Darkness Descends

 

 The Christian season of Advent countenances expectation, hope, joy and purity in the lighting of candles, culminating in a moment of reverence on Christmas Day. The hopes and expectations of the future during this century are continuing to be focused on the climate crisis of our time. It becomes more and more fraught as the COP climate summits pass without concrete actions and benchmarks.

The Wilson Center is a think tank that provides input and public education on policy positions. In its Environmental Change and Security Program, it lays out some high-level issues and possible engagement strategies on climate change as it is dealt with at the global level. The video interview with Ruth Greenspan Bell makes a very clear position that the US has damaged its influence and negotiating strategies with the four year intransigence of the Trump administration. Not only that, but as a result we have now lost the Arctic. As in "finis".

Her article in The Daily Climate makes the argument that the COP process via the UN hasn't produced any substantive agreements or strategies for reducing the carbon emissions that are destroying planetary systems.

"Carbon emissions might have been worse without this annual attention [COP meetings], but it’s hard to escape that the current pathway is essentially business as usual.

What is the return on value of almost 30 years of meetings? We’ve seen record-breaking increases in global average atmospheric carbon dioxide and little progress toward concrete support for poor countries that suffer the most from the climate’s radical changes, though they contributed the least to the destruction.

It might be time to strip away the parts of this annual ritual that have value and jettison the rest."

Emily Atkin is a blogger on Substack who is an environmental reporter and writer, best known for founding the weekly climate newsletter HEATED. It is dedicated to original accountability reporting and analysis on the climate crisis. Her article, "How fossil fuel influence choked climate talks" is very clear about how the climate talks have broken down because of interference by the fossil fuel companies. She has provided further background in the links below her article, it's very dismal. Her summation of COP27 is:

"We are fast-approaching the deadline for limiting warming to safe levels. Yet we are still living in a political and media environment where the vast majority of people don’t mention fossil fuels when they talk about climate change.

That’s not a coincidence; it’s by design. The fossil fuel industry is fighting tooth and nail to deny the truth of their responsibility. As long as they’re allowed at global climate talks, that’s what they’ll continue to do."

The biggest fear is that the fossil fuel corporations will completely derail any global consensus about how to stop the carbon emissions that are so destructive to our ecosystem. This isn't some kind of normal negotiation which allows for "compromise". It is complete and utter destruction of the biosphere; there can be no compromise on the goals and methods. 

Contradiction at COP26

 

Advent is a time of reflection, remorse, and the preparation to move into a necessary future. As our world increasingly faces extreme climate events, we've got to cut emissions drastically within the next few years in order to keep from experiencing the worst impacts of our continuing carbon emissions. 

The biggest disappointment people have after COP26 in Glasgow is that it kept the world on track to blow past 1.5 and possibly even two degrees Celsius of warming, which is not what the Paris Agreement calls for. Given that we are now experiencing environmental collapse at 1C, the future appears dire, and demands increasingly strong countermeasures of resilience. These measures have been published by Ed Mazria FAIA, forty years ago, and was the beginning of the effort to bring the strategies to the construction industry. He has worked with the American Institute of Architecture to move the industry into the forefront of policies and recommendations necessary to forestall the impacts of climate change.

David Attenborough's opening speech at COP26 Glasgow was a clear challenge to the COP26 participants and delegates. He poignantly describes the unraveling processes that are causing destructive climate change. At a 60 minutes interview with Attenborough in 2020, he states: "Our generation has failed. We've allowed climate change to happen".

The UNFCCC provides a review of the processes at COP26 on their website. "A top priority for the UK Presidency and many countries was to finalise the ‘Paris Rulebook’ to fully operationalise the Paris Agreement. The Paris Rulebook sets out the detailed rules and systems to underpin delivery of the Paris Agreement, many of which were agreed at COP24in Poland. However, there were several issues where Parties held such strongly held different views that they had been unable to agree on these at previous COPs."

