And With That, Lima, We're Through

* Click here for an update. A happyish update.

What's the word for what happened in Lima at the COP20 climate change conference over the last two weeks? Besides ZERO, I mean. Nothing, nada, nichts. Nothing was accomplished. Absolutely sweet $#@! all. But what's the word to describe hundreds of countries and thousands of people getting together to solve the climate crisis and ACCOMPLISHING NOTHING? 

Despicable? Obscene? Callous? Negligent? Criminal? Suicidal? Ecocidal? Progenycidal, for sure. 

When I was out yesterday, I heard people talking about the French Revolution. The guillotine. Aristocratic heads rolling. People getting sick and tired of the oligarchy having their way with the planet. Why are the rich not afraid of an uprising? 

Not one gawddamn blessed thing that is actually going to safeguard the future was agreed to. Not one! I'm sure they would disagree, with their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and their Multilateral Assessments and their Adaptation Knowledge Initiative and their Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and their Nazca Climate Action Portal (no, not NASCAR). But not a single one of those, well, whatever-they-are, gets us even heading in the direction of zero carbon, which is where we need to be by mid-century (with our emissions declining by the end of 2015 ... not sort of waiting until 2020 to even get started sort of thinking about slowing our emissions). I didn't hear any talk at all of adopting the IPCC's best-case scenario, RCP2.6! [Update: There is no mention of it in the draft agreement, although the spirit of it seems to have been included.]

Here's a short history of global action talk on climate change:

• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC)
• Kyoto Protocol
• Bali Roadmap
• Poznan, um, nothing?
• Copenhagen Accord
• Cancun Agreements
• Durban Outcomes (and the Durban Platform for Advanced Action)
• Doha Climate Gateway
• Warsaw Outcomes (Come on, Poland! "Outcomes" again -- can't you be more creative?) (p.s. Turns out they also offered the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts)
• Lima Call for Climate Action

I've had respect until today for the UNFCCC and its difficult task and the daunting process of bringing nearly 200 nations to consensus. But each year, it's more of the same old nothing. New names (ahem, Poland) for the same old empty promises. Now I'm convinced that this whole thing has been a charade, a farce played out to appease us -- no doubt so that we won't rise up!

You can read the pile of bollocks here: http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lima/lima-call-for-climate-action-puts-world-on-track-to-paris-2015/

So, I'm through. I'm finished. Over and out. If the fossil fuel corporations and the fossil-fooled governments of the world so badly want to extinguish most life on the planet, who am I to get in their way and try to ram a stick in their wheels? I mean, those poor rich bastards don't have all the money yet, so how can people like me even think of asking them to stop this deadly global game before they're through? The Burning Age truly is over, but it seems world leaders need to be burned before they'll admit it and embrace the Golden Age of Perpetual Energy.

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to focus on teaching children how to grow their own food, build their own soil, collect their own rainwater, and generate their own energy. I'm not saying that's going to be easy -- there are still lots of parents and teachers in my culture who don't recognize the threat that climate disruption poses to their children's food security. But at least I'll be doing something, and not just "talking" here with you every Sunday morning, achieving nothing (though I've enjoyed "meeting" some of you along the way).

This blog started out as a compendium of compassionate climate actions in countdown to the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. That COP15 finished off a lot of climate change activists. High hopes were dashed to smithereens. 

Many of us re-emerged a few months later and we've been slightly reinvigorated over the last few years (no thanks to the COPs but to sharing in a global civil society movement, and more recently, thanks to CAN International and to the IPCC's Really Cool Plan 2.6, which gave us some small remaining hope in hell of surviving this). 

But I, for one, have lost much of the resilience I came into this fight with. I don't want to hang around waiting for the utter disillusionment and anguish that the Paris COP21 seems likely to produce. My puny efforts won't make any difference anyway. (I can imagine how all the small island states must feel.) 

