From an e-mail message I just got in (interesting timing!! Thanks, Larraine!)

“Project Laundry List is making air-drying laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy. It is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization which aims to demonstrate that personal choices can make a difference for the Earth and its people.

Our Mission

Project Laundry List is making air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as simple and effective ways to save energy.

The Washboard

Executive Director: Alexander Lee. Contact:

Alexander Lee   (603) 219-3586     info@laundrylist.org

Board of Advisors

Helen Caldicott, M.D.

Sabra Field

Barbara James

Sen. Richard McCormack

Bill McKibben

Lyman Orton

David T. Suzuki, Ph.D.

Project Laundry List is located at 27 Holly St, Suite A, Concord, NH 03301.

Their Web site is www.laundrylist.org/

The world/humanity’s problems are scarily numerous, complex, interwoven & very darn daunting – even overwhelming – to contemplate. One hesitates to cast one’s mind’s eye 10 years down the road, so grave is the state of our environment & so scary to contemplate the coming impacts of climate change.

I’m not gonna lie to you & say you can “save the world” by buying a clotheshorse; there is so much else we all need to be doing. Transforming politics, bringing in new leaders & new kinds of leaders, putting a halt to our own customary habits of inaction & apathy, becoming politically active ourselves, changing our lifestyles, etc.

BUT…with climate change such an enormous threat & challenge, ALL of our efforts to be more efficient, conserve more, use less energy & switch to renewable forms of energy can, do & will help.

And, since clothes dryers use up an incongruous & preposterous amount of energy, let’s stop relying on them!!

It’s easy to use an outdoor clothesline &/or a clotheshorse (or 2!) faithfully. I wouldn’t expect anyone to do anything I’m not prepared to do myself. I’ve been using outdoor (& indoor) clotheslines & clotheshorses for 3 decades now. Just think of the energy (& money!!) I’ve saved! Clearly, this is something that is do-able.

I wonder if most North Americans know that tons of Europeans (Asians too, as far as I can tell) do NOT use clothes dryers at all? I’m not much of a traveller (especially these days!), but I did notice when I was in Malaysia on a work-related trip that people use nifty balcony drying gizmos like crazy. I saw the same phenomenon in Spain (which is now a world leader in the use of renewable energy, btw).

Why we North Americans have developed this ridiculous notion that life without a clothes dryer is inconceivable, I will never know! Especially when millions of people around the world (tens of millions, I guess!), never give clothes dryers a thought.

Since a serious reduction in energy use will help reduce the need for new (& very energy-intensive & polluting) power plants, what are we waiting for??

Change the world; buy a clotheshorse!

Janet

– From the ‘No Nukes News,’ Feb. 11/10.

Ontario Mandates ‘Drying For Freedom’ Ontario residents can now hang their clothes and linens outside to dry after the Premier lifted the ban on outdoor clotheslines. Previously there were restrictions in many Ontario subdivisions because clotheslines were considered unsightly. The province’s new regulation will overrule neighbourhood or lease rules. Premier Dalton McGuinty said the move is aimed at curbing use of energy-sucking dryers, which burn up to six per cent of Ontario’s power. This recent change is one of many in a movement pushing for less restriction in the use of clothes lines. A new documentary, ‘Drying For Freedom,’ highlights the banning of clothes lines in over 50 million homes in the United States, translating 5 billion dollars a year in electricity bills. The documentary follows the battle for the right to dry clothes asking why drying clothes became an environmental and social catastrophe and questions clotheslines being banned.

Visit Let’s Hang Out Canada website <http://www.letshangoutcanada.com/>
Visit Drying For Freedom website <http://www.dryingforfreedom.com/>
View January 2010 The Sierra Club News Letter

‘Quote of the day’ w. this post: “A citizen of an advanced industrialized nation consumes in six months the energy and raw materials that have to last the citizen of a developing country his entire lifetime.” – Maurice Strong

Alternate quote of the day: “I have come to believe that we must take bold and unequivocal action: we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.” – Al Gore

By Amory B. Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

(Note: this piece originally appeared in ‘Roll Call’ on Nov. 9, 2009, in a slightly different form.)

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Climate-+Eight+Convenient+Truths

In his remarks at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, President Obama did say (to my delight) that climate solutions advance both prosperity and security, but he hadn’t time to rebut in detail the “sign error” — the widespread fallacy that climate solutions are intrinsically an economic burden.

Now that the post-Copenhagen dust has settled and it’s time to refocus on what we should be doing and get back to work, here are eight convenient truths to consider and share about climate and energy.

1. For all world citizens who want a richer, fairer, cooler, and safer world, here’s a heretical suggestion: whether you want to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions should not depend on your view about the reality and risk of climate change.

