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Climate Change, Green New Deal, Greta Thunberg, New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act 2019, Sunrise Movement, US Climate Emergency Resolution 2019
YouthStrike4Climate Student March – London, UK – April 12, 2019
Photo Credit: Common Dreams (Photo Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
To those people who are still in denial that humanity faces a climate crisis that would most likely lead to the extinction of our species, not to mention most other species, I say, wake up to reality. We cannot afford to wait until reality strikes you in the groin or chest for us to take evasive action as a united nation.
Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum 2019 – Davos, Switzerland
Watch Video: World Economic Forum, Published on January 25, 2019
Because we adults are asleep at the wheel, leadership in humanity’s existential crisis now falls upon our youth. After all, it’s their future that is at stake. Greta Thunberg, a fifteen-year-old Swedish student has had enough of the failure of world leaders to act. In her address to the ultra-rich gathered at the World Economic Forum in January 2019, she tells them:
“I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein speaks with young activists of the Sunrise Movement
California Office, USA – February 22, 2019
Watch Video: Washington Post
Here in the world’s leading economy, our leadership is more concerned about preserving their self-interests, their political party, and the status quo. On February 22, 2019, when young activists of the Sunrise Movement visited the California office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to ask her to vote for the Green New Deal, she was firm in rejecting their petition.
“We have our own Green New Deal,” Feinstein tells them. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway. I don’t respond to that… I just won a big election.”
Youth climate activists during sit-in at Washington DC office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – February 25, 2019
Photo Credit: Common Dreams (Photo Sunrise Movement)
The following Monday, February 25th, over 200 young members of the Sunrise Movement joined about twenty Kentucky high school students outside the Capitol Hill office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to demonstrate their support for the Green New Deal. They failed to meet him. Instead, the Capitol Police arrested more than forty of them.
While there is yet no consensus on the Green New Deal—which right-wing commentators view as a socialist takeover of our economy—lawmakers in Washington DC are busy undoing decades of environmental protection regulations. Then, on June 20th, the New York State Assembly passed its own Green New Deal at the state level. Their aggressive Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act calls for net zero carbon emissions statewide by 2050.
On July 9th, our young climate activists gained another victory in their call for action. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) announced the introduction of a resolution in Congress to declare that the climate emergency facing our planet demands a “national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States” in order to “restore the climate for future generations.”
Over two dozen lawmakers, including most of the senators currently running for president, signed on as co-sponsors.
Blumenauer calls for a reality check. “To address the climate crisis, we must tell the truth about the nature of this threat,” he said in his statement.
“What we need now is Congressional leadership to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them that their short-term profits are not more important than the future of the planet,” Sanders said. “Climate change is a national emergency, and I am proud to be introducing this resolution with my House and Senate colleagues.”
Working to solve the climate crisis will create tens of millions of union jobs, empower communities, and improve the quality of life for people across the globe,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
Read the full Climate Emergency Resolution.
Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, supports the resolution. “With an unhinged climate denier in the White House, it’s on Congress to steer us away from climate suicide,” he said in a statement. “This resolution is a sane recognition that science says we need a massive transition away from the production and consumption of dirty fossil fuels.”
The time is now to break down the walls of partisanship, the walls of fear, the walls of ignorance, the walls of hatred and divisiveness, the walls of exclusion, the walls of separateness, the walls of inequality.
“Our house is on fire!” alerts the high school student Greta Thunberg.
“Let it burn!” says The Bully, sitting at the top of the world. “The oil is mine! All mine!”
Three Worlds One Vision 
Thanks for expressing the urgency of our problem. I’m glad the younger generation is so clear about it. Now for the tsunami effect to awaken the adults at large. -Rebecca
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Rebecca, my hope is that the Climate Emergency Resolution would lead to more demonstrators in our streets across America. Our corporate-backed representatives in Washington DC are kept safe from tsunamis.
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It is frustrating to see the slow pace of change.
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For me, too 😦
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Reblogged this on The Secular Jurist and commented:
Excerpt: On July 9th, our young climate activists gained another victory in their call for action. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) announced the introduction of a resolution in Congress to declare that the climate emergency facing our planet demands a “national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States” in order to “restore the climate for future generations.”
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Thanks for sharing my post, Robert. Much appreciated 🙂
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My pleasure. Have a great Sunday!
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☘️🍀🌿🌲🌴
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I personally despair of the major polluters doing anything whatsoever…the USA, Russia, China, India and Indonesia. Our efforts cannot outweigh their selfishness.
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Money and power rule, John.
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Thanks for sharing and doing wonderful work in helping to make known knowledge to the rest of the world “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” (Frederick Buechner )… won’t be easy to overcome the love of power and greed but the fact we tried will be written in stone… 🙂
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
( Maria Robinson )
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Glad that you can appreciate my post, Dutch 🙂 As you’ve noted, it’s not easy to overcome the forces of the powerful and greedy. I believe that we should not give up the struggle.