The Sierra Club has published "Prove Us Wrong": A Roundup of Some of the Best Speeches at COP26.

The Los Angeles Times presented a different view in their editorial. "The Glasgow climate summit brought only incremental progress." The London Greenleft was far more pessimistic about the summit on their blog:

"We saw an insurmountable contradiction and a source of chaos when China and the United States issued a joint statement at the COP. It will be of no use in breaking the deadlock. It is mainly a statement for the sake of appearances. The two great powers have an interest in posing together as the guarantors of the world’s stability and its climate. Perhaps they will try to collaborate on a partial aspect of climate policy (methane emissions?). But the underlying tensions are very strong and tend to deepen the conflicts. In the US, the Democratic majority is hanging by a thread with senior US Senator Joe Manchin (D) being the loyal friend of coal."

"The failure at Glasgow and what needs to happen next", by Peter Kalmus. Peter is a climate scientist at NASA's JPL in Pasadena and the author of “Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution.” And this from Greenpeace -“Scientists have found that governments’ current action plans would cause global temperatures to increase to 2.4 C, which would bring absolute devastation to hundreds of millions of people and ecosystems around the world,” Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International, said in an interview at COP26. “So waiting five years to come back to the table is not an option.”

Climate activist Vanessa Nakate of Uganda had this to say near the end of the sessions: "One of the deepest disappointments for the climate-justice movement was the almost total failure to deal with fossil fuels. Negotiators had flirted with confronting the fossil fuel industry head-on — a key issue previous COPs had dodged — only to back off at the last minute. Whereas an early draft had straightforwardly called for a phaseout of coal power and fuel subsidies, the final version suggested only a phasedown of “unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” draining the statement of any meaning.

The many voices did not come to a resolution, but the hope is that next year's COP27 will develop some definitive positions.

The Gloaming

 

 

It's time now to prepare for and remember the year-ago promise of Advent with the knowing that forces are coalescing around the globe and in the US which are countermanding the denial and obstruction we see at the highest levels of global climate interaction. Groundwork has been laid, players identified, and industries have begun mobilization.

A year ago, John Kerry, the former senator and secretary of state, formed a new bipartisan coalition of world leaders, military brass and Hollywood celebrities to push for public action to combat climate change.The name, World War Zero, is supposed to evoke both the national security threat posed by the earth’s warming and the type of wartime mobilization that Mr. Kerry argued would be needed to stop the rise in carbon emissions before 2050. The star-studded group is supposed to win over those skeptical of the policies that would be needed to accomplish that. Now, under the nascent Biden administration cabinet, these policies are stirring to life with the appointment of Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate.

This clears the way for the US to rejoin the Paris Agreement of COP21 and establish leadership on building a future of zero carbon with the worldwide community of nations. The number of commitments to reach net zero emissions has doubled in less than a year, with many in the Race to Zero by 2050. According to a report by the Data-Driven EnviroLab and the NewClimate Institute, published during Climate Week NYC, that includes cities and regions covering more than the combined GDP of Japan, India and the UK, and companies with a combined revenue of over $11.4 trillion (equivalent to more than half of the US GDP). This shows that climate action has continued unimpeded by Covid-19. This joins with work in place and underway by the private foundations of Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore and Bill Gates, among many others, that have been focused on seeding efforts to implement carbon neutrality in time to avoid the worst of the impacts of climate change, which is set at a maximum of 1.5C by the Paris Agreement.

The architecture profession, along with the construction industry in the US, has risen to the challenge of implementing the requirements of carbon net zero in its construction practices. The American Institute of Architects (AIA), in concert with Architecture 2030, has incorporated tools and strategies for the industry to begin moving ahead with immediate carbon reduction in its construction materials and practices as well as significant carbon sequestration. The basis for this work is the 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I, a comprehensive, multi-year scientific analysis under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Very specifically, this work done by the AIA involves the evolution of its Committee on the Environment (COTE) into an overarching Framework for Design Excellence which guides the design and construction of resilient and carbon neutral projects. This goes beyond the operational carbon reduction used by the US Green Building criteria (LEED) and encompasses embodied carbon as well as water re-use and building electrification. The site and its landscaping are also contributors to carbon absorption.