More importantly, your opinions about climate science shouldn’t change what you should do about energy. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and prosperity, or climate and environment, exactly the same energy actions make sense and make money regardless.

Thus, if we focus on outcomes, not motives, we can build a wide and rapid consensus on what to do, even if we differ about why to do it.

2. We needn’t debate how much it will cost to reduce emissions, nor whether that cost is worth paying, nor who should pay — because protecting the climate is not costly but profitable. Saving fuel is cheaper than buying fuel: energy efficiency costs less than the fuel it saves, as thousands of practitioners prove daily.

Many people get confused because economic theorists don’t count the money we save by needing less fuel. In fact, as many business leaders understand and apply, energy efficiency is one of the highest-return and lowest-risk investments in the whole economy.

a) Dow Chemical has saved $9 billion by investing $1 billion in energy efficiency.

b) DuPont made billions by cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions 72 percent during 1990–2004, and is now expanding that cut by another 15 percent: the firm uses 7 percent less energy now than in 1990 despite 40 percent higher production.

c) Interface doubled its profits and grew its business by two-thirds while cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions 72 percent and offsetting another 27 percent.

We should therefore be talking not about cost, burden, and sacrifice, but about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage. This simplifies and sweetens the politics.  Once we start debating the allocation of benefits, not costs, any remaining resistance to climate protection should melt faster than the glaciers.

3. Profitable energy efficiency can drive the business-led journey beyond oil and coal to cheaper, cleaner, inexhaustible, secure, all-American, climate-safe resources.

Since 1975, America has doubled the productivity of using oil and energy, and tripled the productivity of directly using natural gas. But today’s smarter technology can redouble our oil and gas productivity at about a fifth of those fuels’ price, and can probably quadruple our electric productivity at an eighth of its price. This would save hundreds of billions of dollars a year, helping rebalance our national and personal budgets, and put American industry back in the forefront of global competitiveness.

4. Oil dependence is a problem we needn’t have, and it’s cheaper not to.

The last time we paid attention to oil, in 1977–1985, GDP grew 27 percent, oil use fell 17 percent, oil imports dropped 50 percent, and oil imports from the Persian Gulf plummeted 87 percent. OPEC’s exports shrank 48 percent, breaking the oil cartel’s pricing power for a decade: it had less market power than America, the Saudi Arabia of negabarrels, because we could and did save oil faster than OPEC could conveniently sell less oil. But today’s
technologies are far more powerful. What could they do now?

My team’s 2004 Pentagon-cosponsored roadmap “Winning the Oil Endgame” detailed how to eliminate U.S. oil use by the 2040s at an average cost of $15 per barrel (2000 $). A $180-billion investment to retool the vehicle industries and build a modern biofuels industry could return $70 billion a year net (even at one-third today’s oil price), a million new jobs (75 percent in rural and small-town America), a million at-risk jobs saved (mainly linked to auto making), and 26 percent less carbon (burning oil emits 43 percent of U.S. fossil carbon). Our war fighters could also get negamissions in the Persian Gulf—Mission Unnecessary—by not needing to fight over oil we no longer use.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that ExxonMobil agrees with many private and government forecasters that U.S. gasoline demand peaked in 2007 and is headed permanently down; Cambridge Energy Research Associates says the industrialized countries’ oil demand peaked in 2005; and Deutsche Bank says world oil demand will peak by 2016, then head down.

5. Coal dependence is also an unnecessary and uneconomic problem, thanks to a twin revolution in electricity, whose generation emits 40 percent of U.S. and roughly 41 percent of world fossil carbon, nearly all from coal.

First, electricity-saving technologies are getting better and cheaper faster than we’re applying them, so efficiency is an ever bigger and cheaper resource. New techniques for integrative design can even make very big savings cost less than small or no savings, yielding not diminishing but expanding returns. (No official forecast yet reflects this proven potential — not even the excellent McKinsey analysis showing how to cut global greenhouse-gas emissions in 2030 by 70 percent at an average cost of just $6 per ton of CO2.)

Second, electricity production is shifting rapidly and profoundly from giant coal- and gas-fired and nuclear plants to “micropower” — cogenerating electricity together with useful heat in factories and buildings, plus renewables (not counting big hydro dams). Micropower in 2006 made one-sixth of the world’s electricity and one-third of the world’s new electricity. The U.S. lagged with just 7 percent, but a dozen other industrial countries made from one-sixth to more than half their electricity with micropower.

In 2007, U.S. windpower additions exceeded total U.S. coal-power additions for 2003–07, and exceeded global nuclear additions. So did wind additions in Spain and in China, which had distributed renewable capacity seven times bigger and growing seven times faster than nuclear capacity. In 2008, distributed renewables worldwide added 40 billion watts and got $100 billion of private investment, while nuclear added and got zero; the world invested more in renewable than in fossil-fueled generation. This revolution already happened — sorry if you missed it! — because these decentralized competitors make cheaper electricity, build faster, and have less financial risk than big, slow, lumpy power plants, so they can better attract private capital despite their generally smaller subsidies.

