Cross-posted from TomDispatch.

Next month, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, the wealthy nations that produce most of the excess carbon in our atmosphere will almost certainly fail to embrace measures adequate to ward off the devastation of our planet by heat and chaotic weather. Their leaders will probably promise us teaspoons with which to put out the firestorm and insist that springing for fire hoses would be far too onerous a burden for business to bear. They have already backed off from any binding deals at this global summit.  There will be a lot of wrangling about who should cut what when, and how, with a lot of nations claiming that they would act if others would act first.  Activists -- farmers, environmentalists, island-dwellers -- around the world will try to write a different future, a bolder one, and if anniversaries are an omen, then they have history on their side.

A decade ago, and a decade before that, popular power turned the tide of history. Nov. 30, 1999, was the day that activists shut down a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle and started to chart another course for the planet than the one that corporations and their servant nation-states had presumed they’d execute without impediment. Since then, events have strayed increasingly far from the WTO’s road map for global domination and the financial scenarios that captains of industry once liked to entertain.

Until that day when tens of thousands of protestors poured into the streets of Seattle (as well as other cities from Winnipeg to Athens, Limerick to Seoul), the might of the corporations made their agenda seem nothing short of inevitable -- and then, suddenly, it wasn’t.  Disrupted by demonstrators outside its door and, on the inside, by dissent from poor nations galvanized by the ruckus, the meeting collapsed in confusion. Today, the WTO is puny compared to its ambitions only a decade ago.

The Berlin WallThe mass civil disobedience in the streets was, in a way, an answer to another landmark day a decade earlier:  Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and tens of thousands of Germans swarmed across the forbidden zone splitting their once and future capital city to celebrate, and eventually to reunite their nation.  The fall of the Wall is now often remembered as if the gracious acquiescence of officialdom brought it about.  It was not so.

“I announced the wall would open, but it was only the pressure by the people that made it possible” said Günter Schabowski, then-East German Communist Party central committee spokesperson, earlier this year. Had those East Germans not shown up and overwhelmed the guards at the Wall, nothing would have changed that night. In fact, popular will toppled several regimes that season.  Thanks to creative civil-society organizing, steadfastness, astonishing courage, and imagination, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary also slipped out of the Soviet bloc and so out of a version of communism tantamount to totalitarianism as well.

There was a lot of triumphalism in the West thereafter.  From the White House to business magazines and newspapers came a drumbeat of pronouncements that communism had failed and capitalism had triumphed.  As it happened, those weren’t the binaries at stake in the astonishing uprisings that season in Eastern Europe, or in the failed uprising in Tiananmen Square in the Chinese capital Beijing that spring. People certainly wanted freedom, but it wasn’t the freedom to trade mysterious debt instruments and buy Double Whoppers, exactly. Nor was it capitalism, but civil society, very nearly its antithesis, that had risen up and brought down the Wall. The real binary then was: civil society versus top-down authoritarianism -- and framed that way, our situation didn’t look quite as good as Washington and the media then made out. 

Nevertheless, for a decade afterward, it wasn’t that easy to argue with the logic of capitalism’s triumph, since even China was making a beeline for a market economy and, in the process, doing an especially good job of proving that capitalism and democracy were separate phenomena. It was also the decade of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the first of a series of broad international treaties meant to secure the terms of corporate power for a long time to come.  Its implementation on January 1, 1994, prompted the Zapatistas, the indigenous peasants of southern Mexico’s jungle, to rise up against the treaty, which promised -- and has now delivered -- a grim new chapter in the deprivation and dispossession of Mexico’s majority. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the Zapatistas came as a great shock.

The sucking sound and the turning tide

Few remember how dissent against NAFTA was dismissed and even mocked in the era when the treaty was debated, signed, and ratified. In his debate with Bill Clinton and the elder George Bush during the 1992 presidential campaign, Ross Perot was ignored when he said, “We have got to stop sending jobs overseas.”  He was ridiculed for describing the “giant sucking sound” of those jobs heading south. Which, of course, they did -- and then on to China in a financial “race to the bottom,” while cheap corn raised by Midwestern agribusiness also went south where it bankrupted Mexico’s small farmers.

Cheap food, cheap labor, cheap products turned out to be very, very expensive for the majority of us. It’s a sign of how much things have changed that Hillary Clinton felt compelled to lie in last year’s presidential campaign, claiming she had long been against NAFTA. In that, she was just a weathervane for changing times.  After all, in the decade since Seattle, most of South America liberated itself not just from a legacy of American-supported dictators and death squads, but from the economic programs those instruments existed to enforce.

Venezuela lent Argentina enough money to pay off its debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that earlier instrument for imposing free-market ideology and corporate profit. Various other countries did the same, and the continent largely freed itself from the imposition of neoliberal policies that mainly benefited Washington and international corporations. The IMF was so impoverished by Latin American divestment -- which went from 80 percent of its loans to about one percent -- that it’s been reduced to selling off its gold reserves. The World Bank is doing well only by comparison. By 2005, the tide had clearly turned, and the power of these institutions and of the so-called Washington Consensus that went with them was on the wane.

That tide had just begun to turn 10 years ago, when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman referred to the people in the streets of Seattle as “a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960's fix.”  He charged, “What's crazy is that the protesters want the W.T.O. to become precisely what they accuse it of already being -- a global government. They want it to set more rules -- their rules, which would impose our labor and environmental standards on everyone else.”

Nice though our labor and environmental standards might have been elsewhere too, most of us didn’t want the WTO to do anything or to have any power. As the Direct Action Network organizing leaflet from August 1999 put it, the WTO’s “overall goal is to eliminate ‘trade barriers,’ frequently including labor laws, public health regulations, and environmental protection measures.”

That day in Seattle a crane dangled a pair of gigantic banners shaped like arrows: the first, inscribed “Democracy,” pointed one way; the second, labeled “WTO,” pointed the other. The leaflet and banners were pieces of a carefully organized resistance, and it’s important to remember that events like the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia 20 years ago or the shutdown of the WTO weren’t just spontaneous uprisings; they were the fruit of long toil.  While the right and too many American media outlets like to remember a fictitious Seattle that was nothing but a cauldron of activist violence (while ignoring serious police violence), too many on the left wanted to think of it as a miraculous convergence rather than the result of careful coalition-building, strategizing, outreach, and all the usual labors.

Straying Far from the Blueprint for Our Era

In the twenty-first century, free-trade agreements came down with their own version of swine flu, a disease likely generated on a gigantic Smithfield Farms hog-raising operation in Veracruz, Mexico, and nicknamed the NAFTA flu. NAFTA itself has been widely reviled.  Presidential candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador campaigned in Mexico’s 2006 election on promises to renegotiate it; Hillary disowned it. The plan for a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was met with massive opposition in Miami in 2003. It crashed and burned in Argentina in 2005 and has since been abandoned.

Latin America went its own way while the Bush Administration locked its attention on the Middle East. Indigenous peoples in Ecuador and Bolivia had a particularly rousing set of victories, while the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia, astonishingly, defeated U.S.-based Bechtel Corporation's privatization of their water, and Ecuadorans are suing Chevron for environmental devastation in what could be the biggest corporate settlement in history -- $27 billion.

Meanwhile, the WTO lurched from one meeting to another, safe in the Doha round from pesky protesters, if not from the dissent of developing nations.  It was again besieged by activists in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico -- in scale and impact another Seattle -- and then further battered in 2005 in Hong Kong. The next ministerial conference of the WTO actually convenes in Geneva on Nov. 30, a decade to the day since the Seattle shutdown, still attempting to resolve issues that arose in Doha. Of course, in the meantime, sneakier bilateral trade agreements have taken the place of big multilateral ones, but this has hardly been the triumphant era predicted a decade earlier.  Even Iraq hardly proved the hog trough the big oil and contracting corporations had anticipated.

