Climate Change Happinesses and Sadnesses

HAPPINESS

I love xkcd's comics. They're pretty off the wall and fun (and sometimes delightfully inappropriate). And he's so generous that he allows non-profit folks to use them for free! The comic above is dedicated to my husband, who's always been someone who tilted at windmills, only the enemies he's been attacking haven't been imaginary. Okay, so maybe the hubby-as-Don-Quixote metaphor doesn't hold up (except in the minds of deniers, skeptics, ignorers and delayers). Hmmm. ;-)

SADNESS

On Friday, I attended a professional development workshop for educators on trauma. It focused on the impacts of trauma on child development, and how those impacts might manifest in our classrooms. The facilitator warned that it might bring up our own traumatic experiences, and by the questions and discussion that came up, I could tell that that was how most of us were making sense of the new information (especially about brain research) we were hearing.

The facilitator talked about Type 1 trauma, which is a single event, and Type 2 trauma, which is ongoing, such as a childhood filled with abuse, and that Type 2 especially creates all sorts of attachment disorders in children and therefore psychological (eg, anxiety) and psychosomatic problems later in life (eg, digestive problems). Everything is connected, and so this made a lot of sense. 

Today, I find myself wondering if we've subjected a whole generation of children (in the West and beyond) to a childhood of ongoing (Type 2) trauma, with parents and other caregivers disconnected from each other and the rest of Nature, within a polluted biosphere (light pollution, air pollution, water pollution, land degradation) and a polluted noosphere (the realm of consciousness), with fewer fellow creatures due to biodiversity loss (kids growing up without birds and butterflies is tragic), at a speed of human life and living that creates disconnections and anxiousness from the very start.

Just a thought. A sad one. Compassionate climate action would include giving children back a healthy, carefree childhood surrounded by caring, attentive parents and their loving Mother Earth. 

HAPPINESS

If you're not deeply involved in climate change activism, it's probably hard to imagine how incredibly traumatic it is to work and work and work for solutions ... and then constantly see only more obfuscation and delay on the global front. So imagine our sheer delight when we heard yesterday that Climate Action Network (CAN) International is promoting its fabulous 2014 climate change position statement far and wide! Thank you, thank you, CAN International and your 900 member organizations, not just for hammering out this powerful emergency response to the climate change crisis, but for pushing the important demands within it onto the international agenda. 

SADNESS

You know who these gentlemen are? When I saw this photo, I cried. This is Iraq's president, Fouad Massoum (left) and Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani. They attended the UN Climate Summit in September. Canada's not-so-prime minister did not. 

China, India, Russia, Germany, Australia, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and more did not send their presidents and prime ministers. I dunno, it just made me sad that so few world leaders of big nations took the time to attend. Though I have to admit that it warmed my heart to see Iraq and Iran sitting next to each other, knowing what they've been through together.

HAPPINESS

This Hopi prophecy is happy-making for it gives one (all right, me) a sense that yes, it makes sense to keep on trying.

"The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves. Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. For we are the ones we have been waiting for."

Here's to another week of feeling the fear and the sadness (and the joys of connecting and small successes) and carrying on with this vital work!

So, Do We Really Have Time to Avert Climate Catastrophe? Yes, If We Deploy the Military

Anyone who understands the climate change emergency deeply knows that our Climate EMERGENCY Countdown is a desperate, last-ditch effort to ensure that world leaders at the Climate Summit this September in New York City get us on a path that at least gives us a hope in hell of a future.

Someone responded to the Countdown on FB by saying "This is a realistic plan, but it is also too slow. 2ºC is already locked in at present CO2, methane and NO2 levels. We need to slash the defense budget and use it to convert everything to renewable energy ASAP." 

Yup, all true. But if we start our decline in carbon emissions by next year, then we'll already be on a different trajectory -- one that gives us that hope in hell. And next year is as close to now as we're going to get. (Though the financial crash in 2008-2009 showed us how quickly greenhouse gas emissions can be turned around.)

Several years ago, we and Anthony Marr were talking about a Global Green Fund -- paid for by a 10% donation from each country's military. That would have got the ball rolling, but it didn't happen. (Indeed, ha ha ha ha ha. What were we smokin'?)

Doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea, or that my FB friend's friend's idea isn't a good one. Imagine a world where the soldiers are all busy, not fighting each other (and invisible enemies), but retrofitting whole cities and countries and kickstarting the solar age. Imagine armies of people taking constructive rather than destructive action. (Imagine the increase in military self-esteem!)

