Climate Crisis -- Urgent Action Needed Now!

-----Original Message-----

From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]

Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:26 AM

To: 'climateconf@greenleft.org.au'; 'wcs-a@yahoogroups.com'

Cc: 'rep.brita.sailer@house.mn'; 'mmiron@bemidjipioneer.com'; 'bswenson@bemidjipioneer.com'; 'editor@orionsociety.org'; 'editor@outdoornews.com'; 'Laurel'; 'William McAuliffe'; 'William Oldfather'; 'David Shove'; 'rgettel@uaw.net'; 'Robert Killeen'; 'gdubovich@usw.org'; 'Carolyn Laine'; 'rep.dave.olin@house.mn'; 'info@minnesotaruralpartners.org'

Subject:

Re: Please add my name and organization identification to your statement



Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (Democratic Party); Member, State Central Committee


I call to your attention my blog on this issue:

http://capitalistglobalization.blogspot.com/

I would also call to your attention efforts to save northern Minnesota’s Big Bog--- our largest freshwater aquifer:

http://pineislandstateforest.blogspot.com/

http://freeman-forum.blogspot.com/

http://mnbigbog.blogspot.com/

It would be most helpful if you would be able to circulate links to these blogs and encourage people from across the world to help us in these struggles.

I am Bcc’ing this to a number of people and list serves encouraging them to add their names.

As you can see, I have notified several public officials, union leaders, and the media of my decision to add my name to the signatories of this statement.

Yours in the struggle for peace, social & economic justice, saving our planet and its ecosystems from global warming;

Alan L. Maki




Climate Crisis -- Urgent Action Needed Now!

Statement Initiated by Participants in the
Climate Change - Social Change conference,
Sydney, Australia, April 11-13, 2008

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ccsc220408.html

The following statement was started by the participants
in the Climate Change - Social Change conference.
Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their
signature, and an updated list of signatories will be
issued on a regular basis (contact:
<climateconf@greenleft.org.au>.).

It is being distributed to environmental, trade union,
Indigenous, migrant, religious and community
organisations to help build the movement against global
warming

1. The latest climate science shows that the global
warming crisis is already here

The evidence about global warming is more alarming than
ever. It is likely that critical "tipping points" once
believed to lie in the future have already been passed
(see Climate Change and Trace Gases, by James Hansen et
al, 2007, available at www.carbonequity.info):

* Arctic ice loss reached 20% by extent over the
past two years as against 7% a decade over the
period between 1979 and 2005; the volume of Arctic
summer ice is estimated to have fallen by 80% over
the last 40 years; glacier movement in Greenland is
speeding up, producing massive "ice quakes"; in
Antarctica the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B ice
shelf and the recent splitting of the Wilkins ice
shelf raises the spectre of the collapse of the
West Antarctic ice sheet (and sea levels rising 5
metres).

* The feedback sources of global warming are
accelerating, with declining reflection of solar
radiation, falling carbon absorption capacity of
soils, forests and oceans and increased forest
fires and methane release from Siberian tundra
permafrost. By 2006 global annual human CO2
emissions were 9.9 gigatonnes of carbon, with only
4 gigatonnes being absorbed by the Earth's "carbon
sinks". Some scientists project this figure to fall
to 2.7 gigatonnes of carbon a year by 2030.

* As a result, according to James Hansen, director
of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science,
"the Earth is gaining more heat than it is losing:
currently 0.5 to 1 watts per square metre. This
planetary imbalance is sufficient to melt ice
corresponding to a 1 metre of sea level rise per
decade, if the extra energy were used entirely for
that purpose -- and the energy imbalance could
double if emissions keep growing."

2. A 2º maximum average increase in world temperature
probably won't stop destructive climate change

A 2º increase in average global atmospheric temperature
above pre-industrial levels has been widely accepted
(for example, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) as the maximum allowable if uncontrollable
global warming is to be avoided. The chance of a 2º
increase has been rated at between 38% (IPCC) and 78%
(Hadley Centre) if greenhouse gas concentrations reach
450 parts per million of CO2 equivalent (CO2e). But
these have already reached 459ppm CO2e, producing a
0.8º increase and "locking in" another 0.6º. Clearly,
an upper limit of 450ppm is too high, risking further
destructive climate feedbacks.

3. We need a greenhouse gas reduction target that fits
the global warming crisis

Existing broadly accepted targets for greenhouse gas
reduction (GGR) are therefore far too little far too
late. In particular, the commonly accepted GGR target
of 60% by 2050 compared to 2000 (advanced by the Stern
Review, European Union and the Australian Labor Party)
would allow greenhouse gas concentrations to grow to
550ppm CO2e, making a 3º average temperature increase a
50:50 chance and risking even more extreme increases --
with catastrophic consequences for billions of human
beings and entire ecosystems. This frightening reality
dictates an approach of stopping greenhouse gas
concentration increases as soon as possible, with the
goal of reducing them to a long term safe and
sustainable level (around 300-325ppm CO2, roughly
corresponding to a 0.5º increase from pre-industrial
levels).