In fact, for the corporations nothing much has turned out as planned. Capitalism itself failed a little more than a year ago. Or rather the bizarrely rigged corporate-run market economies that determine at least some portion of nearly everyone’s life on Earth imploded in a frenzy of deregulated fecklessness and weirdly disassociative procedures. Then, they were propped up by governments in a way that made the phrase “socialism for the rich” truer than ever. For a while, the same business newspapers that had celebrated capitalism’s triumph in 1999 were proclaiming “the end of American capitalism as we knew it” and the “collapse of finance.”

It was as though the world economy had been a car driven by a drunk.  Even if we have now let that drunk back behind the wheel, at least his credibility and the logic of what he claimed to be doing have been irreparably harmed. On the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Time Magazine’s cover story was: “Why Main Street Hates Wall Street” and it told readers in its opening passage that they should be furious.  The fall of Wall Street, you could call it, if you want to hear the echo from Berlin.

Oil-price hikes, the misadventures in turning food into biofuels, and economic meltdowns have had other consequences. Michael Pollan wrote in the New York Times more than a year ago:

"In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food. Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington... and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers. Not only the Doha round, but the whole cause of free trade in agriculture is probably dead..."

Another death knell for the sunny corporate vision of globalization had nothing to do with ideology; it was about oil, since the more it cost to ship things around the world the less financial sense it made to do so. As the New York Times put it this August:

The passages cited above came from the New York Times, not the Nation or Mother Jones. Which is to say that if communism failed 20 years ago, then capitalism staggered 10 years ago in Seattle, and fell to its knees a year ago. The crises of petroleum and food costs only augment this reality. But the crisis of climate change matters more than all the rest.

Futures that Work

There are endless questions and conundrums about the largely unforeseen situation in which we now find ourselves, all six billion of us. One of them is: if capitalism and communism both failed, what’s the alternative? The big tent of subversions and traditions called the left hasn’t, in recent times, done a very good job of providing pictures of the possibilities available to us. Still, perhaps the answer to what the political and social alternatives might be will prove very close to what a sustainable world in the face of climate change might look like:  small, local, smart, flexible economies and technologies, democracy as direct as possible, an elimination of excess wealth as part of a leveling that might also eliminate dire poverty.

Some of our hope for the future has to be that, one day, the ecological and the economic can be aligned so that, among other things, petroleum and coal become increasingly expensive, as well as increasingly offensive, ways to run our machines. Will we be creative enough to embrace change before crashing systems and wild weather force change on us in the form of an unbearable crisis? Decisions about the nature of that change to come must be made by the citizenry, which seems to be fairly willing to face change when it gets its facts straight, rather than by wealthier nation-states and their leaders who seem, at this juncture, more interested in protecting business than life on Earth.

To survive the coming era, we need to re-imagine what constitutes wealth and well-being and what constitutes poverty. This doesn’t mean telling the destitute not to hope for decent housing, adequate food, and some chance at education, as well as some pleasures and power. It means paring back on the mad consumption machine that has been the engine of the global economy, even though what it produces is often enough entirely distinct from what’s actually needed. American life as it is now lived is poor in security, confidence, connectedness, agency, contemplation, calm, leisure, and other things that you aren’t going to buy at Wal-Mart, or at Neiman Marcus for that matter. If we can see what’s poor about the way we are, we can see what would be enriching rather than impoverishing about change.  

Anniversaries of a whole host of revolutions seem to fall in years ending in nine -- from 1789 in France to 1959 in Cuba and 1979 in Nicaragua. And then, in our calendar of nines, there was the fall of the Wall and the Battle of Seattle.  The “revolution” that got us into this era of climate change, however, can’t be dated that way.  It was the industrial revolution, a gradual shift to an era of mechanization made possible by, and paralleled by, the rise of fossil-fuel consumption. We can’t, and shouldn’t, undo this revolution, but we need to reject some of its premises and recognize some of its costs, including alienation, degradation, and commodification. 

We need a postindustrial revolution of appropriate technologies, both in the developed world and in the developing one, so that, for example, kerosene lanterns and wood-burning stoves will be replaced not by conventional appliances but by elegant solar technologies.

There needs to be another revolution in addition to these, one that finishes decolonizing the world so that Europe and the United States are no longer using the lion’s share of resources and emitting the lion’s share of carbon per capita. The WTO, the IMF, and other instruments of neoliberalism existed to keep that world-as-it-was going; the revolt in Seattle was against their ideology as well as their impact, and the decade-old graffiti that said, “We are winning,” had a point.

The “we” that could win and needs to win in the climate change wars isn’t the United States itself.  As Bill McKibben recently wrote of President Obama, “The announcement yesterday from the APEC meeting in Singapore that next month’s Copenhagen climate talks will be nothing more than a glorified talking session makes it clear that he has, at least for now, punted on the hard questions around climate. The world won’t be able to get started on solving our climate problem, and the obstacle is -- as it has been for the last two decades -- the United States.”  The citizens of the U.S. need to revolt, again, against their nation’s failure of vision and responsibility, in solidarity with the rest of the people of the world, and the animals, and the plants, and the coral reefs, and the coastlines, and the rivers, the glaciers, the ice caps, and the weather as we now know it, or once knew it.  That's why November 30th is going to be a global day of action.  

Everything is going to change either as runaway climate change takes hold, with its concomitant destruction and suffering, or because a set of programs will be embraced that forestall the worst and return our planet to an atmospheric carbon level of 350 parts per million, now considered the necessary standard to avoid environmental catastrophe.  We’re already at 390 parts per million.  Unfortunately, a lot of the nations in the key Copenhagen negotiations have fixed on an outdated notion that the world as we know it can survive at 450 parts per million, which would conveniently mean that relatively moderate adjustments are needed.

Remembering how dramatically -- and unexpectedly -- things have changed in the recent past is part of the toolbox for making a deeper, far more necessary change possible. Surely, the extraordinary power of ordinary people in Berlin and Seattle provides us with the kinds of history lessons, the riches we need, to start learning to count.

Related Links:

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

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Learning how to count to 350

Climate Citizen: Wyclef Jean

U.S. Senate puts off action on climate bill until 2010

This essay appeared first on MotherJones.com. Bill McKibben is chronicling his journey into climate activism with a series of columns leading up to the global climate summit in Copenhagen this December. You can find the others here. And you can put yourself on the cover of MoJo's special issue on climate change here.

Two caveats. First, early in the primary season, when I was asked to join Environmentalists for Obama, I signed on immediately. I knocked doors, made phone calls, gave money, and celebrated his victory--I think he's the best president of my lifetime.

Second, Obama has done much that's right about climate, including surround himself with a stellar staff of advisers. From auto mileage to green stimulus spending, he's done more to deal with global warming than all of the presidents combined in the 20 years that it's been an issue.

But that's a pretty low bar. And the announcement yesterday from the APEC meeting in Singapore that next month's Copenhagen climate talks will be nothing more than a glorified talking session makes it clear that he has, at least for now, punted on the hard questions around climate. The world won't be able to get started on solving our climate problem, and the obstacle -- as it has been for the last two decades -- is the United States.

