Eco Chamber #3 - Earth Day Special: A movement, not a day

April 22nd, 2009 (Earth Day)

One day. That's all. That's all the time dedicated to the environment by 174 nations. That's all the time some one billion people globally will participate in environmental action. That's all, out 365 days a year, and two generations elapsed, since the modern environmental movement began. Earth Day — that is all.

Today's Earth Day is the 39th Earth Day since its inception on April 22, 1970, by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson. Earth Day began with the aim of raising awareness of the environment. Today, the Earth Day Network encourages year round participation in the environment. But, typically, people join together on this one day, April 22nd, to do their part by attending an Earth Day festival, planting a tree, or going to a teach-in. But at a time when the entire Arctic ice sheet could be history as early as 2013, is this really enough?

Beyond Earth Day, there is the exploding WWF campaign of Earth Hour, that saw participation of nearly one-sixth the earth's population in 2009 (compared to just a hundred million the previous year). There are many cities that extend Earth Day into Earth Week activities. Planet Green is calling for an Earth Month, where "taking the next step" includes environmental volunteerism and "greening your life." Some, like Greenpeace Canada, call for a green year by making every day Earth Day, and counsels such things as going vegetarian and cutting back on plastic bottles.

But we need more than an Earth Hour, an Earth Day, an Earth Week, an Earth Month or even an Earth Year. Simply flicking off lights for an hour, planting a tree one day of the year, attending "green" events, volunteering occasionally, or recycling and using fewer plastic bags is not enough. We need more than that. We need an Earth Movement.

An Earth Movement is a social uprising — a mobilization of people with a singular goal: the sustainability of our planet and our lives within it.

Now is the time more than ever for an Earth Movement, as we face things like:

• Ocean fish stocks gone by 2050 amid rising demand.
• Destruction of the Amazon rainforest from logging and industrial agriculture. (The Amazon rainforest is not only a huge carbon sink, but also a home to 22 million people and one third of all species in the world.)
• The waste that's stampeding us off a cliff. Ontario alone, despite the pride in its recycling program, produces 12.4 million tonnes of garbage annually while only 3 million tonnes is diverted into recycled goods.
• And let's not forget global climate change. Scientific international consensus states that it is 'virtually certain' there will be a 2°C temperature rise this century — some even argue that a 4-5°C rise is inevitable. Which melts the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, displacing 130 million people as the sea level rises.

However, there is reason to be optimistic about the Earth Movement. The Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. declared on Friday that CO₂ and five other greenhouses gases are indeed a threat to human health and welfare. Backed by President Obama under the Clean Air Act, this is paving the path to stricter regulations on automobiles, coal fired power plants, and other major emitters.

This sign for optimism has been brought about by a critical mass of activism, public advocacy, and engaged citizenry that has been on the rise for some time. Today there are over 12,000 environmental groups in the U.S., and roughly an equivalent number in Canada. This is the movement that is igniting climate action in Washington and paving a way forward on environmental issues.

The Earth Movement is very much alive — but everyone needs to be engaged in it. Small actions, by people who consider themselves 'green' because they volunteer for environmental causes, bike to work, and hand out the occasional leaflet, are not enough. It's mostly self-serving it doesn't lead to the massive changes that are needed. Though these micro individual changes are good, the macro scale is where the most change needs to happen.

"We're not going to solve this one light bulb at a time, but we just might if we can build one light-filled, light-hearted, lightning-fast movement.," says Bill McKibben, co-founder and director of 350.org, a group that is organizing a global demonstration on October 24, 2009 in Copenhagen.

Therefore, a movement is what we need — not baby-steps by a few. I needs to remain united and inclusive, unlike the movement of the '70s that has since fractured and dissipated. It may seem like I'm asking for a lot here. I am.

But this can happen. Change has happened in the past and it will happen again. It happened because of people, not institutions and politicians. It was people after all who fought the Women's Suffrage movement; people who fought for the Civil Rights Movement. It has, and always has been, citizens who have changed the world.

But we need action and active citizens now if the Earth Movement — and we ourselves — are to survive. It can't be just rhetoric, conversation over the water-coolers or idle thoughts. It can't be just individualistic changes. And it can't be just one day.

Being an activist does not necessary mean standing on the frontlines all tht time. Activism can mean many things, not holding up signs and yelling. Some things we need to do now are promote a green economy by training ourselves and others with the right skills. Over the next few decades, there will be an explosion of green jobs in fields like retrofitting buildings, constructing wind, solar and wave farms, manufacturing parts for those energy farms, urban agriculture and healthy farming, modern efficient urban planning, and public transit.

