When You're a Climate Change Activist, Everything Looks Like ...

My 20-something niece is visiting from out east. It's fun spending time together. It's also incredible (as in, unbelievable) how many things she can (and does) do with her computer and her cell phone. 

One thing that she's shared with me is the phenomenon of (young) people watching other (young) people play video games while filming themselves making comments on those video games. For us old fogies, it would be like watching a film of a film critic watching a film while critiquing it out loud. I think. It's called Let's Play gameplay commentary. I guess my generation just watched sports on TV with announcers and "sportscasters" and Don Cherry (if you grew up in Canada).

My niece has a whale of a time, laughing right out loud (loudly!) while watching this one particular online, um, player (is that the term?). She's shown me a couple of his vids -- the ones where he's not playing a video game (I was never one for watching "sports" on TV) but talking with his fans (over a million of them!). 

No, wait, the particular fellow I'm talking about has (at present) ... wait for it ... 14.8 million subscribers. It only took Franklin D. Roosevelt 27,313,945 votes to be elected president of the United States. This guy could have a future in politics.

But all I keep thinking is: "This "Youtube personality" could be saving the world! This gameboy could be instructing all his fans on what to do about the climate change emergency! This guy could be a world leading climate change activist!" Yup, that's what is running through my head when I watch. (Sorry to my niece.)

It happens a lot. There's an expression that when you're a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. (Others might say "If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.") So yup, I'm a climate change activist, and everything to me is either a possible activist tool or a waste of a potential activist's time, money or energy. 

It's certainly somewhat of a curse, but it can be a party trick, too, of course. "Let's see how long it takes Julie to work climate change into a discussion of x, y or z." I can sometimes go as long as 20 minutes before making the connection. ;-)

Something similar happens when I find myself watching TV. We don't have a TV at home, so when I'm staying at a hotel, for example, I watch some television to see what the vast majority of North Americans are doing with their evenings ("On average, American adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day").

I was at a conference the other day and relaxed afterwards in my hotel room by watching a TV show about a couple looking to buy an island off the coast of Nicaragua. And it happened again. I started shouting at the TV: "Are you nuts? What about sea level rise? Look at the erosion that's happening already!" 

The realtor even pointed out the coastal erosion to these "investors" (he must have heard me yelling) but they bought it anyway. What a lost opportunity for that show to teach about the impacts of climate change, especially in the tropics. Nicaragua is in the top four countries most affected by climate change in the last two decades. (Who knew?)

Like I said, when you're a climate change activist, everything looks like an opportunity to teach (and learn) about the climate change emergency.

A Fun Way to Spend a Weekend (Talking about Climate Change)

We have a wonderful house guest here this weekend, and oh, what fun we're having. If you can call yakking about climate change till all hours of the day and night "fun"! ;-)

Our guest is Earth Doctor Reese Halter, one of the most dedicated environmental activists we've ever met. We're doing some filming at different sites around our island community to help support his Save Nature Now: Bees, Trees and Seas campaign to mobilize the Millennials and TBDs (apparently the younger generation doesn't have a name yet). 

We've filmed on the beach and on the bluff, at a garden and in a forest, and at a marina with orca whales in the backdrop.

Dr. Halter, who considers himself a specialist in Earth's life support systems, is a hero in our eyes. He has dedicated his whole life to helping people around the world wake up to what we're doing to the biosphere. Nature is collapsing all around us. Climate instability is impacting every region on Earth. 

Reese does TV interviews, radio shows and daily podcasts. He attends protests and demonstrations. He teaches and lectures. He speaks on behalf of the orcas, the bees and the trees -- and man, does he ever know his stuff! He fights poachers and plastics. His "clients" are Nature and all the animals (including the human ones). 

What Reese wants to do is let young people know that there are some wonderful technological solutions in store. But they have to get to work guarding the oceans and forests, and saying no to oil, gas, coal, fracking and pipelines. The science is irrefutably precise. But there's no time to lose. We've run out of time. Our planet's ecosystems -- the oceans and forests that support us -- are under siege. 

