Experiencing Censorship in All the Wrong Places

Censorship. A simple definition might be "the examination of material (such as books, movies, news, and art) and official suppression of any parts that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security (adapted from my computer's dictionary). It is closely related to censure, which means harsh criticism or to criticize harshly.

We used to think of censorship merely in terms of what happened to books and movies that hadn't yet been released. Next came book banning and even book burning. Then some (of the very people who liked to ban and burn books) started equating political correctness with censorship. (I've always considered political correctness to be society's fancy way of labeling what mothers everywhere used to urge: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.") And with the election of T**** in the United States, saying nasty things about "others" is now considered freedom of speech, so any talk of censorship is seen as unconstitutional — almost tantamount to treason. (Sheesh.)

But lately, censorship seems to have gone wonky in other ways, too ... some consternating and some downright dangerous. Within the last three days, I have experienced censorship in conversation with three different friends.

First, I was telling a friend about a disturbing incident that I'd read about in the paper. "Does this have a sad ending? If so, I don't need to hear it." The story was a cautionary tale about her field of work, but it did, indeed, have a sad ending. So with that, I was shut down. 

And I felt shut down — censored. But mostly I felt sad that there are people who won't (can't?) allow themselves to feel the sadness of others. Have some of us become so fragile that there's no strength and no room left for empathy? How are we going to face the extreme sorrow of the climate change emergency if we can't even share a story about a sad incident in a next-door city?

I don't just tell stories willy-nilly. There's a point to a story that I choose to share — sometimes it has a connection to the other person, but sometimes it's simply something that I found interesting or edifying. In the second incident, I recounted a short TV show that I'd watched on Netflix and found instructive for my own career. I'll admit that my menopausal brain might have made the story more meandering than it needed to be. But my friend, instead of engaging with the story, said (I'm paraphrasing), "You know how people who watch TV will talk about shows they've watched and bore you to tears? You just did that."

Ouch. Obviously her mother never instructed her to say nothing if she didn't have anything nice to say — that was my first thought. But then I began to mourn the lack of patience our society has developed. Can't we just talk about "stuff" with friends anymore? If we don't have the time and patience for everyday — uncensored — conversations, how will we ever have the time and patience to listen to how serious the climate crisis is, the science behind it, and the solutions we needed to implement yesterday?

On my way to tea with a third friend, I kept chanting, "Don't talk about T****, don't say anything negative. Don't talk about T****, don't say anything negative." This friend is (what I think is being called) a progressive. I'm simply someone who likes to get to the bottom of things, so months before the American election, I'd been reading up on T****'s growing popularity. My friend and I had a falling out because I wanted to talk about it (the rise of T****) and she didn't. I've been self-censoring around her ever since. (In fact, it didn't even cross my mind until just now that I could have said, "I warned you.") 

Positive thinking does not stop evil and greed. It just doesn't. It doesn't get the good people elected. It certainly hasn't mitigated climate disruption. Talking about how Big Money and Big Oil are killing the future, what their strategies are, and how we can beat them — that's how we will, well, beat them. Not by pretending that everything is goodness and light. 

If we're going to fill our lives with censorship, I'd like to suggest some Censorship for the Planet. Let's stop giving column inches in our newspapers and blogs to climate change deniers. Let's stop watching news and other shows that give air time to climate change deniers. Let's stop "sharing" the dangerously misleading drivel and "alternative facts" of climate change deniers on our social media channels. 

Folks, let's stop censoring ourselves, our friends and our loved ones (and our climate scientists) and start really listening to them. If we're going to censor at all, let's censor (and censure) those who are committing the greatest evil and the greatest ever crime against humanity: climate change deniers who have delayed urgent action on this emergency for decades, causing millions to lose their lives or their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes or entire homelands. 

Let's be very clear that freedom of speech and expression should not, does not, cannot include the freedom to commit progenycide.

No Alternative Facts Here, Just Bad Health and Bad News

I'm lying in bed with a bad cold/flu combo, so I've got too much time on my hands. Even so, some weeks, I just don't know what to blog about. Much of the news is so bad that anything positive I might write about risks seeming trite in comparison. 

I do want to let you know that I've had the privilege of meeting and working with two classes of wonderful first-year international students this past month. These fine young people are from China (mostly), Singapore, Vietnam, Mongolia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Ukraine and Iran. What a pleasure and an honour it is to talk with them about sustainable development and their future.

