VIDEO: Coastal GasLink & Wet'suwet'en

My beloved (Dr. Peter Carter) has done a lot of research and discovered some frightening things about why our provincial and federal governments (here in Canada) are intransigent in their defense of fracking and support for new fossil fuel infrastructure (to the tune of billions of our tax dollars). 

This stands in stark contrast to their irrational criminalization of anyone standing in the way of pipelines — especially the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs and the Unist'ot'en land and water protectors. 

These people — politicians, corporate kleptocrats and, increasingly, the police and judiciary — are rigorously (and vigorously) collaborating to hasten the end of our species and the end of most living beings in the biosphere of Earth. (If you think I'm exaggerating, you're not keeping up with the research on the climate emergency and biodiversity loss.) 

HERE IS THE PLAN of the .01% FOR THE WORLD: These destroyers (the seekers of more, more, more — and their sycophants) have 19 more fossil fuel pipelines up their sleeve just for Canada, with 13 of them in British Columbia!

And are these pipelines being built to ship food and create "a community of love where all have enough to eat because you share what you have" (an idea planted in my head by a friend, Judith Rees-Thomas, and her book, Soul Talk)? NO! They are simply to make the uber-rich richer while they foreclose on the future — which doesn't both them because they subscribe to the puerile belief that the guy with the most money at the end wins.

Here is Peter's video, Coastal GasLink & Wet'suwet'en. I found it astonishing. It shows why, as Exinction Rebellion's Roger Hallam has put it, we need to keep up the mass disruption, get even braver about mass sacrifice for the common good (thousands of us getting arrested), and maintain respectfulness throughout it all.

https://youtu.be/QQvwOB8Lf6M

Dr. Peter Carter on COP25 in Madrid

This interview with Dr. Peter Carter of the Climate Emergency Institute is going viral! People appreciate his honest views of what's happened at the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) 25 in Madrid, Spain, which wrapped up on Friday, December 13, 2019. 

You can also see and share it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa13KrOvE2s

Hats Off to President T**** for Giving Us the Emergency

 Well, we owe a debt of gratitude to that childish "leader" south of the Canadian border. If it wasn't for him, we would still be fighting for a declaration of the climate change emergency. But he has, with his feckless "wall" emergency, managed to ignite a sudden firestorm of concern for the climate crisis.

Sure, others worked hard to lay the groundwork — some for decades (thank you, James Hansen, Al Gore, my hubby, Greenpeace, the IPCC), others for several years (this blog celebrates its 10th anniversary this year!). But nobody listened.

No, it took an American Republican climate-change-denying puerile president having a tantrum to get his own way (ya just know he wants to put his name on that border wall) to wake up the American Democratic asleep-on-their-hopium yawning citizens to the possibility that their next president could call an emergency of her own — a climate change emergency. 

If the whole situation wasn't so frightening, we could view it as a tragicomedy. 

1. For starters, those of us who have known this was an emergency for YEARS (see When 1000 is Greater Than 300,000) have been told repeatedly — REPEATEDLY — that talking about the urgency and the potential disastrousness of climate change would shut people down ... immobilize them. Indeed, we heard it again yesterday. (We've never agreed with those people — see You CAN Handle the Truth! — and explained why, but nobody listened.) And yet, all it took was a loud enough orange flame (sorry, couldn't resist) to ignite concern of one-upmanship (I guess nobody thought Obama's swine flu emergency declaration was ill advised.)

2. For years, I always hushed my voice when talking about climate change in a public place. Now, I'm hearing people all over the place talking about climate change! (It's a day of exclamation marks, I'm afraid. ;-)

3. For years, people have been excoriating former Vice-President Al Gore for making climate change "political." Suddenly it IS political, and people are trying to score political points with it all over social media.

4. I never imagined we'd have to come to a climate change emergency declaration through the back door by having it supplanted by a wall emergency declaration, with half the American population then rising to its defense. Now, here's the thing. Is their concern actually for climate change, or just for the right of their president to get her emergency of choice declared? 

*******

Perhaps it doesn't matter where the concern came from. People are fired up now, and that's what matters. Now, to the task of giving them something to do with this newfound energy and interest in the climate crisis.

