After 45 days, Itzcuauhtli completed his silent strike with 1.5 million people joining his Thunderclap. If you ever needed a reason to smile about climate disruption, listen to his first message after ending a courageous silence.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4z-ehs7mg&w=560&h=315]
What does he mean, YOU are the world leaders? Hear more at SilenceIntoAction.org and become a leader.
This week NY Governor Cuomo banned fracking, President Obama protected Bristol Bay, Alaska from oil and gas, and WA Governor Inslee announced his Carbon plan. Let\’s celebrate these HUGE BABY STEPS forward ending the fossil era!
Picture a kid shouldering a fully-loaded backpack before starting up Mt Rainier. That\’s us! Balancing that load for the first stand-up moment feels triumphant! It\’s the beginning… snap a photo, grab a map, and start climbing that mountain!
Meanwhile climate talks in Peru left the world\’s nations in disarray with no hope for a meaningful agreement at the critical PARIS 2015 talks next year. How did world leaders say so much yet do nothing? Here\’s an example:
John Kerry at the U.N. climate talks gives his best speech. He cites the world\’s best scientists in a call for dramatic personal, social, and political action. he leans way too hard on impoverished, developing nations in a world of killer poverty, to pick up the bill for some of the U.S. pollution we grew wealthy spewing into our air. Nonetheless, he shoulders his responsibility as a statesman-scientist admirably right up until he declares, \”We are proud of these [U.S. pollution] targets!\”
In a sign of how harmful international talks have become, the climate champion of the last 25 years ignores timetables (from the very scientists he names) on how quickly we must act and asks, \”Are we going to do it fast enough?\”
According to scientists Kerry names in his speech, U.S. pollution \’goals\’ not only put our own children on course for exceeding 2C warming to disrupt ecosystems enough to unmake Western civilization, but our \’goals\’ also irreversibly eliminate more than half of species on earth, change the face of the planet and disrupt land & marine ecosystems going forward millions of years. Billions of people will suffer needlessly for centuries to come.
Does that sound like something to be proud of? Instead of aiming for climate recovery, the U.S. Secretary of State hikes down the wrong trail with an old map. In his view, if we refuse to get serious, we strand our kids and everybody else halfway up the mountain with zero chance to get back home. Why not check the map?
Money & power. The world\’s poor don\’t have any. Future generations don\’t have any. It\’s up to world leaders like you and me to give them the power to live in peace. Because worldwide, yes BlackLivesMatter.
If politics is the art of the Possible, climate recovery is the art of the Necessary, where Science maps our terrain, not politicians. What can you do?
Learn climate recovery science. Then school our climate champions on how urgent this has become for young people. Reduce your footprint, and help your loved ones do the same.
Read James Hansen\’s timetable for climate recovery, the one paper every person needs to understand, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of youth, (including Itzcuauhtli\’s brother) who are suing the government for a habitable planet, details a map back to safety that looks something like this,
- 6% per year decrease in Greenhouse Gas pollution, beginning in 2013 (oops!)
- coupled with 100GtCarbon CO2 worth of reforestation (or more than 1,000 billion trees)
- might restore the climate to 350ppm CO2 in the atmosphere near 2100.
In other words, only drastic, liberating action immediately for the next few years keeps our kids chance alive for a climate that protects young people, future generations, and nature.
Half of CO2 we emit today lingers in the air for 25 years, the rest for centuries. Without decisive action starting now, before 2020, we mathematically surrender more and more life centuries from now. Today we hold the right to protect them, the future generations we hear about in every speech on climate. Yet every year we have surrendered more of that right, and have given up on more species. No more.
Who do you choose to lead us? John Kerry a true climate champion, or the people and a boy who is willing to give up something we think we can\’t live without \”for everybody else\’s future\”. Go to ClimateSilenceNow.org to take action.
Go to Plant-for-the-Planet.org to plant some TREES! If 1,000 billion trees tips the equation in our favor, when you plant for the planet, and you plant for our survival.
Restoring climate balance now is the Wonderland journey of this decade. We take steps together both hard and joyful, beautiful and unbearable. But let\’s never forget where we\’re headed, a peaceful world for the next seven generations free and equal, just and lush, prosperous and caring, rising up from the killer consumer culture we leave behind.
Want a little music for your journey? https://vimeo.com/69227576