Okay, We're Awake Now — Let's Take This Back

I marched yesterday. Well, I strolled in the sunshine. But it was with a couple of dozen other people in my community, including some men, several young children and a few four-legged allies. Many of us wore pink (including my favourite little mammal, Lita); some of us understood the whole Pussy Rally thing and wore our pussy ears (can you see mine?), but it wasn't the focus and with the kids present, we didn't make a thing of it. 

We decided that as Canadians, we have to not only work for our own reforms here (better conditions for many First Nations communities, electoral reform so that we join other democracies who have chosen proportional representation, which is much more fair than our first-past-the-post system), but also be vigilant that President T****'s nastiness doesn't 
seep across the border. 

The people I was chatting with along our "route" (ahem, it's a very small community) concurred that the most sickening and despicable moment of that man's campaign was the day he mocked a reporter who has a physical handicap. My hubby figures it was an orchestrated move to test the waters ... to let voters know how brutish his presidency would be and to see whether he could get away with it. Well, he got away with it. Very sadly, Americans at that rally did not turn their backs to him. Now wouldn't that have sent him a message, eh?

Senator Bernie Sanders sent out a message of solidarity on Friday:

"Today is going to be a tough day for millions of Americans including myself. Our response has got to be not to throw up our hands in despair, not to give up, but in fact to fight back as effectively and as vigorously as we can. Our job is to keep our eyes on the prize, and the prize is that we will continue fighting for a government that represents all of us and not just the 1%. We're going to go forward in the fight for economic, social, environmental and racial justice. That's who we are. That's what we're going to do. We are not giving up."

I'll admit that at first, all I saw was "Our response has got to be not to throw up." Because that has been the response of many stomachs around the world these last two months, but especially on Friday. 

According to The New York Times and other outlets, one of the first things that President T**** did was purge the White House website of all mentions of climate change — except one: "Mr. Trump’s vow to eliminate the Obama administration’s climate change policies, which previously had a prominent and detailed web page on whitehouse.gov."

We are in the fight of our lives, as living beings and as a species among millions of others, and this man has decided that the only thing he, I mean, Americans care about is money. His particular form of mental illness won't allow him to change his mind (although for some reason, flip flops are allowed), so now that we're awake and we know this is a living nightmare, we have to take back the fight to safeguard the future, for all the children, of all species.

A Big Step in the Right Direction: China and the US Agree to Do the Right Thing on Climate Change

Several years before I started hearing about climate change (and way before I morphed into a climate change activist), I made a childhood dream come true by travelling around the world. I took a leave of absence and my plan was to be gone for a year, but China's capitalist economic development had other plans for me.

My date of departure was carefully chosen. I left my home in British Columbia, Canada on the gorgeous September morning that I would normally have been heading back to school as a teacher.  The first stop on my trip was more random. The airline I booked with was about to start flying to Beijing. It seemed as good a first stop as any. I was on their inaugural flight. 

I hadn't thought it through very well. At my very first destination, I found myself completely illiterate and quite helpless. I quickly learned the character (or hanzi) for women's washroom, I can tell you. And I only found out later how blessed I was to spend my week there in sunshine. The Gobi desert didn't want me taking its sand home, and the streets were still filled with buses and bicycles, not cars.

Anyway, I had lots of adventures in China (and a few misadventures), but what I really want to share with you is what I witnessed there: the rapid rise of Chinese capitalism. And it was not a pretty sight. I met two doctors, married with one child, who were making the equivalent of $30 per month between them. They made me an absolutely delicious (and delightful) dinner, and when I suggested that they could open a restaurant, their food was so good, they admitted that they'd wanted to do that, but didn't know who to bribe in order to get the permits.

I wrote in my journal, "The Chinese are adopting all the very worst aspects of capitalism so fast that it's annoying." They just didn't seem to get that I was not going to buy their souvenirs on my way UP the Great Wall, no matter how much they accosted me. 

Not only that, but the Chinese economy was heating up so fast that with my Lonely Planet Guide for China only a year or two old, I spent three months' worth of my savings on only two weeks in China! That's how much the prices had soared. 