Legislators confronted with the nuclear industry’s ever-escalating wish-list for lavish taxpayer subsidies — such as the unlimited, no-accountability blank check offered by the Senate — should first consider the verdict of the marketplace. From August 2005 to August 2008, the U.S. nuclear industry enjoyed the most robust political support and capital markets in history, plus new subsidies (on top of old ones) rivaling or exceeding new plants’ total construction cost; yet it couldn’t attract a penny of private equity investment in any of 33 proposed projects. That’s because there’s no business case for building nuclear plants—nor other central power plants.

Of the 56 nuclear plants under construction worldwide, 13 have been so listed for over 20 years, 24 have no official start date, most are late, 40 are in just four centrally planned systems (China, Russia, India, South Korea), all are bought by central planners (generally with a draw on the public purse), and none are competitive free-market purchases. Nuclear power requires central planning, but even the world’s most impressively planned nuclear enterprise, in France, suffered 3.5-fold real capital cost escalation and nearly doubled construction times (1970–2000): doing exactly as nuclear advocates urge does not prevent spiraling costs and bad economics.

6. Nuclear power’s global commercial collapse is good for both our wallets and our security (because it can help smoke out proliferators of nuclear weapons by removing the ambiguity created by “civilian” do-it-yourself bomb kits). To the surprise of many, nuclear power’s collapse is also good for climate protection.

New nuclear plants could save carbon, but two to 20 times less per dollar, and 20 to 40 times less per year, than buying the market winners instead — micropower and efficiency. If greenhouse gas emissions are a problem, we need the most solution per dollar and per year; anything less will reduce and retard climate protection. We need judicious, not indiscriminate, investment — best buys first. We don’t need everything, we can’t afford everything, and every dollar and year we spend on one choice excludes other choices.

7. At Rocky Mountain Institute we are Reinventing Fire™— mapping and driving the business-led transition from oil and coal to efficiency and renewables. Our most novel effort is an in-depth exploration, with utility partners, of the shape, stability, economics, and business models of the emergent distributed and renewable power grid.

This is as big a step from today’s century-old utility business as wireless telephony is from Ma Bell. But disruptive technologies now make it inevitable, and the new competitive landscape will sort utilities between the quick and the dead.

In this new world of IT-driven electricity systems, an encouraging surprise is emerging. Just as better alternatives displaced Victorian steam locomotives, mainframe computer centers, and giant relays-and-copper phone exchanges, so we no longer need to keep building big power plants to keep the lights on. They are the traditional and an effective way to do so, but no longer the only nor the cheapest way. Both steady renewable sources (geothermal, small hydro, waste-and-biomass combustion, solar-thermal-electric, etc.) and variable ones (wind and photovoltaics) can be diversified in type and location, forecasted, and integrated so they power a modern society with even greater reliability and resilience than today.

We often hear this will need far more storage, backup, and transmission than we have now. I doubt it. More efficient use, demand response, and distributed generation will massively free up grid capacity. Solar energy varies less than twofold between the cloudy Northeast and the
Southwestern desert; massive wind resources off both coasts and in the Great Lakes are near the main load centers.

Storage and backup capacity, too, may well be less than what now manages the intermittence of big thermal plants. U.S. utility operators are starting to discover, as their European counterparts have, that integrating many smaller and variable generators is different but no harder and not materially costlier than the way they’ve always coped with the 10 percent to 12 percent failure rate of big power plants and with fluctuating demand: it requires different operating methods and rearranging mental furniture will be required, but not new technologies or equipment.

And total cost is also looking comparable or lower: windpower continues to meet or beat wholesale power prices, and the actual price of new U.S. windpower (“firmed” so you can have it whether the wind is blowing or not) is about half what utilities report for new coal power or a third that of new nuclear power.

Getting off coal is now feasible at costs ranging from negative to modest. The rough percentage of U.S. coal-fired electricity that can be displaced is:

a) 100 percent to 150 percent by using electricity in a way that saves money (even compared with just running an old coal plant even if the plant and grid were free)

b) 50 percent by building the windpower now stuck in the interconnection queue

c) Over 400 percent by building all cost-effective windpower in available sites

d) About 40 percent by allowing industrial cogeneration (plus more by cogenerating in buildings)

e) Over 100 percent by putting photovoltaics on 7 percent of U.S. structures

f) Probably over 50 percent from exploiting other renewables

g) About 35 percent, immediately if desired, by running coal plants less and existing but underused combined-cycle gas plants more, at an extra cost (around 2¢/kWh) less than one-fifth that of building new nuclear plants.

