Humanitarian Relief
Videos to Watch: Climate week highlights, what's next in int'l talks
Published September 27, 2009 @ 02:43PM PT
Above: Climate advocates are striving to contain growing worries that the December climate talks in Copenhagen will be a bust. In this video made just as the G20 summit wrapped up, Kumi Naidoo, chair of the Tck Tck Tck climate mobilization campaign (and incumbent director of Greenpeace), encourages people to get active in their communities, churches, mosques, temples, and clubs. Naidoo and others believe it's crucial that citizens to contact their leaders and demand that they reach a "fair, ambitious and binding" climate treaty agreement in December.
It has been an inconclusive "Climate Week." The world's major economic powers made few significant moves on curbing global warming, and produced no major public breakthroughs in deadlocked climate treaty negotations.
On the activist side, things were a good deal more inspiring:
The Global Wake-up Call saw thousands of people worldwide performing creative, cheerful street actions and calling their political leaders to support a strong climate treaty. This "Human Countdown" in New York City last Sunday kicked off the week's activist events:
The film "The Age of Stupid" had a star-studded evening opening in New York City. The film takes a black-humored backwards look at our era, when no one acted fast enough to stave off global warming. Gillian Anderson! Moby! Heather Graham! Stephen Baldwin!
[[There, my SEO for the week is accomplished.]]
The Yes Men pranked New York City and the media with their mock "climate change edition" of the Rupert "Fox News" Murdoch-owned tabloid, The New York Post:
"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo.
More activist moments, and the anti-climatic policy roundup, after the jump.
In DC, Activist Tent City Evokes Plight of Climate Refugees
Published August 20, 2009 @ 07:26PM PT
Above: Video about climate refugee tent city action in Washington DC, Aug. 2009
Young climate activists built a settlement of tents and tarps near the State Department on Monday, and lived in it for 24 hours. Their goal was to dramatize the plight of climate refugees: people who have been uprooted from their homes and livelihoods by the environmental degradation caused by global warming.
A banner propped up next to the huddle of tarps propped up on sticks urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "recognize and protect climate refugees at COP 15," the international climate treaty meeting in December.
"Climate change is not only a great opportunity to create jobs and new prosperity. It is also an urgent crisis that is already impacting many individual human lives and perpetuating current injustices," writes activist Julie Morgan, who put herself "in the shoes of people displaced by climate change for over 24 hours" by living in the makeshift settlement. She was joined by several fellow members of DC Action Factory, the group that's been spending the summer staging creative actions in support of strong, effective climate action by the US.
Our action gave us a brief taste of what it would feel like to be Katrina refugees forced to leave their flooded homes ... Sudanese refugees who have no choice but to flee from the violent Darfur conflict, which has it’s [sic] roots in drought caused by climate change ... Alaskan villagers forced to relocate as the permafrost that used to support their houses thaws..
Morgan acknowledges that with easy access to cold water, coffee, food, and air-conditioned shops to duck into for a break, she and fellow activists weren't at anywhere near the loose ends of real refugees.
But the modest discomforts of living displaced for just 24 hours gave her a dawning perspective on the experience of those with no end in sight to their forced migration. "It was hot, exhausting, and uncomfortable. I lay on my back awake on the pavement at 4:00 am and longed for my bed at home or even a light blanket to protect me from the early morning chill," she writes.
The tent city action was also a "wake-up call," she says, shifting her perspective on climate activism out of the heady heights of Capitol Hill, federal legislation, and international diplomacy, and into the sometimes-devastating impacts the unstable climate is having on the ground.
"Putting myself in the shoes of those forced to leave their homes due to flooding, contamination, drought, melting ice and war," she writes, "was crucial in bringing my focus to the individual and community level where climate impacts are felt."
This year saw the world's first widely acknowledged climate change population movement, when the 2,000 - odd Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea evacuated their homes and farms for good.
As Change.org Immigration blogger Dave Bennion noted recently, the International Organisation for Migration thinks there will be 200 million people uprooted by global warming by 2050 (when population is expected to be around 9 million people).
The recent report “In Search of Shelter, ” by the United Nations University, the charity CARE and Columbia University, names the likely “hot spots” of climate-driven displacement as: the dry areas of Africa; river systems in Asia; both the interior and coast of Mexico, as well as the Caribbean; and low-laying islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. (Which we blog about here under the rubric of "Drowning Nations.")
And forced migration due to climate change is also seen as a growing threat to national security.
