Introducing Climate Action Now

Who is Climate Action Now? A growing group of highly concerned and deeply committed Vermonters, advancing an intense and strategic campaign to make Vermont a world-leader in solving the climate crisis.

This work is based on a shared belief that climate change is now the human rights struggle of our age, with the millennial generation’s right to a future, to inherit a planet similar to the one that sustained life as we know it for thousands of years--now being grievously threatened by the forces of greed, ignorance and inaction.
 
Facing this rising challenge, this group of Vermonters is gathering behind a shared conviction that Vermont, with its close-knit communities and long history of leading on social justice causes, must once again play a leading role by pointing the way for global climate change solutions.

This Vermont campaign focuses on three primary outcomes:

1.     Raising a bold and audacious, people powered movement that represents a clear mandate from the people of Vermont -- calling for climate solutions at a scale equivalent to the size of the crisis we must now address.

2.      Popular education about the importance of passing far more aggressive climate action legislation in Vermont—in light of the urgent need to end the massive levels of  greenhouse gas presently being emitted worldwide.  

3.      A community-based cultural shift to climate friendly social and economic practices through a strategic program of practical education, model community projects, and staging a network of local climate action centers and information hubs across the state.

Solid work has already gone into organizing this initiative: statewide listening tours, planing retreats, organizing meetings, a statehouse rally and the recent launch of Climate Action Now, an online climate action center.

In the months ahead the effort will continue with 350-VT, Transitions Town, Interfaith Power and Light, Town Energy Committees, campus climate groups and the Vermont Worker Center and many other grassroots and grasstops in Vermont to advance this campaign, through a series of escalating statewide events and citizen forums that will crystallize bold climate action demands into concrete plans and specific legislation, all bolstered by robust public support. 

Finally, in the spirit of open source organizing, Climate Action Now represents an open invitation for your direct involvement. The spirit of this work is one of openness, inclusiveness, equality and transparency. While the work process may never be perfect, the values and standards of behavior are clear.  Every group, every project, every forum is an open invitation for active participation based on a shared awareness that this movement can only advance through our collective action.

Climate Action Day Speach - Joe Solomon

Joe Solomon of 350.org prepped an inspired talk for Vermont Climate Action Day 2/3/2011. But, with so many inspired speakers that day, we didn't get to hear Joe. However, this one is really too good to miss, so here it is for all to apprecaite.

I stand here to humbly represent the burgeoning 350 Vermont movement. and to share a reminder. while it feels like we're standing or sitting in a very ornate beautiful well lit room, in our beloved statehouse, we're also hunkered down on a big rock hurtling through ...the darkness of space. and that rock, that planet, is very different than what it used to be.

All that snow outside right now isn’t irony -- it’s the physics and chemistry of a new world at work. For the last two centuries we’ve been burning epic amounts of oil, coal, and gas: blanketing our sky in carbon. And as we know, that's why our atmosphere's been burning up.

Here’s the thing: warmer air sucks more moisture out of the air than colder air. so while sucking the moisture out spreads drought in more places, in other places all that moisture eventually comes down in more and more super storms.

If you were up in space this week, you would have seen a vast blanket of white covering the US -- and a massive 300-mile swirl of angry whiteness racing towards Australia. Here, it’s a near-country-covering blizzard. Over there, it’s a Category 5 cyclone. Extreme weather has become the new norm.

So, how can Vermont fight climate change? it can't really. we should own that. our carbon emissions are paltry. in 2005, we emitted a mere 6.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Compare that to New Jersey, one of the few states that are smaller than us, with over 133 metric tons. Or California: with over 395.

6.9...395...We cannot solve the climate crisis by simply cutting carbon.

The only way Vermont can change the world, is by inspiring the rest of the world to do so. the only way we can lead, is to act on such a scale, that other big polluter states and nations look at us as a model that works. our best shot as a tiny state is to make such massive waves of change that they resound and ripple and are replicated across the world.

