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Dear Ones,
I apologize for not keeping up on daily quotes. Life if rich and full and sometimes we just don’t get to all we would like to accomplish.
In April I will be covering the People’s Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights Conference in Bolivia and will keep you updated.
I will continue to post poems and quotations intermittently…
 May your heart be filled with eternal love, grace and compassion for all life…
Blessings to you on Valentine’s Day and every day!
Love,
michael
Lovers
Lovers, you who are for a while
sufficient to each other,
help me understand who we are.
You hold each other. Have you proof?
See, my hands hold each other too.
I put my used-up face in them.
It helps me feel known.
Just from that, can we believe we endure?
You, however, who increase
through each other’s delight,
you who ripen in each other’s hands
like greapes in a vintage year:
I’m asking you
who we are.
You touch one another so reverently’
as thought your caresses
could keep each place they cover
from disappearing. As though, underneath, you could sense
that which will always exist.
So, as you embrace, you promise each other eternity.
Rainer Maria Rilke
 Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a gathering of the Avoided Deforestation Partners. It was a most diverse and unlikely group of supporters of the bill including Sir Richard Branson, Robert Zoellick president of the World Bank, Hon. Jens Stoltenberg Prime Minister of Norway, Jane Goodall, several heads of state and representatives from Duke Energy, American Electric Power, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and NRD. Strange bedfellows all in support of REDD.
As I said in my last blog post I have major concerns with this bill, but after yesterday I saw that it may be the only thing that comes out of COP 15. After all 17% of the CO2 could be eliminated from the atmosphere by keeping the roughly 47 trillion acres a year that is currently being destroyed. The idea is making the value of the carbon capture of the trees in the ground worth more than cutting the trees down for farming and timber harvest. Many poor farmers in tropical rainforest zones could benefit from an agreement due to the low income they currently receive from ‘slash and burn’ agricultural practices. REDD payments to keep the forests standing would therefore represent an improvement in their income.
But, many of the safeguards intended to protect indigenous people and the world from greed and mischief have been removed for the current bill in an effort to get it through. I know in the states it is being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, but I still have concerns. When you tie in something like this to the carbon trade market you open the door to the kind of phantom wealth creation that led to the downfall of Wall Street. One of the key issues is the loss of diversity in these areas and the bill is open to supporting the planting of moncultures and biofuel production that could be used for carbon credits. The monitoring system by Google earth could be used to monitor people (of course Big Brother can already do this), and it deepens the possibility of invasion of privacy or halting public dissention. It also makes no consideration about the planting of GMO crops, which continue to have many unresolved and potentially catastrophic consequences. These are just a few of my concerns and yet, it may well be the only outcome that makes a real difference at this conference. Hopefully the people’s movement will be able to put the safeguards back into the process.
 George Monbiot, a British writer, known for his environmental and political activism stated today that “climate delegates are not dealing with climate change”. He explained that this was do to contradictory policies of supply and demand. On the one hand we are working on policies to provide new non-polluting sources of renewable energy. At the same time we are trying to maximize supplies of fossil fuels thereby undermining the more expensive alternatives.
He said that science has shown that once we put CO2 into the atmosphere it is there for at least a thousand years and that once you reach a temperature it isn’t coming down. The 2-degree rise that scientists say we must stay below is based on the cumulative emissions of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere. When you look at the total amount of estimated coal and gas reserves we can only use 60% of them to stay under the 2-degree ceiling. The real question is what part of the oil, gas and coal reserves are going to be left in the ground. Furthermore total reserves of the primary fuels doesn’t take into account the even dirtier sources being looked at with greedy eyes, like tar sands, oil shale, coal gasification and other unconventional fossil fuels. People think, oil in the ground is like money in the bank but it is also a superhighway to destruction of life as we know it. “We need to eliminate supply side policies and totally replace fossil fuel with alternative sources of energy”, says George Monbiot. “The real problem we’re facing is too much fossil fuels!”
 The links between water, energy and climate are interrelated and complex. Energy production requires vast quantities of water, which calls for significant amounts of energy. The consequent CO2 emissions are major drivers of climate change. Changes in any of these sectors will effect the other and increase the impact on land use, food production and transportation. Climate change affects the availability and quality of our water and the types of energy supplies that are sustainable and economically feasible.