So picture me in the garden with the children at my school! Sowing, tending, harvesting in our six little beds. Building bat boxes and pruning raspberry canes. Playing Photosynthesis Relay and sitting quietly writing garden poetry or creating garden art. Baking pizzas we've made from scratch in the outdoor cob oven we built ourselves. 

Below is my parting gift for you. If the uprising happens (and not just in my pizza dough), I'll be there in a flash! Till then, take care.

p.s. Here's my favourite thing I've posted: 0 Days to Copenhagen - The Power of One (+ 3,741,952 Others) 

Rise Up

by The Parachute Club

Rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up 

Rise up, rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up

The spirit's time has come

Woman's time has come

Spirit's time ....

We want lovin' we want laughter again
We want heartbeat
We want madness to end, we want dancin'
We want to run in the streets
We want freedom to live in this peace
We want power, we want to make it okay
Want to be singin' at the end of the day
Children to breathe a new life
We want freedom to love who we please

(Rise up, rise up) Oh, rise and show your power
(Rise up, rise up) Everybody is dancing to the sun
(Rise up, rise up) It's time for celebration
(Rise up, rise up) The spirit's time has come

Talkin' 'bout the right time to be workin' for peace
Wantin' all the tensions in the world to ease
We want to love, run wild in the streets
We want to be free, we want to be free

Talkin' about a new way
Talkin' about changing our names
Talkin' about building the land of our dreams
This tightrope's got to learn how to bend
We're makin' new plans
We're gonna start it again

Rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up 

Rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up, rise up

Spirit's time has come 

Spirit's time has come

(Rise up rise up) Oh, rise and show your power
(Rise up rise up) Ah, dance into the sun
(Rise up rise up) It's time for celebration
(Rise up rise up) The spirit's time has come

Woman's time has come

Spirit's time has come

Rise up

 (Rise up)
Everybody
Time for you and me 

You gotta be happy

Rise up 

Let's Ride This Wave of Rising Awareness All the Way to Paris

by Sandy Hinden

"We are in the midst of an awakening. At no time in history has Mother Earth needed her children to care more than at present. Ancient prophecies from around the world warn of dramatic global change. The Elders teach [that] if we return to harmony in our lives, Melting the Ice in our Hearts, we will survive." -- Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq

For years, we've known that governments weren't going to look after us by taking care of the climate crisis. We're living in a corporatocracy where governments are controlled by corporate interests, and it's not in the financial interest of big banks and fossil fuel companies to take care of the climate crisis. Which translates into the rich people still own us and control us.

I've naively believed that if we let people know what's going on in the world, they would wake up and give a damn. Not so. It's been a pretty comfortable ride for my generation ... the best ride in humanity's history perhaps ... and nobody wants to rock a boat that seems to be taking them on a scenic cruise. 

But as I reported here, the public is finally waking up. The spate of climate change reports (the IPCC's 5th Assessment Report, or AR5; the US National Climate Assessment) has people talking. To wake people up, it took big media coverage of big scientific organizations and big important people saying that this is an urgent crisis. 

That's okay. Any alarm clock will do. (I just wish it had rung earlier. It's not like these groups and politicians haven't known the urgency until now. It's just that they can't deny the urgency any longer, corporate interests be damned. Election campaign donations? Or votes? Perhaps votes are finally winning.)

But as my friend suggests whenever this topic comes up, "If you wake people up, you'd better have breakfast ready for them." It's been common wisdom for years that talking to people about climate change must also include talking to people about climate change solutions.

Hence, after a long discussion with two climate change activists last night, we came to the conclusion that we have to hop onto this wave of awareness and GET OUR BUTTS IN GEAR FOR PARIS 2015. After the complete (and probably completely scripted) debacle at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, a very scary decision was made by negotiators and world leaders at the Cancun talks in 2010 that there would be no agreement until 2015, and therefore no new measures implemented until 2020. 

