Which Tombstone Will They Choose for You?

I have always been a "nice girl." Thoughtful, kind, avoided trouble. But enough!

Is being nice (calm, understanding, compassionate towards wrongdoers) really more important than safeguarding the future for all children? Am I supposed to sit idly by while armchair "pundits" with no climate science qualifications bamboozle their audiences with cherry-picked data, misinterpretations and outright fabrications, the future bedamned? We are all entitled to our own opinions — but not to our own facts.

And which is worse? Calling someone a selfish %$#@ or being the someone who promotes an attitude that condemns all future generations to climate hell?

I know which side I come down on, but I'm just wondering, because it seems things are a little skewed in my community these days. (I won't call individual climate change denialists "selfish bastards" anymore — even though I didn't actually name anyone. They don't like it. Too close to home perhaps. Nor do others. Apparently, being nice trumps integrity and truthfulness and caring about the children. But it doesn't mean that the entire denialist campaign isn't made up of them. What kind of adult is it who puts their own creature comforts ahead of the needs of children for health and safety and security? And I'm a bad person because I called someone a name? Sheesh!)

It's pretty obvious to me that most people don't realize how grave the threat of the climate change emergency is, nor how profoundly their (grand)children's lives will be impacted. If they did, they wouldn't be upset with me for calling a spade a spade. They'd be railing against those who spew misinformation and continue to drag down any possibility of political change in the right direction.

Now, just to be clear about which side the truth lies on ... a new study shows that "global warming is real." Contrary to what my local climate change denialist is sharing in print with my community ("Average temperature appears to have slightly declined over the past decade," he tells his readers — which doesn't include me anymore. Wrong.)

Though not yet officially peer-reviewed or published, the authors of this study are sharing the preliminary results together with the programs and data set "in order to invite additional scrutiny as part of the peer review process."

Robert Muller, a known climate change skeptic, and his team (the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, sponsored in part by the Koch Brothers, deep-pocketed climate change denialists extraordinaire) headed up the project. Here's what he has to say about the results so far:

"When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate."

Please remember that I take no delight when climate change denialists are proven wrong. I wish they were all right! I wish global warming were all a hoax and a myth. I want to wake up from this nightmare. But that's not going to happen. "Global warming is real." It's only getting worse. And it's the children who are going to suffer.

Because it's real, we've got to get going on solutions. And because it's real, you're either, to borrow from Dubya, for the right of future generations to a safe and stable climate, or you're not. Which makes you a selfi ... no, wait, I said I wasn't going to go there anymore.

*******

So, which tombstone would you want for your gravesite? Can you guess which one I want for mine?

Clinton Wasn't Completely Right - It's the Food, Stupid

I know, I know. I talk about this a LOT. But today is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is food! So how could I not talk about the relationship between food security and the climate change emergency?

There. Maybe I've said it all already. Climate change is threatening our food security. Bam. Done.

Okay, I'll keep going. While pundits are still — if they talk about global warming and climate change at all — drawing our attention to rising sea level and the plight of polar bears, the biggest, gravest, fastest growing and most urgent threat to all human beings on the planet (with tens of millions already impacted) is drought and wild fires, which lead to crop failure, which leads to food shortages, with ensuing famine (and then the violence).

I know that we in the developed part of the world feel immune. Our grocery store shelves are stocked with provisions, and our home pantries are full of pasta and canned peaches. What do we possibly have to worry about?

Well, as the summer Arctic sea ice extent continues to decrease (summer of 2011 was the second lowest in satellite history), our Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will become hotter and drier = loss of crops. Witness Russia 2010. If we get a few bad summers in a row, food prices will go through the roof and food shortages could lead to violence, even here "at home." (Remember, our grocery stores only hold about three days' worth of food!)

If that sounds ominous, then get serious about solutions that create local community resilience:

• grow as much food as possible at your own home (lawn = food, porch = food, apartment balcony = food, sunny window sill = food)
• work with others to start as many community gardens as possible
• start a program whereby people without land tend the gardens of people who can't
• talk to others about food security (supermarkets have lulled us into forgetting that our species now depends on a stable climate and successful agriculture)
• create a community kitchen, where people teach each other how to prepare food that is locally grown
• eat lower on the food chain (I see lots of grazing land around my community that could, with some work, grow food for humans instead)

And while you're at it, help to create the political will that will lead to serious international action on the climate change emergency at the next climate negotiations, coming up this December in Durban, South Africa. Help your elected officials and your local, regional and federal governments see that climate change is a threat to our food security.

p.s. As the worst famine in many, many decades continues to ravage the Horn of Africa, can anyone tell me where the "militants" (do they even know what they're fighting for anymore?) of Al Shabab are getting their food from?

By the way, it's never just one thing, is it? But in this case, the famine has been exacerbated by global warming and climate change — and the violence makes it even more tragic.

A Global Suicide Prevention Strategy

Canada's House of Commons agreed this week (something its members don't often do) to create a National Suicide Prevention Strategy. The vote was practically unanimous, I've heard. Everyone agrees that suicide is tragic and heartbreaking. Media pundits believe, however, that talk is cheap and that talking about developing a strategy to prevent suicide is not the same as taking action to prevent suicide.