4. Despite the urgency of the crisis, solutions are
possible

Despite the enormity of the global warming threat the
carbon-reducing technologies, industrial processes and
forms of economic and social organisation that can
reverse it already exist or can be created. Many
needed policies (e.g., rapid energy demand reduction
and application of sustainable energy technologies) are
already being introduced, albeit on an extremely
inadequate and under-resourced scale. The central
challenge is to speed up the replacement of carbon-
intensive infrastructure and forms of economic and
social organisation, setting in place the measures
supporting climate sustainability at a pace that meets
the timetable for the greenhouse gas emission cuts the
Earth needs.

5. Vested interests stand in the way of climate
sustainability and have to be confronted

Reaching this goal involves more than a debate about
climate science and government climate policy. It is
also, even primarily, a struggle against those forces
with a vested interest in keeping the transition to
sustainability within a framework that doesn't risk the
profitability of carbon-intensive investments. Also,
while the global rate of investment in renewable and
sustainable technologies is increasing rapidly from a
low base, it still falls far short of that needed to
produce the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
required by climate science.

6. Existing climate change policy is falling behind the
challenge

Likewise, the presently preferred lead policies against
global warming -- carbon trading schemes and "feed-in"
tariffs -- have not speeded up the uptake of
sustainable technologies to the pace needed. Even the
most advanced Mandated Renewable Energy Targets
envisaged by mainstream environmental organisations
would see 60-70% of energy still being produced by
carbon-intensive technologies (coal and oil) in 2020.
In those states and regions where such policies done
most to increase energy efficiency and stimulate
private investment in sustainable technologies
(Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Spain, California)
energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are at best
falling very slowly. At the international level the
Kyoto Protocol failed and the Bali round threatens to
repeat that failure on a larger scale.

7. The real road to climate sustainability has five
basic elements

There can be no real shift to climate sustainability
without five core elements -- properly resourced public
agencies to drive the sustainability effort, an
international framework where the First World pays the
vast bulk of the price of reversing global warming, an
end to rampant consumerism, vastly strengthened
campaigns for climate sustainability, and building a
powerful political alliance for climate sustainability
with social justice. These imperatives are explained
in the next five sections.

8. We need properly funded public agencies to oversee
the sustainability transition

Climate sustainability will never be achieved if
basically entrusted to the profit motive and the
market. At the core of any successful transition will
be a public agency or agencies entrusted with
guaranteeing that adequate targets are met. Without
going into detail -- which will vary widely by country
and region and require ongoing elaboration to meet
local conditions -- the main tasks of any public agency
overseeing the transition to climate sustainability
will be to:

1. Drive the implantation of energy saving and
efficiency programs, including mandatory and
enforceable minimum standards for domestic and
commercial buildings;

2. Oversee programs to convert existing building
stock to zero-carbon status;

3. Implement a plan to introduce renewable energy
technologies at all levels, simultaneously phasing
out fossil fuel fired power generation;

4. Foster research, development and the application
of sustainable technologies and processes, with a
view to achieving their mass application as rapidly
as possible;

5. Oversee the upgrading and spread of rail networks
to provide the capacity to shift long-distance
freight movement from road and air to rail;

6. Oversee the conversion of the car industry to
non-polluting forms of propulsion;

7. Foster the growth of a new model of agriculture
and forestry which includes the advances of methods
like permaculture and aims to retain and increase
the carbon-absorption capacity of the land
biosphere;

8. Oversee the closure of polluting industries and
the full retraining on full pay and conditions of
the workers affected; and

9. Promote social instead of private ways of
meetings basic human needs in housing, domestic
work, child and aged care, transport etc.

9. We need international solidarity in the fight
against global warming

The advanced industrial nations, whose own growth
continues to depend on access on favourable terms to
Third World resources, have been responsible for 76% of
emissions since the beginning of industrialisation.
Powers like the United States, Europe, Japan and
Australia cannot now demand that those economies that
are presently at earlier points on the path of
industrialisation (or still locked in underdevelopment)
pay the price for decarbonising the structures of
production for which they are overwhelmingly
responsible. Accepting the cost burden of overseeing
the transition to climate sustainability in developing
countries involves the creation of a global
sustainability fund overwhelmingly funded by the
advanced industrial powers. Resources presently wasted
on military spending could, if switched into such a
fund, finance a rapid global switch to renewable energy
sources.

