Scream or A Flicker of Hope

Climate change is accelerating.  Climate change models  - much derided by deniers - look pretty conservative.    Arctic summer sea ice is vanishing: we may see an ice free Arctic summers by  2020.

Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth's polar caps.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/11/arctic-sea-ice-vanishing
  
Greenland's ice cap seems to be thawing like a popsicle dropped on asphalt on a hot Kamloops day.

 New data compiled by the European Space Agency (ESA) has suggested that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought.    Officials said that new satellite images from ice-measuring radar firm Cryosat were combined with NASA IceSat images, which revealed that the landmass is currently losing ice at the rate of around 900 cubic-km each year.  Experts say that although ice melt figures vary greatly, the new results are nearly 50 percent higher than the majority of findings and have sounded new alarms among scientists.

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2012/08/15/greenland-ice-could-be-gone-in-10-years/

But - WHOHOO! open Arctic water means access to oil!

Ottawa has placed 905,000 hectares of the northern offshore up for bids, clearing the way for energy companies to snap up exploration rights for an area half the size of Lake Ontario. The scale of the offer indicates eagerness in the oil patch to drill for new finds in Canada’s northern waters less than two years after such plans were put on hold following the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a major Arctic drilling safety review.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/reviving-arctic-oil-rush-ottawa-to-auction-rights-in-massive-area/article4184419/

And HEY - maybe we can get metahne out of them thar frozen wastelands !  Do you think?????? Ignore that person chittering away about potent greenhouse gases.

The pilot experiment will explore the possibility of ‘mining’ from gas hydrates: cages of water ice that hold molecules of methane. Such hydrates exist under the sea floor and in sandstone deep beneath the Arctic tundra, holding potentially vast reserves of natural gas. But getting the gas out is tricky and expensive.

http://www.nature.com/news/gas-hydrate-tests-to-begin-in-alaska-1.9758
 On my more despairing days I think humanity is too stupid to survive. Makes me want to scream..... But The Joint Review Panel on Northern Gateway did ask for the US NTSB's report on their bungling of the Kalamzoo spill. 

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report was published in July, but Enbridge has not tabled any information about the spill, which leaked 3.3 million litres of oil into the Kalamazoo river, coating wildlife.  Now the Joint Review Panel assessing the company's proposed oilsands pipeline from Alberta to B.C. has tabled a detailed request asking Enbridge to supply the synopsis report and the final report by noon MT on Sept. 4.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/08/15/bc-enbridge-pipeline-kalamazoo-report.html
A flicker of hope in an oil addicted world.....why on earth wouldn't we admit our addiction when we're reduced to scrabbling for  oil with an EROI of 2.41?     How much destruction do we have to cause before we admit this culture and way of life is unsustainable?  We need to change our values.

Deep Green Resistance

Deep Green Resistance
Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen; 2011, Seven Stories Press

When my co-workers ask what I did on the long weekend, I'm going to tell them I spent it reading a manifesto on insurrection.   They won't believe me - but you will.

I've often said that our culture is sick and dysfunctional.  The authors of Deep Green Resistance  (DGR) agree.  They write: "We're up against a system that is not only unjust, but insane"  (page 190.) Their answer to dysfunction is resistance - and by  resistance, they mean resistance in the sense the French resisted the Nazis. IEDs; guns; explosives; death and destruction .....   They state  "A culture of resistance believes in resistance because no amount of love or compassion or earnest education...has ever stopped the powerful." (page 190.)

Really?  Tell it to Gandhi - India is no longer the jewel in the crown of the British.   And the Indians didn't pick up arms - they drove the British out through a campaign of non violence.

