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It's Going to Be Beautiful
There are reasons to be encouraged about the negotiations in Copenhagen, and ways to get involved in your own backyard.
I know many of you are busy preparing for this weekend's vigils, and I know you're all hearing a lot about the climate talks in Copenhagen.
But since we're all working on the same team, I wanted to give you an inside/outside sense of all that's happening in one of the more important weeks in the history of this ball of rock and water we call the earth.
From inside Copenhagen, our crew (which at exactly 350 mostly young souls is reportedly the largest accredited delegation to the talks!) reports the following:
- It's cold and gray and the sun sets at 3:30 pm, but exciting to be in a world where everyone is focused on the climate. Sometimes, amongst all the wonderful activists from every corner of the world, you can really sense how the planet might come together.
- As of Wednesday evening, the 350 target is still in the treaty's "negotiating text." Our movement's lobbying efforts-both in the UN and around the world-might end up bearing fruit. Few negotiators have managed to avoid our briefing papers on the science of 350, and many of them are showing their support in style with 350 ties and lapel pins. But the most persuasive lobbying tool has proven to be the photos-your photos-from the 350 events around the world. Amidst all the compromises and politicking, seeing 350 as a possible element of a global climate treaty is a refreshing acknowledgment of the reality of physics and chemistry-and a crucial reminder of the bottom line for this whole elaborate process.
- More and more countries and leaders are using the 350 figure publicly. Bolivia stepped up to the plate and made the 350 target a main point of their opening statement; then Al Gore gave a remarkable speech saying no matter what happens we have to keep working till we get to 350. Yesterday in the New York Times, Thomas Lovejoy, one of the planet's great biologists, put it bluntly: "350 ppm--that is the upper limit for dangerous interference with ecosystems." And it's sinking in. Countries on the front lines of climate change-like small Pacific islands and many drought-inflicted African countries-are taking stronger stances and refusing to accept the limp compromises currently on the negotiating table. There is a growing understanding that simply getting a deal in Copenhagen is not the point-that any deal that does not point us towards 350 is, in a very real sense, a failure.
And a few updates from outside Copenhagen, where people all over the world are getting ready for this weekend's vigils:
- In the Netherlands alone, 447 churches will be ringing their bells 350 times this Sunday (here in Denmark there will be a huge church service at the main cathedral, with the Archbishop of Canterbury in attendance and with the bell tolling 350 times). These are just a portion of the many "sounds of 350" events that people are registering for this weekend.
- We're hearing about really beautiful vigils planned almost everywhere: bicycle caravans converging on the US embassy in Hanoi; concerts in Bolivia and Caracas; a bridge of lights across the river in Portland, Oregon; women and girls gathering in Fiji to make "climate art" from recycled materials. And everywhere people will be shining light and hope into this troubled world: candles and high-efficiency LEDs in Cali and Wellington, Guadalajara and Sydney, on and on. In Hawai'i, surfers will paddle out into the ocean with candles on their boards, and the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea framed in the background. And here in Copenhagen, we're working with our allies to help coordinate a candlelight vigil with Desmond Tutu and other prominent global leaders. In no uncertain terms-and in visually striking ways-we'll demand a real deal from our leaders. It's going to be beautiful.
Don't get too excited, or too despairing, at any of the news reports coming out from the conference-remember, this is one stop on a long journey towards a just and working planet.
You are the people leading that journey, and we're profoundly grateful for it.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllI would suggest that these good people hand out filtering face masks to everyone who will be exposed next week to the intoxicating and deadly words which will issue from the mouth of Barack Obama.
Perhaps hospital gowns would also help protect them from the exposure to Obama contamination.
How nice to see a positive article in these very troubled times, to read about people all over the world acting with a common purpose. It shows a universal awareness of the situation we Earthlings are in and by-passes the limiting disinformation of the media and climate deniers.
Yay us!
Yes! Magazine is full of positive articles, it's the reason I have a subscription to it. I'm reading the new climate justice issue now, it's very good. Often the articles are so full of good news and hopes that I've felt it lessen my anxiety on the various issues it covers.
As of the posting of this comment, we have one onside, and one denier before me. These comments represent the global proportions of the division on the reality of global warming.
Without a 90% support rate, our leaders are not going to have a mandate that is strong enough to defeat the oilmen. {appropriate denier nicname? - birdbrain}
That means we will continue to produce massive amounts of CO2, and that is causing the OCEANS TO ACIDIFY.
The ice melt is faster than during ANY of the natural temperature increases, which took 100,000 years to grow by 2oC, and we have done it in just 100 years. Nature cannot adapt that quickly. Sunlight is being absorbed where ice used to be reflecting it; methane releases are going to happen in huge "burps" from the tundra and ocean clathrates [never heard of a clathrate? Read the "Sea Sick" book [by Alanna Mitchell? i think].
Oceans will rise, Island nations will be gone by 2100 {your grankids and mine will be alive in 2100 to bear the brunt of our stupidity. New York will have to spend many billions to put dikes around the shorelines - it is estimated that globally we will have to spend 1000 times more on dikes than it would cost right now to replace all coal burners with renewable energy!! Does THAT make good economic sense?
But as for being optimistic, I think the author is just caught up in the positive headspace that occurs whenever large groups of people get together to do something good; it is a false optimism;
I predict that the agreement for emissions cuts will around 10% above 1990 levels, whereas we need to be 50% BELOW 1990 levels to avoid more than 2oC of warming in the next 100 years.
10% above 1990 levels will mean temperature rise of 5oC or more by 2100. The world has never seen temperatures rise that fast on a global scale, and the effects will be dramatic and deadly.
I think you completely misunderstood Birdbrain Alley's post.
"We December"
Thank you.
I think the confusion about what I wrote may stem from a tendency toward sarcasm, of which, I have at times used, but I was not being sarcastic here.
I do sincerely think that Barack Obama and the "official" U.S. delegation should be treated as if they are carriers of a deadly "contagion" because the U.S. is stupidly and deliberately sabotaging our future.
When I referred to the people of 350.org as good people, I meant it.
Looks like Bill McKibben does not have a clue about how serious this is. marching around singing 350 won't do anything. it's nice to be happy about lotsa people making noise. But Copenhagen is another sellout to big oil, and a colossal failure of all the rich world's "leaders".
look at what Ted Rall has to say:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/12-2
I know. Candlelight vigils, yeah that's going to do it. Add a little more carbon to the atmosphere.
Guess it isn't just combustion that sucks all of the oxygen out of this world. Despair about climate change does the same thing. Sure optimism is ineffective in making change happen, but so is pessimism. Hope demands people do something while despair justifies sitting on your ass doing nothing. I'll go with hope.
It's another "show biz" meeting.
I'm so sick of "show biz"........
What -- you mean you don't think that the ringing of church bells, and the trashing of businesses in Copenhagen, and the noble speeches -- won't bring us relief from global warming? What are you -- a realist or something? Shame!
Bill McKibben,
Are you taking personal responsibility and eating vegan?
One cannot call themselves an environmentalist and eat meat.
Studies(UN & Pew Commission most recently) show that farmed animals contribute more to climate change than transport.
Meat-eaters cause 7 times more volume of greenhouse gases than do vegans.
Farmed livestock contributes 40% more to climate change than entire transport combined: cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships.
"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save". -- Jonathan Safran Foer's Grandmother
It would be useful to have a comparison of pastured meat sold locally vs. CAFO crap shipped all over the world.