Prior to the industrial era, the atmosphere was at about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Now, we are about 387 and growing at nearly 2 ppm per year.
The 'old' (a few years ago) scientific consideration was that it seemed we could stabilize, without utterly catastrophic risk, at 450 ppm or below. This is the guiding thinking behind cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050.
Jim Hansen, NASA and one of the strongest voices in climate research, came out with work stating that we must fall to 350 ppm to avoid catastrophic climate change, considering the impacts that we are already seeing globally.
I wanted to share with you all a video about a new project I am leading up and give you a first glance at our new website. The video is embedded below:
Yesterday I was listening to Bill McKibben on the radio talking about his recent book Deep Economy -- ironically while driving, by myself, in my not-so-fuel-efficient car -- and while he was not optimistic about how we as a nation and a planet are addressing global warming, he did make a compelling case that the changes we have to make could make us happier.
First off, let me acknowledge that because of Barack Obama as our Democratic nominee, I'm walking around with a pretty powerful case of hopefulness these days. So I'm intentionally looking on the bright side of things.
And secondly, I mean no insensitivity with my title to those folks in Iowa and Wisconsin and Indiana who are struggling to stay above water. Not that we can blame this particular deluge and flooding on global warming, but certainly global warming may be contributing to more severe weather patterns.
This is a new review of Bill McKibben's book of last year, Deep Economy, from a critical-theory perspective; it's informed by a fair reading of McKibben's opus, observance of a recent speaking appearance by the author, and a reading of his DKos diaries.
There was a green exposition at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston called Down 2 Earth this weekend. I went because I wanted to see Bill McKibben and what he's up to since he organized Step It Up. Now he's starting a new organization called 350.org, the purpose of which is to get out the idea that we need to limit our CO2 to 350 parts per million, 350 ppm, into the public consciousness. This is going to be difficult as we are already at 385 ppm today.
McKibben is following the lead of Dr James Hansen of NASA whose most recent research indicates the 350 ppm is our climate change redline. Over 350 ppm and we lose the ice cover on the Arctic and start positive feedback loops that result in atmospheric warming such as we probably haven't seen as a species. You can read the paper at http://www.columbia.edu/... [pdf alert]
Like Step It Up which triggered 1400 local protests in 2007, McKibben is hoping that the linked imaginations of all those concerned will trigger a mass movement. I hope he's right.
GHW Bush lies at the core of a driving motivation in my life.
The eldest President Bush was facing a reelection battle against Bill Clinton, and so advisers persuaded him to attend the world environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, possibly the most optiistic moment in recent history. Before he went, however, he told a press conference that "the American way of life is not up for negotiation." If that's true, if we can't imagine living any differently, then all else is mere commentary.
One thing that unites Kossacks is our drive to imagine a different life, a different world, a better one, a better path forward ... and we all, in our own ways, fight to achieve those visions.
I am imagining life differently. One path terrifies me. am terrified at the world that we are creating at a head-long pace. Global Warming ... I am terrified at economic prospects in coming years ... Peak Oil.
And, I imagine life differently and it energizes me to fight to Energize America.
Message to message, my inbox demonstrates a split mentality, item A frequently seeming to be from a different world than item B.
My mailbox is confused.
Let's take e-mails from two warriors against Global Warming:
Senator Barbara Boxer sharing with me magnificent news about huge progress on the Global Warming front.
Bill McKibben letting me know that top scientists are confirming that what I've feared, that we need to figure out how to not just reduce our CO2 emissions, but need to figure out how to reduce the absolute level in the atmosphere.
Andrew Revkin, at the New York Times, who I generally find very much worth reading, has a doozy today. In a review of three global warming books, Revkin speaks of Bjorn Lomborg as a "centrist" and discusses his book without suggesting that there any factual errors or how truthiness runs roughshod over the truth. He similarly glosses over the serious problems with Newt Gingrich's Contract on the Earth. Nordhaus and Shellenberger (Breakthrough) are discussed between Newt and Lomborg, and thrown into the same camp with Lomborg.
Revkin seems caught into a journalistic model of balancing, of having the right and the left, and if, well, writers are somewhere between these "poles", they are centrist -- regardless of minor little issues like fidelity to facts and representing truth, rather than pandering truthiness.
Let's face it: most of us will never have the money or connections to buy the support of politicians in Washington. Especially when it comes to global warming. Sorry folks, but I don't care how much money you think you can raise online, Exxon Mobil has us beat . . . about 10,000 times over.
So where does our power lie? In all of our communities. The thousands of towns across the country where Kossacks and other engaged citizens live - the place your sitting right now. The enviro-progressive-climate movement has been spending too much time in Washington and not enough time back in district.
