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WASHINGTON STATE Open Thread
This is a community series giving our Washington Kossacks a virtual meeting place to discuss issues of concern to our state and share what's happening in our lives. Share your activist efforts, plug for your favorite candidate, share a LTE you've gotten published or educate us on the issues you are passionate about. Tell us an interesting or funny story, ask for advice from the community or share a recipe. Tell us anything that has happened out there. Nothing is off topic. Let's connect, unite and act!
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We live in the day when those who seek to plunder our world for profit have huge PR budgets, can rig laws and government processes to suit their needs, and can buy elections. To balance that, what do we have?
We have our personal authentic voices. And sometimes that's enough to make all the difference in the world.
Facts matter. Numbers matter. Policies matter. But they only really matter when they are connected to those people and places we love - see last week's kickoff to the open thread whose theme was What I Love About Our State
Let's check out a sample of what people in our state have said in just the past week about our duty to protect our environment and climate.
We start with a remarkable and deeply personal essay A Letter to My Unborn Child by Julianna Fischer. It just happens that I was in the audience for its first (spoken) presentation at the Cascadia Climate Conference this spring.
Julianna's piece begins:
What if I were to tell you, we could have stopped this? You never had to live in a world like you do my love. So many lives lost, ecosystems destroyed, and hardships faced… all for what? My baby, my unborn child, I tried. I tried to make sure you lived in a world that is as beautiful as when I was your age. But you will probably never see half of the beauty I see in the world today.
Just -
read it.
Next, in The People vs Shell, Emily Johnston contemplates joining the planned attempt to blockade Shell's Arctic drilling rigs as they attempt to leave Seattle. Many people in our region find themselves in this position - what's the right course of action as we near the point of no return on climate?
This week, if all goes well, I will probably commit a crime.
I may not go to prison, of course - I fervently hope I won't - but I know, too, that I may. I'm willing to take the chance, because the alternative is to let disaster unfold - for countless people, for other animals and for whole ecosystems. Given the scope of the threat, and given that we live in the country that is most responsible for it, sitting on the sidelines does not feel to me like a moral possibility.
Six members of The Raging Grannies went past contemplation,
blockading Terminal Five in Seattle, where Shell's Polar Pioneer is currently moored.
"My generation is responsible for how things are today. This rig will destroy any hope of a liveable future for our children and grandchildren," said Seattle granny Annette Klapstein. "It’s our duty to be out here."
Jill MacIntyre Witt, who serves as a Mentor for the
Climate Reality Project and organizes for 350 Bellingham, focuses on moving people to action on protecting our planet:
Well, as Kathleen Dean Moore so eloquently states...this is the 'hinge' decade and everything we do this decade in terms of addressing the climate crisis determines whether or not humanity survives and it is going to take each and everyone to use our skillsets and strengths to help solve this.
So, if you are really good at writing, we need writers on the topic. If you are really good at fundraising, then fundraise. If you are really good at building, then build solar panels or local gardens. We have to treat this like WW2, an all hands on deck approach. The time is NOW to get everyone engaged toward the common goal.
And to close it out, Erika Osland describes why she and Sawyer Joy protested Shell's Arctic drilling plans by climbing the anchor chain of Shell's American Trader in Bellingham Bay this last Friday. In her statement as quoted in the New York Times:
People need to step up and put a stop to this madness. If not us, who? If not now, when?
And with that - please comment as you will. The diary may be about climate and environment, but your comment doesn't need to be.
[Schedule note: I may be out in town when this diary is published, and if so I will reply and otherwise host after I get back home.]
James R. Wells is the author of The Great Symmetry, a science fiction novel is set 300 years in the future, but is definitely about our world here and now.
In an asteroid in the Aurora star system, exoarcheologist Evan McElroy has made a discovery about the Versari, a long-departed alien race. He doesn't realize that his findings will reawaken the long-buried struggle of the Infoterrorists, who believe that all knowledge screams to be free, against those who maintain the True Story that holds all of civilization together. |
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