Climate Highs and Climate Lows Leading Up to UN Climate Summit and the People's Climate March

No, I'm not talking about the temperature today. The climate highs and lows I'm talking about are all the things people are doing or not doing (or not doing right) for the huge climate convergence coming up in New York City in three, count 'em, three weeks. That's three as in 3, as in one less than 4, as in only one more than 2. As in, before we know it. As in, holy sh!t!

You see, this mobilization can't be just about numbers of marchers at the People's Climate March. It can't be just about calling for urgent action. Time is so short (methane hydrate plumes, anyone?), it has GOT to be about very specifically demanding the very specific urgent actions that we urgently need!

So with that urgency as our backdrop this week, let's have a look at what's been happening.

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People are writing -- or finding -- anthems for the climate change movement. A friend of ours is working on one:

Climate safety is a human right
We're not going to get it
Without a fight
We need to unite
Take action - right now
Here's how ....

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That's a good thing. On the other hand, Avaaz, with its self-confessed gazillions of members, just sent round a message asking people to sign a petition that's, well, wrong (see if you can spot the wrong bit):

Right, the "2 degrees" bit is wrong. Two degrees is not "the safe level," it's global suicide. For years, the nations most vulnerable to climate chaos have been asking for a global temperature increase limit of no more than 1.5ºC -- some even 1ºC (recognizing what's already happening at +0.8ºC). 

Here's the problem with 2ºC. Because most of us haven't grasped that (due to the ocean heat lag doubling whatever temperature increase we end up with) 2ºC is the eventual result of only 1ºC of warming. So if we "aim" for 2ºC, we'll end up with 4ºC (which is certainly unsurvivable, given that all crops in all regions will go into decline at or before 1.5ºC of warming). Remember, this isn't temperature increase as in "tonight's low will be 70ºF and the high tomorrow will be 78ºF" -- this is temperature increase as in "98.6ºF is healthy, but you are pretty much dead at 106.6ºF."

So Avaaz has done the world a(nother) disservice by reinforcing the idea that +2ºC is safe. (Indeed, the conspiracy theorist in me figures it's just more proof that Avaaz is indeed part of the nonprofit industrial complex that supports the corporate agenda whenever that support is called upon.)

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From above: "... by rapidly shifting our societies and economies to be powered by 100% clean energy." I don't like Avaaz's wording there (do I smell a shill for "clean coal"?), but this is, properly defined, the goal we all need to be aiming for. Zero-carbon, clean, perpetual energy by 2050. Due to the length of time that 20-40% of our emitted carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere radiating heat (up to a thousand years!), we've got to achieve zero carbon emissions by mid-century or sooner in order to stabilize and drop the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. The Burning Age is over ... we have to start picturing a world of no fuels (no biofuels, no biomass burning; burning = carbon emissions).

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Remember I mentioned plumes of methane up top? The discovery / witnessing of these plumes in the Arctic and along the Atlantic Coast of North America should be striking sheer terror into the hearts of every thinking adult human being on the planet. These plumes are evidence that the seabed's normally frozen methane hydrate deposits are destabilizing. In other words, they're thawing, for heaven's sake! This is the methane timebomb we've been warning about for the last several years. We are freaking well running out of time.

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Speaking of bombs .... 

I keep running across research and lay articles in which scientists "conclude," not that we'd better get our butts in gear to safeguard the future, but that more monitoring is necessary. From an article entitled Vast Methane Plumes Spotted Bubbling Up from the Arctic Ocean Floor:

"Does this mean that the disaster scenario is now developing? Unfortunately, at the moment, that's an unknown. The SWERUS-C3 team will be continuing to monitor the location as long as the weather holds out for their expedition. However, as the Stockholm University press release stated: "These early glimpses of what may be in store for a warming Arctic Ocean could help scientists project the future releases of the strong greenhouse gas methane from the Arctic Ocean."

What is it with scientists and other researchers constantly and continually just calling for "more research" and more understanding? Why can't we just understand the research results we have now and get concerned enough to demand some urgent action from our governments?