Tell it to Gwynne Dyer.   Discussing revolutions,  he states:  "The nonviolent revolutions that began in East Germany in November 1989, and ended Communist rule in the old Soviet Union itself by late 1991, could have been stopped if the local Communist regimes had been willing to follow the Chinese example, but none of them had the stomach for killing on that scale.  So about 350 million Europeans got their freedom and almost nobody died. At almost exactly the same time, the apartheid regime in South Africa released Nelson Mandela and began the talks that led to majority rule in 1994."  http://www.straight.com/article-398587/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-twentyfive-years-nonviolent-revolution

DGR praises MEND in Nigeria, and states that MEND has reduced Nigeria's oil output by one third.  (page 479.)  Yup - sure - violent tactics are working well to stop oil production there.   A quick check via Google brings up oil production statistics.

"Lagos – Nigeria’s crude oil production has increased from one million barrels per day in 2008 to    2. 6 million barrel per day due to the improvement in post-amnesty programme. "http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/02/nigeria%E2%80%99s-crude-oil-production-rises-to-2-6m-barrels-daily-fg/

DGR is a really interesting book  - the authors are passionate about the problems we face - they love this planet and all our relations  -  but they are wrong in advocating violence as a solution to an insane culture.   Read the book for everything but the authors' solutions to our problems.  And hey - bonus!  If  you ever need to construct an underground cell , run a covert operation,  and destroy infrastructure, DGR has the directions!

DGR  also has a website if you want  more than my jaundiced view.
Find it at:  http://deepgreenresistance.org/

New Tools for Undertanding A Turbulent world

This video is a lecture by Thomas Homer Dixon presented at the University of Waterloo as part of that university's  big ideas series.   His recent research has focused on threats to global security in the 21st century and how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change.  The video is long but well worth watching - particularly if you are a climate change activist or worried about climate change.   Thomas Homer Dixon points out that we are urgently in need of new tools to cope with an increasingly unpredictable events including climate change.  He feels that  some of those tools are going to emerge from this field of "complexity theory." 

And here's a link to the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation mentioned by Dr. Homer Dixon during his talk.  From their home page:

The Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation is a research hub that promotes the rigorous transdisciplinary study of innovation within—and the resilient and beneficial transformation of—the complex adaptive systems essential to human well-being.

http://wici.ca/

Love and Climate Change

The effects of climate change are all around us:   permanent Arctic sea ice is melting ; killer droughts decimate Africa; spring comes earlier everywhere ;  BC pine forests have been ravaged by pine beetles and thousands of jobs will be lost in our forest industry;   the rivers of the Mekong Delta get saltier and saltier..... and yet we do so little I think we do - nothing.  Particularly in Canada we procrastinate.    

Climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.  We could phase out fossil fuels if we had the will.....

A paper published in Energy Policy in 2011 concluded  that " barriers to 100 % conversion to wind, water and solar worldwide  are primarily social and political, not technological or even economic.  "  

I repeat   "   Barriers are social and political ....."

We could have, in the twenty years since the Rio summit, replaced fossils fuels with alternate sources of energy.     (In fact,  - there's an alternative energy grid in Germany composed of solar, wind, hdyro, and biofuel - and it provides its customers with energy day and night.  ) 

And yet we do very little - so little that sometimes I despair and think we do nothing. We cannot translate our love of  future generations - our own children - our own grandchildren - into collective action right now.

 We lack empathy for those who suffer the effects of climate change in Bangladesh - or Vietnam - or Sudan - or the Arctic.   I  have a friend who said   " what do I care what happens to Africans or Pakis because of climate change? " 

I was astonished, befuddled,   consternated, dumfounded, flabbergasted, and speechless that he didn't understand that we are all connected.  That everything is interconnected -  that every action we take affects the world  and everyone in the world.

This is true at a physical level.    To use a really cheering example,  radioactive fallout doesn't stop at national borders   - witness Chernobyl.   Sheep farmers in Cumbria (in England) couldn't sell their lambs  due to the radiocesium contamination in the years after Chernobyl.     A few farms continue to be affected to this day.   