Reese is going to confirm for young people something they've perhaps been inarticulately feeling -- that they're enslaved by fossil fuels corporations and the big banks. They (indeed, we) are no longer free. To win back their freedom, they'll have to join the fight to Save Nature Now!

Earth Doctor Reese Halter is someone who exemplifies that old adage by Chief Dan George:

If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys.

Then with his outgoing and enthusiastic nature, Reese combines the Chief Dan George quote with this more positive outlook of Senegalese forestry engineer, Baba Dioum:

In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

I hope you'll spend some time learning about Reese Halter and letting him teach you. For the sake of the children's love for all animals, of all species, and for all the collapsing ecosystems ... the bees, the trees and the seas.

Faith, Hope and ... Activism?

Out of the blue the other day, a friend told me he'd looked up the original Greek words for the three theological virtues of "faith, hope and charity" to see what they originally meant or referred to. 

Faith, yup, no surprises there, from what I recall of our conversation. Hope had more of a sense of promise, like when we reassure worried children that there are no monsters under the bed -- or that there are many adults in the world working to take care of Nature.

But charity, that one surprised me. As you know, "charity" and "love" are often used interchangeably in the Biblical expression, "... but the greatest of these is charity / love." So let's define it first.

In the original, the form of love referred to was agape (αγάπε) (in Latin caritas, which led to the English "charity"). Agape is a selfless, sacrificial love ("as distinct from erotic love or emotional affection," according to my dictionary), not easy to translate into English. Someone named Michael on a Catholic listserv explained it this way: 

"Picture someone we've treated shamefully, and have beaten to within an inch of his life, jumping on a mine one of us has triggered, while pushing us out of the way, in order to save our lives, and you should have the idea. This is a love we could never hope to produce on our own, and it was seeing this love in action that caused Roman pagans to leave their comfortable, and safe, seats in the Flavian Amphitheater to join the Christians on the floor below so that they could die with them."

Mother Teresa certainly understood agape. "Love has to be put into action," she was known to say. So charity is activism and to love and be charitable is to serve, to act on behalf of good causes. 

The next time a couple uses that passage from 1 Corinthians in their wedding ceremony, you might wonder what kind of activism they will be putting their agape love towards and sharing in together. Let's hope it's climate change activism, because we need as many souls as we can get to win this one for all the children.

*******

Just want to share a bit of an epiphany I had this past week. Want to weigh in?

I've always thought that people didn't want to talk about climate change because it makes them feel bad. That's definitely part of it, but I think there's a middle step I've been missing. Because (some/many/most?) people (in North America) see climate change as negative, they deliberately push it out of their realities and make a choice not to read or watch videos about it. 

Then, because these people haven't spent the time and emotional energy to learn about it, they don't have anything to say about it. (Not that that ever stops the deniers / skeptics / ignorers / delayers!) These people are then uncomfortable participating in a discussion about it, and that discomfort tends to shut the conversation down.

Does this make sense?

You Don't Have to Be a Denier to Be in Denial

We're taking our time watching a difficult and eye-opening movie called Labyrinth of Lies. Based on the life of Fritz Bauer, Frankfurt's attorney general, and three prosecutors who were instrumental in bringing Auschwitz Nazis to trial in 1963, this film is a story that exposes the conspiracy of prominent German institutions and government branches to cover up the crimes of Nazis during World War II. 

I had no idea that many, many Germans in the post-war era didn't acknowledge, accept or even know about the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps during the war. (I knew about Ernst Zündel and his Holocaust denial but didn't realize he'd immigrated to Canada in 1958 from a zeitgeist of denial in Germany.) After the camps were liberated by the Allies (April 1945), "German civilians [were] forced by American troops to bear witness to Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald concentration camp, mere miles from their own homes." (See Forgotten Alfred Hitchcock Holocaust Documentary Gets New Life.)

When Auschwitz and several other camps, like Bergen-Belsen, were liberated, the British army sent along a film unit. Under the aegis of Sidney Bernstein, and with the help of supervising director Alfred Hitchcock, the grisly and shocking footage was meant for a documentary called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. However, as the war came to a close, the governments that had once supported exposing German crimes had a new interest in reconciliation. So plans for the film were scrapped, and most of the footage was archived at Britain’s Imperial War Museum until the 1980s.