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“If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right”. Mary Kay Ash 🙂
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Progressive minded people like you share a global view of this problem.
We need leaders who represent all “Mother Earth” perhaps outside the current gridlocked political atmosphere.
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Thanks for dropping by, James, and for sharing your thoughts 🙂 May I add that leaders who demonize progressive minded people and silence our scientists are further aggravating an already dire situation.
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Rosaliene,
While I appreciate that so many people, including the youth, are so concerned, fact is, we are all so dependent on fossil fuels that we don’t even realize how dramatically they have changed our lives. Alternatives like solar and wind are capable of mitigating some of the effects, but far from all of them. Even electric cars are dependent on the grid for recharging, and the grid is dependent mostly on fossil fuels, except the hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. Have we dammed enough rivers yet, or built enough nuclear power plants?
No one in “leadership” roles is addressing the “how” question. How are we as individuals, groups, and nations going to make these shifts in our entire lifestyles? Do the politicians really think they can legislate the reduction in fossil fuel consumption that the “Green New Deal” and its ilk call for? Are people willing to give up their air travel, imports and exports, and war to reduce fossil fuels? Until people wake up to the fact that we are all complicit in the massive overuse of energy, we are not going to get very far. “Green” really means getting out of our air-conditioned buildings, into the real world as it exists, without the energy-consuming cell phones, computers, and other techno-gadgets we have become addicted to.
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Katharine, you hit the nail square on the head and drove it in with a single blow! The how to transition is the first big question. The other is, how much fossil, hydro and nuclear energy is going to be needed to implement the change over. And those batteries don’t just need recharging, they need making and disposing of, and that is looking like a huge negative tidal wave on the environmental horizon. You touch on the only answer: cut back on consumer goods and body comforts in spades. Anything else is “pissing in the wind.” I could also mention the overarching, desperate need to cut back on population but that isn’t ‘politically correct’ thinking any longer it seems.
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Sha’Tara,
I continue to appreciate how you “grok” the problems and potential solutions. Over-population is certainly a concern, but according to “Diet for a Small Planet,” most of the world’s grain goes to feeding animals for a meat-happy society. Now, Asians are eating more meat, too, and producers are happy to supply them.
I’m afraid the over-population problem is going to take care of itself, with the environmental toxins, wars, and unhealthy lifestyles that the institutions promote.
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Speaking of (and FOR!) the animals, I became a vegetarian in an attempt to prove to myself that life did not consist of eating meat. I had developed a belief that eating meat from living animals who were terrorized, tortured and butchered could only result in those evils residing within my mind and I couldn’t partake of that aspect of Earthianity any more. It had nothing to do with health, but it turned out that I became gradually much healthier and I’m now going on past 40 years without any medical intervention and at 73 I still run, kayak and bicycle and I can still “boast” that in a physical endurance contest I would beat my 20 year old self. It’s not all about not eating meat or fish, but much of it is. When I smell meat or fish cooking, I smell corruption. If one reads the very first chapter of Genesis, one reads there that “God” gave plants to all animals and people to eat. Meat eating is part of the predatory system, a system that has infected all aspects of man’s current life. It is evil in that it creates pain and death by terror and it is definitely unnatural, whatever the Neo Darwinists might have to say about it. Man needs to return to nature and eating plants instead of executed animals is the first necessary step in that direction.
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Katharine, thanks for sharing your legitimate concerns about getting off of fossil fuels. Our leaders worldwide have procrastinated so long in addressing this crisis that it’s now upon us. Our transition to more sustainable forms of renewable energy would now have to be massive and drastic. The longer we delay, the more difficult it will become. More people will become climate refugees. More people will die.
It can be done. It will demand changes in our lifestyles. Just think of those thousands of middle class Americans who lost their jobs during the 2008 global financial crisis. They had to downsize. They had to let go of a standard of living they had taken for granted.
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Rosaliene,
I suspect they are still downsizing, but they’re not suffering enough yet to make drastic changes. Of course that’s my judgment, but it seems frivolity rules.
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First to you Rosaliene … thanks for an excellent post, especially in giving some of the latest positive developments towards climate justice in the USA. And to you also katharine – I agree with much of what you say, especially your emphasis that we should live more simply and consume less goods, less meat, less energy and have less military machines and war ,etc.
It’s true that fossil fuels and nuclear energy along with large hydro electric projects has brought the rich and middle class peoples much prosperity over the past century. I’m quite sure you agree this has happened largely at the expense and suffering of the poor of the planet and the earth itself.