*******

This past week — President T****'s first in office — has people around the world not only petrified by the thought what he has up his sleeve but actually impacted by the executive orders he's signed already. WTF? Truly, WTF? How can one loose cannon, in such a short time, undo so much good work of so many good people who have worked for years in a country that has been talking social justice for decades if not centuries? They've not always been successful, but there's always been someone trying.

The first thing I did before starting this post was listen to the song in this Compassion Tune-Up. Loudly. Perhaps I need to start offering Outrage Wake-Ups as well. If the new American president is going to be emboldened, then we ought to become bold, too. One piece of advice I've read more than once this week is to not normalize T****'s actions — to stay outraged by them (99% of them have been outrageous already). But that's going to mean taking care of ourselves by sometimes taking time to not focus on what he's doing. 

So in my sickly stupor, I'm going to watch some re-runs of the Mary Tyler Moore show ... Mary Tyler Moore died this week, and a lot of us are feeling quite nostalgic, I think. I know I am. Her television portrayal of a working single woman in the early 1970s inspired a whole bunch of second generation feminists to see it as quite normal that women would succeed in work just as men do. 

Perhaps we can (re?)create a sense that it's quite normal that elected officials look after more than just the economy of their constituents — especially when it's that predatory economy that's fuelling the foreclosure on our children's future. The new president has children — he must hate them somehow to wish a climate hell on them. Or maybe he just doesn't see it as his job to ensure the viability of their future. (He probably thinks he created his present "success" all by himself, so why should he have to help his children make it? Frankly, because of the climate change crisis, that small attitude leads to progenycide. And people have to ask — read the comments at your peril — what it is that others are protesting. Sheesh.)

*******

I'll leave you with the link to an article by Bill McKibben: The New Battle Plan for the Planet's Climate Crisis, in which he talks about something sort of new: renewable energy denial amongst T****'s roster of cronies. It's an interesting read. 

And hey, Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! It's the Year of the Rooster (my sign) and my Chinese students tell me it means I'm going to have a lucky year. (I promise to share my luck.)

Summoning the Courage to Speak Our Minds (and Hearts) on Climate Change

Hannah and Rachel from Birmingham
getting their brave on!

As part of my introduction at our Break Free from Fossil Fuels presentation in Victoria (British Columbia's capital city, not the state in Australia) this past week, I talked about how often I find myself lowering my voice when I'm talking about climate change in a public place such as a restaurant. As I do this self-censoring, I chastise myself for being a coward at the same time that I'm rationalizing that I don't want to upset others.

Well, as so often happens in this world, synchronicity kicked in and the very next morning, an article on self-silencing around climate change came across my desk. In it, Chris Mooney for the Washington Post outlines research done by Nathaniel Geiger and Janet Swim of Penn State University. It turns out that I'm not alone. A lot of people self-silence when they think others aren't as concerned about climate change as they are. The researchers found that:

"[P]eople are often afraid to talk about climate change with their peers [let alone near strangers in a restaurant!] because they wrongly think those peers are more doubtful about climate change than they actually are. This incorrect perception -- which the authors dub 'pluralistic ignorance' -- then makes people fear that others will think they're less competent [or unkind, in my case], and thus, view them with less respect, if they bring up the subject or talk about it."

Reading that reminded me of the year we discovered on Christmas Eve that we hadn't been invited to a traditional Christmas get-together the next day. I was able to laugh it off (made for a very relaxing holiday!), but my hubby was more bemused than amused when the only explanation we could think of was that we'd talked about climate change at the previous year's Christmas dinner. We're pretty sure other friends have shunned (well, dropped) us because we have a lot to say on the topic of the changing climate. 

Certainly I've had friends suggest that I not be so negative (hmm, well, um, the end of most life on the planet will certainly give jellyfish the chance to flourish ... how's that for positive?), or not be so emotional (we seem to have chosen a path to extinction, ho hum, pass the peas ... is that better?). Have you seen my article on this topic in Alternatives Journal? Love in the Time of Climate Change. (Not my title -- I wanted to call it Can Deep Green Climate Change Activists Have Friends and Find True Love?)

