It's a Holiday ... Let's Just Have Some Fun!

This is a holiday weekend for many people in the world, so I thought I'd keep it short and light. Well, short and fun (cuz the topic of climate chaos is never light). 

Please enjoy Baba Brinkman’s Rap Guide to Climate Chaos. This hiphop artist's lyrics are both ingenious and educative.

Woke Up This Morning - A Compassion Tune-Up

We're on a mini-vacation this weekend (to recharge our food- and rest-powered batteries). We live in a fairly small island community (13 square miles and 2500 people, many of whom disappear about this time every year). 

About twice a year, my husband and I get "cabin fever" and need to "get off the rock." This is one of those times. 

(Funny thing is, we missed tons of "excitement" yesterday! Monsoon-style rains and high winds brought a tree down across the main road, caused a car accident, and cut the power for four hours. One of our inter-island ferries hit a dock and nearly ran aground just off a neighbouring island due to gusting winds. And passengers on a ferry that did venture out into the strait later in the day saw a super pod of about a thousand white-sided dolphins! See what happens when we leave our little rock?)

So I'd simply like to share this beautiful, heart-rending song with you this morning, as a compassion tune-up. It's called Woke Up and it's by Emily Maguire. 

Listen closely. Feel deeply. Enjoy your day. Then get back into the fray of helping politicians and other leaders make the right choices for mitigating climate chaos, choices that are becoming more and more complex all the time, the longer we wait. 

(And remember, if the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska contributed to the GDP (gross domestic product), then certainly spending money to safeguard the future of life on our precious planet should be seen as benefitting the economy, especially if we adopt the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as our measure. Don't let anyone tell you that it's going to be too expensive, or that it's going to ruin us. That's garbage.)

I offer this in honour of all those still suffering or struggling a year after Tropical Storm Sandy hit the East Coast of North America.

WOKE UP by Emily Maguire

I woke up this morning All the trees were gone A concrete jungle left outside Oh no They said on the radio The seas were warm And all the fish had gone and died Oh no So what do we do now? I woke up this morning All our water's gone But now the ocean's at my door Oh no They said on the radio A storm would come And wash away my neighbourhood Oh no So what do we do now? I woke up this morning All the birds were gone And politicians act alarmed Oh no They said on the radio We'll wait and see The economy cannot be harmed Oh no But can you see? Do you believe it now?

Forget Climate Chaos ... Our Governments Are Out to Get Us First

British Columbia premier:
"Um, liquefied natural gas ...
you can drink that stuff, right?"

Have you noticed that those thin lines between paranoia, conspiracy theory and reality are becoming thinner all the time? 

I used to think of conspiracy theory as a fun but purely recreational "critical thinking" activity, one that perhaps sometimes leaned too far over into "creative thinking." 

But you know, that innocence died when George W. Bush watched as millions and millions of people, the world over, begged him to leave Iraq alone, and then he illegally invaded that beleaguered (and 9/11-innocent) country anyway. That was the moment I realized that the world had become nothing more than a stage for the obscenely rich and the mean-spirited multinational corporations (don't tell me they're amoral) to play out their brutish games.

A week ago I noticed that my province's ministry of education removed ecological literacy from its list of competencies that we want our students to graduate with. They completely "disappeared" anything about the environment, Nature, being a good eco-citizen. (Digital literacy, on the other hand, now figures prominently.) I was confused. Was I missing a page or what? 

Then, a few days ago, it all became very clear when we got the throne speech from our unelected premier. It was all about how LNG (liquid natural gas) exports will "disappear" our provincial debt. Hey, we don't want our schoolchildren understanding why putting profits before life might "disappear" their future, now do we? How sickeningly blatant. Completely stinks.

Yesterday, we heard from a professor friend whose research is being confiscated by his national government ... research that shows how perilously close we are to a climate change tipping point. The only other people who had access to his data have died recently. (Doodoo doodoo. That ran chills down my back.)

Today, I saw this:

Yes, in Canada, if you stand peacefully at a pipeline protest, you are "attacking" our prime minister's oil and gas cronies as they "innocently" go about their business of destroying our land, our air, our waters — and our future. If you do the same in Washington, they'll haul you away in handcuffs.

The ruthless corporate-owned sociopaths (isn't that the definition of fascists?) are winning and I, for one, am sorely afraid. But I'm also angry, and I hope that my anger will provide me the courage I'm going to need (indeed, that I already need) to keep defending the rights of today's children and of future generations to a planet that is viable.

You know what oil and gas and coal companies and governments at all levels who don't give a shit about life? Damn you. DAMN YOU! My gawd, I am so sick of pussyfooting around, giving you bastards the benefit of the doubt. You're all freaking stupid (you cannot eat oil, gas and coal) and evil (when progenycide becomes a crime, you'll be first in line to be tried). My. Gloves. Are. Coming. Off.