And in fact none of this should come as a surprise to anyone paying attention. For a year now it's been clear that the president is not particularly focused on applying the political pressure that would have been necessary to reach any kind of pact, much less one that approaches what the science demands. Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year. He talked very little about climate, tending instead to talk about green jobs and energy security, and in the process left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day. And then, as with health care, he left it pretty much entirely up to Congress to write the necessary legislation. That kept him from having to bear the blame for a Byzantine bill, but it also meant that the Senate -- the body from which he came, and whose culture he had to know -- could work in its usual style, without White House pressure. Which at the moment means that Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are essentially rewriting the legislation, to what end no one really knows.

The real tip-off of Obama's unwillingness to lead, however, has been the endless spinning of his climate negotiators. For 12 months they have been fibbing about the science -- reiterating over and over again that their goal is the "scientific standard" of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. That's no longer scientifically accurate -- in the last two years, since the rapid Arctic melt in the summer of 2007, scientists have made it clear that a treaty that aimed at 450 ppm would be a treaty that left the planet free of ice, a planet where many current nations would disappear beneath the waves. We're at 390 now -- we're already too high. The 450 number came from the various graphs and tables of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- but Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, has said repeatedly in the last year that that science is out of date. Recently, asked why he'd endorsed a 350 target instead, he said: "As a human being, I just couldn't keep quiet in the face of all this overwhelming evidence. I know it's probably not right for me to take a position such as this, but on the other hand, I think it would be totally immoral on my part not to take a position, so I came out and said so."

By contrast, the Obama administration's position has been that a tough treaty is politically unrealistic -- that the Senate would never pass it. That's certainly true, at least for the moment. But the White House is starting to use the Senate in the same way that the Bush administration used China -- as a scapegoat for doing too little. You don't get to blame the Senate if you haven't pushed the Senate as hard as you possibly can. It would take a huge commitment of presidential leadership, the sacrifice of large amounts of political capital, to change political reality. It would also take a movement of citizens, which we've tried hard to build. Three weeks ago we at 350.org organized what CNN called "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history." Many prime ministers, environmental ministers, and foreign ministers participated -- heck, the president of the Maldives convened an underwater cabinet meeting to make the point about how desperate the situation was. We asked the White House if anyone -- some spare undersecretary of something -- might come to one of the 2,000 demonstrations across the United States. They couldn't find a soul.

They'll have another chance. With groups around the world, 350.org will help organize candlelight vigils around the world on the weekend of Dec. 12. Many will take place at American embassies and consulates. Not because anyone is anti-American. Because everyone remains hopeful that America will finally help lead to solve the problem that it, far more than any other nation, caused.

None of this is easy. (I haven't even mentioned the obscenely low amounts of money the administration and Congress are talking about appropriating for the foreign aid that will be required to help developing countries adapt to the global warming America has caused.) But all of it is easier than trying to deal with the world that's coming at us faster every day we don't act. Pressuring Senate Republicans (or coal-fired Democrats) is hard; pressuring physics and chemistry is harder still. In fact, it's impossible. That's why this is different than health-care reform or financial re-regulation. You have to actually meet the scientific standard, not just do better than George W. Bush.

And of course, politically, Obama doesn't need to do it. He doesn't need to worry about environmentalists abandoning him for someone else -- he'll always be the preferable choice, and I'll always be out there knocking on doors for him. But his legacy won't depend on the shiny medal the Norwegians hang around his neck next month; it will depend, more than anything else, on whether or not he really tackles the biggest problem the planet faces. There is still time for him to make the crucial difference, but not if his administration continues in fib-and-spin mode. At the same meeting in Singapore where he made it clear that Copenhagen would not negotiate a new climate treaty, he invited all the other APEC leaders to meet in 2011 in Hawaii, adding "I look forward to seeing you all decked out in flowered shirts and grass skirts."

Whatever -- that sounds more like his giggly, sophomoric predecessor than the leader we desperately need.

Related Links:

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Photo: Adam D. SacksJames Inhofe.
Marc Morano.
Richard Lindzen.
Bjørn Lomborg.
George W. Bush.

Names of shame, ignominy, criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself.  Agents of the lethal delays in our response to escalating, accelerating, catastrophic global warming.

Yet, as deniers of climate change, they're amateurs compared to us.  Us activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen politicians.

Even though we're believers, not skeptics, our denial is far more insidious and subtle.  So subtle, in fact, that we've managed to convince ourselves that we're not in denial at all.  Quite the opposite.  Why, the thought is too absurd even to contemplate.

But it's true.

We're deniers every time we say "80 percent by 2050," or even "80 percent by 2020"; every time we refer to tipping points in the future tense; every time we advocate substituting "clean" energy for "dirty" energy; every time we buy a squiggly light bulb or a hybrid vehicle; every time we advocate for cap-and-trade, or even a carbon tax; every time we countenance the mention of loopy geoengineering schemes; every time we invoke the future of our children and grandchildren and ignore the widespread suffering from global climate disruption today.

Every time we say these things and more, we're promoting denial of dire climate reality, the reality that's spinning out of our grasp so fast that we conduct our frenetic climate "solutions" efforts in a kind of stupor, obsessing with parts-per-million statistics, keeping desperately busy to ward off our own utter collapse borne of despair.

The reality we're denying?  We're denying that we've put so much carbon into the atmosphere already that positive feedback loops are well on their way to amplification hell.[1] We're denying that time lags between carbon emissions and their effects are frighteningly relevant, and that the disastrous effects we're seeing now are from emissions of 30 years ago.  We're denying that non-linear responses of physical systems cannot be calculated and therefore are perilously ignored. We're denying that our consumption and waste have far exceeded planetary capacity, possibly irreparably so.[2]

We're denying reality because we're not talking about it; we're invoking fantasies and free lunches instead.[3]

Why do we act like this?  Because just like the skeptics, we are inordinately fond of our cushy lives.  Because we don't want to give up our privileged, well-stocked existences any more than the skeptics do (and enter the realms of unthinkable thoughts, to wit, go back to the jungles? the caves? the starving, thirsting millions -- or is that billions? -- never, never, never, not us).  Because in our heart of hearts, we want the skeptics to be right.  We are brothers and sisters.  And so we join them.

But our denial is much, much worse, because we are the ones presumably advocating for action on global climate disruption.  And when we fall short, who's left to do the job?

Here's an example, in a note from a friend of mine and fellow climate campaigner:

I was quite disappointed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) presentation last night. The meeting title was "Roadmap to a Carbon-Free Society" or something like that. 

There was no roadmap discussed at the meeting. They showed a bunch of charts and graphs showing how we could get to a 26 percent carbon reduction by 2020 and a 56 percent carbon reduction by 2030 (from a 2005 baseline). All those carbon reductions were based on changes to U.S. and state policy, it wasn't clear what those proposed policy changes would be, although they seemed to involve some sort of cap and trade and a renewable energy mandate. 

They were primarily focused on reducing carbon in electricity generation. They had only 2 to 3 percent savings in carbon in buildings. Their proposed savings in the transportation sector seemed to focus on switching to ethanol (but not from corn). 

There was absolutely no call to action. 

There was no elaboration of priority. 

There were no specifics regarding the changes that would need to be made. 

This was a U.S.-only proposal. When asked about global effects, they basically said that was out of scope for their project. 

I am looking hard for something I can do that will make a real difference in the lives of my children and their children. 

