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People’s Climate March: September 21, 2014

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With the mid-term elections heating up and a dozen issues being promoted as The Most Important Issue of Our Day, it is easy to lose track of an issue that really deserves our attention: Climate Change. It is, quite literally, an issue that we ignore at our own peril.

In New York City on Sunday, the People’s Climate March will serve to remind people of this vitally important issue and at least get it right-pathed even if it can’t be immediately addressed.

The People’s Climate March

In September, world leaders are coming to New York City for a UN summit on the climate crisis. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to dramatically reduce global warming pollution.

With our future on the line and the whole world watching, we’ll take a stand to bend the course of history. We’ll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet; a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.

To change everything, we need everyone on board.

Sunday, September 21 in New York City. Join us.

Addressing climate change makes economic sense: Paul Krugman: Could fighting global warming be cheap and free?

This just in: Saving the planet would be cheap; it might even be free. But will anyone believe the good news?

I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses. […]

So here’s what you need to know: Climate despair is all wrong. The idea that economic growth and climate action are incompatible may sound hardheaded and realistic, but it’s actually a fuzzy-minded misconception. If we ever get past the special interests and ideology that have blocked action to save the planet, we’ll find that it’s cheaper and easier than almost anyone imagines.

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People can vote to save the earth:

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) is up for re-election. Here is his position on renewable energy:

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed legislation [in June] that will freeze his state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards at their current levels for two years, legislation that makes his state the first in the nation to roll back its renewable energy standard.[…]

The measure will freeze the state’s renewable energy standard and energy efficiency program at 2014 levels for two years, during which time a committee will study how the standard impacts the state and whether or not further changes should be made. Currently, Ohio’s RES stipulates that the state’s utilities must get 12.5 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2025. […]

Ohio residents also supported the state’s standards: A poll released last month by the Ohio Advanced Energy Economy found 72 percent of respondents were in favor of the renewable energy standards.

According to a report by the Ohio Advanced Energy Economy, the standards also led to significant savings for Ohioans. From 2009 to 2013, the RES saved Ohio residents $1.03 billion and cost $456 million, according to the report.

In Texas: Seven of nineteen proposed social studies textbooks in Texas distort climate science and climate change, a report by the National Center for Science Education found on Monday.

In Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania state agency that regulates gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing was explicitly ordered by members of Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration to remove several references to “climate change” from the agency’s website

In Florida: 42 Climate Scientists To Rick Scott: Climate Change ‘Is Not A Hypothetical’

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People can support the art of Sebastiao Salgado . His Genesis project is now at the International Center for Photography in New York City:

Genesis is the third long-term series on global issues by world-renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado (born Brazil, 1944), following Workers (1993) and Migrations (2000). The result of an eight-year worldwide survey, the exhibition draws together more than 200 spectacular black-and-white photographs of wildlife, landscapes, seascapes, and indigenous peoples-raising public awareness about the pressing issues of environment and climate change. ICP is proud to be the first U.S. venue of this momentous exhibition, which is curated by Lélia Wanick Salgado.

From NPR: His Camera Takes Us To The World ‘We Must Preserve’

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Next week’s United Nations meeting: New Yorker: Bringing the Noise on Climate Change

Next Tuesday, leaders of a hundred and twenty nations, President Barack Obama among them, are scheduled to gather in New York for the United Nations climate summit, called by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ahead of the summit, on Sunday, tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to march through midtown Manhattan demanding that those leaders take action. Almost certainly, the leaders will disappoint the marchers, not to mention anyone else who cares about the future of the planet, though by how much, exactly, will probably not be clear for many months.[…]

Organizers of Sunday’s march are hoping to demonstrate that there’s broad-based political support for cutting emissions; the other day, they told the Times that they are expecting buses from as far away as Kansas and Minnesota. The march is supposed to culminate not with speeches but with a great, deafening clamor. “Own a trumpet?” the author and environmental activist (and former New Yorker staff writer) Bill McKibben has advised. “Bring it. Own a vuvuzela? Definitely bring it.” […]

For next year’s meeting in Paris to produce an agreement that’s meaningful, that agreement is going to have to somehow yield truly significant emissions reductions, and do so quickly. After twenty-two years of failed attempts, it’s hard to be optimistic about this prospect.