That should be a rich enough menu to create a profitable and politically attractive portfolio.

8. I’d like to see an economically conservative, market-based national energy strategy. It would allow and require all ways to save or produce energy to compete fairly, at honest prices, regardless of their type, technology, size, location, or ownership.

I wonder who wouldn’t be in favor of that.

Amory B. Lovins is Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute.

Blog’s ‘Quote for the Day’ with this post: “It’s one of the secrets of the world. We all have the key to one another’s locks. But until we start to talk, we don’t know it.” – Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW’s ‘Bookworm’ radio show

Readers: This post consists mostly of a letter I wrote to a provincial court judge after having been sentenced in her court – along with 6 other Toronto-area activists calling ourselves “People for Climate Justice” – on February 23^rd. We had occupied Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty’s Whitby, Ontario constituency office on November 30^th. We wanted to convey to federal politicians, just prior to the Copenhagen meetings, our deep concern & frustration about our federal government’s inaction (& even willful obstruction) vis-à-vis international efforts aimed at appropriate action on the most urgent issue facing humanity today: global climate change.

After spending about 6 ½ quite peaceful hours chained together in Mr. Flaherty’s office, we were arrested, handcuffed & taken to police holding cells & charged with 3 related offences. These were Loiter and Obstruct Persons in Public Place, Mischief – Obstruct/Interrupt/Interfere with Lawful Use/Enjoyment or Operation of Property (both Criminal Code offences) & Fail to Leave Premises (Trespass to Property Act).

We had a court date on January 14^th and then again a few days ago, on February 23^rd.

The judge gave us an opportunity to say a few words before she handed down our sentence(1), but I found myself feeling pretty intimidated by the whole situation, and refrained from saying anything. I’ve now written her a letter & have mailed it to her office. Here it is…

February 25, 2010.

Dear Judge:

I was in your courtroom in Oshawa the other morning, Tuesday, February 23^rd. I was there with my 6 co-accused on charges relating to our November 30^th peaceful sit-in at the office of Jim Flaherty, Whitby’s Conservative MP and Canada’s federal finance minister.

Ours was one of 6 such protests that took place across Canada just prior to the United Nations meetings in Copenhagen to discuss and find urgent solutions to the climate crisis. (Occupations also took part in the offices of federal cabinet ministers Jim Prentice, Rona Ambrose, Gary Lunn, John Baird and Andrew Saxton.)

I believe you suggested to us that we might find more law-abiding ways in future to express our frustration with the Canadian government’s (in our view criminal) lack of action on this utterly crucial issue – in fact, the single most serious issue and challenge ever faced by humanity! We did not really have the opportunity to explain to you that we have indeed each tried more “conventional” and “polite” methods.

I’m writing this letter to you now because, although you did give us the opportunity to speak up just before you handed down our sentence, I personally found the whole setting and situation more than a little intimidating, and so remained silent.

What I would have liked to say to you on Tuesday, in court, is this:

Your Honour, I am very proud of having taken part in the peaceful occupation of Canada’s finance minister’s office this past November 30^th. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the things in my life I am most proud of. I wish I had done more of this kind of thing in my life, because taking this action made me feel great! Apathy and inaction in the face of such a momentous issue and challenge drain our energy, while action is a powerful energy booster.

You commented that you suspected our action probably took us all a little beyond our usual comfort zone, and you are certainly correct in my case. Chaining myself to fellow human beings and being hauled off to a jail cell with my hands cuffed behind my back in a cold, hard paddy wagon is indeed not the sort of thing I do routinely.

But here’s the thing: I felt I had to do this. That it was the very least I could do in the face of our government’s appalling inaction on climate change and its (in my view) criminal behaviour in the Alberta tar sands.

Letters, phonecalls, petitions, peaceful gatherings on Parliament Hill – none of these have made even a tiny dent in our so-called leaders’ intransigence. When these conventional methods of expressing dissent in a democracy fail, one feels obliged to “up the ante.”

Another thing I want you to be aware of is how overwhelmingly positive the reactions to my part in this protest have been. People have offered effusive praise, and I’ve been told over and over that friends and family members are proud of me.

Canadians are disgusted with the antics of the Harper government. We all know we need to see serious action on climate change: targets, policies, legislation and global cooperation.

Yet our government sits on its hands, stifles dissent by proroguing Parliament, and embarrasses our country on the world stage (we’ve been labelled a “corrupt petro state” by world-respected writer/activist George Monbiot) with its appalling performance on this most urgent issue in the entire history of humanity.