We've had the Bali Roadmap, the Cancun Agreements, the Durban Outcomes, the Doha Climate Gateway, and the Warsaw Outcomes. And nothing has improved. Indeed, things are still getting worse. Emissions are rising, and impacts are deepening. 

But the public is now realizing that "urgent" means "now" --  not starting in 2020. In the IPCC's latest report, the only scenario (RCP2.6) that gives us a hope in hell says that greenhouse gas emissions have to plateau by next year (hello!) and be decreasing by 2020 (apparently not something we're willing or able to make happen overnight -- or we would have already). 

Christiana Figueres, head of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change, knows this and is calling on different groups to get their butts in gear (my term, not hers) "in the lead up to a new, universal climate change agreement in Paris." She said in a recent speech, for example, that faith groups "have an opportunity now to provide a moral compass for their congregations and for political, corporate, financial and local leaders."

So, folks, we've got our homework assignment. It's to make sure that world leaders at the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP 21 -- memorize that number) can't, won't and don't wiggle out of an effective, efficient and binding global agreement to safeguard the biosphere and the future of humanity and the rest of nature. We figure the script is written six months ahead of each conference. That gives us one year to make sure something excellent happens in Paris.

And hey, if pigs could surf, maybe we could even get an agreement in Lima, Peru at the COP 20. You know, come up with an urgent agreement to take urgent action on an urgent crisis. But who am I kidding?

Wait, what? Pigs can surf?

Co-opted, Manipulated and Had

Another series of convergences in my life this week, the second week of the 19th COP in Warsaw, coal capital of the world. 

Last Sunday afternoon, I went for a walk with a friend who wanted to talk over some work ideas. But before she brought up her latest plans, we talked for a while about a dilemma she's been experiencing. She's someone who likes to focus deeply rather than spread her attention and resources widely. Which environmental NGO, she was wondering, should she support? That led to a discussion about hope (schmope) versus optimism (a topic I'm getting sick of) versus just getting busy promoting a change in political will. (Which didn't help her decision making because both the ENGOs she knows and loves are focusing on changing political will these days. Alas.)

That led to a discussion about conspiracies, particularly the theory (my theory, but not mine alone) that many ENGOs have been co-opted by the corporate world — not blatantly or overtly, but by being kept busy adopting business models (rather than keeping or adopting a grassroots model) and kowtowing to their foundation funders, most of whom are fronts for big corporate interests. 

The greatest example here on the west coast of Canada is all the money and energy being thrown into keeping (more) oil tankers from plying our coastal waters, and therefore stopping construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline, and now the twinned Kinder Morgan pipeline. All the while that thousands of British Columbians are giving money (and getting money) to stop these potentials, rich Americans are actually already buying up rail lines and tank cars and are moving more and more tar sands oil by rail. I've actually had two or three environmentally concerned friends tell me they don't believe it. I guess they don't read Bloomberg or the Financial Post. 

Oh man, what the heck was I telling you about? (I just got sucked into the internet vortex, looking for those links!)

Oh yes, convergences. 

A couple of days later, another friend sent me an article called How to Win the Media War Against Grassroots Activists. If you choose to read it, prepare to finally believe that ignorance is bliss. 

Ronald Duchin, of the PR firm Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (MBD), once (or a dozen times) gave a talk entitled "Take an Activist Apart and What Do You Have? And How Do You Deal with Him/Her?" In it, Duchin referred to different subtypes of activists: "radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists." From the article:

Radical activists "want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives" and see multinational corporations as "inherently evil," explained Duchin. "These organizations do not trust the … federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry … I would categorize their principal aims … as social justice and political empowerment." 

The "idealist" is easier to deal with, according to Duchin's analysis. "Idealists … want a perfect world…. Because of their intrinsic altruism, however … [they] have a vulnerable point.... If they can be shown that their position is in opposition to an industry … and cannot be ethically justified, they [will] change their position."

