Post by Kelly Blynn, Step It Up 2007
Around the world, an estimated 10,000 bureaucrats, ministers, activists, climate skeptics, industry lobbyists, and students are packing their bags and making last-minute preparations for their descent upon the small Indonesian island of Bali, for two weeks of hashing it out on what the world's going to do next on the issue of global warming.
Anyone who has anything (good or bad) to do with this problem will be there -- whether it's Greenpeace, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Confederation of European Paper Industries, the World Coal Association, or ... me, a Step It Up organizer.
So where do we stand on the eve of this important moment? In the past few weeks, official reports have confirmed what we've known for a long time: climate change is happening, it's increasingly worse than we thought, and it's going to hurt the poor and disadvantaged first and hardest. To hammer this point home, Cyclone Sidr -- a poster child of global warming -- hit Bangladesh just a few days before the IPCC's synthesis report was released.
In the face of all this gloomy news, there are bound to be some who still refuse to, for lack of a better phrase, step it up. The Bush administration, a long-time stumbling block at the world negotiating table, announced a few days ago its official delegation to the conference, none of whom seem poised to bring the U.S. to a leadership position on global warming (you can Wikipedia their names for yourself). The leaders of the delegation will be Paula Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs, who represented the U.S. at COP12 in Nairobi last year and staunchly defended the Bush administration's calls for voluntary measures and refusal to ratify Kyoto. Also in attendance will be Harlan Watson, long-time negotiator for the U.S., friend of the oil industry, and an expert in delay tactics.
But don't despair too much. There will be plenty of other U.S. delegates in Bali to let the world know we stand with them, and that we'll do our best to get our country back to the table. We've witnessed an incredible year in this movement here in the U.S., which has been extremely exciting. We've still got a long way to go in this country, but simultaneously we've got to begin work internationally -- we don't have much time. It's hard to tell what exactly will come out of these meetings, but the youth in attendance know what the priorities are, even if the delegates don't yet.
A few of our Step It Up crew and other youth in Bali will be helping to keep you apprised right here on Gristmill of the goings-on, so stay tuned. For more dispatches, be sure to keep tabs on the youth climate blog, It's Getting Hot in Here, and Bali Buzz. See you in Bali!
Gucci Group commits to saving Indonesia’s rainforests
Seven reasons for optimism about the Senate climate bill
Carbon poker
Comments
View as Threaded
stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:53 pm
30 Nov 2007
Please find below an email from a distinguished colleague and a personal friend of mine, with its request to you for assistance.
Dear Steven,
FEEDBACK DYNAMICS and the ACCELERATION of CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is non-linear. Once set in motion it is acceleratingly self-perpetuating. There is
then only a small time-window within which human intervention has any (rapidly diminishing) chance
of halting the process and returning the system to a stable state. Failure to act effectively
within that window of opportunity would inevitably precipitate cataclysmic change on a par with the
five mass extinction events known to have obliterated almost all life on earth.
This WESTMINSTER BRIEFING (subtitled PLANET EARTH WE HAVE A PROBLEM) was delivered to a packed
audience in the House of Commons in June 2007. It is now released in the approach to the Bali
Meeting of the UNFCCC because it presents material not yet addressed by the IPCC, but which is
absolutely critical to the decision-making process at and beyond that event.
Click on <http://www.apollo-gaia.org> (if the link is not active, copy and paste the address to your
browser) then follow the link to BALI & BEYOND to access the Introduction, Summary for Policy
Makers, Sample Presentations, and Book Order Form.
FEEDBACK DYNAMICS and the ACCELERATION of CLIMATE CHANGE provides an essential briefing for every
person and organisation involved in the UNFCCC Bali Meeting. Beyond Bali it lays the foundation for
all future strategic engagement with the imperative task of climate stabilisation.
Please do everything in your power to ensure that the material reaches:
All delegates and participants involved in the UNFCCC Bali Meeting
Political leaders and members of government at every level of society
Business leaders with strategic responsibility
Academics and research institutions working on climate change and environmental studies
NGOs and organisations of the Civil Society
Concerned citizens of all ages throughout the world community
Friends and family, colleagues and contacts
E-mail lists, groups, listings, networks, postings and web-sites
With best wishes,
David Wasdell
Director: The Apollo-Gaia Project
(Hosted by the Meridian Programme)
Meridian House
115 Poplar High Street
London E14 0AE
Tel: +44 (0) 207 987 3600
E-mail: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
//
var l=new Array();
var output = '';
l[0]='>';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='';l[28]='\"';l[29]=' 107';l[30]=' 117';l[31]=' 46';l[32]=' 103';l[33]=' 114';l[34]=' 111';l[35]=' 46';l[36]=' 110';l[37]=' 97';l[38]=' 105';l[39]=' 100';l[40]=' 105';l[41]=' 114';l[42]=' 101';l[43]=' 109';l[44]=' 64';l[45]=' 108';l[46]=' 108';l[47]=' 101';l[48]=' 100';l[49]=' 115';l[50]=' 97';l[51]=' 119';l[52]=':';l[53]='o';l[54]='t';l[55]='l';l[56]='i';l[57]='a';l[58]='m';l[59]='\"';l[60]='=';l[61]='f';l[62]='e';l[63]='r';l[64]='h';l[65]='a ';l[66]='
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:16 pm
02 Dec 2007
From my perspective, we have a remarkably large and loud number of people, many of them are our leaders, who are denialists and naysayers with regard to the science of global warming. They have been doing what they are doing now during much of my adult life. What they are saying and doing, I suppose, is derived from one form or another of self-interested-thinking. At least one consequence of their widely shared and consensually validated way of viewing the world could lead the human community into danger. Let me say more now about what I mean.