Mark

Here's another example, from UCS again.  I don't mean to pick on them -- they have a lot of co-enablers -- but they are real scientists, for goodness sake!  Yet they are as ensnared in the silencing trappings of culture as any of us.  They're still on an 80-percent-by-2050 path (below 2005, not 1990, levels), and they still imagine that global warming is simply a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions ("Global Warming Crossroads: Choosing the Sensible Path to a Clean Energy Economy"). As such, they avoid the lethal implications and challenges of the impossible exponential growth that drives our lives (more on this in my Aug. 23, 2009, post, "The Fallacy of Climate Activism").

After attending some of their mildly alarming but strangely reassuring presentations, I have spoken with several UCS scientists personally, and with hardly a tickle of prodding they quickly confess how panicked they are.  Why don't they just state it outright, in public?  Because, they say (just like so many climate activists, with such a uniform voice one might concoct a conspiracy theory), the public can't take it.[4] People will shrivel up into their TVs and McBurgers and never come out again.  Then we'll really be in a fix. (But I thought we already were?)

In December 2008, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), another well-meaning house of denial, sponsored a forum aimed primarily at climate activists, oddly entitled "Taking Climate Change Seriously" (I guess they figured we hadn't done that yet).  SEI folks are very nice, very smart people whom I like personally.  And they are working sincerely and hard on solutions (which, however politically palatable, nonetheless carry very little weight with the thunderous forces of nature). 

A very bright, well-spoken UCS scientist opened the show by revealing that she would speak frankly with us, in a way that she wouldn't with a general audience because they wouldn't be able to take it.  A cartoon flashes onto the screen, showing the entrance to two different movie theatres.  One is showing "An Inconvenient Truth," which has no customers.  The other, "A Convenient Lie," has drawn a large crowd.  The implication, of course, is that the public (whom we chronically assume is dumb) doesn't want to know. She was pretty open about our dire circumstances, however, with those of us who already knew it (remember, we were there to take climate change seriously).

The irony of all of this is that her presentation itself is the embodiment of the convenient lie: that it's the public's fault, despite the fact that scientists and climate activists don't tell them the truth!  How on earth are they supposed to know?  No wonder the skeptics hold such tenacious sway.

While An Inconvenient Truth was critically important as a wake-up call, the title of the movie became part of the problem: Climate change isn't simply "inconvenient."  It's lethal.  Yet now that it's been branded as "inconvenient," it's not so bad, we can live with it -- we work around inconveniences, right?  We do it all the time.  Suppose that just yesterday a CFL burned out and it was dark in the hall and I stubbed my toe looking for my shoes and I had to bike to the hardware store (I don't own a car) and it was chilly and wet outside and my glasses fogged up.  That's "inconvenience."

Here's how the public can come to know the truth about climate: repetition.  Learning and comprehension require repetition.  Think about repetition being used to learn multiplication tables, or in advertising, or in political campaigns, etc.  Certainly dire climate explanations require even more repetition because it is difficult emotionally as well as cognitively.  But we haven't yet even begun to tell that story, we are so spooked by our own reactions and what we think others' reactions will be.

To reiterate, in order to elicit a response commensurate with the problem, we have to start telling the truth about climate.  We have never actually tried it!

If we tell the truth, certainly some people will run away at first.  But we keep telling it regardless.  Otherwise we engage in palliatives as the world crumbles.  There really is no other choice.

-----

Finally, I'd like to say a few words about the recent remarkable 350 day, Oct. 24, 2009, when thousands of coordinated demonstrations across the world stated the climate emergency message loud and clear.  An unprecedented and truly impressive organizing effort.  I attended the local convocation of several communities meeting in Concord, Mass.  We were regaled by activist politicians, a playful tug of war between costumed buckethead deniers and polar bears, post-hippie music, brochures, and photo ops galore. 

And generous dollops of denial.  I found it all rather depressing.  People were enthusiastic about sending our banners to Copenhagen, as if the "leaders" there would care (they would pretend, of course).  The clean energy revolution held center stage, as if simply substituting windmills and solar panels now would make a difference to our beyond-tipped-point physics, as if it were all just an energy problem.

But just scratch the surface and it was clear that we were grasping at straws, and the sense of helplessness and hopelessness, bleeding through the forced cheer, was pervasive.  Perhaps we must confront and embrace the depths of our despair before we can see clearly.  Once we do, however, the remarkable fact is that we can likely do something about climate catastrophe, despite the necessity, for the moment, of bypassing our globally failed political process. Very briefly, local self-sufficiency and sustainability, steady-state no-impact economics, eco-restoration, and rational birth reduction (starting with but clearly not limited to "developed" countries, whose impacts per capita are many multiples of third-world countries). 

Sounds difficult or even close to impossible.  The question is how badly do we want it.  Clearly not badly enough -- yet.  It will require a dizzyingly quick cultural transformation, but the seeds have been planted and are starting to sprout worldwide.  We can turn this disaster into opportunity and hope.

But only if we transcend our denial, and stop lying to the public. 

And, especially, stop lying to ourselves.

---

Endnotes:

[1] Strictly speaking, it may be difficult to nail down a feedback loop in action, such as melting ice.  At what point can we say "the ice is melting and the resulting darker, warmer waters are more rapidly melting ice resulting in more darker, warmer waters" (amplifying feedback loop), as opposed to "the ice is melting simply because temperatures are warmer due to increasing atmospheric carbon" (no amplifying feedback loop, just garden variety endless global carbon pollution).

Here's what I suspect is the key: acceleration. Think of moving a microphone towards a speaker, the volume and frequency of the feedback rapidly accelerate. Similarly, the climate phenomena that have arrived decades early, perhaps early by a century or more, may well be the manifestations of feedback loops in action before we know exactly what they are.

[2] I've written about this before, in "The Fallacy of Climate Activism," but I think it bears a lot of repetition. I hope you will write about it too.

[3] Barry Commoner, in his 1971 book The Closing Circle, defined the four laws of ecology succinctly and directly: Everything comes from something (there's no such thing as a free lunch), everything goes somewhere, everything is connected to everything else, and nature knows best.

[4] For a critically important alternative perspective, see Clive Hamilton and Tim Kasser, "Psychological Adaptation to the Threats and Stresses of a Four-Degree World" [PDF]. "Among the methods to encourage adaptive coping strategies, Crompton and Kasser recommend that that environmental campaigns could: help people express their feelings of fear, sadness and helplessness; gently point out when people are avoiding facing up to the facts of climate science; and, promote problem-focused strategies and mindfulness ... Among the methods to encourage a value shift, Crompton and Kasser recommend that environmental campaigns could: avoid appealing primarily to selfish desires and motivations (such as by promoting “Ten ways you can save money by reducing your carbon emissions”); frame messages to connect with intrinsic values like cooperation and non-material benefits; and, deploy programs that activate an awareness of the inherent value of nature and empathy for non-human animals." (pp. 7-8)

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PARIS -- Leaders from nine major faiths meet at Windsor Castle on Tuesday in an exceptional initiative that supporters predict will harness the power of religion in the fight against climate change.

The ecumenical gathering at the home of Queen Elizabeth II, 22 miles west of London, is being co-staged by the United Nations and Prince Philip's Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC).

Representatives from Baha'ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Taoism will unveil programs that "could motivate the largest civil society movement the world has ever seen," said U.N. Assistant Secretary General Olav Kjorven.

U.N. Chief Ban Ki-moon will launch the event under the banner "Faith Commitments for a Living Planet."

"We expect to send a strong signal from religion to governments that we are extremely committed. It's about religions mobilizing their followers to act against climate change," Kjorven told AFP in an interview.

Eighty-five percent of humanity follow a religion, a figure that shows the power of faith to move billions, he pointed out.