So, all you idealistic activists, you've been had! But there's more:

The two easiest subtypes to join the corporate side of the fight are the "realists" and the "opportunists." By definition, an "opportunist" takes the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain, Duchin explained, and has skin in the game for "visibility, power [and] followers." 

The realist, by contrast, is more complex but the most important piece of the puzzle, says Duchin. "[Realists are able to] live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. The realists should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue."

So, all you pragmatic realists, you've been manipulated. 

Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to "deal with" these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, "cultivate" the idealists and "educate" them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry. 

"If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution," Duchin outlined in closing his speech.

We have all been had and manipulated. We've all been thinking that the corporate types, when they realized what climate chaos would do to their kids' future, would come around in time. But no. They are in a deadly game where the winner takes all, at all costs, then dies anyway, taking his children and most life on the planet with him.

Meanwhile, what of the environmental NGOs? Well, have a wander around The Wrong Kind of Green (forget it; looks like it's been hacked). It presents a fascinating look at how we've been manipulated, co-opted or, at best, simply kept "busy in the bushes," as a friend used to say about our movement.

A right-kind-of-green friend wrote to say that in an ENGO she's been involved with, "the people are so deep in denial and their own delusional idea of 'successful campaigns' that their posts are no longer worth reading. Same old nonsense. They refuse to accept where we are at. They refuse to accept/acknowledge science. We are so human-centric that I guess we believe that what we want is more powerful than nature herself."

This reminded me (convergences, remember?) of the film we watched earlier this week, The Island President. I hadn't realized that Mohamed Nasheed (of the Maldives) sold out at the Copenhagen climate talks. In the movie, you can pretty much pinpoint the moment when his ego takes over! It's an interesting point in the film (and if you're in love with this 350.orger man, you likely won't see it). 

He doesn't see himself slipping from "I must do something to save my people" into "I must do something to save these talks — because, look at all these important people who are meeting and talking with me." One of his key advisors (his environment minister, I think) notices the sell-out-in-the-making and calls him on it, but the president can't see it and pretty much asks him to be quiet.

In other words, it was almost like Duchin was there using his tactics to "deal with" this Maldivian idealist. In fact, that moment in climate change history would make an *excellent* case study of how we're all being co-opted, manipulated and had.

Ho Ho Hum, Another Climate Change Conference

Here we are, in the middle of the annual United Nations climate conference (known as the 19th Conference of the Parties or COP 19) being held in Warsaw ... and who gives a flying leap? As Canada's CBC News explains: 

"Expectations for this one are even lower than usual, after the disappointments and plodding progress of the last few conferences."

Even that is overstating it. There has been no "progress" at these conferences at all. Some activists never got over the crash-and-burn fiasco (and complete loss of hope for global action) at the Copenhagen COP in 2009. (Remember Hopenhagen? Remember why I started this blog?) But hey, nice logo, eh?

No, negotiators from almost 200 countries just sit in a big hall and talk, and then they sit and talk some more, and sit and talk and sit and talk. And in the end, they dramatically stay up all night so that they can agree to maybe sort of kinda perhaps someday possibly agree to agree on something one day off in the future, if the stars are in alignment and not a single rich person or corporation anywhere has to lose one single cent to stave off the climate change crisis.

Why, oh why, do they bother with this charade? They would all be better off rehearsing for a Christmas pantomime together instead. (I'd pay for tickets to see it!)

It does seem there's a moment of realness at each COP, however. This year's moment, as I'm sure you know by now, was an impassioned plea from the Philippines' delegate, Naderev (Yeb) Saño, following the devastation of Super Typhoon Haiya that impacted hundreds of thousands of people in his homeland. He is now on a hunger strike, which people around the world have joined in on, until the end of the COP.