The goals are that these strategies, as well as a calculation for embodied carbon in a project will bring the construction industry into closer compliance with global carbon emissions requirements. The EC3 tool is the first free tool that allows for supply chain specific analysis of embodied carbon data, utilizing the first searchable and sortable database of all United States and Canadian Environmental Product Declarations for concrete, steel, wood, glass, aluminum, insulation, gypsum, carpet and ceiling tiles.

Because the building sector is currently responsible for 39% of global energy related carbon emissions: 28% from operational emissions, from energy needed to heat, cool and power them, and the remaining 11% from materials and construction, the World Green Building Council has a call to action with the new requirements:

• By 2030, all new buildings, infrastructure and renovations will have at least 40% less embodied carbon with significant upfront carbon reduction, and all new buildings are net zero operational carbon.
• By 2050, new buildings, infrastructure and renovations will have net zero embodied carbon, and all buildings, including existing buildings must be net zero operational carbon. 

So we embark on a new course together with the world community to put actual practices in place for the reduction of carbon emissions to zero and a new sensibility for the value of the natural world no longer at the mercy of GDP economics.

 

An Upwelling

The Christian season of Advent countenances expectation, hope, joy and purity in the lighting of candles, culminating in a moment of reverence on Christmas Day. The hopes and expectations of the future during this century are now focused on the climate crisis of our time. It becomes more and more fraught as the COP climate summits pass without concrete actions and benchmarks. COP 24 in Katowice, Poland in December of 2018 was no different, but it has become clear that progress has been stalled by corporate interests and the countries that feed on them, such as the USA, Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Yet forces are coalescing around the globe and in the US which are countermanding the denial and obstruction we see at the highest levels of global interaction. Professional groups such as the USGBC, which are sponsoring internal conferences, are taking action. Former President Barack Obama spoke at Greenbuild 2019 in Atlanta, on Nov. 20: During the conversation, Obama identified climate change and global economic inequality as the most compelling issues in the world today, explaining the difficulty leaders face in addressing the two “directly connected” issues. The American Institute of Architects has also gotten behind Architecture 2030’s Ed Mazria, who has become something of a building-sector Al Gore, appearing at global conferences with pie-chart slides, says he believes another industry-wide strategy could curb carbon emissions even faster than policy. “Twenty percent of all the construction in the world is influenced by a small percentage of AEC firms. That’s where the power is,” he says.

John Kerry, the former senator and secretary of state, has just now formed a new bipartisan coalition of world leaders, military brass and Hollywood celebrities to push for public action to combat climate change.The name, World War Zero, is supposed to evoke both the national security threat posed by the earth’s warming and the type of wartime mobilization that Mr. Kerry argued would be needed to stop the rise in carbon emissions before 2050. The star-studded group is supposed to win over those skeptical of the policies that would be needed to accomplish that." Meanwhile, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $500 million for a campaign designed to accelerate the country’s progress toward a 100% clean  energy economy. The Beyond Carbon campaign will seek to close the  nation’s remaining coal plants by 2030 and limit the expansion of  natural gas.

In October of 2019, a gathering of city leaders at the C40 Mayors Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, seeks to accomplish more, seeking to announce initiatives, plans, and agreements that will make a significant dent in emissions. By bringing together mayors, business executives, scientists, leaders of the Youth Climate Strike, and elected officials, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is giving a keynote address on Wednesday, and Secretary General Gutteres, the gathering reflects what organizers see as the power of cities. Twenty-three states and three cities — Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC — are suing Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its decision to loosen vehicle emissions standards. The lawsuit is intended to block the EPA from revoking portions of a wavier it granted California in 2013 to set its own standards for vehicle efficiency and electric vehicles.