Sustainable energy experts have proven and developed many different ways to create an abundance of energy, with more good jobs created per each unit of renewable energy utilized than traditional large scale and high octane energy sources we’ve largely become addicted to. Solar energy alone gives about 1000 watts per/square metre in it’s most ideal orientation and efficiencies … two examples: simple photosyntesis and passive solar heating. Most homes and small businesses can and should be net energy producers via solar power… And electric powered vehicles in parking lots and driveways will become power storage plants powering a new co-operative grid. These quickly advancing energy solutions are essential to help shift all of the world to a conserver lifestyle.
The power of these much more benign renewable forms of energy is grossly unrealized. Governments under the positive influence of democratic citizen movements everywhere must stops giving power and control to big businesses. Although each individual human being has responsibility in changing lifestyle choices, corporations have become modern day plunderers, pirates and profiteers.
Many people have been convinced by these “powers that be” that business as usual is essential and good. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. In a sense I believe we have been brainwashed.
I apologize for being so forceful in my opinion, and I respect yours and others viewpoint in this regard. I will not compromise in my movement and conviction that there is another path, and it’s actually being taken by many of us. Each of us, lets hold up and build stronger the momentum for a just, an equitable and a sustainable planet – for Our Common Good and Our Common Home
Cheers to you – Bruce
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Bruce,
I, for one, appreciate well thought out and reasoned opinions, which become part of the solution. However, I don’t think the solutions you’re mentioning are going to go mainstream anytime soon. And, they imply a leadership and workforce skilled enough to implement them, as well as affluent enough to afford them. As things stand, we have government and corporate structures heavily invested in the status quo. Witness the Keystone Pipeline, for starters, and others like them.
While the governments may give corporations preference over individuals, it is the individuals buying the corporate stocks and products (and paying taxes) that keep them at the helm.
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Thanks for dropping by, Bruce, and sharing your vision of our climate crisis. You demonstrate by your example that we can retrofit our homes to run on solar energy and to live a more sustainable lifestyle.
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The children give us hope, the adults not so much. I suspect we also need to look at our own choices: our use of A/C, driving, air travel, food products, certain kinds of clothing. I am not innocent myself.
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I, too, am not innocent, Dr. Stein. I’ve been working at reducing my carbon footprint, wherever possible. What we do count, but it’s not enough. Our climate and ecological crises demand a collective, global mobilization.
“All are involved! All are consumed!” (Guyanese Poet Martin Carter)
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Pingback: Earth’s Climate Emergency: Break down the walls! – by Rosaliene Bacchus | Guyanese Online
Thanks for sharing my post, Cyril. Much appreciated 🙂
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Ros”alien”…thanks for that “wake up” call
to all those leaders who choose to live in denial
by doing “nothing”…spectating !
Hope my willful misspelling of your name
did not offend. Sometime I feel like one 👽
If the guy in the sky is watching let’s hope
he listens to your wake up call and do something. Davos has become another
“Talk shop” for political jackasses so this article
and your contribution is like a “breath of fresh air”….IN……out !
👏
Congratulations for this “eye opener”👀
Wake up call !
Kamtan
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Thanks for dropping by and reading, Kamtan 🙂 No offense taken with the “alien” misspelling: After all, my president believes that “alien” people like me should go back to where we came from. What a crazy world we live in! Our house is on fire, but we continue to stoke the flames. Then, we turn around and shoot the firefighter. Go figure.
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Great post Rosaliene, I found the Feinstein video very revealing.
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Thanks, Mike. The Feinstein video was both revealing and disturbing.
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Disturbing indeed, this is our California liberal after 30 years.
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While I personally remain ambivalent about the real cause of climate change – as an observant environmentalist I won’t put as much emphasis on the “anthropological” aspect of it as some insist – there is no doubt that we have entered into a crisis that our privately owned and controlled technology is unprepared to deal with and our population levels make even more difficult to know where to turn when over 50% of the global population now lives in cities. It is these populations that will be trapped and forced to bear the brunt of consequences from climate change. For those interested in a documentary on South Africa, particularly Cape Town’s water crisis due to climate change, have a look at this: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/city-without-water/
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I’m so proud of these young ones. We must listen to them and make better choices in our personal lives as we support those moving in a healthier direction. It’s good to learn about the Climate Emergency Resolution. Thank you for this update, Rosaliene.
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You’re welcome, JoAnna 🙂 Our mainstream media is failing in its responsibility to keep us informed and up-to-date with the climate crisis. They have allowed the voices of the climate change deniers to dominate the narrative.
I’ve recently read an abridged version of a speech by Bill Moyers, published in The Nation magazine (July 15/22, 2019 Edition), in which Moyers asked: “What if reporters covered the climate crisis like Murrow covered World War II?” As president of the Schumann Media Center, a small nonprofit devoted to the support of independent journalism, Moyers announced that one of their last major gifts will be a million dollars to launch the Covering Climate Now project of the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation and to get the project through the first year. He added: “Other foundations and individual philanthropists will then have to step up to the challenge, and I believe they will.”