A) Everyone needs to write / phone / fax / email / visit their elected officials at every level to insist, require and demand that all fossil fuel subsidies be stopped forthwith. We can't keep handing the fossil fuel industries our tax money ($5.3 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies every year worldwide, according to the IMF) when we're trying to get to a ZERO-CARBON ECONOMY by 2050. 

B) For a long time, the lack of urgency on climate change has stemmed not just from the lies and cheating of the deniers, but also from a crisis of imagination. People just haven't been picturing that a fossil-fuel-free world of perpetual, everlasting renewable energy will be safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful. The Golden Age of Solar Energy has the potential to be the best ever era in human history. It certainly would give children back their future. 

But we have to get our carbon emission into decline by 2020. Can we do it? We did it by accident during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, so we can certainly do it on purpose — with a sense of purpose — by using our imaginations, our creativity, our care and concern and compassion, and the millions of solutions already out there. And if we can always afford to go to war (right?), then we can most certainly afford to mobilize to safeguard our precious biosphere. 

C) If all this makes you feel sad or angry, that's okay. It makes perfect sense! Then turn that anger or depression into action. (And remember, talking about it is a form of action.) But put some good news in your back pocket first, both for the naysayers and to bolster your own resolve to be part of this good fight. For example, check out the enthusiasm and ambition of Costa Rica to be part of the solution:

Costa Rica Launches "Unprecedented" Push for Zero Emissions by 2050

Or be inspired by young Greta Thunberg — and take her deeply honest words to heart. She has definitely contributed to waking up the world (along with the IPCC's October 2018 Special Report on 1.5ºC).

Do anything, but please just don't go back to sleep. The world needs, as Paul Gilding says, all hands on deck to deal with this emergency!

The Real Truth About the Climate Crisis

Sorry that I'm posting later than usual this week. I saw my hubby off to a big health conference in New York City this morning (everyone else was flying to Mexico!), and just got home a while ago.

Peter will be speaking on The Global Climate Change Emergency: From Personal to Planetary Health, and then joining a panel that includes one of his greatest heroes, the preeminent climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, who wrote the foreword to Peter's book (co-authored with Elizabeth Woodworth), Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival.

The real truth about the climate crisis seems to be finally seeping into the public consciousness, doesn't it? (Perhaps that's the real reason President T**** shut down the American government! He wouldn't want people questioning his commitment to "clean coal" — the greatest oxymoron EVER.) 

More and more municipal governments are declaring the climate change emergency — which is a declaration of their intention to spend money doing something to safeguard the future for their citizens.

I'm Becoming More and More Concerned About the State of Things

The Peruvian spectacled bear is facing an uncertain future

Here's a new year's compilation of what's got me feeling more and more worried these days.

We tried to watch Paddington the other night. You know, the live action movie about a sweet little talking bear from Darkest Peru? (It's supposed to be a spectacled bear, known for being playful and mischievous.) For some reason, one of the characters is a evil taxidermist (played by Nicole Kidman) who is not content with the animals she has already stuffed. We might have made it through her nasty scenes except that she suddenly let loose with a not-well-veiled screed against immigrants and refugees. We turned it off immediately, but I was shaken. That sort of manipulative mental violence is pretty insidious. :-(

Next, my hubby put together a film this week showing how little the latest climate talks (in Katovice, Poland) achieved — and then they lied about it, with the media lapping it up. It's bad enough that they haven't accomplished much of anything in 24 years of meetings, but to be deceptive about it, as well? That takes the cake. Perhaps we could blame it on their lack of sleep. Anyway, here's the movie. It's called Life Condemned: The Intolerable Evil Corporate Carbon Corruption. Says it all, eh? :-(

Next, do democratic governments around the world seem to be more and more at the beck and call of fossil fuel corporations? Here in British Columbia, Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted (they're not so mounted anymore) Police have warned that they're moving in soon to forcibly remove a First Nations community that has barred a natural gas pipeline from crossing its unceded territory. This makes me feel sick to my stomach. Sick in my heart. Sick for all the children, and for all that is sacred, healthy and beautiful in the world. :-(

