What's the Right Word for "Emergency"?

Holy flying freak out! The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide hit over 412 parts per million (ppm) this past week! We're still setting temperature records, especially in the Arctic. Despite fossil fuel CO2 emissions being flat over the last few years, CO2 concentration is still increasing — and at an accelerating rate. Sea level is rising at an accelerating rate. The oceans are heating at an accelerating rate. Unprecedented ocean acidification is increasing at an accelerating rate. And ocean de-oxygenation is on the increase, as well.

If you understand global warming and climate change, you'll understand how distressing all of this is. But if you don't understand it, what can I say to explain that this is an emergency — even though you're not bleeding or in pain? Yet.

Look at this. It's a fuzzy version of what my hubby just presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. Just note how all the graphs are on the upswing.

All of these data trends point to a planetary emergency ... but still, amongst the public (and even amongst the vast majority of scientists, it seems), there's no sense of panic or urgency. No sense of impending calamity or danger. No sense of crisis or emergency.

What's a gal who cares about the biosphere — and all the children, of all species — to do? What WORD is going to help people grasp the plight we are in? What metaphor will help people get that we're in a doomsday scenario?

Please, I'm begging for help here. Can we put our heads (and hearts) together globally and come up with the right words to say? The right metaphors and analogies? The right graphs and graphics? Can the advertising agencies of the world do some pro bono work in order to help us safeguard the future? Can the artists and musicians come up with ways to wake up the public? 

We are so close to the point of no return (if not already past it) that my plea is a desperate one. 

Can you help solve this problem? Or do you know someone who might be able to?

Greenhouse Gas Pollution — Our Greatest Enemy

Like many of you, I can still remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I can remember that I was at home, working hard to finish up a writing project before the deadline later that day. I can remember that the weather (in my part of the world) was soft and sunny. (Septembers used to be like that here.)

I can remember the phone call from my stepson, who said, "Do you have the TV on? Put the TV on" and hung up. I remember that I was alone, my husband away at a retreat (from which he came home the very next day after hearing one of the organizers say, "We should nuke 'em" — without even knowing who "'em" was).

I can also remember the growing sense of dismay and then horror as the American dogs of war were riled up against Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. Then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, insisted to the world that Iraq had WMDs: weapons of mass destruction. They didn't. I knew that. Lots of Canadians knew that. The Canadian prime minister knew that. How come Colin Powell didn't know that? (He sure knows it now, saying his speech to the UN about Iraq's supposed WMDs was the low point of his career.)

Anyway, I was reminded today in a TEDx presentation by Dan Miller (A Simple and Smart Way to Fix Climate Change) that one of the reasons we're not responding to the climate change emergency is that it's a threat without an enemy. (Is that why a majority of Americans believed — or more accurately, were led to believe — that it was Saddam who brought down the Twin Towers? Because they needed a face for the anger and the threat they were feeling?) 

The threats that our species responds to immediately, according to Miller, are those that have one or more "threat indicators" (Miller suggests envisioning a lion heading towards you on the savannah):

• visible (versus global climate change, which is still invisible to many of us, especially on nice days)
• have historical precedent (versus global climate change, which is unprecedented in human history)
• immediate (versus global climate change, which is drawn out over months, years, decades and centuries)
• direct personal impacts (versus global climate change, which has unpredictable and perhaps indirect impacts ... but hold onto your hats, folks)
• simple causality (versus the complex causes of global climate change)
• caused by an enemy (versus, gulp, the climate change emergency, which is caused by almost all of us)

Well, all of this is my way of introducing something I've been working on: the vilification of greenhouse gas pollution. Pollution is "the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects." Yup, too much CO2 in the atmosphere has harmful effects, making it a pollutant (despite its beneficial effects on plants at the right levels, meaning before global warming causes heat waves, droughts and floods that harm plants).

So what do you think? Does that carbon dioxide molecule need a mustache to be seen as an enemy we can fight together? Or is it scary enough just the way it is? ;-)

When Did So Many of Us Become So ... Um, Dumb?

Duh!

Still reeling from the dimwitted (not to mention progenycidal) approval of yet another fossil fuel production facility in my Canadian province -- at a time when we need to be shutting down fossil fuel production and heading rapidly to zero-carbon energy -- I stumbled upon a recent article that really demonstrates how governments can get away with this. It's because we're, um, well, dumb.

