Armageddon or Not?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Ron

Tar Sands Extraction

Are we approaching another Armageddon? A well-recognized naturalist Professor at Harvard, E.O. Wilson, say we are. He says, “it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.”

The last one was around 65 million years ago — that was the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs could have named that one they’d have called it a Global Cooling event.

Some articles and other papers I’ve read over the past several years point out that there are 50,000 species disappearing off the face of the Earth every year. It’s never happened before, but there is now one species on this planet which is slowly trying to kill the very planet they live on. Yes, it’s us — the species who started walking upright on our hind legs about 200,000 years ago.

There have been records kept over the past 10,000 years or so, but the era which bears a careful good look is the modern industrial era. If you look even deeper in this history, you’ll see that the 20th century is the most amazing. During the 20th century alone our global population quadrupled, the world economy grew 14-fold, and industrial output went up 40-fold. How did we manage to do all this in such a short time? We fed it with a 13-fold increase in energy use compared to the already industrialized 19th century.

Let’s see — what else did we do during that time? We destroyed about a quarter of the world’s forests — we wiped out thousands upon thousands of species so we could convert our nature into goods we could sell — and to make more room for the increasing numbers of people. We also needed to have more room to grow products and animals to feed ourselves. Our human explosion has upped our air pollution five-times which in turn upped our emissions of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide by about 17-fold.

All this expansion has taken an enormous amount of energy. Here’s an interesting statistic: “Since 1970, the rate of energy building up within the biosphere is on a par with exploding 2.5 of the bombs that levelled Hiroshima every second, or 216,000 atomic bombs a day, every day, for the last four decades. Minus the radiation, of course.”

Since I’m talking about reengineering the planet — here’s one factor which, if you’ve been reading this blog for the past few posts, really has me disturbed. Yes, it’s the Syncrude mine in Canada’s Athabasca tar sands. (See photo above) This one project alone involves displacing some 30 billion tons of earth — more than twice the total tonnage of sediment carried down all the world’s rivers in a year.

Whether we like to admit or not, we, the human beings on this planet, are not the dominant force of nature on the planet. The world is currently undergoing a very rapid loss of biodiversity, comparable with the great mass extinction events that have previously occurred only five times in the Earth’s history. We are pushing the envelope of our planetary boundaries – the boundaries which have kept us safe for the past 10,000 years. We humans are overwhelming the Earth we live on. Even though we don’t want to face the reality of the changes we have to make in order to continue to survive, we can’t continue to procrastinate. We can no longer afford the luxury of denial.

“Now wait a minute,” I can hear you saying! We have an economy in crisis mode — we have huge unemployment problems — we have this phenomenal debt we need to take care of — we don’t have the time to be worrying about climate change right now. I mean, so what if in the time you’ve been reading this article another species has been driven into extinction.

Nearly all of the physical sciences have documented how serious this threat to our survival truly is — yet the wider global community has just not responded with anything approaching a solution — we either don’t want to face it — or we are just not able to do so. We know there is a way to move toward fixing this problem, yet we seem to have dropped even a pretense of trying. Why is that?

I know my first reaction to this question is to find a lot of things other than myself to blame. Things like, the energy industry propaganda which we’re hearing and seeing on our television ads every day — or the cynical corporate control of the media — or the way the energy lobbyists are buying off our politicians.

It could be those things do add to the problem — but when we really put our minds to it we can see it’s in our own psychology where the problem lies. Our brains don’t function well in responding to slow-moving disasters. We’re hard-wired to to respond to immediate threats — the kinds of things which will evoke a ‘fight or flight’ response. We’re not so interested in what the costs might be in the future — we’re more tuned into the present gains. We, or our media, or our political structure, don’t stay focused for long on abstract threats or things which might be happening sometime down the road. This is especially true when it involves changing the way we live. I believe that is what is involved here.

But, as I said when I first started this blog — if we don’t deal with this climate change problem now, these other problems which are at the top of our priority lists really won’t matter.

24 Hours of Reality

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Ron

Dear friends,

Have you been noticing the weather getting wilder where you live, and in the news around the world?

350.org - Climate Change

Well, we wanted to share with you an exciting global event from our partners that will help connect the dots between the wild weather we’re seeing, climate change, and why it’s so important we push the planet beyond fossil fuels.