You can read the full article online at https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-change-media-murrow-boys/
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Thanks for this information, Rosaliene. It’s ridiculous what I gloss over in the mainstream media, especially that celebrity BS. Good to know there are people with common sense who care about our planet and can do some good work. We need more of this.
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thank you for expressing the seemingly
criminal behavior on the part of greedy leaders, Rosaliene!
it is disparaging not witnessing a bigger movement by citizens.
yet, your exposure of the youth gives hope that others may awaken
the mainstream media, leaders, business and communities.
may you day be cool and complete with joyful moments 🙂
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Thanks for the joyful wishes, David 🙂 They are very much needed at this time of grief for the people of Earth, not forgetting all of non-human Nature.
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We are facing the results of many many years of denying this truth and hoping someone else will fix it. No one will escape the effects of this ignorance. That’s how we learn unfortunately. 😪
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Unfortunately, as you observe, we humans have to suffer the consequences of our actions before we can change our behavior or respond to a threat.
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Few remember now, and many of us are dead, but in the 60’s and 70’s “we” offered much the same “solutions” that are being bandied about now: wind and solar power though the technology was nothing compared to today. We offered a serious look at global economics to lower the birth rate – and were immediately upstaged by the corporate/capitalist agenda of the “green revolution” and the Word Bank to sink all developing nations into impossible to repay national debts. We offered recycling and a move away from plastics. And in our essays and speeches and our rare appearance on the political scene as representatives, we offered common sense in the guise of peace and justice for the entire world… say what? In the middle of the Cold War and the Vietnam war which everybody just knew was America’s great sacrifice to stem the red tide of Communism and protect democracy? Who would listen? The theme song for the “West” was ‘Let the good times roll’ and in came the beginning of the populist war-mongering leaders, Reagan, Thatcher and in Canada, Brian Mulroney who was as crooked a politician as any you have today.
Excuse me if I seem more than a little jaded after spending half a life-time pushing the environmentalist/green agenda when I look at today’s mess based entirely on individual choices people made at the time and passed on to their spoiled kids. Now those spoiled kids are in charge of the world and they know nothing about nothing if it isn’t on their cell phones. A deliberate choice was made to drop it all after the unpopular Vietnam war was terminated. Then came the “endless wars” the media hardly touched upon unless there was a “win” here and there, like the infamous invasion and conquest (!) of the island of Grenada! Oh, what a glorious victory for the US to subdue an isolated nation of 131 square miles, a total coastline of 75 miles and with absolutely no military capability for defense, let alone aggression.
You see what I’m saying? The madness isn’t new nor should it come as any surprise: it’s been in the making at least since the pretend end of WWII and the recognition of the state of Israel as a pro-West Zionist stronghold. Today’s world was shaped with the hypocritical invention of the United Nations, a cobbled up job some people still believe to be legitimate.
People will have to eat the bitter fruit of their labour, or lack of it. If they refused to tend the garden they will be forced to eat the weeds and die. Take that as an educated prediction.
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Willful ignorance the virtue of 21st century.
Kamtan
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Incomprehensible! Thanks for dropping by, Kamtan 🙂
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Some are willfully ignorant
Some are politically ignorant
Some are socially ignorant
Some are historically ignorant
Willful ignorance is “self opinionated”
I am right
Everyone else is wrong
A bit like your Potus
Kamtan
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Your message is clear and powerful Rosaliene! Now, if we could only grant those under 18 the right to vote. After all, it is their future that’s being exploited for short term financial gain. The greedy, self-absorbed climate change denier MUST be repalced in 2020!
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Thanks, Henry. With the GOP leadership backing him, I have my doubts that he will be replaced in 2020 😦
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Observe how Potus and Bojo will “rock USA UK boat” !
May even sink the titanic !
Kamtan
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I understand Rosaliene, but perhaps the old saying ‘hope for the best but prepare for the worst’ is appropriate in this case.
Surely anything is possible over the next 16 or so months. I have to maintain that perspective. An additional 4 years of the pompous bully is too horrible to consider. The opposition must get everyone–at least those who hasn’t been disenfranchised through gerrymandering!–out to vote in 2020. I comfort myself by realizing that Trump was only elected due to 1) the fact that only 58% of eligible voters cast ballots, and 2) he didn’t win the popular vote.
I caught a quote from Pete Buttigieg today. He said Trump is always strutting around “like the rooster who made the sun come up.” Having grown up on a farm where I was flogged by an arrogant rooster when I was 3 years-old, I thought his quote quite appropriate. 🙂
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I agree, Henry, anything is possible: going into battle with the overconfidence of an arrogant rooster could end in a crippling defeat.
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