In addition, faith-based groups own nearly 8 percent of habitable land on Earth, operate dozens of media groups and more than half the world's schools, and control 7 percent of financial investments worth trillions, according to ARC.

"But the problem is deeper than economics and money, it's much more about the moral idea [of] 'Nature is God's Nature, so we have to be kind to it,'" said Victoria Finlay, ARC's director of communication.

"Global warming and its impacts cannot be looked at just as a material problem. The root causes are spiritual," agreed Stuart Scott, whose Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change -- calling for the "stewardship and reverence for creation" -- has been endorsed by dozens of major religious organizations.

In July, some 200 Muslim leaders gathered in Istanbul to forge a seven-year climate change action plan.

One of the measures adopted was the creation of a "Muslim eco-label" for goods and services ranging from printings of the Koran to organized pilgrimages.

"We don't want to distance ourselves from governments, we are all in the same boat," said Mahmoud Akef, who led the initiative. "If we devastate the planet, we'll have no place else to live."

Sikhs who feed some 30 million people in need every day in their temples in India are poised to revamp their kitchens to make them "eco-friendly," and China's Taoist temples are going solar.

"Religions cross boundaries and don't have to deal with issues of finance, of sovereignty, of intellectual property on technology" -- all issues bedeviling U.N. climate talks, said Jessica Haller, director of the Jewish Climate Campaign.

American environmentalist Bill McKibben, the founder of grassroots climate group 350.org, has identified two wellsprings for the worldwide tsunami of support for his web-based cause: educated youth and faith-based groups.

350.org organized a day of "global action" on Saturday, Oct. 24 of more than 5,000 mainly small-scale climate-awareness events around the world.

"If Earth is in some way a museum of divine intent, it's pretty horrible to be defacing all that creation," McKibben, an author who is active in the Methodist Church, said.

"And if, in Christianity and other faiths, we are called upon above all else to love God and love our neighbors, drowning your neighbor in Bangladesh is a pretty bad way to go about it," he added.

Scientists warn that unabated global warming will likely cause ocean levels to rise at least 3.25 feet by century's end, enough to wreak havoc in high-populated low-lying deltas, especially in South, Southeast and East Asia.

For Peter Newell, a professor at the University of East Anglia in England who had tracked climate activism for more than a decade, religion has the traction to haul a truly global movement.

"It would be a huge mobilizing force if people started to frame the issue of climate change in religious terms," noted Newell.

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Learning how to count to 350

On the same streets in the Windy City, where a young liberal Democratic activist named Francis Peabody peddled "smoke-free clean coal" in the 1890s, an estimated 400 Chicago residents marched to the infamous Fisk Generating Station coal-fired plant for the Chicago 350 Climate Action last week.

Eight activists were arrested for blockading Cermak Road, in front of the entrance to the coal-fired plant.

Here's a film clip from the action by the wonderful Topless America project in Chicago:

According to a 2006 Sierra Club report:

In 2000, a team of researchers from Harvard University estimated that Fisk and the five other coal-fired plants, plus three more elsewhere in Illinois, together cause 300 deaths and 14,000 asthma attacks each year. If the plants were forced to abide by the Clean Air Act's pollution standards, the researchers found, two-thirds of those deaths and asthma attacks could be avoided.

The Chicago activists also called attention to the deadly life cycle of coal mining and coal burning -- including the burning of coal stripmined from mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. As the great Appalachian writer Harry Caudill wrote in his classic, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, "the rape of Appalachia got its practice in Illinois," where commercial stripmining was first launched in the 1850s.

Today, strip mining continues in southern Illinois, while devastating longwall mining has undermined thousands of acres of fertile farmland. For more information on longwalling in the heartland, visit: Illinois citizens opposed to longwall mining.

For more information on closing the dirty coal-fired plants in Chicago, and their reliance on deadly coal mining, see:How Green is Chicago.

Once the "world's largest coal market," Chicago has had a long history of peddling coal and coal-fired plants to the world. As Jeff Goodell pointed out in his book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, after 22 million fairgoers at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 "got a glimpse of the futuristic all-dream electric Dream City, electricity became an instant icon. In cities across America, from Akron to San Francisco, local citizens banded together to bring electric lights to their Main Streets."

In 1892, however, the Chicago Daily Tribune already recognized the limits of coal. "How long can the earth sustain life," an editorial in the Chicago Daily Tribune asked, if we depend on the "wonderful power of coal?" The Chicago editorial lambasted Americans for our lack of vision and sense of energy conservation, and our need to "invent appliances to exhaust with over greater rapidity the hoard of coal." The article declared: "Doubtless the end of the coal, at least as an article of a mighty commerce, will arrive within a period brief in comparison with the ages of human existence. In the history of humanity, from first to last, the few centuries through which we are now passing will stand out prominently as the coal-burning period."

A century later, let's hope the end of the coal-burning period is not far away.

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Hundreds of thousands of people around the world turned out for last Saturday’s International Day of Climate Action. The global climate event was organized by 350.org. Grist caught up with 350’s founder, writer Bill McKibben, in New York’s Times Square. McKibben talked about the event, the worldwide turnout and what it may all mean for the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

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Carrie Madren, a freelance journalist, filed this dispatch from the International Climate Action Day event in Washington, D.C.

You had to be pretty dedicated to complete the 350.org march climate action march in Washington, D.C. That’s because participants had to slog down the streets of the nation’s capital in a deluge.

Participants in the D.C. rally gathered at Malcolm X Park at noon; skies were gray but all was dry. The crowd swelled as speakers offered up short speeches and musicians—in genres ranging from an eco-rapper to an all-women’s African drum corps—performed a couple songs each. Dark skies threatened rain, but drops didn’t fall until the moment that rally-ers turned to march down the park’s grassy expanse, White House-bound.

By the time the march got going, the crowd was numbering some 500 to 600, by my estimates, was made up of an eclectic mix of college-age kids, Generation X-ers and baby boomers, with a few dozen young kids, hippies and seniors tossed in.

Speakers included Denmark’s ambassador to the United States, who spoke about the need for America to support action in Copenhagen at December’s international climate conference. Environmental activist Sheila Holt Orsted recounted her experience with environmental injustice—the Tennessee county where she lived failed to tell her family and other black neighbors about contaminated groundwater, even while they informed white neighbors; Steve Ma of Live Green conveyed that we need more businesses focused on the future, not just focused on today. Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s Mike Tidwell pumped up the crowd before the march with a short but impassioned rally speech.

As the march began, umbrellas popped up as the crowd sought to avoid a drenching from a driving rain storm. The marchers headed south on 16th Street, occupying up all southbound lanes. Cars passing by honked and cheered. Marchers carried a 350-foot-long banner with climate change messages, pictures, signatures and notes scrawled across the entire banner.

A solar-powered bus (Solarbus.org) led the way, followed by a fleet of bicyclists, then climate change foot soldiers.

The riving rains poured down, creating huge puddles (and under a bridge, a foot-deep lake), but accompanying police kept the marchers moving along with right of way to traffic.

At Lafayette Park in front of the White House, marchers formed a “circle of hope,” chanting messages to President Obama—and even singing “This Land is Your Land” (a suggestion shouted from a Baby Boomer). Wet protesters slowly slogged away as the rally died down about 4:45 p.m., tired, yet empowered.

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Technology brings together a 3, 5, and 0 worlds apart: Sydney, London, and Copenhagen350.org via Flickr Creative Commons

Kicking off with thousands gathering on the steps of Sydney's iconic Opera House, global warming protests took place around the world Saturday to mark 50 days before the U.N. climate summit.

From Asia to Europe via the Middle East, activists staged lively events addressing world leaders and to mobilize public opinion around climate issues.