All that to say that it makes complete sense to me that China would want to make a commitment to fight fossil fuel greenhouse gas pollution. Over at ClimateProgress, Kiley Kroh explains:

"Late Tuesday night [11 November 2014], the U.S. and China announced an historic agreement to combat climate change, a major step forward from the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters. Not only does the agreement hold the two nations to taking additional steps to bring down the carbon emissions that drive climate change, but China just pledged to deploy a tremendous amount of clean energy."

Of course, it's not enough. Not by a long shot. Neither country is talking zero (carbon emissions) or 100% (renewable energy), but Obama is finally doing what he should have done in 2009 for the Copenhagen climate talks. And China ... well, much of China can barely breathe, so they couldn't hold out much longer either. 

Congrats to both President Obama and President Xi Jinping for taking this step in the right direction. Now, if they could just drag Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott and Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper along, kicking and screaming, we'd really get somewhere.

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.

Have We Waited Too Long? Is It Too Late?

Was it just last week that I suggested we could "make it" if we took the bold step of throwing our military resources (funds and (hu)manpower) at the climate change emergency? After yesterday, I'm starting to feel a panic.

You see, yesterday was the day of the Fall Fair in my little community. It's the biggest event of the year. I love convening the Young People's Agriculture section (we had to create a new category this year for the four giant pumpkins that kids entered into the Any Other Variety division against garlic and canteloupe). People see other community members they haven't seen all year. It's a happy time. For most.

One woman was sent off to the hospital by ambulance, likely for dehydration. I felt strange all day, hot and lightheaded -- but the high was only 22ºC or so. Then a local farmer bent my ear for a while, telling me of biosecurity issues on our island (a fungus being carelessly spread from farm to farm) and being "scared shitless" of what's on the way -- or here already. "We're in a little bubble here," he said. "We have no idea what's coming." 

As someone who understands the climate change emergency and sees what's happening around the world, I was nevertheless shocked to hear it come from someone else, especially someone local. (We really do live in a blessed little bubble here.)

So imagine my angst when I came home to an impassioned email from a friend who recently moved to a farm a couple of hours away. She wrote that she's afraid to sell or share any of her produce or farm products this year. That's because there are practically no insects or animals anywhere on her property -- not even a worm in her compost -- and she's fearing the worst. (Fukushima fallout? The worst of climate change?)

There's someone up her way, a biologist and diver, who just spent 9 days surveying 200 kilometres of coastline and in that time saw only one live seagull, one crow, no insects, minimal showings of only 4 other species, and no trace of anything else.

My husband and I have been noticing the scarcity of seagulls (we never appreciate what we've got till it's gone) for quite a while, at least several years before Fukushima. We used to see huge flocks of them around here. His elderly mother in England, during her last years, lamented the loss of birds and their birdsong (Silent Spring, anyone?). Peter often decries (and cries about) the lack of butterflies these days. His childhood was filled with butterflies. 

One of the most invisible and most insidious effects of a more variable and unpredictable climate is that predator / prey relationships are being thrown into chaos. If a prey insect hatches early because the seasons have shifted but the predator bird hasn't returned from its migration, that's a problem. If a predator shows up early, but the prey is late, that's a problem. 

It's a North American (and perhaps EuroAmerican) habit to think in only black and white terms, forgetting the greys and all the other colours of the rainbow. What I'm getting at is that there's probably no one origin of this situation. It's probably not just habitat destruction. Not just Fukushima radiation. Not just climate change. Not just karma. But because we don't think in systems, we want one enemy, one reason, one proven cause. 

And while waiting for that one enemy, reason or cause (that we can what? shake our fist at? throw military might at?), it seems they've all been ganging up on us. I'm not going to say it's too late, but holy shit, we'd better wake up and get our act together! 

My friend wrote that if there's hope, we need to be determined and heroic. "Can we take [this biologist's] lead and do our own research? Official sources are letting us down. Understand this onslaught is sudden and inevitably headed [our way]. How quickly? What are people seeing this season that was not noticeable last? How quickly can we think, work and cooperate?"