10. We need a struggle against consumerism

The struggle for sustainability is also a struggle
against the consumerist, individualist life-style of
"developed" industrial society and a search for a
human-centred and community based social existence.
Solidarity with the struggles of Indigenous peoples
whose environments have been stolen and most ravaged by
"development" and the study of their values will teach
a lot about what sustainability and care for ecosystems
really mean. In particular, attention to these values
will be an important element in countering the mass
lifestyles promoted by the vested interests of the
corporations -- with their ever higher levels of
consumption, builtin obsolescence and throw away
culture.

11. We need the broadest possible alliance for social
justice and climate sustainability

The bedrock of the transition to climate sustainability
lies in developing the alliance between the
environmental and climate change movement and working
people, young people, the unemployed and welfare
recipients, and their union and community
organisations. Such an alliance can only develop on
the basis that the costs of the transition to climate
sustainability are funded from reduced wasteful
spending in government budgets (for example, on
military hardware and subsidies to polluting
industries) or through taxes borne by those who bear
greatest responsibility for the climate crisis and
those who can most afford to pay. Whatever the
mechanisms used to reduce the use of carbon-intensive
products and processes and to harvest the income to
help fund the replacement of carbon-intensive
infrastructure, the burden must fall primarily on the
corporate world and the rich. The history of
ecotaxation has already seen too many failed attempts
at making ordinary consumers pay, leading to working-
class and popular alienation from the environment
movement, and providing dangerous openings for right-
wing anti-environmental demagogues. If those opposed
to radical action for climate sustainability succeed in
turning the mass of working people against the global
warming struggle there simply will not be a
sustainability transition -- the majority (especially
the poorest and most oppressed) will see the fight
against global warming as an attack on their living
standards, social gains and rights, reproducing on a
massive and debilitating scale the split between forest
preservation movements and timber workers in places
like Tasmania, the US and Canada. The struggle for
climate sustainability will also be weakened if it
separates itself from other struggles for social
justice and equality. By supporting all those
campaigning for their rights the climate sustainability
struggle will strengthen its own cause.

12. We must build all campaigns for climate
sustainability

The emergence of movements that give powerful and
sustained organisation to the profound community
concern about global warming will be the key driver of
the climate transition. The Climate Change - Social
Change conference commits to helping build the movement
for climate sustainability in Australia and elsewhere.

The signatories to this statement come from a wide
range of backgrounds -- climate activism, scientific
climate research, Green, socialist, Indigenous,
feminist and many more. We do not agree on all the
issues in play in the great, complex debate about how
to confront and defeat global warming, but we do agree
on the basic approach outlined in this statement. We
understand that ongoing involvement in the struggle for
climate sustainability will give us the best chance of
further developing policy against global warming and
resolving present differences. We are also committed
to further developing the discussion that has taken
place at this conference, and will form an email
network to this end. We urge everyone committed to the
vital cause of reversing global warming -- even if they
do not agree with the analysis and proposals presented
here -- to join it and use it to develop our collective
understanding and effort to confront humanity's most
vital challenge.

Signatories (at April 19, 2008)

The signatories have signed in a personal capacity.
Titles are for identification purposes only

John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology, University
of Oregon. Editor, Monthly Review

Patrick Bond, Director, Centre for Civil Society,
University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development
Studies

Ian Angus, Coordinator, Climate and Capitalism web site

Pat Eatock, Secretary, National Aboriginal Alliance,
Aboriginal Rights Coalition

Sam Watson, Deputy Director, Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland

Cam Walker, Campaigns coordinator, Friends of the Earth
Australia

Jim Green, National nuclear campaigner, Friends of the
Earth Australia

Genevieve Kelly, Senior Lecturer, School of Social
Sciences, University of Western Sydney

Stuart Rosewarne, Co-editor, Capitalism, Nature,
Socialism and Australian Journal of Political Economy

Hans Baer, Lecturer, School of Anthropology, Geography,
and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne

Adrian Whitehead, Beyond Zero Emissions, Zero Emissions
Network

Dick Nichols, National Coordinator, Socialist Alliance,
Australia

John Rice, Co-ordinator, Adelaide Eco-socialist Network

Kamala Emanuel, National Environment Coordinator,
Socialist Alliance, Australia

Renfrey Clarke, Climate change analyst, Green Left
Weekly

Ben Courtice, Climate change group, Australian
Manufacturing Workers Union, Victoria

Simon Cunich, Climate change activist, Resistance,
Newcastle

Melanie Barnes, Students Against the Pulp Mill,
Tasmania

Dave Holmes, Manager, Resistance Books, writer on
environmental issues

Emma Murphy, Co-editor, Green Left Weekly

Stuart Munckton, Co-editor, Green Left Weekly

Richard Stiles

Kellie Gee

Peter Lach-Newinsky

Del Weston

Leigh Hughes

Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/