Like excluding biodiversity, leaving water problems out of the equations and negotiations at COP15 could lead to serious scientific, political and social problems. There are several reasons this. What is not fully appreciated is the hydrological cycle and how overusing water can speed desertification, which in turn increases the impact on the climate.
I talked to Maude Barlow, who is the Senior Advisor to the President of the UN General Assembly and head of the Council of Canadians. She said that there were three main reasons that water should be included in climate negotiations:
- Climate Change is having an enormous impact on water around the world, with melting glaciers, the rapid evaporation of surface water, the overuse of ground water, and disappearing snow packs, available water is rapidly disappearing.
- Water is not just a victim of climate change, it is also a major cause of it. This is because our massive displacement of water from where it is needed in watersheds to maintain a healthy hydrologic cycle through growing crops in deserts, selling it off or sending it into big cities where we dump it with garbage and then into the ocean. (170 trillion liters a year from land based water systems into the oceans)
- Climate refugees are water refugees. They are the first and most devastated face of climate change. Industrialized countries are trying to set the same market based responses to climate change to water in the form of privatization and commoditization of water.
Dr Riccardo Petrella of the World Political Forum’s Scientific Committee says that in spite of the massive water problems facing humanity today “the future is not finished.” We must include three goals among the priorities of the world policy for a sustainable and lasting development:
- The human universal right to water
- The protection and safeguard of water resources on the planet as a common good, human heritage and essential to the functioning of ecosystems.
- A public, integrated, effective and united government of the planet’s water.
Dr. Petrella believes that the inclusion of water in the COP15 negotiations would provide many advantages. Most importantly it would be a positive sign in favor of the revaluation of the role of world common goods at the top of the agenda of strategies for attenuation and adaptation to climate change. In other words it would put the wellbeing of the public above private interests and competitive world markets. Which would leader to greater security and an “eco-nomy of justice and shared welfare.
 Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) sounds like a good idea, but with closer inspection seems to reveal a number of problems. One of the concerns here in Copenhagen, especially amongst indigenous and poorer peoples, is that the strategies could have a disastrous impact on biodiversity and the lives and land of Indigenous Peoples in developing countries.
The involvement of Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities in the development of REDD strategies and projects differs significantly from country to country, however there are numerous key issues that arise. These issues include the lack of consultation and inclusion of indigenous peoples, no recognition of the involvement of women who will be most impacted, concerns with lack of biodiversity and increase of monocultures, protection of indigenous property rights, the threat to the world’s natural forests, and the fact that Market-based approaches to REDD are complex yet lucrative, a combination that discourages community participation but encourages fraud and corruption. For most of the people in these areas climate negotiations should not be focused on discussing REDD and other market-based mechanisms, but rather on the transition to a new production, distribution and consumption model based on agro-ecology, on a solidarity-based economic approach, and on a diversified and decentralized energy matrix capable of ensuring food security and sovereignty.
The Industrialized nations are pushing hard for this market based approach, but it is becoming another instrument for creating phantom wealth. Since mono crops and bio-fuels are included in the equation, the impact on biodiversity would further exacerbate the environmental problems. As money is involved in payment for carbon credits, it is likely that the people of the forest would get little or no return for their participation. Indigenous peoples have been protecting the forests for thousands of years. It is the richer nations that have been responsible for most of the destruction. Who would be best to leave as the stewards of the land, the people of the forest or big business? Can the market really be expected to take responsibility for the future of life on this planet? Seems to me like putting the fox in the house to guard the hens…
 Bill McKibben
Bill MicKibben is an American environmentalist, writer and founder of 350.org, an international climate change campaign. Today at Klimaforum09 he shared the history of the organization he founded and why 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 is such an important goal to reach. For the past 10,000 years the carbon count was pretty stable at 275 ppm, but with the advent of the Industrial revolution some 200 years ago it began to rise with the burning of fossil fuels. In 1950 it reached 315 ppm, in the 80’s American Climatologist, James Hansen testified in Congress that scientists were getting very worried about the increases. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 that it became clear to scientists that we had passed the danger line. That was the summer that ice melts across the Arctic reduced the ice pack by 25%, way ahead of all scientific projections.