So, do we have time? Yes, just. But first, to ensure our success, we have some important things we need to do ... fast. And since we all know who can mobilize fast, let's ask the calvary and the National Guard and the King's Army and the FBI and the CIA and maybe the Mafia and street gangs, too, to lend us a hand. After all, they're all human beings with beloved children in their lives. Why wouldn't they want to help?

Launching the Climate EMERGENCY Countdown

Well, today's the day of our Climate Emergency Countdown conference in Toronto. But you, dear reader, are getting the scoop right here.

We figure we have until December 2015 to safeguard the future. Here's what we're picturing:

5         TELL THE WHOLE WORLD

Start now. Encourage all ENGOs (as well as human rights, development, and public health NGOs) to mount a massive education / agitation campaign. Educate about RCP2.6 and CAN International’s position statement (see below). Help everyone in the world understand the climate emergency and that there are simple yet powerful solutions (see below). And then encourage everyone to apply pressure to their own governments. Get everyone calling for an emergency zero-carbon global agreement in Paris (see below).

4         IN NEW YORK, DEMAND THAT GOVERNMENTS DECLARE THE CLIMATE CHANGE EMERGENCY

New York is the place to be this September. In every way possible, let's urge attendees at the NYC September 20-21, 2014 People's Climate March to call for a DECLARATION that CLIMATE CHANGE is an EMERGENCY. And in every way we can think of, let's urge all government representatives and negotiators at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit 2014: Catalyzing Action to declare the emergency.

Once governments declare that we are “beyond dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), things will start to happen. This declaration would be an automatic trigger for the bureaucrats who work underneath politicians and within governments to start working on climate change solutions. Scientists say that determining whether climate change is an emergency is a value judgement that society must make. So let's make it! We're society. Let's get the CLIMATE EMERGENCY DECLARED! 

3         FOR THE LIMA CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE (COP20 in December 2014), DEMAND THAT NEGOTIATORS ADOPT THE IPCC's RCP2.6 SCENARIO + the CAN INTERNATIONAL POSITION STATEMENT

The essential text of the all-important 2015 Paris agreement will be determined in Lima, Peru this year. The best-case IPCC scenario (which is all that government negotiators can work with), one that can possibly keep us below a catastrophic 2ºC rise in global temperatures, is called RCP2.6. (RCP stands for Representative Carbon Pathway, but I think it really means REALLY COOL PLAN!) Let's start calling now for adoption of RCP2.6 PLUS these important new Climate Action Network (CAN) International positions:

•sharp declines in GHG emissions starting 2015 (RCP2.6 has emissions starting to decline in 2020, but really, folks, we're already out of time)  

•reaching zero carbon emissions by 2050, specifically by transformation of all fossil fuel energy to clean renewable energy (RCP2.6 does not go far enough to save our butts)

•limit warming to 1.5ºC (not the deadly 2ºC "target") 

2         CALL FOR THE END OF FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES AND PUT A PRICE ON CARBON (by the December 2015 COP21 in Paris)

Governments "give" $1.9 trillion every year in direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuel corporations. Direct subsidies must be switched to perpetual energy technologies. Period. Especially in developing nations to help them "leapfrog" over fossil fuel dependence. We also need to demand an economic shift that will make fossil fuel companies pay for their $1.4 trillion every year in economic externalities (indirect subsidies or "mispricing"). 

We need to charge a FEE on CARBON EMISSIONS to pay for their health and environmental costs and to help offset the transition to the Solar Age. This "price" on carbon can be applied to promoting the use of safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful perpetual energy technologies ("perpetual" means renewable without biomass burning technologies, since burning emits carbon). This carbon fee will signal the market overnight, and investments will be switched to renewables.

1         IN PARIS, GET THE MOST IMPORTANT AGREEMENT IN THE WORLD SIGNED

“Though a great many obstacles remain in the path of this essential agreement, I am among the growing number of people who are allowing themselves to become more optimistic than ever that a bold and comprehensive pact may well emerge from the Paris negotiations late next year, which many regard as the last chance to avoid civilizational catastrophe while there is still time.”          — Al Gore 

0         ACHIEVE ZERO CARBON by 2050

Post Paris, we need to immediately begin a rapid decline in greenhouse gas emissions. And then we need to continue that decline for decades, until we reach zero carbon emissions by 2050 … and safeguard the future.