Feeling the Climate

A Look Into the Environmental Groundswell

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Just attended the Students as Catalysts for Large Landscape Conservation Conference at Colby College. This is a video I made that was selected to show as a part of the speaker series.

Take a look into the state of the Colorado River; it doesn't reach the sea.

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A quick look into what the conference looked like. Helped throw this together over the weekend = no sleep.

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It's coming

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From Grassroots to Treetops: The Moral Issue

Socio-political issues come and go, but never without a fight. If there were ever a pressing issue in our world, it’s the advent of global climate change. But where is “the fight” exactly? Is there even a fight at all? This issue touches not just one group of people, but all of civilization. Of course, there are actions and measures of different degrees, but there has been no unified grassroots fight against climate change across the United States, especially on college campuses like ours.

That’s all about to change.

In the past, political action did not spring out of thin air. The Emancipation Proclamation was not born in the White House. People throughout the country stood up and fought for change. Books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or the actions of John Brown, the martyr and activist once branded as a terrorist, inspired an entire generation to challenge the status quo.It’s true that many of us carry around reusable water bottles, turn off our lights, and take environmental studies classes like ‘Intro to Global Climate Change’. However, we all know that the problem isn’t going to be solved by our stickered-up water bottles – that’s a band-aid for a broken leg. We, as a generation and as a world, need large-scale political action from the top and it’s not happening. There is one major component missing in the solution to the climate change problem – us.

People and their direct actions predicate larger institutional change. It was just four years after Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. As Lincoln himself put it, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.”

So why have our actions to stop climate change been so limited? It is because we are profiteers from this modern slave trade. Our lives are made tremendously more convenient by our accessibility to cheap energy, just as the cheap labor of slaves created tremendous ease and wealth in the South. Every day we profit from fossil fuels and we place what is best for us above what is best for humanity.

We, in the post-industrial world, will be able to adapt to a changing climate. First world nations will be able to modify crops, handle the rise of food prices, desalinate water, and implement alternative energy technology. But what about the one billion people who live on one dollar or less a day? Their struggle for survival will become impossible.

People talk about the extinction of the polar bears, but the focus should be redirected to the human-centric impacts; climate change is a civil rights injustice in disguise. The detrimental effects of climate change will hurt most of the people on Earth who have done nearly nothing to contribute to the problem. On the other hand, we struggle to care because we are the beneficiaries, but it is unconscionable to continue burning fossil fuels unabated. Business as usual is immoral. It’s time for the movement to begin.

So how do we do it? Ultimately, we need an emancipation proclamation. We need a carbon tax. We need to shift our source of energy. But that is the Federal government’s role, and they won’t follow unless we begin to lead. Gandhi said, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” Similarly, our leaders need the people to lead them; they need the youth now more than ever. On campus, what we can do to lead the fight against climate change is to divest our endowment from fossil fuel companies.

It’s time our institution took a moral stand against climate change and stopped profiting from crimes against humanity. But we can’t convince them alone – we need your help. Students over the past five years have repeatedly asked for divestment to no avail. But things are different this year.

The newly formed Student Divestment Committee (SDC) is working with over 200 other colleges to lead a unified struggle for institutions of higher learning to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The opportunity for advocacy is upon you. Remember when I said that we are the missing element? I’m talking about the 19.7 million college students and 400 billion dollars in college endowment funds. So far, it has been missing from the struggle. Together, we can change that.

It’s time for us all to join this grassroots movement. If you’ve ever felt like making a change, if you’ve ever walked out of that sociology or environmental studies class feeling guilty because you’re part of the problem, then stand up with me now. It’s time we, as global citizens of this already failing planet, became part of the solution, not part of the problem.

That’s why the SDC has started a school-wide petition advocating for the divestment of the Colorado College endowment from fossil fuels. It’s time we became bigger than our individual actions. It’s time to drum up the public sentiment and be heard. The petition for divestment has arrived. I’ll see you in Worner.

Originally seen in The Catalyst, Colorado College's Independent Newspaper. 

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Keystone XL Rally: The Inconvenient Truth

Signs that read, ‘This beard was grown with solar’, ‘Wind mills not oil spills’ and ‘The last tree on Easter Island was cut by a REPUBLICAN’ lined Washington Monument Park on Sunday February 17th. Getting there early was a sight in itself; at first only a few hundred meandered around, but within minutes of noon thousands flooded the park. It felt like an environmental Bonnaroo. Bill McKibben, a Senator, various celebrities and indigenous persons from all over, danced to the likes of It’s Tricky by Run DMC and Save the World (Tonight) by Swedish House Mafia. With nearly 50,000 people waving signs and police helicopters hovering above, it certainly felt more like a rally than a protest.

