It’s Getting Hot In Here

It can if that number is 350. That’s the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million (ppm). It’s also the rallying cry of a creative campaign to raise awareness of the climate crisis and build grassroots support for the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen. 350.org wants communities around the world to join together on October 24 for an International Day of Climate Action. You can join with your church, your school, or your friends and do something to visibly get the word out about 350. [See the latest video from 350.org]

Already, churches are ringing their bells 350 times and Buddhist monks have formed a huge 350 with their bodies against the backdrop of the Himalayas. People are baking 350 cakes, planting 3,500 trees, and doing whatever they can to spread the word about 350. On October 24 it’ll get even bigger with events from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef. Over a thousand groups in almost sixty countries have signed up for what should be the biggest day of grassroots action on climate change ever. The movement’s gaining particular momentum in the developing world where the impact could be greatest.

There is a lot to like about the number 350. We are already at 389 ppm and climbing. While there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that climate change is real and is already having disastrous effects on the planet, the public is still slow to jump on board. There’s been so much misinformation spread that people don’t know what to believe. 350 slices through all that. It doesn’t ask you to make a judgment call or a moral decision. It says, this is the reality we face and here’s the line in the sand. 350 doesn’t have an agenda. It doesn’t belong to one group or one language. Or one people. It’s just a number. But a number that could save the world. So do whatever you can to spread the word about 350. Bake a cake, organize an event, or write a blog post 350 words long.

Billy Parish is a co-founder of the Energy Action Coalition, a U.S. and Canadian youth climate coalition, and lives with his family in Flagstaff, AZ.

The most common question I’ve been asked since returning to Halifax from the Bonn climate talks, which ended last Friday, is, “What was the most inspirational thing that happened?”

The United Kingdom’s emissions are dropping year by year. China has committed $600 billion into green technology. There were 100 passionate young people present, ensuring the presence of another generation was seen and heard. The United States is fully participating at the negotiating table. Rich and polluting countries support the science that a 25 to 40% emission cut below 1990 levels by 2020 is completely necessary, and that we may need to go even farther.

Inspirational notes aside, the resounding feeling coming away from the talks, is the deep rumbling craving for one simple attribute: Ambition.

Don’t get me wrong, the Bonn climate talks certainly moved forwards – like how my little sister moves forwards out of bed to the kitchen for breakfast at 6am. I want the negotiators to rush to their United Nations meeting desks with an ambitious level of tenacity, focus, and recognition of opportunity – because, the climate knows, we need it.

What is it that is missing? How can a driving desire for success be created? Is there a deeper level of emotion that needs unearthing? Do governments crave praise? Support? Love? Good will? Public demand? Is there more incentive needed?  I’ve adopted Canada’s negotiators. And I’m fiercely concerned about our country’s position based on the past 2 weeks.

Here’s why: Continue reading ‘Canada Bonn Climate Talks Wrap-Up’ here…

Canada has committed to emission reductions at home of 2.7% below 1990 levels by the year 2020. (Or 20% below 2006 levels by 2020 as the government phrases it). ember that we committed years ago to 6% below 1990 level target by the year 2012 via the Kyoto Protocol.

I am confident that the government recognizes the scientific advice of achieving 25 to 40% emission reductions globally below 1990 levels by 2020. Yet our target doesn’t seem to match up.

Continue reading “Number Crunch: Where Canada’s Emission Targets Stand” here…

In a meeting Wednesday night with Canada’s lead climate negotiator, Mr. Michael Martin said this to me as he explained the position of the Canadian government. Background information: Negotiating domestic and international targets is precisely why these United Nations conferences exist.

When I asked our lead negotiator, Mr. Michael Martin, to explain Canada’s position further, this was what he said:

Continue reading “Canada is not here to negotiate our domestic targets” here…

Inspirational banners, music, drums and polar bears welcomed delegates to the thirtieth sessions of the UNFCCC Convention subsidiary bodies – SBSTA and SBI, sixth session of the AWG-LCA and the eighth session of the AWG-KP this morning at the Maritim Hotel in Bonn. Delegates in Bonn will be hammering out the draft text for the Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in December, 2009.

This important meeting will see an unprecedented level of youth engagement for an intercessional. Following on the successful participation at Bonn I, the international youth have descended on Bonn. Action factories, negotiator trackers, 350.org, a day of action and regular actions throughout the conference will remind the delegates that we are watching.

See more images from the first day in Bonn here. (©Robert van Waarden)

I am excited to feature this guest post by Bill Walker, campaign director with Earthjustice, focusing on a critical and largely unsung component of the fight to overcome the climate challenge – Jesse Jenkins, founder and chief editor, WattHead – Energy News and Commentary, contributing editor, ItsGettingHotInHere.org

Senators who usually couldn’t be farther apart on environmental issues agreed on Earth Day that the EPA should look at ways to control a dangerous pollutant that kills millions worldwide and accelerates global warming, particularly in the Arctic: soot, also known as the sinister-sounding “black carbon.”

Two of the Senate’s greenest members, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California, and Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the Senate’s chief global warming skeptic, introduced a bill requiring the EPA to study black carbon pollution and within a year come up with solutions for reducing emissions.

Earthjustice has just released a short animated film that explains the black carbon problem and urges EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to take action. The video also asks Americans to urge Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team to take international leadership on black carbon at next week’s Arctic Council meeting in Tromso, Norway. The video can be viewed below and at www.stopsoot.org.

