The Physics of Copenhagen: Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization
In Copenhagen, if the U.S. is willing to treat climate change as politics-as-usual, most of the other major players will simply follow suit. They’ll sign some kind of paper in Denmark — that became all but certain on Friday night when Obama announced he’d jet in for the meeting’s close. European leaders and some environmental groups may then call it a “qualified success,” and on we will go through more years of negotiation. In the meantime, physics will continue to operate, permafrost will continue to thaw, sea ice to melt, drought to spread. It’s like nothing we’ve ever faced before — and we’re facing it as if it’s just like everything else. That’s the problem.
We Have Allowed the Corporate State to Sell the Environmental Crisis as a Matter of Personal Choice
The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.
Mobilizing for Climate Justice
The Mobilization for Climate Justice was founded to link the climate struggle in the U.S. to the growing international climate justice movement, with an eye toward building for actions around the Copenhagen climate summit and beyond. Its objective is to provide a justice-based framework for organizing around climate change that opens space for leadership by representatives of communities in the U.S. that are most impacted by climate change and the fossil fuel industry.
The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has clearly hit a nerve among people of many walks of life, all around the world. While the outcome of this fall’s events remains highly uncertain, it is clear that such a flowering of creative and determined popular responses is precisely what is needed to reverse decades of willful inaction by the world’s elites and reach beyond the limits of politics-as-usual.
Peak Oil: A Dark Look Into Our Future
Blind Spot is a documentary that illustrates the current energy crisis that our way of life is facing. Whatever the measures of greed, wishful thinking, neglect or ignorance, we have put ourselves at a crossroad which offers two paths, both with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don’t our way of life will collapse.
A report from Bill McKibben at 350.org
Largest anti-coal action yet in the United States took place on March 2nd: Thousands and thousands of people flooded the streets around the Capitol Hill power plant.
Dr. James Hansen talks with Charlie Rose
James Hansen talks with Charlie Rose about Coal, Sea Level Rise, and 4th Generation Nuclear Power Plants – A must See Video
Bill McKibben to be among demonstrators in Washington DC against coal-fired power plants
On March 2, environmentalist Bill McKibben will join demonstrators who plan to march on a coal-fired power plant in Washington D.C. In this article for Yale Environment 360, he explains why he’s ready to go to jail to protest the continued burning of coal.
350 parts per million carbon dioxide is the wrong target…
Sorry, Bill and the crew at 350.org, you’re wrong about 350 being our campaign target for 2009 and the lead-up to Copenhagen. The most important number of earth is 300. That’s what Hansen is saying, that’s what Schellnhuber is saying. There’s no point campaigning on an inadequate target. We only get one chance at this, and advocating targets that will still fail to fully solve the problem is the most de-mobilising action we can take.
Bill McKibben Rewrites the Global Climate Challenge
Act now, we’re told, if we want to save the planet from a climate catastrophe. Trouble is, it might be too late. The science is settled, and the damage has already begun. The only question now is whether we will stop playing political games and embrace the few imperfect options we have left.
Gore Supports 350 ppm Target at Poznań
Al Gore gave the international climate talks in Poznan a new set of marching orders this afternoon, declaring that old targets for fighting global warming had been made obsolete by new science and that 350 parts per million co2 was the new standard for which the world must aim. “A year ago, nobody had ever heard of 350. But it turns out it’s the most important number on the planet,” said Bill McKibben.