While there is now a heightened sense of urgency to reduce emissions — one year later, over 455 U.S. cities have joined the Climate Mayors — not enough of those mayors are looking at dramatically remaking their cities to address the coming crisis.If these mayors agree that climate change threatens our cities, then they must confront the fact that some cities, their cities, must be relocated to confront climate change — or climate change will relocate them first.

This upwelling of environmental consciousness and organizations in the US during this era of Trump and his corporate enablers will move us into 2020 with a gathering momentum for the necessary changes needed by human societies across the globe to forge the solutions that will address climate change.

Update 11/30/19: Watch the US stall on climate change for 12 years (video)

Update 12/1/19: Greta Thunberg call to fight global warming cheers LA rally on Nov. 1

Update 12/4/19:  Climate Mayors to bolster city-level action with steering committee 

Emmanuel

The season of Advent is a quiet Christian meditation on the event of the dawning light of 2000 years ago, symbolized by the lighting of candles on a wreath. Most consider lighting of the first candle to symbolize expectation, called Emmanuel, while the second symbolizes hope, the third joy and the fourth purity. A central candle is lit on the 25th of December in a moment of reverence, as the ascendant light.

As people and governments participating in COP 23 across the globe begin to coalesce into a center of consensus, it's now clear that time grows short to achieve the goals of reducing emissions and pollution in time to forestall the worst ravages of climate change. From coalitions of local governments providing leadership, musicians and scientists acting in concert, the building industry, energy and power suppliers, agriculture and fishing, to the focus on the UN 2030 Agenda, the chorus is rising among the people of our world to animate global climate change response.

ClimateKeys is a local UK initiative launching with over thirty concerts in nine countries during October & November 2017 to raise public engagement with COP23, the 2017 UN climate talks that took place in November. ClimateKeys, founded by Markson Pianos Composer-in-Residence pianist Lola Perrin, features concert pianists and climate change experts collaborating in performances that include a conversation with the audience about positive response to climate change.To date, over a hundred concert musicians and guest speakers in twenty countries have joined ClimateKeys. More concerts are being planned through 2018. A discussion from the UN of its public engagement shows how the UN brings together musicians and climate experts. Their worldwide synopses of talks about climate change take place all over the world, even in the USA.

The SDG Knowledge Hub is an online resource center for news and commentary regarding the implementation of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is managed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which is fully responsible for its content. It provides a wide-base resource in all countries for this work in developing the SDG for each and every country.

Paul Hawken has compiled a comprehensive reference book on widely available emission reduction solutions, called Project Drawdown. It examines the actual impact of carbon emissions reduction from all available technologies. Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Paul Hawken did not make or devise the plan—he found the plan because it already exists. He gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research, and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change. What was uncovered is a path forward that can roll back global warming within thirty years. It shows that humanity has the means at hand. Nothing new needs to be invented. The solutions are in place and in action. Their work is to accelerate the knowledge and growth of what is possible. The name Drawdown was chosen because if we do not name the goal, we are unlikely to achieve it.

The light of Emmanuel is the light of knowledge and expectation, the knowing that the work is ahead of us, and understanding that we're now on its path.

Update 11/28/17:  From wisdom - a great grandfather’s perspective

Update 11/29/17:  ClimateTECH: decarbonization is a transformation

Update 12/21/17: Visualizing a future based on different principles

Update 1/22/18: Well-Being Economy Alliance: It's Going to Take a New Economy to Save the Planet

It Comes into Force

The Christian season of Advent countenances expectation, hope, joy and purity in the lighting of candles, culminating in a moment of reverence on Christmas Day. The hopes and expectations of the future during this century are now focused on the climate crisis of our time. The Paris climate change deal became international law on November 4, 2016. This milestone comes to pass as we are already approaching the 1.5C limit, and forests across the world are now burning. Glaciers are disappearing along with the water supply for many land-bound countries, and the polar caps are now collapsing and melting at unprecedented rates.