I'm not talking about "Act Local, Think Global." I'm talking about:
I’ve spent the last year trying to cure myself of a political cynicism that had sunk too deep, and one of the great inspirations for me has been the steady grinding work of Kossacks actually trying to hold power accountable.
We’re five days out from Saturday’s huge Step It Up demonstrations on climate change, and the work that you and many others have done is paying off in remarkable ways. As of late afternoon, 43 Senators and Congresspeople had agreed to come speak at a rally somewhere on Saturday, or in some cases to send a representative. We’re betting that number will be north of 50 by the time the weekend rolls around, and that’s as many national leaders addressing their constituents about a single topic in a single day in a very long time.
"What we're fighting for now is not to prevent global warming. There is going to be some global warming; there already is. What we're fighting for now is to keep that miserable and difficult century of global warming from turning into an absolute catastrophe that rewrites the geology and biology of this planet for eons to come."
After several years of constant lurking, and occasionally writing about Kos in the MSM, and even getting to speak at Yearly Kos, this is my first post. It's because I want to ask folks to take a few minutes to help us with a project and introduce you to a new tool we've developed to make it happen.
The day after George W Bush gave a speech on climate change that has been panned by all serious reviewers (e.g., diplomats and scientists), The Washington Post did something it is doing too rarely nowadays: it published an OPED by someone who actually knows something about the subject matter: Bill McKibben.
Last night, in Manchester Vermont, the nationally known environmental writer Bill McKibben debated the locally known free-market booster John McClaughry on Global Climate Change. McKibben needs no introduction; he wrote the book on the subject and has been a strong advocate for signing on to the Kyoto protocols. (Check out http://www.billmckibben.com/... McClaughry is head of a small think-tank, the Ethan Allen Institute (see http://www.ethanallen.org/...
I didn't get to the debate, but I've heard McClaughry's views before, and the local paper's report tells me he stuck to his guns: he concedes that the planet is probably undergoing climate change, but he's either certain or pretty certain that it's a natural phenomenon. He argues that calls to take action against it— a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade system of limits--are misguided. Measures like that would be expensive and they’d have very large economic consequences: they’d definitely slow economic growth. For McClaughry, that’s the biggest sin. But his commitment to keeping the engines of economic growth fully stoked leads him into a contradiction.
Bill McKibben and the organizers of the successful "Step It Up" campaign to call for action on global warming are calling for immediate action to stop mountain top removal as a first step in "No New Coal":
Right now, the Bush administration is relentlessly pursuing
anti-environmental policies to allow coal companies to continue to
bury hundreds of miles of streams in Appalachia under enormous piles
of rubble created by Mountaintop Removal coal mining. This large scale
devastation has already buried over 1,000 miles of streams, flattened
more than 400 mountains, and driven American citizens from their
homes. We need to let the administration and the public know that we
won't stand for this.
It may surprise you to hear that Vermont has a Republican at the helm of government in the person of Governor Jim Douglas. Douglas is a sneaky politician. He hires hard right GOPers to run the government, works against progressive policies, and when a few sneak by him despite his best efforts, he routinely travels around the state and nation to take full credit for them, which has cemented his image as a "moderate" and the sense that he's electorally undefeatable.
And nobody is stepping up to challenge him. Partly because so many in the political establishment still believe in the old Vermont election calendar that begins roughly next May (way too late to mount an effective challenge, given Douglas's chummy relationship with the teeny Vermont press corps), but also because the heavy hitters have decided to wait until he retires.
This has many of us looking outside the political bench. And when you consider that Douglas has shown vulnerability through his recently upheld veto of groundbreaking energy/conservation/climate change legislation and the overwhelmingly negative response from the press and public, one Vermonter's name comes to mind: author and activist Bill McKibben.
... an energy plan that I find far more comprehensive and thoughtful than anything the think tanks have produced. It's been read and reshaped by thousands of readers; it will serve as a useful model should the Democrats retake Congress and have the ability to move legislation.
Bill McKibben, the New York Review of Books
It's been almost two years since the Energize America experiment got underway and today, just coming back from the YearlyKos panel that described the new perspectives ahead of us, I wanted to retrace the history of this unprecedented attempt at netroots-run policy-making.
Global Warming is a massive challenge. It requires serious commitment for change toward a better tomorrow, change from government and from individuals. Government action can help drive (and facilitate) individual action. And, well, individual action -- individuals acting in concert -- can help drive government action.
That second, individuals combining to drive a government response, is the core to Step-It-Up. And, after a massive set of actions earlier this year (1400 rallies across the nation), Bill McKibben is organizing another day of citizen engagement for 3 November 2007. This is something that everyone (EVERYONE) should engage with ...
split mentality, item A frequently seeming to be from a different world than item B. 
action. And, well, individual action -- individuals acting in concert -- can help drive government action.
