things came across my desk this week. (Now there's a pre-email expression, when notices arrived by post!) They're such opposite takes on what needs to happen that I'd like to juxtapose them here. Mind you, not to be unkind — with the sun peeking through the trees today, I'd like to believe that we're all doing our best. (It's just that our best really sucks right now and the future is rapidly becoming a thing of the past because of it.) I hope the juxtaposition will be instructional.

1. Did you know that February 17 is National Sweater Day here in Canada? Yup, it's the one day of the year we're supposed to turn down our thermostats — at home, work and school — and put on a sweater to stay warm. The announcement says

This single action can help make a difference to the future of the planet. If every Canadian turned down the thermostat by two degrees in winter, 2.2 megatonnes of carbon dioxide could be saved per year — the equivalent of taking about 350,000 cars off the road. That's an important step toward reducing our carbon footprint.

Two degrees? Is that all? Considering that the average Canadian household is about 22 degrees Celsius (71-72 degrees F) all winter, I think we can stand turning down our heat by more than 2 degrees, no? Especially in light of the fact that a lot of Canadians keep their houses cooler than that during the summer! How can we look our children in the eyes and say we've done all we could when we keep our houses cooler in the summer than in the winter? It's cuckoo! So yes, put on a sweater, but keep it on all blinkin' winter!

2. On the other hand, I also heard from Greenland Eskimo elder and shaman, Angaangaq, who shared this:

My Elders say it is too late to stop the melting of the Big Ice.

Everywhere I go, people ask: So what can we do? My Elders say: Change!

They say that the easiest ice to be melted is the ice on the ground. The hardest ice to be melted is the one in the heart of Man. Only by melting the ice in the heart of Man does Man have a chance to change and begin using his knowledge wisely.

We have been doing the same old stuff over and over again. And we know it does not work. We still have wars, the Big Ice is melting every day, pollution is getting worse, and we have never been so many people before. Now we need to change. Now we need to melt the ice in our hearts and to begin using our knowledge wisely.

See the difference? One strategy lasts a day, one suggests transformative change.

Are we willing to suffer the cold for the sake of our children? Or aren't we? (Mostly, we aren't.) The heat will come soon enough.

p.s. Please start praying for a miracle. Perhaps the miracle of compassion.

One Month to Copenhagen - All This for Nought?

Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy

I've been hearing for a few weeks now that "the powers that be" have already decided the Copenhagen climate talks were going to fail. The optimist in me decided not to listen. I should have listened.

In The Grist's Copenhagen reality check: Governments concede new climate treaty unlikely until 2010, Geoffrey Lean of London's Daily Telegraph reported the other day that it's now out in the open: "Key government leaders and U.N. officials are finally, publicly admitting what they have long privately believed: there is no chance of concluding a new climate treaty in Copenhagen next month."

So that's it, then. We're hooped. Because if it ain't gonna happen next month, it ain't gonna happen next year. Perverse, insane, criminal procrastination isn't going to end just because it's "a new year."

It's already probably too late, so waiting even longer is completely cidal: suicidal, biocidal, genocidal, and progenycidal.

I think some people are celebrating because this might mean we can create a better framework for a treaty ... one that doesn't depend on one hundred percent consensus and doesn't give one country (or bloc of countries) the right or the ability to wreck it for the rest of us. But what does Pollyanna-ish moi do with this information? What does someone who has been counting down to the world's most momentous meeting for almost 200 days do with this news of a death sentence?

I personally want to smash some heads in. Oops, that wasn't very nice. But really, who are the heartless freaking bastards who are allowing the future of life on this stunningly beautiful, miraculous planet to slip through our fingers?

Our only hope, it seems, is truly to melt the ice in the heart of man, as shared by Greenland Eskimo elder and shaman, Angaangaq.

But how? Despite all the rhetoric over the years to think globally and act locally, we haven't (it's obvious) done a very good job of thinking globally. We don't think in terms of the human species. We don't see ourselves as planetary citizens. We are all still so nationally oriented, so attached to our national boundaries and borders — and economies.

When that shit that is already hitting the global warming fan for the world's poorest and most climate-change-vulnerable starts spewing all over EuroAmericans, then we'll see some cross-boundary action. But it will be too late. When the global warming fan starts spewing all over EuroAmericans sitting pretty within their nice, neat boundaries and borders, it will be too late for us to reach across those borders and boundaries to make a difference.

Our culture is so disconnected from the Earth that feeds us that we have no idea how unimportant the economy is. We think it's important, we vote like it's important, we play out our lives as though it's important — but try eating the economy, folks, when the Arctic summer sea ice melts and the droughts and deserts spread and we start getting hit with crop failures. Try eating that.

My deepest sympathies, condolences and thanks to all the people in Denmark (and the UK, as well) who have been working so hard to make this climate summit a success. The prognosis is grim, but perhaps you can still pull off a miracle cure.

What they're now hoping for in Copenhagen is a "framing document," the outcome of which must be "comprehensive, balanced, ambitious, effective and fair” and must include "ambitious commitments and actions to reduce emissions." Significant new "financial and technical help should be "made available to support developing country actions."

Hmmm. Not one word of the climate emergency! No wonder there's so much dithering and diddling while the Earth burns. No one has yet heeded the alarm raised by James Hansen, John Holdren and Ban Ki-moon! Shame on every other climate scientist, world leader and two-bit local politician who pretends it's not in their mandate. They're all playing dice with our grand/children's lives.

106 Days - Two Years for Life on Earth

Two Years for Life on Earth was the working name that my husband and I gave our campaign to save the world, based on this quote from Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in November 2007: "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

Had a yummy and thought-provoking brunch amongst like-minded and like-hearted people a while back. Thought I'd share with you this eclectic list of thoughts on and solutions to the climate change emergency.

• Wayne: "I don't have time to save the world" is a common lament. How do we get people to see that there's really no time (left) for anything BUT saving the world? (How about "30 fewer minutes a day of watching TV to save the world?")

  Peter: "The answer is spiritual. The power that's needed to change things is spiritual." Others felt that the word "spiritual" puts many people off (funny what we get used to, eh?). Amanda uses "heart" to signify this realm.

  The Greenland shaman, Angaangaq believes "We must melt the ice in the heart of man." JJ: "Will it take global warming to melt the ice in the heart of man?" (Not aimed directly at males, of course!)

  Wayne: "We need a unified purpose with foreseeable, integrated solutions" (cultural, technological/engineering, economic, psychosocial, "spiritual")

  Actions - scale / incremental / small steps (JJ: do we have time for small steps, which should have been happening 20 years ago?)

  Amanda: short-term changes versus long-term changes.

  The Pope is calling for personal ecological conversion.

  Krishnamurti said:
  You have to change.
  You have to change completely.
  And you have to change now.

  JJ & Amanda: Venn diagram (Science + Spirit) became a triple Venn diagram: the overlapping circles are Heart/Spirit, Thought/Understanding, and Action.

  • 1. HEART/SPIRIT
    • denial/fear --> courage, sacrifice out of love, creativity, hope springing from action

    2. THOUGHT/UNDERSTANDING

    • learn the carbon cycle, learn about energy and combustion, learn about global warming and climate change
    • become ecologically literate
    • search for engineering "systems" that work

    3. ACTION - (see tomorrow's post)

  In the centre of our triple Venn diagram is TRANSFORMATION.