renewables

History is “made” when it’s least expected: This past week, as soon as Air Force One touched down at Beijing Capital International Airport — in nothing flat — President Obama sealed a climate initiative between China and the U.S.
By all appearances, it must be good policy with considerable merit, because, quick as a wink, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, and the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Michael Brune, and Ben Adler of Grist, and Mother Jones all sent congratulatory notices. The consensus amongst pundits on climate change is: “It’s a gamechanger!”

As businesses increasingly embrace a not-for-profit culture, an end to overconsumption on a finite planet could finally be in sight. But given the huge lobbying power of vested interests, it will remain impossible to create a truly sustainable world until the illegitimate power of corporations is held in check.
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The climate action weekend built around the People’s Climate March proved that the climate movement has broad popular support and millions are ready to mobilize. These are two ingredients necessary to achieve climate justice. Also needed is a strategy that is widely understood so people recognize their work is connected to a larger movement and their actions are more effective.

Professor Chris Williams says a solution to the climate crisis requires a restructuring of the global economy, but when the last opportunity to do so came after the 2008-9 financial crisis, world leaders saved the banks instead.

As concerned citizens mobilise for climate change demonstrations across the world, never has it been more important to embrace a collective demand for ‘system change’ as the surest way to limit global warming and ensure environmental sustainability.

America’s national energy policy is not green; it is dark & oily, backward, cloddish, and out of touch with the realities of today’s world of modern technology.  It’s archaic.
Congress has at least one foot in the wrong century. This is the 21st not the 20th.

We the undersigned call upon the United States Senate, House of Representatives, and President Obama to work together to introduce, promote, and pass legislation that puts a price on carbon pollution and returns revenues to the American people, either directly or by reducing taxes.
— From Pricing Carbon Initiative’s Petition to the Congress and the President of the United States

All of the elements required to create climate justice seem to be in place. The climate movement can put hundreds of thousands on the streets, organize creative civil resistance, get thousands to risk arrest and mobilize blockades of tar sands, fracking, oil pipelines and mountain top removal.

The film Disruption, produced and directed by Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott, executive producer, Jon Warnow is a prelude to the People’s Climate March, which, according to 350.org, will be the “largest climate march in history,” scheduled for September 21st at Central Park West/NYC between 59th and 86th streets, beginning at 11:30 am.
The People’s Climate March will be conducted prior to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s UN Summit on the Climate Crisis scheduled for September 23rd.
The world will be watching.

I began to involve myself in actions and organizing to address the global warming crisis 10 years ago, in 2004. The first thing that I did was to attend a national conference related to that subject in Washington, D.C. in early January of that year.