Where is the love? Where is the care and concern? Where are the parents willing to make sacrifices for their kids? Where is any government willing to stand up for the people against Big Money and Big Oil? I never imagined it would play out so blatantly ... so cruelly ... right before our eyes. :-(

On Becoming a Political Person

My husband and I are at the Green Party of Canada biannual convention this weekend in Vancouver. Some lovely friends convinced us to come, and our shared hotel room has been like a grownup's slumber party. ;-) 

One of the nicest things about attending this convention has been running into dear old friends from the environmental movement who, like us, have found their political tribe in the Greens. Loved your new music video, The Gasoline Breakup Song, Franke and Billiam James! "Sound Activism" ... fabulous! And Dr. Warren Bell, it was good to reconnect after years of watching your continued online activism and involvement with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. (My hubby, Dr. Peter Carter, was a founding director of CAPE in the mid-1990s.)

Highlights? 

I'm going home psyched up to help people understand proportional representation (PR) so that they vote "YES" in my province's upcoming referendum on PR. Our first-past-the-post system puts all the power in the hands of one party, even if they have less than 50% of the votes. See Fair Vote Canada.

Elizabeth May's speech at Saturday night's banquet (the most vegetarian banquet I've ever attended!) was, in turns, quite moving and very rousing. What got the most resounding applause? When talking about the climate crisis, she said:

"The Green Party doesn't want to be a one issue party but if the one issue is survival then there is only one issue."
— Elizabeth May, Leader, Green Party of Canada

Another highlight for me was the Saturday morning keynote address by Caroline Lucas, a British politician who in 2010 was elected the Green Party's first Member of Parliament. She said several things that resonated for me, for example: "You can't just bolt the environment onto business as usual." Exactly! We need a transformation in how we "do business." (You can watch her half-hour speech here, from 3:00 to 31:44 — https://www.facebook.com/GreenPartyofCanada/videos/1825623187581859/.)

It's been interesting for me to observe my reactions at this political party convention. I'm proud to say that I helped Elizabeth May get elected twice now — she's my federal Member of Parliament — but it simply meant putting her bumper sticker on my little car and manning a Saturday table at the shopping centre in my tiny community before the election. I wasn't "involved in politics." It was something Caroline Lucas said that reminded me to be watching the political machinations this weekend:

"Complacency is a more dangerous enemy than denial."
— Caroline Lucas

And what I witnessed was a kinder, gentler political "beast" than I knew possible. Mind you, check out this refreshing UN address by New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, about her government's determination to focus on kindness. Kindness! Imagine that. (I've started her speech near the end, but it's worth listening to the whole thing.)

Don't get me wrong, the Green Party members in attendance at this convention got plenty excited at times and were generous with their standing ovations. They are certainly not a staid bunch. But the feeling here is that if they can't achieve their goals and still be decent people, then their goals aren't worth achieving. Souls are not for sale in the Green Party. People don't have to sell out any part of their beliefs or ideals. (Although my friendly amendment to a proposed policy to make it more ecologically literate in its wording — "people and other animals" instead of "animals and people" — was not accepted via the consensus process (too many red cards), which I'll admit was a bummer for this newbie. Our language choices can have a transformative effect, but some people either don't realize that, or are more comfortable with status quo — i.e., biblical — understandings of our species. But the consensus process worked to keep things rolling along ... and I can always try again another time.) 

Anyway, I just wanted to share my #GreenConv18 experiences with you. I hope that wherever you live and with whatever time you have available, you can contribute to making our political systems kinder, gentler, more ethical, and perhaps a tad more ecologically literate. 

What's the Right Word for "Emergency"?

Holy flying freak out! The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide hit over 412 parts per million (ppm) this past week! We're still setting temperature records, especially in the Arctic. Despite fossil fuel CO2 emissions being flat over the last few years, CO2 concentration is still increasing — and at an accelerating rate. Sea level is rising at an accelerating rate. The oceans are heating at an accelerating rate. Unprecedented ocean acidification is increasing at an accelerating rate. And ocean de-oxygenation is on the increase, as well.

