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.

Who Should Be Apologizing?

There seems to be an upsurge in fault-finding and aspersion-casting these days. But the wrong people are taking the flak.

Why are the "green capitalists" (who at least are trying to raise awareness and create change, even if it's within a broken system) being excoriated by all parties while the vast majority of capitalists — the rape-and-pillage kind — pretty much escape censure and get to carry on, business as usual?

Why are outspoken climate scientists who mention nuclear as a partial solution to the climate change emergency being pilloried while the vast majority of climate scientists are not called out for their cowardice and their silence?

Why are people who care deeply about the future we're bequeathing our children getting blamed by friends and strangers alike for spreading doom and gloom (aka, the truth) while the vast majority of parents and grandparents (in my culture, at least) spend their spare time watching crap on the television? If you feel "blamed" then maybe you know deep inside that you bear some of the responsibility.

It's getting pretty tiring for anyone who's been trying to sound the climate crisis alarm to continually be called an alarmist. (What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm an alarmist. Full-time.) Why is it considered worse to be a scaremonger (when what's happening is seriously scary and we want people to wake up and be frightened!) than to be an ignorer, delayer, skeptic or downright denier?

And don't even get me started on what a vegan has to put up with these days. Apparently our lower-carbon dietary choice is a judgement, an imposition on people who want to torture and murder animals in the most inhumane ways possible in order to enjoy their hunk of flesh without guilt — at the expense of all future generations. Well, folks, if you're feeling guilty around a vegan, perhaps you should listen to that little niggle.

How can I apologize for caring? For passionately wanting to safeguard the future of life on this planet? Why should I have to? Why do I have to watch what I say at dinner parties and in cafés? Why aren't we all talking about all of this? All the time? With everyone we meet?

How will we ever transform political will if we can't muster some personal and social will just to discuss the emergency let alone face it and solve it?

Truthfully, who should be apologizing to whom?

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.

Responding to Scientists Who Don't Like "Alarmism"

Sometimes I find myself commenting on websites and blogs (or responding to other commenters) and thinking that what I've written is rather profound or potentially transformative. So today I'd like to share a couple of those comments with you.

Here's the first:
"But what if you're completely wrong? What if it is NOT 'true that climate impacts will be ... not as bad as some climate hawks say'? What if agriculture is going to fail everywhere? What if billions of people are going to die? What if the planet is going to become uninhabitable (to all but jellyfish and cockroaches, if they're lucky)?

"When my first teaching job took me to a logging town, I quickly learned to say, 'Sure, not every tree is for saving, but nor is every tree for chopping down.' Loggers and kids of loggers could handle that 'moderate' stance. But we weren't talking about a (literally) potential end-of-the-world scenario, we were talking about local forests.

"Does it really make sense to continue sitting around, talking about our fire safety rules and discussing the wisdom of pulling the alarm while the blinkin' house is on fire? If you're going to do that, at least lead the children to safety first, damn it! Indeed, take all the time you want to figure out how best to communicate the emergency, just ensure the children — of all species — a viable future first."

That was my response to the blogger. Then I read some of the comments and bumped up against a scientist who seems to be placing "the scientific method" ahead of life. Guys, guys, when are you going to get it through your heads? If you're fighting for anything other than life, what you're fighting for is moot! It (money, profit, power, fame, the scientific method) will not even exist if we don't safeguard the future of life on this planet.

So here's my response to that scientist, in the form of five questions: 
"1. Given that the Global Humanitarian Forum "conceded" a significant margin of error and was reviewed by Hans Schellnhuber, Jeffrey Sachs and other experts, what is the real complaint about their Human Impact Report? (It strikes me that any human loss due to the climate change emergency should invoke a humanitarian response, but I guess if those who've died aren't our loved ones, well ....)

