We need to accept this moral responsibility. The following article which appeared in the Guardian I believe comes straight from James’s heart. Do you care enough to take an activist stance while we have the time?

Thank you – Bob Williamson Founder & Chair Greenhouse Neutral Foundation.

“How did you become an activist?” I was surprised by the question. I never considered myself an activist. I am a slow-paced taciturn scientist from the Midwest US. Most of my relatives are pretty conservative. I can imagine attitudes at home toward “activists”.

I was about to protest the characterisation – but I had been arrested, more than once. And I had testified in defence of others who had broken the law. Sure, we only meant to draw attention to problems of continued fossil fuel addiction. But weren’t there other ways to do that in a democracy? How had I been sucked into being an “activist?”

My grandchildren had a lot to do with it. It happened step by step. First, in 2004, I broke a 15-year self-imposed effort to stay out of the media. I gave a public lecture, backed by scientific papers, showing the need to slow greenhouse gas emissions – and I criticised the Bush administration for its lack of appropriate policies. My grandchildren came into the talk only as props – holding 1-watt Christmas tree bulbs to help explain climate forcings.

Fourteen months later I gave another public talk – connecting the dots from global warming to policy implications to criticisms of the fossil fuel industry for promoting misinformation. This time my grandchildren provided rationalisation for a talk likely to draw ire from the administration. I explained that I did not want my children to look back and say: “Opa understood what was happening, but he never made it clear.”

What had become clear was that our planet is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea levels to rise and species to become extinct beyond our control. Increasing atmospheric water vapour is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

Stabilising climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.

Actions needed for the world to move on to clean energies of the future are feasible. The actions could restore clean air and water globally. But the actions are not happening.

At first I thought it was poor communication. Scientists must not have made the story clear enough to world leaders.

So I wrote letters to national leaders and visited more than half a dozen nations, as described in my book, Storms of My Grandchildren. What I found in each case was greenwash – a pretence of concern about climate but policies dictated by fossil fuel special interests.

The situation is epitomised by my recent trip to Norway. I hoped that Norway, because of its history of environmentalism, might be able to take real action to address climate change, drawing attention to the hypocrisy in the words and pseudo-actions of other nations.

So I wrote a letter to the prime minister suggesting that Norway, as majority owner of Statoil, should intervene in its plans to develop the tar sands of Canada. I received a polite response, by letter, from the deputy minister of petroleum and energy. The government position is that the tar sands investment is “a commercial decision”, that the government should not interfere, and that a “vast majority in the Norwegian parliament” agree that this constitutes “good corporate governance”. The deputy minister concluded his letter: “I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad.”

A Norwegian grandfather, upon reading the deputy minister’s letter, quoted Saint Augustine: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

The Norwegian position is a staggering reaffirmation of the global situation: even the greenest governments find it too inconvenient to address the implication of scientific facts.

It becomes clear that concerted action will happen only if the public, somehow, becomes forcefully involved. One way citizens can help is by blocking coal plants, tar sands, and the mining of the last drops of fossil fuels.

However, fossil fuel addiction can be solved only when we recognise an economic law as certain as the law of gravity: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy they will be used. Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and efficiency.

A carbon fee is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction.

Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade with offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

Because the executive and legislative branches of our governments turn a deaf ear to the science, the judicial branch may provide the best opportunity to redress the situation. Our governments have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the rights of young people and future generations.

I look forward to standing with young people and their supporters, helping them develop their case, as they demand their proper due and fight for nature and their future. I guess that makes me an activist.

• The full version of this essay, entitled “Activist”, will appear in the book The Day After Tomorrow; Images of Our Earth in Crisis by J Henry Fair, to be published in November by PowerHouse Books. Dr James Hansen’s latest book is called Storms of my Grandchildren.

March 4, 2010

Methane release from the not-so-perma-frost is the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle. Research published in Friday’s journal Science finds a key “lid” on “the large sub-sea permafrost carbon reservoir” near Eastern Siberia “is clearly perforated, and sedimentary CH4 [methane] is escaping to the atmosphere.”

Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane.  Methane is  is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years! 

The carbon is locked in a freezer in the part of the planet warming up the fastest (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“).  Half the land-based permafrost would vanish by mid-century on our current emissions path (see “Tundra, Part 2: The point of no return” and below).  No climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. 

The new Science study, led by University of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Centre and the Russian Academy of Sciences, is “Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf” (subs. req’d).  The must-read National Science Foundation press release (click here), warns “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.”  The NSF is normally a very staid organization.  If they are worried, everybody should be. 