When I speak to educators and other audiences, I often underscore the necessity of summoning our courage and compassion to becoming heroes for today's children -- and all future generations -- of all species. I hadn't registered that the simple act of speaking about climate change to others and speaking up about it in front of others is actually an act of courage.

Since I read that article, I've got my brave on and have started fighting back against the deniers (who are still around in full force despite the sheer weight of the evidence of climate chaos from around the world) by calling them out in the comments sections of online articles about climate disruption. They're often so irrational, so lacking in compassion, or so just plain wrong that it's not at all hard to respond to them. 

In other words, one doesn't have to be a climate scientist to counter the deniers, one just has to be a person who understands, as Greenpeace Canada's Laura Yates does, that "climate change is the most urgent threat humanity has ever faced." She wants to "be part of the generation that listens to the science, moves away from fossil fuels and begins the clean energy revolution." I'm a lot older, but so do I!

Just remember to talk compassion for the children and the world's most vulnerable who are already losing their lives or their livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes and entire homelands. You can also mention the precautionary principle, thinking like an ancestor, and how you'd like to leave behind something other than progenycide as your legacy. Let's all start speaking up on climate change!

And With That, Lima, We're Through

* Click here for an update. A happyish update.

What's the word for what happened in Lima at the COP20 climate change conference over the last two weeks? Besides ZERO, I mean. Nothing, nada, nichts. Nothing was accomplished. Absolutely sweet $#@! all. But what's the word to describe hundreds of countries and thousands of people getting together to solve the climate crisis and ACCOMPLISHING NOTHING? 

Despicable? Obscene? Callous? Negligent? Criminal? Suicidal? Ecocidal? Progenycidal, for sure. 

When I was out yesterday, I heard people talking about the French Revolution. The guillotine. Aristocratic heads rolling. People getting sick and tired of the oligarchy having their way with the planet. Why are the rich not afraid of an uprising? 

Not one gawddamn blessed thing that is actually going to safeguard the future was agreed to. Not one! I'm sure they would disagree, with their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and their Multilateral Assessments and their Adaptation Knowledge Initiative and their Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and their Nazca Climate Action Portal (no, not NASCAR). But not a single one of those, well, whatever-they-are, gets us even heading in the direction of zero carbon, which is where we need to be by mid-century (with our emissions declining by the end of 2015 ... not sort of waiting until 2020 to even get started sort of thinking about slowing our emissions). I didn't hear any talk at all of adopting the IPCC's best-case scenario, RCP2.6! [Update: There is no mention of it in the draft agreement, although the spirit of it seems to have been included.]

Here's a short history of global action talk on climate change:

• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC)
• Kyoto Protocol
• Bali Roadmap
• Poznan, um, nothing?
• Copenhagen Accord
• Cancun Agreements
• Durban Outcomes (and the Durban Platform for Advanced Action)
• Doha Climate Gateway
• Warsaw Outcomes (Come on, Poland! "Outcomes" again -- can't you be more creative?) (p.s. Turns out they also offered the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts)
• Lima Call for Climate Action

I've had respect until today for the UNFCCC and its difficult task and the daunting process of bringing nearly 200 nations to consensus. But each year, it's more of the same old nothing. New names (ahem, Poland) for the same old empty promises. Now I'm convinced that this whole thing has been a charade, a farce played out to appease us -- no doubt so that we won't rise up!

You can read the pile of bollocks here: http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lima/lima-call-for-climate-action-puts-world-on-track-to-paris-2015/

So, I'm through. I'm finished. Over and out. If the fossil fuel corporations and the fossil-fooled governments of the world so badly want to extinguish most life on the planet, who am I to get in their way and try to ram a stick in their wheels? I mean, those poor rich bastards don't have all the money yet, so how can people like me even think of asking them to stop this deadly global game before they're through? The Burning Age truly is over, but it seems world leaders need to be burned before they'll admit it and embrace the Golden Age of Perpetual Energy.

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to focus on teaching children how to grow their own food, build their own soil, collect their own rainwater, and generate their own energy. I'm not saying that's going to be easy -- there are still lots of parents and teachers in my culture who don't recognize the threat that climate disruption poses to their children's food security. But at least I'll be doing something, and not just "talking" here with you every Sunday morning, achieving nothing (though I've enjoyed "meeting" some of you along the way).

This blog started out as a compendium of compassionate climate actions in countdown to the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. That COP15 finished off a lot of climate change activists. High hopes were dashed to smithereens. 