But for this very reason, you’ve got to give those who are planning to march on Sunday that much more credit for trying. (It seems that the Secretary-General himself will also attend the march.) There’s a lot of inertia in the climate system, and whatever we do to it now, our descendants are going to have to live with the results for a long, long time. […]

As Governor Jay Inslee, of Washington, recently summed up the situation, “We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.”


Categories: Uncategorized.

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24 comments

  2. princesspat

    RonK will be at the Peace Arch Park in Blaine, Wa with Emma today.

    On September 20th, as world leaders gather for the UN climate summit in New York, Canadians and Americans, First Nations and Native American tribes, and all the diverse communities of the Salish Sea will gather at the Peace Arch to send a unified and clear message to world leaders, as well as to our own local elected officials: it is time for unprecedented action to defend the Salish Sea and our global climate from fossil fuel development.

    We will reach out across the border, literally taking each other’s hands; share our struggles and aspirations for a livable planet; and pledge to take unified action to protect the climate and the ecosystems, economies, communities and cultures that cohabit the Salish Sea bioregion

    Join us to stand together with people from across the border and around the world to demand a rapid, dramatic and equitable transition to a clean energy future.

    .

    https://www.facebook.com/event…

  3. princesspat

    Scary lessons for Bristol Bay from recent B.C. mine-waste accident

    For millennia, humanity’s insatiable appetite for valuable metals has degraded the integrity of ecosystems that provide habitat for the world’s wildlife, and the clean water and food humans need to thrive. During the past decade, proposals have emerged to develop several mega-mines on the North America’s West Coast on some of our largest free-flowing rivers that produce much of the world’s wild salmon.

    ~snip~

    U.S. taxpayers are spending billions of dollars to manage and clean up mining waste legacies in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River, which was once as great as the Fraser River for producing salmon. The corporations that made untold riches from these mines are long gone, but their impacts to salmon and wildlife in some tributaries will persist for centuries. We need to ask ourselves whether we are willing to trust that the infrastructure can be built to operate new large mines without substantial risks to rivers, fisheries and the people currently dependent on these ecosystems.

    The policy decisions involved in permitting large-scale metal mines are indescribably complex. Scientific information sheds light on the potential risks and benefits of such projects. However, in the end, public input will ultimately be most influential in motivating decision-makers to achieve clarity in their actions.

  6. JanF

    Denying Climate Change ‘Will Cost Us Billions Of Dollars,’ U.S. Budget Director Warns

    “From where I sit, climate action is a must do; climate inaction is a can’t do; and climate denial scores – and I don’t mean scoring points on the board,” [head of the OMB Shaun] Donovan said. “I mean that it scores in the budget. Climate denial will cost us billions of dollars.”

    Donovan noted that climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, and singled out Superstorm Sandy as a storm that caused huge amounts of damage – $65 billion in all, making it the second most expensive weather disaster in U.S. history, behind Hurricane Katrina. According to a Center for American Progress report from 2013, the U.S. was hit by 14 extreme weather events that created at least $1 billion in damage in 2011, and 11 billion-dollar disasters in 2012. Added up, the disasters from these two years created up to $188 billion in total damage.

    Wildfires: “Donovan: “So we spend what we have to in order to put out the fires, and then we under-invest in the tools that can help mitigate them, only leading to higher costs in the future,””

    Drought: “The 2012 drought, which hit states like Kansas and Indiana worst of all and decimated corn and soybean crops, cost the U.S. a record $14 billion. And this year’s western drought will likely cost California $2.2 billion”  

  7. JanF

    David Atkins: Unsettling science

    Steve Koonin has an obfuscatory piece in the Wall Street Journal today claiming that the science of climate change isn’t settled. […]

    Koonin doesn’t dispute that the climate is changing and that the world is getting hotter. He doesn’t dispute that humans are causing the change through greenhouse gas emissions. He doesn’t even dispute that these changes are dangerous. His position is that because we don’t fully understand all of the complex reverberating effects of climate change, we can’t make good climate policy yet.