It is increasingly clear that if the world strays significantly above 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide for any length of time, we will find it unimaginably difficult to stop short of 800 to 1000 ppm. 

Note:  As part of the Climate Science Project, I’m making this post as definitive as I can by including other recent scientific findings on the tundra.  Please add other relevant links in the comments. 

The lead author, Natalia Shakhova, explains the new findings in this video:

  NSF explains:

“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material (which contains carbon) stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under anaerobic conditions, gradually releases methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane-rich area that encompasses more than 2 million square kilometers of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean. It is more than three times as large as the nearby Siberian wetlands, which have been considered the primary Northern Hemisphere source of atmospheric methane. Shakhova’s research results show that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is already a significant methane source, releasing 7 teragrams of methane yearly, which is as much as is emitted from the rest of the ocean. A teragram is equal to about 1.1 million tons.

“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”

Shakhova notes that the Earth’s geological record indicates that atmospheric methane concentrations have varied between about .3 to .4 parts per million during cold periods to .6 to .7 parts per million during warm periods. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, she said. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a relative frontier in methane studies. The shelf is shallow, 50 meters (164 feet) or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or terrestrial, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. During the Earth’s coldest periods, it is a frozen arctic coastal plain, and does not release methane. As the Earth warms and sea level rises, it is inundated with seawater, which is 12-15 degrees warmer than the average air temperature.

“It was thought that seawater kept the East Siberian Arctic Shelf permafrost frozen,” Shakhova said. “Nobody considered this huge area.”

Last August I discussed findings by German and British scientists “that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres” (see “So many amplifying methane feedbacks, so little time to stop them all” and figure on right).

A lead researcher of that work said, “Our survey was designed to work out how much methane might be released by future ocean warming; we did not expect to discover such strong evidence that this process has already started.”

But the situation in the ESAS is far, far more dicey, as NSF explains:

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.

“The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said. “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.”

That trend is occurring now, as seen in these two photos from a recent ScienceNews article, “Boreal forests shift north.”

“Upper photo taken in 1962 shows tundra-dominated mountain slope in Siberian Urals. A 2004 photo of the same site, below, shows conifers were setting up dense stand of forest.”

Another major study warns that the warming-driven northward march of vegetation poses yet another threat to the tundra:  “Greater fire activity will likely accompany temperature-related increases in shrub-dominated tundra predicted for the 21st century and beyond.”  The concern is not so much the direct emissions from burning tundra, but the albedo change.

And all that warming would cause massive melting of the tundra and faster emissions release. That must be avoided at all cost, since the tundra feedback, coupled with the climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks that the IPCC models, could easily take us to the unmitigated catastrophe of 1000 ppm.

The good news is that a 2009 NOAA-led study found “Near-zero CH4 growth in the Arctic during 2008 suggests we have not yet activated strong climate feedbacks from permafrost and CH4 hydrates” (see “Is it just too damn late?“)

The bad news is we clearly are on very thin ice.  Literally.

Lawrence revised and updated his 2005 analysis of tundra loss under different emissions scenarios (after some scientists criticized the original work) in this 2008 study, “Sensitivity of a model projection of near-surface permafrost degradation to soil column depth and representation of soil organic matter” (subs. req’d).  The updated analysis still found: “the warming is enough to drive near-surface permafrost extent sharply down by 2100.”

I had asked Lawrence if it was still reasonable to keep using this figure in my presentation, since it is so much easier to understand than the figures in his new paper.

He said, “Using the old figure is still fine as long as one mentions the caveats that permafrost is probably degrading a bit too rapidly in the original.

So I will certainly use that caveat, though, of course, I will also caveat the caveat by saying the slightly slower rate of permafrost degradation does not include Lawrence’s new analysis on the accelerated warming of the permafrost due to sea ice loss (or, for that matter, the accelerated warming of the permafrost due to faster shrub encroachment).

Note that the “B1″ scenario stabilizes CO2 concentrations in the air at 550 ppm — and the near-surface permafrost permafrost (down to 11 feet) plummets from over 4 million square miles today to 1.5 million.  If concentrations hit 850 ppm in 2100 (A2), permafrost would shrink to just 800,000 square miles.

And while these projections were done with one of the world’s most sophisticated climate system models, the calculations do not include the feedback effect of the released carbon from the permafrost. That is to say, the CO2 concentrations in the model rise only as a result of direct emissions from humans, with no extra emissions counted from soils or tundra. Thus they are conservative numbers–or overestimates–of how much CO2 concentrations have to rise to trigger irreversible melting.

