“… the context may be different, but the content is the same. My struggle is your struggle, my humanity is your humanity, my fight is your fight…when we have had a good dream, it is not the time to sleep…we must resist, mobilise and transform”. Nnimmo Bassey*
Okay. So maybe the planet isn't privy to the 'two and a half' option. But hey, what the hell? The word out of London today is that we've just begun tapping into six billion ways to let the sun shine in.
Without frying us all in the process.
Clicktivism and climate change mobilization was a key topic in London yesterday at the third annual 6 Billion Ways - Making another world possible conference, where Bolivia's UN Ambassador Pablo Solon stressed the need for massive social participation within the climate debate.
6 Billion Ways focuses on educating and engaging citizen journalists in colossal civic engagement campaigns, merging motivational cognitive reprogramming with blogs, tweets and film to engage in discourse and exert pressure to effect social change on local and global issues. Yesterday's speakers included Lidy Nacpil, Hilary Wainwright, Samir Amin, Rob Newman, Patrick Bond, Caroline Lucas MP, Omar Barghouti, and Tariq Ramada.
The 6BW motto? "The culture of campaigning has got too comfy. We need to be building movements!"
In the Planet in Crisis, what's next for global action on climate change? session, Solon was highly critical of the 'bloated' UNFCCC process, which is more and more viewed as lacking the chutzpah or cajones to honestly, transparently and inclusively tackle the catastrophe of climate change. Solon depicted the Cancun Agreements and the previous Copenhagen Accord as "disastrous for developing nations and the future of the planet as whole."
Session participants agreed that huge civic engagement is undoubtedly the only means to effectively exert sufficient pressure on Northern governments to target the root causes of climate change in time -- and with sufficiently drastic measures -- to prevent a 2-4 degree rise in global temperatures, which would threaten the existence of small island states and severely impact developing regions.
Salon ... also criticised the short-termist approach of politicians and the damaging effect this has within the global climate change strategy. Unfortunately, the majority of politicians are largely more concerned with winning elections and offering quick-fix solutions than planning holistically for the handling of the environmental crisis as part of the bigger picture.
Mind the Gap?
US UNCUT bridging the gap between digital and real world activism
A spinoff from UK Uncut, US Uncut launched February 26th to energize and inform citizens to take action against "unnecessary and unfair cuts to public services across the US." The project features action maps, calls to action, tweet feeds, and a Facebook page.
•Read Johann Hari’s Feb. 3 A Ten-Step Guide to Launching US Uncut
•Listento Counterspin interview with Chuck Collins, a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, and the co-founder of U.S. Uncut, a network working to stop corporate tax dodging.
• Follow USUncut on Twitter
• ACT!
•Watch UK Uncut's short video (above) on how to make your action fun and unique.
Shock & Awe
Don't want to be responsible for a dead planet?Then ... Recycle Yourself ("WARNING-Graphic Hyper Violence within!!!!! Notice - SKAM does not endorse the killing of oneself or others. SKAM endorses an open communication about the damage humans have done to our planet.")
Designed to invoke a highly emotional reaction to jump start discussion and movement to reverse the impacts of 300 years of "abuse and disconnection" from the planet, Recycle Yourself aims to intervene to prevent the "the 6th mass extinction on Planet Earth." Overpopulation, pollution, ecosystem destruction give rise to art intervention, culture jamming and a deep immersion into education.
Education is the only thing that will change this behavior. If you want to climb the mountain you don't just jump to the top. This change needs to happen in steps. The first is being aware of such steps. If humans so selfishly ignore these warning signs. Some day there will be no fish in the sea, no birds in the sky, no whales in the ocean, no dogs to follow their masters, no flowers to bloom, no bees to pollinate them.
(snip)
For billions of years the earth has recycled the life that has existed on it. Through a natural cycle. At one time the Human race followed that natural cycle. The humans lived hand and hand with the environment taking and giving back to the land. Even after death humans at one time gave their actual bodies back to the planet to decay in a natural way. Over time mankind has forgotten about our beautiful planet and how it created the life that exists on it. ...The status quo is a false reality.
Educate
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle Yourself!
Climate Change News Roundup
Climate Change Action
- Read the Call: Direct Action ... a joint appeal from Radford (Greenpeace), McKibben (350.org) and Tarbotton (RAN) appeal: "we're going to have to build a movement bigger than anything we've built before, a movement that can push back against the financial power of Big Oil and Big Coal. That movement is our only real hope, and we need your help to plot its future."
Time is not on our side, so we’ve concluded that going forward mass direct action must play a bigger role in this movement, as it eventually did in the suffrage movement, the civil-rights movement, and the fight against corporate globalization. Even now, environmentalists in places like the coalfields of Appalachia have been putting these tactics to good use, albeit in small ways. (In the spring of 2009, our three groups worked with others to pull off a large-scale action outside the congressional power plant in D.C. that resulted in a promise that it would cease to burn coal.) History suggests, in other words, that one way to effectively communicate both to the general public and to our leaders the urgency of the crisis is to put our bodies on the line.
Nobody can predict which one event will trigger social change. Paul Revere was not the only rider to warn of the British advance, and many people refused to move to the back of the bus before Rosa Parks. But we do know two things. First, that we must act with unity, and second, many minds working together are likely to be smarter. So we’re asking for your help. As you go about your other work on behalf of the planet and its diverse communities, think about the possibilities for direct action, and write them down and send them to us. Here are a few thoughts to guide you.
- Mark your calendars for Earth Hour March 26. From switching off to taking action! True, hundreds of millions of people around the globe switched off their lights for one hour last year, but this year Earth Hour wants MORE! They're asking people, organizations, municipalities, regions, even countries to commit to taking an action designed to sustain the planet's future. Check out who's committed and make your pledge! Also take a look at Going beyond Earth Hour.
- Cancun Agreements: Next Steps: Repacking COP online.
What will governments do in 2011 and what exactly what was the significance of the Cancun Agreements? The UNFCCC has published a highly user friendly interactive site to educate we plebians on such issues as mitigation and adaptation, financial, capacity building and technology transfer. The highpoint of the ‘primer’ into COPs is the Progress Tracker time line and the countdown clocks.
- Google Earth Engine. If you haven't already checked out Google Earth Engine, don't wait. Unveiled at COP16 this tech platform "enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment." Its initial use was to support development of systems to monitor, report and verify (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation, which as we all know accounts for 12-18% of GHGs.
Why is this important? The images of our planet from space contain a wealth of information, ready to be extracted and applied to many societal challenges. Scientific analysis can transform these images from a mere set of pixels into useful information—such as the locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping.
Google Earth Engine can be used for a wide range of applications—from mapping water resources to ecosystem services to deforestation. It’s part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future.
BP & FOSSIL FOOLISH NEWS