IS IT EVER WRONG TO DO THE RIGHT THING? (a repost)

Almost thirty-five years ago, while still living a post-hippie lifestyle, I attended my first Earth Day in Los Angeles. I was working at one of the first 24 hour gas stations in California, where gas was 25 cents a gallon. A couple of bucks would fill the tank of my, mint condition, 1955 VW Bug, almost to the brim.

I was invited to attend the day in the park by a young woman who wrote for an ecological magazine, a “commie rag”, as my father would say. She would come in late at night to get gas and we would talk about movies, politics and the world around us. Her passion and main train of thought was about the environment and her involvement in the upcoming Earth Day festival. At the time, Earth Day had the overtones of a “love-in” of the sixties with music and speeches, but instead of the war in Vietnam, the direction had shifted to the environment.

The focus of Earth Day in 1974 was about the quality of our air and water as well as the use of pesticides in farming and toxic waste being dumped in the ocean. And on that sunny spring Saturday in the park, with the sun shining down, out of a clear blue sky, global warming or the thought of climate change was far from the minds of this eclectic group of people, holding hands and singing along with Joni Mitchell’s, 70’s hit and anthem of the fledgling environmentalist movement, Big Yellow Taxi, one of the most prophetic songs ever to be written.

During the day’s event of music and speeches, my friend invited me to the podium to say a few words during an open “mic” period in between sets. I remember my stomach feeling like it was tied in a knot, as I had never spoken in front of a large group before. A light breeze blew through my shoulder length hair and I can still feel the way the sun played upon my face. I don’t remember much of what I said that day, a blessing of time I think, other than these few words, “the future is deeply rooted in the actions we take today”, and from that moment forward I become an environmentalist.

Now, forty years after the start of Earth Day, the movement is under attack from all sides, challenging and dismissing years of recorded data, attacking the credibility of thought-leaders, scientists and engineers, but the worst part is that the confidence of the American consumer has been shaken and they have begun to question an idea that had touched their lives.
Simple things like recycling their trash or driving a fuel efficient car or purchasing energy star appliances or changing out every light bulb in the house for compact-florescence ones, began feel silly as if they were the butt of a secret joke. It all became very clear for me one evening as I sat at the kitchen table, helping my 7 year old son with his Earth Science home work, when he asked me “what if all these things we do around the house, don’t change anything?” POW!...right between the eyes by one of my own. It was like being asked if I believed in GOD. I sat dumbfounded for a minute or two and looking him straight in the eyes I said…”is it ever wrong to do the right thing?

I explained to him that we, as individuals can make a difference, by the choices we make and the actions we take, we can make a lasting impact on the world around us. So, yes…the things we do around the house to lower our carbon-footprint, like taking shorter showers or changing out light bulbs or compositing or bring our own bags to the market…do make a difference.

So even if climate change or global warming were not an issue, I ask, is it wrong to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and seek alternative energy resource? Is it wrong to want a more energy efficient automobiles or home appliances? Is it wrong to conserve and protect our limited natural resources? Is it wrong to want to make a difference in the world around us? No, it is not wrong to want and expect these things, but we have to take action and we cannot wait for the government or a group or committee for the answers, we, as individuals, hold the power to make a difference and by the choices we make and the actions we take, we can alter the course of life on this planet, now and for generations to come.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE…NOT! (a repost)

It started out simple enough with a middle-of-the-night request…”Dad!can I have a drink of water?” came a small, half awake voice from my son’s room…”Sure” I said as I got outta bed and trudged down the hall to the kitchen. As I leaned over the sink in the light of the moon streaming in through the kitchen window, I let the water run for a moment, it struck me what a wondrous thing this was to be able to go to the tap and get a cool and clean glass of water in the middle of the night. It never would have accrued to me that it would not come out of the wall or that I would have to be concerned with the quality of the water.

It has always been there…as a kid, I remember that there was no greater treat than drinking from the garden hose on a hot summer day. In America, we take water for granted…24/7, drinking water is always a few steps away as if it was an inalienable right…like life, liberty and guaranteed clean water. I took my son his water and we sat and talked a little about what a miracle it really was to be able to get a glass of water…and like that say…out of the mouths of babes…he drop the question…”Doesn’t everyone have water?”…I got him back to sleep, but the thought of accessible water kept gnawing at the back of my brain for the remainder of night.

Not being able to sleep…I started researching my son’s question…being an active environmentalist for over 40 years…I had a vague understanding about global water issues, but after a few clicks, an email and a couple of texts…I had a new awakening to a crisis of global implication.