Continue reading ‘Strange Climate Bedfellows Tackle Black Carbon [VIDEO]‘

I was recently surrounded by family at a cousin’s wedding which is always interesting, especially in the past several years as my environmental activism has picked up speed.   Something happened that made me even more sure that the Trek to Re-Energize America and events like it need to happen a lot more often.  My family comes from a wide array of political thought, from my raving liberal Aunt Patty to my Fox news die hard Grandpa.  A few years ago when I admitted to my grandma that I was a vegetarian, she replied with, “Nonsense, John Paul.  If you like it, eat it.”

So it was with trepidation that I replied when asked about my current employment in the lobby of a country club before the wedding.  I currently work for the Sierra Club as an organizer with the Beyond Coal campaign, working to make the Pacific Northwest the first zone in the nation to go coal free.  That explanation didn’t set well with my grandpa, a traditionalist who has worked in the banking and real estate world for much of his life.

Later that night after the vows had been said and the cake eaten he asked me a few more questions about my work and he made a comment that really stood out to me.  He told me that instituting a cap and trade system in the U.S. would cost the average American family $3,000.  The fact hit me like a brick, not because of the cost, but because I knew it to be false.  The erroneous number started its life with the Republican Party and quickly made its way to Fox news and the rest of the media.  The number came from a report by a few MIT professors and when they were contacted regarding the number they roundly rejected it as false and a gross distortion of the $30/family number their report had actually stated.

It was fascinating and horrifying to see how a simple lie made its way out into the public and down the vine to my Grandpa.

It made me realize how important the Trek really is.  By visiting communities across the nation we will present ourselves as real, caring people, not as talking heads on cable news.  Our future has become an unnecessarily partisan issue, due largely to our own politicians and the biased media that feeds off of them.  We need to start presenting climate change, sustainable farming, clean energy, all of it with a more unifying message to wrest control back from the partisan media. I know it’s not easy, but the more we can have honest, one on one conversations about the base concept of a healthier future, the easier our work will be in the long run.

Nothing compared to ecosystem collapse that is.

Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done.

“Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It’s devastation,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men — big, strong grown men. We’re holding on by the skin of our teeth. It’s desperate times.”

A result of climate change?

“You’d have to have your head in the bloody sand to think otherwise,” Eddy said.

Ten years ago I traveled to Adelaide, South Australia, the driest province in the driest continent on Earth. I spent five months of my Junior year in college studying sustainable development, environmental politics, and climate change. It was the first time I grasped the issue of global warming. At that time, the drought described by Tank had only just begun.

Now, ten years later, Australia is teaching me a new lesson – as depressing as they may be, articles about climate impacts can still teach us something.

My climate reading for today all started with this news story about global warming creeping into Joshua Tree territory. Have you no decency, Mr. Crisis. That’s my tree you’re messing with.

Date: Thursday, April 9, 2009
Time: 1:15-2:30 pm (4:30pm at Woodbury, MN)
Place: St. Cloud State University
 St. Cloud, MN, 56301 

Representative Bachmann was barely present at her Cap and Trade event, a lecture from lawyer Chris Horner. No questions were fielded by our representative, whom sat to the side, watching Horner spew lies at her constituents. 

Pre-event Media Release:
St. Cloud, MN – This Thursday, over 60 students from St. Cloud State University  (SCSU) , College of St. Benedict, and St. John’s University (CSB|SJU) will be attending Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Public Forum on Climate Change and Cap and Trade at SCSU to provide their fellow constituents with an alternative viewpoint from the one presented by speaker Chris Horner, a conservative who has repeatedly referred to global warming as “hype.” The students will share information about the real impact of the climate crisis on Minnesotans, and explain how a cap and trade program would help bring much-needed jobs to the state. Bachmann has been a vocal opponent of the President’s cap and trade proposal: in an op-ed published in the Star Tribune on Tuesday, she referred to cap and trade as “cap-and-tax,” and stated that the economy would “suffer” if such a plan was implemented.
 
“As one of Rep. Bachmann’s constituents, I am disappointed by how frighteningly out of touch she is when it comes to the realities of the climate crisis,” said Casey Wojtalewicz a student at CSBC|SJU. “Considering her views, it is no surprise that she has invited Chris Horner, a fellow denier of the science behind climate change, to lead her Public Forum. We thought it was important to debunk the ‘facts’ being presented by this Forum, and provide those in attendance with the truth about climate change and the benefits a green economy would have for Minnesotans. Armed with this information, we can work together to create positive change on climate issues that will contribute to the long-term economic stability of our country.”
 

I will be liveblogging, beginning at 1:15 PM CST.

Continue reading ‘Students Bring Truth to Bachman’s Public Forums; Liveblog + media, links.’

This is a guest post from Matt Williams, a youth organiser from the UK working with the UK Youth Climate Coalition. He recently helped lead a UK delegation to the Our Opportunity youth conference in Copenhagen, and wrote this report.

All over Europe, young people are mobilising around climate change issues. This was evident at a recent event organised by Energy Crossroads Denmark, at which around 300 European students gathered to discuss the challenges we’re facing regarding energy generation. We were part of a team of 23 British students that attended the 3-day conference of talks, discussions and workshops.

Some of the British youth in Copenhagen. Image courtesy of Conor Reid.

Continue reading ‘Our Opportunity’