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Well, I started with a climate high, and I'd like to end with a high. But I'm drawing a blank. We're meeting some wonderful new climate change activists, but for every new one, two or three climate "cynics" pop up. If you've got any good climate change news to share, please let me know.

Creating Change is Like Gardening

It was a sad day for me. I discovered yesterday morning how difficult it is to change a norm, even if it's a simple change (with not much sacrifice attached to it) and even when making the change would be a gift to the children and their future.

For almost a year, I've been a member of a group of teachers who are interested in social justice issues. I sit on the sub-committee that deals with environmental justice issues, so it's normal that we would bring forward environmentally related issues. 

Yesterday I presented a simple motion that we transition to meatless meals at our meetings (which would amount to a couple of lunches, the three times per year when we meet). The supporting statement explained that eating lower on the food chain (note no use of the V word) has many benefits.

My rationale was that this would lower our carbon footprint and set an example to other educationally-focused groups. It truly is the easiest way we can reduce our personal and collective greenhouse gas emissions. 

Industrial livestock processing (veganspeak: the inhumane torture and slaughter of almost 30 billion animals every year in the USA alone -- but I didn't use that language, because it's often considered inflammatory) (imagine how it feels to the animals, then compare that to the "pain" we feel when we "feel their pain" -- we're such wimps at times, eh?) is one of the most carbon-intensive and environmentally damaging human activities on the planet, polluting water, degrading land, and spewing carbon, nitrous oxide and 35-40% of anthropogenic methane emissions. 

It took me three meetings to get up the nerve to put forward this resolution. I guess I already knew what the reaction would be. And I was right. To be fair, I was encouraged by how many people spoke in favour. But we use a consensus model and that means that one person holding up a red card can scuttle a motion. Four or five people held up red cards. One person tearfully admitted she's not ready to give up meat yet. (For six lunches per year?) Another said she didn't want to lose her freedom of choice. (Forget that billions of people are losing their freedom to choose to live on a habitable planet.) 

The motion was defeated. I was defeated. Afterwards, I got some advice and had some helpful discussions. I'll rework and reword my motion and present it again the next time we meet. But the bittersweet ending came during our farewell go-round. One of the no-voters thanked the group for opening her up to new ideas that haven't been within her realm of consciousness. "I might even start eating less meat," she said. "But not quite yet."

What do I take from this experience? Creating change is more like gardening than building. We have to plant our seeds (the earlier the better) and then be patient. A lot of the process is outside of our control ... though definitely within our circle of influence. Time for me to tend those seedlings.

p.s. Speaking of food growing, the news from drought-afflicted California grows ever more terrifying!

From 7 States Running Out Of Water: "At [the current] usage rate, California has less than two years of water remaining."

And this, from Cows, Rice Fields and Big Agriculture Consume Well Over 90% of California's Water: "Agriculture uses 93% of California's water and almost half of that is devoted to growing alfalfa for shipment to the Far East, mainly China, to feed their cows. California is, in effect, shipping almost half its precious water to China."

Happy Green Christmas

It's not easy being a climate change activist at this time of year. (Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year in Canada, and because it's become quite secular, practically everyone celebrates it or has to deliberately try not to.) Everybody wants a break from the climate change bad news.

So I'd just like to tell you about our gift to the world, and then I'll wish you a happy holiday with beloved family and friends. Oh, and please, if you really "must" eat the traditional bird with your Christmas meal, at least say thank you for the sacrifice it made.

My husband is now a member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, a virtual think/action tank based in the UK. For the last few weeks, he and I have created their website, edited their package of urgent information on the Arctic methane emergency (which was put together by eminent Arctic researchers, scientists and engineers), had it printed (on FSC paper), researched the contact information for every head of government in the world (well, we might have missed out South Sudan, the newest nation), collated everything, addressed and licked over 200 envelopes, and stunned the folks at our local post office when we walked in on Christmas Eve morning with boxes and boxes of these envelopes to mail.