But there they sit (and talk and sit and talk and mainly sit), while the following headlines swirl around them:

Greenhouse gas levels hit new record high [oh, but the Americans shipped some of theirs overseas, so it must all be a hoax or something] 

Time for climate change fix running out, IEA warns [yeah, that's the International Energy Agency — you know, the fossil fuellers — telling us that]

World temperatures go off the chart by 2047, study says [yup, that's in our children's lifetime] 

Climate change draft report predicts war, heat waves, starvation [duh! how long have we been warning about this?]

Leading climate change understanders have been trying to warn the world for years. This year, a leading voice is Mary Robinson, former Irish president and head of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice. Speaking directly to my country, she said, "Moving to a low-carbon economy would be very good for Canadians' futures, and for everyone's future. And as well as that, we don't have a choice. We're running out of time."

Ms Robinson is also reported to have said that "If you're serious about preventing the worst of climate change, you have to leave that bitumen, oil and gas in the ground." Hey, is there an echo in here?

But they'll all just sit and talk and sit and talk. But it's not like they're sitting on their thumbs (which I suppose is an expression that means "doing nothing"). No, they're all sitting on their crossed fingers, hoping like hell that what just happened to the Philippines won't happen to their country. 

At least, not before the next COP.


(Please know that although I can sound flippant at times, I see this international procrastinating as the greatest ever crime against humanity ... and it breaks my heart.)

Durban, Meet Copenhagen - You Might Have Some Lessons to Learn

Tomorrow begins COP 17, the next great climate change circus. It is shaping up to be the worst set of climate talks yet ... leaders of all the rich nations have already decided they're only going for the champagne.

So, knowing this is an exercise in surreal futility, I would like to offer up a Copenhagen redux of past Compassionate Climate Action posts for Durban.

1. What the heck are all the women there, at the talks, doing? Why aren't they fighting for the right of their children and grandchildren to have a climate-safe future?

2. I can no longer be nice about this. Seriously, it's getting harder and harder to be nice to idiots who refuse to even look at, let alone examine, this excruciatingly difficult issue. I don't care that it's excruciatingly difficult — and might cause some emotional pain. Our emotional pain is laughable in the face of the pain that future generations are going to face. To not even want to know about it? From The Gloves are Off: No More Ms. Nice Guy:

The sense of failure and progenycidal disaster coming out of the Copenhagen climate talks hangs over me like a black cloud of betrayal. It seems that our human world is so entrenched in borders and boundaries and sovereignty that the negotiators and leaders just could not view the Earth as one planet, its atmosphere as the same atmosphere for all nations. The only thing that has been nearly globalized is our addiction to economic growth through fossil fuel use.

3. Hey, where's John Lennon when you need him? Power to the People! Time for a revolution, folks. No, wait, we've got one happening already! If someone from Occupy Wall Street wants to call me up, I'll explain how moving to a safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful perpetual (= renewable minus biofuels; The Burning Age is Over) energy economy will help them attain their goals. With all the economic breakdown in the USA, still people have no sense of how bad things are going to become when the summer Arctic sea ice disappears, taking with it the "air conditioning" for our summer growing season. A couple of years of bad crops failures in the northern hemisphere and POWWEE! economic chaos. And we thought only developing nations, like those in Africa, would be impacted. Ha.

4. We still see no willingness to sacrifice one iota of comfort or economic "growth" from the developed nations of the world. And yet, as Reuters' Edwards Hadas says, "Even for the very rich, the sacrifices needed to reduce inequality would be mild." And right now, the greatest inequality humanity faces is through our decision that future generations of human children don't have the right to live in a stable climate. Ah, but governments can't do everything alone.

5. I still believe that compassion will be what saves us. I have yet, in two and a  half years of blogging, to hear from one person (denier, skeptic, ignorati, delayer or otherwise) who has an argument against compassion. I think they know that, in the end, compassion will encompass them and their loved ones, too.

p.s. Illustration used with permission.

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???

*******

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.

THE GLOVES ARE OFF — NO MORE MS. NICE GUY!

It has been harder than usual for me to feel festive this Christmas season.

