Today, like many of you, I am going to attend a climate strike in Atlanta.
But before I leave, I would like to introduce a new blog project. I hope to write these about once per week, if people here show an interest. (Please let me know in the comments.)
The title of this project will be: IS THERE STILL HOPE?
This is a question that all of us who are attuned to the climate crisis have been asking for a long time. We have this world-wide fast moving train, which seeks to extract fossil-fuels in ever-increasing amounts to feed global capitalism or, if you want to put a capitalist spin on it, to feed the world and raise billions of people out of poverty. This encompasses not just transportation and heating/cooling but also industrial agriculture.
Even as we are succeeding in raising consciousness about climate change, the question remains whether it is too late to slow the incredible inertial momentum of that train.
A recent poll shows that more than 2/3 of Americans now believe that climate change is either a crisis or at least “serious”. But goodwill is not enough. Will they give up their SUV’s? Will they set their air conditioning up to 78 degrees in summer and their heat down under 65 degrees in winter. And this is not nearly enough. Will they reduce meat to one day per week? Will they agree to declare the heart of all their cities to be automobile free?
We have to change everything about the way we live. And at the same time, we have to take regulatory control of our industries. And we have to do it soon.
In this series of diaries, I hope to explore concretely the ways in which innovative people are trying to lead us toward these goals (for example, regenerative agriculture), and also the forces aligned to block these goals (for example, the feudal thugs burning down the Amazon who have small armies prepared to fight for their “rights” to burn down the earth).
I am well aware that some people believe we must keep up a (fake) optimism because otherwise people will give up the fight before it starts. I don’t believe that. To put it philosphically, each of us knows individually that he or she is going to die. And we even know that the sun will eventually explode. But that has never meant that we should not act ethically to make life better as we are living it.
To be clear-eyed about both the intractable problems and the hopeful solutions will provide us all with insight (I hope), myself included, about how to act ethically in the face of this climate crisis.
Today, in honor of the climate strike, I will begin with a hopeful note about an event which I have not seen covered in a DKOS diary.
25K Climate Protestors Disrupt Frankfurt Motor Show
Jordan Davidson
Sep. 16, 2019 12:08PM ESTCLIMATE
At the International Motor Show (IAA), climate protestors are calling for a change in transportation politics. © Kevin McElvaney / Greenpeace
The International Motor Show in Frankfort, Germany is a big deal, drawing one million visitors in 2015 and 800,000 in 2017. Notwithstanding much greenwashing by BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) et. al., approximately ¾ of the cars on display still use diesel or gasoline fuel, according to Greenpeace. According to a report published last week “Germany's big three produced more CO2 emissions in 2018 than the country itself produced.”
But this year, in a powerful lead-up to the climate strike, 25,000 people came out to disrupt the show, including 15,000 (police estimate) to 18,000 cyclists (organizers’ estimate, according to Reuters).
That is amazing!
The number of people, "willing to take part in a civil disobedience campaign and put their bodies in the way of the powerful auto industry" had exceeded their expectations, said Marie Klee, a spokeswoman for the climate action group Sand in the Gearbox, as CNN reported. "An IAA in this form will most certainly not exist anymore. The days when VW, Daimler and BMW and co. celebrated their destructive tin cans without any interruption are over," she said.
So take heart! And join with millions more today, if you possibly can.
Dream Big. Think clearly.
See you on the front lines.