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

Climate Highs and Climate Lows Leading Up to UN Climate Summit and the People's Climate March

No, I'm not talking about the temperature today. The climate highs and lows I'm talking about are all the things people are doing or not doing (or not doing right) for the huge climate convergence coming up in New York City in three, count 'em, three weeks. That's three as in 3, as in one less than 4, as in only one more than 2. As in, before we know it. As in, holy sh!t!

You see, this mobilization can't be just about numbers of marchers at the People's Climate March. It can't be just about calling for urgent action. Time is so short (methane hydrate plumes, anyone?), it has GOT to be about very specifically demanding the very specific urgent actions that we urgently need!

So with that urgency as our backdrop this week, let's have a look at what's been happening.

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People are writing -- or finding -- anthems for the climate change movement. A friend of ours is working on one:

Climate safety is a human right
We're not going to get it
Without a fight
We need to unite
Take action - right now
Here's how ....

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That's a good thing. On the other hand, Avaaz, with its self-confessed gazillions of members, just sent round a message asking people to sign a petition that's, well, wrong (see if you can spot the wrong bit):

Right, the "2 degrees" bit is wrong. Two degrees is not "the safe level," it's global suicide. For years, the nations most vulnerable to climate chaos have been asking for a global temperature increase limit of no more than 1.5ºC -- some even 1ºC (recognizing what's already happening at +0.8ºC). 

Here's the problem with 2ºC. Because most of us haven't grasped that (due to the ocean heat lag doubling whatever temperature increase we end up with) 2ºC is the eventual result of only 1ºC of warming. So if we "aim" for 2ºC, we'll end up with 4ºC (which is certainly unsurvivable, given that all crops in all regions will go into decline at or before 1.5ºC of warming). Remember, this isn't temperature increase as in "tonight's low will be 70ºF and the high tomorrow will be 78ºF" -- this is temperature increase as in "98.6ºF is healthy, but you are pretty much dead at 106.6ºF."

So Avaaz has done the world a(nother) disservice by reinforcing the idea that +2ºC is safe. (Indeed, the conspiracy theorist in me figures it's just more proof that Avaaz is indeed part of the nonprofit industrial complex that supports the corporate agenda whenever that support is called upon.)

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From above: "... by rapidly shifting our societies and economies to be powered by 100% clean energy." I don't like Avaaz's wording there (do I smell a shill for "clean coal"?), but this is, properly defined, the goal we all need to be aiming for. Zero-carbon, clean, perpetual energy by 2050. Due to the length of time that 20-40% of our emitted carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere radiating heat (up to a thousand years!), we've got to achieve zero carbon emissions by mid-century or sooner in order to stabilize and drop the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. The Burning Age is over ... we have to start picturing a world of no fuels (no biofuels, no biomass burning; burning = carbon emissions).

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Remember I mentioned plumes of methane up top? The discovery / witnessing of these plumes in the Arctic and along the Atlantic Coast of North America should be striking sheer terror into the hearts of every thinking adult human being on the planet. These plumes are evidence that the seabed's normally frozen methane hydrate deposits are destabilizing. In other words, they're thawing, for heaven's sake! This is the methane timebomb we've been warning about for the last several years. We are freaking well running out of time.

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Speaking of bombs .... 

I keep running across research and lay articles in which scientists "conclude," not that we'd better get our butts in gear to safeguard the future, but that more monitoring is necessary. From an article entitled Vast Methane Plumes Spotted Bubbling Up from the Arctic Ocean Floor:

"Does this mean that the disaster scenario is now developing? Unfortunately, at the moment, that's an unknown. The SWERUS-C3 team will be continuing to monitor the location as long as the weather holds out for their expedition. However, as the Stockholm University press release stated: "These early glimpses of what may be in store for a warming Arctic Ocean could help scientists project the future releases of the strong greenhouse gas methane from the Arctic Ocean."

What is it with scientists and other researchers constantly and continually just calling for "more research" and more understanding? Why can't we just understand the research results we have now and get concerned enough to demand some urgent action from our governments?