I recognize that you are playing your own (perhaps quite principled) part in our legal system in the best way you can, and I do appreciate your intelligence and considerate handling of our case. The disposition you handed down was not an unreasonable one, given the original charges and the limitations with which you no doubt must work. I must say too, though, I do not feel the slightest bit guilty or ashamed for having done what I did. I’m proud of it, and I wish many more citizens would take similar coordinated action.

Yours sincerely,

Janet McNeill

P.S. Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown have said in Coming Back to Life – Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World, “Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.” It’s true!

Note to blog readers: Other blog posts about the sit-in: Busted for Climate Justice!; Civil Disobedience Rocks!! 10 Observations; Civil Disobedience: Why did we occupy Fin. Min’s Office?

Also note: If you go to Direct Action in Canada for Climate Justice you can read up on the various sit-ins held in MPs’ offices across Canada last Fall, just before the Copenhagen meetings.

‘Quote of the Day’ w. this post: “When the Earth has been ravaged and the animals are dying, a tribe of people from all races, creeds and colours will put their faith in deeds, not words, to make the land green again. They will be called ‘Warriors of the Rainbow,’ protectors of the environment.” – Native saying

Published in the U.K. Guardian December 21/09 under the title “Requiem for a Crowded Planet,” by George Monbiot (used w. permission).

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/21/requiem-for-a-crowded-planet/

This is what the failure of the climate talks means.

By George Monbiot.

The last time global negotiations collapsed like this was in Doha in 2001. After the trade talks fell apart, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) assured the delegates that there was nothing to fear: they would move to Mexico, where a deal would be done. The negotiations ran into the sand of the Mexican resort of Cancun, never to re-emerge. After eight years of dithering, nothing has been agreed.

When the climate talks in Copenhagen ended in failure last week, Yvo de Boer, the man in charge of the process, urged us not to worry: everything will be sorted out “in Mexico one year from now.”(1) Is Mexico the diplomatic equivalent of the Pacific garbage patch: the place where failed negotiations go to die?

De Boer might pretend that this is just a temporary hitch, but he knows what happens when talks lose momentum. A year ago I asked him what he feared most. This is what he said. “The worst-case scenario for me is that climate becomes a second WTO. … Copenhagen, for me, is a very clear deadline that I think we need to meet, and I am afraid that if we don’t, then the process will begin to slip, and like in the trade negotiations, one deadline after the other will not be met, and we sort of become the little orchestra on the Titanic.”(2)

We can live without a new trade agreement; we can’t live without a new climate agreement. One of the failings of the people who have tried to mobilise support for a climate treaty is that we have made the issue too complicated. So here is the simplest summary I can produce of why this matters.

Human beings can live in a wider range of conditions than almost any other species. But the climate of the past few thousand years has been amazingly kind to us. It has enabled us to spread into almost all regions of the world and to grow into the favourable ecological circumstances it has created. We currently enjoy the optimum conditions for supporting seven billion people.

A shift in global temperature reduces the range of places than can sustain human life. During the last ice age, humans were confined to low latitudes. The difference in the average global temperature between now and then was four degrees centigrade. Global warming will have the opposite effect, driving people into higher latitudes, principally as water supplies diminish.

Food production at high latitudes must rise as quickly as it falls elsewhere, but this is unlikely to happen. According to the body that summarises the findings of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the potential for global food production “is very likely to decrease above about 3C”(3). The panel uses the phrase “very likely” to mean a probability of above 90%(4). Unless a strong climate deal is struck very soon, the probable outcome is a rise of three or more degrees by the end of the century.

Even in higher latitudes the habitable land area will decrease as the sea level rises. The likely rise this century - probably less than a metre - is threatening only to some populations, but the process does not stop in 2100. During the previous interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago, the average global temperature was around 1.3 degrees higher than it is today, as a result of changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun. A new paper in the scientific journal Nature shows that sea levels during that period were between 6.6 and 9.4 metres higher than today’s(5). Once the temperature had risen, the expansion of sea water and the melting of ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica was unstoppable. I wonder whether the government of Denmark, whose atrocious management of the conference contributed to its failure, would have tried harder if its people knew that in a few hundred years they won’t have a country any more.

As people are displaced from their homes by drought and sea level rise, and as food production declines, the planet will be unable to support the current population. The collapse in human numbers is unlikely to be either smooth or painless: while the average global temperature will rise gradually, the events associated with it will come in fits and starts: sudden droughts and storm surges.

This is why the least developed countries, which will be hit hardest, made the strongest demands in Copenhagen. One hundred and two poor nations called for the maximum global temperature rise to be limited not to two degrees but to 1.5. The chief negotiator for the G77 bloc complained that Africa was being asked “to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”(6).

The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama. The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal which outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation; either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown.