But interconnectedness isn't merely   physical.   It is true on an economic level  - just think of the worries that Greece will dump everyone back into recession with a default on their bonds - and  also true on  a  spiritual level .

The Dalai Lama states  that, by  neglecting others  " we ignore the reality of our situation"  

and ignore the " the interdependent nature of reality." 

Curiously,  denying climate change  is more distressing  and disempowering than acknowledging it.    It takes a lot of energy to repress truth...  ... or a lot of drink and drugs.

But - perhaps oddly - stating that climate change is real and that we live with an unprecedented disaster looming over us - is empowering. 

And healing.  Telling the truth  - with loving kindness - shifts the Zeitgeist .

So.  The truth.

 We -   we humans -  exist in a time of ecological holocaust -  created by ourselves.  I don't think any words exist for the level of pain I feel -  or the level of pain others feel. -when think of htis truth. 

 I weep due to this pain .  Often.     It  is nearly unbearable. 

 But- oddly -  this pain  is good - in a way - it reminds me that I am a part of Gaia -   it reminds me that I love this beautiful blue green world   -  and that I exist to give voice to her. 

A tree  once told me - yes, I said a tree told me - that, If we learn to love ourselves, other people, and Gaia, we will save ourselves.   Gaia is a part of us - we are a part of her -we need her.  

When we are healed of self hatred, we will be healed of world hatred. 

What to do ?  Love - more, more fully, more openly, more encompassingly...

This seems to be an appropriate time to meditate on increasing love in the world. 

Please make yourself and let the tension drain from your body.   Read the following out loud - gently. 

May I be happy.

May I be well.

May I be free of suffering.

May I love myself - all of myself - with my whole heart.

May I accept myself.

May all  living beings be well, may all living beings be happy.
May all living beings be free of suffering.

May I love all living beings  - with my whole heart.

May we all  love all living beings with our whole hearts.

May we accept all living beings as ourselves - not separate from us.

May this earth - this beautiful blue pearl -  Gaia-  be well.  May she be happy.

May she be free of suffering.

May I love this earth - this Gaia   - with my whole heart.

May we all love  Gaia with our whole hearts.

May we accept Gaia as  ourselves - not separate from us.

May all sentient beings be well .

May all sentient beings dwell in spacious equanimity -

May all beings dwell in love -  inseparable from Gaia.

Take a moment to return to yourself. 

When our values change - we will change our systems.
Martin Luther King said that

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.

 I say  when we love ourselves, we will be able to love the world, and to create a velvet climate revolution.

350 eARTh Art 2010

 

If ordinary people can take action, why can't politicians?

 The fires, floods, droughts, heatwaves , and storms of summer 2012 are what global warming looks like.  The photo below is of the view from my house:  the smoke isn't from a local fire.  It has drifted from the Colorado wildfires - 1300 kilometers away.  Our actions affect everyone and everything - what we do and say matters.

If ordinary people can take action, why can't politicians?

Write your MP and your MLA and let them know you'd like to see action on climate change.

300 Years of Fossil Fuels

From the Post Carbon Institute via YouTube.

http://www.postcarbon.org/

As Goes the Planet

So go we ..........as we destroy and hack and kill and  mutilate and overfish entire ecosystems and life ....we're destroying and hacking and mutilating and killing ourselves.

I found this drawing at:
http://conservationbytes.com/2012/02/13/cartoon-guide-to-biodiversity-loss-xv/

We need a velvet climate revolution.  We need to love ourselves - then we'd love the world, our mother.

The Ethics of Climate Change

I am a Unitarian Universalist.   Recently , our minister preached  - yes, big surprise - that's what ministers do!  She explored  the subject of " neighbours."

Well, I believe that we are all connected - people, animals, insects, viruses, plants, fungi, stars - you get the idea.   So my answer to the question "Who is  my neighbour? "   is -  everyone and everything.  Therefore, it behooves me to look after my nieghbour - or not to actively harm them.   Therefore, I must  act to prevent  climate change as well as work to persuade others of the necessity of acting.