That footage is now included in a new documentary, Night Will Fall, which "tells the story of how the footage came to be, and what happened to it."

Margaret Bourke-White, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

In an Independent article (Germany finally pays tribute to first Nazi hunter Fritz Bauer), I learned that "only six of the [22] accused ["Nazi SS henchmen"] were given life sentences. Twelve others were given terms of up to 14 years. The trials nevertheless obliged a reluctant German public to face up to the horrors of the Holocaust and accept that the perpetrators lived in their midst." The article says that "surviving film footage reveals how controversial the trial was. Inside the court the police saluted the accused as former 'comrades.'"

I'll bet you can see where I'm going to go with this. I probably don't even have to say it. The terrifying metaphor revealed itself as we watched Labyrinth of Lies. Many German people weren't deniers -- but they were certainly in denial. Their ignorance. Their apathy. Their disbelief. (Some of the Germans who did see the footage believed it was propaganda staged by the Americans.) Their hubris. The fact that many were still benefiting from their Nazi connections. Their society-wide unwillingness to look at what had happened, to see that "many Third Reich values were still admired," to feel shame and deep remorse, to take some responsibility. (There's a scene in the movie where the stenographer taking down witnesses' testimony runs from the room and breaks down in sobs. No longer in denial, her character is becoming someone who helps in the fight to bring justice.)

I don't know what I would have done if I had -- by luck and timing of birth -- been there. I'm not saying I'm better than any one of those German civilians. But I'm alive today, and I'm not going to let the climate chaos holocaust carry on without vociferously protesting it. And why wouldn't I protest it? There is no SS threatening to track me down and lock me up because I oppose the globalized Western economy's biosphere-devastating, life-murdering business-as-usual fossil fuel status quo. 

I can go about my daily life and speak up about the climate change crisis online or in person, with family, friends, neighbours, colleagues and strangers. I can keep my job and send faxes and emails about emergency climate change mitigation to my elected representatives and leaders. I can live free of fear in my country and attend protests, make presentations and give workshops about climate justice. (Confession: I can't do all these things and keep my house tidy. So I've chosen life over tidiness.)

Fritz Bauer received death threats nearly every day once he began his campaign to see justice done (he was responsible for the capture of Adolf Eichmann). What's keeping you from speaking up on behalf of those most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change impacts ... on behalf of all those who are already losing their lives and their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes and entire homelands? 

Our very own "Global Reich" -- fossil fuel companies, the big money that bankrolls them and the governments sitting comfortably in their pockets -- is killing about 5 million people per year, and that number is rising as 2016 continues to knock out temperature records and see record CO2 levels. We see increasing evidence everywhere we look. So where is our outrage? 

Waking People Up

It's Earth Day, and I'll admit that after 20 years or so of being a big fan (and an events coordinator wherever I was living), I'm miffed with the direction Earth Day has taken, in Canada at least. (Their merchandiser is now called "Eco Bling." Is there something wrong with that, or is it just me?!)

Happy Earth Day, nevertheless. I'm staying with a friend this weekend, and last night we were talking about people needing to be spoonfed. "If you wake people up," my friend said, "you'd better have breakfast prepared for them."

Okay, okay, I'll admit that Diana is younger, more optimistic and obviously much kinder than I am. Because my reaction was, "Wait a minute. People have been making their own breakfasts since they were 5 years old, pouring cereal and milk into a bowl so they could watch Saturday morning cartoons on TV without waking up their parents. Why do we have to spoonfeed them solutions to the global warming crisis when there's a whole cupboard full of solutions available to them?" (It was late after an Earth Day festival so maybe I wasn't quite that eloquent or coherent. :-)

Diana makes a good point, however, and here's where I struggle. Most (most? the vast majority of) people do not spend their every waking hour feeling concern for the human race, Earth's biosphere, or all the other species we're taking down with us. Indeed, I would bet that most people don't even spend a minute a day thinking about these issues. So if we try to "wake them up" without having the smell of freshly brewed coffee (or whatever ... I don't drink the stuff) wafting into their bedrooms, they will simply roll over, pull the covers over their heads, and go back to sleep.

