It’s Getting Hot In Here

Martin Luther King said, more than 40 years ago, “We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”

I have had, in the past week, three moments in which it struck me — Tomorrow IS today. Everything we imagined for the future is happening right now.

1. Nations are Disappearing. Entire Nations. Now. I heard the President of  Kiribati say to the Minister of State of the Maldives that Australia was finally willing to take his refugees; that they had agreed to train his citizens so they could move as recruited migrants and not as refugees. He said, “When my nation is uninhabitable, my citizens will be working sustainably all over the world.” The Minister of the Maldives said he would never see his nation underwater and uninhabitable, that he would never leave.

2. The Climate Changes Are Everywhere. I opened the Times of India on Tuesday morning to a front page story about the energy and water shortages — Delhi had its largest power demand ever on Monday. I went to cut it out (to add to my growing climate news story collection) but couldn’t – the back was a story about wildfires in Northern India. The next page: water shortages; Next: lack of rain; Next: droughts in Andhra; Next: bacteria that will eat coal and produce methane for energy; Next: GDP’s growth with or without a strong monsoon this year; Next: US/India climate policy – why the US is requesting India to reduce emissions if even in 2030, India per capita emissions will be 1/7 of America’s.

3. The Solutions are Ready. Wind turbines are installed in the streets in Amsterdam, and solar panels in the villages of the Himalayas. Samsung released India’s first solar-powered phone, while students in the UK created a seesaw that charges a battery to light African villages. Island nations commit to carbon neutrality while villages improve air quality and environmental quality by using biogas for cooking from food and animal waste. Green buildings and green communities are emerging in Delhi, Dubai and Detroit.

Tomorrow’s problems – and solutions – are hitting us today.

Two of the coolest 2009 Echoing Green Fellows, who are working to build gardens in Africa for those with HIV and AIDs, shared the following Martin Luther King, Jr quote:

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”

I refuse to tell the next generation that I waited for tomorrow. Tomorrow is today.