We can no longer content ourselves with being the Green Mountain State. It's time to be the bright, burning, luminescent Climate Solutions State. the 1st 100% clean energy state. the Solar everywhere state. the Wind, where it makes sense, state. the Energy efficient home for ALL state. the Public Transport for EVERY Vermonter state. the local food state. the Transition state. the renewable jobs state. the Justice which surrounds us state -- and that includes universal healthcare.

This only works if we go all out. this only works: if our actions roar, and in so doing mobilize the rest of this nation to echo our deeds, and to return those roars.

This only works if we act at the scale of the crisis we seek to fix. anything less than inspiring, anything less than bright burning and luminescent, and we’re still hurtling through space on a planet that’s falling apart.

We are given a chance to be a candle in this darkness. But we must make ourselves a sun.

A beautiful social movement is just getting started to make it so.

Join us at: http://www.facebook.com/350Vermont



A Call To Transform

We live at a time when—more than ever before—all citizens of earth must act strongly to transform our entire way of life on this planet. Everything we know, all that we’re skilled at doing, must now actively serve this urgent collective request for personal, social, and economic change on a global scale. Every aspect of our personal and professional lives must now be transformed to operate in greater synergy with and support for the planet on which we live – with all its amazing living systems and astonishingly beautiful forms of life. As a global population, we must rapidly shift from users to stewards, from consumers to conservers, from indifferent and mindless action to conscious intentional preservation—passionately nurturing the planet that sustains our lives today and that must continue doing so for endless generations to come.

Does this threaten business as usual? Absolutely! If it’s to be effective at all, it must - especially in the west where little or nothing about our lifestyle over the last century has been remotely close to being sustainable. Yet, at the same time, each and every one of us must also meet the needs we share for sustaining our everyday lives with at least a basic measure of abundance and plentitude. The entire global economy cannot be sustained by government programs or operate like a nonprofit – depending only on the donations of others. We must all produce to survive.

As business people—for-profit or non-profit—we must learn and work together to transform our enterprises so that they operate in full alignment with these earth-centered and human-centered values, and still efficiently meet the needs of all forms of life living on this planet from today forward.

Clearly, this level of complete and total transformation is a tall, tall order. It requires racing forward while simultaneously rethinking, reinventing, retooling and relearning everything about our lives. And doing this at the same time we’re responding to the strident demands of a global operating system which is woefully out of balance and in dire need of massive repairs: increasingly breaking down, wrecking large scale havoc, belching smoke and gas and leaking deadly toxic fluids—more and more acting like it’s preparing to self-destruct. Tall order indeed. Especially in light of the fact that this earth and this planetary operating system has no back up—for better or worse what we have is all we’ve got.

Transformation is change at warp speed and full scale, which pretty well sums up what’s required from all of us today, if we’re to meet the challenges we face as a global community. Embracing this level of change means everything is up for grabs and no one has all the answers. This scale of effort requires collectively crafting a system-wide, globally-scaled learning community capable of learning at the speed of light through bold and continuous trial and error; constantly sharing innovation and information while racing forward.

Change, especially at this level, is both an outer and inner process. Inner skill and personal change and growth are just as vital to this effort as anything we might attempt outwardly. Without the ability to think and see our problems differently, manage our internal reactions better, find balance in action and peace in stressful times, and constantly nurture and support each other in the process; nothing of value or consequence will ever be achieved. Helping our human family to move though this period in a caring compassionate way while learning new internal tools, mindsets, and attitudes is both the indicator of true civilization and the single greatest factor that will determine our ability to succeed – if not survive. 

We must care for each other, leave no person behind, and let no one go hungry or be ignored or suffer unnecessarily. We must learn to communicate and share and actively and tirelessly support one another—even when we fail miserably even on a grand scale. This is the expression of the unique combination of strength and fragility that best expresses humanity’s priceless gifts and exquisite beauty. At no time in the evolution of our species have these qualities been more called forth from so many at one time than they are today. We can succeed, we can survive and even thrive in the face of challenging times, but to do so every one of us must fully participate, giving everything we’ve got. Such are the times we live in.