The event is called 24 Hours of Reality at http://climaterealityproject.org/– it’s happening THIS WEDNESDAY, Sep 14th, and it will be a 24-hour worldwide marathon all about the reality of the climate crisis. Around the world, from New York City to South Africa to the Solomon Islands, people will use the power of the Internet to present their stories of living with climate change, and make clear the connection between extreme weather and the corporate carbon pollution that’s changing our climate.

All the presentations, which will be in multiple languages, and in every single time zone, will be streamed live at http://ClimateRealityProject.org.

Be sure to scroll down at the above site and watch the video too.

Many of us within the 350 movement already get the basic science and reality of climate change — yet we sometimes struggle with getting our friends to really grasp the urgency. This event is a great opportunity to help your friends see why you care so much (plus, you can always pick up a new communication tip or two).

The timing of 24 Hours of Reality couldn’t be more perfect — it’s just 10 days before Moving Planet (http://www.moving-planet.org/), the global day of bike rallies and on-the-ground events to call for climate action. It’s that one-two kick of awareness and activism that’s got me really excited.

At the end of many of the Climate Reality Presentations there will be a plug for joining Moving Planet actions — so we can all move together from knowledge to action.

We hope you’ll be watching Wednesday too!

Onwards,

Ron Rink

Climate Change and Food

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Ron

With all the weather events happening here and around the world, it set me to thinking more about what effect these events might have on another aspect of our Climate Change discussion – our ability to provide food.

Corn in the field

In the United States we are often considered to be the supplier of last resort for places in the world where hunger is a reality. It’s one of those things we seem to take for granted – we’ve always been able to come up with plenty of grain, meat, vegetables, fruits and other crops, haven’t we?

What about now – should we be thinking more seriously about what the Climate Change problem might be doing to our ability to continue to provide? Just considering corn, soybeans and wheat, we are the world’s leading exporter of these items.

But, just how vulnerable are we now?

In the Midwest, many farmers are growing more and more skeptical about the future. They are now making subtle changes to the way they farm to adapt to the changing climate. The extreme events – drought, floods, heat, cold – are causing farmers to make adjustments to deal with the risk of fires and pest and pathogen outbreaks which could have a direct effect on food production.

Even though framers will pooh-pooh discussions about Global Warming, they are using larger machines to allow for faster and denser seeding when the excessive rains get started earlier in the spring. Since frosts seem to be coming a little later each year, they are leaving the crops in the fields longer for better drying.

Farmers in the Corn Belt are seeing higher humidity levels which lead to higher night-time summer temperatures which have cut down on their yields. Corn likes the days to be hot, but it wants night temps to be cooler. Farmers in parts of Texas are seeing huge reservoirs dry up and crops wither in the fields because of the drought. There just aren’t any work-around’s for this problem.

The government is getting in the picture lately – which is good in some ways. There are grants coming from the U.S. Agriculture Department to study crops and climate change, and their relationship to each other. There are grants to look at greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane from livestock and carbon dioxide from growing crops.

The primary point of this is to stress the importance of realizing just how serious the changing climate can be on things like our survival.

Tar Sands and Health

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Ron

The following article was sent out by Common Dreams — if anyone believes a break in a tar sands oil pipeline won’t have consequences — or that tar sands oil is no different than any other oil, then you need to read this.
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Published on Thursday, September 1, 2011 by the Michigan Messenger

Toxicologist: Oil Spill in Kalamazoo River Far More Toxic Than Admitted — Illnesses are common to all spills, she says

by Todd A. Heywood

Nicholas Forte has spent the last year with an array of health issues. Headaches. Migraines. Nausea. Breathing problems so severe they would land him in the hospital.

“We have no idea what it is,” the 22-year-old Battle Creek resident told Michigan Messenger. “Then it escalated to seizures.”

And while the seizures landed him in the hospital — at one point stopping his heart and his breathing — doctors are at a loss to understand why. Tests indicate none of the expected patterns for epilepsy.

Finding out why the formerly healthy young man had suddenly fallen ill drove him and his family to listen to Riki Ott, an environmental toxicologist who has been tracking the health impacts of oil spills on human beings since her home was impacted by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Ott was in Battle Creek Wednesday night at the invitation of local activists.

And when Forte asked Ott about his symptoms, she nodded an affirmative.