In short, the would-be point of atmospheric stabilization, 550 ppm isn’t stable at all — it is past the point of no return. We must stay well below 450 ppm to save the tundra and hence the climate.  The new research underscores that conclusion, especially since the planet will keep warming (slowly) for decades even once we slash emissions to near zero.

And that means we must begin a staggering amount of clean energy deployment as soon as possible (see “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution“).

Wake up media and politicians who are being duped by the anti-science disinformers into thinking there is any serious doubt about the catastrophe we face on our current path of unrestricted emissions!

UPDATE:  WWF’s Nick Sundt points out:

A report released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, Abrupt Climate Change, said in December 2008 (during the Bush Administration) that warming in the Arctic could cause sea levels to rise substantially beyond scientists’ previous predictions and could result in massive releases of methane.  The report said that the “rapid release to the atmosphere of methane trapped in permafrost and on continental margins” was among “four types of abrupt change in the paleoclimatic record that stand out as being so rapid and large in their impact that if they were to recur, they would pose clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt.”

The NSF has a good fact sheet, “Questions and Answers on Potentially Large Methane Releases From Arctic, and Climate Change.”

UPDATE:  Since we don’t have a time series of CH4 emissions from the shelf, we can’t know for certain that these emissions levels are new or growing.  But as the study makes clear, they are unexpectedly high and the lid is perforated:

They found that more than 80 percent of the deep water and more than 50 percent of surface water had methane levels more than eight times that of normal seawater. In some areas, the saturation levels reached more than 250 times that of background levels in the summer and 1,400 times higher in the winter. They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

These findings were further confirmed when Shakhova and her colleagues sampled methane levels at higher elevations. Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated Arctic levels.

So yes, there is the possibility this is a grand coincidence — but  that would not eliminate the fact that the  lid  on these vast methane stores is perforated and emissions are poised to rise  sharply as temperature rises and none of this is in any of the global climate models.  How much is  the business as usual warming now projected for the region?  Try M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F.

The nations of the world should immediately begin emergency methane monitoring across the entire permafrost region — and, of course, aggressive GHG mitigation.  The risk of abrupt climate change is simply too grave to not treat as the most serious preventable problem now facing the human race as a whole.

Related Posts:

A methane feedback from the past strikes again

The Garden of Eden had a 40-foot, 1-ton snake plus 90°F average temperatures

Source Climate Progress

That comment in a recent article along with the following adaptation (from the French) of a story sent to me by a colleague in Quebec Canada made me reflect on why the global community is not focused and active on pushing for immediate reductions in greenhouse emission.

We don’t see it as affecting us directly today. We know the world is warming at a rate that will cause a radical shift in the way we live in the coming decades, still we don’t act. The question to be asked and for you to answer is when will you? Does it need to hit you personally, to devastate your life and that of those you love?

From the frozen north, now warming at an alarming rate comes this observation by Par Moukmouk le jeudi of the village of Pohenegamouk, not far from Montréal – I pay all credit to his observations.  

I am not alone in giving news about North. The newspapers are full. But why the focus on what happens elsewhere?

In France, Betancourt’s case occupies journalists; here is a change in the law on the census. Yes, there are many fires in Russia and floods in Pakistan, but that’s not going to pay the mortgage, or find the love of my life.

Caribou by tens of thousands are moving slowly in the treeless plain bordering the Arctic Ocean. There were mountains here, but the glaciers have crashed, it remains as soft undulations as small breasts of young women. There is not a single tree as far as the eye. Here, the permafrost layer under a few inches when pushing the moss and grass particularly abundant this year, there are tens of meters of ice mixed with soil of moraine rock crushed as finely as flour by the friction of glaciers.

A caribou walks a bit away to a clump of grass that seems appetizing. Suddenly, he sinks into the ground; he struggles to swim and wants what does widens the pool of mud around him. You hear shouting, call and then nothing, his head sank, he disappeared. The other caribou have pretended not to hear, have had nervous tremors like to hunt mosquitoes too abundant. I think they know that danger is now standing still on the ground may open under their feet and they disappear with no hope of relief. The caribou are pretending not to know.

Our small planet saw the warmest year since we are able to measure temperatures. The boreal forest burns, permafrost melts at high speed releasing billions of tons of methane much more active than the CO2 in the development of the greenhouse effect. The earth opens up beneath our feet.

Because of the current La Nina, next winter will probably be a little colder than average. This will be a good opportunity to burn more oil. The loudmouths on the radio to enjoy laughing doomsayers who talk about global warming. And we’ll pretend not to know.

“Next in the sales brochure, we are off back to the Northern Hemisphere to a balmy climate that until now has been largely overlooked by holiday makers, Siberia.”

