The Saddest of Déjà Vus, All Over Again

Remember Libya? Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. But the war drums didn't stop beating in the Middle East.

And now the American president, Barack Obama, has unleashed the dogs of war -- on Syria. 

I am feeling so, so sad for Syria and its people. It's Iraq and Libya all over again (and reminding me of a song lyric: "Thank you for our freedom, could you leave now please?") 

But I'm also feeling outraged that Obama would so blatantly and unabashedly announce this new "war" a week before the huge climate change events in New York City. It's like a giant Eff U to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called the September 23 Climate Summit, and anyone else who gives a damn about the climate crisis.

Obama never had any intention of doing anything about climate change. He was always a coal man, allowed to become president by his Big Money backers. 

So true to form, after stalling for a couple of years (during which some of us naively thought he was showing restraint for the right reasons), he picks now to announce a new war. 

If there was a shred of respect left in me for this man, it has shrivelled up in my province's drought and blown across the dried up agricultural lands of Syria.

Despite the Climate Change Emergency, There's Some Good News to Report

Okay, the baseline is still that we're in a planetary climate change emergency, and if governments don't get their act together at the upcoming UN climate conference (COP20) in Lima, Peru this December, we're hooped. 

(Easy peasy, lemon squeezy solution: Write to every elected official you can think of to demand that governments put an end to fossil fuel subsidies, start the decline in carbon emissions next year, and opt for RCP2.6+ as the basis for their next global, legally binding agreement at Paris (COP21) in December 2015.)

We're presenting the Climate EMERGENCY Countdown in our own community this coming week. It's not all bad news (after all, if governments put an end to fossil fuel subsidies, start the decline in carbon emissions next year, and opt for RCP2.6+ as the basis for their next global, legally binding agreement at Paris (COP21) in December 2015, then there's some hope!), but at the request and behest of some friends who don't have the stomach for any of the bad news, we're going to make a point of presenting some good news on the climate front. Here's a bit of it, collected from various sources:

1. A handful of chemistry companies are mimicking photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide emissions into products such as chemicals, fibres and jet fuel. (Source)

2. The UK is transforming old coal mines into solar farms. (Source)

3. The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States is proposing a Clean Power Plan. (Source)

4. Both UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, both understand the urgency. Perhaps they'll be able to (what's a nice word for) knock some sense into world leaders.

5. Climate Action Network International's June 2014 position statement, Long Term Global Goals for 2050, is the best ever. 

(Hey, I didn't say it was a long good-news list!)

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.

31 Days - An Open Letter to Local Leaders of Faith Communities

I thought you might like to know that you and your flock are being officially invited to join in the greatest initiative that world religions have ever taken on.

Agence France-Presse reported earlier this week that the leaders from nine of the world's major faith groups met at Windsor Castle in the UK on Tuesday, November 3 to discuss how religion can get behind the fight against climate change. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the event under the banner "Faith Communities for a Living Planet."

This ecumenical meeting was co-staged by the United Nations and Prince Philip's Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC). Representatives from Baha’ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Taoism were to present programs that "could motivate the largest civil society movement the world has ever seen," said U.N. Assistant Secretary General Olav Kjorven. "Eighty-five percent of humanity follow a religion, a figure that shows the power of faith to move billions," he pointed out.

Speaking of numbers, according to ARC, faith-based groups "own nearly 8 percent of habitable land on Earth, operate dozens of media groups and more than half the world’s schools, and control 7 percent of financial investments worth trillions." That's a lot of clout!

"We expect to send a strong signal from religion to governments that we are extremely committed. It’s about religions mobilizing their followers to act against climate change," Kjorven said in the interview.
Peter Newell is a professor at the University of East Anglia in England who has tracked climate activism for over 10 years. He believes that religion "the traction" to create a truly global movement. "It would be a huge mobilizing force if people started to frame the issue of climate change in religious terms," he has noted.
What we really need is a combined faith voice calling for a global emergency response and calling on climate scientists and the world's scientific organizations to join in out of a sense of morality - or at least a moral duty.

55 Days - What Shall We Be Thankful For?

It's Thanksgiving Day in Canada. I remember becoming mysteriously homesick in October when I was an exchange student in Belgium many years ago. Then I received a Thanksgiving letter from my mother and realized what I'd been subconsciously missing.

So what can we be thankful for in Canada in 2009?

I know what we're NOT thankful for. Our not-very-prime minister, who still thinks the economy and re-election are more important than giving his children a chance at a future. The tar sands in Alberta, our national disgrace. (For heaven's sake — or Earth's sake — leave the bitumen in the ground as a carbon sink!) The rather pervasive Canadian attitude that we would rather die comfortable than live miserable (an admission from someone I met recently). That attitude surely is held only by people who can't conceive of how wonderful a renewable energy-powered world will be.

But we are thankful for people — climate heroes — like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Al Gore, climate scientists James Hansen and John Holdren, Glenn MacIntosh of ecoSanity.org in Toronto (who keeps us sane and inspired; thanks, Glenn!), and all the children of the world, of all species, who remind us why we're doing the climate work that we do.

We are grateful for our fresh water, our food security, our fresh corn and ripe apples, our peace and our prosperity, our luck and our timing. We are so very blessed — most of us, at least — in this country, and it's a shame that we aren't more compassionate towards those less fortunate around the world.

If you don't celebrate a thanksgiving holiday in your country or culture, give it a try yourself, with your family. Acknowledge your blessings, and work to change what vexes you and the Earth. For a place to start, visit GreenHeart Education's Saying Grace Together and Graces and Prayers for the Earth.

Happy Thanksgiving!

148 Days - We Have Our New Churchill!

I so wanted Al Gore to become our climate change Churchill. I will always resent the American (and other) climate change deniers and progenycists ("progenycide" is the killing of future generations, a term I coined recently) who turned his understanding of the climate change emergency, his passion for sharing the truth far and wide, and his mission to safeguard the future into a political football. (I'm usually a pretty positive person, but those people are despicable. Sadly, they're not the ones who are suffering the consequences of climate chaos first.)

I am, however, thrilled to see that a softspoken statesman is taking on the role of Churchill when it comes to the climate change emergency. His name is Ban Ki-moon, and he is the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Please watch this video (ignore the dork at the other end of the microphone — what a stupid question he poses!) to see Mr. Ban's quiet passion, skillful diplomacy, and strong commitment to this issue. The man is a hero — still unsung, but singing his own song — of the children of the world, and indeed the whole planet.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - Climate Hero!
on the Moral Imperative of the G8 Nations

If you would like to write a note of thanks or congratulations to Mr. Ban Ki-moon, visit the Emergency Action page at Climate Change Emergency Medical Response. Scroll down for his contact information, including his email address.