    Atkins continues:

    The argument sounds reasonable at first, but it’s absurd on its face. It would be like a doctor refusing to treat a strange new disease because we don’t fully understand all of the effects it might have on the body. It might cause kidney failure and heart failure, or maybe just one, or neither! We just don’t have enough information to treat, so let’s do nothing! Of course, by the time kidney failure occurs it will be too late to save the patient, but oh well.

    Elon Green is a bit more direct: Tweet.

  8. Ronk

    Canadian Border in Northwest Washington State on Saturday. The theme was “Save the Salish Sea” and Climate Knows No Borders”

    Here are a few photos of the event that was largely sponsored by the Native American tribes of Washington and British Columbia, the ancient inhabitants of this area and the Salish Sea.

    The Peach Arch at the border:

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 001

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 037

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 033

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 047

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 059

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 025

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 041

    Grand daughter’s opinion of oil tankers in our waters:

    IMG_2154

    What we are trying to save, a view from Peach Arch:

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 071

    Speaker Ruben George, grandson of Chief Dan George:

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 063

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 066

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 083

    2014-09-21 Climate@border 048

  12. JanF

    New York, it’s time to sound the climate change alarm

    Here’s the backstory. About a year ago, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked world leaders if they’d come to the city this week to talk about climate change.

    Some of us, who’ve been working on global warming for decades, knew what would happen: They’d arrive at the General Assembly, make some fine-sounding statements, and head back home.

    So we invited ourselves to come, too. Led by local environmental justice groups – the people still cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy, or coping with the dirtiest neighborhoods in New York – we’ve organized what will certainly be the largest single climate change demonstration in the planet’s history.

    When I say “we,” I mean a crowd as diverse as you’ll ever see. Young people from the communities most affected by climate change along with indigenous allies will be in the lead. They’ll be followed by waves of scientists who have been trying to warn us for years; of ministers and rabbis and imams; of labor union members and artists. […]

    Our political leaders are terrified of the fossil fuel industry’s money. We’ll never match that money, but we need them to be just as wary of our numbers and our passion.

    More from Bill McKibben and his group can be found at 350.org

  13. JanF

    NPR: All Eyes On Obama, World Leaders At Climate Change Summit

    Americans are deeply divided; not only about how to address climate change but whether it’s a problem at all. Carroll Doherty of the Pew Research Center says in a poll last month, 68 percent of Democrats called climate change a major threat to the U.S., concern on a par with Islamic extremism. But only 25 percent of Republicans feel that way.

    “It’s one of the most partisan issues we track,” Doherty said. “Republicans just do not see it as an imminent problem for the United States. But Democrats by and large do.”[…]

    [Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist for a climate SuperPac] says a climate message can help mobilize those voters if it’s presented, not as an esoteric issue about polar bears, but a close-to-home concern such as drought, smokestack pollution or the rising cost of flood insurance.

    “You do need to bring it down to the kitchen table. So that people actually understand the impact it’s having on them, their families [and] their kids,” Lehane said. “When you do that, it’s an entirely different conversation and people are motivated in terms of who they’re going to vote [for] and whether or not they’re going to turn out to vote.”

    The outcome of those November contests will help to determine how much of a weapon climate action – or inaction – may be in future U.S. political campaigns.

  14. JanF

    We’re ready for action. Not Words.

    On September 21st, more people gathered worldwide for climate action than ever before.

    On September 23rd, more heads of state than ever before will gather in New York to talk about climate action.

    Send a message to world leaders that the world is taking bold action, and that it’s time for them to join us. On Tuesday we’ll deliver it to top leaders inside the UN to deliver our signal to the meeting

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