“We see that in 16-year olds in the Gulf,” she said. And Forte was not the only person she may have given much needed answers to. Nearly 50 people gathered to talk about headaches, nausea, burning eyes, memory loss and rashes. There were young and old, African-Americans and whites, rural residents and city dwellers, all with one thing in common — they live by the Kalamazoo River and were exposed to last year’s Enbridge Energy Partners Lakehead Pipeline 6B.

For Ott, it was a litany list of symptoms and voices of frustration she has heard from Alaska to South Korea to the Gulf Coast and now in Calhoun county. And Calhoun, she says, represents exposures to both tar sands and lighter oils, each with its own chemical make ups and attendant toxins.

“You’ve got the worst of two worlds. You’re getting a fully double whammy,” she says of the Cold Lake Crude Oil. “Peoples’ health problems (from the Enbridge spill) are identical to the Gulf.”

Ott says that studies about health impacts conducted by health officials since last summer are based on 40-year old science.

“We used to be able to use a thermometer and say, ‘yep, you’ve got a fever,’ but we didn’t have an understanding of how that worked on a cellular level,” she said. “Now, we have the tools and the ability to see how these chemicals impact us on a cellular level.”

Ott noted that just this July a peer-reviewed study of oil spill exposure found the same set of symptoms in each location. They are the identical to the ones being seen in Calhoun county. She also noted that the studies have begun to identify toxicity to DNA, as well as reproductive health impacts. She says many of the chemicals of concern to occupational and environmental health officials have been shown to impact fetuses in the first trimester.

Studies by the MDCH released this summer have indicated no risk of long term health effects. The National Wildlife Federation condemned the Aug. 17 report, calling it incomplete.

“By their own admission, multiple chemicals have not been fully tested. No doctor would look at a sick patient, skip doing a full diagnosis, and declare him fit as a fiddle. Officials are prematurely drawing conclusions about the risks of tar sands oil to human health.” said Beth Wallace with the Great Lakes Regional Center of the National Wildlife Federation. “Residents at the meeting, including myself, were extremely skeptical and frustrated when hearing these conclusions from officials with MDCH. A complete study on the make-up of tar sands oil needs to be conducted before we can begin to truly understand the impacts to humans, wildlife and our environment.”

Ott had not had a chance to fully read the report before an interview with Michigan Messenger or the public meeting, but said this determination and realization that specific chemicals of concern have been excluded from a review is not uncommon. Nor is it uncommon for people to be diagnosed with colds and boils, month after month.

The reason, she says, is twofold. First, the doctors are unlikely to be fully versed on the issue of what she calls chemical illnesses. Second, she says, even if they are aware, most insurance companies have no billing code for the diagnosis. This means that if a doctor issues a diagnosis of chemical illness, it is unlikely an insurance company will pay the doctor for the care and time put into making that clinical diagnosis.

Part of the issue, Ott says, is that the science of exposure concerns and health issues is based on research conducted in the 1970s on volatile organic chemicals or VOCs. Those are the chemicals that easily evaporate into the air and can be smelled at long distances. They include things like benzene. But science has science developed a body of literature exploring the impacts of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. She says that while both chemicals may have persisted at significantly lower levels than considered unsafe, they accumulate in the body over the course of continued exposure.

She likens the human body to a rain barrel, able to safely overwhelm and eject only a certain level of toxins. When that threshold is reached, the body begins to “park” the chemicals in various places in the body until it is free from the continued exposure and can clear them. The more exposure, the more accumulation, the more chemical illness, she says.

On top of this, different members of the community are more at risk to chemical illness, like children, the elderly, African-Americans, those with chronic health issues and the poor.

“The medical community knows this,” she says. “The public policies have not been adjusted to reflect the new science because the petrochemical lobby is so strong that it is blocking the health consequences of our continued oil use.”

Ott says sick people are a problem for oil companies and the government.

“It’s not just a simple pipeline break or a rig blow out. It’s America’s energy future, the politicians have no exit strategy off oil,” she says. “So they minimize the costs in sick people, lost babies, it doesn’t matter. That’s what we’re seeing. Battle Creek is a pawn in this giant bid for Alberta tar sands. It doesn’t matter that it happened in Battle Creek … there will be countless communities in the future. What is starting to change is that — after witnessing this over two decades now — this is a decision that is not going to be made by the politicians, our energy policy, it’s going to be the people. Fracking, tar sands, there is a moral obligation for future life and immediate public health that we do something different. That will give enough transformation to bring the politicians along.”