I am very lucky that my life has only ever been peripherally touched by suicide. My heart goes out to anyone who has ever felt suicidal or been devastated by the suicide of a loved one. I know it leaves nothing but a trail of tears and questions behind. (Was there more I could have done? Something I could have done differently? Some clue I should have picked up on?) I know its causes are innumerable — from mental health issues (such as depression), to socioeconomic despair (suicides are rising amongst farmers around the world), to not taking seriously the immense pain felt by a young person whose first boyfriend or girlfriend has broken up with them. (It's not just "puppy love" to them.)

All of this got me thinking about suicide in broader terms, and I wondered (due to our parliament's unanimity) if the idea of global suicide prevention is something people could easily grasp and get behind.

The English word "suicide" comes from the Latin sui "of oneself" + caedere "kill." And it is true that we are killing ourselves — certainly our species, our progeny (hence, my coined term "progenycide"), if not our own children or grandchildren.

As with personal suicide, there are still many who can't, won't or just don't see the danger signs. There are still many who deny the insanity of our system, which is based on infinite growth on a planet of finite resources. There are still many who are ecologically (and historically) illiterate and don't understand the connection between civilization, agriculture/food security, and a stable climate. There are still many who pooh-pooh the seriousness of the climate change emergency, a risk I've never fathomed. (Think how those people can gloat if those raising the alarm are wrong. Think of the perilousness of their stance if they themselves are wrong.)

So what would a global suicide prevention strategy look like? Here are my ideas. Please feel free to add your own.

1. Declare the planetary climate change emergency.
2. Immediately stop all subsidies to fossil fuel industries. (They are doing quite well on their own, thank you, and we should not be continuing to feed the AGW* beast.)
3. Immediately switch all subsidies to promote the growth of renewable energy technologies and businesses.
4. Immediately make it law that all businesses must pay for their hitherto externalized social and environmental costs.
5. Immediately tax carbon. (Create an international even playing field.)
6. Immediately create a Global Green Fund with a donation from every nation of 10% of its military budget.
7. Plant trees. Plant trees. Plant trees. Plant trees. Everywhere, everyone, at every level of government.
8. Teach children how to grow food. NOW.
9. Put the children and all future generations of our species at the centre of all our talks, conferences, summits, and negotiations.
10. Do everything in our power to refreeze the summer Arctic sea ice. (Prepare to paint every black roof and dark surface in the world white, which will create reflective, cooling albedo.)
11. Create a Global Suicide Prevention support group. This stuff is scary and we need friends and like-hearted community members to help us face all this and work at it. Most of the actions above are not things that individuals will do, but together we can be change the political will of our governments.

* AGW = anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming

Compassion for the Deniers, Skeptics, Ignorers and Delayers

Finally, there's a reason to feel compassion for those who deny the climate change emergency, ignore it, or simply don't seem to give a damn about those already (and soon to be) impacted.

They fear their own mortality. They are afraid of death. And that fear drives them to hold fast to anxiety-buffering worldviews or "immortality projects" that sometimes act as barriers to sustainable practices.

This is an idea that I've been aware of for a while now (see Janis L. Dickinson's The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideologies, and Human Response to Climate Change). A series of studies by psychologists Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg "found clear evidence that evoking people's fear of death made them more defensive of their world view, more hostile to foreigners, more willing to lash out violently at people of different political or religious beliefs and more drawn to charismatic leaders." (See also this discussion of fear and the environmental movement.)

Ernest Becker once said, "To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything." The Ernest Becker Foundation (EBF) "seeks to illuminate how the unconscious denial of death and mortality profoundly influences human behavior, giving rise to acts of hate and violence as well as noble, altruistic striving." Indeed, the EBF has a conference coming up entitled Understanding the Violence of Climate Change (Seattle, October 21-23, 2011), which will "explore the close correlation of the denial of climate change to the denial of death."

Here's the question, then. If those who deny, question or ignore the climate change emergency are afraid of death, do those who are fighting to safeguard the future of life on Earth face their own mortality with acceptance or courage? Are climate activists those who have made peace with the idea of dying?

Let me tell you a story. One Sunday, almost 20 years ago, I woke up and told my husband we needed to take a drive. (This is something we never did, and something I never did as a child — my father was a travelling salesman, so taking a Sunday drive was something we just didn't do.)

Because I was so sure I had to do this, my husband joined me to see what it was all about. (I had no clue at the time.) We drove south out of town for quite a ways until I shouted, "Turn left here!" Again we drove for quite a ways until we came to a lovely little campground by a pretty little lake. "This is it," I said. I wandered about in the campground and sat by the lake until I realized this wasn't the right place.

I decided to cross the road, and started bushwacking up a wooded hill through trees and leaves and branches. My husband was following his own path now, so I was alone. I kept wondering what I was there for, what I was going to find.... And then it happened. Something caught my attention, and as I looked over my shoulder, I saw myself — my dead body — lying next to a log in a bed of moss.

A wondrous sense of serenity came over me as I realized that my death will be a gift to the Earth, a returning to my Mother. In that instant, I was no longer afraid of my mortality, knowing deeply and calmly that death is not an end but a new beginning in the cycle of life.

Perhaps that sounds cliché (not to mention sudden) but I made my peace with the idea of becoming compost after I die. And now I fight to protect all life (not just my own) — the very miracle of life — on this planet.

Which has me wondering ... are all climate activists at peace with their own death, and therefore able to to fight for the right of others to live?

p.s. No, that's not me. (I wish!) It's a beautiful photo by Scott Fitzhume from Pixdaus.