Category: Climate Chaos

Envi­ron­men­tal activist & polit­i­cal pris­on­er Jeff ‘Free’ Luers wrote a prison dis­patch in which he made a call out for an Inter­na­tion­al Gen­er­al Strike on Decem­ber 11 2009 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Inter­na­tion­al Demon­stra­tions on Cli­mate Change dur­ing the Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit.

Around the world peo­ple are begin­ning to feel the heat of glob­al warm­ing, entire nations to tiny com­mu­ni­ties are suf­fer­ing the effects of cli­mate change.

Ear­li­er this year dead­ly wild­fires raged across a drought strick­en Aus­tralia where the con­ti­nent con­tin­ues to suf­fer through one of the worst droughts in its his­to­ry. In South Amer­i­ca, the accel­er­at­ed melt­ing of Andean glac­i­ers is threat­en­ing water sup­plies in Bolivia, Colom­bia, Ecuador and Peru. In Tan­za­nia 85% of Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro’s glac­i­ers have already melt­ed, severe­ly affect­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of water in this African nation. A recent study by the Nation­al Cen­ter for Atmos­pher­ic Research (based in Col­orado, USA) has found that glob­al warm­ing has had a much more sig­nif­i­cant and dam­ag­ing impact on the world’s rivers than pre­vi­ous­ly real­ized. The dis­cov­ery now under­scores a grow­ing threat to food and water sup­plies for mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing in some of the world’s poor­est regions. Mean­while an Oxfam report has warned that by 2015 the num­ber of peo­ple affect­ed by cli­mate relat­ed crises will raise by 54% to 375 mil­lion peo­ple.

The impact of glob­al warm­ing will not just be felt by the poor­er nations who are less able to respond to the cri­sis. In March some of the world’s top cli­mate sci­en­tists warned the U.S. Con­gresss that severe drought in the west­ern por­tion of the Unit­ed States could make tracts of land from Cal­i­for­nia to Okla­homa a waste land, with heat waves in north­ern cities that could make life impos­si­ble.

Recent stud­ies in the Arc­tic have shown that the melt­ing of Arc­tic ice is hap­pen­ing faster than any cli­mate mod­els pre­dict­ed. The rapid melt is threat­en­ing to leave the Arc­tic ice free as ear­ly as 2013. The loom­ing cri­sis is threat­en­ing to cre­ate mil­lions of cli­mate refugees. As peo­ple flee drought plagued regions in search of water, oth­ers retreat from coastal regions in order to escape ris­ing flood waters. The impend­ing cat­a­stro­phe demands imme­di­ate action on the part of both indus­tri­al and devel­op­ing coun­tries. How­ev­er, we need more than just polit­i­cal action, the world needs action from the car­bon emit­ting indus­tries them­selves.

Yet, despite the ever grow­ing wealth of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that the plan­et is warm­ing at a dis­as­trous rate due to human activ­i­ty, indus­try con­tin­ues to resist caps on CO2 emmis­sions. This resis­tance by the most pow­er­ful multi­na­tion­als is mak­ing strict gov­ern­ment action and reg­u­la­tion on cli­mate change dif­fi­cult. Par­tic­u­lar­ly for lead­ers who fear los­ing cor­po­rate sup­port and mon­ey.

The state of Cal­i­for­nia, how­ev­er, is demon­strat­ing that com­bat­ing cli­mate change is not only nec­es­sary but can be good for the econ­o­my. If Cal­i­for­nia were to be ranked as a nation it would be the 7th largest econ­o­my in the world. The state, under Gov­er­nor Schwarzeneg­ger, has signed laws mak­ing it manda­to­ry to reduce over­all green­house gas emis­sions to 1990 lev­els by 2020, and to 85% of 1990 lev­els by 2050. More over, these cuts are expect­ed to cre­ate an esti­mat­ed one mil­lion jobs.

While most of the world’s gov­ern­ments strug­gle with what, if any, demands to make toward forc­ing imme­di­ate and strict reduc­tions in car­bon emis­sions, the world’s poor con­tin­ue to suf­fer the effects of a warm­ing world. Even the wealth­i­est nations are unable to avoid the heat, and many indus­tri­al coun­tries are begin­ning to suf­fer its effects. In ear­ly May sci­en­tists at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty con­clud­ed a study that revealed the world has already burned half of the car­bon nec­es­sary to bring about a cat­a­stroph­ic rise of 2 degrees cel­sius (3.6 F) in aver­age glob­al tem­per­a­ture. At this tem­per­a­ture near­ly half of the world’s plants and ani­mals will be threat­ened by extinc­tion. The sci­en­tists say that half a tril­lion tonnes of car­bon have been con­sumed since the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion. In order to avoid a 2 degree cel­sius rise in tem­per­a­ture, the total amount of car­bon burned must be kept below one tril­lion tonnes. At cur­rent rates of con­sump­tion that fig­ure will be reached in forty years. Myles Allen, the cli­mate sci­en­tist who led the study, had this to say about the threat of cli­mate change. “Moth­er Nature does­n’t care about dates. To avoid dan­ger­ous cli­mate change we will have to lim­it the total amount of car­bon we inject into the atmos­phere, not just the emis­sion rate in any giv­en year.”

The world needs to begin the shift toward a non-car­bon based econ­o­my. Sci­en­tists in every nation have reached the same con­clu­sion and are warn­ing that we must take action now to reduce CO2 emis­sions and invest in clean ener­gy if we are to pre­vent a near­ing glob­al envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis. In nations around the globe the pub­lic have demand­ed action on cli­mate change. Yet, all too often their voic­es go unheard. There is a grow­ing cam­paign to change that; reach­ing across bor­ders and beyond polit­i­cal lines and affil­i­a­tions in an effort to bring those who will be most affect­ed by cli­mate change togeth­er in one pow­er­ful voice.

In every nation the work­ing class is the beat­ing heart. It is the work­ers who keep soci­ety run­ning smooth­ly. But, it is the work­ing class and the work­ing poor who will be hit the hard­est by a warmer world. Which means we must har­ness the pow­er at our fin­ger tips and demand imme­di­ate action to be tak­en to curb green­house gas emis­sions. We need cli­mate jus­tice today, not tomor­row. We need deeds and not promis­es.

On Decem­ber 11th in response to the inter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, we ask that every­one con­cerned with glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change to join us in an Inter­na­tion­al Gen­er­al Strike demand­ing Cli­mate Action. Our work stop­page can have a glob­al impact. Togeth­er, in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty and uni­ty, we can demon­strate to world lead­ers that the glob­al con­sen­sus is for action to stop cli­mate change. They can not ignore our voic­es when we strike.

For one day we will shut the sys­tem down and demand that our gov­ern­ments work togeth­er to act in our best inter­ests. On Decem­ber 11th Strike for Cli­mate Jus­tice, Demand Action!

www.strikeforclimatejustice.org