If you understand global warming and climate change, you'll understand how distressing all of this is. But if you don't understand it, what can I say to explain that this is an emergency — even though you're not bleeding or in pain? Yet.

Look at this. It's a fuzzy version of what my hubby just presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. Just note how all the graphs are on the upswing.

All of these data trends point to a planetary emergency ... but still, amongst the public (and even amongst the vast majority of scientists, it seems), there's no sense of panic or urgency. No sense of impending calamity or danger. No sense of crisis or emergency.

What's a gal who cares about the biosphere — and all the children, of all species — to do? What WORD is going to help people grasp the plight we are in? What metaphor will help people get that we're in a doomsday scenario?

Please, I'm begging for help here. Can we put our heads (and hearts) together globally and come up with the right words to say? The right metaphors and analogies? The right graphs and graphics? Can the advertising agencies of the world do some pro bono work in order to help us safeguard the future? Can the artists and musicians come up with ways to wake up the public? 

We are so close to the point of no return (if not already past it) that my plea is a desperate one. 

Can you help solve this problem? Or do you know someone who might be able to?

Unprecedented Climate Change Emergency

Well, I've spent about a week in bed with this flu, which means I'm not feeling up to much blogging today. So allow me to leave you with a video book review done by my husband, Dr. Peter Carter. In the video below, he reviews two books written by David Ray Griffin, the second co-authored by a lovely new activist friend of ours, Elizabeth Woodworth. Both books are available on Amazon. I hope you and yours manage to stay healthy this season!

Believing is Seeing

I keep reading about the new understanding that people only allow in (to their lives, their minds, their outlooks, their consciousness) that which doesn't confront or contradict their belief system.

It's a sort of psychic safety mechanism against cognitive dissonance, and it is making it very difficult to educate those who don't understand — and don't want to understand — the climate change crisis. 

I experienced a funny incident the other day that not only proved this theory in myself, but also proved that believing is seeing. (So many people think the opposite is true, that seeing is believing.) 

I woke up early to get to a special event at work much earlier than usual. In the early morning darkness, I bid a silent goodbye to the shadowy lump in the bed next to me that was my husband and snuck down the stairs to get ready. I turned on several lights downstairs (including in the hallway and the bathroom, both near the guestroom) and as time passed and I had to quicken my pace, I started turning on more and more lights and making more and more noise — popping in and out of the guestroom to gather up items I'd put there the night before. 

Just before I left, I noticed that the dog had followed me downstairs and was snuggled up on the guestroom bed. When I went to pick her up to carry her back to the bedroom so she could snuggle with her "dad" instead, I tripped over a glass on the floor and noticed that my hubby had left his reading glasses and some writing paper scattered about as well. As I was making this racket, the dog climbed higher in the bed towards the pillows.

It wasn't until I leaned down to pick her up that my husband moved and scared the you-know-what out of me! I screamed, "What are you doing here? I saw you up in the bed, next to me."

"No," he responded, "I couldn't sleep but I didn't want to disturb you. So I snuck down here in the middle of the night to do some work, and then I fell asleep."

I'm sure he'd managed to fall back to sleep before I was even out the front door — but I didn't leave until I'd tiptoed up the stairs again to check out that bulge in my bed. Sure enough, it was just the way the blankets were heaped that looked like a human being sleeping there. Climate change is real after all ... I mean, that wasn't my beloved in the bed next to me in the morning, but because it's what I believed I saw when I got up in the very early dawn light, I just couldn't see him in the guestroom bed, even with all the lights on and the dog on top of him!

So folks, that's just one little personal anecdote, but I think I'm going to start diverting my attention and efforts to building coalitions with people and organizations and politicians already doing the good work to safeguard the future. I have a feeling the others just won't be able to see the climate change emergency until something happens to wake them up to its ravages.

Stand Up for Science!

Fascinating. A week in the United States, San Francisco, both before Christmas and before the Electoral College decides on the new president.

I can report that yes, the "T**** effect" is a real thing. Emboldened jerks are saying rude things to women, visible minorities, anyone they think might be an immigrant. The waitress in our favourite restaurant told us a story that ended with her suggesting to one particular table of jerks that unless they were of Native American heritage, they too were immigrants. (She was an "immigrant" from New York City.) Apparently they had a hard time wrapping their brains around that. And yes, people south of the border are wearing safety pins to signify that they're a safe haven if things get ugly.