The British and American governments have blamed the Chinese government for the failure of the talks. It’s true that the Chinese worked hard to mess them up, but Obama also put Beijing in an impossible position. He demanded concessions while offering nothing. He must have known the importance of not losing face in Chinese politics: his unilateral diplomacy amounted to a demand for self-abasement. My guess is that this was a calculated manoeuvre guaranteed to produce instransigence, whereupon China could be blamed for the outcome he wanted.

Why would Obama do this? You have only to see the relief in Democratic circles to get your answer. Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible.

So what happens now? That depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people - the kind who read the Guardian every day - have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions onto the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero.

Is this music not to your taste sir, or madam? Perhaps you would like our little orchestra to play something louder, to drown out that horrible grinding noise.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Yvo de Boer, 19th December 2009. http://unfccc.int/2860.php

2. From transcript of video interview for the Guardian’s “Monbiot Meets” series. You can watch the edited discussion here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/dec/08/monbiot-yvo-de-boer-climate

3. IPCC, 2007. Assessing key vulnerabilities and the risk from climate change. Table 19.1. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter19.pdf

4. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/supporting-material/uncertainty-guidance-note.pdf

5. Robert E. Kopp et al, 17th December 2009. Probabilistic assessment of sea level during the last interglacial stage. Nature Vol 462, pp863-868. doi:10.1038/nature08686

6. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/20/copenhagen-obama-brown-climate

Post-script from blogger Janet here: Monbiot is always stunningly intelligent, incisive & insightful. His Web site has TONS of great columns. As it happens, I want to recognize the CCPA Monitor for drawing my attention to this one. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives puts out a monthly newsletter, the CCPA Monitor, that always has gobs of great articles. This column of Monbiot’s was in their Feb. 2010 issue as a guest editorial.

‘Quote of the day’ w. this post: “The message, so firmly, is – don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the angry-hearted, the whiners, the blamers, the negative minded. Hang with those who believe in love, hope, and beauty – and then work with them to make this a reality. This is our planet. This is our time. This is our call to action.” ~ Guy Dauncey, author of The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming.

I don’t always keep up with what’s in “the news.”

I gather, however, that there is a storm of climate change denial happening out there.

This post is just to let readers know about a response to this nonsense.

There is a list serve that has tons of intelligent conversation about the environmental crisis in general & the climate crisis in particular. It comes from the Environmental Educators of Ontario (EEON).

So. I heard about this “Elevate the Climate Conversation: Climate Response” Web site there.

http://www.trunity.net/climateresponse/

The person who started the site says:

“This activity is impacting public opinion over climate change. According to a recent article in the Globe & Mail, public skepticism of climate change is growing. The doubters do disservice to climate facts.

We need to fight back. I’ve just launched Climate Response (www.climateresponse.ca), which calls on all of us to help elevate the public conversation on climate change and climate change solutions. Climate Response offers handy at-your-fingertips facts and stats to help support your arguments when writing to the press. It also provides members with timely notices on articles dealing with these issues.

We need to unite, get active and get vocal. Please join, tell your students, colleagues and friends. Join us on Facebook here and Twitter here too.

The only way we will beat this is strength in numbers.

Sincerely,

Cheryl McNamara

Climate Response”

Please check it out!!

Deniers are such…Flat Earthers. To put it very, very politely. (Too politely! Criminal is more like it…)

By all means, make use of the site, please!!

Janet

P.S. Must-read book: Climate Cover-up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan (with Richard Littlemore).

Quote of the Day w. this post: “So-called global warming is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy-independent, clean our air and water, improve fuel-efficiency of our vehicles, kickstart 21st century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don’t let them get away with it!” – Chip Giller, founder of Grist.org

As you’ll see, the particular workshop this message is promoting took place a few weeks ago.

I’m posting this because I want readers to know the workshop exists, & also that author & activist extraordinaire Guy Dauncey has published a new book called The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming. More info on it below, along with a wonderful tribute to its practicality from Bill McKibben.

Climate Action: Best Practices
What are the best ways that governments can tackle climate change?
with Guy Dauncey
Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC.
Thursday February 4th, 1-4:30pm.  $55 +GST

This course will offer a guided tour of best practices in the areas of transport, buildings, energy, farming, food, wastes, carbon pricing, and community engagement, and provide an opportunity for participants to find solutions to the challenges they face.

AND ….What will it take for BC to achieve a 100% reduction in our GHGs by 2030?

This course should be of interest to everyone who is concerned about the growing climate emergency.