First, I heard recently that a large group representing business, industry and commerce in the United States (I will not dignify them by giving them free publicity here) is suing some youth who staged a phoney press conference. Ya know, when the old farts who care only for money start attacking the young people who are desperately trying to safeguard their own future — that's when my gloves come off. My generation has no right whatsoever — NONE — to give the younger generations a hard time when we are 100% responsible for the mess their future (heck, our future!) is in.

Second, a local newspaper defamed my husband — by name — and then gave him only one sentence in which to show the weight of evidence that we are in a global climate change emergency. Peter spends 8 to 18 hours of every day reading and synthesizing the global warming / climate change research, so to be insulted for caring about future generations (heck, today's generations!) was hard to bear. Not to mention it was also a sign that our small community isn't the entirely intelligent, supportive and caring place we thought it was.

(Those in Canada will appreciate this farce: CBC's crank commentator Rex Murphy was one of the "experts" quoted to "prove" that my husband's stance is "extremist." I did not know that Murphy is a climatologist when he's not on radio and television. These climate change deniers are very busy people — busy memorizing all the latest denialist drivel it seems they have been asked to spout and spread at every opportunity. And the world continues to heat up. Don't believe it? Let's compare your so-called "facts" to what is actually happening in the Arctic.)

And third, the sense of failure and progenycidal disaster coming out of the Copenhagen climate talks hangs over me like a black cloud of betrayal. It seems that our human world is so entrenched in borders and boundaries and sovereignty that the negotiators and leaders just could not view the Earth as one planet, its atmosphere as the same atmosphere for all nations. The only thing that has been nearly globalized is our addiction to economic growth through fossil fuel use.

Reading this view of China's role in the final hours of the talks sealed that realization for me — and gave me a shudder. The government of China wants to develop — at all costs. Given what I've seen recently of the devastation in that once beautiful country, I'm not sure the Chinese people impacted by this not-sustainable development would choose it over living off the land, given the choice. (Photos by the very courageous photographer, Lu Guang.) Remember "economic globalization"? It seems we've created a monster that's come back to bite us in the butt.

UNPRECEDENTED AGREEMENT IN COPENHAGEN!

Yes, it's true. Despite the foolish United Nations rule that all nations party to the Framework Convention on Climate Change must agree on an agreement to safeguard the future, it turns out that only a handful of bully nations can create an agreement to condemn humanity and the rest of life on Earth to extinction.

And so we have it. A default agreement out of the Copenhagen climate talks. An agreement that our species is not worth saving. An agreement to foreclose on our children's future. An agreement to carry on committing progenycide. An agreement to exterminate life on the planet. An agreement to be our own executioners.

Something about transparency versus sovereignty got in the way at the final hour. Guess those folks have never heard of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Aren't we smart. Good luck eating your transparency and your sovereignty when the climate #!@$ hits the fan.

Time for a revolution, folks.

YO, COPENHAGEN! TIP FOR SUCCESS: PUT THE NEEDIEST FIRST

The talks in Copenhagen have been suspended because (a) they have this crazy ass rule of 100% "consensus" (which is actually unanimity; consensus is something completely different), and (b) usually it's the USA standing in the way of consensus but this time it's a little guy country who is refusing to budge. And good on them! (See below.)

Yet there need be and should be no impasse in Copenhagen. The negotiators should simply do the obvious and ethical thing: consider and discuss the needs and requests of the most climate-change vulnerable populations. Put the neediest first.

In fact, this is the clearly stated requirement under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Convention specifically requires that small island states be protected from adverse impacts of dangerous interference with the climate system, and specifically requires Annex 1 nations (the developed countries) to provide all manner of assistance (also specifically listed) for the protection of the small island states.