24 Hours of Reality

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Ron

Hello …

Would you travel to a remote village in Pakistan to give a presentation about climate change? That’s just part of the daily routine for Asif Iqbal, one of the outstanding people who will be giving presentations around the world during 24 Hours of Reality.

Beginning on September 14, Asif will take part in our 24-hour event that will bring the world together to address reality. He’ll be one of a diverse group of Climate Presenters who will tell the truth about climate change in multiple languages, in an event live streamed around the world.

Asif has lived an extraordinary life. He grew up in Pakistan in a remote, mountainous region, and has been passionate about environmental protection from an early age. Through his work at World Vision Pakistan, he helps share the truth about climate change and motivate others to take action. In 2009, he was trained as a Climate Presenter by our Chairman, former Vice President Al Gore.

Asif told us he feels a “moral responsibility to do whatever I can, even a little thing, to protect the beauty of my homeland, to educate people, to reach influencers and to motivate others for action.”

You can learn more about Asif and our other Climate Presenters when you view our Climate Reality Blog. Browse through interviews with our Presenters to read about where they are from and why they’re taking part in 24 Hours of Reality.

You’ll find stories about people like Nitin Raikar, who helped protect the environment while serving in the Indian Army. Or Rachel Brown, who leads a network of businesses committed to sustainable development in New Zealand.

I hope you’ll be joining us for 24 Hours of Reality beginning on September 14. Until then, learn more about the people who will make that day a special event. Read about our Climate Presenters on the Climate Reality Blog.

http://climaterealityproject.org/blog/

Thanks,

Ron Rink

Why is the Tar Sands Pipeline Such an Important Issue?

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Ron

Here’s what Bill McKibben had to say about it on Keith Olbermann’s program.

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/08/24

Peace,

Ron Rink

Day 4 Photos

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Ron

These photos include shots of Tantoo Cardinal and Margot Kidder getting arrested. Tantoo was in Dances With Wolves and Legends of the Fall and others. Margot Kidder was Lois Lane.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2350449245210.138415.1369470012

Hope the link works —

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Ron

I truly do plan to do some of my own writing here, but when articles like the following are showing up in my emails, I have to share them with you. This one is by Jane Hamsher, of FireDogLake, who was arrested in front of the White House on Saturday along with about 75 or 80 others, including Bill McKibben and Dan Choi. Here’s the article:

Peace,
Ron Rink
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By: Jane Hamsher Sunday August 21, 2011 1:32 pm

Yesterday I was arrested along with Dan Choi, Bill McKibben and John Chandley (Scarecrow). I was released last night, but Dan, Bill and Scarecrow are all still in jail. They have been told they will remain there until we all go to court on Monday at 2pm.

The Tar Sands organizers were negotiating with park police for days in advance of the 2 week sit-in. They had been told repeatedly that they could expect that protesters would be given $100 tickets and released, because that’s their standard operating procedure. They repeated that to the organizers shortly before the sit-in started yesterday. And that is what normally happens — Dan Ellsberg was released after paying what amounts to a parking ticket after the last two White House protests he participated in, an anti-war protest in December 2010 and the other on behalf of Bradley Manning in March of this year.

But after we arrived at the Park Police station, we were immediately told that we would be held until Monday when the courts open, so we would be in jail for two nights. The same park police claimed that this was their standard operating procedure (it’s not).

All 65 of us were crammed into four 6 x 8 holding cells (we measured) with a toilet at the end. I was held with other women who took part in the demonstration. There were more men than women, so some of the men were held in the sally port because of the overcrowding. But that meant there were about 14 women in my room, with a few rotating out periodically for booking, making phone calls, etc.

The park police took all our jackets and sweaters away, which left a bunch of women in spaghetti straps. They said they were worried we’d hang ourselves if they let us keep them. Then they cranked up the air conditioning so everyone was really cold.

We asked for something warm so they brought us 3 yellow styrofoam sheets. They said that was all they had. So we ripped them in two and rotated them with two women sharing them at a time, but when someone had to pee, we all turned our backs and used the sheets as sort of a wall so they’d have some privacy.