COP22 in Marrakech concluded in early December with a remarkable resolve by many nations to act on climate change issues, particularly fossil fuel emissions. Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Patricia Espinosa, summed up the central outcomes of the UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, along with outlining the next steps for international, national and local climate action. The Marrakech talks may not have tackled the actual gap between global climate goals and fossil fuel production, but individual governments don’t need to wait to show leadership.This means that it's incumbent upon countries, cities and states to do all they possibly can as soon as possible to reach zero emissions. It brings a focus to local governments to act on this policy.

California has been experiencing severe environmental impacts as a result of climate change that exacerbates the drought and reduces water supplies. It has been struggling to maintain water supplies throughout the state. The way water distribution works in California is that the water is pumped from the Bay area via several main aqueducts into the dry metropolitan areas in Southern California. Water allocations from the State Water Project go from there to the southern portion of the state. In addition there's the Colorado River Aqueduct from Lake Mead near Las Vegas, Arizona and also the City of Los Angeles which takes its water from the Owens Valley aqueduct. The allocations for this water are adjudicated by Department of Water Resources in Sacramento among the various water agencies. Their approach has shifted to significant conservation strategies.

Working to make water conservation a way of life, state agencies have released a draft plan for achieving long-term efficient water use and meeting drought preparedness goals that reflect California’s diverse climate, landscape, and demographic conditions. Here's a graphic record of our reservoir levels that are used by many agencies and individuals to track our water reserves. This year, the heavy rains in Northern California helped fill the reservoirs up north, but also allowed the water agencies to start filling the reservoirs in Southern California with a reserve supply via the aqueducts because it's not getting much rain. This system keeps the large coastal cities alive: San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, although they are all now looking at severely restricted water supplies.

Another serious impact has been the health of our forests. The drought and climate change has had a devastating effect on California's forests. After 70 million tree deaths, the worst is "still to come" (as of August 2015). In November 2016, an astounding 102 million trees are now dead in California. There are no easy answers for what to do with them, or how to preserve what's left. And also, what's to become of the giant sequoias? Forest ecologists talk about the unprecedented die-off: "In more than 30 years of studying these trees Stephenson had only seen two die on their feet. Five years into the current drought, he’s now seen dozens of standing dead." Looking to the future of these forests, X-ray technology reveals that California's forests are in for a radical transformation, as well as a future of more forest fires which contribute large quantities of carbon and soot.

Because of these horrible conditions, we come to a reality check: California is about to find out what a truly radical climate policy looks like, as a result of the impact of climate change on the state. SB-32 is a new state law which will now mandate an additional 40 percent cut in emissions by 2030, the most restrictive emissions law in the country. So California, with the sixth largest economy on the planet, out of necessity will be providing leadership to the US and also the other developed countries of the world. And it's just the beginning.

Update 12/2/16:  California climate leadership at COP 22 Marrakech

Update 12/3/16:  Trump campaign is a direct threat to California citizens

Update 12/4/16:  Trump victory is a threat to California's natural resources

Update 12/13/16:   Bill Gates/University of California joint announcement about the start of a billion-dollar fund to invest in transformative energy research and development to reduce the emissions that cause climate change.

Update 12/14/16: California forest dieoff is turning tree-cutters into millionaires

Update 12/15/16: A Tale of two droughts in California

Update 12/15/16:  The last five years were the driest ever documented in downtown L.A. since official records started 140 years ago.

Update 12/20/16: New California Law Recognizes Meadows, Streams As “Green Infrastructure”, Eligible For Public Works Funding

Update 1/20/17: The Great Exception - California and the Trump Administration

The New Beginning

The season of Advent is a quiet Christian meditation on the event of the dawning light of 2000 years ago, symbolized by the lighting of candles on a wreath. Most consider lighting of the first candle to symbolize expectation, while the second symbolizes hope, the third joy and the fourth purity. A central candle is lit on the 25th of December in a moment of reverence.