The 2001 Third IPCC Assessment (reinforced with additional evidence in the 2007 Fourth IPCC Assessment) said that small island states are exceptionally and extremely vulnerable to many inevitable adverse impacts of global warming, climate disruption and ocean acidification. The committed global temperature increases already constitute the grossest of crimes against humanity for small island states and the other most climate change vulnerable nations (whose populations number in the billions of our brethren).

*****

Tuvalu wants a legally binding agreement that might save their small island nation in the Pacific. Other small island states and poor African countries (indeed, close to 130 nations) are supporting Tuvalu's call for a "Copenhagen Protocol" — complementary to the Kyoto Protocol but, it seems, for those major developing countries not bound by the Kyoto Protocol (you know, the ones George W. Bush kept bitching about). Tuvalu wants a CO2 target of 350 ppm, and a global temperature increase target of 1.5ºC. (We're almost at 400 ppm now and with the warming already in the pipe, pretty close to 1.5 already, too.)

Folks, this is an easy one. Oh, so easy — if you negotiators have any heart and any regard for your children's future, that is.

Tuvalu is going to disappear — literally — if we don't do something urgent to halt greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Human decency, compassion and plain old common sense would dictate that we move to help the country that's in the most trouble, first. It's what we do in our communities, right? We help out those in trouble. We give, we make sacrifices, so that the situation of those worst off is somewhat alleviated.

What is happening to Tuvalu will, before too very long, happen to us. They're among the first to be impacted, but they're by no means going to be the last. It is only a matter of luck and timing. This is NOT a time for selfishness or greediness, obstinacy or pretending that the atmosphere respects national borders. It certainly is NOT a time to put our economies ahead of our humanity.

(Note to China and India: Dudes, relax. It's climate disruption that's going to "constrain your economies." Racing to achieve zero carbon emissions, making the transition to renewable energy and saving ourselves from climate chaos is going to fuel your economies, pardon the pun. You've got to get that through your heads!)

This is a crisis of heart and of imagination. I've said it before, and I'll say it again — only now, it's playing out in real life at the Copenhagen climate negotiations:

COMPASSION WILL BE WHAT SAVES US.

How to Follow the Climate Talks in Copenhagen

Here are some links to follow if you want to watch what's happening in Copenhagen at the COP 15 climate talks.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change homepage.

Here you'll find press conferences, live webcasts, schedules, news briefs and links to side events in Copenhagen.

Stakeholder Forum will produce a daily Outreach report.

Greenpeace is reporting from Copenhagen.

Third World Network is offering news updates and briefing papers on the talks.

For a busy take on what's happening in Copenhagen, visit the Grist.

In several countries, you can Adopt a Negotiator. But it's worth visiting their website no matter what country you live in.

I'll add more as I hear about them.

Also, we have three friends there who have promised to send us reports. Stay tuned.

0 Days to Copenhagen - The Power of One (+ 3,741,952 Others)

(Lovely photo by David Faintich)

Well, my friends, this is it. My last Compassionate Climate Action blog post. The Copenhagen climate talks begin tomorrow, and since this was a countdown blog, well, there's nothing left to count down to.

Writing about climate change and global warming every day for two hundred days has meant that I've had to read about this crisis and learn the science when I would rather have been doing crossword puzzles or going for walks or watering my tomato plants. It's not been an easy time for me ... I'm immensely sad to think that these talks will not lead to dramatic and compassionate climate change action.

However ...

*****

If you don't think you can make a difference, if you don't think you have power, if you think your voice is too small to be heard, then you've never been in a tent with a mosquito.

— African proverb

And so, I would like to leave you with this story (adapted from the book Synchronicity, by Joseph Jaworski), which has stuck with me since I first read it. My very best wishes to you all.

*****

"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," a sparrow asked a wild dove.

"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.

"In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story," the sparrow said.

"I sat on the branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk, when it began to snow — not heavily, not in a raging blizzard — no, just like a dream, without a wound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd snowflake dropped onto the branch — nothing more than nothing, as you say — the branch broke off."

Having said that, the sparrow flew away.