At this time climatologist came to an agreement that any CO2 level greater 350ppm was going to have a severe if not disastrous impact on our climate. Currently we are at 390 ppm, well past the agreed upon redline set by the majority of the planets climatologists. It is estimated that some 300,000 people a year are already dying from climate change and with glaciers melting, increasingly violent storms, desertification, rising sea levels, dying coral reefs and the warming of the seas future trends do not look good for the planet. Looking at the promises being made by member countries at the UN Climate Change Conference and calculating the predictable outcome, we can expect CO2 to reach 770ppm by 2,100. Which basically means a dead planet for our children’s children.
Isn’t it time to ask ourselves what do we want? And what are we going to do to achieve it? 350.org is building a global movement to reduce CO2 to 350ppm and kept it there in order to maintain a healthy functioning planet. McKibben, sponsored the largest global demonstration in the history of the planet on October 24th, when people at over 5200 events in 181 countries united to call for strong climate action. Today he asked, “If people around the world can get organized for change and come together why can’t our leaders?
President Mohamed Nasheed
The President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, was released only a few years ago as a political prisoner and became the first democratically elected president. The Maldives are a group of 1,200 islands in Southern Asia in the Indian Ocean, south-southwest of India. They are an island nation acutely threatened by the rising sea levels. While they are small, here in Copenhagen they represent the little country that roared and have become one of the most vocal and stirring voices in Copenhagen.
In his speech President Nasheed stressed the power of people taking action on climate change, when he spoke to a packed audience at Klimaforum09, the alternative climate summit in Copenhagen, Monday evening. “The social movements have the power to save the planet from the effects of climate change. My message to you is to continue the process of movement building after the conference,” the President said. “We had no power, but our cause,” the President explained, before he went on to promise to turn his country into the first CO2 neutral society in the World in just ten years time. “Let us make the planetary goal of reaching 350 parts per million. We believe that if the Maldives can become carbon neutral so can larger countries.”
 This Sunday I attended a most beautiful ceremony at The Church of our Lady in Copenhagen. This church, which was originally built in the 12th C., has been burned down or destroyed 5 times in its history. But, the Danes continue to rebuild it as a testament to faith it self. When the English ships blew the bell tower off the church with their mighty cannons in 1807, they opened the doors again in 1821. And as the Queen of Denmark walked proudly by me singing with the congregation, I felt proud of my Danish heritage.
The capacity crowd was treated to music from 3 choirs; Church on the Rock, Aavaat, Greenlandic Choir and the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir. The procession of global leaders from around the world including Archbishop Desmond Tutu were followed by citizens from the far ends of the globe carrying three symbols of Climate Change: Glacier stones from Greenland, dried up maize from Africa, and bleached chorals from the Pacific Ocean. It was a grand opening that highlighted the growing concern for the reality of Climate Change…
What most moved me was the sermon of Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I would like to share some of the highlights of his talk. His talk was entitled “Love casts out fear”, and he said that our “confidence and fearlessness is built by seeing love at work through us.” He went on to say,” “We cannot show the proper kind of love for our fellow humans unless we also work at keeping the earth as a place that is a secure home for all people and for future generations… At the present moment we are faced with the consequences of generations of failure to love the earth as we should. We are also faced with the choices that might make those consequences less destructive than they would otherwise be.”
“Each of us as an individual, each international business concern, each national government, all of us have choices. We are not doomed to carry on in a downward spiral of the greedy, addictive, loveless behavior that has helped to bring us to this point. Yet, it seems that fear still rules our heats and imaginations. We have not yet been able to embrace the cost of the decisions we know we must make. We are afraid because we don’t know how we can survive without the comforts of our existing life style. We are afraid that new policies will be unpopular with the national electorate. We are afraid that younger and more vigorous economies will take advantage of us. Or we are afraid that older historically dominant economies will use the excuse of ecological responsible to deny us our right to proper and just development. There is in a word no shortage of excellent excuses for turning away from decisions that will mean real change. But, at least let us be honest about where they come from — not necessarily irrational fear, not even necessarily purely selfish fear, but fear all the same. So long as that dominates our calculations we are stepping back from love. Love for the Creation itself… Love for one another and for the generations still unborn who need us to do whatever we can to guarantee a stable, productive and balanced world to live in.”