This season is unquiet, with the negotiations at COP21 in Paris moving full tilt with dialogues at the UNFCCC about adoption of a global framework for carbon emissions reductions. The California contingent is moving ahead rapidly with Governor Brown's presence in the U.S. ambassador's residence on Sunday to commemorate an international agreement he's promoted between states, provinces and cities. The governor has nearly two dozen events scheduled over five days.

Will this unprecedented meeting of the world's representatives and corporations finally reach a consensus?
Will the knowing of the true dangers that face our planet finally bring us to the light of reason?

This critical threshold has been recognized for many years, and we must now act.

Update 12/6/15: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was in Paris on Dec 4 to speak with world leaders about the pLAn Climate Action for the city of Los Angeles.

A Foreshadowing

This Advent season, we will have the gathering of world representatives for COP 20 in Lima, Peru in order to forge a consensus on the framework for a global climate agreement to be finalized in December 2015. Last September there was a preliminary UN conversation in Washington, D.C. along with several parallel conferences and the People's Climate March taking place worldwide. One notable presentation for the Club of Rome was a presentation by David Wasdell, the Director of the Apollo-Gaia Project which is part of the Meridian Programme in the United Kingdom. It was called, "Beyond the Summit,Sensitivity, Target Temperature & the Carbon Budget".

In the presentation, Wasdell is adamant about the clear and present danger of our current global carbon emission path: 

It is now abundantly clear that limiting temperature change to 2°C cannot be achieved by emissions reductions on their own. There is no available carbon budget. Emissions must be reduced to zero in the shortest possible time and the existing stock of atmospheric greenhouse gasses must be drastically reduced. Moreover, the 2°C target has been set far too high and must be lowered from 2°C through 1.5°C to a mere 1°C in order to avoid dangerous climate change, and comply with the global commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In conclusion - Ending the Addiction: an Inspirational Challenge

This is therefore a call for global transformation. It is a call to break free from our addiction to fossil energy. It is a call to break free from the fossilized slavery at the very heart of human civilization. We must end fossil slavery now. That is the imperative of the strategic agenda.

This conclusion that we have already exceeded our carbon emissions budget under which we have a habitable planet is grounded in Wasdell's systemic calculations of the global sensitivity factor, which has been omitted in previous IPCC calculations and studies along with the feedback mechanism from arctic melting. He takes a very deterministic stance on this factor, sounding the alarm on its critical importance in the climate picture as well as its omission from the models used by the IPCC.

Wasdell notes in an earlier paper that the IPCC models are minimally computed in the AR4 report, and this remains uncorrected in the AR5 models recommending the 2°C upper bound, estimating the 2.6 RCP scenario of a remaining 250 Gt C carbon emission budget. The IPCC AR5 report does state that the Climate Sensitivity factor is important, but it lies within a range of consensus. So Wasdell's position is that the budget really needs to be at zero as soon as possible, setting that point at about 2050; therefore the current models are horribly in error and will only produce a lethal future scenario for our planet if they're adopted in Paris at COP 21. The Precautionary limit should be 1°C to allow for the probable overshoot in accomplishing this goal. That is merely a path on the way back to a safer level of 350 PPMV for the atmospheric concentration of carbon which should be established by 2100 if we want our civilization to continue.

The further path - back to the natural atmospheric carbon concentration of 280 PPMV - that we experienced prior to the Industrial Revolution in 1800 is a task for our descendants (if we have them) in the next century beyond 2100.

The practical reality is that these agreements don't forge the necessary action. Historically, the goals recede in the face of economics and pragmatic local policies. According to Rob Stavins, the Paris agreement could provide a post-Kyoto framework that finally gets the world on track for an eventual climate fix. “The way to judge the negotiations coming out of Paris is whether or not the structure is a sound foundation for meaningful long-term reductions.”