And now that project is done. Phew! Feels good. In a world where more and more people who shouldn't be are having green Christmases because of global warming, the governments of the world will no longer be able to claim ignorance of the climate change emergency.

As I send you love and compassion ... may your day be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be the right colour.

Geoengineering, Our Metaphorical Tracheotomy

December 4, 2011

If your child is deathly allergic to insect stings, what do you do? You buy an EpiPen® (or two or three) and keep it near your child at all times. An epinephrine auto-injector could save your child's life one day if a bee sting or wasp sting leads to anaphylactic shock.

Now, let's apply this as a metaphor. Your child (or your wife, in the case I witnessed) is stung on the neck by a wasp. You always carry an EpiPen, just in case. Well, this is the "case" you've been waiting for, but instead you decide to wait and see. Why use an EpiPen if you don't have to, right? I mean, heck, nobody wants to be given a medication they don't need. Right? And why waste the money?

Fast forward about 30 minutes. You carry your child (or your wife, in the case I witnessed) into the emergency ward. They're almost dead, but the doctor works feverishly, injecting this and that, setting up a drip, calling the helicopter ambulance, staying with your child (or wife) to monitor their condition until the moment the helicopter ambulance closes its door. Just before that door closes, eyelids flutter and open slightly, and a very weak voice says, "I was almost gone there, wasn't I?" Your child (or your wife, in this case) lives. 

The doctor is shaken for weeks. He knows how close he came to losing your child (or your spouse). He's just happy he didn't have to perform a tracheotomy but keeps asking the same question, over and over. Why, if they had an EpiPen, did they not use it? (My husband was the doctor, I was his assistant. This incident took place many years ago. As you can tell, I am still shaken by this memory.)

WE ARE ALL ALLERGIC TO METHANE. The Arctic is warming and spewing methane. This is creating a huge allergic reaction (or positive feedback loop). The methane, a potent greenhouse gas, creates more warming. According to the latest satellite data, the Arctic is now warming four times faster than the rest of the world. This extra warming is leading to more melting permafrost and more destabilized (thawed) methane hydrates along the continental shelf, releasing more methane, leading to more warming. It is a viciously vicious cycle, and we are dangerously close to letting it kill us.

(You think I'm being overly dramatic, perhaps for effect? No. Once we allow the summer Arctic sea ice to disappear, the northern hemisphere will lose the cooling "air conditioner" effect during our growing season. Remember Russia, 2010? It won't take too many widespread crop failures before we descend into global chaos.)

How many people deal with their bee sting allergy by just living life indoors all the time? Not many. Most choose to go outdoors — and carry an EpiPen. We've been carrying a metaphorical EpiPen around since at least 1988: the concept of living the same lifestyle but lowering our global greenhouse gas emissions, moving to renewable energy, being greener.

Now we've been stung, and we refuse to use our EpiPen. It's too expensive, we say. We can't afford it. It's too inconvenient. "I'd rather die comfortable than live uncomfortable." (Real quote, that one.) I'm not going to use my EpiPen unless China uses its Epipen! Blah blah blah.

So what are we going to do? It's an emergency situation! What are we going to do? We're actually facing down the prospect of extinction of our species! What are we going to do?

Folks, the tracheotomy is an emergency procedure for emergency situations. Our collective tracheotomy is geoengineering: "deliberate large-scale engineering and manipulation of the planetary environment to combat or counteract anthropogenic changes in atmospheric chemistry" (Wikipedia).

If we're already saying no to the possibility of geoengineering, then we either don't realize the emergency we're in, or we're choosing a future with no future for our children. The Canadian Youth Climate Coalition naively, in my view, calls geoengineering "a false solution."

Friends, geoengineering is not a false solution, it is our last resort — and soon to be our only solution. We have been stung. We are ignoring the allergic reaction. We are refusing to use our EpiPen. If we don't get some adrenalin into our system soon, we'd better be open to a tracheotomy (pardon the pun). Because otherwise, we are opting for death.