We were attending the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference, one of the largest meetings of scientists in the world, where my hubby, Peter, presented on the planetary climate change emergency. (It was called Climate Golden Age or Greenhouse Gas Dark Age Legacy?)

The highlight for me, besides the opportunity to meet and dine with some wonderful online friends and fellow climate change activists, was the Stand Up for Science rally at noon on day 2 of the AGU conference. (You can see Peter in the bottom left corner, below, and our friend, "Earth Doctor" Reese Halter, in the top row in red.) 

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2016-6-november-december/green-life/these-scientists-are-fighting-for-our-future-we-need#6

Several scientist-speakers, well known as brave souls to climate change activists, called on their colleagues to speak out against a politicization of science that is increasingly dangerous for the planet.

We ALL need to become CLIMATE HEROES for the children of all species and all future generations — but scientists have a particularly important role to play in helping the rest of us pluck up our courage through knowledge and understanding.

Science is definitely under attack. The US has a president-elect who is gearing everything up (Exxon CEO for Secretary of State, anyone?) to continue burning fossil fuels at any cost, when the science says we need to get to zero carbon emissions by mid-century if we want to ensure a future.

Let's stand up for climate change science and scientists, folks. After all, we don't quibble with gravity. Then why do so many of us doubt the physical law that pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causes it to retain more heat?

UPDATE: Here in Canada, things are getting better for scientists.

It Would Appear Evil Has Triumphed

Evil has "trumped" good. The future can feel the reverberations.

Here's an excerpt from an essay-in-progress by Dr. Peter Carter, an indomitable climate change activist.

How bad can a Trump US presidency be?

Surely it would not be the end of world? Actually it would.

The surprise Trump win turns out to be the latest episode in a decades long overt conspiracy and campaign of deception and "big money" political influence by the American fossil fuel corporations to keep America and the world dependent on and dominated by the fossil fuel industry.

This makes Trump the greatest ever threat to world and US national security. A Trump presidency in the United States would be the end of our world, including particularly America.

During the campaign, a number of reasons were given for a Trump win to be a national security nightmare, but the greatest, most definite security issue has been all but missed.

Trump as president would be the end of US national and world security because his stated agenda is to pollute the planet to death with catastrophic levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, global warming, climate disruption, and ocean acidification.

This is definite. It is in his platform on his campaign website, where, if elected president, Trump promises to "unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves." That "unleashing" — at a time when we should be desperately trying to meet a goal of zero carbon emissions — would result in the collapse of the life-sustaining biosphere, both land and oceans.

Since the Trump win, several reasons have been given why the Electoral College in the United States should not confirm Trump, but global climatic annihilation is not one of them.

The reason a Trump presidency would be the end of the world, which he has made no secret of, is that he rejects any measures to mitigate the effects of atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution. Worse still, his election platform is to burn all the American fossil fuels as fast as they can be fracked and mined. According to the science of greenhouse gases, this will lead to the end of American and world agriculture, ending civilization and making an unlivable world for today’s children.

The resulting global climate disruption, with its ever escalating heat waves, forest fires, drought, ocean heating, ocean deoxygenation and ocean acidification makes the Trump agenda for his nation a death sentence for our planet.

The media gave the impression during the lead up to the election that Donald Trump had no fixed policies and just made things up as he went along the campaign trail — and they are still saying he has no election mandate. That is dangerously not the case. 

We're now hearing that Trump is back pedalling on a lot of his campaign rhetoric, including admitting that climate change might be real. But let's not be fooled. This man is a shill for Big Money and the fossil fuel corporations — and we know they will stop at nothing. There is no longer any distinction between the Church of Greed and State in the United States of America.

EARTHx: A Prescription for Our Children's Future

Here's a guest post by Howard Breen, which was published June 30th, 2016 as an op ed in the Vancouver Observer. (If you've already read it, it's worth reading again!)

As a physician for nearly 40 years, Pender Islander Dr. Peter Carter [my beloved] did his best to save lives and help heal thousands of patients. But it wasn’t until he retired and became a full-time climate change research presenter that he made his most dire diagnosis.