One woman had to poop and she just really did not want to do that in a 6 x 8 cell with 13 other women in the room. She asked the guard if he’d let her do it in the restroom down the hall. He wouldn’t. So we asked if she could go join some of the men who were being held in the sally port where there was a porta potty, or if we could be taken there while she used the one in the cell, but he refused. We all said we didn’t care if she did what she needed to do, but she was so uncomfortable she just couldn’t.

The guards were actually very nice to us and we appreciated that. But they had their orders, and their orders were to lie to us and humiliate us. We all made the best of it.

After we had been there for about six hours, they stopped processing us. They told us their computer system was down, and they couldn’t process anybody else. Then they started taking the local people out one by one and telling us that we would be released within a half hour because of the computer system malfunction, but we were ultimately put back in the cells and continued to wait.

The story, of course, was bullshit. One of the local women they released, Angela, had already been processed. So a computer system malfunction, real or imagined, had nothing to do with it.

When I was waiting to get my property returned to me, I quickly stepped over to the small window to the holding cell where Dan and Scarecrow were being held. I waved at Scarecrow, who gave me the thumb’s up. Dan started making faces in the window. We had been able to hear Dan’s laughter all afternoon coming from the men’s cell. He worked hard to keep everyone in good spirits.

They also opened up Bill McKibben’s cell for a moment while I was standing there. He hollered “Jane, make sure everyone writes about this!”

A few minutes later Dan was brought out of his cell, and I got to give him a big hug before they pulled him away.

“Any comment?” I said.

“Don’t take no shit!” said Dan as they hauled him off to the DC jail, where they are all still being held.

When I got outside, the 350 organizers said that only about 10-15 of those who were arrested were being released, so approximately 50-55 are in jail until Monday. They said that the Park Police told them that they were keeping the others as a “lesson” that would “discourage” anyone who wanted to take part in the daily sit-ins over the course of the next two weeks. But the system isn’t set up to handle a two-week wave of demonstrators, so they believe they had to figure out a reason to let some people go. The reason that was chosen assured that Bill McKibben would remain in jail, and the organizing would be disrupted.

I had an amazing time yesterday getting to share the experience of standing up to corporate dominance of our political system, and the insatiable desire of oil companies to rape our environment at all costs, with people I care about tremendously. I also got to know a fabulous group of women, who are inspirational for their principled commitment to stopping the construction of the pipeline. Most of them came from far away to take part in this action, many from Canada, and this arrest may mean they won’t be allowed in the country again.

The night before the sit-in we went to St. Stephens Church for a training with Bill and others from 350. I don’t remember who it was, but one of the organizers mentioned that standing up to the oil companies right now — and to corporate America in general — is to us what standing up to King George was to the colonists.

That stuck with me. I am happy that we were able to protest in front of the White House and that whatever happened as a consequence, it was probably going to be a matter of inconvenience more than anything else. I’m not sure how much longer that will be true. The growing economic despair of many Americans will only get worse with the austerity measures being pushed on us, and there are signs that both the surveillance state and the police state are preparing to respond with force. It is unquestionable that this White House has only accelerated the rapidly advancing criminalization of free speech.

When Barack Obama was elected, he said that the earth would now begin to heal. Yet last week, he and Michelle took separate jets only a few hours apart to Martha’s Vineyard. There may well have been a good reason for that. But it just goes to show that even on a symbolic front, there has been no commitment to end our dependence on oil.

The decision to allow the construction of the pipeline rests with the President alone. He cannot blame Congressional gridlock or partisan intransigence. The pressure on him to allow its construction is no doubt fierce — the oil companies will claim that it will create jobs and balance our trade deficit. Yet whatever money goes back into the economy in the form of jobs will once again be extracted from the wallets of taxpayers, because that’s what the oil companies are good at orchestrating. And any reduction in the trade deficit will be achieved at the cost of cracking open the largest known deposit of carbon on earth, second only to Saudi Arabia.

Far from ending our dependence on oil, the President will be doubling down on it by allowing the construction of this pipeline.

This is not a right-left fight. And it’s also bigger than just a climate change fight. If we want to throw off the corporate overlords who push our elected officials around like pieces on a chess board, the time is now — while we still have some freedom to resist.

Yesterday, when we were sitting in front of the White House waiting to be handcuffed and taken to jail, Dan Choi said we were all “flaming firebaggers.” And together with John Chandley and Bill McKibben, he is spending tonight in jail again so that the government can send a message to you on behalf of the oil companies. They don’t want any more flaming firebaggers in Washington for the next two weeks who will overburden the DC jail system by throwing their bodies upon the gears, to quote Mario Savio. They hope that you will think about what is happening to John and Dan and Bill and be discouraged from fighting back.

