Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Connie Barlow, a climate activist, writer, and film maker, dislikes the word “apathy” used to describe people’s response to climate change. She says, “I now bristle at that word. In my view, what looks like apathy, especially when it comes to climate disruption, is actually a variety of psychological protections.”
I do not look forward to the future like I used to. I do not sit and dream about the life I will lead or the things I will do. In fact, these days, I have to force myself to think about it. Dreaming is effort. Imagination is work. Hope is complicated.
Now the title to this week’s reflection may sound a bit alarmist. Intentionally so. It’s right out of a thousand disaster movies where people scream this wildly as their ship is sinking, their plane is crashing, or the tsunami is heading for them.
So during these seven days, we will be unveiling our Seven Generations New Deal, which is a seven point program for climate action. And we’d love for you to come and listen to see what we’re thinking and give your input, because we really want this policy to be built from the ground up. We fully expect that the first draft that we are releasing on Monday will look nothing like the final draft that we have by the end of this campaign.
As the UK Climate Assembly is about to launch in Birmingham on January 24th, on the other side of the Channel, the French Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat has got a head start. On January 10th, 150 French citizens met for the fourth time to look at how to address the climate crisis.
There is much to be said about the relationship of commons to climate change, but let me offer this short glimpse into the clash of worldviews that must be negotiated. Whatever the outcome in ongoing arguments with capitalist climate-deniers, our best recourse will be to build and fortify our many commons as a failsafe against the earthly reckoning that is coming.
Feeding off of a failed UN Summit late in 2019, the almost daily release of reports updating and confirming climate science studies, student strikes, a continent on fire, and the already prominent place of climate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2020 looms as a watershed political year for national climate policy.
The world is on fire.
We need a global political movement in the broadest, not party-political sense. We cannot go on watching the rainforest burn, the German coal power plants produce CO2 and people as well as millions of animals die in Australia´s bushfires. We need a common and global reaction.
Best of all, regenerative agriculture was acknowledged as a shovel-ready solution to climate change. That’s a big reason why over one hundred nations, NGOs, and agricultural organizations signed onto the original ‘4 For 1000 Initiative’. “[It] has become a global initiative,” said French Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll. “We need to mobilize even more stakeholders in a transition to achieve both food security and climate mitigation thanks to agriculture.”
2020 is already promising to be a watershed political year for national climate change policy. A failed UN summit in Madrid, new reports updating and confirming climate science studies, student strikes, a continent on fire, and the prominence of climate in the presidential race will all be in evidence throughout the year. The confluence of so many reminders that climate change is both real and already upon us means there will never be a better opportunity to put the nation on a sustainable path forward.
All agree we need to take action for climate change, but some environmentalists find the Extinction Rebellion’s tactics difficult to get behind. Environmental campaigners Chay Harwood and Marc Hudson provide the arguments for and against them.
There is a much cheaper and faster way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere that doesn’t rely on these corporate giants to transition us to 100% renewables. Additionally, it can be done while at the same time reducing the chronic diseases that impose an even heavier cost on citizens and governments. Our most powerful partner is nature itself, which over hundreds of millions of years has evolved the most efficient carbon sequestration system on the planet.