The Precautionary Principle Cautions Us to Be Cautious

Have you heard of present-day trolls? (Not the kind that used to lurk under fairytale bridges, but certainly similar.) It's the term used for people who, for fun or money perhaps (I don't think anyone knows their motives for sure), show up in the Comments section of practically every blog, anywhere in the world, at all hours of the day and night, that mentions global warming and climate change — to cast aspersions on those who are concerned about the climate change emergency.

You can tell the trolls by the way they spew things like, "Where's your PROOF?" or "What's your evidence?" when the rest of us are trying to discuss solutions (and the evidence is so accessible, it's completely disingenuous that they keep asking us to track it down and present it to them — a time-wasting manoeuvre they like to use that came to light during the Hackergate thing).

So, to the trolls, a cautionary tale about caution. The "precautionary principle" doesn't insist on 100% proof or complete evidence (although the people already impacted by climate chaos must really wonder about the audacity of skeptics and deniers to keep questioning the existence of global warming).

The precautionary principle says that if there's a chance of harm, we'd better slow down or stop — not keep going with something harmful until we know absolutely, totally, utterly, perfectly, entirely, wholly, fully, thoroughly, unreservedly, definitely, certainly, positively, unconditionally, categorically, unquestionably, undoubtedly, completely and 100% that the suspected cause is indeed the cause.

Sober, intelligent and educated people don't play Russian roulette with their children's future. They just don't.

p.s. The trolls haven't found Compassionate Climate Action yet. Not sure if that means my blog is really small potatoes — or that they can't argue with compassion.

Here's a video from the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment (IonE) that explains all the reasons for caution and the precautionary principle. The only thing I disagree with is their call for low-carbon technology. If we don't get off carbon (ie, all fuels, aka The End of the Burning Age) and get to zero-carbon technology, well... let's just say that wouldn't be a cautious approach to avoiding climate catastrophe.

96 Days - Go Vegetarian, Cut the Methane, Save Yourself and Your Children

An online correspondent wrote (thanks, Remi!), wondering how we're going to effectively cut methane by getting the world to go vegetarian when we can't even get people to go veg in order to stop world hunger.

He raises a good point. People who eat meat out of habit or superstition also don't tend to consider the impacts of their diet on the environment (pollution and resource depletion), on others in the world today (grain going to feed cattle and other livestock animals instead of to fellow humans), or on future generations (our Western meat-focused diet is a huge contributor of methane and other greenhouse gases).

What if we presented the choice this way: Would you rather voluntarily cut back your meat consumption to virtually zero in the next year thereby giving the world a fighting chance of safeguarding your children's future, or continue eating meat, ensure a future of climate chaos and hunger for your grandchildren, and have your right to meat eating taken away from you by force in the not-too-distant future?

There will come a time (probably not soon enough, sadly) when governments will suddenly start doing everything they can to mitigate global warming. Since livestock is such a huge contributor, it will one day be seen as an easy way to reduce our GHGs.

In North America, we often cite the success of anti-smoking campaigns, but their "overnight" success took decades. We don't have decades to make this huge social change.

Why not just look on it as a sacrifice we have to make for our children — one that is a lot better for us than going to war, and one that can actually be quite fun and delicious.

Or am I dreaming?

146 Days - Why Joe Romm Needs to Get Some Perspective

Climate change blogger Joseph Romm (a good guy who's on our side) is slamming Dr. James Hansen in the blogosphere these days.

First, I should mention that anybody who messes with Hansen messes with me! (Just so we're clear where I stand on this.)

I don't want to go into details. In fact, I don't even want to send you to the original postings and the spinoffs.

I just want to say this. James Hansen understands the climate change emergency far better than almost anyone else on Earth, and certainly (it is now obvious) better than Joe Romm, who (I will grant him) deeply understands American political responses to climate change.

I've written about this before — we enviros seem to have a penchant for critiquing our own, even those who know more than we do. So, when James Hansen says we desperately need a carbon tax, Joe, don't disagree with the man. When he says that the new Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the USA isn't enough, don't disagree with the man.

When you say, "I have previously explained why W-M takes us sharply off of the BAU [business as usual] emissions path over the next decade, probably reducing coal use more than 25% by 2020," please understand that cutting coal use 100% by 2020 is one of the few ways we've got to save the future.

We must get all our fossil fuel emissions down to zero. Say it with me. ZERO. Z-E-R-O. That's zed (zee to you Americans), ee, ar, oh.

Not "42% emissions reduction by 2030." Not "an 83% reduction by 2050." We must reach zero fossil fuel emissions fast, or we risk losing it all. (And I'm talking that really big ALL!) Indeed, any target that isn't zero is not a serious target.

The perspective that Joe Romm is missing is the global perspective. He's so caught up in the American scene that he's forgetting Hansen's global view. And it's not pretty.

So please, sure, be proud of your Waxman-Markey legislation, but don't go braggin' all over that it's going to save the world. It just isn't, because it doesn't talk about getting to zero fast.

It doesn't consider all the people all over the world already impacted by climate chaos. And it does not come from that place of compassion that asks, "What do we really need to do to safeguard the future, for all the children, of all species?"