There were 45 more people today who refused to be discouraged. They watched what happened and were willing to get arrested anyway, in the hope of “lighting a fire” under the world.

So the question is: are you discouraged, or are you a flaming firebagger?

If you wish to take part in this, go to: http://www.tarsandsaction.org

This Will Blow Your Mind!

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Ron

There are no words to top this video. This was made by the Oscar-nominated Director of Gasland.

Watch it — then do what needs to be done!

Peace,

Ron Rink

http://vimeo.com/27902739

Author-Activist Bill McKibben Gets “Disobedient” About Climate Change

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Ron

This article appeared in Seven Days, a leading Vermont newspaper. Since it’s about my friend and former neighbor, Bill McKibben, I would like to share it with all of you.

Peace,

Ron Rink
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Published on Seven Days (http://www.7dvt.com)

Author-Activist Bill McKibben Gets “Disobedient” About Climate Change

Local Matters

By Kevin J. Kelley [08.10.11]

Not too many Distinguished Scholars at Middlebury College get arrested at the White House gates. But that’s what Bill McKibben, who’s also a Harvard grad, intends to do August 20 at the start of a two-week series of civil-disobedience actions that could lead to scores of Vermonters being carted away by the D.C. police.

McKibben is helping to organize this protest against a proposed $7 billion, 1700-mile pipeline that would pump crude oil to Texas refineries from tar sands in Alberta, Canada. As one of more than 1000 activists who have pledged to break the law, McKibben says he feels compelled to make a radical move because the effects of climate change are becoming so grave. NASA scientist James Hansen recently warned that tapping Canada’s vast oil sands would stoke the atmosphere’s carbon overload to the point where “it’s game over” for planet Earth.

Nearly a year ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went on record saying she’s “inclined” to let the oil flow. Given the Obama administration’s mixed record on environmental issues, McKibben isn’t convinced the president will have a different view. A decision is expected within the next three months.

“The insane flooding we saw this spring in Vermont,” McKibben remarks, is a symptom of the one-degree rise in average global temperature that’s already been brought about by burning oil and coal. Most climate scientists agree that Earth is going to warm by at least another degree even if the output of greenhouse gases is radically reduced. An increase of an additional two or three degrees, which could occur as a result of projects such as the Alberta-Texas pipeline, will render the next century “completely impossible,” as opposed to “merely miserable,” McKibben says.

Despite their sense of urgency, organizers want to make sure the White House arrests take the form of what McKibben calls “very civil disobedience.” Decorum should be maintained, he suggests with a smile, because “it’s too hot to be fighting” in the streets of Washington in August. The goal is “to demonstrate who the real radicals are — the ones who are willing to alter the Earth’s atmosphere,” McKibben continues, his smile receding. “We’re a conservative force by comparison.”

Middlebury College doesn’t appear to object if its brightest faculty star winds up getting busted in Pennsylvania Avenue’s no-go zone — and the incident airs on CNN. In fact, it sounds officially supportive. “Protests have long been a part of the political discourse in American democracy,” says Alison Byerly, the college’s provost. “Middlebury faculty and staff are private citizens as well as employees of the college and pursue a wide range of interests and passions, many of which enrich their interactions with our students.”

McKibben in turn applauds the school that recruited him soon after he relocated to Ripton from the Adirondacks in 2001. “Middlebury had started moving toward having a green campus before I got there,” he notes. The college’s commitment to achieving carbon-neutrality “meant students didn’t have to badger the administration, which freed them to do much more important things,” says the scholar-in-residence in environmental studies.

In the decade he’s been at Middlebury, McKibben has taught two courses. But in 2007, he helped Midd kids launch a movement called Step It Up that instigated climate demonstrations across the United States. Step It Up also spawned 350.org [1], the catalyzing agent for today’s global campaign to prevent atmospheric carbon content from reaching catastrophic levels.

All this has flowed from The End of Nature, McKibben’s prophetic book about global warming. Published in 1989, the best seller changed the thinking — and the lives — of some of its readers, among them Vermont actress Kathryn Blume. “That was where my awareness began,” she says by way of explaining why she also plans to get arrested at the White House. Blume says she’ll use the book as the basis for her next one-woman play — her second about becoming an activist.