But climate change activists are tired, too! We'd like to be able to sleep in sometimes, too (and wake up from the nightmare), without always having to get up first to make the breakfast. Why can't our governments make the damn breakfast? Why can't fossil fuel companies quit stealing all the food from our cereal cupboard? Why can't people lay out their own breakfasts before going to bed the night before? Why must this be so damn hard, when the solutions are yummy and nutritious for everyone but those heavily invested in fossil fuels — though extremely healthy for their children and grandchildren!

Well, I've just made myself hungry for breakfast, so will leave you with this thought for Earth Day. If we don't make the solutions look, smell and taste incredibly delicious (and cheap and available), I guess it doesn't make sense to wake people up. They'll just get cranky with us! So, into the kitchen with us, fellow climate change activists. Let's get cooking together.

Happy Earth Day, everyone.

Time for True Confessions

Today, by admitting my true confession to the world, I am going to break a recently formed bad habit and get on with saving the world.

BACKGROUND (also known as EXCUSES)

I don't remember ever being read to as a child. No memories of that whatsoever. Once I learned to read, I enjoyed reading (and am currently reading one of my childhood favourites to my own students) and read a lot. But not often fiction. It wasn't until I hit midlife that I realized how much I crave story and "plot" in my life.

Several years ago, once the US illegally invaded Iraq, my husband and I decided to stop watching television. We didn't want that violence and insanity in our home every evening. (Plus it hadn't helped that I shushed him once during a live show. Ooops! Humans before screens, I said to myself. ) So about once a week we'd snuggle up with a good movie (if there's a gun on the cover, we won't rent it). Once we got laptop computers, we'd snuggle up with a laptop and watch a DVD. Without TV every night, that's when our activism really took off, of course. (Winters are long and dreary here.)

After the fiasco called the Copenhagen climate change negotiations (you'll recall that this blog started as a countdown to the oxymoronically named "Hopenhagen" talks), I become quite depressed. Did I already mention that winters are drearier here than in Copenhagen? Plus I'd broken my ankle the previous summer and tendonitis was keeping me inactive. I, like many climate change activists, found myself at a loss. We'd been told (just like millions of people around the world who asked for peace before the US invasion of Iraq were told), "You don't matter. What you do, think, want or care about doesn't matter."

THE CRUX

I started watching TV on my laptop. There, I've said it. I discovered that I could watch some interesting shows (no, not documentaries) for free online. For over a year now, several times a week — when tired after work, when depressed at the state of the world, when too lazy to figure out what to do next — I've turned on my computer and watched an online TV drama.

It almost makes me gag to admit it. But I have to. Keeping a bad habit a secret only makes it fester. Not to mention that my hubby became angry with me (he used the word "disappointed" but my reaction was the same) the other day for not having completed the updates to his website that I'd promised to do in February. Now, I can give you a huge list of all the other things I've completed since then (indeed, in my own defence, I created that list!), but I know in my heart of hearts that I've wasted many, many hours watching TV shows on my laptop when I could have been helping to save the world.

LESSONS LEARNED

Quite often over the past year, I've told myself, "This is research." Watching TV was helping me figure out why so few people are engaged in the struggle to safeguard their children's future from the climate crisis. So here's what I've learned:

1. TV can truly be addictive. It's easy, it's passive, it's mindless, mind-numbing and mind-dumbing. You are convinced that you're doing something while you're actually doing nothing, not living your life at all. What a waste of time! ("Luckily" I grew up in a family where the TV was never on before supper. Daytime television ... now there's a serious addiction!)
2. Human beings need story. The indigenous peoples know that this is how we learn best. Plus, the TV/computer screen takes the place of the glow of ancient campfires. But watching someone else's pretend two-dimensional life night after night is not learningful — it's deadening.
3. Ignorance is bliss. Watching TV can convince you that environmental problems don't exist. (Although there's this one family drama where they believe in global warming. Wow.)