 

 

 

April 7, 2024

It's a dozen years since I wrote the post above. Everything is — still — getting worse, faster. The deniers (and yes, kowtowing politicians and non-brave climate scientists) have caused so much delay that we're on catastrophe's doorstep. (Anyone remember the summer of 2023? Yowza.)

While the deniers have been denying that digging up and burning carbon that was safely stored away via the long-term carbon cycle 250 million years ago — and spewing an extra ±50 billion tonnes of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year — would affect the climate system or overwhelm the short-term carbon cycle, conspiracy theorists have been insisting that some secret cabal has been geoengineering the climate. (To be fair, the geoengineering began at the start of the Industrial Revolution back around 1750 when we industrialized our fossil fuel burning. (And our impacts began 11,000 years ago as we started developing agriculture.) But Dane, seriously dude, learn the science of condensation of contrails at different altitudes and humidities.) 

Anyway, as I exhorted above, if we'd used our metaphorical EpiPen by lowering our carbon and other GHG emissions in every way we could, we wouldn't now be needing a tracheotomy / geoengineering. And so the geoengineering experiments have begun. (BEGUN, Dane, got that?)

Here's the scary part for me. With all extreme weather events now increasing in intensity, frequency and/or duration — and many now starting to compound (pile on top of each other) — and with taxpayers still subsidizing fossil fuel corporations (who are making windfall profits, BTW) to the tune of $7 trillion around the world every year (IMF, 2023), and with practically every government still "moving ahead" with business as usual (AKA full-steam ahead to extinction), it seems like a "mere" tracheotomy (geoengineering) isn't going to cut it anymore (sorry for the pun).

 

But nothing, not even geoengineering, is going to save us without an immediate and rapid decline in global GHG emissions.

It's as though the world has decided to wait until the too-late very last minute and then opt for ... decapitation. That's a sure-fire way to open up our constricted airway and get some air into our lungs. It'll kill us, sure, but we kept the economy pumping away, didn't we? Yeah, that's what our chosen trajectory seems to be. Sure will make us wonder why we didn't use our collective EpiPen when we still had the chance.

A New Kind of Judgement Day?

There's a button out there that says Less Judgement, More Tolerance. This is a great slogan when you're encouraging intercultural understanding and things like that. But is there not a place and time for judgement in our fight to safeguard the future for our children?

As I listened to a panel of inspirational vegan speakers the other day, I noticed that they all either spoke directly about or alluded to the notion of not judging others.

They spoke of leading by example, serving as inspiration, not making others defensive — by not judging.

As I sat and listened, I thought to myself, "If we judge people who murder other people, and murdering animals is now directly related to murdering fellow humans through the impacts of global warming and climate disruption, then is it not time to judge those who murder animals for meat?"

(The chemical-intensive agri-business livestock industry causes an inordinate yet unnecessary percentage of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, particularly the very powerful heat forcers, methane and nitrous oxide — not to mention the water wastage, water pollution, land degradation, and world hunger caused by our meat habit.)

I got up the nerve to pose my question aloud, but I think it was considered a bit, hmm, over the top. Most of us still don't really think of other animals as our kin, and most of us still can't conceive of faceless future generations and what we're doing to them (progenycide). Over and above that, most of us don't think in terms of systems, so we view solutions as changes that individuals make, rather than as full system overhauls.

So, let's look at it this way. We have (at least here in North America) managed to demonize smoking (if not the smokers themselves), and smoking is no longer allowed in any public buildings in most places. If we can go that far because of the personal health impacts of secondhand smoke, can we not go even further when meat eating is contributing so much to the climate change emergency (40% of human-caused methane emissions, for example), which could see life on this precious planet disappear? A global switch to a vegan diet would buy us some time for implementing all the other solutions that already exist (like renewable energy technologies).

I guess what I'm saying is this: When someone asks, "Why are you a vegetarian?" the response should be "Why aren't you one?"