“Love casts out fear. The truth is that what is most likely to get us to take the right decisions for our global future is love. The temptation is to underline fear so as to dissuade one another of the urgency of the situation. Things are so bad, so threatening, that we have to do something and indeed there are moments when we might think, rather bitterly, that the human race is not frightened enough by the prospect of what it has served up for itself, but this is to drive out one sickness by another. That kind of fear can simply paralyze us as we all know. It can make us feel that the problem is too great and we may as well pull up the bed covers and wait for disaster. What’s more it can tempt us into simply blaming one another or waiting for someone else to make the first move, because we don’t trust them. We need more than that to make life-giving change to happen. And that is what we are here to say today…”
The Archbishop completed his sermon by asking us two questions: first, “how do we show we love God’s creation and secondly how can we learn to trust one another within a world with limited resources. There can be no trust without justice, knowing that my neighbor is there for me when I face insecurity or risk. How can we build international institutions that make sure the resources get to where they are needed? That for example green taxes will deliver more security for the disadvantaged and transitions and economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope. Love casts out fear. He concluded by saying, “Don’t be afraid. Act for the sake of love.”
In the end we followed the Queen and procession out of the church, lit candles in hand, hope in our hearts and urgency to act in our minds.
 Saturday Climate Demonstrations
An estimated crowd of over 100,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Copenhagen on Saturday, the largest gathering in this city since the end of WW2. South African Spiritual leader, Desmond Tutu inspired the crowd with a call to the rich nations to pay their debt saying, if you are able to bail out the banks, surly you can spend a few billions to stop climate change. “Wake up rich countries! We, the world expect a real deal.” He then handed UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer the countdown to CO2penhagen petition with 500,000 signatures.
Yvo de Boer responded by saying, “I’ve just come from the Bella Center and they’re always talking about the financial crisis. But this is a moral crisis, which could result in a global climate crisis. The demonstrators then began a 3-hour march to the center where a candle light vigil was held.
Arrests
Unfortunately the mostly peaceful march was disrupted when a small group of people dressed in black, called Never Trust a Cop, started digging up cobblestones and throwing them at the stock exchange along the route. Approximately a 1000 people were arrested as the large police force encircled both offenders and innocent bystanders, arresting them under a new law, which allows them to arrest anyone suspicious and hold them for up to 12 hours. May innocent people had to sit on the frozen ground with their hands bound behind them for 3-4 hours. On Sunday another 230 people were arrested when they tried to block the harbor here.
Heads of State Arrive Tomorrow
Tomorrow 110 heads of state arrive tomorrow to begin the final negotiations on and the draft of a global climate change treaty. The big question is will it be a political nonbinding treaty, as the richer, more powerful nations want or will there be a legally binding treaty as the majority of the poorer more impacted nations want?
Further complicating matters is the issue of climate debt and reparation by the industrialized countries towards the poorer nations. Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain states that “industrialized countries are responsible for over 70% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution, they have incurred a debt that must be repaid!” This topic make it even more difficult to leave Copenhagen with a legally binding treaty.
 Most people in the US don’t really think about where their food comes. The average distance the food in our super markets travels is 1,500 miles and the stores maintain an inventory of 2-3 days for normal times. During the past decade our food system has grown increasingly fragile due primarily to the affects of climate change and peak oil. During the latter part of the 20th century world hunger and malnutrition had been decreasing, but since the mid nineties it is on the rise again. Currently it is estimated that a billion children go to bed hungry every night.
Between 2006-08 food prices soared with wheat, rice and soybean prices tripling. The current recession has temporally brought prices down, but here in Copenhagen you can really feel the impact of the falling value of the dollar. Food price increases in the past have been caused by isolated events with production returning to previous levels or increasing. The current situation is the product of long-term trends, which will continue to limit food and increase demand. These trends include loss of topsoil, desertification, water depletion, soil nutrient depletion and erosion. The miracle of GMO seeds is also proving to be a threat to the future of food by reducing biodiversity, creating super weeds and bugs, decreasing soil capacity, and presenting yet unknown threats to animal and human health. Lab tests on rats have shown serious damage to digestive systems and cancers.