“Earth has a dangerous fever it can’t shake,” Dr. Carter says. “The atmosphere and oceans are being poisoned by excess carbon dioxide, which reached a record 409 parts per million this spring. (It should be under 350 ppm.) CO2 is highly persistent and cumulative in both vital systems of the biosphere. The planet is in a rapidly deteriorating state of emergency for our future survival.”

As if to prove this diagnosis correct, the NASA team at Climate Science Awareness and Solutions has recently predicted that 2016 will be another record year for surface temperature increase, which is now above 1.0ºC (a record reached in 2015). “We are living on a planet substantially damaged and different from the one our species has developed on. Global temperature is now in the extremely dangerous zone for the world population and the rest of the “biosphere,” Dr. Carter explains. 

According to Dr. Carter, founder of the Climate Emergency Institute, “The 2015 UN Paris Climate Agreement prescription only offers ‘intended’ targets that pretend to cure the afflicted Earth. The Paris prescription is to keep administering the poison under the guise of good intentions, which can only result in the death of the patient.” The 2 May 2016 UN Climate Secretariat update of nations’ non-binding targets reports that emissions will be higher in 2030 than they are today – making the Paris Agreement a death sentence.”

The essential – and totally reliable – test that Dr. Carter uses for this grim diagnosis is the level of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. “Record high, still accelerating levels of atmospheric GHG pollution have for years been on a consistent heading to end the human race and wipe out almost all life on Earth (both on land and in the oceans). Just in the last few years, the levels have jumped up even faster.”

“In a time of climate change deceit,” Dr. Carter confides, “telling the truth is a personal act for global survival.” So he doesn’t mince words when he shares the urgency of the climate and oceans emergency. “When I was a physician, it would have been the grossest negligence not to tell my patients of their diagnosis, no matter how bad it was.”

“The worst crime of all time, and now clearly the greatest evil ever, is the connivance of the big banking and fossil fuel corporations – with the compliant complicity of some big-economy governments – to deny the catastrophic dangers of continued emissions and to keep delaying decisive and rapid action to put global emissions into decline. This worst-ever negligence has come about because as a society we are in deep denial of the dire state of planetary emergency the entire world is in.”

The prognosis is grim. Dr. Carter believes that “only our profound care and compassion can save today's children and all future generations from inheriting a literal hell on Earth.”

The 2014 Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave us the bottom line for our future survival. “The IPCC said that limiting warming requires ‘near zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases.’ Science rules this world, and rules out more carbon emissions.”

The “other long-lived greenhouse gases” are methane and nitrous oxide. Methane emissions from the livestock industry and artificial wetland rice production, as well as from the natural gas industry (fracking), can and must be eliminated. According to Dr. Carter, “The switch to a healthy vegan (lower GHG-emitting) diet is now vital for tomorrow’s children – and today’s – to have a life worth living.

Other “prescriptions” to get our greenhouse gas fever down include ending government subsidies to fossil fuel corporations and charging large corporate greenhouse gas polluters the full cost of their deadly pollution.

“Our only and best imaginable future is with safe, clean, everlasting 100% renewable energy,” Dr. Carter says. That’s why he is now urging an immediate planetary emergency Manhattan-style R&D Project along the lines of a worldwide Marshall Plan model – a global-scale venture to rescue our future. His emergency response plan depends on fast tracking the progress being made to develop safe, zero-carbon, and super-high energy-dense fusion power. Fusion will be able to power heavy industry and heavy transportation that clean renewable energy is not yet up to.

“The burning age is over,” insists Dr. Carter. “We literally have no future with fossil fuels. With carbon-free fusion power, we’ll be able to manufacture the enormous amount of renewable energy infrastructure we need without having to burn more fossil fuels to rebuild the entire world for the age of safe, clean, everlasting energy. To survive the climate and oceans emergency, and revert to a safe level below 350ppm CO2 and 1.5 degrees Celsius, we also have to mechanically remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide directly from the air for the next hundred years, chemically converting it to a solid carbonate, which can be safely achieved only with safe, zero-carbon, energy-dense fusion power.” 