The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself, "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for humans to live with all species in harmony on this Earth."

5 Days to Copenhagen - Compassion Tune-Up: Hard Rain

Mere days now before the Copenhagen climate talks ... friends everywhere are asking if we're going. Nope, we're going to stay home and keep working to get the science out there. 

One neat thing that's going to happen at the talks is the release of “Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision with Nature” by Mark Edwards and Bob Dylan. It's a DVD based on Dylan's song and Edwards' photographic display. Below the video is a moving description of the DVD project, from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

In this video, the Mystic Revealers give Bob Dylan's prophetic classic a reggae beat. (See lyrics below.)

The film, released in partnership with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), combines a rare live recording of Bob Dylan performing “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” with the photographs from Hard Rain and an extended illustrated commentary, in a moving and unforgettable exploration of the state of our planet and its people at this critical time.

The global issues highlighted in Hard Rain are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that define the 21st century. While each problem is understood to some degree by decision-makers, they are typically addressed as separate issues. Hard Rain puts the pieces together and shows that the world has little chance to solve any one of them until we understand how they all connect by cause and effect.

The DVD is accompanied by a specially commissioned essay by Lloyd Timberlake. The “Urgency of Now” cuts through the muddled thinking and failed policies that have delayed a radically new worldwide approach to climate change, poverty, the wasteful use of resources, population expansion, habitat destruction and species loss. The essay title was inspired by a response to Hard Rain from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"If Hard Rain is a photographic elegy", said Mr. Brown, "it is also an impassioned cry for change. Forceful, dramatic and disturbing, it is driven by what Martin Luther King called 'the fierce urgency of now' - and I believe the call for a truly global response to climate change is an idea whose time has finally come."

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "The dark and evocative lyrics of ‘A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall’ echo the kind of impacts the world faces if climate change continues unchecked. But Bob Dylan had another song. One that reflects a strong and positive Copenhagen outcome that puts the world on a low-carbon path – ‘The Times They Are A-Changin'."

Lloyd Timberlake's essay focuses on a key dilemma facing the climate negotiators. "Right now", he writes, "we have two huge challenges to life on earth. One is living and consuming within planetary means. The other is helping billions of people toward safe, fulfilled and dignified lives, meaning that many people need to consume more, not less, to have a reasonable standard of living. These would seem to be contradictory goals. Yet we must manage both, and we cannot manage one without managing the other. Poor countries will not accept a climate change treaty that prevents them from developing."

[Note from me: In the same way that many developing countries leapt right over television and telephone technologies straight to internet kiosks and cellphones, those same developing countries must leapfrog over fossil fuel development and go straight to development with renewable energy technologies. They can even pass Go and collect $200, which is a throwback to the game of Monopoly but also a reminder to developed countries of our financial commitment through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to help developing nations make this leap to the Golden Era, the solar age. This can happen and must happen.]

"We have to give governments a constituency to reinvent the modern world so that it's compatible with nature and human nature," says Mark Edwards. "Political change comes only when people form a movement so large and inclusive that governments have no choice but to listen — and act. The last verse of Dylan's song begins 'What'll you do now?' It's a question that cannot be left hanging when the Copenhagen talks come to a close."

The exhibit is part of a UNEP display, open free to the public for the duration of the UN Climate Talks, which will feature a Climate Maze that people can come and "negotiate" their way through.

The walls of the maze are made from cloth banners stamped and signed by thousands of citizens around the world in support of the UN-led Seal the Deal! campaign, which asks world leaders to conclude a fair and effective climate agreement in Copenhagen. Complementing the Hard Rain commentary, the maze also contains climate change facts from UNEP in order to raise awareness about climate change.

Check out the project at http://www.hardrainproject.com.

Contact Mark Edwards at MarkEdwards AT hardrainproject.com. Contact Bob Dylan at, well, your guess is as good as mine.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Bob Dylan, 1963

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.