Activism can also be bringing an environmental angle to other aspects of your life: advocating for green politics in all parties; environmental journalism and writing; speaking out for green causes; documentary filmmaking on eco-issues; art-activism; green education; guerilla gardening; eco-feminism; promotion of green health; connecting ecological causes with social causes such as aboriginal rights; promoting green science and technological development, and so on.

You can be a part of this movement in many ways. But we have to do more than one day's work, and build a worldwide — dare I say — revolution.

Eco Chamber #2: Countdown to Copenhagen

April 17th, 2009

The countdown to Copenhagen is 233 today. That is the number of days left until the Obama administration must sway its own domestic politics by getting Congress on side of climate action, and prove real leadership in global emission reductions. It's a very short timeframe, especially when, in a state of economic turmoil, one big "E" seems to take precedent over another, economics over ecology.

Come December, 170 countries will come together at the Copenhagen Climate Convention in Denmark to attempt at an agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol. But like Kyoto, if there is not real leadership from the U.S., the Copenhagen agreement will fail too.

More than leadership, Copenhagen comes down to American politics. Republican and Democratic senators alike are more interested in economics than ecology today, and that attitude will further stall any significant action on climate change. Many scientists say we no longer have any time to wait.

"I frankly think that this Copenhagen is the last chance for us to deal with this problem," Andrew Weaver told the Montreal Gazette recently. Weaver is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor and author of Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World.

With the Arctic now melting faster than scientists had previously believed — possibly reaching 100 percent summer melting as early as 2013 — global climate change is pushing us toward a precipice. International consensus says that by 2050 it is "virtually certain" that temperatures will rise to 1.5° to 2°C, unless there are sharp carbon reductions. Every decade there is delay, experts say, temperatures will continue to rise by half a degree.

On the earth's surface, this temperature rise means that young people today will be living in a vastly re-shaped world when they are older. Thirty percent of species will be at risk of extinction; there will be widespread aridity and crop failure in the global south, where most of the Earth's population lives; and we will see up to 12 meters of sea level rise. That doesn't even get into the new geopolitical world we will be living in, with mass human migrations and conflict.

As we come to a close of the first decade of the 21st century, with emissions only rising, now, more than ever, is the time for action. People around the world en masse are calling for it. This year's Earth Hour had over eighty countries and one billion individuals participating, according to WWF Canada's Communications Director, Josh Laughren, who spoke about the Earth Hour event on the Green Majority radio show on April 10th. That's a huge leap forward from last year's Earth Hour, with 35 countries and between 50 and 100 million participants.

WWF is calling this year's Earth Hour a "global phenomenon." Earth Hour is meant as a symbolic action on the fight against global climate change. By dimming lights, people are voting for the earth and creating a mass demand for action.

However, US deputy special envoy for climate change, Jonathan Pershing, told the Reuters news agency that global climate agreements are complicated. "Finding common ground will take some time."

In domestic American politics, the situation is further complicated. With a recent Congress bill passed that now requires any cap-and-trade climate plan needing sixty votes to see the light of day. And with the two U.S. parties preoccupied with the economy, the prospects for a cap-and-trade bill looks dismal.

President Obama's election promise was to have swift action to combat climate change. the promises included cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent by 2020 and a cap-and-trade emissions plan. However, on the recent climate talk in Bonn, Germany, as part of a series of talks leading up to Copenhagen, delegates were disappointed with the U.S.'s vague and far-reaching plan to cap emissions. Obama's rapid action on climate now appears cautious and slow.

But slow and steady is a luxury we can no longer indulge in. And people around the world are making a stand for climate action now. At the recent G20 Summit in London, UK, 4,000 protesters were part of a "Climate Camp" protesting against the proposed cap-and-trade systems with slogans including "Nature Doesn't Do Bail-Outs." The activists argued that cap-and-trade is just another system for emitters to hide behind, while true emissions reduction remains on the back burner.

At the same G20 conference, over 20,000 protestors took over the streets of the central banking district, rioting about the economy. For many in Washington, this "separate" issue of the economy is often a fig leaf to hide more inaction on the climate. But economics and ecology are not two mutually exclusive entities. Rather, with a failing economy comes opportunity: opportunity for sustainability, with green industries and jobs, less dependency on oil, and more renewable energy.

Our world is out of check, but we have an opportunity for a sustainable one. Copenhagen is the first and last opportunity for Obama to make it so. But a slack pace will not get us there. Instead, we have 233 days — and the world is counting.