Five Videos to Watch This Week: From Climate Denial to Keen Electric Sportscar
Published August 11, 2009 @ 07:41PM PT
Okay, I know it's summer. But look away for just a few minutes from Darth Vader dancing to Hammer and Mean Kitty vs FlippyCat and check out this week's haul of nifty and informative videos about global warming:
1. Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Peter Sinclair's "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" is an ongoing and very enjoyable video series that debunks global warming myths. This installment, which mentions Anthony Watts of the prominent global warming denial blog wattsupwiththat.com, was temporarily taken down by YouTube after Mr. Watts complained it had violated some copyright rules.
Across the Change-i-verse
Published August 09, 2009 @ 07:12PM PT
Just a small sampling of what's been going on this past week on Change.org's blogs:
Friday Futures: Food: How might the combination of population growth, monocrop agriculture, and overfishing affect the future of food. Sustainable Food blog editor Alanna Shaikh isn't optimistic: "We'll continue to grow enough food in aggregate to support the weight of the world's population. In terms of the variety of our food, however, we're on the verge of a major contraction. Variety will shrink, and prices of food will go up enough that the even the middle class will see their food options substantially limited by price."
Also at Sustainable Food, editor Natasha Chart covers one of the major underreported natural resource stories, the growing shortage of phosphorous for fertilizer.
Twitter, Facebook Shut Down in Attempt to Silence Activist: "On Thursday and Friday millions of social media users found themselves frustrated and without access to services like Twitter and Facebook," writes Social Entrepreneurship editor Nathaniel Whittemore. "News reports soon came in that the outages were being caused by an ongoing and coordinated hacker attack. Just today, the story got even more interesting, with the New York Times reporting that the target of the attack appears to have been a single person, a 34 year old economics professor and refugee activist from the Republic of Georgia."
Fear, Sex, and Pandemic - Horrible Outcomes Don't Change Behavior: Global health equivalent of global warming's To Scare or Not To Scare? "Only a small percentage of the public will respond to the ‘useful parts' of the message and change habits," says Global Health guest blogger Carol Dunn, "All ‘call to action' messages that trigger our fear response-are not sustainable, healthy, or useful..." and several more interesting points.
Does "Cash for Clunkers" Hurt the Homeless? "In addition to stimulating the economy and promoting fuel efficiency, the "Cash for Clunkers" program may be having another unintentional effect: hurting the poor and homeless," suggests End Homelessness editor Shannon Moriarty. Vehicle donation programs, such as Mission Solano in Fairfield, California, rely on vehicle donations (in return for a tax write-off) to raise funds to serve the area's homeless."
Friday Food: Fresh and Light Pastas, Zucchini Love, Filled Pancakes, and More: Another great roundup of vegan recipes from Animal Rights editor Stephanie Ernst. And Because Sometimes We All Need a Little Bit of Adorable, she posted this cheering video as well.
Find My Happy Place (Or, Music for a Bad Day): We certainly don't have the corner on bad news here at Stop Global Warming. But it's important to re-energize. Genocide blog editor, Michelle shares a selection of music to cheer up by from her personal "Find My Happy Place" i-Pod playlist.
Across the Change-i-verse
Published July 19, 2009 @ 06:04PM PT
Above: President Obama speaks in Accra, Ghana, on July 11, 2009. Via whitehouse.gov blog.
No summer vacations so far here at Change.org, where my fellow editors are keeping up the heat on their beats:
Sudan Is Number One*: "The most recent World Bank report on climate change - Convenient Solutions to an Inconvenient Truth - lists the countries most at risk for a range of climate change-related threats," blogs Humanitarian Relief editor Michael Bear, "including drought (Malawi), flooding (Bangladesh), increased storms (Philippines), rising sea levels (all low-lying island states), and greater agricultural uncertainty (Sudan)...Africa as a whole is particularly at risk."
Social Media and Obama's Ghana Speech: Nathaniel Whittemore, editor of the Social Entrepreneurship blog, takes a look at how the "bottom-up" approach to economic development articulated by President Obama's speech in Ghana has resonated -- and how the White House itself used social media to be sure its messages got out.
Living the Animal Life: "There's a bill that's been introduced in Congress that would put sharp limits on Confined Animal Feeding Operations, and Obama supports it. I'm fairly amazed and impressed, which I was getting worried that I'd gotten to cynical to even beIt won't pass," writes Sustainable Food editor Natasha Chart. "Even that's okay I suppose, considering how the discussion is off to such a good start...If you couldn't prevent the conditions of feedlot life itself from killing cattle, they'd have to be raised in lower concentrations, under cleaner conditions, and given a much healthier diet out of sheer necessity...As it is now, most cattle are raised in lots packed deep with nothing but each other's waste. The health hazards of this are, one would think, obvious."
