At the close of the Bali climate change negotiations, we are left again with the disappointment of the Bush administration and all the other climate criminals in Washington. These fossil-fuel-phillic people have slowed down negotiations, stripped key renewable energy provisions in the US energy bill, and pretty much told the rest of the world that they don’t care if global warming cripples their economies. Ted Glick, now in a climate emergency fast for over 100 days, recently said the truth about these climate criminals, and Gore made it clear at Bali that the world must move without the US for the moment. Of course, wonderful things are building on the ground in the US, but we’ll have to wait until 2009 to get seriously going on this issue in the US.
But we don’t have to stop here. We have to make 2008 bigger than 2007. So, to kickoff the year, I created a petition, with the help of peer organizers, for youth around the world to tell world leaders that we want, in 2008, mandates to get rid of coal use by 2020. Dr. James Hansen from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has made it clear that we can’t continue burning coal if we can’t capture it, and that it must stop within the next decade, or else we risk runaway climate that will literally cook the planet. So, youth have to tell world leaders that we want exactly that. On January 1st, we need to send these leaders a strong message with international media on this Youth Call to End Coal by 2020!
To make this really big, we need 10,000-100,000 youth from around the world to sign the petition and get ready to do media work on January 1st about it in every major global warming polluter. So, what are you waiting for? Sign the petition now and tell your friends to do the same! Go!
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Other than the fact that the Bali Summit provided nothing other than to agree to agree to further climate talks (and that’s all that it was), it provided absolutely no change in stopping the constantly increasing global pollution and the life-threatening build up of carbon dioxide. Climate change added to the world’s emerging and dire problems (population explosion and its sustainability, famine and food shortage, energy resource depletion and increased energy demands, cyclic pandemics, global pollution and carbon dioxide saturation, dwindling water shortages for life etc, etc, etc), put together are immense. Indeed together, they are a recipe of nightmarish proportions that has never been seen before by humankind. But the greatest threat to human stability is the fact that people in high places do not realize that the time-span for solving these huge global problems has a finite period of time also. The writing is now on the wall I would say for all to see if they will only look and where humanity has to react without delay, but where, reaction to global problems takes decades to solve. Therefore the lead-time that we have now is the only thing that we have in our favour. Leave it for another 20-years and we shall not have the necessary lead-time to do anything about the really ‘big’ problems. This is what we really have to get over to our leaders, politicians and multinational industrialists, for it will affect them as much as it will affect you and me. Indeed, if they do not change quickly there self-preservation and vested interest thinking, we shall all end up with problems that are just unsolvable due to the time-served requirement to solve them and where time will literally run out on us all.
For only by people in high places realizing our dilemmas quickly now will be able to confront them and have enough time to solve them. It is no use therefore in pussy footing around until it is too late. For hesitancy and delay today is the greatest threat to the survival of humankind and where if we do not come to our senses quickly, in fifty-years time, the world will have become very similar to most probably how we can picture in our minds, a world very much like hell itself.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Bern. Switzerland
I would agree. It’s absolutely absurd that they spent 2 weeks to just agree to another conference. It’s a shame!
I’m not sure I would call them criminals. Most of these policy types probably do not have science or engineering backgrounds, so the climate science may not have the same impact on them as others.
Also, it sounds like the movement cannot decide where carbon sequestration fits in (or not). With so much disagreement over the different alternate technologies, the policymakers do not have a clear path to eliminate coal.
Carlos: Good post, great idea on coal petition. Can you cross post this on TEI? We want to support the petition and actions any way we can. tell me. jm
Sorry, but this is the 4th assessment report. The scientists have screamed, and the policymakers have heard it in DC over and over from citizens. The problem is that they’ve got lobbyists giving them $ to not vote for the right thing. Didn’t the Department of Defense say that climate change was the biggest threat we face? They said that in a report. So why are these policymakers not up to date? Climate criminals is pretty accurate.
As for coal, we don’t want sequestration. Period. We just don’t want any of the fossil fuels. We have what we need to power the world, save the policymakers who have to shift subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables. Coal is not the future. It shouldn’t be used under any scenario.
Yes there have been assessments and reports. Still, the policymakers face the prospect of phasing out 80% of the current energy supply and replacing it with something else. I think even Abraham Lincoln would have been perplexed how to do that. [At least he might have recognized earlier that it needed to be done ;-)]
Windmills are protested, LNG is protested, even transmission lines are protested. The policymakers do not see a consensus in how to transition from fossil fuels.