“On offer here we have one or two new tourist attractions—thawing peat bogs!! This could be symbolized by thinking of the Olympic rings linking up and ever increasing in diameter. As the permafrost starts to melt the outside of the circles fall inward in an ever widening pool of melting peat. As the sides collapse in a positive feedback, puddles become ponds, which become lakes. A real sight, but not for any freestyle Olympic swimmer to tackle—better leave this for the extreme sports crowd. Covering an area of a million square miles and frozen for eleven thousand years, Siberia has, as is the situation with the Arctic, been storing carbon since the last ice age. The simple botanical lesson works like this. The moss and lichen surviving on the frozen permafrost over thousands of years have been slowly absorbing massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Until now it’s been a little too chilly for the seasonal growth to fully decompose, so for the last eleven thousand years the ever thickening, year after year layers, are now around 25 meters thick. We have on offer again, assisted by the standard no-option heater, up to a quarter of all the carbon that has been taken up in the world vegetation and soils since the last ice age. Now as average temperatures rise at three times the global average these frozen Siberian peat bogs are melting into putrid puddles, then swamps, then lakes. Lacking in oxygen, they release methane. More than twenty times more powerful and faster acting as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the critical level of atmospheric concentrations could be reached, exceeded, and on a run to massive climatic destabilization in a heartbeat.”

“From 2002 to 2005 reports stated, that while the West Siberian peat lands had remained stable, the big thaw was now on, warming faster than anywhere on the planet. With every year the spring melt has been starting earlier and earlier adding to the positive feedback. Increasing levels of rainfall are making the area far wetter and with spring coming sooner and the winter freeze coming later, many areas of Siberia and Alaska are retaining their warmth longer. As the peat on the bottom of the lakes is converting its methane cocktail, the gases bubble to the surface. Some of the southernmost lakes are remaining unfrozen during winter, lakes that had frozen each year for thousands of years. Where the winter snow does fall, it acts as a blanket to keep the lower levels warm, where the spring melt can add even more moisture. Add to that the fact that the dark lakes, as with the expanses of open ocean in the Arctic free of sea ice, absorb more warmth the cumulative effects of warming are amplified. These areas were now being referred to as an ‘ecological landslide that is probably irreversible.’”

“Where the pebble had fallen previously on hard ground, it now falls into a quicksand of fetid swamp. Lakes of melting permafrost can be seen to stretch for hundreds of kilometers with the clear and present danger that methane release is happening at an alarming rate already.” “As the zero-degree isotherm line moves ever further north (the point at which the land reached the melting point of ice, 0 degrees centigrade) year after year it is not a case of if, but one of inevitability. Not a case of, will the methane contribute to further planetary warming, but how much and when will the critical level be reached?”

“In northern Siberia lakes are releasing methane at a rate five times higher than previously estimated. Studies by Katey Walter, an International Polar Year postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks, reported in Nature in 2006 that her team’s calculations increase the present estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands by between 10 and 63 percent. She explains: ‘This newly recognized source of methane is so far not included in climate models.’ Estimates suggest the area has 500 gigatons (1,100 trillion pounds) of carbon, largely in the form of ancient dead plant material. Walter suggests: ‘Permafrost models predict significant thaw of permafrost during this century, which means that yedoma permafrost is like a time bomb waiting to go off—as it continues to thaw, tens of thousands of teragrams of methane can be released to the atmosphere enhancing climate change.’”

“Monitoring of methane releases is becoming an advanced area of research. London’s Royal Holloway College oversees a large international program led by Euan Nisbet to monitor emissions. Their studies suggest that releases from the West Siberian region are up to 100,000 tonnes per day, with a representative warming effect on the planet as a whole of greater than all of the emissions from the United States manmade attributable emissions. Nisbet suggests that ‘If the peat lands become wetter with warming and permafrost degradation, methane releases to the atmosphere will dramatically increase. Methane storage once released is estimated to be equivalent to all manmade emissions for the last 200 years.’

When?

“It has already started,” said the super salesman.

Get the book in hard cover or e-book HERE

Let the ideas percolate up from a thousand localities!

On the Fourth of July, we celebrated Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison and all the other great men who created our democracy, right?

Not exactly. The Founders did create the framework for a democratic republic, but they didn’t create much democracy. Indeed, in America’s first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote.

The Founders created the possibility for democracy, but it took the struggle (often bloody and always hard) of ordinary people over the years to create the substance. In some decades, we’ve made advances; in others, we’ve fallen back – including in the past three decades, when the power of America’s workaday majority has steadily been usurped by corporate elites. So now, We the People must put America back on its historic path toward economic and political democracy.