"2. Scientists think that the best way to think about the impacts of global heating and climate disruption is scientifically. But how have scientists proved this? What if the best way is to think with our hearts and our guts, with our compassion, spiritually, or with our parents' and grandparents' love and concern for the children we love? I'm just sayin'. That we should stay calm and think scientifically is still just a hypothesis, is it not?

"3. Isn't considering the worst case scenario an important aspect of risk management?

"4. Is it true that many (most? all?) computer climate models don't include the scariest, er, biggest Arctic carbon feedbacks (peatlands, permafrost, methane hydrates)?

"5. If that's true, then shouldn't we be far more concerned than we are now?"

Give me James Hansen any day. He's a scientist through and through (listen to him give any presentation other than his TED Talk), but he loves his grandchildren and he's willing to fight for their right to a viable and climate-safe future.

One Month to Copenhagen - All This for Nought?

Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy

I've been hearing for a few weeks now that "the powers that be" have already decided the Copenhagen climate talks were going to fail. The optimist in me decided not to listen. I should have listened.

In The Grist's Copenhagen reality check: Governments concede new climate treaty unlikely until 2010, Geoffrey Lean of London's Daily Telegraph reported the other day that it's now out in the open: "Key government leaders and U.N. officials are finally, publicly admitting what they have long privately believed: there is no chance of concluding a new climate treaty in Copenhagen next month."

So that's it, then. We're hooped. Because if it ain't gonna happen next month, it ain't gonna happen next year. Perverse, insane, criminal procrastination isn't going to end just because it's "a new year."

It's already probably too late, so waiting even longer is completely cidal: suicidal, biocidal, genocidal, and progenycidal.

I think some people are celebrating because this might mean we can create a better framework for a treaty ... one that doesn't depend on one hundred percent consensus and doesn't give one country (or bloc of countries) the right or the ability to wreck it for the rest of us. But what does Pollyanna-ish moi do with this information? What does someone who has been counting down to the world's most momentous meeting for almost 200 days do with this news of a death sentence?

I personally want to smash some heads in. Oops, that wasn't very nice. But really, who are the heartless freaking bastards who are allowing the future of life on this stunningly beautiful, miraculous planet to slip through our fingers?

Our only hope, it seems, is truly to melt the ice in the heart of man, as shared by Greenland Eskimo elder and shaman, Angaangaq.

But how? Despite all the rhetoric over the years to think globally and act locally, we haven't (it's obvious) done a very good job of thinking globally. We don't think in terms of the human species. We don't see ourselves as planetary citizens. We are all still so nationally oriented, so attached to our national boundaries and borders — and economies.

When that shit that is already hitting the global warming fan for the world's poorest and most climate-change-vulnerable starts spewing all over EuroAmericans, then we'll see some cross-boundary action. But it will be too late. When the global warming fan starts spewing all over EuroAmericans sitting pretty within their nice, neat boundaries and borders, it will be too late for us to reach across those borders and boundaries to make a difference.

Our culture is so disconnected from the Earth that feeds us that we have no idea how unimportant the economy is. We think it's important, we vote like it's important, we play out our lives as though it's important — but try eating the economy, folks, when the Arctic summer sea ice melts and the droughts and deserts spread and we start getting hit with crop failures. Try eating that.

My deepest sympathies, condolences and thanks to all the people in Denmark (and the UK, as well) who have been working so hard to make this climate summit a success. The prognosis is grim, but perhaps you can still pull off a miracle cure.

What they're now hoping for in Copenhagen is a "framing document," the outcome of which must be "comprehensive, balanced, ambitious, effective and fair” and must include "ambitious commitments and actions to reduce emissions." Significant new "financial and technical help should be "made available to support developing country actions."

Hmmm. Not one word of the climate emergency! No wonder there's so much dithering and diddling while the Earth burns. No one has yet heeded the alarm raised by James Hansen, John Holdren and Ban Ki-moon! Shame on every other climate scientist, world leader and two-bit local politician who pretends it's not in their mandate. They're all playing dice with our grand/children's lives.