Climate Activists Against Drunk Driving

Here’s how my mind grapples with the question of what's an approrpraite inidividual response to golobal climate change?

There’s a bunch of folks in a moving vehicle barreling down the road, heading straight for a cliff that if we go over, will surely be the end for us all. The driver is madly intoxicated, having the time of his life, and could care less about any risks involved. Everybody else in the car is either unaware, sound asleep, or as high as the driver and loving every second of the wild ride. You on the other hand, are wide-awake and can see that unless you take strong action right now, everybody here is toast. Oh, and did I mention that as the car’s speeding down the road it’s smacking into every person and beast it can reach, and that if and when it finally sails over said cliff, the big bang at the bottom will end all life as we know it on planet earth? So that’s the scenario, and the question I keep asking myself is what should I do? What would you do? What would any sane person do in this situation?

Common sense says, do whatever you need to take the wheel away from guy driving, ignoring his protests and the screams of the other revelers, knowing that when everybody sobers up and finally sees the humongous cliff ahead, they’ll be hugely grateful someone was clear headed enough to take the wheel when they did.

What you don’t do, at least as far as I can see, is sit back and watch the show. What you don’t do is hand the driver another drink. What you don’t do is say, I don’t want to get involved here, or I don’t like being aggressive or bossy or loud; I really don’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers here. I’m too busy now. If it’s really a matter of life and death, and grievous harm is already being done today, there’s really no choice but to act now—not later, not when everybody agrees. Regardless of how much my actions will upset many others riding in the car, I do have a moral responsibility to act.

So, in real life, the car is planet earth. Our driver becomes our political leaders and big corporate execs. The passengers are the world population, and the beasts and people already being harmed are the people and species being impacted today by climate change. The cliff that we’re racing towards is the impending impact of global climate change, barreling down on planet earth at an already frightening but still accelerating speed.

In this true-life situation, what do you and I do? What an ever-increasing number of people are choosing to do is to act. To call out the insanity of our global choices, and to keep calling out ever more loudly if need be, until the human family finally wakes up and sees what modern civilization is doing to planet earth, and what’s at stake with climate change today and for generations to come. Anything less is collusion, if not outright cowardice. 

Now it would be easier to say, let’s just go along and wait until more people “get it”. But the fact of the matter is that every day we postpone action, more people and untold living species are being harmed and in increasing numbers are now dying. Every day that’s lost is billions more tons of GHG ejected into our atmosphere, that become much like a ticking bomb that unerringly if still slowly heats this planet and alters our climate.

As a civilization, now also largely responsible for the well-being of this planet and all its natural inhabitants, we no longer have time for further delay or even for convenient incremental measures. It’s time to hit the breaks today on our fossil fuel rampage, regardless of the short-term pain. Or, according to the vast majority of our leading scientists today, it’s over the cliff we go, with the consequences of inaction being truly grave.

One way to look at this is that it's just a lack of consensus. The jury is still out for some, on the existence of climate change as a whole, and more specifically on whether climate change is caused by human action. Conventional wisdom in this case says, give it time; wait until there’s a greater consensus for action. Putting aside the fact that just like in our speeding car scenario, crowd wisdom doesn’t always guarantee an accurate perspective, another niggling problem with this approach is that it’s not well supported by history, real or allegorical.

Every wonder what Noah’s neighbors thought and said of his strange behavior when he started  building the arK? Put yourself in his shoes and that’s kind of what this situation feels like. 

Then there’s Columbus. Whether or not people really believed the world was flat when he set sail, clearly there were no guarantees he would find anything worth seeking on his voyage of discovery. Yet sail off he did, definitely without full scientific proof or public consensus behind the wisdom of his course of action.

What would have happened if John F Kennedy had taken an opinion poll of the general public and of all the leading scientists of the day to determine how many actually believed we could reach the moon before he decided to launch the lunar space program?

Or Mahatma Gandhi, suffrage leaders, civil rights leaders; if each of these life saving initiatives waited for full consensus of leading experts or public opinion before taking bold action, it’s hard to imagine where our civilization would be today.