It is hard to believe that in this day of age that, according to UN figures, over 2.6 billion people live without safe drinking water. In the hospitals of Sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of the beds are occupied by patients suffering from sanitation and water related diseases. UN studies have shown that many diseases could be prevented simply by improving local water supplies. Children are the highest at risk with over 4000 dieing daily from preventable water related diseases, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

As we all know, we live on the big, blue ball, Earth the water planet. The problem is that 97% of the Earth’s water is salt water, leaving a meager 3% of freshwater to sustain life for humans, other living creatures as well as plants and agriculture for a hungry planet. It is not unthinkable that in the not-so-far future, competition for water in an overpopulated world could lead to major border disputes and outright war over water resources.

SO WHAT ARE THE KEY POINTS OF THE GLOBAL WATER CRISIS?
• Inadequate access to safe drinking water for about 884 million people
• Inadequate access to water for sanitation and waste disposal for 2.5 billion people
• Excessive use of groundwater leading to diminished agricultural yields
• Overuse and pollution of water resources harming biodiversity
• Regional conflicts over scarce water resources sometimes resulting in warfare

Growing up in post-war America, I was always amused and a little perplexed by my Mothers mantra at the close of the evenings meal with…”be sure and clean your plate because there are starving children in Europe”…and I would think to myself how could finishing my broccoli help some poor kid a million miles away…I did voice this observation once to the full force of my Mothers indignation. Years later as an adult, I realized what my Mother’s point, totally lost on a broccoli hating eight year old, was one of appreciation…too “appreciate” the food we had in front of us and to think of those less fortunate than ourselves. Now I find myself thinking of others once again every time I pour a glass water at 2 am or while I’m taking a longer than normal hot shower or as I watch my sprinklers in action during a down-pour.

I have begun to address each of my short comings regarding water usage in my own home. We all, including my teenage daughter, now take shorter and timed showers. We have replaced our clothes and dishwasher with water-saving and energy efficient new models and until I can convince my wife that replacing our lawn with indigenous plants that use and need less water, I have replaced my sprinkler timer that now turns it’s self off when it rains. We have also joined several groups to help educate others about water usage and the crisis at hand as well as to raise money to help build wells and filtration systems where they are truly needed.

Like my Mother, I want my children to appreciate the bounty before them that they now, like most Americans, take for granted. We are truly blessed to live in the greatest country on the planet with our wealth of natural resources, technology and freedoms, but in most cases we are here only by an accident of birth…I didn’t choose to be an American, I was just lucky enough to be born an American and I shudder to think that if the dice had rolled in another direction, I could have been the one living in the Sudan, not to be awaken at 2 am by my son’s request for a glass of water, but to the screams of a sick child dieing from the water she drank because her thirst outweighed her thoughts of caution.

I encourage you to find out more about the Global Water Crisis and what you can do to help. Please visit the following links for information, participation and donations.

http://www.charitywater.org/whywater

http://www.endwaterpoverty.org

http://www.cleanwateraction.org

http://www.ewg.org

The Truth Be Told

In October of 2009, I was invited to attend the Governors Conference on Climate Change, the Road to Copenhagen in Los Angeles, California. This was the final gathering the troops, so to speak, before the Conference on Climate Change at Copenhagen in December of that same year.

The event was attended by Governors of other states, UN delegates, international media, scientists and engineers as well as non-profit organizations and corporate leaders…and all on the same page regarding Climate Change. All those attending were there for one purpose…to find solutions to a problem of global proportions.

I left the conference re-born with a new vigor as well as a new commitment towards the future. No matter what the talking heads on TV may say, it was clear that Climate Change is real and that a clear path on both a local as well as global level had been defined and that through our individual, as well as collective actions, we could make a difference.

About two weeks before the conference in Copenhagen was to begin, the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, announced that climate change is a real threat to the planet as well as all life forms and that it was being driven by human activity. A simple statement, with global implications and coming from a US Government agency as a statement of fact could alter the vote of global delegates attending the conference.

And then like a pack of rabid dogs, the attacks on the agency and it proclamation began from all sides, first with outright challenges to the findings as “bogus” and “pseudo-science” and then the real war began with the leaking of private communications among various scientists about undisclosed errors in the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report. The final blow came in the form of select leaked e-mails from the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain‘s University of East Anglia. This “smoking gun” appeared to vindicate climate change skeptics by suggesting scientists were deleting information that contradicted climate change.

This media “blitzkrieg” completely derailed the conference, forcing complete delegations to back down or not vote at all and the majority of the conference was left to defend the data and the reputations of thought-leaders and leading scientists. The fallout was devastating…the Kyoto Accord failed to pass, scientists, educators and environmental leaders were fired or quit under a cloud of shame. This coordinated action, by persons unknown, countered the Gore-effect and set the movement back almost 30 years.