55 Days - What Shall We Be Thankful For?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Thanksgiving!

81 Days - The Truth about Climate Change: "Climate Scientists Just Want to Be Popular"

I wrote a couple of days back that we can't really trust climate scientists to give us the whole truth about the climate change emergency. James Hansen is a rare example of an outspoken climate scientist digesting all the research and being honest about what it adds up to.
Thought I'd expand on this a bit, since I just found a 2007 article by James Hansen, who laments this unfortunate situation as well.

In Climate Catastrophe (New Scientist, 28 July 2007), Hansen writes:

"Why might scientists be reticent to express concerns about something so important? 

"I suspect it is because of what I call the 'John Mercer effect'. In 1978, when global warming was beginning to get attention from government agencies, Mercer suggested that global warming could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Although it was not obvious who was right on the science, I noticed that researchers who suggested that his paper was alarmist were regarded as more authoritative. 

"It seems to me that scientists downplaying the dangers of climate change fare better when it comes to getting funding [me: which is the opposite of the view of the deniers]. Drawing attention to the dangers of global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for the relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like Mercer who stuck their heads out. 

"I can vouch for that from my own experience. After I published a paper in 1981 that described the likely effects of fossil fuel use, the US Department of Energy reversed a decision to fund my group's research, specifically criticising aspects of that paper. I believe there is pressure on scientists to be conservative. [...] 

"[I]n a case such as ice sheet instability and sea level rise, excessive caution also holds dangers. 'Scientific reticence' can hinder communication with the public about the dangers of global warming. We may rue reticence if it means no action is taken until it is too late to prevent future disasters. [...] 

"Reticence is fine for the IPCC. Individual scientists also can choose to stay within a comfort zone, and not worry that they may say something that proves to be slightly wrong. But perhaps we should consider our legacy from a broader perspective."

Bob Hunter, in 2030: Confronting Thermageddon in Our Lifetime (slightly different title in the USA), quotes Greenpeace's Jeremy Leggett, who attended the first IPCC meetings in 1990 in Berkshire, England. Apparently, what happened at the end of the final session is still happening today.

Leggett and others wanted more emphasis in the first climate threat assessment to be placed on the role of feedbacks, even though these are very hard to quantify and aren't generally included in climate models (note: the most recent IPCC report excluded all carbon feedbacks, and since these are already occurring at "only" +0.78 degrees C of warming (while most governments are "targeting" +2.0 degrees C!), it might be extremely wise to go beyond the IPCC, instead of sticking with them).

"'I [Leggett] urged the scientists to mention specifically what in principle the very worst case might be for a world where emissions were not cut deeply — a runaway, unstoppable greenhouse effect.' The suggestion was dismissed — not because of any scientific consensus, but because of the political judgment of the scientists themselves. A sea-level expert expressed concern that the media would 'sensationalize' any mention of anything like that. The leading U.S. scientist at the meeting was Robert Watson [...] who was still working with NASA. 'I have a problem with this,' he said, according to Leggett. 'We mustn't give policy-makers the impression that there's no point. We don't win that way.' A dubious strategy, at best: not telling the truth because it might be too much to take? There was more than a whiff of scientific elitism at work here. In retrospect, the tactic of keeping the report within the bounds of solvability, of avoiding making it seem too dark or hopeless or pointless, can be seen as probably the most critical blunder in what became a long string of miscalculations by some of the smartest people on the planet. And it only happened when the scientists tried to get political, tried to start anticipating reactions, tried to aim for a certain effect."

Anyone else see what I'm trying to get at here? Climate scientists are only human. They have the potential to become climate heroes, to save the world, but a PhD doesn't necessarily come with a cape and a large dose of courage. Climate scientists, like the rest of us, are going to have to look their children in the eyes and then figure out whether they are doing all they can do to safeguard their children's future.

146 Days - Why Joe Romm Needs to Get Some Perspective

Climate change blogger Joseph Romm (a good guy who's on our side) is slamming Dr. James Hansen in the blogosphere these days.

