What Activists Can Do

This was at a session of the Americans for Prosperity (climate deniers) "Hot Air Tour" speakers series. Note that the protesters actually made up the bulk of the audience!

Climate Justice

Climate Justice

This is a term with which the developed world is going to become increasingly familiar, so I thought I'd write a little primer. Basically, here’s how things look to the developing world (and this is a vast oversimplification, of course, but a place to start):

The last several hundred years of human history have been rife with one version or other of colonialism – from when Portugal and Spain could throw their weight around and the sun never set on the English empire to multinational corporations making gazillions of dollars while polluting the planet and owing no money or allegiance anywhere but to their stockholders, to whom they are unconditionally obligated to maximize profits.

The countries which have been getting the short end of the stick (pointy end of the sword/bang end of the rifle/downstream end of the sewer) on this colonialism deal are full of large numbers of very poor people who are only getting poorer.

These same countries, which have contributed very little to greenhouse gas emissions, are the ones who are currently suffering the most severe effects of climate change. Low-lying island nations like Tuvalu and Maldives are already experiencing rising sea levels which threaten their very existence. African nations like Sudan are locked in drought and their farmers have very little chance of growing enough food to feed their long-suffering people. Countries like Bolivia (or most of SE Asia) which get their fresh water from glacial runoff are having their water supplies threatened by rapidly melting glaciers.

As you might imagine, they’re feeling pretty pissed about it, and they want this climate treaty to make sure that the US and other rich countries pony up enough money to help them develop in a low-carbon, sustainable way, and help pay for all the damage they’ve sustained up to now.

As you might imagine, the rich countries don’t want to do that.

This is a big problem. And it doesn’t even get into how some of these countries feel about free-market capitalism overall, but I’m not going to get into that, because then you get into economic buzzwords that start with sounds like “com” and “soc” and people just stop listening to you completely.

The bottom line is that we’ve been eating all the snacks, using all the toys, and pooping in the sandbox, and the rest of the kids are tired of it.

The Gauntlet Is Thrown

I got this email from a woman named Helen Hill today:

global warming is a hoax to tax the people thanks for being taken in, and helping spread the scam. Be careful in your desire for fame

Leaving aside any comments about her lack of punctuation (or any further comment on the whole hacked email hoax hoo-ha), here's my response back:

Helen, I wish it were a hoax.

But I am here in Copenhagen with people from all over the world - people from Pacific Island nations who are already suffering rising sea levels, and people from Africa who are already suffering drought, and people from the Andes and the Himalayas who are watching their glaciers shrink before their eyes - glaciers which provide their sole source of fresh water.

All of these folks are already having their lives threatened by climate change. I'm sorry you've been mislead by the climate deniers - who tend to be funded by big oil. Exxon-Mobil alone has funded 39 climate change denier groups.

The people - you and me both - have already had money taken from us to fund subsidies to big oil and coal. Switching to renewables can only serve us all, both financially and environmentally.

Best regards, Kathryn

Alex and Elke

I'm staying in the London flat of my friends Alex and Elke - a lovely, slightly unlikely couple. Alex is an African-American actor from Los Angeles, Elke is a civil servant who works for the German Embassy. They met on an adult hook-up site, fell in love, and got married.

They've been in London for the past few years, and will be moving back to Germany this summer where Elke will divide her time between working at the embassies in Berlin and...Baghdad.

I took them out for dinner tonight, and we got into an interesting conversation about Purpose In Life.

Alex talked about how while he feels like he's here to make the world a better place, he's very non-political about it, and can't imagine engaging in a cause-driven life such as mine. He said that he's too much of an obsessive personality, and would end up pulling his whole existence, including his relationships and his marriage, into his work.

Elke said that she's very interested taking care of the people she loves, but that if she allowed herself to focus on the big issues of the world, it would just make her angry and incapable of functioning.

The remarkable thing is, though, they might not be cause-driven, but they're living examples of something really important.

Alex is devoted to his personal growth, and he's a loving, generous presence who brings a kind of peaceful music into the room with him wherever he goes. I guessed, and he confirmed, that when he's in a show, he's the go-to guy of the cast. When people have problems, they come to him. When conflicts need addressing, Alex is the peace-maker. When he's not in a show, he writes, plays his guitar, walks the city, and explores his inner life.

Elke loves her job - even though it's a fairly low-level clerical job. And she has no desire to go any further up the chain of responsibility. She's good at what she does, she finds it fulfilling, it supports her well, and she doesn't have to take it home with her. She's able to support both herself and Alex. While they do have a TV and a computer, they don't have a home full of extraneous stuff. They live a pretty simple, non-consumerist existence. And every few years, they get to move to a new country. After Germany, they're hoping for South Africa or Nepal.

I so admire the fact that they've created lives of such elegantly simple contentedness and deep personal devotion. Every time I visit them I feel like I've landed in a safe haven, a place of nurturing and relaxation. I can't help but note that with purpose, but without ambition and drive, they live pretty lightly on the planet.

Perhaps this is an active, vivid part of the vision of the future that we're trying to create for ourselves. Perhaps it's not the toys in our lives but the tone of them, the music we carry with us, which will help us find our way.

New Promo Postcards

Given the intense, overwhelming nature of COP15, and the fact that so many people will be there trying to get attention for the work they're doing, a friend suggested I make some new promotional postcards which might be a bit more eye-catching. If I can't achieve fame, I might as well shoot for infamy.

The Devil's Woman

My friend Susan Andrews, daughter of revered High School drama teacher Alan Greiner, just sent me this picture with a note reading:

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the ground each morning, the devil says, "OH CRAP, SHE'S UP!"

How has everyone managed to identify my idealized self-image? Am I that transparent?

This gal must be related to the naked babe with the rifle posted below.

Climate Scoreboard

The group Climate Interactive has developed this scoreboard to calculate the long-term climate impacts of proposals under consideration for the climate treaty.

It will automatically update to reflect changes in the negotiations. Very, very clever.