Guy Dauncey is author of the newly published book The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming <http://www.earthfuture.com/theclimatechallenge/> and President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association His personal website is www.earthfuture.com <http://www.earthfuture.com/>

To register, click here: http://bit.ly/4YZYzn
or call 250-391-2600 Ext 4801  Toll-free 1-866-890-0220

Feedback about Guy Dauncey’s new book:

What an amazingly (insanely!) comprehensive and useful book. This is a joyous, hope-filled manual for facing the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered. – Bill McKibben, 350.org <http://350.org/>

Guy Dauncey has created something unique in the current literature - if you wish to grasp the mind-boggling complexity of the climate challenge, read this book. – John Shellnhuber, Chief Sustainability Scientist for the German Government

If you are wondering what to do about climate change, here is the answer. The Climate Challenge is not only interesting and informative, it is also exciting.  –Lester R. Brown, author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Feedback from people who have attended this course:

“Fantastic, world-changing course. Must be turned into a 2-3 part documentary.”

“Guy is a tremendous speaker, teacher, and stimulator. More people need to hear him.”

“Excellent presentation – should be made into a movie.”

Blog ‘Quote of the day’ w. this post: “I know of no restorative of heart, body, and soul that is more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth.” – Barry Lopez

There are plenty of climate change deniers. As you might imagine, I have very little patience with them. (In general, I think, it often pays to ask ourselves, “Who stands to gain?” & then ask ourselves also, if something benefits corporate hotshots & big oil executives, is there much chance most of the rest of us stand to gain??)(1)

Right at the top of my must-read list is the book Climate Cover-up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan (with Richard Littlemore). I think it’s a good idea for all of us to be fully aware of the depth of the organized, criminal conspiracy to deny climate change.

Meanwhile, this blog post is my way of sharing with readers a letter to the editor that I wrote in December in response to (Canadian) Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren’s Dec. 16^th piece entitled ‘The Scare Tacticians.’ (I’ve tried to locate this one on the Citizen Web site, but have not been able to find it.) My letter was not published.

December 20, 2009.

Dear Editor:

Citizen columnist David Warren’s piece last Wednesday entitled ‘The Scare Tacticians’ kind of blew me out of the water. I am not a regular Citizen reader by the way; just a fluke, basically, that I saw the paper and his column at all.

He seems to be suggesting that environmental activists just made up acid rain, ozone depletion, species loss, deforestation, water pollution, climate change and too many other serious environmental problems to attempt to list here.

Actually, his rantings were so extreme I wondered briefly if he was spoofing somebody. But I guess he’s for real.

For sure, my 20 years of environmental activism have not been about “accumulating wealth and power.” I’m just more concerned than I can really even articulate about the state of the world my generation (especially the “old boys” who really run the show here) are leaving for my children and grandchildren (should my kids be fortunate enough to have children; fertility is one of the casualties of all this environmental degradation, one assumes…).

Weaver thinks environmental activists are scare tacticians. I see us as change tacticians. Things need to change, and we see that this is possible. We can change, we are changing, and people of great energy and conviction are making all kinds of awesome innovations all over our still-lovely planet.

I wonder what it is about trying to make the world a saner, healthier, cleaner place that scares Mr. Weaver so much?

The folks who scare me are the ones like your columnist, who seem to think there’s something wrong with change, adaptability and evolution. I think the point of human evolution (and our own individual lives) is to grow, adapt and change. I think it’s time to shed this particular human-as-consumer skin – and I see great examples of inspiration from far and wide that this is indeed eminently do-able.

I think Mr. Weaver is just plain afraid of new ideas. John Cage said, “I can’t understand why people are afraid of new ideas, I’m afraid of the old ones.” Me too.

Sincerely,

Janet McNeill

(1) Readers: if you have investments, have you made sure that you are not personally helping to support “big oil”? We want to be sure we are part of the solution, not part of the problem…right?

‘Quote of the day’ w. this post: “When there’s a bend in the road, the only ones who crash are those who refuse to change direction.” ~ Source unknown

<written in late 2008,1^st posted in early 2009; revised & re-posted now!>

Full Book Title: Becoming the Kind Father – A Son’s Journey, by Calvin Sandborn (New Society Publishers, 2007).

Are you already a kind father? Kind mother? Kind non-parent, or kind person of any description?

Wonderful!

I’d suggest that you consider reading this book anyway, because it is truly a book for everyone.

This is a book that explains – from the in-side out – why so many men are chronically angry, impatient & unable to articulate (& thus understand) their own emotions. Lots of men are frequently grumpy, impatient & exceedingly judgmental of others – but have no idea why they are this way. Most probably “caught” it from their fathers. I recall once talking to a mother of 12 who said children “soak up their parents’ values like a sponge.” We parents “infect” our children with lots of less-than-useful attitudes & behaviour patterns. We can really only learn to jettison our parents’ harsh attitudes and judgments (of ourselves and of others) if we can begin to recognize where our own have come from. Emotional intelligence is power!