DENOUEMENT

So, I'm back. I'm not saying I'll never watch another episode of ... well, never mind. But I'm back on track with my activism, over the depression (it's springtime anyway!) and pretty clear again about what I can do to contribute to the climate change campaign.

And if you need a hand getting over a screen addiction yourself, just drop me a line. I've got lots of climate change work you could be doing, too! Or maybe you could just sacrifice one of your least favourite shows per week, and donate that time to some climate change activism. Seriously, let me know and we'll figure something out for you.

You're a Firework — A Compassion Tune-up

We don't normally use the term "firework" in the singular. And I'm an old fart, so I don't follow the popular music scene much anymore. But a young friend played this song for me yesterday and it has really hit home for me. Apparently Katy Perry wrote the song herself — quite a catchy number — and made an outstanding music video with it, one that has probably saved many, many lives of young people who were feeling like cast-offs.

I took the song — and the visual of the power of one in the video — differently. I was feeling quite low yesterday, like nothing that we do matters anymore. It was a deep, visceral sense of sadness. Our young friend's mom had pointed out that the world's giant scale is weighed quite down on one side by the heaviness (and effectiveness) of those promoting big banks and fossil fuel use and continued consumerism and environmental destruction and erosion of programs that promote social equity. There's just not enough weight on the other side of the scale — not enough people, not enough voices to outweigh (or even to counterbalance) the destructive side.

This video not only reminded me that there are lots of people with their own very real personal pain who aren't yet ready to fight a bigger fight. It also reminded me that I have lots of power inside — and when it's joined with the power of others, we can create synergies. We need to encourage others to take on some of the climate change work so that our voices gain weight, and start getting some movement in the balance. So, please, if you can, take 10 minutes each week to learn one thing about the climate change emergency, or to write one letter to a newspaper, or to talk with one friend or family member about what you know and care about. Let's start putting everyone's individual "firework" together with everyone else's to create fireworks!

Climate Change Activism, Love and Loneliness

So, here's to a happier 2011 for all those who have been or will be impacted by climate change. Wait, that's everybody! Well then, happier new year, everyone! I'm longing for a year of good news on the climate front outweighing bad news — a new kind of tipping point. ;-)

I have a story to share. The advice columnist for my favourite environmental news listserve gave (in my humble but opinionated opinion) bullshit advice to a woman whose hubby isn't on the same green path. This woman says she "woke up to the destructive nature" of their "consumer lifestyle" five years ago and is "wrestling" with their "vastly different levels of commitment to changing" this lifestyle. She goes on:

I'm tired of compromising my values. He's tired of compromising the conveniences and luxuries he feels he's "earned" at his corporate job. I feel trapped; he feels judged. Do we keep compromising, or do we divorce and find more like-minded mates?

Along the lines of "listen to him more, don't judge him, take him on a green holiday, get massages at an eco-friendly day spa" (somehow, in my books, "spa" and "eco-friendly" seem oxymoronic if not just downright decadent in an age when so many people still don't have clean drinking water), I thought the advice was more an advertisement for green consumerism.

To shorten a long story ... I submitted a comment that suggested she dump him, because life's too short to spend it with a partner who has terminal entitlement issues. Okay, I'll just give you the whole thing:

I say dump him (and if the roles were reversed, I'd say dump her). He's coming from a world view of entitlement, in a world where billions of people don't have food and water security! Dump him now, and find a like-minded and, more importantly, like-hearted mate you can share your commitment with. He feels judged? He should feel judged! His lifestyle is progenycidal. If you were to have children with this man, his lifestyle would be killing your kids!

As someone who has found a soulmate who spends practically every waking moment fighting the good fight against the climate change emergency, I can tell you now that if your hubby doesn't embrace the notion of sacrificing now for the sake of the future of all children, you will not be happy in your marriage. Get out now, before the future becomes a thing of the past!

(Sorry to disagree with you, [Advice Column Person], but life is short — getting shorter all the time — and simply greening her consumption to try to bring her hubby around will not allow [this woman] to gift her time, energy and money to creating the best possible future for all life on Earth.)