Even U.S. President Obama weighed in recently, at the University of California Irvine commencement on 14 June 2014:

So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, accumulated and measured and reviewed over decades, has put that question to rest. The question is whether we have the will to act before it's too late. For if we fail to protect the world we leave not just to my children, but to your children and your children’s children, we will fail one of our primary reasons for being on this world in the first place. And that is to leave the world a little bit better for the next generation.

Someone on FB said this morning, "It needs courage to face the mess we are in. The fight has only just started and will be painful. But optimism is a moral duty, without which the fight cannot be won." Courage and compassion, folks. Courage and compassion. Leave the dishes and the TV shows and video games. Let's get to work!

(Thanks to Mike at Tau Zero for the photo of the very pissed off seagull.)

Is "Hope" Making a Comeback?

We are all connected. Each baby born carries a miracle inside. A unique purpose and that miracle is promised to one person and one person alone. We are voyagers set on a course towards destiny, to find the one person our miracle is meant for. But be warned: as we seek out the light, darkness gathers and the eternal contest between good and evil is not fought with great armies... but one life at a time. (from the movie Winter's Tale)

The one friend I have whom I can talk to about the bleakness of our climate-changed future is feeling so low, she told me yesterday, that she's in the bell jar. So she's feeling pretty fragile.

But I've realized that the tiny glimmer of hope that's been peeking into the dark tunnel ahead, well, maybe if we adjust our eyes, we can use that glimmer to light our path.

There's the news that the IPCC's scenario RCP ("Really Cool Plan"?) 2.6 (especially when combined with some excellent suggestions from Climate Action Network International's new position statement, so RCP2.6+) presents the possibility of keeping global average temperature increases within a survivable range. (The oft touted 2ºC limit would be catastrophic and deadly.)

There's also evidence that more and more people are "getting" it. At this weekend's convention of Canada's Green Party, it seemed the strongest, loudest and longest applause came when leader Elizabeth May spoke about the urgent need to deal with climate change.

Different types of people are entering the fray. "Masters of the Universe" (today's version of the captains of industry of yesteryear) are meeting to explain that climate change is Risky Business.

The entertainment industry is starting to take climate change seriously (if in funny ways; Jon Stewart and John Oliver, anyone?)

American President Obama is steppin' it up on climate change, in a dance with China that, if they don't step on each other's toes, could lead to major movement toward decreasing emissions. Okay, so they still don't get the "zero carbon" part of the dance ("This week, the United States and China took important steps to advance their cooperation to combat global climate change and work towards the common goal of low carbon economic growth."), but at least they're twirling on the dance floor together. (See Key Achievements of U.S.-China Climate Change Cooperation Under the Strategic and Economic Dialogue.) (Seriously, can't these leaders see that keeping economic growth as their main goal is, um, see Risky Business above.) 

Parents in the US are starting to demand scientific teaching of climate science in schools. (What a concept! Apparently one that Wyoming cannot grasp.) Check out the Climate Science Students' Bill of Rights. 

And the Climate Psychologist (Margaret Klein) has developed a mobilization campaign, to get people motivated by joining a movement (think WWII). Read the full strategy document here.

Plus, the deniers are just getting sillier and sillier! To wit:

There is no global warming. There is climate change. This melting is caused by the underground volcano's..We are starting a mini ice age due to the suns inactivity..This is all a money thing for the bigwigs..Pollution is poison, we are killing our planet. This is not made by us. This is a nature process..We cant stop it. We can stop Fukushima. sharon b, ky,usa   18/07/2014 06:55

So folks, maybe, just maybe, it's starting to happen. Can we create a crescendo of public outcry that convinces negotiators at the December 2014 UN climate conference in Lima, Peru to adopt the RCP2.6+ for the text of the all-important agreement that will be negotiated in Paris in 2015?

