Climate Chaos And Us

By
Chris Riger and Mas Kimball

Everyone's already exhausted, that's the problem.

It's not always obvious, many of us get through our days alright but, if someone asked you to go out there and keep the oceans from rising, make it rain where crops are dying and halt the waves of monster hurricanes, heat spells and floods – would you have what it takes?

Do we even know what it would take?

There's no way to find the right tone for the seriousness of this issue. Just take a few minutes to picture a super low-pressure, record storm surge hurricane like Sandy - zeroing in for a direct hit here. With a warmer ocean, all of a sudden, storms like that in this part of the world do not come just once in a century, a lifetime, generation or even just once in a decade anymore. From DC up into Maine it's nothing but bull's eyes on the east coast and the Vineyard's one of them.

It so happens that now we actually do know what it will take to slow this trend. A first step may be recognizing our fatigue to be partly a result of so many deferred or shattered hopes and dreams over the last 40 years. Like our tragic loss of faith in just those social systems that are meant to handle a collective crisis like the climate chaos that is now mounting. In the Inauguration speech the President sounded more serious about conducting the peoples business, including on the climate crisis - a new report released the week before could be one reason why.

It's OFFICIAL: from the National Climate Assessment U.S. Government report, “Climate change is already affecting the American people. Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts. These changes are part of the pattern of global climate change, which is primarily driven by human activity.“

From the New York Times Jan 10: “Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide - The heat wave in Australia; the flooding in the U.K., and most recently the flooding and extensive snowstorm in the Middle East: it’s already a big year in terms of extreme weather calamity.”

And meanwhile what's up on this Island, our six towns can't agree on a fully coordinated Emergency Disaster Management Plan. Maybe our middle and high school students can help us with that one.

For a generation top U.S. climate scientists like James Hansen and nature writers like Bill McKibben have been warning us and they've had all the particulars pretty much dead on except for the timing – actual destructive climate chaos has arrived much faster than any of the modeling predicted. So what the heck is it that has driven so much denial in so much of society and Governments, from Federal to Town, of the stark facts and the urgency for action?

Look, this overarching crisis we face in a way is no one’s fault – but it seems to be everyone's responsibility. As nature writer Bill McKibben explained last July in what is a very important source of perspective on this subject, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, “Much of their profit stems from a single historical accident: Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free. Nobody else gets that break – if you own a restaurant, you have to pay someone to cart away your trash, since piling it in the street would breed rats. But the fossil-fuel industry is different, and for sound historical reasons: Until a quarter-century ago, almost no one knew that CO2 was dangerous. ...”

But after that everyone who needed to know what it would mean to keep pouring CO2 into our atmosphere – did know, quite well. However, today the value on the books of these private, for profit companies includes $20 trillion in fossil fuel reserves that must not be burned.

That's the new information we have this year. After all the international climate change conferences the only thing officially agreed on is that we can't let the global temperature rise more than 2 degrees Celsius. The leading scientists say that's still too much, but it's a tough enough goal and it's been agreed on. The stringent limit to how much more fossil fuels we can burn and possibly hold to that 2 degree rise, has also been determined. But the fossil fuel companies and producer states are already paying themselves in advance from the future burning of confirmed reserves totaling 5 times that limit. They are literally counting on burning it.

With Irene and Sandy in bac- to-back years, Australia engulfed this month in record smashing heat induced wildfires then disastrous flooding and last years drought returning this spring to threaten world food supplies and prices – this is a very serious problem. The science tells us that "in the next few decades” the fossil fuels we burn, or don't, will be what make really destructive sea level rise inevitable, or not! It would be a staggering calculated theft of not only our children's future but our own to burn too much.

People and markets are proving themselves willing and able to transition quickly away from fossil fuels. But as part of that process we must immediately and forcefully serve notice on the fossil fuel companies in a way that begins to threaten their freedom and impunity to promote the burning of carbon at levels way beyond the safe limit. Why does it have to be us serving notice on the most powerful industry in the world? Because the President, the Congress and the Courts may have too many old habits to break – to be able to do it fast enough. And we literally can't afford to wait.

Fortunately over the course of the last year some very brave and committed folks have been preparing a way for us to do just that. It is time for all of us with a valued connection to the Cape and Islands to inform ourselves about the very careful, hard work being done on our behalf. A well establish divestment campaign like the one that helped to end Apartheid in the 1980's is sweeping US colleges, universities, churches and major cities. ... Seattle being the first U.S. city to order its investment portfolios to divest from 200 major fossil fuel corporations.

The XL Tarsands pipeline project is being targeted and must be stopped. It's construction would in reality provide very few long term jobs and would drive even more extremely destructive scorched-earth mining of the dirtiest carbon heavy fuel there is. Many thousands of your fellow citizens will converge on Washington DC, this Presidents Day, February 17 for a massive, peaceful rally. It is in the hands of the U.S. President and Secretary of State to approve or cancel this pipeline project. Obama must be shown that the citizens of the country he governs demand a NO answer on the XL Pipeline, to be the first of many truly responsible decisions.

As Bill McKibben was saying, “Until a quarter-century ago, almost no one knew that CO2 was dangerous. But now that we understand that carbon is heating the planet and acidifying the oceans, its price becomes the central issue. If you put a price on carbon, through a direct tax or other methods, it would enlist markets in the fight against global warming. Once Exxon has to pay for the damage its carbon is doing to the atmosphere, the price of its products would rise. Consumers would get a strong signal to use less fossil fuel.”

McKibben has founded an outfit called 350.org which is oriented toward fast solutions and is very informative.

After Presidents Day here on the Island we can go to work on divestment with local institutions and towns and push hard for a national initiative to put the true price on carbon in order to raise the determination and the funding for our transition away from fossil fuels. Our pushing the global climate, our life-support system, to change in such a destructive chaotic direction is a pretty bad mistake. Getting it to stabilize may seem impossible. But ask any student on Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod or Nantucket - can we accept the idea of not trying as hard as we can?

Ask any teacher or farmer, doctor, lawyer, economist, selectman, investor or carpenter, fisher-woman or chef. Ask a young mother or father. If they really knew what was at stake and why, could they accept the idea of not trying as hard as we're able, together?

Join the more than 15,000 people who have already committed to bringing the urgency of this message to the President's door on February 17, including the full staff and student body of at least one school in Delaware.

With a new urgency, the February 17 Rally is being lead by the Sierra Club, 350.org and the Hip Hop Caucus. To sign up on the National RSVP list and for current details, go to: www.ForwardonClimate.org - If you need information or have suggestions for local travel arrangements to Washington DC write to: feb17now@yahoo.com

Editor's note: Chris Riger and Mas Kimball are Island residents interested in Climate Change and are working towards establishing a 350.org on Martha's Vineyard.