Greenhouse Gas Pollution — Our Greatest Enemy

Like many of you, I can still remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I can remember that I was at home, working hard to finish up a writing project before the deadline later that day. I can remember that the weather (in my part of the world) was soft and sunny. (Septembers used to be like that here.)

I can remember the phone call from my stepson, who said, "Do you have the TV on? Put the TV on" and hung up. I remember that I was alone, my husband away at a retreat (from which he came home the very next day after hearing one of the organizers say, "We should nuke 'em" — without even knowing who "'em" was).

I can also remember the growing sense of dismay and then horror as the American dogs of war were riled up against Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. Then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, insisted to the world that Iraq had WMDs: weapons of mass destruction. They didn't. I knew that. Lots of Canadians knew that. The Canadian prime minister knew that. How come Colin Powell didn't know that? (He sure knows it now, saying his speech to the UN about Iraq's supposed WMDs was the low point of his career.)

Anyway, I was reminded today in a TEDx presentation by Dan Miller (A Simple and Smart Way to Fix Climate Change) that one of the reasons we're not responding to the climate change emergency is that it's a threat without an enemy. (Is that why a majority of Americans believed — or more accurately, were led to believe — that it was Saddam who brought down the Twin Towers? Because they needed a face for the anger and the threat they were feeling?) 

The threats that our species responds to immediately, according to Miller, are those that have one or more "threat indicators" (Miller suggests envisioning a lion heading towards you on the savannah):

• visible (versus global climate change, which is still invisible to many of us, especially on nice days)
• have historical precedent (versus global climate change, which is unprecedented in human history)
• immediate (versus global climate change, which is drawn out over months, years, decades and centuries)
• direct personal impacts (versus global climate change, which has unpredictable and perhaps indirect impacts ... but hold onto your hats, folks)
• simple causality (versus the complex causes of global climate change)
• caused by an enemy (versus, gulp, the climate change emergency, which is caused by almost all of us)

Well, all of this is my way of introducing something I've been working on: the vilification of greenhouse gas pollution. Pollution is "the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects." Yup, too much CO2 in the atmosphere has harmful effects, making it a pollutant (despite its beneficial effects on plants at the right levels, meaning before global warming causes heat waves, droughts and floods that harm plants).

So what do you think? Does that carbon dioxide molecule need a mustache to be seen as an enemy we can fight together? Or is it scary enough just the way it is? ;-)

98 Days - We Have the Heart of Hitler...

We must face up to it. We are Hitler.

We are the doctors who performed unspeakable experiments. We are the scientists, engineers and architects who designed and built the .... We are the teachers who said nothing as we watched children disappear from our classes.

We are the soldiers who were "just doing their jobs." We are the neighbours, the citizens, the nation, the world leaders who turned a blind eye.

We are ALREADY murdering hundreds of thousands of people every year due to the ravages of climate chaos. We have ALREADY condemned millions more - along with most life on Earth - to a future with no future.

We have been so profoundly trained to only care about ourselves that we are blithely going along with this second holocaust, not questioning it, not taking any responsibility for it.

Why did Anne Frank's diary touch the hearts of countless millions of readers? Was it because she was a child? Or was it because it only came to light after the slaughter - when knowing didn't have to compel action?

Why do we seem so incapable of responding to the climate-change-innocent who are already suffering terribly? How is it that we can continue to live with obscene prosperity (damn The Secret), knowing that our wealth - the Western lifestyle that we so blithely accept without question - is killing 30,000 children per day because they don't have enough to eat?

Why, how have we allowed ourselves to be so blinded to the fate of these children, of our children?

Every day that we don't feel deeply for our brothers and sisters and children, that we don't demand a change, that we don't stop slaughtering animals and eating meat, that we don't implore our leaders to lead us away from climate catastrophe, we are no better than Hitler.

P.S. I do not, for one moment, say this lightly. It hurts so much to know this, to understand the science, to bear witness to the suffering in Africa and the Arctic and the Pacific island nations and now major world cities that are running out of water - and to see no movement towards an agreement in Copenhagen that will get greenhouse gas emissions to virtually zero to safeguard this beautiful planet for my niece, my stepsons, and my grandchildren.

Compassion MUST go hand in hand with courage in this fight to save the world from climate catastrophe. We must be brave, damn it. Courage is feeling the pain, the fear, and doing the right thing anyway.

Courage comes via French from the Latin cor meaning "heart." And, it turns out, the French word "courage" replaced the Old English ellen, which meant "zeal, strength."

Perhaps it's zeal and strength that we're missing. Maybe we're all numbed and flabby from our two-dimensional lives spent sitting down, in front of screens.

Please, could we muster a little zeal, strength, compassion and courage?