Let's start here and now:    * * * **  ** * ***  ** * ** *** *** ** *
                                      * * * * *     * *      * * **** **
                                 * * RCP2.6+  * ** * * !!!
                                 RCP2.6+  ** *** * ** **** ** * ***
                            RCP2.6+                                *** * **     *** **     * * *** **
                  RCP2.6+                                                 
RCP2.6+

I'll tell you something that should chill your blood. No matter how far we tip the scales our way, no matter how many of them we turn dark, nothin' seems to break their capacity for hope. They pass it back and forth like the flu at a preschool fair. We're losing, Lucifer. One bright star at a time, we're losing. (from the movie Winter's Tale)

Which means we just might be winning!

"Our Enemies Teach Us What We Must Do"

"Our friends show us what we can do; 
our enemies teach us what we must do."

~ Goethe

I have a great example of that quote in action to share with you this week. But first, I'd like to show you something that a famous 20th century orator said -- something that is as relevant to environmental crises and the climate change emergency as it was to the social and economic ills he was addressing in 1960s United States of America.

There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light.... Or, when a person is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed.... Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.... Massive civil disobedience is a strategy for social change which is at least as forceful as an ambulance with its sirens on full.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

A massively funny act of civil disobedience took place this week near Washington, DC at the Homeland Security Congress. The Yes Men pulled off one of their stunts again. You can read about the Operation Second Thanks "prank" here, read the speech of "Benedict Waterman" from the "Department of Energy" here, and read "Bana Slowhorse's" speech here.

I can tell you it was civil disobedience by how many loop-the-loops my stomach did just reading about their antics! I think I'd rather be arrested than have to get up the nerve to do what they did. But these are our ambulance drivers. These are people willing to race through red lights. Taking the truth about the global climate change emergency to people and organizations who would not normally listen, except when sirens are blaring and lights are flashing. 

Back to Goethe. The attendees -- security and defense contractors, lobbyists and officials who might be considered "the other side" if not exactly the enemy (we'll save that term for fossil fuelers and bankers) -- were extremely receptive to the mythical American Renewable Clean-Energy Network that Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum presented. They have, therefore, taught us "what we must do." They showed us that they're ready to move. They just need to be nudged and encouraged.

Monsieur Obama certainly isn't encouraging these people to get into renewable energy. But he could be. So folks, if it's true that AmeriCAN, then let's send as much encouragement as we can -- to Obama, to US entrepreneurs, to the US public. That's "what we must do."

Thank you to all the participants in this wonderful project. I wonder if you know this: that you've shown us what we can do. 

We're Getting Close to a Breakthrough in Public Understanding of Climate Change, But World Leaders Are Still Dense

The IPCC AR5 WGII SPM is out. Isn't that exciting? Wait, what?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report Working Group II Summary for Policymakers is out. It's the one that looked at impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and despite the shenanigans that only people who read the technical (scientific) report before the policymakers' report will see, it's making waves where IPCC reports don't normally make waves ... at my school, for example, and at my favourite sushi restaurant.

My school principal told me the other day that students should be learning how to grow food because the UN said so (or something like that). As the teacher who designed, fundraised for and installed (with my students and their families) the school garden -- I'm someone who has known for years that students should be learning how to grow food. Alas, my colleagues, for the most part, don't see food growing as a curricular pursuit, so it's not as effective a program as I'd hoped.

It was interesting to hear my boss and some folks at the restaurant talk about the latest instalment of the IPCC's fifth report. Suddenly it's serious! Suddenly it's about food security and water sources! And it's about bloody time! 

I can tell that it's finally getting into the general public's awareness by how much the loony tune deniers are out in full force, telling bigger whoppers than ever. A natural health newsletter that purports to have millions of subscribers responded to the Working Group II report with headlines like "Plant use of CO2 utterly ignored by IPCC" and "The UN goal is to enslave humanity under a system of dictatorial control." Seriously! The author of this "editorial" has "a background in science and software technology" so that makes him a total expert on climate change and the workings of the United Nations, right?

Anyway, the more frightened the deniers get about "losing" (which I don't understand, because we're all losing), the more ridiculous their claims become. But that's simply a sign that public awareness about climate change is growing.

In the meantime, President Obama's Administration in the United States is "taking public comment about possibly updating standards for existing landfills." Oh yeah, that's gonna solve America's pesky wee climate change emergency! You go, Barry. 