Many waved placards bearing the logo 350, referring to 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere which scientists say must not be exceeded to avoid runaway global warming.

France's politicians received a "wake up" call from several hundred Parisians who chose clocks as their symbol.

Protesters who met in a central square had set their alarm clocks and mobile phones to ring at 12:18 p.m. in reference to the closing date of the summit, which lasts from Dec. 7-18.

The summit is considered crucial as world leaders will try to thrash out a new treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions in place of the Kyoto Protocol which will expire in 2012.

However, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said Saturday that preliminary discussions are not moving fast enough for an international decision to be concluded in Copenhagen.

"It is time to give full speed to the negotiations," Rasmussen said, adding that he wanted a legally binding international agreement to be in place by January.

There is growing concern that a treaty deal in Copenhagen could be hampered by issues including U.S. domestic politics and the problems of securing agreement between developed and developing countries.

Rasmussen underlined that progress had been made on climate issues but that these "key political questions" still had to be resolved ahead of the December meeting.

In Berlin, some 350 protesters wearing masks with the face of German Chancellor Angela Merkel came together in front of the Brandenburg Gate in the city center.

In London, more than 600 people gathered beneath the London Eye Ferris wheel by the River Thames to arrange themselves into the shape of the number five, according to organizers Campaign against Climate Change.

An aerial photograph of the event was added to pictures of a giant "three" and "zero" from around the world (photo at top).

"Hundreds of thousands of people are taking part (globally) and for us that's so important, to have people out on the streets," campaign activist Abi Edgar told AFP. "We want serious action on climate change and we want it now."

Across the Thames, some 100 musicians playing trumpets, trombones, saxophones and clarinets gathered outside parliament to play the same note -- an F, made by the frequency of 350 Hz -- for 350 seconds, organizers said.

In the Lebanese capital Beirut hundreds of activists, many wearing snorkels, held demonstrations in key archaeological sites.

They gathered around the Roman ruins in central Beirut, in the ancient eastern city of Baalbek and along the coast, carrying placards bearing the logo 350.

"It's not the first time Beirut will have gone under water," Wael Hmaidan of the IndyACT group organizing Beirut's protests said to AFP, explaining the goggle-wearing, "but this time it's going down because of climate change, and not earthquakes."

In Jakarta, around 100 students from the London School of Public Relations also gathered to form the symbolic number 350, coordinator Candy Tolosa said on Detik.com news website Saturday.

In central Madrid, the Spanish capital, members of the Platform Against Climate Change, grouping social organisations, ecologists and unions, acted out parodies of the "catastrophic consequences of climate change on the planet," the Platform's press release said.

Environmental activists in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul staged their protest in a boat, unfurling a banner reading "Sun, wind, right now!" under the main bridge linking Asia and Europe over the Bosphorus Strait, Anatolia news agency reported.

They then sailed to the ancient Maiden's Tower, which sits on a tiny islet in the Bosphorus, and unfurled another banner reading "Jobs, climate, justice," the report said.

Here's a full slideshow of the worldwide events:

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Learning how to count to 350

Two phrases you don't hear every day:

"Can I film your breasts?"

"Are you, like, a coccyx?"

The first was from a guy holding a large video camera, and was prompted by the fact I was wearing a t-shirt with the numbers "350" emblazoned across the front in bold type. "I'm not a pervert or anything," he went on to say, somewhat less than convincingly, as he aimed his lens at my chest.

The second was from a young woman with a big smile and black dreadlocks. After I'd stood on a chair and bellowed into a megaphone to address the crowd at the London Eye, she came over to say she'd loved my speech. "You had me rolling with laughter." I think she was referring to my comment that, "If I can row 3,000 miles across an ocean for climate change, then you can remember to turn off the lights when you leave a room." I'm not quite sure hilarity was the desired effect, but maybe the sustainability movement needs a little humor once in a while.

In turn she made me smile when she doubtfully regarded my petite frame and said, "So are you, like, a coccyx that yells at the other people in the boat to row harder?"

Well, coccyx or coxswain, I suppose; I am indeed concerned with getting people to try harder ...

And that was the feeling that I took away from today's 350 event. I am not talking about the organizers trying harder -- Abi Edgar and the heroes of the Campaign Against Climate Change could not humanly have given it any more than they did today. And today has on many levels been an amazing success. According to the 350 website, people in 181 countries have staged over 5,200 events to express their concern over climate change. I am sure that by the end of these amazing 24 hours, many more people will be aware of the number 350 and what it means.

These people have their eye on the target: 350 at the London Eye.Photo: Hemant Anant JainBut as I sat on the train on the way home, I thought about the day and whether it had succeeded. There were a lot of people there -- fantastic. But there were also a lot of people NOT there, people whose Saturdays were business as usual -- shopping, drinking coffee, hanging out with friends. There are 8 million people in London -- why weren't they ALL here?!

Maybe I'm just in a cup-half-empty mood -- the hectic days and short nights of the book tour have finally caught up with me and I spent most of today in bed apart from the couple of hours at the London Eye -- but instead of celebrating the numbers that turned up at the rally, my mind was on the absentees. My perception is that there is still too much apathy, fear and denial amongst the general public.

Will today turn out to be just another masturbatory exhibition by those who are already environmentally aware, while most people continue in ignorance of our climate crisis? Climate change affects everybody; how can we get everybody to care?

We need a shared POSITIVE vision of our green future. We need to get away from the language of sacrifice and inconvenience, and towards the language of excitement, opportunity, and potential. I am currently reading "The Great Transition," a report by the new economics foundation, which presents a powerfully attractive picture of a sustainable world. We need more of the same. At the moment we are still focusing on the problem (climate change) rather than the solution (sustainability). And the majority of people don't need another problem -- they have enough of their own already. The sooner we make this paradigm shift towards the positive, the better.

Other Stuff:

The other speaker today was Bianca Jagger. She arrived late and discombobulated, her driver having been confused by the closure of various nearby roads and bridges, while I smugly arrived by public transport, early and relaxed ...

My speech (or at least, what I wish I'd said):

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Sarah Rifaat via 350.org Flickr Creative CommonsIf you’re still looking for a good reason to venture out and take part in an International Day of Climate Action event on Saturday, try this on for size: the day of action won't simply be a landmark moment for the global climate movement; it could very well turn out to be a landmark moment in human history. And that's not an exaggeration.

The truth is, nothing like the International Day of Climate Action has ever happened before. As Bill McKibben just said, with over 4000 events taking place in almost every country in the world, this day will be the most widespread day of global action on any issue in history. That’s no joke, and for that reason I’d also argue that this will be the first truly global event in human history. Not even the Olympics or a world cup final could come close to matching the Day of Climate Action as great global events. Sure they might draw global TV audiences that would dwarf our numbers on this day, but the real measure of a global event lies not in its numbers but in its spirit. And on that score I'd say the Day of Action will beat any Opening Ceremony hands down.

Just consider the context. As the first truly global-scale crisis humanity has ever faced, climate change is forcing us to start perceiving ourselves for the first time as a global community, as a common people facing a common threat. It’s becoming increasingly clear – and especially in the light of the sputtering UN climate process – that solving the climate crisis will require a new brand of international cooperation that transcends the traditional model of individual nations negotiating their way toward a middle ground between their individual interests. What we need now more than ever is action not as a united nations but as a global community. We need action by people and for people, not just by nations and for nations. To transcend this crisis, we need the first truly global grassroots movement – a movement which by its very nature will lead us through a door to a new era of global consciousness, to a transformation not just of the way that we consume energy, but of the way that we perceive ourselves, and our relations and responsibilities to each other.

