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!