This is a big year for humans and our planet. Our ‘leaders’ in Copenhagen accomplished nothing useful, so now we must take the lead. Fortunately, there are many very useful things you can do, or even better, your family or group of friends can do.

Even if you do just one thing per month, the cumulative impact is substantial. Of course, we need everyone doing these things, otherwise we all swirl down the toilet bowl of history together – not that there will be anyone to write it. However, these action items focus not simply on lightening your load on the planet – they also make you a leader, and that’s what we really need: millions of people leading, showing the rest of humanity and our so-called leaders how it’s done.

We simply cannot emit any more greenhouse gases (GHGs), and must begin pulling them out of the atmosphere (and ocean) immediately. The longer we delay, the less likely our survival. So make this your year to “go green” in your own ways. Here you go: One action per month to save ourselves: Continue reading →

There is an influential school of thought that says if someone knows the truth, he will accept it. The environmental group subscribes to this, and thus the tremendous focus on events that raise awareness, from candlelight vigils to An Inconvenient Truth.

However, it is certainly also true that you cannot change someone, he can only change himself. He can change, but he must choose to change. Unfortunately, many deniers are not open to change, and they reject any “truth” that you try and force-feed them. You can lead a horse to water, but if he wants to die of thirst there’s not much you can do. Continue reading →

It is all of these. For the developing countries:

Copenhagen is like finally admitting to yourself that someone you thought was a good friend has been stealing from you. For years. Lying to your face the whole time. And with no intention of going honest any time soon.

Copenhagen is like finally admitting to yourself that this person is not your friend, probably never was, and doesn’t really even know what it means to be a friend.

Copenhagen is the realisation that leadership will not come from the rich countries. Canada and the United States will not do the right and honourable thing. We will not even do what is sensible to save ourselves.

Copenhagen means you must defend yourselves from us. We’ll still be dumping greenhouse gases while you are struggling with millions of climate refugees, with flooded cities and ruined farmland, with economic and social disaster. Not our problem.

These are the harsh truths of Copenhagen: You must lead and you must protect yourselves from us. We are not your friend.

You should go after Rex Tillerson and Stephen Harper for crimes against humanity. Tillerson because his company has funded climate denial for years, and Harper because he stabbed you in the back at Copenhagen and Bali; their actions will cost you dearly.

Are deniers the modern equivalent of Neanderthals, genetically unequipped to handle the world? Deniers profoundly reject reality in favour of some preferred “truth,” and they seem to regard truth as entirely subjective. Yet they seem to suffer no cognitive dissonance in a world that must seem an overwhelming one of contradictions. They have no problem driving a car, a miracle of science and technology, yet reject the science of climate change.

Why can’t they handle the truth? Is there some part of their brain that is undeveloped, that renders them unable to process material threatening in some way? The only common thread I can find among the deniers so far is devotion to Libertarianism bordering on the religious. They all seem to be Market Fundamentalists, and they see regulating or pricing externalities like pollution as a threat to the “free” market.

This would make sense; when facts contradict a religiously-held belief, the pious man bows to his God. In this case, the Almighty God is the dollar, the religion and church Market Fundamentalism. Continue reading →