“Fine,” you might say, “but how? I’m just one person. What can I do?”

1) Start by considering what’s reasonable for you. Few of us can be full-time activists, and the list of issues and problems is intimidating, long and complex. So just take one bite, choosing an issue that interests you most, then start contributing what you can (time, skills, contacts, money, enthusiasm, etc.) to making progress. No contribution is too small. If you can only devote half a day a week, or an hour a day or even minutes a day – it all adds up. As a young Oregon woman said of her half-day-a-week volunteer door-knocking in a legislative race: “I was only drop in the bucket, but I was one drop. And without all of us, the bucket would not have filled up.”

2) Inform yourself. A little effort can quickly connect you to accessible, usable information and insights on any given topic, allowing you to gain a “citizen’s level” of expertise so you can talk to others about it. Read progressive periodicals, tune in to progressive broadcasts, get information from public-interest groups, and plug into good websites and blogs.

Don’t know how to go online? Nearly all public libraries not only have computers, but also librarians and volunteers who’ll assist you in finding the info you want and teach you how to use the machines.

Or find a youngster (maybe your grandchildren or someone at church) who’ll help you. Yes, you can do this!

3) Democracy belongs to those who show up. Join with others. Everyone feels better when they’re part of a group, a movement, a community (whether real or virtual). In your own town or neighborhood, many others are either already working together or willing to help form a group – seek them out, maybe at bookstores, book clubs, coffee shops, events, churches, blogs, Websites and other meeting places.

4) A community is more than a collection of issues and endless meetings. Combine the serious with the social, and remember the Yugoslavian proverb, “You can fight the gods and still have fun!” So discuss your issues and strategies at potluck suppers (bring the kids, have some music, pour a little wine), throw an annual festival of politics, create weekly sessions of beer-mug democracy at local taverns, set aside one day a week for Big Talk (rather than small talk) at the coffeeshop, etc.

5) Become the media. Create a local newsletter, blog, bulletin board (on the wall or online), Internet radio broadcast, etc. Just as importantly, enlist high-school or community college speech and journalism teachers to help you learn how to do radio and TV interviews and how to get local media to cover your issues. Also, get them to train you and others in pubic speaking, so you can have your own speakers’ bureau to address clubs, churches, schools, etc.

6) Hold your own “what to do” sessions in your community. Don’t wait for national progressive groups, which haven’t figured out a cohesive strategy for focusing on people’s anger about the meekness of Washington’s Democratic leaders. Instead, have your own discussions about what should be done nationally – if anything – and start zapping those ideas to other communities, heads of national groups, progressive media outlets and so forth. Let the ideas percolate up from a thousand localities!

That’s what democracy is. Some assembly required.

Source Alternet

You can be the solution as a single voice that joins many others. Personally I have and am committed to being engaged to create change in our troubled world. When I wrote my book ZERO Greenhouse Emissions I acknowledged my role as an unwitting contributor with the following passage in the introduction chapter.

Excerpt:

We teach our children simply “This is a book—say book! This is a cat. This is a dog.” They see it and understand. We teach them right from wrong. We teach them how to share, but to some extent, through our actions we teach them how not to. Inadvertently we have shown them the wrong way to value their worth instead of the right way. We have told them that the true measure of a person’s worth is what they contribute during their time on Earth, but we have taught them with our toil how important it is to amass as many material possessions as we can in the shortest possible time. We have shown them how to consume. We have told them not to be greedy and shown them how to be. We, you and I, learn through life the true value of life, but by the time some of us fully understand love, compassion, and caring for our fellow man, we have already imbedded in our children the same values we once held as our principal purpose, the accumulation of personal wealth. End Excerpt.

In chapter 10 Designed for Demise is written:

We tell our children to share but we show them how not to. Finite resources means going, going, gone. But every industrialized process, every commercial practice, every economic activity, every consumption pattern, revolves around the depletion of finite resources until they are going, going, gone.

And I finish the chapter with:

Future generations will not have the resources on which we have built the industrial and economic model of the developed and developing nations. They will need to survive without them and adapt their lives to survive. They will need to develop infinite and sustainable systems. They will have no other choice. If they do not adapt they will perish. I have confidence that they, with survival of the species of man at stake, will find new ways of living within the boundaries of the natural system, taking no more than can be provided with infinite sustainability. It will be the world we have left them and the only one available.

It cannot be a system designed for demise.

Now watch; and decide if you wish to join me and others and the ‘Coalition of the Willing’

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.