URGENT ALERT – climate-wrecking at Bali

I just signed an emergency petition trying to help save the climate talks going on right now, and it would be great if you could join me. The most important global warming meeting since Kyoto is happening right now in Bali. 192 countries are meeting to discuss what comes next – but they’re in crisis.

Negotiators were nearing agreement on cuts by 2020–a step which the scientists say is needed to avert the worst ravages of global warming, and which will help to bring China and the developing world onboard. But then the news broke: the US, Canada and Japan rejected any mention of such cuts.

We can’t let three governments hold the world to ransom, by vetoing a real solution to the climate crisis. Bali is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to start working toward real climate action, and we can’t let it pass by.

The campaign will be delivered direct to summit delegates, through stunts and in media advertisements, so our voices will actually be heard. But we need a lot of us, fast, to join in if we’re going to make a difference. Just click on the link to add your own name now:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/bali_emergency/

Thanks!

PS Avaaz, the organisation hosting the petition, are very serious — they host the Fossil Awards held by hundreds of NGOs at the summit

Blue Man Group – Earth To Humanity

Can you hear?

Taking Action Against Climate Change, the best choice

In the whole climate change debate (it’s ridiculous it has to be a debate), I decided that the possible cost of NOT taking action, would FAR outweigh the cost of taking action NOW. Actually, what would be so bad about preventing climate change? Living in a cleaner, healthier world? The cities wouldn’t be so filled with smog, there would be less polution, no more oil wars… Sounds a lot better.

Anyway, the following video argues the same thing, but in a way that’s a bit more digestible than my elaborate theories.

A Manifesto For A New Environmentalism

By way of the Survival Acres Blog:

“Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, like Silent Spring, was considered powerful because it marshaled the facts into an effective (read: apocalyptic) story. But, ironically, for more than seven years, research that environmentalists have privately conducted on attitudes toward global warming has found the opposite: Cautionary tales and narratives of eco-apocalypse tend to provoke fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among voters–not the rational embrace of environmental policies. This research is consistent with extensive social-science research that strongly correlates fear, rising insecurity, and pessimism about the future with resistance to change.

In promoting the inconvenient truth that humans must limit their consumption and sacrifice their way of life to prevent the world from ending, environmentalists are not only promoting a solution that won’t work, they’ve discouraged Americans from seeing the big solutions at all. For Americans to be future-oriented, generous, and expansive in their thinking, they must feel secure, wealthy, and strong.”