Now, not nearly a year later, the EPA has announced that the allegations made against their original findings were not substantial enough to outweigh the decades of evidence the EPA had amassed that clearly indicated that: greenhouses gases have risen to unprecedented levels; that the accumulation of these gases is warming the planet; and that climate change is visible through shrinking Arctic ice, rising oceans and rising temperatures. It also restated that the rate of climate change is increasing and that greenhouse gases are the driving force behind this increase. It is a sad commentary on our society that not one word about these new and reaffirmed findings made the evening news.

So…now what? Like a bad call at a ball game, where the winning runner was later determined “out” after reviewing the tape…the game is over and score is in the books to be forever debated. It is easy to all “foul”, but the crowd has moved on and gone home. We now need to pick our selves up and dust ourselves off and regroup and rethink our next move.

It has become clear to me that we most rethink the whole concept of environmental activism. As a species, we have had a direct impact on the planet since we first climbed down out of the trees and then turned around and burn them for warmth. It has taken generations upon generations to accomplish the damage we have done to our home. Today, there are few, if any, locations on the planet that have avoided the effects of man. We need to take an even larger global view than ever before…as someone once said, “one mans endangered species is another mans dinner”.

There are two types of environmentalists, those who wish to live in harmony and balance with nature and those who wish to dominate and control nature. I believe that as there are certain aspects of climate change that are beyond our control and that in many ways, I fear, “the train as left the station”. It is no longer about control or change…it is now about survival of the species.

The new environmentalist must bridge the ground between the two schools of thoughts, one of control verses harmony and man over nature as well as to seek new paths to a more sustainable, eco-centric and bio-diverse world.

Evolution is at hand, and as it has been throughout the history of our movement, there are those who hunt, those who prepare and those who just eat. Where will you fit in?

The True Threat to Climate Change

It is agreed by all that the UN Climate Conference held in Copenhagen in 2009 was under attack from all sides, starting weeks before the conference began with leaks regarding corrupted and falsified data regarding climate change. Fingers were pointed, lines drawn, delegates recalled and at the end, a failure to move forward on the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Now, through diplomatic cables released through Wikileaks, we find that the two top global polluters, the US and China, joined forces to derail COP15.

According the leaked cables, in May of 2009, Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, met with Deputy Prime Minister Li Keqiang in Beijing. Sympathetic to China's resistance to accepting mandatory targets at the upcoming United Nations Climate Conference, Kerry outlined "a new basis for 'major cooperation' between the United States and China on climate change." The two countries secretly formed an alliance of collusion in the months just prior to Copenhagen to de-bone the Kyoto Protocol to a toothless document.

In 2007, under President George W. Bush, US climate negotiators organized a 10-year framework agreement with China on energy and the environment. The two countries also agreed to hold "Strategic and Economic Dialogue". Under the new administration lead by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued the dialogue and according to leaked dispatches, the two countries would form a "new partnership” on energy and climate change that would be favorable to the world’s largest polluters.

The Kyoto Protocol, signed at the climate summit in 1997, distinguished between industrialized nations, which were to reduce their emissions, and developing countries -- including economic powerhouse China, which could basically continue releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without restrictions. "Joint, but differentiated responsibility," was the principle upon which the Kyoto Protocol was based.

The US signed the protocol, but never ratified it, leaving the United States and China to continue polluting at will, while European nations who signed the Protocol would have to cut their energy consumption. The goal of the European countries for Copenhagen was to fight for a new agreement that would require the United States, China and newly-industrialized nations, like India and Brazil to specific emission-reduction targets.

In December 2009, world leaders, delegates, scientists and the press, descended upon Copenhagen with great optimism and hope for a binding agreement. Unbeknownst to the delegates, China, India, South Africa and Brazil met secretly in a hotel room where, with a copy of the Copenhagen Agreement, proceeded to gut it of all binding obligations. Once completed, President Obama joined the clandestine gathering to review what would later be known as the "Copenhagen Accord."

According to a Wikileaks released memo, “the Obama Administration offered millions of dollars in the form of “Development Aid” to poor countries, like the island nation of the Maldives, to support the rewritten “Copenhagen Accord”, knowing that other small and developing countries would come to realize that there are advantages to be gained by compliance”.

As an American as well as a dedicated environmentalist, I was shocked and sicken when I first read the leaked documents regarding the Copenhagen Conference and the lengths our government went to destroy the Kyoto Protocol, but more was the fact that the very people that we trusted and elected to office to act as our global voice, would betray our trust and like a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” work against the very causes they professed to support… I say “stand strong, stay ever vigilant, and God bless Wikileaks”.