Two Months to Copenhagen - The Compassion of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience

Yesterday, I wrote that I wouldn't know how to get arrested even if I wanted to. Tonight, I've been invited to get arrested!

Seriously, I just read about The Yes Men's Beyond Talk, which invites people who are sick of hearing about climate change to "do something" about it. And that something is

NON-VIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
I pledge to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and risk arrest in order to get our leaders to make the right climate-change choices.

I get to send in my email address, then await further instructions. (Something is brewing for November 30, one week before the Copenhagen climate talks begin.)

So now, I start to get weak in the knees. Do I really want to risk getting arrested? Phew, what a relief, there's another choice:

LEGAL PROTEST

I cannot risk arrest, but I will join others in acts of legal protest in order to get our leaders to make the right climate-change choices. I also pledge to demonstrate my support for those who risk arrest to halt climate change.

Again, all I have to do is send in my email address and await further instructions. (Starting to feel like I'm in a spy movie here.)

So, what's my decision? (A third choice is much less dramatic: donating money to the cause, to pay bail for someone who does get arrested.) Well, I refuse to burn fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gas emissions just to travel somewhere else to get arrested. But I'm not sure the one police officer on duty in my small community would hear about my civil disobedience in time, much less care about it.

I could just pledge my name but then not risk arrest, a strategy that would lack integrity.

So, I'm going to sleep on it. Meantime, watch to see what the Yes Men have up their sleeves.

110 Days - Ideas for Impassioning the Climate Talks at Copenhagen with Compassion

On 11 August 2009, Grist ran Climate disobedience: Is a new "Seattle" in the making? by Mark Engler.

It's an interesting article that's got me thinking about civil compassion (rather than civil disobedience). You know, protest-y type events, but where people simply teach and preach about love for our children and grandchildren and compassion for the rest of life on Earth.

So, very quietly (don't want word to get out or photo albums could be slammed shut all over the world), here's my best (so far) idea for the protests and "civil compassion" at Copenhagen in December.

Let's get photographs of all the children of all the climate negotiators and all the world's leaders (I already have photos of the children of Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper) and anyone who will be participating at the talks.

I know that my heart goes out to all the children of the world, but I doubt that hard-nosed politicians and bureaucrats will so easily have their deep inner sources of compassion tapped into. But seeing the faces of their own children and grandchildren hung on walls, flashed on screens and stuck on T-shirts might help them realize who they are negotiating for - or whose future they are negotiating away.

Sure, it's a tame idea. But tame isn't necessarily lame. And since we have to do absolutely everything we can, let's not throw out any ideas that stand a chance of moving even one heart - that one heart could turn out to be our greatest climate hero.

Writing the names of the children and their home country on all the photos will help people match hard-hearted (or is it cowardly?) negotiators with the real-life faces of the young people whose future they are willing to trade away.

Thoughts? Is it workable? Any other ideas for getting some compassionate action into the Copenhagen climate talks in December?