Many of us re-emerged a few months later and we've been slightly reinvigorated over the last few years (no thanks to the COPs but to sharing in a global civil society movement, and more recently, thanks to CAN International and to the IPCC's Really Cool Plan 2.6, which gave us some small remaining hope in hell of surviving this). 

But I, for one, have lost much of the resilience I came into this fight with. I don't want to hang around waiting for the utter disillusionment and anguish that the Paris COP21 seems likely to produce. My puny efforts won't make any difference anyway. (I can imagine how all the small island states must feel.) 

So picture me in the garden with the children at my school! Sowing, tending, harvesting in our six little beds. Building bat boxes and pruning raspberry canes. Playing Photosynthesis Relay and sitting quietly writing garden poetry or creating garden art. Baking pizzas we've made from scratch in the outdoor cob oven we built ourselves. 

Below is my parting gift for you. If the uprising happens (and not just in my pizza dough), I'll be there in a flash! Till then, take care.

p.s. Here's my favourite thing I've posted: 0 Days to Copenhagen - The Power of One (+ 3,741,952 Others) 

Rise Up

by The Parachute Club

Rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up 

Rise up, rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up

The spirit's time has come

Woman's time has come

Spirit's time ....

We want lovin' we want laughter again
We want heartbeat
We want madness to end, we want dancin'
We want to run in the streets
We want freedom to live in this peace
We want power, we want to make it okay
Want to be singin' at the end of the day
Children to breathe a new life
We want freedom to love who we please

(Rise up, rise up) Oh, rise and show your power
(Rise up, rise up) Everybody is dancing to the sun
(Rise up, rise up) It's time for celebration
(Rise up, rise up) The spirit's time has come

Talkin' 'bout the right time to be workin' for peace
Wantin' all the tensions in the world to ease
We want to love, run wild in the streets
We want to be free, we want to be free

Talkin' about a new way
Talkin' about changing our names
Talkin' about building the land of our dreams
This tightrope's got to learn how to bend
We're makin' new plans
We're gonna start it again

Rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up 

Rise up, rise up

Rise up, rise up, rise up

Spirit's time has come 

Spirit's time has come

(Rise up rise up) Oh, rise and show your power
(Rise up rise up) Ah, dance into the sun
(Rise up rise up) It's time for celebration
(Rise up rise up) The spirit's time has come

Woman's time has come

Spirit's time has come

Rise up

 (Rise up)
Everybody
Time for you and me 

You gotta be happy

Rise up 

Compassion Tune-Up: How Hot Will It Get in Their Lifetime?

How how will it get for a child born today?

Every time I turn around, I read or hear "two degrees." Two degrees this, two degrees that. Two degrees has wormed its way into our climate-changed brains as though it's a goal or a target we're aiming for, instead of a temperature rise we don't want to go near.

The Independent: "A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures [is] the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change ...." 

The Conversation: "Two degrees [is] the temperature rise we need to stay under to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change ...." 

European Union: "Limiting Global Climate Change to 2 Degrees Celsius" 

The Guardian: "... the agreed 'safety' limit of 2ºC."

I've talked before (here and here) about the ill wisdom of setting 2ºC as some sort of guardrail, especially when we've got a bunch of yahoos driving the global go-karts. "Guardrail? Yeehaw, let's go for it!" Considering what's happening already with only an additional 0.8ºC of warming, how could anyone wish 2ºC on their progeny and descendants? 

Having said all that, if one recognizes the catastrophic danger that continued global warming poses, then one might find The Guardian's interactive How Hot Will It Get in My Lifetime? of use as a compassion tune-up. For example, here are screenshots for my birthdate versus the birthdate of my beloved niece. This helps me see that it's all inexorable without a huge push for zero carbon emissions.

Warming in my lifetime (click on image to see the whole graph)

Warming in my niece's lifetime (click to see the whole graph)

On current emissions trends (which show no sign of slowing, let alone stopping), when my niece reaches my current age in 2048 (and I'm in the ground or in deep decline), we'll have blown past the 2ºC "guardrail" and will be heading to over 6ºC of warming. 

By the way, here's how I look at that best-case lower limit of the range of warming. If emissions keep rising and the global temperature keeps going up, then there is no "best case." It's just a matter of the speed at which we're committing this greatest of crimes against humanity: progenycide.