Being in a presence the size of 25 Colorado Colleges, all there to combat the Keystone XL Pipeline, felt reassuring. I met people who travelled from coast to coast and others from just about everywhere in between. Another reassuring factor was that there were young people! A giant drum (below) bellowed with the pulses of the youth as they chanted “One beat! One heart”! The vibe was primordial, a sense of release and activism that couldn’t be stopped stirred. I had high hopes for the day, perhaps too high.

Right off the bat there were tears, this clearly was an emotional struggle for many. At the mention of the people’s land being poisoned by hydrologic fracturing (fracking) and the “rape and pillage of the land” by tar sands extraction, as one indigenous woman put it, tears rolled down the eyes of many in the crowd. There was nothing wrong with that in itself, but as I looked at the mothers around me crying, with their kids on the ground, I noticed something. The people seemingly so touched by pollution were also the ones polluting. Not just them, but many people; the consumer culture abounded.

It’s hard to judge on such a superficial level, but I observed one mother in particular crying at the stories of injustice told by the native people of Canada. Yet, I looked down to see her and all her four kids drinking hot chocolate out of Styrofoam cups with plastic lids while eating a plethora of processed foods with enough packaging to fill a trashcan. There was something wrong here. How could the same lady be so touched by the stories of environmental degradation, but be such a polluter herself? Her ideal and her reality were starkly misaligned.

Now let it be said that a majority of the protesters probably would not have been at the protest unless they sacrificed some of their environmental idealism to realistically get there (although buses and trains were a popular method due to their lower carbon footprint). By no means should carbon-guilt, as its called, be an excuse for inaction. The point is that we are always going to use resources, but we’re going to have to learn to use them sustainably. The bottom line is that Styrofoam never degrades naturally.

The hindrance to solving this hypocritical tension between polluter and pollutee was not helped by the distinction that was being made in the rally’s rhetoric. Perhaps the most striking example of this distinction was in the speech of Senator Washington (D-RI) when he proclaimed, “The big oil companies don’t want you to be heard. The polluters don’t want you to be here”. Over and over there was a psychological separation being made between the ‘polluter’ and the ‘crowd’. As if to say, you are not a polluter. I looked back at the mother from before and saw utter belief in her eyes. She had bought it and it seemed everyone else had too. This vilification of the fossil companies is valid in one manner, but a total fraud in another sense.

There were surely different reasons why people were there. Regardless, in my mind the overarching idea behind protesting the Keystone XL pipeline is moving towards creating a sustainable society. It’s good rhetoric to stand up there as a politician and say, “Are we going to look our kids in the eye and say we failed them? No”, as Senator Washington did, but it’s also not sound logic to solely blame the fossil fuel companies for our woes. We are the polluters.

This is what is so hard about the anti-climate change movement. In the civil rights movement it was obvious who was the oppressor and who was the oppressed. In the Birmingham campaign there was the oppressor spraying the hose and the oppressed being sprayed. But in the climate movement it gets tricky. We are the ones spraying pollution out of our tailpipe and it’s the fossil fuel companies supplying the ‘water’, in this case fuel. So who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? Who is to blame?

On one hand the people are justified in holding up signs that demand wind and solar on a large scale and blame the fossil fuel industry for their profit-motivated dismissal of the green sector. It’s true that fossil fuel companies have deliberately staggered competitive entry into the market. Yet these green(er) technologies won’t completely solve the problem either. There is a fundamental problem: we have no other energy source that can supply our current energy demands. Even if solar and wind were implemented on a scale never seen before, they could not supply our demand. Their sources are variable and we do not have the technology to store the power.

The fundamental tension between the movement is this: at the current rate of consumption per capita in America, it would take four earths to provide the necessary material goods. In simpler terms, we can’t have our cake and eat it too.  It’s going to take personal sacrifice to a degree; we need to go on an energy diet. By no means does that infer going off the grid or reviving the hippie commune, but it does mean taking the necessary individual steps to solve the problem by giving up some of our petty conveniences.

If we are to move towards creating a sustainable society—and fast— not only is it going to take technological optimism, it will take personal responsibility. Not only is it going to take a fundamental shift of government energy policy, it’s going to take a shift in our own behavior.

The elephant in the room was plain and clear and because it was never addressed the march felt halfhearted at times. When we showed up to the Whitehouse I heard through the grapevine that Obama was playing golf in Florida with Tiger Woods. The lesson? It’s invaluable that people demand top-down change and a larger economic impetus for change, but people must also change their own actions, it needs to be a cultural shift as well.