That’s what October 24 is all about. That’s what this day is the opening ceremony for. And as the first truly global-scale expression of this coming transformative global movement, I think it’s safe to say that the International Day of Climate Action could turn out to be a pretty historically significant moment. Moreover, those of us who participate in it won’t just be helping to usher in a new stage in the global climate movement; we’ll be helping to usher in a new era of human history.

Come snow or rain or heat or gloom, I’d say that’s definitely something to show up for. Do not miss out. Go to www.350.org now to find an action near you.

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The International Day of Climate Action spearheaded by 350.org has already kicked off, and will involve more than 4,800 events in 171 countries. Find one near you—and then tell Grist about your big time!

Sometimes it can be quite expedient
To act all quiet and obedient.
But now’s the time, across the land:
Get off your butt and take a stand!

On October 24, climate voices ring—from Mongolia to Maine.350.org

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Will getting to 350 ppm be the great barrier to saving the Great Barrier Reef? Poppy and Jarrah via 350.org Flickr Creative CommonsIn parts of the world, today is already the first-ever International Day of Climate Action in places like New Zealand, but it's not too late for millions of you to find the biggest, weirdest, adorablest, most inspirational, or flat-out nearest demonstration of support for the goal 350 ppm CO2 emissions.

We found a few such events worth noting -- some which have already happened and others which you can still join:

If you haven't found one that suits you and your grassroots style, check out this map of 350.org climate action events and take your pick. And after you get home, don't forget to drop us a line, a video, or a photo from the events via email, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Keep your eye on our page rounding up all the latest goings-on around the International Day of Climate Action.

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Scott Cooper, sustainability coordinator for EOS Alliance in Seattle, wants all his fellow Emerald City denizens to join him at the Space Needle this Saturday for International Climate Action Day.

350.orgWhy? Cooper offers up a top ten reasons:

10. Hang out at the fountain with family, friends, and neighbors

9. Show the world that Seattle is serious about climate change

8. Free buttons!

7. Send a message to policymakers

6. Take part in an unprecedented global collection of human aerial art

5. There’s a strict moratorium on singing “Kumbaya” and “We Are the World”

4. The viaduct is closed this weekend, so getting anywhere else will be a hassle

3. You don’t want Capitol Hill to be waterfront property

2. This could be your last chance to get a photo taken with Mayor Nickels

1. Be a part of the global movement to confront climate change

If you attend only one climate change event in Seattle this year, make it this one!

More info. on the Seattle event:

* Seattle details on 350.org

* @350seattle on Twitter

* On Facebook

Not in Seattle? There are more than 4,000 actions planned in 170 countries around the world. Find one near you!

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Courtesy 350reasons.org350.org is taking a big-tent approach to activism on its International Day of Climate Action this Saturday, inviting anyone who wants to help to join a climate-change demonstration, or create one of their own.

That open invitation means not everyone will be pushing the same message. In fact, a trio of groups will use the day, and the number 350, to highlight their opposition to market-based approaches to capping global warming emissions. In other words, to oppose cap-and-trade, the mechanism integral to the clean energy bill in Congress and to the United Nations approach.

Those groups—Rising Tide North America, Carbon Trade Watch, and the Camp for Climate Action—recently launched 350reasons.org, a collection of reasons why they oppose emissions trading. At climate-day events on Saturday they'll be handing out pamphlets (sorry, "zines"), detailing some of those reasons. They’ve also promised a “video report,” to be released soon. They've essentially taken a no-compromise approach to climate action, preferring to defeat a flawed plan rather than see it succeed and hope it can be fixed later on.

“We’re trying to say there’s no way to reach 350 parts per million through carbon trading,” said Rising Tide’s Brihannala Morgan, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student. “It’s a false solution.”

Among the 350 reasons:

Actually, the group has 450 reasons at the moment, Morgan said; it’s working to edit them down.

350.org founder Bill McKibben says the point of Saturday's events was never to choose specific policies, but to build a broad movement demanding that leaders reverse the rising atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. For too long, he said, the climate problem has been a debate between experts—scientists, economists, and policy wonks.

“There’s been no movement to back them up, no counter-pressure big enough to stand up to the unrelenting pressure from vested interest,” he said last week. “We’re helping provide the popular part of that movement.”

While 350.org doesn’t take positions on specific policy strategies such as cap-and-trade, it shares the sense of urgency of the no-cap-and-trade groups. For that matter, most people working to push a climate bill through Congress share the same sense of urgency. Most readily admit that any bill that can pass through Congress will be too weak to stop climate change. But they would prefer to get started rather than to insist on a perfect bill.

“We have to start some place and we have to start now,” Daniel J. Weiss, director for climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, said in response to a Rising Tide campaign last month.

350.org organizers say they’re OK with off-message groups joining Saturday’s events.

“We encouraged lots of different groups to join,” said May Boeve, a 350.org partnerships director. “We’ve cast a very large net.”

Those groups will include churches, performance artists, and extreme athletes. They will include Chinese businessmen holding a black-tie gala in Shanghai, an odd partner for the 350reasons.org groups critical of corporate influence.

When I asked McKibben about how to engage the ‘no-compromise’ types last week, he said it was too soon to fight over plans. No legislation would be sufficient until the public was making more noise on the climate emergency.

“It’s too early to make calls on what happens with the legislation, because we haven’t built a movement to push that process as hard as it needs to be pushed,” he said. “Politicians aren’t feeling pressure either in Washington or in Copenhagen to do more than the minimum. We need to provide that pressure.

“Another way to say that is, we need to give people who want to do the right thing some room to do it. Barack Obama has not laid his cards on the table yet. We need to give him some maneuvering room, to show him that people have his back, not just here but all over the world.”

The question, then, seems to be whether 350reasons.org and the like will amplify the pressure on political leaders, or fracture it.

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PARIS -- Even as politicians dial down expectations for the Dec. 7-18 U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, analysts and activists detect a groundswell of anger, channeled through the Internet and voiced especially by the young, demanding action on global warming.

Conventional wisdom says environmental issues wax at times of prosperity and wane when belts are tightened.

But these sources believe that adage no longer holds true in the face of the unique threat posed by climate change.

When the talks to craft a post-2012 climate pact get underway, leaders may find themselves facing a coordinated movement cutting across continents, creeds, and class, they argue.

"As evidence mounts of the severity of the threat, civil society groups will be fueled by the urgency of acting now to avoid the worse consequences of a problem for which future generations will surely hold us accountable," said British expert Peter Newell.

"We can expect the continued and expanded use of all resources available to them -- legal and non-legal, constructive and coercive, national, regional and international," said Newell, a professor at the University of East Anglia in England.

Over the past half-century, broad-based movements -- from civil rights in the United States to anti-missile protests in Europe, "people power" revolts in the Philippines and South Korea -- have been largely confined to national borders.

Climate change, though, cuts across all frontiers. Some regions will be hit earlier and harder than others, but no place on Earth will be spared the greenhouse effect.

Awareness has also been boosted by disasters. Typhoon-driven floods that ravaged east Asia last month drove home the perceived links between warming and extreme weather, even if scientists point out such connections are far from linear.

"There is a growing awareness in developing countries that this issue is impacting them now and that they need to do something about it. That awareness is especially strong in Asia," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, told AFP.

Then there is the Internet, an infinitely more powerful organizational tool for protest than the cassette tapes, fax machines and roneo-copied "samizdat" leaflets of the recent past.