The Lesson in Aikido? Envelop Your Adversaries

"If your heart is large enough to envelop your adversaries, you can see right through them and avoid their attacks. And once you envelop them, you will be able to guide them along a path indicated to you by heaven and earth." 

— Morihei Ueshiba, O Sensei, Founder of Aikido 

What, oh what, do I do with that lovely thought? Sure, it's useful in everyday situations in my small circle. It's helping me help a girlfriend dealing with a greedy landlord. It's good to keep in mind at work sometimes. It's great for when my hubby and I are feeling pissy with each other (envelop = big hug) (the "guiding" part being more difficult with a spouse, however, especially a Taurus ;-). And I'll even be able to use it when I make community presentations about the climate change emergency.   

But I don't think my heart is large enough to envelop our true climate change adversaries. You know them: the ones who keep pushing inaction, delay, "more research," economic development versus environmental protection, and thinly-veiled greed as rationale for not giving a crap about the future.  

Given how little we humans can literally survive on, it's so obscene, mean-spirited and harsh how much some people live on. That they would commit progenycide by deliberately and knowingly killing off the viability of the future ... grrrrr! That these people (and their corporations) would go to such expensive lengths to maintain their obscene wealth ... grrrrr! I just can't get beyond being really freaking angry at them!  

And my little squeak of anger doesn't seem to effect any change other than upsetting friends who "don't want to hear about it"! Alas. So how do I make my Mother Bear anger roar????   

Holding the anger in a safe container (it's righteous anger, so I don't feel the need to get rid of it, though I must be ever vigilant to ensure that I'm transmuting it into action instead of passive, negative energy), what do I do next? 

I feel that my anger is held in balance with my compassion. And my life energy feels strong (even if I am tired of all the struggle). It's the way, or the path, that has me stumped. An online friend has asked what that "next" might look like. But besides carrying on with my Climate Reality presentations (my third one coming up soon; forewarned that there are some "unbelievers" in the group), and my writing and talking and sharing, I honestly don't know what my "next" will be, could be, should be.  

Any ideas? How can we simply (ahem) enlarge this kind of goodness and decency to embrace and envelop the more climate change vulnerable around the world (including our farmers and, soon, ourselves), and all future generations, of all species? 

Earthworms After a Rain: A Metaphor for Climate Change Catastrophe

I took my (newly gluten-free and therefore pain-free) body for a run this morning. It had poured rain all night and so I wasn't surprised to find a huge earthworm on the road at the end of my driveway.

I couldn't just leave it there because it would soon be run over by a passing car. But I'm a bit squeamish about picking up worms (which does surprise me, since I played with them as a child). So I got a stick and gently tickled the long, thin worm into a squirmy spiral of fat worm (worms are so fascinating), which was then easy to pick up with the stick and move to the side of the road. Remembering the old joke about the Boy Scout who helped the little old lady cross the road, even though she didn't want to cross, I hoped I had put the worm on the side it was heading to.

I carried on my jog, feeling pleased that I'd done my good deed for the day. Another few steps, and DISASTER! Worms everywhere! More worms than I've ever seen before. Big mama worms, baby worms. Pink worms, bluish worms, terra cotta worms. I was stunned! The road was covered with soon-to-be squished or dried out annelids. I realized very quickly that there was no way I could rescue all these worms.... Especially if I was to finish my run and get on with my day.

All I could do was try to avoid stepping on them. My eyes welled up with sad tears, but that only made it worse because I could no longer see the road clearly.

And then it struck me. Here was a metaphor for what's happening in the world today, in the face of climate change catastrophe.

• Some people care, but feel helpless against the sheer size of the problem.

• Some people don't notice worms ... or vulnerable populations.

• Some people just don't care about worms ... or those who are already losing their homes and homelands.

• Some people are skeptical that thousands of worms on the road constitutes a problem. "Can you show causal effect? Maybe the moon's plasma whatever caused it."

• And some people deny the problem completely. "Worms? What worms? I don't see any worms. Those are just dead sticks on the pavement." "Global warming? What global warming? There's no global warming. Those refugees are just sissies who can't swim."

I hope the psychologists are ready for the day when these comfortable skeptics and deniers discover that their greed, their lack of compassion, and their refusal to see and accept the problem are responsible for their children's lack of a future. Progenycide.