The article in question was published on a prominent business website, usually known for its sane coverage of the climate crisis (though, to be fair, they made a point of putting "This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board of So-and-So Company and its owners" at the end of the article).

What disturbed me most and made me question our intelligence in this North American culture of ours is that the author compares climate scientists to economists and climate change science to macroeconomics. Her dimwitted thesis is that because economists couldn't seem to model and predict what was going to happen with the economy (I can, by the way: without a revolution, the economy is going to keep making the rich richer), climate scientists can't predict what's going to happen with the climate.

C'mon. Really? You're comparing the dismal pseudo-science of economics with the laws of physics studied by climate scientists? Really? That's idiotic.
 
Then this author insults those of us who understand the climate change emergency by implying that "lukewarmists" are more rational than we so-called "alarmists" are (obviously forgetting that it's not alarmist to sound the alarm when something is alarming). "[Lukewarmists] say that warming is likely to be mild unless you use a model which assumes large positive feedback effects. Because climate scientists, like the macroeconomists, can't run experiments where they test one variable at a time, predictions of feedback effects involve a lot of theory and guesswork."

How can an educated-enough-to-write-for-a-fancy-business-website columnist write that and not laugh at the ludicrousness of it?

Why is this a ludicrous argument? Well, first, because the sentence structure implies that a computer model is the only thing keeping "mild" global warming from becoming hotter global warming.

It's also ludicrous because things are getting pretty scary all over the world already. For example, although fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions don't appear to have increased since 2014, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are increasing at a frighteningly accelerating rate.

And finally, it's ludicrous because we already have evidence that climate change models have been underestimating the impacts of global warming, not the other way around.

Besides, all the nations that attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and signed on to Agenda 21 agreed to the precautionary principle, which means we shouldn't fall prey to this asinine pretension called lukewarmism -- especially when we're already locked in to dangerously high global warming, with catastrophically dangerous heating just over the horizon.

So are we simply dumb -- too dumb to think critically about the climate crisis and about articles like the one I read? Perhaps all the toxics in our air, land and water have damaged many of us neurologically and intellectually to the point where we're no longer capable of critical thought. 

But I suspect the "powers that be" are happy to have dulled us and numbed us and dumbed us down so we'll be like those frogs in the proverbial pot of water, never complaining about the intensifying heat -- allowing them and their toadies (including that writer) to continue battering life on Earth with their evil, moronic greed.

From Lima to Paris, or Bust!

"While the difficult takes time,

the impossible just takes a little longer." 

- Art E. Berg

I just noticed that in April (2014), CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere hit 401.33 ppm. The dreaded 400 ppm upper limit has been breached. Ouch. Angst.

Quite by coincidence, for the last few days I've been trying to figure out if I'm up for one last big push, between now and the next climate change conference (COP20) in Lima, Peru in December of this year. You know, get all the governments in the world to agree to agree in Paris at the COP21 in 2015. And then maybe pack it in. Start working on local issues again. Or take a break? I dunno. I do know in my head it's probably already too late for an effective global agreement, but my heart keeps believing in miracles.

1. What if, in the next few months, we could convince scientists to state categorically that we're beyond dangerous interference with the climate system?
2. What if, in the next few months, we could convince NGOs everywhere to urge governments to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels and let the "invisible hand" of their precious "free" market (ahem, it's not a free(dom-from-government-interference) market if governments are pouring $2 trillion of fossil fuel subsidies into it annually, now is it?) fix the carbon problem?
3. What if, in the next few months, we could achieve the impossible and get governments to commit, by law, to a zero-carbon economy and a climate-safe future?

I asked a friend for advice (and moral support, really, for making this commitment to an 18-month-long campaign), and he did an excellent job of reminding me why I do this work to begin with. And then he gave me a virtual kick in the pants. He asked:

If you lead (in life) with your heart, it's going to get broken along the way. Should you then stop leading with your heart? 

If the end hasn't arrived yet, why stop trying until it does? 

If you love the children (and parents) of all species, shouldn't you - and don't you - want to keep trying to help them?

"It's hard to try," he continued, "but I think for people of certain character, it's just as hard (or harder?) not to try and not to act."

This friend shared with me a line he uses when others are defeatist: "Regardless of odds or potential outcomes, we ALL have the power and moral responsibility to ACT. And if we take the choice to see and face the true, existential wickedness of the predicament, there will at least be possibilities.... What matters (if anything does) is how we choose to live, how we choose to act / react, regardless of whether something's going to work out or not." 

