“Climate change used to feel like an issue that other people were dealing with, or that future generations would face,” tweeted the New York Times. But this summer, it’s different. There is a shift. We are witnessing global warming in real time. Everything we value is at risk: our children’s and grandchildren’s future, ecosystems, the oceans, the air we breathe. And because everything we love is at stake, it’s time to Rise for Climate Action.
Image Credit: riseforclimate.org
No one is coming to save us – not governments, politicians, world leaders, religion, the Paris Agreement, the United Nations. We the people of this world must shoulder the responsibility of saving our planet. The first and most pressing step is to transition from fossil fuel energy to a low-carbon future. The transition to clean energy will bend the curve on rapidly escalating GHGs (greenhouse gases), giving us a fighting chance to tame climate change.
Rise for Climate Action
Note: the following is extracted from the riseforclimate.org website.
On September 8, people on every continent will come together to Rise for Climate Action. We will rise together in our neighbourhoods to take action, telling the story of the communities we want, and showing governments how to follow our lead. We’ll connect all our local efforts globally to help make an unstoppable wave of people’s climate leadership – from our town halls, to our schools, and places of worship.
No more stalling, no more delays: it’s time for a fast and fair transition to 100% renewable energy for all.
We Are at a Tipping Point
2020 is a threshold for meeting global targets to tackle the climate crisis. We are fast running out of time to act, but meaningful action from national governments has been slow at best.
With climate impacts escalating, we don’t have the luxury to wait to see what bureaucratic negotiations have to offer. We need our local leaders to step up and do everything they can right now to stop the fossil fuel industry and build 100% renewable energy for all.
We believe that the Global Climate Action Summit, being held in California on 12-14 September 2018, presents a unique opportunity to pressure local governments and institutions to raise their ambition and do more for climate action. Every city and local leader has been invited to make a commitment around the summit.
We think this is an opportunity to set a new bar for climate leadership, drive ambition and close the gap between what justice and science clearly tells us,,and the achingly slow action by our national governments.
Our actions won’t stop with this mobilisation, we will keep the pressure on our local, state and national leaders to turn words into deeds for a fossil free world.
Every local leader has the power, and a moral obligation to do everything they can to stop the fossil fuel industry and build 100% renewable energy for all.
The Ask
The bar for real climate leadership is simple: public, actionable commitments to a fast and fair transition to a fossil free world, powered by 100% renewable energy for all.
We can’t keep powering our lives with dirty fuels from the last century. It’s time to repower our communities with clean, renewable energy from the sun, earth, wind and water.
We need every local government and institution to commit to building 100% renewable energy and stopping new dirty energy projects in their community. Anything less than that is out of line with what science and justice demand.
#RiseForClimate
We’re not running out of time. We are out of time. Join the #RiseForClimate global day of action this Sept 8 and boldly stand to demand real climate leadership.
There is a simple measure for real climate leadership: no new fossil fuel projects and a fast, just transition to 100% renewable energy.
We must rise to the level of action this crisis demands.
Find an EVENT near you. I’m going to RiseForClimate at the Ottawa event.
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Most if not all of us have had “hope” for many years. Hope isn’t cutting it. It’s time to face reality, it’s time for action. Utilities hope we keep thinking wind and solar will do what’s needed because they know wind and solar are intermittent sources and as long as we pin our hopes on wind and solar the utilities will stick to their outdated business model of centralized generation saying that central generation is needed to back up the intermittent wind and solar sources. And all the time they will oppose expanding wind and solar and make the public pay extra for keeping the public on the main grid. I say it’s time for microgrids and for the utilities to adopt a new business model.
You are right Les. Hope can be an excuse for inaction. But without hope, without any chance of success, without a belief that things can get better, inaction would most always be the end result. So we need hope. It is far from futile.
Thank you for your comments as always.
Coming from a physician with a background in mental health , unfortunately I believe that the disease of which inaction on climate change is a symptom of the first world ailment, a “civilization ” in its final stages, and includes: a lack of psychological/emotional development – with parents both having been too busy trying to cover debt and needy for their kids’ affection and approval because we are all so lonely and isolated – that there is instant gratification as a norm, as opposed to the previous normal direct experience of death, often hunger and necessary chores in childhood; then add not needing to get along with your neighbours because “I have my money and I have my car , so I don’t need you – if we have a conflict it is your fault”, also missing from the developmental environment. So yes most of us avoid facing inconvenient truths, nor will we vote for politicians who give us bad news. See books – “A Short History of Progress” and “The Righteous Mind”. This must be taken into account strategically as do the lessons of the books: “Thinking Fast and Slow” and “I’m Right and You’re an Idiot”. Further arguing about ideology or evidence is unlikely to win over more of the non-converted unless there is grade 4 level flooding of mainstream media and social media which have been regulated to require journalistic method looking at evidence not just opinion, and repeated coverage commensurate with the importance.
Although not as academically referenced the classic regarding psychological development would be the book “Necessary Losses” which bascily describes similar stages of developmental movement to those described around death and dying – we do not give up earlier stratgeies until they fail and we “hit bottom”. As a society this probably means collapse – unfortunately history repeats (per” A Short History of Progress”) since our brains’ hardware and operating system have not changed; even if the scale of our tools and impacts this time is unprecedented.
A campaign around rehabilitating the role of a free press and education about that role is one of the few teeny glimmers I can imagine. People are right to have intuitively lost faith in both science and journalism given that if the right questions are not asked/funded, and in a manner commensurate to their social importance, the societal role of these critical institutions are indeed lost – the baby and the bathwater. Is there hope for such a campaign in these threshold times??? And is there enough time? Otherwise it will not be politically viable to act decisively before collapse , as we no longer believe our leaders if they dare to enact that which is inconvenient for us to wish to believe.
Andre – welcome to Below2C.
Your observations and your perspective on the inability of our societal and cultural tools to help us deal with the huge challenges our civilization faces are bang on. I’m struck in particular with this phrase – “we do not give up earlier stratgeies until they fail and we “hit bottom.”
We have not yet hit bottom but we’re well on our way.
Thank you for your comment.
The theoretical will not win over those triggered and looking to blame something/someone including the messenger.