“Runaway climate change and ocean acidification are not future-tense events,” concludes Dr. Carter. “It is of the utmost urgency that we immediately act to abolish the burning of fossil fuels – or watch as fossil fuels abolish humanity.”


EARTHx event in Victoria, BC, Canada - July 4th, 6-10 p.m. at the Victoria Event Centre (1415 Broad Street). The planned program for EARTHx includes video screenings and presentations on the climate and oceans emergency. (The VEC refreshment bar will be open for the event.)

I'm Baaaack! (To Spread Courage and Compassion - Are You In?)

I think that's a famous quote from some horror flick. It's also how I'm feeling right now. I gave up writing this blog post-Lima climate change conference (COP20) when the result was so discouraging. (Why had I expected anything to come of it in the first place?) I couldn't even pretend anymore that I had the heart to carry on, especially when I knew Paris was going to be a sham as well.

It's been almost a year and a half since I last blogged. So why the change of heart? 

1. My husband sobbing inconsolably at the increasingly terrifying news on accelerating temperature and CO2 level increases -- and still working every day to try to wake people up.
2. My best friend telling me about the deer jumping in front of cars as they tried to flee the Fort McMurray wildfires (and realizing that millions more animals will have perished). 
3. The mom of one of my students discussing compassion with me on a beautifully warm evening in April. (We don't often have warm nights in the summer, let alone in April.)
4. Someone on Facebook saying that her daughter is already ho-hum about climate change. "Yeah, yeah, I know, apocalypse," she says.
5. Starting a letter to Canada's prime minister begging him to put life before corporate profit -- and not being able to finish it for the tears. (There's no ink on a blog for tears to ruin ... though I'd better not cry on my computer.)
6. This month, people around the world are participating in the Break Free from Fossil Fuels / Leave Coal, Oil and Gas in the Ground campaign.

7. And me realizing that I don't have the luxury to not try my very best to move people, governments and fossil fuel corporations to action. So I'm back at my weekly blogging habit. I'll be here every Sunday morning again.

Folks, I'm no scientist. But I know the science on climate change cuz I live, sleep and eat with it every day. If you want to learn the science (it's hard to stand up for the planet and the children's future if you feel "the other side" can win the argument with their sciency-sounding assertions), here are my hubby's websites:


Urgent Climate and Ocean Rapid Response
www.urgentclimateandoceanrapidresponse.org 

State of Our Climate 
www.stateofourclimate.com 

Only Zero Carbon 
www.onlyzerocarbon.org 

Climate Emergency Institute
www.climateemergencyinstitute.com

Climate Change and Food Security 
www.climatechange-foodsecurity.org 

Climate Change Emergency Medical Response

www.climate-change-emergency-medical-response.org 

Climate Crime 
www.climatecrime.org 

Next, this is a call to courage. Mine and yours. It's so scary to truly countenance what's coming if we don't turn this juggernaut around. Experts used to think all the climate chaos $#@! was going to happen at century's end -- and most people still believe that, not realizing that the timeline has sped up something fierce. Hell on Earth is what we're facing if we don't get to zero carbon at lightning speed. 

Let me say that again. This is your children's life we're talking about. Your life. My life. My mother's life, too, and she just turned 90 and is hale and healthy. If we don't make the rapidest possible switch to zero-carbon renewable energy technologies and a zero-carbon economy, we're going to fry. It's going to be very ugly much sooner that we thought.

So screw up your courage and turn on your compassion, folks. We've gotta get going on this, sadness be damned. 

Are you in?

Hey, Look! We've Done This Before! Our Greatest Human Venture Ever ... Innovating to Zero Carbon

Today, all I want to do is share this movie with you. It was just created by someone I love and respect deeply for his passionate commitment to safeguarding the future. And it says Look! We've done this before! 

We (and especially the United States of America) have spent billions to tackle huge issues, employed thousands, and succeeded. So why do we think that retrofitting the world's energy systems can't be done? Look! We've done this before. Sure, sometimes out of conceit and hubris. Sometimes for what seemed in hindsight like evil purposes. And sometimes for the good of humanity. But we have taken on mammoth challenges in the past and triumphed.