Should we be trying to put all the earthworms out of harm's way? I don't know. Should we be trying to get to zero carbon as rapidly as possible? Oh yes.

p.s. Thanks to schwarz wetter for the great photo of an earthworm after the rain.

The Cake is Burning! The Oven's Still On!

We had a lovely dinner here last night with two wonderful young friends. Over ratatouille (it's that harvest time of year) on couscous with pain de campagne (sounds fancier than it was), we talked about a lot of fun things as well as harrowing life experiences — as friends do over dinner.

And then, sometime during dessert, C sat back in his chair and said, "I guess this is a debate that could go on all night.... [long pause to leave us in suspense] ...but a lot of people are saying that there's no such thing as global warming and that the Earth is actually cooling."

I'm happy to say that I avoided spewing my blood orange sorbet with fresh cherries all over the table! My beloved very calmly explained that the temperature has gone up — and it hasn't gone back down again, therefore the Earth can't be cooling.

Then he used the analogy that's so easy to understand, our friends were nodding in no time.

If you put the oven on at 350ºF (my stove hasn't gone metric yet), the temperature of the oven will rise until it hits 350, and then stop rising. That's when the little light goes out and we put the pan full of cake batter in. Now, if we don't at some point (about 30-40 minutes later) turn the oven off and take the pan out, what happens to that cake? It is going to go past "baked" to dried out and then to burned.

Globally, we have turned the oven up by 0.8ºC — AND WE HAVE NOT TURNED THE OVEN OFF! Hence there's no way the Earth can be cooling.

I know that a 0.8ºC increase in global average temperature doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to rough up the climate in numerous parts of the world: I'm freezing (okay, chilly) in early August where I live, Russia is ablaze with forest fires and heat records, precipitation patterns are changing (hence more droughts and floods), and on it goes.

Remember, we've evolved to be an agricultural species since the last Ice Age, and our agriculture has been based on a stable climate (and stable global average temperature) over the last 10,000 years.

Folks, we have to turn the oven off (mitigation) or at least start taking the pan out of the oven (adaptation) — and we have to start yesterday. Why are so many people still listening to the progenycidists, children haters, and fossil fuel investors?

What's stopping us from drumming up a little courage and compassion, putting on our metaphorical oven mitts, and simply getting the job started?

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.

THE GLOVES ARE OFF — NO MORE MS. NICE GUY!

It has been harder than usual for me to feel festive this Christmas season.

First, I heard recently that a large group representing business, industry and commerce in the United States (I will not dignify them by giving them free publicity here) is suing some youth who staged a phoney press conference. Ya know, when the old farts who care only for money start attacking the young people who are desperately trying to safeguard their own future — that's when my gloves come off. My generation has no right whatsoever — NONE — to give the younger generations a hard time when we are 100% responsible for the mess their future (heck, our future!) is in.

Second, a local newspaper defamed my husband — by name — and then gave him only one sentence in which to show the weight of evidence that we are in a global climate change emergency. Peter spends 8 to 18 hours of every day reading and synthesizing the global warming / climate change research, so to be insulted for caring about future generations (heck, today's generations!) was hard to bear. Not to mention it was also a sign that our small community isn't the entirely intelligent, supportive and caring place we thought it was.

(Those in Canada will appreciate this farce: CBC's crank commentator Rex Murphy was one of the "experts" quoted to "prove" that my husband's stance is "extremist." I did not know that Murphy is a climatologist when he's not on radio and television. These climate change deniers are very busy people — busy memorizing all the latest denialist drivel it seems they have been asked to spout and spread at every opportunity. And the world continues to heat up. Don't believe it? Let's compare your so-called "facts" to what is actually happening in the Arctic.)

And third, the sense of failure and progenycidal disaster coming out of the Copenhagen climate talks hangs over me like a black cloud of betrayal. It seems that our human world is so entrenched in borders and boundaries and sovereignty that the negotiators and leaders just could not view the Earth as one planet, its atmosphere as the same atmosphere for all nations. The only thing that has been nearly globalized is our addiction to economic growth through fossil fuel use.

