93 Days - Upcoming International Climate Action Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 24th - INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION

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

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

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

94 Days - Welcoming an Economic Depression (A Guest Post)

With thanks to Remi Charron, a concerned father and expert in solar homes and sustainable housing, for this post:

Climate change poses a serious threat to humanity and other life on Earth. The world needs to come together and drastically reduce, if not eliminate, its greenhouse gas emissions in short order. This monumental task will require global collaboration like we have never seen before. However, if our focus is simply to eliminate global warming, humanity and the world will still be in great peril. Why? Global warming is simply a symptom of a bigger problem.

Humans have unleashed a cancer on our biosphere and it has metastasized, with global warming being only one of a number of tumours. Others include deforestation, increasing fish stock collapse, the extinction of over 70 life forms per day, collapse of global fresh water supplies, etc. They are all related; it is one big cancer. 

Here's a definition of cancer:

A class of diseases in which a group of cells displays uncontrolled growth (beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis (spread to other locations in the body via lymph or blood).

Some say that humans themselves are the cancer that plagues the Earth. However, we are part of Nature; we are as natural as the birds and the bees. But we have become a group of cells in uncontrolled growth. 

In my mind, it largely stems from our current need to have sustained economic growth. The model of continual growth the global economy relies on treats natural resources and the environment as externalities in infinite supply, and puts a huge value on money. 

In reality, the concept of money is made up. It is simply a bunch of 1's and 0's and coloured paper going from one hand to another. Nature and its natural resources are real. That is where the real value lies.

Stopping the spread of the cancer — indeed, curing it — requires the global economy to shrink and shrink and shrink, until humanity can once again be in balance with Nature. 

Is growth possible? Yes, as with the definition of cancer, cells can grow within normal limits. But we have grown way beyond those limits, and need a period of sustained economic contraction to return to a healthy balance. 

Current politicians have limited or no money to stop global warming, yet easily find trillions of dollars to slow or stop a recession. The challenge is to get the world to embrace a sustained depression and find a way to spread the hardship so that we can remain happy and upbeat, while coming out at the end better off than we started. 

What we face cannot be fixed through technology, but requires a whole new mindset.

95 Days - Belly Fat and Climate Change

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

"1 Tip for a Flat Belly"

"1 Rule to a Flat Stomach: Obey!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?