Way back during Selfish &%$#@! Week, I wrote: "People who are working to slow global warming and to mitigate the climate change emergency are people who know that any 'costs' involved in doing this will be miniscule compared to what it will cost if we don't stave off climate catastrophe."

But it's more than that. Making the leap to the Golden Era of Perpetual Energy is going to be a colossal benefit to the global economy -- the biggest ever! We have to stop seeing and describing this transformation as a cost. Every time a coal-fired power generation plant is built, it's seen as an economic benefit because it provides employment. Every time a new gas or oil well is dug, it's considered an economic benefit because jobs are created. When an oil tanker spills its oily guts all over a coastline, it's seen as an economic benefit because it creates employment.

So as you're watching this short movie, try to get a sense of how many people were employed in the Apollo Program, the Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan. And then think to yourself, "Hey, look! We've done this before!"

Our Greatest Venture from Dr. Peter Carter on Vimeo.

The IPCC: "All About Modelling, Not About Protecting the Earth"

I've waited awhile to let the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) hype die down a bit. Man, it sure was loud! But I'm not sure which was worse: the deniers saying that the report "proved" (huh?) that global warming has stopped or the enviros claiming that the report says "we face a global climate emergency" when it doesn't say that at all (but should).

Both groups are wrong. But for different reasons. 

The deniers? Well, we've been pumping 90 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every DAY for ages (almost half of which has been absorbed by the oceans). Where do they think all the heat radiated by those extra greenhouse gas molecules has gone? (The answer, by the way, is that the oceans have been warmed and ice sheets and sea ice have been melted. It takes some heat to accomplish that!)

The enviro groups? Well, the mistake they've been making is not noticing how much the IPCC has left out — namely all positive (that is, amplifying) carbon and climate feedbacks. So the IPCC's new ("RCP") scenarios are actually underestimates of the dangers we are unleashing in the climate system. In other words, the situation is much worse, and much more urgent, than the IPCC's Working Group I (Physical Science Basis) report.

It's all very complicated and complex, and clearly the media have to simplify it for the public. But how can we rely on the IPCC's assessments when they don't include all possible sources of warming in their computer models (due to "carbon cycle uncertainties")? How can we trust the IPCC assessments when they offer a range, but then only speak to the "mean warming projections" (what they call "most likely")? 

Should not climate scientists use the upper end of the temperature range when talking of risk? Especially since risk equals probability multiplied by magnitude (and the upper range of possible temperature increases is the potential magnitude)? Yet we're not just risking the mean warming projections, are we? We're also risking the upper ranges. And we're not just risking the upper ranges, we're risking those upper ranges with several degrees caused by carbon feedbacks tacked on.

Unfortunately (and perhaps ironically), the IPCC does not "do" risk. This intergovernmental panel that synthesizes the science of climate change has a code of silence on dangerous, disastrous, or catastrophic climate change. They claim that they cannot define "dangerous" climate change because that is a "value judgement" that science cannot make. (Gee, last time I checked, doctors were scientifically trained and they can tell you what's dangerous and deadly to human life.)

I'm not sure why the IPCC hobbles its scientific contributors and their discussions this way. But perhaps if each country's general public asked for more scientific honesty and a scientific assessment of how dangerous climate change could become, they'd be able to change their terms of reference.

If human beings (and our food/agriculture systems) have never experienced the temperatures that we're heading for, doesn't that at least imply danger ahead? Not "Ooh, it's not looking good," but "Holy flying %$#!, we're heading into a dangerous climate change emergency!"

Worth writing a letter or two, anyone? After all, changing political will is about the only transformative action (beyond individual reductions in carbon emissions) the public still has the power to take.

So, with apologies to the great Welsh bard, I'll leave you with a Dylan Thomas rendition by my husband that reminds us what our response to the AR5 ought to be. 

Do not go gentle into this unnatural night.
Real people burn and rave at Mother Earth's deplorable plight.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rage, rage, rage with all your might.
— Peter Carter 

p.s. That quote in the title is also from my hubby, someone who spends many, many hours every day reading and synthesizing research on climate change.

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.