McKibben’s charisma, scholarship and relentless roadwork have proved inspirational far beyond Vermont. Offsetting whatever frustration he may feel, McKibben says, is the satisfaction he’s gained from collaborating with activists “in the poorest parts of the world,” including — to name a few he’s recently visited — India, China, the Maldives, Mexico, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Oman.

Rock-star status notwithstanding, hop-scotching the globe does get wearying, confesses McKibben, 50, over a lunch-time plate of chicken curry at Taste of India restaurant on Bakery Lane in Middlebury. Balding and almost gaunt, he laments, “There have been stretches where I’ve been home only 50 or 60 days a year. I’ve hated that because I do love it here.”

When he travels, McKibben usually leaves behind his wife, author Sue Halpern, who is also a Middlebury College scholar-in-residence, and their teenage daughter, Sophie. He says he misses them both, along with Vermont’s political culture and natural beauty, adding that he’s proud to live in a place recognized in China and other countries as a world leader in environmental awareness.

Does the state deserve its green reputation? Shutting down Vermont Yankee, according to McKibben, was “the easiest case there ever was to make.” Noting it took a “30-foot wall of water” to damage the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, McKibben recalls that the side of a cooling tower at Yankee “just fell off” a few years ago. Entergy, the owner of the Vernon plant, “shouldn’t be allowed to run even a chain of convenience stores,” McKibben charges.

The trend in energy generation, he observes, is “away from few and big and toward many and small.” He’s all for wind power, for example, despite the opposition of some Vermont greens to ridgeline installations. “Every kind of energy has drawbacks,” McKibben acknowledges. “In general, the benefit of the doubt belongs to renewable energy.”

He says he’d welcome wind turbines in his own backyard — or at least up the road at the Middlebury Snow Bowl. “There’s something to be said for dealing with the drawbacks closer to where the energy is being consumed,” McKibben suggests. Right now, though, he notes, the drawbacks of fossil-fuel power plants are felt most acutely in places like West Virginia, where mountains are being blown apart to expose their coal deposits, and low-lying, densely populated Bangladesh, which is starting to sink like Atlantis as the ice caps melt.

In McKibben’s view, the “planetary emergency,” as Al Gore calls it, still doesn’t justify partnering with a company such as Lockheed Martin on climate-control initiatives, as Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss has proposed. “There’s enough local talent to do what needs to be done” in Burlington, McKibben maintains. He goes easy on Kiss, though, insisting the mayor’s willingness to work with a warplanes manufacturer doesn’t make him “a warmonger.”

Lockheed’s expertise can supplement the talent that Burlington does possess, Kiss says in response. But the politically beleaguered mayor doesn’t sound eager to battle a segment of the Progressive base for the sake of salvaging the Lockheed deal. The company was “looking at this relationship as a way to build a positive effort,” Kiss says. “They don’t want to add to controversy.” So, while conversations between the city and Lockheed are continuing, “there’s no timetable” for taking action, the mayor reports.

Local actions of any sort could be negated by what’s happening on the planetary level, McKibben warns: Think locally, act globally, in other words. “We could replicate Hardwick and the Intervale all across Vermont,” he says, “but if it rains every day for 30 days, or if it never rains, you won’t be able to grow any food.”

That’s what keeps Joe Solomon, a 350.org staffer, in the fight. Referring to the likely impact of the Alberta-Texas pipeline, Solomon notes that “all that extra carbon is what burns up Vermont’s summers, melts away our ski seasons, unravels our farms and will keep breaking unprecedented floods upon us. We have a hell of a lot of self-interest to stop this thing.”

The current political and economic situation could not be less conducive to McKibben’s mission. But waiting for things to improve is not an option, either. “This isn’t a problem like other problems,” McKibben warns. “We can’t come back to it in 10 years when the politics may be better.”

What’s more, “there’s no guarantee we’re going to win,” McKibben points out. In that crucial respect, the climate movement differs from one of its activist antecedents. “People in the civil-rights movement had to be braver because they could be shot at,” McKibben reflects, “but they had the great advantage of knowing they were going to win.”

Source URL: http://www.7dvt.com/2011author-activist-bill-mckibben-gets-disobedient-about-climate-change
Links:
[1] http://350.org