Reading this view of China's role in the final hours of the talks sealed that realization for me — and gave me a shudder. The government of China wants to develop — at all costs. Given what I've seen recently of the devastation in that once beautiful country, I'm not sure the Chinese people impacted by this not-sustainable development would choose it over living off the land, given the choice. (Photos by the very courageous photographer, Lu Guang.) Remember "economic globalization"? It seems we've created a monster that's come back to bite us in the butt.

Two Weeks to Copenhagen - Who is Dispensable?

Imagine travelling to a nation's beef and oil capital — and offering a seminar called "Creating a Healthy Planet with a Plant-Based Diet"! That's what we did yesterday here in Canada, in a city that shall remain nameless. During the 1970s oil crisis, these were the folks who put the slogan "Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark" on their bumper stickers (talking about their fellow Canadians in eastern provinces, which is where I was living at the time). So I, at least, came with some trepidation.

It was, happily, a wonderful event, attended by wonderful people ... some life-long vegetarians/vegans who wanted to learn the connection between meat and global warming, some new to this diet and seeking support, and some just learning about it for the first time.

During the question period, a well-known and respected vegan in this community asked my husband to comment on what seems to be an orchestrated campaign by "certain interests" to wipe out hundreds of millions of human beings. "There's a group of people who have no conscience whatsoever," this gentleman said. "They are aiming at controlling, through the economy, the whole of the Earth. Their prime goal is to reduce the population by 80%...."

I must admit that even though my Pollyanna view of the world has been rocked by the global climate change emergency, I had never quite looked at it this way. Yet it fits perfectly with what I talked about yesterday — our inability (or wanton unwillingness) to view human beings outside our circle of familiarity as members of our species.

The gentlemen, as I understood him, was not only talking about the very powerful denialist machine that has ramped up again, pre-Copenhagen, to sow confusion and spew falsehoods about the science of global warming and climate change. He was pointing out that our inaction on the climate crisis is a form of population control. And definitely not the kind of population control many of us have espoused or worked towards, through higher levels of education for girls and women, funding for family planning, and reproductive rights for women everywhere.

No, this form of population control is akin to genocide, and it is leading to progenycide.

The tragic irony is that by being willing to dispense with the lives of all those who aren't "like us" (or contributing to "our" economy), we are risking 100% population control ... the end not only of human civilization, but of human life itself.

Photographer: H. Armstrong Roberts

15 Days - Meat Eating Gone Very Wrong

In trying to uncover the reasons why we humans are doing the unthinkable (committing progenycide), we recently came across a report in the Guardian on findings that suggest the Neanderthals disappeared at least in part because Homo sapiens ate them.

This news has us thinking that one of the main reasons we're letting the Earth go down the drain is that we aren't very good at considering fellow human beings our kin. We are not species-aware or species-sensitive, therefore we don't hold our species as sacred — nor do we think in terms of species survival. (We are egocentric and think in terms of our own personal survival and perhaps that of our own family — although even that is questionable these days.)

So, we wondered, could that be because we have poorly developed schnozzes? Since we human beings didn't evolve with a powerful sense of smell in order to identify each other through our noses (like most animals do), then perhaps we were destined to not recognize our own kin. (Hey, this is all so depressing and frustrating that we're reaching for anything that will help us understand climate change deniers and industry-seduced politicians.)

If this is true — that we don't "recognize" our fellow humans — well then, we've got to start consciously putting aside our instincts and start viewing the whole human family as worth safeguarding. If we allow one child to die because of our climate change neglect, then we risk all the children — of all nations, all species and all generations.

p.s. Thanks to Oliver Kurth for the artwork.

51 Days - Denier-Free Days Declared!

As I was "googling" for something recently, I came across an old blog headline: "Sun Going Down on the Climate Skeptics." And my first reaction was an insolent "Why do we have to fight climate change AND climate change deniers? The job is big enough without people denying that the fight is even necessary."

I would like to run with that headline and declare the rest of 2009 Denier-Free Days! Let's just ignore them and maybe they'll go away (though that never worked when my mom suggested it as a way to get rid of my pesky brothers). Let's not allow any of their stupid-ass comments on our blogs anymore. (What's a little denier/skeptic censorship compared with safeguarding the biosphere?) They have had their day — and stolen the future.

