Published on Saturday, September 3, 2011 by ClimateStoryTellers.org

Tar Sands Action organized a civil disobedience sit–in at The White House to oppose construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that began on August 20 and will culminate in a big rally on September 3rd. On August 29 I joined 60 religious leaders and other fellow protestors. I was arrested that day. But before I was handcuffed, I addressed fellow activists who had gathered outside The White House with these words:

Let us return for a moment to the election night in 2008. As I sat in our farmhouse in Pennsylvania, watching Barack Obama’s victory speech, I turned my head aside so my wife would not see the tears in my eyes. I suspect that millions cried. It was a great day for America.

We had great hopes for Barack Obama — perhaps our dreams were unrealistic — he is only human. But it is appropriate, it is right, in a period honoring Martin Luther King, to recall the hopes and dreams of that evening.

We had a dream — that the new President would understand the intergenerational injustice of human–made climate change — that he would recognize our duty to be caretakers of creation, of the land, of the life on our planet — and that he would give these matters the priority that our young people deserve.

We had a dream — that the President would understand the commonality of solutions for energy security, national security and climate stability — and that he would exercise hands–on leadership, taking the matter to the public, avoiding backroom crippling deals with special interests.

We had a dream — that the President would stand as firm as Abraham Lincoln when he faced the great moral issue of slavery — and, like Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, he would speak with the public, enlisting their support and reassuring them.

Perhaps our dreams were unrealistic. It is not easy to find an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill. But we will not give up. There can be no law or regulation that stops us from acting on our dreams. Read the complete Post.

We risk losing our country to permanent droughts and extreme natural disasters.

Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images
Scientists have been predicting for years that global warming would produce record-breaking extremes on either side of the thermometer. This past winter, America survived its so-called snowpocalypse, and now that summer has arrived, we’ve got a heat dome.

If you’re wondering what the hell that is — it’s just another obvious climate change assassin that we could see coming miles away, if some of us were paying better attention. If you’re looking for a more technical definition, according to National Geographic a heat dome is a seasonal high-pressure system of dense hot air, albeit one with a highly unusual (for now) strength and size, stretching one million square miles from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast. It’s already killed a couple dozen people, adding to a swelling death toll resulting from recent tornadoes and floods that bedeviled the nation this year.

It conforms easily to the ravages of Kevin Borden and Susan Cutter’s so-called Death Map — academically known as “Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States” — which in 2008 peered into climate change’s crystal ball and found intensifying natural disasters capable of regionally reshaping the nation with every catastrophe. According to University of South Carolina scholars Cutter and Borden, heat and drought were the main death-dealers, along with extreme summer and winter events. Borden now works for homeland security risk management specialist Digital Sandbox. If his post-academic career choice doesn’t confirm it outright, then recent warnings from the United Nations Environment Program should: These global warming nightmares, not domestic or international terrorists, are the most dangerous threat to global security in existence. Read the complete Post.

As many of you already know, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in jail yesterday for defending thousands of acres of pristine wilderness in Utah. The Bush administration was illegally selling off land to the oil and gas companies. DeChristopher stopped them. I am deeply moved by his courage.
Vandy July 27, 2011

Excerpt – “Mr Huber claims that the seriousness of my offense was that I “obstructed lawful government proceedings.” But the auction in question was not a lawful proceeding….

The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people. The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the more that power begins to shrivel. The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today. And neither will I. I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future. Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience. Nothing that happens here today will change that. I don’t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don’t have that authority.

You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine alone…I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false. I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government. I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience. If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.

You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path. You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing. You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM. You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.”
Tim DeChristopher – July 26, 2011 Utah courthouse

Follow the story at Peaceful Uprising

By John Vidal
Monday 13 June 2011 19.59 BST

Drought zones have been declared across much of England and Wales, yet Scotland has just registered its wettest-ever May. The warmest British spring in 100 years followed one of the coldest UK winters in 300 years. June in London has been colder than March. February was warm enough to strip on Snowdon, but last Saturday it snowed there.

