What Will it Take for Us to Act -Really Act?- on the Climate Crisis?

Action isn’t a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders.
It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a coming alive.
More than some moral imperative,
it’s an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts.
~Joanna Macy

What Will it Take for Us to Act -Really Act?

Dear Subscriber First Name

A few weeks ago, I was at my parents’ place in France, cleaning up the attic. An article in an old magazine titled “La Terre se réchauffe”/“The Earth is warming up” attracted my attention. It read:

“The president wipes the beads of sweat from his forehead. “But who on Earth had this idea to stop the A/C at the White House to model energy savings for the rest of the nation? ”. The summer of 2023 is planned to be even hotter than preceding years. With a frown of anxiety, the President lays on his desk at the Oval Office desk a very thick volume titled Climate Change, across which one can see a large red stamp, the one of the National Research Council (NRC), the highest scientific authority in the USA. This was a study ordered by Jimmy Carter and officially provided to his successor Ronald Reagan as early as December 1983!
“Yes, we already knew” sighs the President, bitterly regretting that none of his predecessors had the political courage to act, forcing him now to take draconian and unpopular measures because they are so late: reducing the consumption of coal, oil and gas by 30% for all – individuals, companies and electricity producers -while simultaneously restarting construction of nuclear plants and accelerating the solar energy program.”

The article had been published in Géo, a French educational monthly publication similar to National Geographic in the US. The article written by Cedric Philibert, energy and climate change analyst, which I am translating here, was published in the October 1984 edition of Géo. That’s almost forty years ago. It continues:

“This is going to cost him his re-election. But how to proceed otherwise? There is urgency. For once, (and at last!), scientists agree: drought is everywhere, from the shores of the Mediterranean sea to Vietnam to Central America. An irony of fate: it rains more on the sahelian deserts because the oceanic evaporation is increasing. Everything is explained in the following two words: Global Warming. The planet is heating up and simmers like a soup kettle that has been forgotten on the stove. The climatologists have a culprit: the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas transparent to visible light but opaque to infrared that captures the solar rays at the Earth’s surface and transforms it into a pressure cooker. It’s the greenhouse effect: CO2 behaves like glass letting light in and retaining heat.
And what is at the origin of these large emissions of CO2, it’s the fire, ignited everywhere by humanity. Burning wood, burning coal, burning oil, burning gas means that we are oxidizing carbon: from 20 to 25 gigatons of CO2 per year sent into the atmosphere at the beginning of the 80’s, with 4% annual increase. As the temperatures rise, so does the sea level. Still slowly for now, but more and more rapidly every year: the poles are melting. The Dutch have started large projects to raise their dykes. But urban regions such as Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo or Lagos (50 millions inhabitants together) do not have the means to do the same and are waiting for the catastrophe to happen. In twenty years, the sea has already risen by a meter. As it goes on, vast continental zones will be submerged, from Florida to Bengladesh, the Netherlands and the northern part of Germany. It’s only in Moscow that people are cheering: in Siberia, the harvesting of the wheat crops are beating all records.”

The four decades old article together with graphs, photos and renderings provides an accurate description of the phenomenon of global warming, now more frequently referred as human caused climate breakdown. While we have been told that scientists have been aware of the problem since the 70’s, I personally did not realize that the information was actually available in general publications like Géo or that it had been so clearly communicated to our governments.
Further researching the report delivered to the oval office according to the Géo article, I indeed find: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment, National Research Council, Washington, DC, The National Academies Press, 1979 and in it, the following paragraph:

“If carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, the expert group sees no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, nor any reason to believe that they will be negligible… Waiting to see before acting means waiting until it is too late.”

So what will it take for us to act? Almost forty years on ….

Paul Dickinson from Outrage&Optimism, the podcast he runs together with Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, was asking this week in his newsletter: “Have you been asking the same questions as me?”:

• What on Earth will it take for us to act -really act- in line with the science?

• Why on Earth are we still stuck in a nonsensical morass of madness, in which we continue to subsidize polluting fossil fuels and destroy the natural world even as we know the devastating harm it causes?

• And how on Earth do we change the future?

• What does it even mean to be a human being?

You may find some of the answers to these questions while listening to his latest two-part podcast Lifelines vs Deadlines.

As for me, I am teaming up with a social entreprise in France, Circle for future. While we may not have the answers, we may have a process to get to the answers and more importantly to take action: coaching circles that provide an environment conducive to personal shift and systemic action. We are having an informational workshop on Wednesday May 31. The initial target audience is coaches, but if you are a change maker you are invited to join too. See all details and registration info below.

As for any one reading this newsletter, the invitation is to review the list of climate action resources provided below and to engage with one action. As Joanna Macy writes: “You don’t need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it is enough.”

Please write back with questions or comments or to share how you are taking action.

Warmly,

Anne-Marie (born 317.73 ppm)
May 21, 2023
(423.5 ppm of atmospheric CO2, up from 421.20 last year, safe level 350)

A Workshop with Circle for future on May 31st

Resources for Climate Action

Here are a few resources I have been collecting on my climate journey. There are many others; the important thing to do is to start. Write back if I can support you in taking a first step.

• Books

• Podcasts:

• Movie and action website: Don’t Look up by the director Adam McKay, available on Netflix, a satire about the climate crisis and the apathetic response of our society and governments and its associated website in partnership with Count Us In for taking action.

• Project Drawdown: A list of climate solutions and how to get involved

• Activism for people 60 and over: Third Act! with Bill McKibben, a community for experienced Americans who want to engage with the climate crisis.

• Carbon Offsets: Wren.co, projects to invest in to offset your carbon footprint

If you have any feedback on any of these resources, please write back.