Threshold of Change

Upon this Advent season, consensus has begun to illuminate the world dialogue on climate change. On the 19th of November UNFCC, IPCC, IGBP, co-posted a short film reprising the Policy Makers Summary of IPCC AR5 WG1. This group comprises the representative scientific global public policy group on 'climate science and policy', and it's unprecedented for them to co-publish any policy statement.The established absolute limit, from scientific research and study, is for perpetuity the most stringent of the carbon-budgets published in IPCC AR5 WG1 in September 2013.

Their film ends with a comment affirming that global contraction budget limit to future emissions is '250 Billion Tonnes', if the 2 degree limit to global warming is to be held. GCI's file compares this limit to the one previously established by the UK Climate Act. The group recognizes that emissions ‘contraction’ should be complete globally by 2050 if, once ‘feedback effects’ are included, we are to give better than 50:50 odds for keeping within the 2° rise. This is a critical, critical illumination of the scope of the world problem that threatens our existence: a total global emissions cap of 250 Gt C, accomplished by 2050.

The challenge to all of us is very simple, very clear, and the time is now.

It Begins to Turn

The COP 18 global conference in Doha is once again exhibiting the display of climate change brinksmanship. It's probably the last time that opportunities will be available to the global community to actually come to an agreement about the reduction of carbon emissions in time to salvage the ecosphere from catastrophic warming. There's no escape, the USA is now experiencing the disastrous consequences of climate change on the food and water supplies as severely as the rest of the world.

The only hope is that leadership will be asserted not only in agreements, but in myraid ways by all countries. The growing awareness by people all over the globe is beginning to coalesce on strategies that are being undertaken in many ways. But this also means a shift in our values away from the corporate model and into a humanistic value system, a critically necessary step in the cooperation of the world governments and their people in this immense crisis we face.

But this can be the beginning of a new way of living deeply in this natural world, while it still exists.

It Deepens Us

The traditions and hopes of the Advent season are upon us again. We look to the future with an enhanced understanding of our place this world and the burdens we're placing on it. Enlightenment comes in the shape of science, history and ethics.

As we forge a path forward in the changing global future, we'll necessarily have to make a conscious shift in our values and cultural patterns, which have outraced the capacity of this new Eaarth that we now inhabit to sustain our unthinking consumption. Our resources as a global society will have to be put towards repairing the damage of climate change, as well as ongoing efforts at ecosystem restoration. But this won't be easy. To cite the linked article:

The countries that are most powerful and most addicted to fossil fuel aren’t ready to come to terms with it. You can’t really have an AA meeting while everyone’s still in denial. In each of the last three years, Exxon Mobil made more than any company in the history of money. That may give them enough political power to keep the U.S. in denial for years to come.

Here in the US, we're the key to unlocking a sustainable future. A commitment by the people, the businesses and ultimately the corporations are imminently necessary to change this course. We've seen what economic collapse has done to the world, and now the ecological systems are being pushed to the same brink. Hopefully we've learned something from this first collapse, so as to correct our ecological course through the power of human networks and a deeper connection to the natural world.

A Glowing Light

As we begin the season of Advent, anticipating the light of a religious epochal event, we're at the threshold of our own great secular challenge. Democracy Now interviews Derek Jensen about his latest book, "Deep Green Resistance":

"...in the book, What We Leave Behind, what we came to for a definition of "sustainability" is leaving the physical world in a better place than when you were born, that the world is actually a better place because you were born.

A lot of definitions of "civilization" that we see are not really very specific, and the definition I like the most, which is defensible both linguistically and historically, is civilization is a way of life characterized by the growth of cities—once again, defensible both linguistically and historically. And a couple things happen as soon as you—well, wait. Back up. So that’s great, Derrick, but what’s a city? A city, I’ve defined as people living in numbers large enough to require the importation of resources. And what this means, that the Tolowa didn’t live in cities, because they didn’t require the importation of resources. They didn’t live in cities; they lived in villages, camps, and they ate salmon. They ate what the land gave willingly.