Hey, he reminded me, we're all gonna die. So I might as well die (or in my case, get old ... I'm not ready to die yet) trying.

With all that encouragement (and butt-kicking), how can I not commit myself to campaigning for a strong agreement in Lima to agree strongly in Paris?

I hope you'll join me on this virtual carpet ride from Lima to Paris, or bust! (And never has "or bust" been so dire, or so literal, since it means "... or die trying.")

I'm not alone! Check out
http://abibimman.blogspot.ca/2013/12/build-climate-change-momentum-from-lima.html

Can't Win for Losing — Why Do We Ignore the Principles of Sustainable Development at Our Peril?

from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

As reported by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (June 2010, No growth in total global CO2 emissions in 2009), the economic downturn in late 2008 and 2009 meant that the world's developed countries (OECD nations and Russia) spewed 7 percent less carbon dioxide than the year before — a dramatic decrease. This is the first time since the 1992 recession that global CO2 emissions have not increased. Good news, right? (Oh yeah!) "This would have been the largest drop in more than 40 years because the global recession froze economic activity and slashed energy use around the world."


However, the CO2 emissions of China and India increased 9 percent and 6 percent respectively — strong increases. 


The result? No growth in CO2 emissions last year, but no decrease either. China and India completely nullified the drop in emissions in the developed nations. Global emissions of carbon dioxide have therefore remained constant. (And if we want to avert global climate catastrophe, we have to get our carbon emissions down to virtually zero. Obviously, our math sucks.)


This also means, obviously, that we have done a very poor job of teaching about and insisting on sustainable development and its principles as a discussion, planning and decision-making framework. Sustainable development, which was introduced to the world at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, has been around for almost 20 years — and still we have developing nations developing in ways that aren't sustainable ... while we in the developed parts of the world continue with our unsustainable growth. 


Ah, it's all nuts. Just nuts. Why can't we all grow up and learn to get along ... like Wombat says?

130 Days to Copenhagen, and the news just keeps getting worse and worse

Here is an excerpt from

A FOREWARNED FUTURE

by Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service

25 July 2009

• Thousands of people pour out of Manhattan onto the waiting armada of ships. The "October Surprise" has hit with a vengeance -- a massive hurricane has flooded and paralyzed New York City.
• 
  
• Dozens of world leaders watch the disaster unfold beneath them as they are airlifted from the United Nations General Assembly that had just convened on the banks of the now overflowing Hudson River.




• "I guess the problem was that we counted on this not happening, at least not yet. Most scientists assumed the worst effects of climate change would occur later in the century," the president of the United States writes in his diary. "The culmination of disasters, needed cleanups, permafrost melting, lower agricultural yields, growing health problems and the like is taking a terrible toll, much greater than we anticipated 20 years ago."




• This presidential diary entry is, of course, fiction. But its inclusion in the 120-page November 2008 report by the National Intelligence Council, a Washington security think-tank, illustrates a grim and troubling reality that is causing worry in such diverse places as the Pentagon and British Defence Ministry, major aid agencies, the United Nations and, of course, among environmentalists.




• Real life 21st century threats due to climate change — massive flooding, droughts, population explosions, massive migrations of uprooted and desperate people facing life-threatening food and water shortages — have made "climate security" a buzzword that now extends far beyond the war rooms of western capitals.




• The trepidation is very real that this will be the driver for war on a scale we have yet to see on this planet, bringing tension to stable parts of the world, making the tense places worse.




• Don't dismiss this as military-driven paranoia: the alarm is being sounded by non-military actors — United Nations agencies, leading philanthropists, the World Bank, as well as major international aid agencies that have always strived to maintain a healthy distance from the world's military establishment.

Remember, folks. The opposite of fear is complacency. There is nothing wrong with fearmongering when there is something to fear. Monger away! The sky is falling, or at least, filling up with carbon. And of every five little carbon dioxide molecules you release, one of them will still be up there in 1000 years, continuing to heat the planet beyond the capability of life to survive. 

Unless, of course, we take action to demand action, as Greenpeace is suggesting in their new You-Turn-the-Earth campaign. If you haven't written to the leader of your country lately, please take 7 minutes and do it now. 

For the Earth, the Future, and the Children of All Species.

p.s. See the rest of the article here.