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!

There Are So Many Things We Can Be Doing!

I think I'm just going to make a list today. I haven't offered this sort of thing in a long time, but we attended a meeting the other night where lots of ideas for what a nearby city (and the capital city of my province in Canada) can do about the climate crisis. I'll add in some of my own ideas.

Change now, as philosopher Krishnamurti taught. Picture … dream … envision how the world needs to be: free of war, terrorism, violence, cruelty and slaughter. A world free of fossil fuels, a “golden age” of zero-carbon renewable energy, will be safer, cleaner, kinder, healthier, more equitable, and more peaceful. It’s a beautiful vision, isn’t it?

For the sake of the children – of all species – find the strength, the courage and the compassion to truly feel the pain of the climate crisis. Next, lament. And then, get active. Remember that the most vulnerable are being impacted worst and first, but we are all impacted. People around the world are losing their lives or their loved ones, their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes and entire homelands, in extreme weather events caused or exacerbated by climate chaos. We also need to understand this from the perspective of indigenous people, who have nowhere to move to because they are their land.

If you and your family are not already eating a plant-based diet, go vegan now, for the sake of your own health and the health of the planet. It’s the quickest – and most significant – way to lower your greenhouse gas emissions. Further, how can we create peaceful transformation in a world filled with slaughter and cruelty?

The Burning Age is over. Support a carbon fee and any other strategy that will encourage people to switch their investment money to zero-carbon, non-combustion renewable energy. Work towards a combustion-free society by transitioning away from the internal combustion engine.

Call for your government to keep its pledge to end taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuel industries. According to the International Monetary Fund, every year governments around the world give $5.3 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuel corporations. Just think how much faster we’ll make the transition to zero-carbon, non-combustion energy when all that money is switched to renewables.

Make a plan for reducing your family’s carbon footprint as rapidly as possible. Invest in the future by ensuring that your investments are ethical and green. Divest from fossil fuels. Vote with your dollars. Invest in a heat pump for your home to lower your heating bill. If you need to drive, save up to purchase a hybrid or electric vehicle. Figure how far you and your family are willing to walk, bicycle, take public transit, car share, etc., and set up systems to help you use these greener modes of transportation more often. Be willing to make changes, compromises, even sacrifices for the sake of the future.

Support fair elections and electoral reform so that governments are made up of elected officials representing all voices, not just those beholden to fossil fuel industries.

Learn the basic science of the unprecedented crime of greenhouse gas pollution and the anthropogenic (human-caused) climate and oceans crisis it has led to. Then learn why climate disruption and the trifecta of ocean heating, ocean acidification, and ocean de-oxygenation represent an urgent emergency. Understand that the climate change denial campaign is deliberate and extremely well funded. They can sound convincing, but don’t be fooled. Do your own research, check your sources, and stay strong.

The greatest immediate threat is food and water insecurity. After all, we have evolved over the last 10,000 years into a species dependent on agriculture – and agriculture is dependent upon a stable climate, which we’ve had globally for the last 10,000 years – until now. Encourage ecological and regenerative agricultural practices and the implementation of permaculture principles. Mulch your garden. Plant trees. Lend support (time, money, energy, expertise) to food-growing programs for children and schools. We can’t grow food overnight; nor can we learn to grow food overnight. Be a champion for a different kind of education … one that will help create the world we need.

Permaculture the heck out of your community. Turn public spaces and boulevards into food forests. Build food security, food sovereignty, food resilience. (If climate chaos is going to lead to worldwide hunger, at least we'll be among the last to go.)

Get your local municipal government/s to declare a climate change emergency. (The Climate Mobilization can offer guidance with this.)

Protest outside of any bank that is investing in global destruction. Divest while you're at it, and put your money into a community bank or credit union.

Pull off some "intersactions." Take your protest signs to the busiest intersection in your community and keep crossing the road when the walk sign is on walking around in a square. Get it? High visibility. Not illegal. Drivers won't be turned off because you're not blocking traffic.

Remember to make your planning meetings and your public actions inclusive (invite others who might not normally participate) and accessible (for example, to people with disabilities, to parents with small children). 

Finally, do your spiritual work – pray, meditate, dance, go for walks, whatever – but don’t stop there! Remember, we all have at least a little bit of time, money, energy and/or expertise to share.

 And hey, if none of these actions feels right to you, you can always bake muffins for those on the front lines of saving the world. Even protestors have to eat!