There was a inkling of this cultural shift in the air as signs read ‘drones won’t clean up oils spills and capitalism won’t fix the problem’ and one banner toting the logo of the environmental socialist organization promoting ‘system change not light bulb change’, but all of the other solutions seemed to be purely ‘market based’ as Obama called them in his State of the Union last week. It begs the question; can capitalism alone fix the problem of global climate change? Where will the real change come from? These are big questions with complex answers, but perhaps tangible change is best sought in the top meeting the bottom in the middle.

It seems that we still haven’t come to terms with what Al Gore popularized ‘The Inconvenient Truth’. Our hypocrisy already looming seven years in the past, all I know is that dynamic change needs to happen soon. I am not trying to undermine what was the largest anti-climate change rally in U.S. history, only attempting to start a conversation about the tension that need to be worked out. Unfortunately time is not on our side when it comes to cooling the planet.

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Just another day in Washington DC, almost 50,000 people gather to rally against the pending permission of the Keystone XL pipeline. This behemoth of a pipeline would stretch 1,7000 miles and carry unconventional tar sands from Canada all the way to Texas. Not only does it threaten indigenous people of Canada, small towns along the way, and water for miles, it threatens to set off one of the largest carbon bombs in the world— the Alberta Tar Sands. With greenhouse gases already approaching dangerous levels, the last thing we need is to stick another dirty needle into the climate. Article above

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Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods -- all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -- and act before it's too late.

Barack Obama 2/12/13 State of the Union Address

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                WE DON'T WANT YOUR TARSANDS OIL

About fifty activists on the train practice for the rally this Sunday in DC

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The Past Leading the Future: It’s Not the Destination it’s the Journey

            As I sit in the midst of a live rendition of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, revived from the past like a ghost train, I look around to find myself surrounded by an average age of 60. It’s 10 pm and the minibar is closed, shouldn’t all these people be asleep? Did I join the movement too late? Where are all the young people?!

            For those of you that don’t know, I’m heading across nearly ten states, over 4,000 miles, all by train, to answer one simple question, “Where is the environmental movement going and what do young college students have to do with it?” Well, of course it isn’t that simple. There’s not just one question to be answered, not even one answer, but it’s a start. And starting my journey is.

            Crossing through the desolate plains of Ohio this afternoon, I was asked to sit for an interview with a Minnesotan radio station. Two young attractive ladies pitted me against an adorable old woman with a heart of gold; she couldn’t have been more optimistic about her role as an activist. The station then asked me, “How is the youth, particularly your age, responding to the issue of climate change?” I looked around to find myself surrounded by an aging crowd, where were all the young people? I couldn’t help but be affected by the positivity around me, “The zeitgeist is there, it’s just time that the youth manifested it into action. It’s coming”, I told them after a long pause. I only hope I’m right.

            The two young women invited me to a sing-along that night and told me there would be a variety of poets, artists, and activists from Minnesota. I showed up, but little did I know that I would be greeted by hoards of senior citizens.

            At first I was a bit disappointed, but I soon couldn’t keep the smile off my face and my voice out of the coo that swept the train’s lounge. All of these old souls had an energy that I had never seen on a college campus. The first song I heard put it best:

Get on board, children, children Get on board, children, children Get on board, children, children Get on board, children, children Let’s stop this big pipeline We watch them ice floes melting The water’s way too warm The prairies dry and dusty The coasts beat up by storms We’ll stand before the White House Our message will be strong We’ve got to stop that pipeline And move big change along

              It made total and complete sense; the past would lead us into the future. Better put, the wise would lead us into an era of uncertainty and it couldn’t have felt better. This older generation, ridden with tweed coats and clunky bifocals, could see the change over time. They could see the times a-changin. They were surer of themselves than I had ever seen any other group or cause. And they were drawing on the past for strength. One woman sang a song about her late father:

And now all the stories fall away And I will sift through them another day I just want to feel The pure love revealed And the healing today And you left me faith in the human race And as you loved nature you left me that place And to stand up tall When I am called He left me that way  

            I had just met 350 Minnesota, some of the most jubilant and open individuals on the face of this Earth. After getting a songbook and trucking along, I no longer felt an outsider. These old folks had the confidence that I needed and for that matter the youth. I didn’t join the movement too late. It was just starting. After all the optimism I felt in their songs and conversation, from a generation that’s seen the horrors of humanity through and through, they too had “left me faith in the human race”.

            Things are looking up for the climate; it’s impossible not to feel it on this train headed eastbound to the largest anti-climate change rally the world has ever seen. That and the fact that a West Virginian coal miner and I can get along like old friends over a bottle of whiskey and an orange. There’s a deeper thread to humanity than our addiction to fossil fuels, a collective will that cannot be silenced. The degradation of our only home binds all of us. Listen up Obama: here we come.