Welcome to the climate rollercoaster, or what is being coined the “new normal” of weather. What was, until quite recently, predictable, temperate, mild and equable British weather, guaranteed to be warmish and wettish, ensuring green lawns in August, now sees the seasons reversed and temperature and rainfall records broken almost every year. When Kent receives as much rain (4mm) in May as Timbuktu, Manchester has more sunshine than Marbella, and soils in southern England are drier than those in Egypt, something is happening.

Sober government scientists at the centre for hydrology and ecology are openly using words like “remarkable”, “unprecedented” and “shocking” to describe the recent physical state of Britain this year, but the extremes we are experiencing in 2011 are nothing to the scale of what has been taking place elsewhere recently. Read the complete Post.

By Bill McKibben
Published: May 23
The Washington Post

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected. Read the complete Post.

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Reuters reports that, “A string of Arab uprisings are giving a foretaste of the likely havoc that climate change will cause without greater effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a British foreign ministry official warned. …’Treat this as a prequel, because if we can’t remove some of those upward pressures on resource stresses then crises that are difficult to deal with when they happen will become more likely,’ said John Ashton, special representative for climate change at Britain’s foreign ministry.”

“Soaring food prices, stoked by Russia’s drought last year and subsequent ban on wheat exports, were an additional trigger in the popular revolts across North Africa and the Middle East mostly blamed on public frustration with autocratic rule. …(Ashton) used the example of food riots in Mozambique after the Russian wheat export ban. …A Libyan uprising follows revolts which toppled the long-time rulers of Tunisia and Egypt and threatened entrenched dynasties including Bahrain.” Read the complete Post.

Blogpost by Rex Weyler – January 14, 2011 at 22:14
Deep Green is Rex Weyler’s monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace’s past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.

January 2011

“Ecology is a subversive subject.”

Paul Sears, BioScience, July 1964

Last November, British television’s Channel 4 aired ‘What the Green Movement Got Wrong’, attacking environmentalism while supporting nuclear power, DDT, genetically modified crops and geoengineering. The diatribe was laced with bias, misrepresentation and outright errors.

One of the show’s contributors, Adam Werbach, is a former member of Greenpeace International’s Board of Directors. Werbach reported that the Channel 4 producers misled him about the content of the documentary, misrepresented his ideas and used his comments to support points of view he opposes.

Willing contributors included Florence Wambugu, lobbyist for biotech giants Monsanto and DuPont, and Stewart Brand, consultant for ExxonMobil, Cargill, Dow Chemical, General Electric, and Bechtel – a virtual Who’s Who of socially predatory and ecologically-destructive companies. Read the complete Post.

December 29, 2010, 6:15 am

It may seem a strange time to say so, but 2010 remains on pace to be the hottest or second-hottest year ever recorded, according to NASA:

By email, Reto Ruedy of NASA elaborates:
… the 2010 mean will most likely be 0.65 C [above the 1951-80 mean], statistically indistinguishable from 2005 (0.63 C), and barely distinguishable from 2007 (0.58 C), 2009 (0.57 C), 1998 and 2002 (0.56 C), 2003 and 2006
(0.55 C), but definitely warmer than 2004 and 2001 (0.47 C) and 2008 (0.43 C).

All other years are below 0.4 C and all years before 1981 are below 0.2 C above the 1951-1980 mean.

Here’s hoping Congress takes some action in 2011.

By Miriam B. Weiner
Sent by Ross Moster – VPOE and Village Vancouver
Posted on Yahoo! Travel

Many of us take for granted the notion that all of our beloved cities will be around for centuries to come. However, cities around the world seem to be vying for the title of “The Next Atlantis.” Shaky foundations and encroaching seas are posing significant threats to some of the world’s largest and most beloved cities. When planning your next vacation, keep in mind that some of the world’s favorite destinations have a bit of a ticking clock on them. Here are seven major cities that are preparing to take the plunge.

#7: Bangkok, Thailand

Thailand’s capital is sinking — and sinking fast. However, unlike other cities on our list, a shoddy foundation isn’t necessarily to blame. Resting on the Chao Phraya River — which flows into the Bay of Bangkok about 30 miles south of the city center — this colossal settlement is more likely to drown than sink. Experts now say that this mouthwatering foodie destination — along with the dozens of beautiful temples found here — may be under water in as little as seven years. Read the complete Post.