I'm not the only person who has arrived at this conclusion.

Climate change is changing our world. Not only is it changing our physical world, but also our intellectual, social, and moral worlds, in ways that we could not have imagined a  generation or two ago. The science of climate change, and the political impasses associated  with dealing with it, demonstrate that we are in a profoundly unsafe, interdependent, and uncertain world....[Therefore] be willing to take an ethical stand on climate change.  There is no place to hide form this....Regard economics as being about provisioning - that is, the way socities organize themselves to provide for the sustaining and flourishing of life. http://www.e3network.org/papers/Ethics_and_the_Economist_033111.pdf

So what do I do to live ethically and to prevent and mitigate climate change?

Little and big - in no particular order:

• I walk to work.  If you cannot do that, take transit.  Or car pool! If everyone drove to work with one aother person, you'd reduce vehicles on the road by one -half and greenhouse gas emissions accordingly.
• I shop at the local farmers' market and freeze and preserve food  for the winter.  Trucking and flying goods generates a lot of greenhouse gases.
• I am a vegetarian.  Eating meat raised in the agri biz is not only cruel to animals, and  destructive to the environment,  but the industry  generates almost 20 % of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
• I buy fair trade food.  (OK - it's trucked in  -but at least shade grown coffee doesn't destroy the environment. And as soon as I find coffee that arrives om the Bluenose, I'll buy that.)
• We have cut our electrical bill to one- half its former total by turning off lights/ appliances/ clock radios  and installing CFLs.  We replaced our washer , dryer , and dishwasher with European models that use very little electricity or water.
• We(me and my partner)  turn our heat backto 15 C at night and up to 17 C during the daytime.  Walking around in a sweater isn't a hardship.  And snuggling is fun!
• We installed a solar hot water heater.   Lots of susnshine in the Interior of BC.
• We don't fly anywhere.
• I write letters to politicans and urge them to to take action on climate change ( and perahps salvage Canada's reputation in the process.)  
• We donate to climate action groups.
• We help organize climate change rallies and vigils - in fact, we volunteer a lot of time.  Not only do we work for a good cause, we enlarge our community of friends.  And have fun.
• I educate myself  on the issue and on the psychology of climate change denial.
• I meditate to grow my loving kindness and to generate more love in the world.

Anyone can do some of these things.  I / we didn't begin by doing all of them at once. Just begin! 

If you can only choose one, please choose creating more love in the world - for yourself as well as all others. After all, Gandhi said  "Be the change you want to see in the world."   I say once we learn to love the world and ourselves, we will not destroy it  - we will  create a velvet climate revolution.

PS The picture was taken at a candlelight vigil for the Copenhagen Conference - the action was suggested by the folks at
http://www.350.org/             Check the website out - lots of ideas for actions in the fall of 2011.

Vandana Shiva and Climate Debt

Naomi Klein on Bolivia and Climate Change

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/22/how-bolivia-transformation-could-change-world

The Bolivian government got the ball rolling by proposing four big ideas: that nature should be granted rights that protect ecosystems from annihilation (a "universal declaration of Mother Earth rights"); that those who violate those rights and other international environmental agreements should face legal consequences (a "climate justice tribunal"); that poor countries should receive various forms of compensation for a crisis they are facing but had little role in creating ("climate debt"); and that there should be a mechanism for people around the world to express their views on these topics ("world people's referendum on climate change").

The next stage was to invite global civil society to hash out the details. Seventeen working groups were struck and, after weeks of online discussion, they met for a week in Cochabamba with the goal of presenting their final recommendations at the summit's end. ..... Yet Bolivia's enthusiastic commitment to participatory democracy may well prove the summit's most important contribution.  That's because, after the Copenhagen debacle, an exceedingly dangerous talking point went viral: the real culprit of the breakdown was democracy itself. The UN process, giving equal votes to 192 countries, was simply too unwieldy – better to find the solutions in small groups.