Adapted from Henry Van Dyke

Declaring—and Advertising—the Climate Change Emergency Closer to Home

Did that get our attention? Back in 2014, for a Climate Emergency Countdown, I wrote:

DEMAND THAT GOVERNMENTS DECLARE THE CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY

... And in every way we can think of, let's urge all government representatives and negotiators at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit 2014: Catalyzing Action to declare the emergency.

Once governments declare that we are "beyond dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), things will start to happen. This declaration would be an automatic trigger for the bureaucrats who work underneath politicians and within governments to start working on climate change solutions. Scientists say that determining whether climate change is an emergency is a value judgement that society must make. So let's make it! We're society. Let's get the CLIMATE EMERGENCY DECLARED!

Have we? No. Every time I (metaphorically) come running from my burning house, stumbling through the smoke and blaze with my beloveds (and my laptop, if I'm lucky), I find a ring of firefighters sitting on the front lawn in lawn chairs, discussing the need for more study of fire safety rules. Although I remember that they did publish another report on more serious fire safety rules just a few weeks ago, so things are looking up (or down?).

 

And among the lookie-loos on the street are those who say, "Fire? There's no fire at my house, so I don't believe in housefires." The more erudite and learned among the deniers will point to my house and say, "Sure, your livingroom's got some smoke and flames coming out of it, but look at your kitchen windows. Nothing. You're cherrypicking the data and exaggerating the risk." Ah heck, they're probably afraid the burnt-out shell of my house will lower their property values. Or they just can't face the possibility that a house fire can happen to anyone with a house.

 

Well, there's a sort of solution to the lack of global and national urgency on the climate crisis front. Municipalities are declaring the climate change emergency and doing what they can locally. Let's hear it for:

• Oakland​, USA
• Berkeley, USA ​
• Byron Shire Council, Australia 
• Darebin, Australia
• Colorado Democrats
• Richmond, USA​
• Montgomery County, USA

We'll see if Tuesday's election in the United States brings more attention and voice to the issue, state-wide and federally. 

Near my home in Canada, we're working to have two local cities declare the climate change emergency. The Climate Mobilization offers a city-by-city campaign toolkit. We all live somewhere with some sort of local governing body, so this is something we can all do!

Here in BC, one of the province's best-known and loved environmentalists, Guy Dauncey, has launched The November Offensive in which he asks British Columbians to write to the province's governing (NDP and Green Party) MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) to ask that 12 policy requests (inspired by the urgency of the IPCC's special 1.5ºC report) be included in BC's upcoming new climate action plan.

"The second goal is that people will step forward to seek a meeting with their MLA, to impress the same urgency and solutions in person. The concise, specific, actionable request is that the MLA you meet with will convey your concerns, hopes and recommended 12 Actions in person to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and to the Premier of BC."

"Actionable." If people want action on the climate change emergency, they have to TAKE ACTION. Which leads me to ....

 

Finally, I'm just reading The Climate Truth, an essay by Climate Reality presenter and psychologist, Dr. Joe Silverman. In it, he almost agrees with my take on cognitive dissonance:

"In some ways, action on climate change seems caught in a Catch-22. Politicians don't act because the voting public does not demand it. And much of the public is not fully engaged on the issue because their individual actions are a drop in the bucket that will do little to solve the problem."

(To me, the problem is that politicians are waiting for the public to demand climate action, but the public is waiting for politicians to take the lead and tell them it's urgent.) 

 

Dr. Silverman suggests that what's been missing in climate change problem-solving is "the need for engaging and motivating the public on this issue using a multi-dimensional [and, I would add, multi-media] publicity campaign." 

 

He's calling for a Climate Truth Campaign. "Despite all the efforts to communicate the urgency of global warming, this approach [a publicity campaign on the climate crisis] has never been tried" [his emphasis].

 "Advertising routinely sells the public on a number of unhealthy products (e.g., drinking soda, eating junk food), so perhaps it's not unreasonable to think that an advertising model could 'sell' a message about a healthy environment and sustainable future."

 

Give his essay a read. His idea is something that we can all contribute to and get going on, whether on/in local media or further from home.

We can't wait any longer for our elected officials to declare the climate change emergency. Many of them have only one aim, and that's to get re-elected. 

So let's declare the climate change emergency ourselves, in every possible media available to us. Let's do a GoFundMe®, a Kickstarter, an Indiegogo campaign, or just pass the hat at local events to raise funds.

 

And then, let's advertise it! 

 

Let's tell the world in, as Joe Silverman recommends, short, vivid, eye-catching, visual ways (even on radio!) that we're in a climate change emergency, and we all have to wake up, get out of the burning house, and start hosing it down together!