I find the title of this book almost unfortunate in some ways, because one might tend to gloss over it, thinking one is not the intended audience. Either one is already a “kind father,” one has a “kind father,” or one is not a man, and thus has no need to read it at all (unkind fathers aren’t a very likely audience either, really, although one wishes it might be so).

Maybe it would have been better to call the book “Understanding Those Godawful Mean, Alcoholic Fathers –Thousands of Years of Patriarchy & What It Means to ALL of Us”… or something along those lines. Yes, I know, not really a viable idea…

At any rate, this is a wonderful, brave and sensitive book, & I suspect many men are probably too scared – or too defensive…to read it.

Please read it anyway!!!

If you’re a kind father, kind mother, or neither, but are a human being on Planet Earth in the year 2010, I’d say, this book will be worth your time. It’s a fairly quick read, and written so well & with such honesty & compassion that it goes down very well indeed.

It explains how humanity’s very long experiment with patriarchy has been damaging men for thousands of years – & how the author broke free of it (hint: it took a crisis). It discusses how men need to learn to feel their emotions, recognize and articulate these emotions (i.e., not simply deny that they exist & squash them down year after year after year), and talk more – and why their fathers were, in so many cases, mean, impatient, angry men – maybe alcoholics to boot (certainly something with which a great many of us are entirely too familiar). It also explains why most males don’t really trust one another, from a pretty early age.

The book explains, from the in-side – i.e., from a man’s own perspective – why so many men are chronically angry & even become more or less hardwired for anger. The staggering health & emotional costs to our society of all this anger are also made clear.

As well, very practical tips for how we can change these unfortunate patterns are provided. The importance of learning to let go of ancient resentments & learning how to forgive is highlighted. Forgiveness is not a simple thing, as those who have been deeply abused are well aware, but Sandborn gives it full justice (& an entire chapter, called “Forgiveness & Freedom”). He references the work of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project & its impressive achievements in Northern Ireland.

The author also talks about his own childhood with an angry father, & how he eventually changed his own life and became a “kind father,” not just to his children, but to himself. (1) He explains fully how anyone can do this.

The book is brimming with psychological wisdom & insights. Anyone who reads it is certain to learn some very practical lessons.

The reason men will find it particularly compelling is that the story is from a man’s point of view. Sandborn references other very useful books (e.g., one by Terrence Real called I Don’t Want to Talk About It), and includes a (short) suggested reading list at the end.

I would venture to say that there are many women who could also benefit from Sandborn’s idea of becoming a kind parent (of either sex!) to oneself. Lots of us had some not-very-excellent parenting – sometimes from fathers; in some cases, from mothers…

But don’t take my word for it! Go to http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3951 and check out the information there. You can even listen to the author read on the New Society Publishers site.

Why am I writing this review? I think this is a very well-written book, filled with wisdom & insight, that could help lots and lots of people. Challenging times are upon us, readers – I think we will all need to have our wits about us, in as many ways & as much as humanly possible, in the days to come…

Janet

P.S. Another great book for helping us all understand the nature of many father-son relationships (and a little about the fallout from our 5000-year experiment with patriarchy) is The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert, Penguin Books, 2002. Stunning book…

P.P.S. Perhaps you are a man who says, “Oh heck, I don’t need this book. I understand all that stuff already.” To which I reply, “Sir, I don’t buy it. You may understand some of this on the intellectual level – but I am willing to bet you don’t get it in your guts. Until you get it in your guts, you really don’t get it at all.”

P.P.P.S. If after reading this book it occurs to you that you might benefit from some help with your relationship with your wife/husband/partner, I also recommend the book Healing the Wounds in Couple Relationships, by Martin Rovers. Rovers hasn’t just written a book, he gives occasional workshops (on behalf of Serenity Renewal for Families, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) that he calls “Healing Love in Couple’s Relationships” (when I went, it was called “The Dance of Wounds in Couple’s Relationships”). I found both his book & his workshop very helpful indeed.

P.S. # 4: Yet another useful book is BrainSex – The Real Difference Between Men & Women, by Anne Moir & David Jessel. This quick read explains fundamental brain differences & the resulting behaviour differences between women & men.

‘Quote of the day’ with this post:

“The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our life.” – Alice Miller, 20^th-century therapist & writer

“Runners up” for Quote of the Day:

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.” – Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941

“We live in a world that has practiced violence for generations – violence to other creatures, violence to the planet, violence to ourselves. Yet in my garden, where I have nurtured a healthy soil-plant community, I see a model of a highly successful, non-violent system where I participate in gentle biological diplomacy rather than war. The garden has more to teach us than just how to grow food.” ~ Eliot Coleman, ‘Four-Season Harvest’

“Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone: it has to be made like bread, remade all the time, made new.” – Ursula K. LeGuin

“A dead end is just a good place to turn around.” – Naomi Judd