While this has been happening the global demand for food has been increasing. World population is increasing by 79 million annually. The profitable bio fuel market is taking land away from food production. While the US is experiencing an explosion of obesity, a large percentage of global populations are facing starvation and malnutrition. The growing demand for meat is also threatening food availability as it takes about 10 pounds of grain and enormous amounts of water to produce 1 pound of meat. Also, factory farming of livestock produces about 40% of the greenhouse gases.
Another disturbing trend of the many countries that can no longer feed their people is the acquisition of farmland in other countries. According to World Watch Institute:
• Libya plans to farm wheat on 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) in Ukraine
• South Korea signed deals to grow wheat on 690,000 hectares in Sudan
• Chinese firm secured 2.8 million hectares in Democratic Republic of the Congo for palm oil
• In all, some 50 large agreements worth $20-30 billion are being pursued
These land shopping trends portend a major threat to global security and international cooperation, especially since the acquisitions are often made in already impoverished countries. Further exasperating the situation is the idea that some of the countries plan to bring in foreign farm laborers.
Historically food scarcity has led to the collapse of civilizations like the Mayan, Sumerian, and numerous other early civilizations. What can we do to avert a collapse of our earth systems and protect life on this planet? Of course there are not guarantees, but there are a few things that would help.
- Eat and grow locally produced organic food.
- Ask yourself what are the food dollars I am spending supporting?
- Reduce your intake of meat.
- Write your political leaders and support small farmers instead of large agribusiness. Ask them to stop farm subsidies that are mono-crops and petro chemical intensive.
- Compost
- Spend time in nature and reconnect with the natural system of mother earth. She is talking – we are not listening.
- Make a list for yourself of how you can support food security.
Food and water security is one of our biggest threats to civilization. We can turn things around. All it really takes in a shift in consciousness. It all starts with you and I communicating, educating ourselves and acting on behalf of future generations…
Tibet
Global warming has had a devastating impact on Tibet which will have huge consequences for the fresh water supply in most of Asia, a representative from the Tibet exile government warns. Tibet has the worlds third largest ice mass in the form of the many glaciers and is the world’s largest fresh water reservoir. Many of the large Asian rivers come from Tibet. Rising temperatures in Tibet will make a huge impact on billions of Asian’s who need access to clean drinking water. The organization “Third Pole” in Copenhagen is pushing forward an agreement to secure the Tibeten plateau. Its not just Tibetan glaciers that climate changes affecting, it is also upsetting the monsoon weather system. The Chinese have begun to tap more water from the Tibetan rivers with massive tunnels redirecting the water to China to compensate for their own diminishing water supply.
 Pacific Island states
The Island state Kirbati, risks being swallowed up by the ocean and the people are speaking out. Many of the Pacific Ocean island states face enormous risk of not existing in 90 years. The Kirbati states are asking that an ambitious plan be put forth to reduce CO2 emissions. They cannot withstand more extreme weather and water levels rising more than 80 cm more according to the UN climate panel.
They are asking. along with other 40 countries in the Alliance of small island states (AOSIS) that are vulnerable to climate changes that the global emission of CO2 be topped in 2015 so that the temperature does not rise more than 1.5 degrees centigrade rather than the 2 degrees currently proposed.
Thailand
Part of Thailand’s main rice growing region is under severe economic and environmental threat from climate change which must be addressed by world leaders at a UN summit, Greenpeace said Monday. A study by the activist group revealed the dangers faced by the Bangpakong River Basin, which supports around 1.25 million people who rely heavily on the region’s fertile soils for crops, especially rice, fruit and fishing. The study was released days before Bangkok holds another major meeting on climate change.
The 7,900 square-kilometre (3050 square mile) area in eastern Thailand is “one of the most productive river basins the world” and a prominent source of jasmine rice, Greenpeace Southeast Asia campaign manager Tara Buakamsri said. But the basin, which empties into the Gulf of Thailand, “is threatened with severe economic and environmental impacts due to flooding, drought, saltwater intrusion and coastal erosion caused by climate change”, Greenpeace said. “Local rural communities stand to suffer most from climate change impacts,” said Ply Pirom, a campaigner for the group, adding that the “worst impacts are yet to come”….
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May your heart be filled with eternal love, grace and compassion for all life…