So once again, we have voices telling us on the one hand that climate change is threatening our food and water ... and on the other hand, we see world leaders doing diddly squat about it.

I'm sorry, folks. This is disheartening work. I'm signing off now.

Inspiration Versus Cynicism (Which One's Winning?)

Abandoned car in Toronto's flooding, July 2013

The last few weeks have been downright Biblical, haven't they? Killer wildfires. Persistent droughts. Flooding that took two major Canadian cities by surprise. The deadly wreck of an oil-transporting train in a small town in Quebec with a blast so big, it could be seen from space. Ireland is dealing with another potato crop failure after Europe's terrible winter. And, last but definitely not least given their importance, the pollinators (bees and butterflies) are missing from a friend's native flower garden.

Train explosion,
Lac Mégantic, Quebec

If a movie started like this, what the heck would the climax look like?

We're heading into it, folks. The climate change shit has begun to hit the fan. In local ways and global ways. In big ways and small ways. In frightening ways and imperceptible ways. Either way, it no longer feels far away. 

While I've been feeling fearful for the children and their future for many years (check out my early blog posts), I'm now starting to get a bit viscerally scared for myself and my family and community — a community that still doesn't understand the chaos that climate change will inflict on our food security. 

(For the same price, we could purchase a 200-acre farm or a 1.5 acre oceanfront property with chocolate lilies growing on it. Guess which one we're fundraising for? Next, we'll have a choice between buying that 200-acre farm or building a seniors home. Guess which one has captured the imagination of the mostly oldsters living in my community? For heaven's sake, they've already HAD their future! We truly are a culture that eats its children and grandchildren, to paraphrase Tom Brown, Jr.)

Anyway, all of this just to share some thoughts with you about inspiration versus cynicism. 

To start, I've been wondering how to stay "up" enough to not give up my work on behalf of the children. This video by John Marshall Roberts on the science of inspiration gives a clue or two:

Note the very last thing he shares: "Cynicism is undigested pain." So there's a clue, eh? Feel the pain, "digest" it, understand it, let it, um, pass through you. Let the pain come out the other end (to take the metaphor to its natural conclusion) not as cynicism but as resolve. 

How's this for inspiring? Not.

Then I read that fracking has dramatically increased the number of "manmade" earthquakes in North America. And then I read in the Guardian that climate scientist/hero James Hansen and colleagues have projected runaway global warming if we don't decarbonize. 

(By the way, for a good explanation of why Obama ≠ (does not equal) hope and optimism, check out The Obama Carbonized Climate Plan. His new "action" plan (ha!) encourages innovative new fossil fuel exploration and extraction ... old-fashioned devastation is not good enough for him. "Yes we can" lead the world to oblivion seems to be Obama's motto these days.)

It's like a seesaw, isn't it? Up then down, up then down. 

Then I saw something that really perked me up, because it suggests something that people CAN DO. (People often ask me, "What can I do?"* as though they really have no ideas of their own.) David Suzuki and Faisal Moola, writing in the Toronto Star following the fantastical rainfall and flooding of July 8th, suggested a strategy that can play out at several levels, from private homeowners to towns and cities and all institutions in between.

"So, knowing there will be dark, costly clouds on the horizon, how can we get ahead of the storm? One of the best strategies for dealing with severe weather events is to steal a page from Mother Nature’s playbook: bring nature home to the city through green, living infrastructure."

Yeah! That really resonated for me. Retrofitting yards and neighbourhoods and school playgrounds and city infrastructure will give us something to do to keep us from getting cynical while the climate change shit continues to hit the fan. But at least we'll be busy buffering ourselves from the worst of the increased natural disasters.

Suzuki and Moola explain that modern urban areas are almost entirely covered with impermeable concrete and asphalt. So when big storms and flooding surges hit, these cities (all built near water) are inundated (in more ways than one). 

"Nature doesn’t play this way. Natural ecosystems — like forests, fields, marshes and wetlands — are built to absorb rainfall and slow the flow of water as it passes through vegetation and soils and into waterways. Thus, incorporating natural systems into the built urban environment can effectively mitigate the intensity of storm surges. Interventions that bring together natural and built environments can range from large networks of interconnected green spaces to small-scale engineered systems, like green roofs, permeable pavement and green walls."