Now, here's the funny part. In a follow-up comment, a troll (someone who trawls the internet looking for opportunities to interject with stupid / irrelevant / untrue / mean-spirited remarks) called this "environmental fascism." Hmm, now there's a person who hasn't learned their history. (Or were they simply suggesting that I'm intolerant of people who are killing the future?)

But the follow-up comment to that follow-up comment is what I want to share.

@GreenHearted, you risk finding yourself stuck in a narrow social isthmus.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry! Of course I'm stuck in a narrow social isthmus. I know too much about what we're doing to the planet to be able to hang out with people who don't give a flying leap. Let me tell you, if a wide social network is your goal in life, do NOT study the causes and impacts of global warming and climate change. You become a bore at parties and who the hell wants to invite climate change-fighting vegans to dinner? (We're actually fascinating people and excellent conversationalists, but people don't seem to enjoy our favourite topics of discussion. ;-)

So sure, sometimes we feel a little lonely on a Saturday night, but know this. The rest of the time, we are both eternally grateful that we've found a kindred spirit in each other, that we share our deepest values and concerns, that we work together on behalf of future generations, of all species.

Having a soul mate and a few wonderful friends who are on the same good green path (thank you, Cory and Glenn and Nadia and B) — that's more important to us than all the dinner parties in the world. Sure, it's lonely at times on our "narrow social isthmus" but there's room out here for anyone who would like to join us.

[Isthmus Avenue photo by Modest and Jill]

Individual Activism - Seven Points from an Activist Extraordinaire

Our friend and fellow activist (indeed, the most active activist I know!), Anthony Marr, will soon be leaving on his 7th Compassion for Animals Road Expedition (CARE-7). Anthony has dedicated his life to activism on behalf of the voiceless ones: non-human animals, children, future generations of all species.

He is a speaker every year at the Animal Rights Conference in the USA, and in 2009, he made a presentation entitled Individual Activism. Below are the 7 excellent and eloquent points that Anthony made.

1. The Power of One: One activist standing in the rain for 10 days is more powerful than 100 activists holding a one-hour protest in the sun.
2. Where you can lead: If you have no leadership quality, you would not be an activist. There is one thing among the millions that people can do in which you are the best. What is it?
3. Go where no one has gone before: Do what no one has done before. Media will cover you if you do something that has never been done there before, bearing in mind that something new anywhere is new only once.
4. Go where angels fear to tread: Do what no one dares to do — physically and spiritually. You need not be an outlaw to be brave. You can work within the law to change the law. Treat restrictions as challenges to your ingenuity.
5. Choose your enemy with compassion: Do it for justice, not for vengeance, and certainly not out of cruelty on our part.
6. Live for your cause. Be its instrument on Earth: You will live on in the difference that you will have made.
7. Save the Earth for her own sake, and our children and all creatures, for their own sake: An individual human has the potential to be an individual planet-saver.

"The rest is all up to you," he concluded.

You can watch Anthony Marr's speech, Individual Activism, on video.

85 Days - Knowing It's Going, Not Willing to Say Goodbye

We were out and about yesterday, my husband and I. Lunch with a fellow activist (a true eco-warrior and an inspiration to us both — thanks, Joan!), more tests at the hospital, a bit of shopping (Julie's Rule of Three: If you must drive, make sure you have at least three good reasons, and that doesn't mean soymilk, bread and carrots — grocery shopping only counts as one reason).

It was a quintessential September day ... sunny, warm, a light breeze, just right. Everything and everybody seemed happy, soaking in the last of summer.

And then Peter said it. "Isn't it sad to think that all this is going to disappear because we're not moving fast enough on climate change?"

As I live in a temperate zone, and not near the equator, I am always prone to a tinge of melancholy and nostalgia in autumn. It's probably natural for people who notice the days getting shorter and the leaves changing colour. So try to imagine my angst when he said that. I had never thought of it that way before.

I feel deeply what's happening to the children in Africa due to climate chaos. I can imagine what the Pacific Islanders who must abandon their homelands are feeling. I can picture what the Inuit are going through in a melting Arctic where their traditions are disappearing along with the ice.