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Well, I started with a climate high, and I'd like to end with a high. But I'm drawing a blank. We're meeting some wonderful new climate change activists, but for every new one, two or three climate "cynics" pop up. If you've got any good climate change news to share, please let me know.

Cutting Down and Burning Up Our Future

A fairly new neighbour (one I've never met) had a truckload of giant logs delivered this past week. They weren't that long (maybe 20 feet, max) but they were huge in diameter. When I went past on my bike, a small crane was lifting them off the truck into his side yard. I thought, "Oh, cool, he's going to bring in a portable sawmill and build himself a little place."

Fast forward a day or two. As I ride past again, I glance over and see ... a pile of firewood. He's taken enormous logs, which obviously came from enormous trees, and turned them into firewood. He's taken immense logs that would have made stunning lumber, and turned them into firewood. Besides being amazed at how quickly he was rendering the massive logs into small chunks, I was not impressed.

I know, I know, it's none of my business on a day-to-day, neighbourhood level. But it's representative of what we're doing in the world, to the world. We've reached a time when the only fossil fuels we should be burning are those that are creating the energy to usher us into the Age of Zero-Carbon Perpetual (non-burning renewable) Energy (the Burning Age is over). Instead we're hunting for ever-increasing sources of fossil energy (tar sands, shale gas ... fracking? possibly the stupidest thing any human being has ever thought up) and still increasing our burning of fossil fuels every year. 

So our culture is like my neighbour who has taken fabulous logs (have I mentioned how big they were?) and, instead of "sinking" their stored carbon by building a structure out of them, is going to burn them for a bit of warmth, releasing their carbon into the atmosphere just when we need less carbon in the atmosphere. I just don't get it.

Here's another example. A friend who's had a tragic death in her family circle wrote to say that she's doing okay (just okay), but that she woke up the morning after the funeral to city workers cutting down a "100% healthy, beautiful, spectacular black walnut" on her street. (I've been there, and the trees in her neighbourhood are truly magnificent.) Then they cut the tree next to it. She did all she could think of to stop them, but to no avail. "Life is hard," she said, "when so few respect life outside of human life." 

See what I mean? In this age of wacky weather that's delivering record heat waves and droughts, why would a city decide to cut down trees that provide shade, lowering the temperature and making city life more livable? When we should be planting trees like crazy, my friend's street is now more vulnerable to extreme heat. 

Alas. Are these simply signs that as a culture, we're still ecologically illiterate (with no understanding of the short- and long-term carbon cycles, and no memory of transpiration from our study of trees and the water cycle in school)? Or perhaps we're just unable to see how we're shooting ourselves in the foot because we've been convinced that our ignorance is not a gun in our hands.

Transformation Starts Here

I have to laugh every time I receive the "green" newsletter from my province's ministry of education. After, what? 50 years of environmental education, we still pretend that what we've been doing all along is just fine, thank you very much — despite all evidence to the contrary.

So when the newsletter summed up an article written by a school district superintendent by saying "His article suggested that, in the end, it will be lifestyle changes made by individuals that determine whether we achieve a sustainable society," I thought to myself, wow, these ministry of education people just don't get it.

Do you see what's missing? Any sort of critique of the system! There's no mention that our economics will have to change. That our legal system will have to ensure and enshrine economic and legal rights for future generations. That our governments will have to legislate lifestyle "choices" before enough of us will adopt them to safeguard the future. That our present course doesn't just need a tweak. That Big Money might have some role to play here.

We need a revolution — a complete transformation of how people get the energy for all the things they need (and don't need). The end of the Burning Age! No more fuels! But people in very high and influential places keep talking about lifestyle changes, which won't even be viable without a total shift in our economic system.

Please. No more platitudes. No more "other people's lifestyles must change" attitudes.

The day that some bigwhig says, "Let's scrap it all and start fresh!" will be a refreshing — and promising — chance at a future for our children.

Aaaargh, folks, please! Say something revolutionary. Something transformative. Something that shows you actually give a damn about the future — and understand something about the climate change emergency that's threatening us.