A Warning and a Plea to US and World Leaders

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/there-is-little-hope-left-of-keeping-global-temperature-in-the-safe-zone/273860/

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/03/new-hockey-stick-graph-scarier

I saw both of the above-linked articles today.

We Are Toast. Burned toast.

I still believe – though that’s all it is at this point – that we can reverse this. We have done remarkable things in the past. But we have to get on a true global war footing to do so, and we have to date shown no signs of being willing to do so. That must change now.

We think we will survive and die peacefully of old age in our beds while the bees die, the rains stop, the seas rise, the crops fail, and the wildfires rage? Some form of the world will go on without us. Life, of some form, will likely survive even this – though not the forms we love, or not many of them. What environmentalists are really fighting for is not Nature, which will survive us, but a fighting chance for human civilization to continue its journey.

Congress and the President – and the leaders of other industrialized nations, as well – Must Act Now and put us on a war footing. No compromise, no more time wasted.

Forget Keystone XL. We cannot permit that. If the government permits it, the people must prevent it.But the problem is, by all scientific accounts, so much more dire. We must be proactive. We must do more than we believe to be necessary, faster than we believe possible, because we have less time than we thought. Time’s up. We cannot delay another month.

• We must reduce our emissions of CO2 this year, this month, in real terms, and help China, India, and the EU to do so.
• We must begin building 4th generation nuclear plants, if we can do so responsibly and safely, decommission all coal plants, and go all in on renewable energy.
• We must now stop and reverse the exponential growth in the population of humans.
• We must reforest the nation and the world, beginning this year.
• We must ground planes and park cars in significant numbers – 20%? 50%? 75%? – without any delay.

We must not wait for anything before acting. No new Earth Summit. No new studies. No economic impact studies. We may already have delayed too long. We must hope we have not. We only have the present in which to act. We are increasingly foreclosing the possibility of a future in which to act.

I do not understand: the President and Congress must have in hand facts that are even more detailed  and disturbing than the information I have linked to above, and what I heard from NASA’s Dr. James Hansen a couple of weeks ago. President Bush’s administration was vilified for ignoring the warnings of Al Qaeda flying planes into buildings. Surely President Obama is receiving dire warnings about the march of climate change. The consequences of ignoring these warnings will make 9/11 look like a minor tragedy in comparison.You and I will live to see the catastrophic effects of inaction. This is a current, not a future problem. We, not our children or grandchildren, are responsible for taking action. We Must Act. Right Now.

Humans have risen to great challenges before. We have shown an enormous capacity for courage, self-sacrifice, and vision. We have developed the capacity to see farther and deeper, and to make finer measurements, than even scientists a hundred years ago would have imagined. We must now heed the warnings that our long quest for knowledge have brought us. This is our generation’s challenge, and it is greater than any that have come before. We will either respond in a manner worthy of mythic story, or we will twiddle, while all stories and knowledge come to an end in us.

Consider what and who you love, and act with all urgency. Do not wait for others, or for permission. The decision is yours. The lives of those you love depend on what you do right now.

Urgently,

John McAndrew

[To see how to contact your elected officials, go to this link]

We Hit 7 Billion in 2011 – two years early

Fleeing Colorado Wildfires

Texas Drought of 2011

Superstorm Sandy: Not a Thrill Ride. A Disaster

Noon in Beijing. How Can We Think This Has No Consequence For the Planet?

Well, I’ll Be Damned: I’m a Believer

In the Schleswig Munster, in north Schleswig-Holstein, almost all the way to Denmark, is a triptych of the life of Mary. I was struck by its simplicity and universality. It spoke to me of a Christianity I could believe in, which will surprise those who know me. I took pictures so I could share.

Moving Your Money

[This is the first post I am cross-posting to a new blog in which I am participating. My friend Jack Jamison (no relation to Jenna, at least that I know of) and I, along with others, will be posting all manner of ideas, ruminations, and discussions on the affairs of the hour/week/era. So please come by and see what's up.]

A year ago I decided that it was no use complaining about the behaviors and policies of the big banks if I was letting them use my money to do what I railed against. So I closed my Wells Fargo account and moved my business to a local credit union. If we don’t like how Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America treat people and conduct business, WHY would we give them our money? This is a rare issue that conservatives and liberals can agree on, albeit for different reasons: conservatives railed against the bail outs, liberals against the bail outs AND foreclosures. About the only ones less popular with both groups are insurance companies and Congress.

There is a group on Facebook called Bank Transfer Day. It was launched around October 6, so it is less than a week old and already has 18,000 “attendees” – those who have already transferred their accounts, and those who pledge to do so before November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day, and a day made more memorable to Americans by the book and movie, V for Vendetta). Time Magazine and The Village Voice have already done stories on this effort.

This is not the first effort to remind Americans that we have the power to cast votes for or against particular businesses as well as politicians. There have been boycotts for years, whether sponsored by Greenpeace or Focus on the Family. A year or two ago, Huffington Post sponsored an effort called the Move Your Money Project. But this effort is riding the wave of the suddenly-emerged populist movement, Occupy Wall Street, which even a Fox News poll shows to be supported by 67% of respondents. While Bank Transfer Day is not an official outgrowth of #OWS, there are clear affinities between the groups; a Venn Diagram would show a significant, and maybe an almost total, overlap.

It takes little effort to make the change. Keep your old bank account open for a month or so while you make the transition to a credit union or local bank, just to make sure everything is working smoothly. Then cut ‘em loose.

That’s free market capitalism at work. Bank of America just gave two severance packages worth $11 million to two execs who were let go. These were not performance bonuses. This, after stating that their need to cut expenses will lead to the elimination of 30,000 jobs, and announcing a $5/month fee on debit card use.

At some point, you realize you have to leave an abusive relationship.

To find a credit union near you, go here. For a local bank, go here, then go here for other resources: make sure the local bank is FDIC-insured, and check their financial stability.

If we stop abdicating our responsibility as citizens, we may find that our country begins to look something like what we want it to look like. This is just the first small step. Think of it as practice for bigger things.