Indeed, one of Nature's most important gifts (or ecosystem services) is flood and erosion control. 

And lest you think this green retrofitting is pie-in-the-sky dreaming, check out Franke James's visual essay, Paradise Unpaved.

So, which is winning, inspiration or cynicism? It's rather like the weather in San Francisco. Wait 10 minutes and I'll have a different answer for you. 

* or some variation:
What can I do?
What can I do?
What can I do?
What can I do?
Usually this question, in any form, means "I'm not really interested in doing anything." Perhaps apathy is the greatest form of cynicism.

Getting Tired of the Rhetoric

Last night, I was already in bed when I heard Barack Obama's voice. It was a nice voice. Calm and soothing. It sounded confident. Very Americanly. Lovely music was playing in the background. Obviously my husband was watching an ad or a Youtube movie about the U.S. president. 

I wasn't really listening — until I heard this: 

"... and lead global efforts to fight it. This is a serious challenge. But it's one uniquely suited to America's strengths."

Aaaarrrrgh. You know, we could possibly maybe perhaps conceivably get this solved if Americans stopped thinking (or being told) that climate change is a challenge that Americans can solve. That sort of rhetoric feeds straight into the small-minded, insular view of the world that has held up action on climate change in the United States for decades. 

This is NOT an American problem. Every human being, indeed every living thing on this planet (except perhaps those creatures who live around hot vents at the bottom of very deep oceans) is going to be severely impacted. 

The American problem is that Americans think it's their God-given right to be the ones who decide when, where and how our catastrophic plight will be addressed. 

Sure, Obama's focus groups have been talking with my wonderful stepson — our cannibalistic, er, capitalist economic system is so ingrained that it seems climate change solutions have to be presented through economic eyes and seen as good for jobs and the economy (and each family's financial well-being) to be accepted by the American public.

But it wasn't "money in every pot" that got Americans interested in the space race way back when. It was finding out that they were losing the space race to the Russians!

If Obama really wanted to safeguard the future for his children (and ours), he'd be saying:

My fellow Americans, the rest of the world* has left us behind! They are fighting the good fight against climate change without us. They are leaving us in our own (drought-stricken) dust(bowls). Ladies and gentlemen, we are losing the race to save the world! Let me repeat. We are losing. We have become global losers, ladies and gentlemen. Sweden is beating us, for heaven's sake! Who even knows where Sweden is??? Come on, people, let's hustle and get to zero carbon before they do!

Sorry, I got carried away there. But you get my drift? Americans are not leaders in the global climate change fight. Saying they are going to lead global efforts does not make it so. Beating every other country to a zero-carbon economy ... now that would be global leadership!

*******

The video in question is currently on the homepage of the White House website, but I'm sure it won't stay there long. (Republicans and other deniers have already been shouting down Obama's plan — even before the announcement.) Unfortunately, I can't embed the Youtube version here because some sickos have been posting dreadful comments there. 


* Except for that laggard north of the border, but Canadians are working to get rid of him and his tar sands.

We are Aborting Our Children's Future

Each week, I read many different things that I'd like to tell you about on Sundays when I write this blog, but of course I can't share them all. This morning, there is one story that is still resonating for me.

Kids in the United States are suing their federal government and several state governments for lack of action on climate change. You can read the story, The Young and the Restless: Kids Sue Government over Climate Change at The Grist.

The young Alec Loorz (who was about 12 when he founded Kids vs. Global Warming), is leading this initiative, probably with an unbelievable amount of disbelief at how so many adults have done so little, er, so much nothing. These are young people who understand what's happening. We can't begin to fully grasp their sense of frustration.

Our Children's Trust (a magnificent play on words) is supporting the initiative. Their byline is: "Protecting Earth's Climate for Future Generations." Sounds like good people. Their campaign has three aspects:

LEGAL ACTION: Coordinating an international mobilization of scientists, attorneys, and youth for legal action on the climate crisis.

COMMUNICATIONS: Creating ground-breaking documentaries examining the geographic, economic and societal impacts of climate change on our youth and their communities.

ADVOCACY: Giving a voice to youth.

I hope the federal court in the USA gives these youth their "day in court." (See more info on the case, including fascinating expert declarations, here.)

We're at a point in the climate change emergency where the only thing we can do is to keep on doing everything we can do. Climate activists are starting to realize that we've lost this fight — the ultimate battle for life on Earth; that the fight was too big and the enemies of life on Earth too many in number and too strong in influence. But each one of us can keep fighting because to not fight is not an option. I used to say "Hope is not an action verb; action is our only hope" but now I think it would be more honest to say "Fighting is our only salvation."

But all that is a long-winded way to share with you two comments from the original Grist article on this court case:

1. "So the Environmental Groups have resorted to using children to get their message across? There is just all kinds of things wrong with that." This comment (that's all they wrote; talk about not "getting it") reminds me of the time my husband suggested that an environmental group focus on children's environmental health. (Children, as a vulnerable sub-population, are like bellwethers ... canaries in the mineshaft.) His suggestion was shot down because it would be "using children." So we're allowed to injure children and ruin their future with our pollution, but we're not allowed to focus on their health and wellbeing. (This commenter missed the part in the article about young people being the ones "using children to get their message across.")

2. Another commenter said that "Conservative Republicans and their corporate multi-national masters are ABORTING the future of our nation's children." Now, I don't want to get into American politics today (after all, their Democratic president has done NOTHING to address the climate change emergency, a point the kids are pointing out!), but the terminology is correct.

I used to say we were foreclosing on our children's future, making their future a thing of the past, committing progenycide, but "aborting their future" is exactly what we're doing: halting, stopping, ending, axing it; calling it off; cutting it short; discontinuing, terminating, arresting, cancelling, scrubbing it ... pulling the plug on their future.

It breaks my heart to think that so many people care so little about the children, their own children, all the children. What kind of civilization have we become?

One Month Until This Year's Climate Change Circus Begins!

From Bali in 2007 (when we still thought we had a chance to get it right) to Poznan (where nothing whatsoever seemed to happen), then from Copenhagen in 2009 (where Obama and his henchmen, including the prime minister of my country, threw every climate change activist in the world into a depression of some duration) to Cancun in 2010 (where the very courageous Pablo Solón representing Bolivia was the lone voice for a rapid and scientifically rationale response to the emergency), the UN's climate change negotiations have become more and more circus-like.

As in circus: |ˈsərkəs| A traveling company of acrobats, trained animals, and clowns that gives performances, typically in a large tent, in a series of different places.

The Durban Climate Change Conference starts one month from tomorrow, and will run from November 29 to December 9, 2011. Durban is a (mostly) lovely seaside city in South Africa; too bad it, too, will be turned into a circus. (The name "Copenhagen" is now associated with farce and failure.)

We've had a Bali Road Map, a Copenhagen Accord (see? nothing happened in Poznan, Poland), a set of Cancun Agreements — and still, absolutely NO national or international declaration that we've reached "dangerous interference with the climate system" (a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change trick: if we don't declare it, we don't have to do anything about it). NO declaration that we're in a global climate change emergency. NO emergency response. NO result from any of these conferences that has actually led to any nation, anywhere, moving toward a zero-carbon economy. (Even the disappearing Maldive Islands are only heading for carbon neutrality, not zero carbon.)

Where's our global imagination? Why aren't we excited about working together to envision the zero-carbon economy? (After all, it'll be safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful than what we've got now!) Why do our leaders and negotiators feel such disdain for our (and their own) children and grandchildren? For our whole species? For life itself? Why do they act the role of such ecologically illiterate, callous clowns when they get together at these climate change conferences?

May this year's negotiators keep the world's most vulnerable, the children of all species, and future generations in their hearts and minds as they do their negotiating. Who else could they possibly think they're negotiating for???

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Hey, great cartoon, eh? I commissioned it from Stephanie McMillan, award-winning editorial cartoonist. If you want to use it, let me know and I'll send you a high quality version. Visit her Code Green website to see more ("Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."), or to commission your own cartoon.

8 Days to Copenhagen - This is Starting to Sound Like a Christmas Song

Come on, sing along!

With only 8 days til Copenhagen, my true love said to me ...

... Obama said he's going

... what's up with our prime minister?

... Al Gore has a new book out

... the Carteret Islands are sinking

... coral reefs are doomed

... oceans are acidifying

... deniers and skeptics are still bellowing

... we're still pumping out greenhouse gases

... and the temperature continues to rise at the North Pole!

38 Days - When 1000 is Greater than 300,000

American president Barack Obama has declared that the H1N1 flu is a national emergency. Because more than 1000 people have died.

So — and help me here — swine flu is an emergency when 1000 die, but global climate disruption is not an emergency when 300,000 are dying each year? I don't get it.

According to the article I read, Obama's officials said the declaration "was a pre-emptive move designed to make decisions easier when they need to be made." Sheesh, sounds a lot like what the Kyoto Protocol was supposed to be all about — and what the Copenhagen climate talks (that Obama will probably not attend, even though he's going to be in Scandinavia to pick up his Nobel peace prize) are supposed to lead to.

Apparently "many millions" of Americans have had swine flu so far, with 20,000 hospitalizations, according to an estimate from the Centers for Disease Control. All but about 1000 of these people have recovered, no problem. But millions of people are losing their lives and their livelihoods, their food security and their water sources, their homes and their entire homelands due to global climate disruption. But that's not an emergency?

The world needs to get a grip (rather than la grippe — flu, in French) and declare that global climate disruption is a planetary emergency. Without that declaration, nations will not work together as a world-wide human family to safeguard the future.

Mr. Obama has just proven how vital an emergency declaration is for implementing an action plan.

163 Days - Note to President Obama: Please Leave Your Coal in the Ground!

We had strong suspicions when we saw support ads for Obama's presidential candidacy from the American coal industry, but now we have confirmation that it's true.

Barack Obama is a coal man. Damn.

In an interview reported in The Grist yesterday (25 June 2009), Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and therefore Obama's chief environmental advisor, said, "[C]learly coal is a part of our energy mix now and it's likely to be so in the future....

President Obama, please, with all due respect, coal is a carbon sink that should be left in the ground. Once you burn it, you've destroyed both the past and the future.

Plus hey, it ain't going anywhere! Maybe after you have developed "clean coal technology" (a better oxymoron than even "military intelligence"?), then you could start eyeing it as part of your "energy mix" (which, I take it, is not something the White House disc jockey creates to get Americans up dancing).

From where I sit, it looks like you're willing to trade the future of your beautiful children for votes from the coal industry.

For the sake of children everywhere, of all species, please leave your coal where it belongs!

176 Days - A Simple Action: Ask World Leaders to Actually Attend the Talks!

Here is a Greenpeace International petition that is definitely worth the ten seconds it will take to sign:

Astoundingly, few of the world's leaders have committed to even show up at the UN Climate Summit in December, where decisions about the future of our planet will be made. Can the fate of the world really be delegated? Ask them to take personal responsibility to see to it that the right deal is sealed.

ASK WORLD LEADERS TO PERSONALLY ATTEND THE CLIMATE CONFERENCE

• President Barack Obama, United States of America
• President Hu Jintao, People's Republic of China
• President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil
• President Nicolas Sarkozy, France
• Prime Minister Gordon Brown, United Kingdom
• Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany

[And let's throw Primer Minister Stephen Harper, Canada into that list - tiny population, HUGE carbon footprint, a LOT of bad carbon karma!]

Dear leaders,

I call upon you, not as representatives of your countries, but as leaders of the world, to personally attend the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December.

Decisions which will be made at this meeting will impact the lives of everyone alive today, and determine the shape of humanity's future.

This is the world's best chance to avoid runaway climate change.

You owe it to the world to attend, to set aside your national interests, to safeguard our future, and to do what you were elected to do: lead.

My request is simple: promise now to personally attend.

SIGN HERE