In authoritarian countries, notably China, it has helped civil society cohere around environmental and climate issues to a degree not tolerated for political and human rights, or trade unionism.

The prospects for a borderless protest movement will be put to the test on Saturday, selected by grassroots group 350.org as a "day of global action" with some 3,000 events around the planet. The brainchild of U.S. environmentalist Bill McKibben, 350.org takes its name from a warning issued by climate expert James Hansen, who says atmospheric concentration of CO2 must be pegged below 350 parts per million (ppm) to avoid potential catastrophe.

Levels are currently around 385 ppm and on track to bust a 450 ppm threshold previously viewed as safe.

Launched in March 2008, the Web-based network says it has nearly 200,000 activists in dozens of grassroots groups spread across 170 countries.

"It has worked beyond our wildest expectations," McKibben told AFP. "We've basically got the whole world organized, much of it for the first time. Oct. 24 is going to be, by a very large margin, the most widespread day of environmental action ever."

Two demographic profiles dominate among 350.org's rank-and-file, McKibben said: educated youth and people linked by religion.

"I was aware of climate change but didn't know what I could do," Gan Pei Ling, 22, a student at Tunku Abdul Rahman University in Malaysia, said this month at climate talks in Bangkok, where she had come to lobby negotiators.

Meeting a small node of activists in Malaysia gave her the courage to speak out, and 350.org put her in touch with like-minded young people across Asia and beyond.

Gan Pei Ling and hundreds of other 20-something activists who converged on Bangkok -- many sporting T-shirts asking "How Old Will You Be in 2050?" -- see global warming as an injustice toward the poor and the young.

"Older people don't seem to care," said Lokendra Shrestha, a 28-year-old sociology student from Nepal, where vanishing glaciers threaten much of Asia's water supply.

Religion is also emerging as a lightning rod.

"Climate has risen up massively as an issue of concern in religious communities," said Stuart Scott, a former statistics professor from Hawaii who has crisscrossed the globe garnering support for his Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change.

His cause got a big boost when the declaration was included in an oecumenical ceremony at the U.N. Nations last month ahead of the world's first climate summit.

"It would be a huge mobilizing force if people started to frame the issue of climate change in religious terms," noted Newell.

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Clearly, pretending to loft your kid across the countryside in a balloon is the big story.

But what about the fairly extraordinary effort that the kids at 350.org and Bill McKibben are mounting next weekend?

They’ve taken serious scientific analysis—the contention first raised by Jim Hansen that 350 ppm co2 is the target we should be aiming for—and turned it into a real movement. On Saturday, their day of global action, there will be at least 3,800 events and rallies and demonstrations in almost 170 countries. It’ll be one of the most widespread days of political action in the planet’s history.  People are rallying all over the place:

They’ve gotten plenty of coverage in the blogosphere, and in the foreign press:

But in the bigtime U.S. press? So far nothing much.

Maybe editors think it’s too complicated—that people can’t deal with that much science. But clearly they can—and as I pointed out last week, given new research like Tripati’s paper in Science they’re going to have to (see Science: CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher — “We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm”).

We’re not going to get back to 350 anytime soon, obviously, but it’s a good sign that people all over the world are calling for it. And a bad sign that our press, who have plenty of time to deal with the political realism of climate, seem to think that scientific realism is hopelessly idealistic. As Bill McKibben keeps saying, Republicans and Democrats need to negotiate, and Americans and Chinese—but at root, it’s a debate between human beings on the one hand and physics and chemistry on the other.

Take a look at the slideshow of stuff that’s already happened—this is a small taste of what the weekend will bring. It’s what a movement looks like, and it’s about time.  We’ll see thousands more of these images on Saturday—the question is whether newspaper readers and tv viewers will see them too.

For the science behind 350, see “Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al.” Since the science is preliminary and it is not not yet politically possible to get to 450 ppm, let alone 350, my basic view is, let’s start working now toward stabilizing below 450 ppm.  I think we will need ultimately to get back to 350, and the faster the better.  But since it ain’t easy, I hope climate scientists will shed more light on how fast is really needed.  Either way, this is what needs to be done technology-wise:  “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated).”  The difference between the two targets is that for 450 ppm, you need to do the 12-14 wedges in four decades.  For 350 ppm, you (roughly) need 8 wedges in about two decades plus another 10 wedges over the next three decades (and then have the world go carbon negative as soon as possible after that), which requires a global WWII-style and WWII-scale strategy (see “An open letter to James Hansen on the real truth about stabilizing at 350 ppm“).

The great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, helped me research this post

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays

A scientific hack job that won’t cripple climate talks

Bill McKibben and Chip Giller want you to get pumped up for the International Day of Climate Action.

When Grist was launched 10 years ago, a key idea behind it was that the web could be used to spread the news about what’s really happening across the planet. Turned out to be true.

Now the question is: Can the web spread more than information to the farthest corners of the planet? Can we really use it to effect the outcome of the most important scientific questions we’ve ever faced? And the answer to that looks to be "yes" as well.

Those of you who’ve been following 350.org know that the campaign has gone viral in recent weeks, in the lead-up to the International Day of Climate Action.  There will be more than 4,000 events in almost 170 countries on Oct. 24—pretty much every place that isn’t Burma or North Korea. It’s certainly the most widespread day of environmental action ever—as far as we can tell, it will set the record for political action in general. And it’s all been done without much coverage from radio and TV and the newspapers. It’s been the electronic media—the network of bloggers and YouTubeists that Grist helped to spawn—that have been spreading the word.

No matter where you live, there’s something going on nearby on Saturday—in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, and in Iran, and in the coup-ridden capital of Honduras.  Underwater on the Great Barrier Reef, and on the shores of the Dead Sea in Palestine and Israel and Jordan. In 300 Chinese cities, and just as many places in India. Against the backdrop of Machu Picchu and the Pyramids. And in a thousand American cities and towns. If you want to see what these actions will look like, check out some of the best early pictures on Flickr.

And every one of these events is scientifically literate—people just like you are taking a data point and using it to make a political point. 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere—and we've already surpassed it. The Copenhagen climate talks in December won't just be a forum for negotiations between China and the U.S.—the real talks are going on between humans on the one hand and physics and chemistry on the other.

Help spread the word in the next few days, on the web and also to the mainstream press, so they’re not entirely left out of this huge spectacle. Call your local newspaper editor or radio station or AP bureau, and ask if they’re going to cover the International Day of Climate Action.

And, of course, join in the action yourself.  Wherever you are, there will be an event going on nearby; find one.  One of us (Chip) will be on Vashon Island, Wash., with his family, at the farmers market where the local action is taking place. The other (Bill) will be in Times Square in New York City, coordinating the showing of photos from events all over the world on three of those huge JumboTron advertising signs usually devoted to vodka or cigarettes.  Where will you be?

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

Get involved in the fight against climate change.

Got plans for Saturday, Oct. 24?  Join up with climate-concerned citizens around the globe for the first-ever International Day of Climate Action, to demand that world leaders get moving in the fight against climate change. 

More than 3,000 events in 170 countries are in the works, many of them focused on the number 350, which represents the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere (we’ve already surpassed it—d’oh).

Find an action near you, or organize one yourself.  Anything goes!  Events will include everything from major rallies at iconic spots like the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu, to underwater scuba-assisted protests, to mountain climbers hanging “350” banners and churches ringing their bells 350 times.  Don’t miss out.  “It’s shaping up to be to be the biggest day of grassroots action on global warming ever,” according to Bill McKibben and the other organizers at 350.org.

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks