Watch the video then find out more at coalitionofthewilling.org.uk

“We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More”

Some choice excerpts:

• According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
• A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.
• Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
• And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have — they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

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For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you’re supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

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By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking. They bent over backwards like Soviet gymnasts.  Senator John Kerry, the legislator they worked most closely with, issued this rallying cry as the final negotiations began: “We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further.”

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Step one involves actually talking about global warming.  For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else — energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that “green jobs” polled better than “cutting carbon.”

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Step two, we have to ask for what we actually need, not what we calculate we might possibly be able to get. If we’re going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don’t actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run. We need a stiff price on carbon, set by the scientific understanding that we can’t still be burning black rocks a couple of decades hence. That undoubtedly means upending the future business plans of Exxon and BP, Peabody Coal and Duke Energy, not to speak of everyone else who’s made a fortune by treating the atmosphere as an open sewer for the byproducts of their main business.

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Asking for what you need doesn’t mean you’ll get all of it.  Compromise still happens. But as David Brower, the greatest environmentalist of the late twentieth century, explained amid the fight to save the Grand Canyon: “We are to hold fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else propose the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function.”

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Which leads to the third step in this process. If we’re going to get any of this done, we’re going to need a movement, the one thing we haven’t had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we’d get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we’ll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

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As Tom Friedman put it in a strong column the day after the Senate punt, the problem was that the public “never got mobilized.” Is it possible to get people out in the streets demanding action about climate change? Last year, with almost no money, our scruffy little outfit, 350.org, managed to organize what Foreign Policy called the “largest ever coordinated global rally of any kind” on any issue — 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, 2,000 of them in the U.S.A.

People were rallying not just about climate change, but around a remarkably wonky scientific data point, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which NASA’s James Hansen and his colleagues have demonstrated is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Which, come to think of it, we do. And the “we,” in this case, was not rich white folks. If you look at the 25,000 pictures in our Flickr account, you’ll see that most of them were poor, black, brown, Asian, and young — because that’s what most of the world is. No need for vice-presidents of big conservation groups to patronize them: shrimpers in Louisiana and women in burqas and priests in Orthodox churches and slumdwellers in Mombasa turned out to be completely capable of understanding the threat to the future.

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But no one will come out to fight for watered down and weak legislation. That’s not how it works. You don’t get a movement unless you take the other two steps I’ve described.

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Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we’ve got. It’s not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we’re going to have to raise our voices.

Read the full article here.

What the Zapatistas Can Teach us About the Climate Crisis

In the 1990s, the Zapatistas told the world “Enough already!” That message resonates in today’s climate crisis.

While political forces have conspired to make the Zapatistas largely invisible both inside Mexico and internationally, their challenge has always been to propose a paradigm of development that is both just and self-sustaining. It seems fair, then, to see if Zapatismo can shed any light on the muddle of politics around the climate crisis. Can the poetic riddles of Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos serve as signposts on the rough road toward just climate solutions?

Read the rest here.

Show Us Your Politics
3 – 14 August 2010
Kudos Gallery, 9 Napier St, Paddington

With a last minute entry, I was accepted into this exhibition which opens on Tuesday and runs for two weeks in Paddo. This is actually the first time I’ve been part of a proper exhibit – crazy, I know. Here’s what landed in my facebook inbox a week or so ago:

Art Revolt! Dare to make a work that’s a response to the oppressive world you live in! A call out for dangerous and insightful work! Comment on sexism, racism, homophobia, patriarchy, institutions, capitalism, corporations and environmental destruction! Art to inspire, annoy, educate, and empower!

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”

So, I promptly sent something across and found out Friday that I was in! Queue mad scramble to actually get the thing…

…printed. Just picked it up on the bike from King St today en route to door-knocking the lovely residents of Stanmore asking their views on climate change and renewable energy. Anyway, it looks pretty great so I’m exciting about hanging it on Monday.

Aside from all that excitement, the other art project I’ve been working on is artRiot. If you haven’t copped the spiel yet, a few of us have got together and started a new artist’s collective with the aim of supporting, promoting & connecting artists whose work aims to create radical social change in a concrete way… and challenging the stagnation and encroaching banality of Sydney’s art scene. Our inaugural exhibition will run from September 11 – 26, upstairs at the Annandale Hotel on Parramatta Rd and is part of The Sydney Fringe – this being the first year a fringe festival has ever been run in Sydney.

The opening night will start at 6pm, Sat 11 Sept with the performance works and lots of exciting & interactive things besides. Check out www.artriot.org.au, join the facebook group, bring your friends to the opening night and if you’ve know any radical artists we’ve got a last-ditch drive to get a few more submissions by the end of this week:

Alright, that’s all from me for now – but you gotta promise to spread the word about artRiot, okay?

Everyone will remember the night the riot started.

I’ve been working on the visual component of this concert – both the poster above, and a collection of my photos…

The modern relevance of John Dowland’s songs – performed brilliantly by musicians from Song Rising – will be explored through a photographic journey that crosses three continents and spans six years.

So, now you know it’s going to be awesome: reserve a place (pay at the door) via songrising@gmail.com