But I had never looked around my own home area to try and picture what will happen here. If we continue to allow the burning of carbon-based fuels and the release of other greenhouse gases from other industrial (and industrialized agriculture) processes, practically everywhere on Earth will dry out (some areas will flood out). (According to the IPPC in 2007, areas of the world stricken with severe drying have doubled in the last 30 years.)

The problem is the rate of change. The rate of climate change determines our ability to adapt and survive. And the rate of change in the chemistry of our atmosphere and the oceans right now is unheard of in geological time. We are increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at an unprecedented rate — and living things cannot adapt that quickly.

Indeed, I remember the moment I "got" global warming and climate change. I was watching a recorded lecture given by a professor of ecology at the Harvard School of Public Health. When he explained that some insects will start to hatch earlier or later than usual because of changes in the climate, and their predators probably won't adapt in the same way, I knew what we were dealing with. They don't call it climate disruption for nothing.

So, if you love the idea of a habitable planet for future generations of all species, try this experiment: Go to your favourite place outdoors, a beautiful place that feeds your soul. Look around. Drink it all in. Then say to yourself, "All this is going to disappear."

If your spirit then cries out, "No, damn it! I'm not going to let it go without a fight," then welcome to the world of climate activism. Allowing yourself to know this truth and feel this angst is the first step.

3 Months Until Copenhagen - Happy Labour Day: Climate Activists in the Workplace

September 7 is Labo(u)r Day in Canada and the United States. (Anywhere else?) It's a reminder of the importance - and rights and responsibilities of working people. So here is my Labour Day post, dedicated to everyone who works for their money! May you (we) all find a powerful way to make our work and our workplaces part of the solution to global climate change.

*****

Doesn't it feel strange to be sounding the alarm on an emergency that seems so far away (for some of us) and so, well, not urgent - yet? Where I work, people's eyes sometimes glaze over when I talk about global climate change, the way mine would if someone started talking about, say, rocket science, or stock market statistics. But we're not "crying wolf," as they say. We're talking about a vast, growing, picking-up-speed planetary emergency that will impact all life on Earth. Which is why I was glad - and inspired - to read about a new workplace based climate initiative in Australia: The Australian Conservation Foundation is working with 3000 workplace activists to encourage climate friendly behaviour in workplaces and homes by setting weekly tasks and targets. According to the press release, activists will also lobby politicians for strong policies to create up to one million new clean energy jobs, and urge Australian leadership at the Copenhagen talks in December.

"Union members want to be part of the solution to climate change. We can make a big difference in our workplaces - from universities through to hospitality and manufacturing - and we will also be at the forefront in urging our political leaders to adopt a strong and decisive set of policies to cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions and create clean energy jobs," said Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow. "If we do not take a lead on climate change action we will miss out on a global market in low carbon technology that is already worth $6 trillion."

Check out Union Climate Connectors for more information, and to get inspired about organizing the same sort of campaign where you live and work.

93 Days - Upcoming International Climate Action Days

September 21st - GLOBAL WAKE-UP CALL TO WORLD LEADERS

Avaaz is pulling out all the stops. A stunning 96% of over 100,000 people in 182 countries said YES! to a day of wake-up events in public places all over the world to make leaders sit up and listen.

The world's presidents, prime ministers and other heads of state are gathering at the United Nations on 22 September 2009, at the invitation of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, for a summit on climate change.

Avaaz says, "We have to show a massive public demand for them to sign a fair and binding deal in Copenhagen. Thousands of simultaneous events [on September 21] will give us a unique chance to seize the attention of world media and of leaders everywhere."

September's high-level summit is a time for political leaders "to be forced into the crunch issues" of climate change, identifying these as financing for adaptation and mitigation strategies, according to Connie Hedegaard, Minister for Climate and Energy of Denmark. She added that the meeting is the "last chance" for political leaders to "push for unity in Copenhagen, thus setting the cue for negotiators in December."

So, start dreaming up ideas for your own wake-up call to your elected representatives on September 21st! And if you can help Avaaz fund the wake-up call, please click here.

October 24th - INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION

350.org (I still wish they were ZeroCarbon.org, but they didn't ask me!) has over 100 countries signed up to take climate action this fall. They are sponsoring a huge day of global events on 24 October 2009 to ask for progress on climate change that gets the planet back to 350 parts per million of CO2 (which is still too high, but better than where CO2 levels are now: nearing 390 ppm and rising).

But numerous countries still have no events registered. Visit the 350.org Action List to see if your country has one or more events listed. If not, just contact 350.org for advice on how to get something going.

Let's get behind these two growing international campaigns to sound the climate change emergency alarm. Do something in your local community or country on September 21st and October 24th. Do something simple or complex, radical or safe, imaginative or tried-and-true, but do something!!

95 Days - Belly Fat and Climate Change

Is it just me? Or is everyone online being harangued by internet advertisements promising us a flatter stomach?

"1 Tip for a Flat Belly"

"1 Rule to a Flat Stomach: Obey!"

I'm sick of seeing flubby tummies and skinny tummies. Enough already!

My aggravation, however, finally got me wondering whether anyone out there has discovered this "one rule" — and whether we could use this tactic to save the Earth, the future and the children of all species.

My thinking went like this. Whoever is behind the Flatter Stomach ads is paying to advertise — so we know they must be making money from these ads. Which means that people are clicking on them, and presumably buying something from the advertisers.

Why aren't we using similar tactics? After all, we can promise a much thinner body if people follow this one tip: keep pumping out the greenhouse gases and agriculture will be over, leading to starvation and famine and nice lean bodies.

Oh, I don't know. I get so annoyed to think that people care more about the size of their bellies than climate change. Heck, at least they could be as concerned about their children's future as about their stomachs, no?

We who are working on climate change are doing something wrong, but I cannot put my finger on it. Please, send in your insights. Before I am finally driven to click on that ad to discover the "1 tip" for ridding myself of my cute and cuddly tummy.

118 Days - Falling Prey and Losing Confidence

Tomorrow I will start a five-day Nature Daycamp for children aged 5 to 12. It's something I should be excited about. Yet I'm anxious. Why is that?

My whole professional career — until now — I have revelled in opportunities to introduce youngsters to the joys of the natural world. At university during my education studies in outdoor and experiential education, I focused on sensory awareness when all my classmates were either athletic (and focusing on physical pursuits in the outdoors) or science majors (focusing on biology and ecology).

I do not have a scientific mind. I have had to work very hard to understand the science of climate change, and I feel confident in my knowledge of the fundamentals. But somewhere along the way, I have lost confidence in my ability to pass on my love for the rest of Nature.

Is it because I feel I need to "know" all the science we'll meet up with in the woods and at the beach? Or is it because I'm nervous about wired kids getting easily bored by the speed of the natural world? Whatever it is, I feel I am casting my fate to the wind.

Perhaps, then, it is the angst from my life as a climate activist pervading my work with children — and I don't like it one bit.

So tonight, my compassionate climate action is to take care of myself, treat myself gingerly, and trust in the wisdom of my friends and neighbours of other species. And then to relax and have fun tomorrow!

182 Days to Copenhagen - Courage is Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway: The Kingsnorth Six

Climate change activism is a study in courage these days. It takes guts to stand up for the children of all species and for all future generations if you're living in a culture that deifies now, me, and this quarter's profits, and that has no space in its heart for the rest of Nature.

So when I come across inspiring examples of ordinary citizens doing extraordinarily courageous things to raise the alarm on global warming and the climate change emergency, it would be selfish of me not to share them.

Here's an excerpt from one such story in the UK's Guardian, a tale of six people who risked death and jail terms to make a powerful point about coal-fired energy in England: Why Six Britons Went to Eco War.

"When six activists, protesting against climate pollution, scaled a tower at a coal-fired power station in 2007 the resulting court case drew support from the world's leading scientists. Their subsequent acquittal proved historic and changed government policy."

Reading the full story first (at the link above) before clicking to watch the video below will make your viewing richer and more meaningful. Be inspired!

(p.s. To muster up your courage in the face of deniers, skeptics and apathetics, just remember the children - and the precautionary approach.)

A Time Comes - the story of the Kingsnorth Six from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo

(If this version doesn't work for you, visit The Guardian.)