If you need some inspiration for hanging up your meat habit, becoming a healthy vegetarian or vegan, and being kinder to the planet, the future and the children of all species, check out the resources at BeautifulEarth. org.

47 Days - The Future is in Your Hands, and on Your Plate

The climate work we've been doing lately has a decidely "can-do" upbeat aspect to it.

We have to get to zero carbon as rapidly as possible. Methane from industrial food production and the livestock industry accounts for about 40 percent of human methane emissions. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, so if we reduce our methane fast, that might give us a fighting chance of getting some other global warming solutions in place before it's too late.

We can eliminate the emissions of a huge amount of the most warming intense greenhouse gases by a revolution in our food production and by adopting the healthiest diet possible — for us and for the planet.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chair of United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that greenhouse gases are emitted during virtually every step of the meat producing process.

Zero carbon = zero meat. I know a lot of people who balk at this idea, but imagine if practically everyone in the world gave up meat? (I'm not going to ask the Inuit to give up meat, although the way things are going, they might soon find it easier to grow grain than to find animals.)

We could retrain those farmers and ranchers and fishers in more benign forms of agriculture or renewable energy (ooh, now there's a win-win). And we'd be giving today's children a chance at a future.

It's easier for me. I'm already vegetarian. Have been for ... counting ... yikes, almost 30 years (am I that old?). So I can assure you that there's life after meat — in more ways than one.

The future, folks, is quite literally in our hands, in our shopping baskets, on our stoves and on our plates. We don't have to wait for any government decrees or taxes (though taxing the carbon in meat would ensure it's expensive enough to make tofu look good).

Enjoy the bounty of the Earth without killing (and without killing the future). C'est tout. It's that simple. Let's just choose to stop eating our grandchildren.

(Photo from Liaison College Lakeshore Campus)

70 Days - Another Reminder: Be Green, Go Veg, Save the Planet

Today, my husband and favourite climate hero will speak at a seminar called Creating a Healthy Planet with a Plant-Based Diet, which is sponsored by the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association of Victoria, British Columbia.

If there's one leader on this planet who understands the urgency of the climate change emergency, it's Supreme Master Ching Hai. However she's done it, she knows — deeply, intuitively, scientifically — what's happening, and how we can — each us, by choosing what we put on our plates and in our mouths — influence the mitigation of climate catastrophe.

Supreme Master Television is focusing many of its programs on stopping the methane menace that comes with the animal breeding and slaughter industry. Here's just one of numerous videos on this crisis:

STOP METHANE-A Main Contributor To Global Warming @ Yahoo! Video

For more information on climate change and vegetarianism, visit Supreme Master Television. And remember, this is something you can do. You can control what food you buy and what food you eat. Moving to a plant-based diet will radically reduce your carbon footprint and the CO2 and especially methane emissions for which you are responsible.

80 Days - Compassion by Numbers

I've been talking with my students' parents about Gardner's 8 Intelligences:

• Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
• Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
• Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
• Musical intelligence ("music smart")
• Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
• Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
• Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
• Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")

So, I'm trying to remember that not everyone will learn about the climate change emergency, or be able to picture it, or even be impressed by it, in the same way. I'm sure we all have the capacity for compassion, but our individual learning styles mean that it will come to us and develop in us due to different sorts of experiences and sensory inputs and other perceptions.

I've mentioned before that I don't have a "science mind." I don't even think of myself as having a math mind (though I got 100% in grade 6 math! — thank you, Mr. Welburn).

But for anyone with number/reasoning smarts, these estimated statistics from the Global Humanitarian Forum have got to make an impression — on your heart.