Self-interested-thinking is potentially dangerous because it serves to hide the truth of global warming, among other things, as well as "poison the well" of public discourse regarding climate change.
Too many of our politicians, economists, big-business benefactors and the talking heads in the mass media are all "whistling the same tune." What is even worse is the way leaders entice many appointees and surrogates to whistle that same tune, too. After all, who can resist offerings of great wealth, power and privileges that accrue to those who go along with one's self-interests, with whatsoever is political convenient, economically expedient, religiously tolerated and socially agreeable. In the face of such temptation, we can readily understand why the scientific gains of the IPCC would be everywhere, in every way, rejected by the denialists and naysayers. The science from the IPCC could forcefully impede their acquisition of more wealth, more power and more privileges.
Not only are too many leaders trying to hide or otherwise deny the good scientific evidence of human-driven climate change, they are also actively involved in poisoning the well of public discourse by strategically disseminating disinformation. And for what? Evermore power, wealth and privileges for themselves and their minions so they can carefreely play out the "conspicuous consumption fantasies" of their "Me Generation" by living large and unsustainably, come what may, having forsaken the future of their children and forgotten how human life utterly depends upon Earth's limited resources and frangible ecosystem services for its very existence.
It seems to me that the human community has reached a crossroads in Bali, Indonesia, December 2007: EITHER we will choose to "stay the current course" of endless economic growth, ever increasing conspicuous per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers OR we will find other ways to go forward. If these distinctly human overproduction, over-consumption and overpopulation activities we see overspreading the surface of Earth are unsustainable, then I am going to suppose we will insist upon some changes in our behavioral repertoire so that sustainable ways of living in the world are proposed by policymakers and adopted by our leaders.
With thanks to you, and to the delegates at the Bali Climate Meeting,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink
stevenearlsalmony Posted 2:28 am
10 Dec 2007
The current scale and rapid growth rate of the global economy cannot be sustained much longer, much less forever, on a planet with the size and make-up of Earth. Many intellectually honest and courageous people possess this knowledge of Earth's limitations, and are standing up in larger numbers now and speaking out loudly so as to share their understandings with others.
Given the purposes of too many leaders, of course, speaking out in intellectually honest and courageous ways are not examples of human behavior that support these leaders' pervasively proclaimed view: only we know how to live. Afterall, have you ever heard one of these not-so-great leaders say something like, "Our way of life is non-negotiable. There is no other. It is either our way of life or else............"?
These leaders hold a monolithic, potentially pernicious view of the way the world works and, consequently, may present themselves in our time as a formidable challenge for humanity. The global challenge presented to humankind by this leadership could be every bit as formidable a global challenge as human-induced global warming.
Here we want to objectively identify an overlooked but primary aspect of the distinctly human-forced predicament that is presented to humanity in these early years of Century XXI. I would like to submit that too many leaders among us, all espousing their insistence upon their one right way to live, present themselves to humanity and to life as we know it as a global challenge.
Through 'talking heads' in the media and bought-and-paid-for politicians, super-rich powerbrokers have predominantly established their view about this world and what about it is most important to them. Can they say what they intend more clearly? What more can they say to be better understood? They report their message ubiquitously in the mass media.
These leaders are making themselves crystal clear. They are all about endless economic growth, come what may. For any of them to so much as suggest an alternative to maximal expansion of human consumption, production and propagation activities now threatening to engulf the Earth, would be politically inconvenient, economically inexpedient, socially disagreeable and religiously intolerable.
Nevertheless, it appears worth noting that their "24/7" message via mass media endorsing unrelenting economic globalization could soon be generally recognized as a scientifically unsupportable fabrication. Their contrived, consensually validated 'necessity' for unbridled economic growth could be eventually seen as fraudent as well as an willful exercise of governmental and corporate malfeasence, all of it based upon the selfish interests of a tiny minority of wealthy and powerful people.
These wealth accumulating and power-driven leaders and their not negotiable view of the right way for all human beings to live, I am supposing, will shortly stand out as an ominously looming threat to humanity. One day this threat will be given the attention it deserves. Sometime thereafter, this threat will be acknowledged and addressed in an intellectually honest and courageous way. Then the global threat posed by a small number of people advocating evermore patently unsustainable economic growth, come what may, will be confronted by the family of humanity.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Permalink