What You Can Do for Climate Justice TODAY #cop15

This message comes from Josh Lynch, an organizer with AVAAZ Action Factory:

Friends -

On Tuesday morning I posted this note on facebook:
“If you could see what is happening here in Copenhagen you would be outraged. After two decades of negotiating climate change policy to death, wealthy countries are blocking a real deal with weak targets and loopholes. The next 72 hours I will need you to act to seize the moment of Copenhagen. Please be prepared to act.”

Now is the time to act. First I will ask for what is needed. Then I will explain some context.

1. This is going to sound crazy. I need as many of you who possibly can to organize a sit-in in your Senator’s office to read 12 millions names of global voices demanding a fair, ambitious, and
legally-binding climate treaty in Copenhagen. The first sit-in of this kind was a nine-hour act of civil disobedience by 19 international youth outside the main plenary in Copenhagen. This sparked solidarity reader sit-ins at the Canadian Prime Minister’s office and the U.S.
State Department on Thursday. On Friday youth are calling for a non-violent civil disobedience to demand a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty on the final day.

Here is a guide to help you pull it off:
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/12/17/solidarity-sit-ins-spread-resources-for-your-own-event/

The original story:
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/12/17/live-blog-youth-activists-refuse-to-leave-before-everyones-voices-are-heard/

2. Call President Obama (202-456-1111) to urge him to “support the call of the most vulnerable nations for a 350ppm carbon reduction target and a goal of keeping temperatures below 1.5 degrees celsius in the global climate treaty.” This has been a critical demand of vulnerable nations in Copenhagen fighting for their survival.

That’s it. Now some context as promised.
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Posted by:

The Editor

Battle of the Bella (#COP15)

Follow all of Jayme’s copenhagen coverage at http://youngvoter.org/cop15

Cold, Snowing, 100′s of police, 1000′s of marchers, banners, Amerie on the radio…

Angry, frustrated, trains shut down, young, old, global climate movement.

All words used to describe my experience at the Reclaim Power protest. While folks in the U.S. were safely tucked in their beds, thousands of young people from around the world gathered in the streets of Copenhagen to demand access to the Bella (convention) Center. To demand real policies that will reverse climate change and save planet earth.

It saddened me to see a man, eyes fire-red from being peppered sprayed, snot hanging from his nose, talking about how all he wanted was to have his voice heard. It was at that moment that reality set in. There are millions of people around the world already suffering from climate change. Their frustration is not unlike the thousands of displaced workers in Milwaukee looking for something to put them back to work. These protesters were just trying to express what they know to be right, but don’t have access to do so.

From my viewpoint, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Global warming, increasing unemployment, and escalating wars all the while people around the world are crying, “enough!” And our leaders can’t let go long enough to listen and figure out a way to push the stop button. This, like so many other similar experiences, come down to the same thing…POWER.

No matter how disempowered I might feel right now, I will be up tomorrow to do it all again.

Posted by:

Jayme Montgomery

Enviromental Protection Agency Getting Its Bars Up!

Just hopped off a video announcement from Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency and definitely a top pick on the short list of D.C. insiders who are really taking their title/mission to heart.

On what is coincidentally (purely surely) the first day of the international COP15 summit, the EPA announces that their thorough (musta been really thorough) analysis of all the available facts leads to one simple conclusion: greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of the American people.”

There’s more:

“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

Great talking point from Mrs. Jackson and my instinct thinks she’s legit. When asked on the call about the timing of the EPA’s announcement, when House reps have indicated no movement on environmnetal legislation until early Spring (months from now), Lisa Jackson said the EPA did not want to wait to get the ball rolling and hoped that Congress would “follow the ball.”

Translation: watch out, world. Apparently it’s not a pre-requisite of American political power to actually lose total touch with the land and your people!

Keep it up, Mrs. Jackson.

Posted by:

Sam Patton

Peak Oil…hey, got a light?

This is a few days old i.e. another epoch in internetz time but I bet when society crashes and we burn our laptops for plastic scented warmth, we’ll kill for the chance to one more snarky blog post, to tag one more pic of the person we were before Nature takes our headphones off and smacks us back to the Ice Age.

By which I mean, is anyone really surprised that not only do we have to confront the awesome, shame-on-us specter of global destruction as a simple truth – we are consuming the world, will we do anything about it? – but also as a classic opportunity for government conspiracy, what we don’t know will kill us, of course the Man is savvy to the fact that famine and hedonism are mutually exclusive and you’ll catch more of us flies if you act like the honey is gonna flowwwww forever.

Turns out “[t]he world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit,” with the United States quite specifically called out for encouraging a false representation of 1.) how much oil is undiscovered [how do they know?!] and 2.) how much we’ve got left in our fields.

Consensus is growing that this roller coaster we call Life™ is already over the hump, we’re hurtling down hill to a NEW epoch the people at the Center for Egregiously Named Memetics call Peak Oil. When you hit Peak Oil, your oil production enters a phase called “terminal decline….” yeah, it looks kinda like this:

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Posted by:

Sam Patton

Sam Patton: Van Jones is a symbol. Defeat for all.

I am disgusted to learn that Van Jones resigned from his position of Green Jobs czar for the Obama Administration.  I do not know what to think about our country.

I am a Southern Man, born in North Carolina, raised in Mississippi.  My history is slavery, is grits, is catfish and racial distrust, confederate flags and soulful music that hits you in your guts.  I am not an anarchist, and I dare you to come inside the ‘conservative stronghold’ of Mississippi and call me one.  I am no radical, I am a lover of freedom and truth, of intelligence and change meaning growth, meaning the desire to do what is right even in the face of incalculable danger.

I was not born loving America, but it grew on me.  I was born like all organisms, outside of identity, inheriting the genes and attitudes of my forefathers and for that I thank my parents, two beautiful, wonderful Mississippi natives who grew up in a time when family, when community, meant everything.

Sound familiar?  That’s the America we all love, right?  The America that has been co-opted by certain individuals, people who hide behind some cloak of political party, hide behind the walls of commercial entities that, increasingly, appear to me to be the threats and dangers to Truth, to Justice, that we are so afraid of.

America, what have we become?  Honestly, honestly, does anyone think Glenn Beck is the answer?  He sits behind his desk.  His interns – unpaid, low paid, low wage sycophants – develop our news and Glenn Beck adds the fire.  But he is no pastor, this is no religion and this is nothing we can believe in.  His language is the language of oppression, of fear, and I refuse, I absolutely refuse, to be afraid.

I am America.  I am some small and burning part of it, and I am flawed, I am self centered but I try to uphold the greatest tradition, the most beautiful idea of which humanity ever conceived: the belief in Honor.
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Posted by:

Sam Patton