ESTIMATIONS OF SUFFERING TODAY:

• Deaths - over 300,000 per year
• Severely Affected - over 300 million people
• Living at Extreme Risk - 500 million people
• Climate Displaced People - over 20 million
• Economic Losses - over US 100 billion dollars

ESTIMATIONS OF SUFFERING TOMORROW (IN 20 YEARS TIME):

• Deaths - approximately 500,000 per year
• Severely Affected: approximately 650 million people
• Climate Displaced People – more than 75 million
• Economic Losses – over US 300 billion dollars

There's a chance these figures are too conservative. What if these estimations weren't based on Arctic carbon feedbacks ramping up once the summer sea ice in the north disappears, taking with it the Northern Hemisphere's summer air conditioning, upon which our agriculture depends? What if they didn't consider the methane time bomb setting off runaway global warming?
Even if these estimations are overinflated, off by an order of magnitude, the numbers are still scary.

Unless you have no heart.

92 Days - Explaining the Connection Between Going Veg and the Methane (and Nitrous Oxide) Menace

With the help of GreenHeart Education's climate change research analyst, I have been working to understand the importance of methane emission reductions in our fight to safeguard the future.

There is no question that stopping the emissions of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (or N2O, which comes from burning fossil fuels, from chemical fertilizers, and from manure, which forms ammonia, which converts to N2O in the atmosphere) will give us the most reward for our efforts.

Because the eating of industrialized meat is a huge producer of methane and nitrous oxide emissions — and because what we put in our shopping carts and our mouths is something that we have total control over — I will continue to strongly suggest lowering meat consumption / going vegetarian as the most important compassionate climate action that individuals and families can take.

And as spiritual leader, Supreme Master Ching Hai, points out, the more people who go vegetarian, the more time we give ourselves to get to zero carbon emissions. "Stop killing animals, stop producing meat, stop eating meat," she advises. Okay, here's the science of this issue (please see The Green Grok if you need more information):

• Even though CO2 has caused more warming over the long term, reductions in CH4 or N2O emissions will provide a lot more climate relief in the short term than reductions of CO2.
• This is because reducing methane emissions by one ton is equivalent to reducing CO2 emissions by 25 tons; thus, its CDE (carbon dioxide equivalent) is 25.
• Because its carbon dioxide equivalent is 298, reducing our emission of nitrous oxide by one ton is the equivalent of 298 tons of CO2. So almost 300 times the bang for our buck!

The above figures are based on the 100 year global warming potential of the greenhouse gases. If we use the IPCC's global warming potential figure over 20 years, the benefit of reducing methane is even more dramatic.

• Over 20 years CO2 is 1, methane is 72 and nitrous oxide is 279.

So 1 ton of methane emissions prevented = 72 tons of CO2. Each ton of nitrous oxide prevented = 279 tons of CO2. Nitrous oxide emissions last in the atmosphere for 114 years and so these emissions must stop — because they are so persistent and cumulative.

I really hope that explaining this science and math to people will help them understand the climate-change-fighting power of going veg, switching just one habit. After all, it's not that we're asking people to stop eating altogether. We're simply asking them to make a dietary choice that is delicious, nutritious, healthier (do it right!), cheaper, more fun, definitely more compassionate, and a gift to their children's future.

So the case for closing down the livestock industry is overwhelming - it's a matter of our survival. If slaughtering and eating other animals does not stop, humanity is dead.

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?

97 Days - It's All About the Methane (GO VEG!)

American President Bill Clinton's campaign team, back in 1992, made famous the line, "It's the economy, stupid." More and more, it's looking like we should borrow it for our climate emergency action:

IT'S THE METHANE, STUPID!

It's not the easiest of math. The heating effect of methane over its 12 year lifespan in the atmosphere is about 100 times stronger than the heating effect of the same amount of emitted carbon dioxide. But then the methane breaks down into water vapour, ozone and CO2 — all greenhouse gases — and can carry on emitting heat for hundreds of years longer.

The physics of methane heating (like the physics of global warming), however, is simple. Put more methane into the atmosphere, the atmosphere heats up more.

And keep in mind that we are emitting all these greenhouse gases constantly, so they are accumulating in the atmosphere.

Since so many human beings seem to be overwhelmed by the idea of safeguarding the future by lowering our CO2 emissions, what about if we focus for the next two years on just one thing: stopping our methane emissions?

And what if we (the people) focus on just one way to do that: not eating meat?