And two things happen as soon as you require the importation of resources. One is that your way of living can never be sustainable, because if you require the importation of resources, it means you denuded the land base of that particular resource, and as your city grows, you’ll need an ever larger area. And the other thing it means is that your way of life must be based on violence, because if you require the importation of resources, trade will never be sufficiently reliable, because if you require the importation of resources and the people in the next watershed over aren’t going to trade you for it, you’re going to take it.

And one of the problems with this whole system is that destroying your land base gives you a competitive advantage over the other cultures who don’t. The forests of North Africa went down to make the Phoenician and Egyptian navies. And if you destroy your land base, if you don’t care about the future, you can turn this into immediate power and then use it to conquer, and which is something you have to do, because you’ve destroyed your own land base. And as time goes on, you have to keep expanding. And that’s not a very good idea."

We're at the precipice of the immense ecological impact of the consequences of human consumption. I would hope that we can somehow change the course of our unwitting destruction and create a balance that provides for the regeneration of the ecosystem that gives us life.

So far it's been all take and no give. A Green Resistance could change this course.

The Light of Advent

Entering the holiday season brings us into the traditions of honoring the ancient events that marked a sea change in human history and spiritual self-awareness. We're perhaps approaching another one of those epochal moments as we start to understand the importance of humanity's role in this global environment. Advent is the traditional preparation for the birth of Christ, considered to be Christmas day. From that point forward, we have Epiphany, the twelfth night, celebrating the visit of the three kings or wise men to the Christ Child, signifying the extension of salvation to the Gentiles.

Now shall we extend this salvation to all people, the creatures and life that inhabit our home, the planet?

When we begin to see, to understand, the vast tapestry of nature and its critical balances and complexities, it's then time to make some decisions together as a human race. For example, the study of natural sciences leads to kind of a "natural understanding" of what global realities we're dealing with, which is undergirded by the scientific method of study and rigorous analysis. A remarkable interview with Jane Goodall by Bill Moyers cuts to the heart of the issue:

Moyers: You even wrote once that it was your study of chimpanzees that crystallized your own belief in the ultimate destiny toward which humans are still evolving. What is that? What is that ultimate destiny? And how did the chimps contribute to your understanding?

Goodall: Because, when you have the thing that's more like us than any other living thing on the planet that helps you to realize the differences. You know, how are we different. And so, we have this kind of language. So, that's led to our intellectual development. That's led to refining of morals. And, you know, the questions about meaning and life and everything. So I think we've moving or should be moving towards some kind of spiritual evolution. Where we understand without having to ask why.

A Call to Joining Creation

Global Warming After Gore

AlterNet. Posted November 10, 2007. Speaking about young activists, Teryn Norris writes:

The "old-fashioned" tactics of protest, demand and complaint just aren't enough. Global warming is one of the most complex challenges the world has ever faced, vastly different from those of the 1960s. It calls upon us to innovate, politically and economically, at an unprecedented scale. Our politics must be retooled, not only to achieve immediate policy changes but to create new and lasting political majorities. And instead of constraining our economy, we need to unleash it, driving our engineers, scientists and manufacturers to hone their skills and knowledge, and put these forces to work toward building the next energy economy.

A powerful climate movement -- one capable of capturing the public imagination, defining new political identities and fully unleashing our economy -- should put forth an even stronger vision of American greatness than the neoconservatives once offered. It must tap the optimism and can-do spirit embedded in our nation's history that has driven us to overcome the daunting crises of the past. "A new story of American Power begins by acknowledging what our country is great at: imagining, experimenting and inventing the future," argue Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break Through. "First we dream -- and then we invent."

Image from CSRwire, Corporate Social Responsibility News