First, I should mention that anybody who messes with Hansen messes with me! (Just so we're clear where I stand on this.)

I don't want to go into details. In fact, I don't even want to send you to the original postings and the spinoffs.

I just want to say this. James Hansen understands the climate change emergency far better than almost anyone else on Earth, and certainly (it is now obvious) better than Joe Romm, who (I will grant him) deeply understands American political responses to climate change.

I've written about this before — we enviros seem to have a penchant for critiquing our own, even those who know more than we do. So, when James Hansen says we desperately need a carbon tax, Joe, don't disagree with the man. When he says that the new Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the USA isn't enough, don't disagree with the man.

When you say, "I have previously explained why W-M takes us sharply off of the BAU [business as usual] emissions path over the next decade, probably reducing coal use more than 25% by 2020," please understand that cutting coal use 100% by 2020 is one of the few ways we've got to save the future.

We must get all our fossil fuel emissions down to zero. Say it with me. ZERO. Z-E-R-O. That's zed (zee to you Americans), ee, ar, oh.

Not "42% emissions reduction by 2030." Not "an 83% reduction by 2050." We must reach zero fossil fuel emissions fast, or we risk losing it all. (And I'm talking that really big ALL!) Indeed, any target that isn't zero is not a serious target.

The perspective that Joe Romm is missing is the global perspective. He's so caught up in the American scene that he's forgetting Hansen's global view. And it's not pretty.

So please, sure, be proud of your Waxman-Markey legislation, but don't go braggin' all over that it's going to save the world. It just isn't, because it doesn't talk about getting to zero fast.

It doesn't consider all the people all over the world already impacted by climate chaos. And it does not come from that place of compassion that asks, "What do we really need to do to safeguard the future, for all the children, of all species?"

151 Days Left - What's Ice Got To Do With It?

I'm not a science-leaning person (too emotional for that), but I understand both a scary science story and a brave scientist when I see them.

NASA satellite measurements are showing that Arctic sea ice is not only shrinking (think size or area), but is also "dramatically" thinning (think depth).

"The volume of older crucial sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk by 57 percent from the winter of 2004 to 2008," wrote American Press science writer Seth Borenstein on 7 July 2009.

Arctic summer sea ice serves as the air conditioner for much of the northern hemisphere, ie, most of the developed world. Disappearing Arctic sea ice means we are losing our cooling buffer against rising temperatures. And that means our agriculture will become even more tenuous than it's been recently (ask any of the North American farmers already dealing with drought).

But the heartening news is that NASA scientist Jay Zwally is credited with saying — actually saying — that global warming is to blame. Climate scientists haven't been the most courageous (or, by extension, compassionate) bunch of folks lately. (Well, I shouldn't generalize — look at Dr. James Hansen!)

So it's wonderful that someone has spoken the words: "Global warming is to blame."

When politicians and other leaders start adding it all up (melting Arctic sea ice + rising global temperatures = holy !#$%), they're going to start acting fast. To date, most of them seem rather climate change illiterate and innumerate.

Cheers to brave climate scientists!

165 Days - Note to Self: COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS

Dr. Hansen, you're a hero!

Anyone following climate change news has already heard that NASA's Dr. James Hansen was arrested yesterday when protesting mountain top removal coal mining in West Virginia.

I got a shiver when I heard the news. It was the last prod I needed to screw up my courage enough to start not caring what people "think" of me anymore. I'm ready to start not being nice in my work to safeguard the future.

Dr. Hansen certainly has more to lose than I do when sticking his neck out for the children of all species and all generations. (Kudos to Darryl Hannah and the other brave protestors / arrestees, too.) It turns out that courage is contagious!

We've started a conversation about the courage that climate scientists and activists are going to need in order to save the world. Check it out at Clean Energy Project in Germany.

And now, repeat after me. "Nice" is getting us nowhere. Courage is what's needed and courage is compassion in action.