Let's quit being nice to them. One should not be nice to bullies — one should be pleasant yet assertive. But wait ... why should we even be pleasant? These people (especially the mad, egotistical scientists among them) are responsible for the greatest crime against humanity ever: PROGENYCIDE! Because of them and their deadly obfuscating and procrastinating, we are now knowingly killing off future generations, of all species (except maybe jellyfish and bacteria).

Why are the people who are defending the rights of children to a future worth living for NOT willing to adopt the tactics of "the other side"? Why ARE we so polite, even in the face of climate catastrophe? Let's look at it from the perspective of Pascal's wager: if they're right and we're wrong, no one has been hurt (though a few wealthy dudes have had to share a bit of their money with the people they exploited in the making of it) and the world becomes a safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful place; if they're wrong and we're right, life on Earth is doomed without our full and immediate attention to reaching zero carbon.

I know where I'm putting my money! So, with this declaration of Denier-Free Days (October 16 to December 31, 2009, and then, hmmm, yes, January 1 to the end of time), I am giving deniers and skeptics no more of my time, no more of my space, no more of my attention, and no more never-mind (whatever that expression means).

Poof! They're gone. They no longer exist. I'm fighting climate chaos for the sake of the children, and I am heretofore assuming every other human being wants to do the same.

148 Days - We Have Our New Churchill!

I so wanted Al Gore to become our climate change Churchill. I will always resent the American (and other) climate change deniers and progenycists ("progenycide" is the killing of future generations, a term I coined recently) who turned his understanding of the climate change emergency, his passion for sharing the truth far and wide, and his mission to safeguard the future into a political football. (I'm usually a pretty positive person, but those people are despicable. Sadly, they're not the ones who are suffering the consequences of climate chaos first.)

I am, however, thrilled to see that a softspoken statesman is taking on the role of Churchill when it comes to the climate change emergency. His name is Ban Ki-moon, and he is the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Please watch this video (ignore the dork at the other end of the microphone — what a stupid question he poses!) to see Mr. Ban's quiet passion, skillful diplomacy, and strong commitment to this issue. The man is a hero — still unsung, but singing his own song — of the children of the world, and indeed the whole planet.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - Climate Hero!
on the Moral Imperative of the G8 Nations

If you would like to write a note of thanks or congratulations to Mr. Ban Ki-moon, visit the Emergency Action page at Climate Change Emergency Medical Response. Scroll down for his contact information, including his email address.

183 Days to Copenhagen - Sharing the Voices of Others ("Cannibal Culture")

Today, I would like to share something that a dear loved one — and one of the world's best climate change research synthesizers — wrote recently in response to some vegetarian and vegan compatriots who are despairing about the global climate change emergency.

(As I mentioned on Day 201, going veg is the quickest, easiest and most impactful change you can make right now.)

From Dr. Peter D. Carter:
"Hello all, it is encouraging to know there are some good humane beings out there. You are perhaps the only group on the planet right now having the humane integrity to face the terrible truth about global climate change.

The rest of the world is in deep, dumb denial.

As a group knowing the truth, you are in a powerful and unique position right now. Someone asked how can it be that people don't/can't see what is happening. I have asked myself the same question a million times.

First, ethics practically no longer exist, having been taken over by The Market Economy that makes all decisions for all in our culture.

Also, we are a thoroughly desensitized culture raised on violence and cruelty - and distraction and entertainment.

Next, people in general only respond to strong leadership on a big issue. They regard the scientists as the leaders on climate change and the scientists are in as great denial as anyone. Apart from James Hansen, most of them say and do nothing.

And finally, there is the main psychological reason for denial. While it is now so painfully clear that our EuroAmerican consumer culture is literally killing life on Earth, because we are (so people deeply believe) the best there has ever been, our belief tells us we really can't be as insanely evil as to be murdering the Earth. The belief and reality don't match and people are rejecting the reality to keep the belief.

I think the reason why animal rights / vegan folks can see this is that they have a counterculture belief. They don't believe we are the best there is because they believe murdering other animals to eat their flesh is a stupid and bad thing to do. (And climate change research is bearing that out.)

It takes a critical thinking, deep thinking and deep feeling individual to go against our culture's big ritual of meat eating.

The dominant EuroAmerican consumer culture has a history of terrible evil deeds — of ruthless oppression, torture and murder to exploit other far better human cultures over many hundreds of years. Our culture has become the Cannibal Culture as people are now killing their children."

Thank you, Peter. I call it progenycide.