Expect More Katrina Scale Displacement: Despite what would seem to be hard lessons learned on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, the federal government is still not ready to provide emergency housing if there's a repeat disaster on the same scale. And the poor will be the hardest hit, writes US Poverty editor Leigh Graham. "If you weren't yet building your social movement for tenant rights or racial justice or economic equity, I suggest you start now."
What Not to Blog: Alanna Shaikh posts some prudent suggestions for how undergraduates hoping for careers in global health should conduct themselves online. They probably apply to students with earth science or environmental politics aspirations as well.
It's Not About the Stuff: On product placement & blogging: "The Federal Trade Commission is looking closely at "product placement" on blogs and online more generally. Eager to get the word out, companies are only too glad to send out samples of their products to bloggers," writes Kristina, an editor of the Autism blog. She gets a lot of offers, including some from manufacturers of devices to "help" autistic kids, she says, and accepts only books by and large. This is an issue in the world of "green" blogging as well.
Across the Change-i-verse
Published July 12, 2009 @ 06:24PM PT
14-year-old Alec Loorz, founder of Kids vs Global Warming
Highlights of the past week's blogging by the smart, talented, and good looking editors at Change.org:
Youth Taking Action: Kids vs. Global Warming: The Social Entrepreneurship blog chats with Ashoka Youth Venturer Alec Loorz, 14, founder of Kids vs. Global Warming. On positive ways to make change, Alec says, "Even though the actions we need to take might seem small in comparison to the enormity of the problem, every thing we do brings us one step closer to making the shift that we, as a whole society, need to make," says this remarkable peer organier. "It's also true that we can recycle and ride bikes all day long and we still won't be making a huge dent in the problem. Our whole world needs to get serious and make big changes. We need to be involved in the changes that governments and businesses need to make too."
Is Oil Ever NOT Connected to War? On the occasion of Sudan joining the African Petroleum Producers Association (APPA), Stop Genocide editor Michelle notes that the membership is composed of nations with striking histories of civil war and human rights abuses. "And to Energy Gluttons elsewhere in the world: How often do you stop to think about the human cost of your weekly fill-up?"
Climate Change, People and Poverty: Humanitarian Relief editor Michael Kleinman has put together a good resource page on the Humanitarian Impact of Climate Change.
The Slave Behind Your Bargain: Another example of just how interlinked human rights abuses and environmental pollution have become: "[H]ave you ever wondered why that bookshelf or tennis ball or t-shirt is so cheap? Have you ever wondered if a slave is paying the cost of your bargain?", writes End Human Trafficking editor Amanda Kloer. "The Human Trafficking Project writes about the prevalence of slave-made consumer goods on the market...They also share some hopeful ideas, like whole towns committing to selling only fair trade goods. However, the fact is that slave-made goods are in every part of our lives, and in many cases they are bringing us the bargains we so love."
Amada frequently highlights Fair Trade products on the HT blog in her "Red Light Specials." This week it was Cocoa Minty Lip Balm.
A caricature-buster, via Dave Bennion at the Immigrat Rights blog: GOP Voters Support Path to Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants
Immigration Restrictionists Make Bad Environmentalists: Dave also makes a great catch on the real motivations of immigration reform opponents who make an environmental case for their arguments: "[T]he members of Congress that NumbersUSA, [an anti-immigration John Tanton-organized] outfit, rates most highly on immigration policy voted against the recent Waxman-Markey climate change bill by a margin of more than 5 to 1."
Dave's Open Letter to John Tanton on Global Warming asks, "Will you ask Congress to support ACES and other environmentally-friendly legislation? Or will you continue to assert that policies that limit immigration, rather than those that limit carbon emissions, are the key to slowing climate change?
Obama's Nominee for FWS: No Friend to Endangered Species: According to Animal Rights editor Stephanie Ernst, "Obama has nominated, to enforce the Endangered Species Act as head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sam Hamilton: the FWS official with 'by far the weakest record on Endangered Species Act enforcement of any comparable official in the country'...Obama is no animal rights advocate, but surely he can do better--and the animals deserve better--than Sam Hamilton."
Suggest a story to Stop Global Warming
Published July 10, 2009 @ 08:01AM PT
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