Could there be a greater contrast between the two conferences?

Transistion Town Totnes

I'm Gonna Read This!

Excerpted at The Tyee

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/03/11/SmartenUpOrDie/

Today's threats demand that we hone a new sensibility, the capacity to recognize the hidden web of connections between human activity and nature's systems and the subtle complexities of their intersections. This awakening to new possibilities must result in a collective eye opening, a shift in our most basic assumptions and perceptions, one that will drive changes in commerce and industry as well as in our individual actions and behaviors.

A velvet climate revolution for sure!

Transition Towns

Two of us attended a Transition Towns Workshop this weekend in Vernon, BC:  it was unlike most workshops I've ever been to.  I was astonished, energized, strengthened, and inspired - you could have knocked me over with a typewriter!   Transition Towns are places that, led by an initiating committee,  are working to solve the problems of peak oil and climate change locally.   That sentence sounds impossible, doesn't it?  It isn't - the city that I have raved about previously, Portland, Oregon - is a Transition Town.  ( Portland's greenhouse gas emissions will be 10 % below 1990 levels this year! )

But it isn't just the successes that make the Transition Model so cool: coolness is implicit in its philosophy.  It is best describeds by the phrase "Transition is a party, not a protest!"  The model is democratic and inclusive; focuses on both exterior results and inner transformations, creates social connections and fun, and embraces uncertainty.  In fact, their UK website states:

We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale. What we are convinced of is this:
■if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late
■if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
■but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Check out their website at http://www.transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionNetwork
 Or research a Canadian city  - Victoria, BC, and Vancouver, BC are both transition towns. Or go to a Transition Towns workshop with your friends.  And start a party!
(Yes, the reference to "obsolete" technology was deliberate. )

The Olympics Are Over

Vancouver is waking up to a hangover this morning: the Olympics are over. They ended well  for Canada - we won two gold models in hockey.  Will they end well for the Right Honorable Stephen Harper?  Have Canadians forgotten about the torture of Afghan detainees?  Has the best ever Olympics afterglow gone to our heads - have we fogotten our anger at the  proroguing of Parliament and the dirty tricks to shut down the committee investigating the torture of Afghan detainees?

 Has Mr Harper crafted and perfected a vision to inspire the nation as he "recalibrated" during the extended winter  break?  Will the throne speech and the new budget presented by his Finance Minister demonstrate leadership?  Will the Conservatives fund clean energy and sign on to meaningful cuts to Canada's greenhouse gas emissions?  Will we actually do something about climate change  ?  Will Canada begin a velvet climate revolution instead of playing follow the leader with the Americans?

It should be an interesting week.....

Are Profits The Most Important Thing?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-top-firms-environmental-damage

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.  The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.....Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California.

Are profits the most important thing in the world?  More important than healthy ecoysystems?  Just in case no one else has noticed, I'd like to point out that the economy is a subset of the environment, not the other way around.   We have no Planet B  - so let's work for a velvet climate revolution  - a world that is sustainable and more democratic than  the one we live in now. 

The New Economics Foundation - 21 Hours

I love the foundation's ideas and publications.   One of their latest is entitled 21 Hours.  They suggest that a twenty one hour work week become the new norm for three reasons.  Firstly, a shorter work week would eliminate unemployment and ensure that unpaid labour is distributed equitably between the sexes.  Working less may help break the "habit of living to work, working to earn, and earning to consume." Less consumption equals fewer ill effects on the ecosystems that sustain humanity.  Thirdly, less consumption and fewer paid hours may lead to a more resilient sustainable economy.

Sounds completely un-doable, doesn't it?   However, the nef lists examples of short work weeks in their paper and proves it can and has been done.  They point out that working less would give all of us more time to be active citizens,  among other benefits.  Part of a velvet climate revolution, don't you think?

Their paper is well worth time spent to read it - just click on the link to their site on my blogroll.