What if? There is some scientific conjecture that if globally we stopped eating meat as quickly as possible (within about two years), we could still save the day — and the future.

Here's a Meat Free Petition I have signed and am happy to support.

And this Meat Free Monday Canada site explains the background to the Meat Free petition.

Please think about this. We're going to have to get our carbon dioxide emissions down to virtually zero — but that can be a slightly longer term feat. Right now, let's see what we can accomplish by being more compassionate to the other animals we share this planet with and going vegetarian or, better yet, vegan.

155 Days to Copenhagen - A 2 Degree Threshold? Why 47 Signatories Have It All Wrong

Kate Sheppard reported on the 1st of July at Stop Global Warming.org and on The Grist that a coalition of 47 environmental, scientific and religious groups have written to President Obama asking him to "pursue a goal of keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius in upcoming international meetings."

Here's what the letter actually says: "Failure to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius will have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable nations and communities and will dramatically increase the need for adaptation in the future."

And here's what these 47 groups fail to grasp. Reaching anywhere near a 2 degree C global average temperature increase will be a death sentence for Life on Earth. We do NOT want to get anywhere near +2 degrees.

And here's why. Right now, we have about 0.8 degrees C of warming and we already have serious carbon feedbacks (methane release from thawing permafrost and destabilizing methane hydrates in the oceans, plus meltdown of the Arctic Ocean summer ice).

Once you get positive carbon feedbacks, you risk runaway global heating. So at +0.8 degrees, we're already gambling with extinction. And that's without the at least 0.6 degrees of warming in the pipe.

350 is a boondoggle and 2 degrees is insanity. The only target we and President Obama should be focusing on, aiming at and working for — because our children's lives depend on it — is ZERO. Zero greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

Why water down that message with dangerous talk of 2 degree thresholds?

181 Days Left - Fossil Fuels Are Like Drugs: Just Say No!

Our friend and fellow climate change activist (and animal rights activist extraordinaire) Anthony Marr wrote today about the futility of the Bonn climate talks.

"First of all, the targets set will be grossly inadequate (guaranteed), and even so, countries can still violate them left, right and center — without penalty." He notes that there seems to be no mention of methane at the talks. Yet methane (from the thawing permafrost and the destabilizing methane hydrates at the bottom of the oceans and in continental shelves) is the scariest thing happening because of global warming. (Can you say "carbon feedbacks"?)

In a 6 June 2009 article by William Marsden for Canwest News Service entitled "Crunch Time for Climate Talks," United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, says that in the six months left, negotiators will try "to reach an agreement on what might well be one of the most complicated international treaties ever negotiated."

Well, Mr. de Boer, I know how to make it uncomplicated. Extremely uncomplicated. Just say no. Just say zero. Zero carbon emissions. Zero fossil fuel use. That's our goal. Our target should not be 350 parts per million, nor (a catastrophic) 1.5 degrees of temperature increase, nor 80% greenhouse gas cuts by 2050. Our target needs to be ZERO. As quickly as possible.

Zero is a good, clear number that creates a level playing field. Every nation in the world, every corporation, every human being can start striving now to reach zero carbon emissions as soon as possible.

Sheesh, considering that survival of the human species (and millions of other species) is at risk, you'd think governments everywhere would be tripping over themselves to be the fastest to cut their emissions.

Sadly, as Anthony points out ("It is about time we realize that we can no longer rely on our 'leaders' to lead us to any promised land. If we do, we WILL be led into a hell on Earth.... It is up to us folks, who have any true love for our children, life on Earth and the planet itself"), these talks are simply a stalling tactic.

Instead of racing each other to ZERO CARBON EMISSIONS, negotiators are looking for ways to put off making any cuts for as long as possible — thereby condemning us all.

Please, when you have some time (49 minutes and 8 seconds of it), watch Anthony Marr's video, M-Bomb: Doomsday Machine. It will explain why there is no time for procrastination. There is barely enough time left to just say no.