We Need a Climate Change Mobilization at World War II Speed

It's not often that climate change activists hear news so good that they find themselves skipping and hopping and jumping about, crying and laughing and hugging! But that's what happened to us this past week. Here's what was in the email we received:

In a shock decision, the Democratic National Convention platform committee voted overwhelmingly Saturday night to include language in the party’s platform championing a “World War II-type national mobilization to save civilization” from “the global climate emergency.” (See the video of Russell Greene’s and David Braun’s awesome speeches and the vote here.)

The full text of the amendment reads:

Democrats believe it would be a grave mistake for the United States to wait for another nation to lead the world in combating the global climate emergency. In fact, we must move first in launching a green industrial revolution, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because it is in our own national interest to do so. Just as America’s greatest generation led the effort to defeat the Axis Powers during World War II, so must our generation now lead a World War II-type national mobilization to save civilization from catastrophic consequences. We must think beyond Paris. In the first 100 days of the next administration, the President will convene a summit of the world’s best engineers, climate scientists, climate experts, policy experts, activists and indigenous communities to chart a course toward the healthy future we all want for our families and communities.

Oh my gosh, my beloved and I have been calling for a declaration of the climate change emergency for years now. (I've mentioned it 105 times in this blog alone!) So we couldn't believe what we were reading and hearing. You see, once the emergency is declared, it'll be like letting a genie out of a bottle. The world and all nations will have to move at an urgent pace on emergency measures. (Right?)

The neat thing is that my next blog post (this one) was going to be about a war time speed mobilization. Peter has been an advisor for the folks who made this happen, so we feel personally invested in their campaign. Now to get the Democrats elected in the United States this November and a climate mobilization campaign going in Canada. OMG, this is so exciting!

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A few weeks back, we talked about how a whole nation was able to "not see" what had gone on under its nose -- sometimes literally just down the street -- during World War II. The Holocaust is such common knowledge now that it's difficult to understand how so many people could have turned a blind eye to it ... or been born and raised with no knowledge of it.

Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD, is a young New York psychologist who explained in a recent video that her Jewish upbringing gave her an exposure to the Holocaust that has informed her climate change activism -- indeed pushed her into it. Margaret, along with journalist Ezra Silk (who also grew up with a deep understanding of the Holocaust), is calling for a climate change mobilization that will rival the Allies' (and especially the Americans') mobilization as they entered the Second World War. In fact, Margaret founded The Climate Mobilization based on what she knows is possible because of what's been possible in the past.

In this video, Lester Brown explains how the United States stepped up after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. It's an evocative story of what we human beings are capable of when we make the choice to act.

The full video (from which this excerpt is taken) is available here.

In the following video compilation put together by my hubby, we see more evidence of the speed at which we can turn things around -- when we make the choice to act.

Our Greatest Venture from Dr. Peter Carter on Vimeo.

So watch this space for mobilization ideas as we roll them out. And many thanks to our friends and family who understood how big this news is and helped us celebrate. 

SPOILER ALERT p.s. We watched (well, my hubby bailed, but I watched) The Martian the other night. Yes, sure, it's fiction, but it portrayed very well the kind of time, money and energy that the United States is capable of throwing at a problem -- in this case, one astronaut left behind (by accident) on, you guessed it, Mars. And the motivation to do so didn't come just from a desire to look good in the public eye. It came from enough people at NASA demanding that they do "the right thing." So, Americans, please have a look in your hearts and see if 7.3 billion Earthlings equal one Matt Damonesque Martian. Then do the right thing.

42 Days - Climate Refugees ... Already Starting to Happen

At our International Day of Climate Action event yesterday in my small community (15 people showed up! I was shocked ... only expected 3 or 4, and we had a learn-in and lament and a rich discussion of the future we can create), we talked about the fact that climate change is already happening, so how can people deny its existence?

Economist Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute, wrote in The Grist recently about the rising tide of environmental refugees: "Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas."

Though many of us lucky ones still haven't been impacted by the changing climate — at least not in any way that we can see or complain about — Brown relates the stories of would-be refugees found dead in their small boats, or in the deserts. In some cases, poverty drove these people to seek a new home. In some cases, the poverty was caused by desertification of their croplands. Let us be frightened by the numbers and shed a tear for these people. They could soon be our own children or grandchildren.

Here are snippets of his article to, I hope, evoke empathy and compassion for these refugees. There but for the grace of God....

Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking.

Desert expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, principally in the Sahelian countries, is displacing millions of people.

We do not know whether they [these refugees] were political, economic, or environmental refugees. Failed states like Somalia produce all three. We do know that Somalia is an ecological disaster, with overpopulation, overgrazing, and the resulting desertification destroying its pastoral economy.

Today, bodies washing ashore in Italy, Spain, and Turkey are a daily occurrence, the result of desperate acts by desperate people.

Many of those who try to cross the Arizona desert [from Mexico] perish in its punishing heat. Since 2001, some 200 bodies have been found along the Arizona border each year.

With the vast majority of the 2.4 billion people to be added to the world by 2050 coming in countries where water tables are already falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace.

Whereas the U.S. Dust Bowl displaced 3 million people, the advancing desert in China's Dust Bowl provinces could displace tens of millions.

While desert expansion and water shortages are now displacing millions of people, rising seas promise to displace far greater numbers in the future, given the concentration of the world's population in low-lying coastal cities and rice-growing river deltas. The numbers could eventually reach the hundreds of millions, offering yet another powerful reason for stabilizing both climate and population.

According to Brown, "During this century we must deal with the effects of trends—rapid population growth, advancing deserts, and rising seas—that we set in motion during the last century." He suggests that our choice is a simple one: "reverse these trends or risk being overwhelmed by them."

With thanks to Hermann Josef Hack for the artwork.

84 Days Left and Our Economic Paradigm Still Doesn't Get It

Headline on the front of the Report on Business in the Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper), 11 September 2009:

"Either you grow or you die"

No, wrong, false. When are economists and businesspeople going to get it? We can't keep growing. Continuous growth = obesity or, worse, cancer. Children grow, trees grow, young businesses grow. The rest of us have to turn to development that is sustainable. (Gee, that sounds familiar. 1987? Brundtland Report? 1992? Rio Summit? Hmmm.)

The Western (and increasingly globalized) economic paradigm must change.

Green design guru, Bill McDonough, puts it another way. The question, he suggests, isn't growth-no growth. The question is, What do we want to grow? Sickness, or health? Poverty, or prosperity? We wouldn't tell a tree not to grow, he points out. But trees don't suck up natural resources, destroying them forever in the process. When trees suck up natural resources, they transform them into beauty, oxygen, food (seeds/fruit/nuts), biomass, erosion control ... and then everything gets recycled again.

The other part of the Globe and Mail story that hurts is that it's about growing an auto parts company into an automaking company. Why, in the midst of a global climate change emergency created mainly because of fossil fuel burning in internal combustion engines, do we still live in a society that allows businesses to do suicidal things like this? Where is Roosevelt when we need him? Someone to tell the automakers that they ain't makin' autos anymore. Nope, they're all going to turn their attention — and their facilities — to the manufacture of renewable energy technologies and infrastructure. Now.

Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute and Plan B 3.0 (now 4.0) fame, is an agricultural economist who understands ecology. In the two videos below, he explains that we need a restructuring of the economy and a war-time mobilization to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty and restore damaged ecosystems. In this first video, watch especially from 4:45.

In the second video, listen especially for the story starting at 4:20. It's sheer inspiration!