Preconceived Notions - Part 2

In 1491,  Charles Mann describes "milpas" in  Mexicao.  A milpa is a field in which up to a dozen crops are planted at once - they usually include corn, beans squash, tomatoes, avocadoes, hot peppers, and sweet potatoes.   "Milpa crops are nutrionally and environmentally complementary .....there are places in Mesoamerica that have been continuously cultivated for four thousand years and are still productive. " (P 221) Contrast this with our system of agriculture - we exhaust our soils within years.  Of course, these fields are tended by hand.  Doesn't that make them less productive than our system of industrial farming and therefore impractical ?  Not at all. The UN 's Food and Agriculture Organization shows maximum productivity is achieved by farming tiny areas - between 1 to 2 hectares -  with a multiplicity of crops and tending them by hand.

So will a velvet climate revolution include de-urbanization and a return to small holdings? 

Conniving Canada

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/11/chinese-thinktank-copenhagen-document

Rich nations furthered their "conspiracy to divide the developing world" at December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen, while Canada "connived" and the EU acted "to please the United States", according to an internal document from a Chinese government thinktank obtained by the Guardian. .... The paper is scathing about the US-led "umbrella group", which it says adopted a position of inaction. Canada, it says, "was devoted to conniving" to convince the world that its pledge of a 3% emissions reduction between 1990 and 2020 is significant, while having no intention of meeting its Kyoto protocol target of 6%.

Our leadership drag their feet on climate change?  Spin and connive?  Jamais!

Meanwhile - tick, tock, tick, tock ... time is running out on opportunites to save money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions,   amd reverse climate change.  And Canada fiddles.....and other countries protect their turf. And argue. And debatae.

 We need a different world view.  For starters, we might  consider the impacts of our actions on all future generations.

No Impact Man (2009)

We rented No Impact Man  tonight and loved it.   (Google YouTube and No Impact Man to watch the trailer.) Don't get me wrong - I'm not giving up electricity - especially not living in Canada where we need electrical power or the furnace won't run - but I loved the point the movie made about life being - gasp! - MUCH BETTER without constant consumption.   I highly recommend it....
From his blog at http://noimpactman.typepad.com/

The No Impact Experiment is a one-week carbon cleanse. It is a chance for you to see what a difference no-impact living can have on your quality of life. It’s not about giving up creature comforts but an opportunity for you to test whether the modern “conveniences” you take for granted are actually making you happier or just eating away at your time and money.

Velvet climate revolution, here we come!

Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility

The US Pentagon has acknowledged that climate change increases the possiblity of conflict around the world.  "The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilising force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The Pentagon, in acknowledging the threat of global warming, will now have to factor climate change into war game exercises and long-term security assessments of badly affected regions such as the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force

 International Alert, an independent  peace building organization funded by the European Union,  has spent twenty years attempting to create peace.  "Effects of climate change such as more frequent natural disasters, long-term water shortages and food insecurity could combine with other factors and lead to violent conflict." http://www.international-alert.org/press/Climate_change_conflict_and_fragility_Nov09.pdf

 In spite of these two organizations' diametrically opposed missons, they agree on the security implications of climate change. Unlike the Pentagon, International Alert attempts to understand and  prevent conflict. They conclude that, by instituting good governance,  peaceful solutions to the problems caused by global warming are more likely to be created.  Do you doubt their conclusions?   Fragile states are characterized by an elite that controls economic and political opportunity - think of Guatemala.  Conflict risk is increased when  resources are hogged by by elites and the poor have no access to institutional structures through which their grievances can be addressed.     Hmmmnnnnn  - now I'm wondering if the BC pipeline bomber feels he has no other way to express grievances besides violence.     (Goerge Monbiot did call Canada a thuggish petro state.)

I conclude that climate change activists must be politically aware and work towards increasing participation in democracy if a velvet climate revolution is to be successful.