One Earth
Climate Change Action Group
ONE EARTH
Climate change threatens humanity
as nothing else in the history of civilization.
Climate change threatens all the Earth’s creatures
with loss of our planet, our home.
Climate change is now, not in the distant future.
And it's caused by us.
OUR CALL TO ACTION In the face of this unfolding disaster unlike any other, we choose activism. There is our Livable Planet to be salvaged. There are countless Sacred Creatures to be saved from extinction or mass death—including humans. We refuse to feed the climate beast now threatening All of Us. Our Climate Crisis is a global emergency happening now. Our house is on fire. Emergency climate action must be taken now or many of us will perish. THE EMERGENCY "Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet," Lord Stern of If global temperatures rise by the predicted 4C to 7C by 2100, “agriculture would be destroyed and life would be impossible over much of the planet, the former World Bank chief economist said.” "We can forget about the 2C (average global temperature rise)"," said Professor Katharine Richardson, chair of the 2009 international Climate Congress in http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=120853 This same conference heard warnings of a five-to-nine feet rise in sea levels by 2100, caused by the historic melting of the Antarctic and http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-eu-denmark-climate-change,0,3662461.story http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/08/climate-change-flooding HOW TO RESPOND The Australian climate scientists of Code Red state we must take emergency measures now. “We need now,” they write, “to ‘think the unthinkable’, because the sustainability emergency (climate crisis) is not so much a radical idea as now simply a necessary mode of action.” Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute, agrees. “…unless we restructure the economy and do it quickly, we will almost certainly fail," says Brown. "Time is our scarcest resource." http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40822 Follow this link to download a free copy of Brown’s 2008 book, Plan B 3.0: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm Our pre-eminent climate scientist, Jim Hansen, has taken to the streets to demand fast, dramatic response to our Climate Crisis. Hansen is director of NASA’s Goddard Space Institute. Hansen delivered the first warning to Congress about global warming on June, 23, 1988. “The democratic process doesn’t … seem to be working,” Hansen said before joining a 2009 protest against the headquarters of a British firm planning a new coal-fired power plant. “What we get… from political leaders is greenwash... peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we’re running out of time.” ROOT CAUSE OF CRISIS We accept the root cause of our Climate Crisis is over-consumption of resources by the Industrial World. We are not alone. A group of Nobel Laureate Canadian climate scientists agrees. http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2007/21/c5408.html The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) agrees. If global resource consumption continues at the current pace, humans will need a second Earth to devour by 2030. http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/ See the chart on page 14 of the following file. It shows American per capita resource consumption is almost five times greater than what is sustainable. Yes, the rate of increase in GHG emissions by Shared responsibility binds us. We humans must discover a communal sense of stewardship for our Shared Earth, if we are to implement effective climate programs. FALSE OPTIMISM and DENIAL We reject fatalism and false optimism. Fatalism is doing nothing while our house burns. Fatalism is fed by terror and denial. The terror comes from the formerly unthinkable prospect of losing our Earth. Denial follows and gives a false sense of calm as our house burns. It allows us to keep driving cars and flying in planes despite our certain knowledge driving and flying fuel the Climate Crisis. False optimism is another form of denial. False optimism denies that How We Live is the cause of the Climate Crisis. False optimism clings to notions that we can ‘fix’ or ‘solve’ our Climate Crisis. We agree with climate author Ross Gelbspan. We cannot solve this crisis. http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=7203&method=full False optimism manifests under banners like Energy Independence, Green Jobs and Green Prosperity. These are slippery slogans and programs that push the Big Climate Lie. This lie says we can avoid profoundly changing the way we live and structure our economy. We cannot avoid this basic change. We will either voluntarily and radically change the way we live or the Climate Crisis will force the change on us. CARBON TRADING and BIOFUELS More dangerous than false optimism, carbon trading and biofuels are capitalism’s one-two punch for destroying our Livable Earth as quickly as possible. We have little chance of mitigating our Climate Crisis unless these lethal programs are undone. They must be replaced with effective climate programs like aggressive carbon taxes and steadily lowering emissions caps with no escape. All crop-based biofuels (all major biofuels now in use) are vastly worse for the Earth than petrol, including so-called ‘2nd generation’ cellulosic ethanol. One Earth shills for no one, especially the petrol industry. As destructive as petrol is for Our Shared Earth, biofuels are much worse. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1152747 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1152747v1.pdf http://www.rsc.org/images/biofuels_tcm18-99586.pdf http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1609623/wind_water_and_sun_beat_biofuels_nuclear_and_coal_for/ In 2008, One Earth enjoyed tremendous success resisting the scourge of biofuels. We were instrumental in having King County Metro drop all biofuels from its fleet of buses. King County Metro serves the metropolitan http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004464783_biofuels08.html Carbon trading sells our biosphere—our Global Commons—to the world’s worst polluters, and makes sure they keep polluting. http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010808EC.shtml http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=52713 Hansen warned about plans by the Obama administration to make carbon trading its centerpiece climate program. “If they are going to support cap and trade then …I think that will be another case of greenwash. It’s going to take stronger action than that.” How do we act? Collectively when we can, individually when we must. But we need sustained group efforts to succeed in salvaging much of Our Earth. We are connected to each other and to our Home Planet. The core Climate Crisis lesson is this. We are One! What happens to one of us happens to all of us. Shared responsibility binds us. When you drive your car, you are denying our shared Right to Exist. And that of our kids, our grandkids, and all our Fellow Creatures. When One Earth fails to confront a biofuels polluter or expose a carbon trading supporter, we are failing you and the Earth. We are allowing the lethal status quo to stand, and stoking the climate flames burning our Shared House. One Earth embraces bold climate activism that challenges our grossly non-sustainable culture. We must implement profound structural changes if we wish to salvage a Livable Planet. (See One Earth Climate Manifesto below for specifics.) We commit to a variety of strategies as we seek alliances with groups and individuals. We support what works. The Climate Crisis emphatically tells us our Industrial World culture is not working. We invite you to join us and help expand our efforts. We need help in We need help in http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7065061.stm We need help across the region to expand our Car Free program. We want Car Free Zones in cities like CHANGED ORDER Humans have already changed the Order of Things. Carbon, the most basic stuff of life, has become a pollutant, a threat to all life. We have spewed so much carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere our Climate Crisis is now unsolvable. We must adapt to what is coming. Many actions that mitigate our Climate Crisis also adapt to it. Like getting out of our cars—and staying out. We must work feverishly to lessen the severity of what is coming. Every creature on Earth now exists in the space between the unavoidable and the possibly avoidable. In this shrinking space hang the lives of All of Us. We must act. Now. Join us in the streets. Join us in the offices and classrooms. Join us. One Earth organizer Duff Badgley ONE EARTH CLIMATE MANIFESTO Profound structural change is needed now to address our Climate Crisis. As in childbirth, pain will attend this change. We are birthing ourselves into a world radically different from the one middle-class Industrial World citizens have known for a century. Because of humans, the Earth is changing in non-linear ways. We can no longer avoid this change. Those leaders who sell the lethal notion that we can ‘prosper’ and avoid painful change with our Climate Crisis are false leaders. Reject them now. We must convene Climate Emergency sessions of Congress and state legislatures now to enact emergency World War II-type mobilization laws that will restructure our economy. Our plan is to, first, centralize so we can implement globally the changes needed to adapt to and mitigate the Climate Crisis. Second, with this restructuring in place, we must then localize economies to survive in the changed new world we will inhabit. For the affluent, income will fall. Collective local efforts will provide sustainable shelter and food. Transport and health care will be localized. EMERGENCY CLIMATE PROGRAMS: (1) Prepare abandonment plans for low-lying coastal areas, including the Environmental justice cannot occur without economic justice.
We refuse to be crippled by calamitous Climate Crisis news.
Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/nasa-climate-change-james-hansen "We need to focus on sustainable levels of consumption, which means finding ways to rein in our currently insatiable demand for more and more," said the leader of the Wasan Group.
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report_2008.pdf
Jim Hansen agrees carbon trading “will be guaranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/nasa-climate-change-james-hansen
WHAT WE CAN DO NOW
(2) Assign top priority to relocation plans for climate refugees at local, national and global levels;
(3) Start a global campaign to support women’s reproductive rights and equal access to education. Exploding human population threatens all climate programs and our survival.
(4) Nationalize the defense (war) industry. Divert defense contractors like Boeing from airplanes and weapons of mass destruction to making solar, wind and wave power equipment;
(5) Nationalize the auto industry. Divert auto manufacturers from private vehicle production to making mass transit vehicles for bus and rail;
(6) Nationalize the oil industry. Ration and radically reduce petrol use;
(7) Nationalize the coal industry. Phase out all coal operations in five years;
(8) Nationalize the banking industry. Low income people to serve as majorities on Boards of Directors;
(9) Nationalize airline and shipping industries. Phase out both over ten years;
(10) Nationalize concrete production industry. Restrict production to maintenance and repair of defensible, existing public infra-structure. Concrete production is the 3rd worst global greenhouse gas polluter after fossil fuel combustion and deforestation;
(11) Vastly increase public transport system—low income ride free;
(12) Phase out private vehicles over five years, except where no public transport exists;
(13) Impose aggressive, corporate carbon taxes to fund our economic restructuring;
(14) Assess bold, progressive individual carbon taxes--low income exempt;
(15) Carbon taxes to subsidize local, small-scale food production and penalize agro-business;
(16) Establish steadily reducing carbon caps for industry, regions and government;
(17) Outlaw carbon trading schemes;
(18) Begin personal annual carbon allowances (carbon rationing);
(19) Carbon tax funds channeled to poor to offset high food, housing, transportation costs;
(20) Carbon tax funds channeled to global Rainforest Protection and Global South recipients;
(21) Enforce and expand rights of Indigenous and Local People in all countries.
(22) Withdraw all foreign troops from
(23) Outlaw crop-based biofuels production and use;
(24) Provide energy retro-fit for all commercial, residential and government buildings;
(25) Adopt federal, state and local land use laws requiring affordable density. Stop sprawl;
(26) Protect all trees as our Common Good, critically benefiting our climate, needing permit to kill.
Contact One Earth organizer: Duff Badgley, eduffb@hotmail.com