Foresight, courage, a clear inner call to right action and just plain old fashioned leadership, over and over have led us as a world family to rise and meet the challenges of our time.

Clearly, the call of climate change, the wrenching toll it’s already taking and the colossal risks to civilization from further bargaining and delay are our Ark, our Lunar Program, our Human Rights Movement, and those of us who see this fact clearly must not fail to act regardless of the personal consequences. We must act today, we must act boldly, we must do whatever’s needed to wake up our sleeping friends and stop the fossil fuel intoxicated politicians and corporate leaders from driving  us over a cliff. Failure to act is a denial of the gift of our individual consciousness and does a dangerous disservice to all.   

Five Dollars To Save The World

Maybe I’m a control freak, or maybe I’ve just joined the growing ranks of those who are totally frustrated with Washington’s absence of anything remotely resembling leadership. Whatever the cause, I’ve been borderline obsessed lately, noodling on how the Climate Change Action Movement can take back control of its vital work from the federal government and the corporate greed that clearly drives the political process.

It’s oblivious that much of the real power on this level comes down to who has the money and who controls the purse strings – how and where the money is spent. Well, last time I checked, 100% of the money is actually generated by John Q Citizens like you and me. And this is where I start feeling a bit rebellious. No, I’m not ready to quit paying federal taxes—not yet. But instead of turning over all of our resources to Washington and greedy corporations, we the people—and specifically the people who understand and care about accelerating climate change—need to take back control of our money! 

Rather than send all of our dollars to pay for taxes that are being misspent on disastrous fossil fuel subsides and the like, and then spend the rest of our precious dough to line the pockets of greedy corporations bent on protecting fossil fuel income or ramping up dangerous consumerism – we need to start building our own large and powerful fund to pay for real climate change solutions now.  A fund that is people driven and really really big. We’re talking billions. 

Let’s not buy into the belief that the money isn’t available today to put into climate change solutions. Forgetting for a moment how much our government is spending, we the people are also spending huge sums of our own money every single day. It’s not lack of money. It’s a lack of leadership to actively cultivate the public awareness, foresight and commitment that’s needed to help us put a higher priority on spending our money wisely – for the protection and well-being of our families, homes and communities, and yes, for the future of our planet for generations to come.

Think for a moment about the insurance industry. Recent calculations estimate that the world spends upwards of 3.5 TRILLION DOLLARS every single year on insurance. For what? Not for tangible goods and services; not for food or recreation; not for buildings and cars; but exclusively for the CONCEPT of our future security. This astounding figure clearly says that those of us who are committed to addressing climate change must start doing a much better job of conveying the CONCEPT of how investing in climate change solutions is the best insurance we can hope to buy right now. Taking control of the situation by individually choosing to channel a greater portion of our own dollars into building a huge climate change fund is the only short-term way we have available to protect our long-term future—not to mention deal with the climate change impacts already pounding our global family today.

We can’t afford to wait for Washington to “get it” and finally act with foresight. And it’s not like we need to spend a ton of money individually—unless of course we have a ton to spend. I am reminded of how many millions the Obama campaign raised with all those emails we all received asking us to donate five to fifty dollars to get President Obama into office. Well, no offense President Obama, but after observing Washington’s recent mockery of the Cancun negotiations and your failure to actually participate there, I’m feeling a whole lot more inclined to give my next 5 bucks to someone I can actually trust to do something about climate change.

When hearts and minds are a little less steamed there’s probably some solid thinking and planning to be done by wiser people than I on how best to organize and build this type of people’s fund. But for now, I’ll just go on record saying I’d love to see a general fund be generated by people like Bill Mckibben and a few others with his understanding and vision—people who I know “get it” and who will use my 5 dollars well.

If insurance agents can raise 3.5 trillion this year, why can’t we the people raise a billion or two for something like a Carbon Neutral Climate Action Now Fund? I’m ready Bill; just  let me know where to send my 5 dollars to start doing some real good.