Last week many political and
economic leaders -- those who do not embrace the current governing party's "National Way of Selfishness and
Stupidity" -- met in California for a Global Climate Action Summit to talk about
what can be done, and what should be done, without relying on any support from
the so-called most powerful nation on earth, the country (that's ours) that's
fast proving to be the paper tiger our enemies used to call us.
The State of California, the largest public
entity in the United States still under rational leadership, made news when its
governor announced his state's pledge to eliminate carbon emissions within 27
years.
That's a good step. But the bigger, and
closer, signpost is the year 2030, by which time worldwide emissions must be
reduced substantially in order for the world to have a chance of keeping global
warming increases within 2 percent F. Anything above that increase, according
to the best projections, and we're swamped.
To reach this goal, according to news reports on the climate action summit, the human
world has to cut its expected annual greenhouse gas emissions by the
equivalent of nearly 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, on top of the
pledges nations made at the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
The pledges so far made by
businesses and US state governments amount to about 4 percent of that
total.
So, basically, the world has a long
way to go.
Another perspective on what have to
do -- and have to refrain from doing -- was offered by actor Harrison Ford, one
of the non-scientist, non-politician celebrities to attend the Global Climate
Action Summit.
"I beg you," Ford told summit
attendees. "Don’t forget Nature. Because, today, the destruction of nature
accounts for more global emissions than all the cars and trucks in the world.
We can put solar panels on every house, we can turn every car into an electric
vehicle but as long as Sumatra burns—we will have failed. So long as
the Amazon’s great forests are slashed and burned, so long as the protected
lands of tribal people, Indigenous people, are allowed to be encroached upon, so
long as wetlands and bog peats are destroyed, our climate goals will remain out
of reach, and we will be shit out of time."
Many of us at one time or another
have donated money to organizations pledged to plant trees to fight global warning. There are many good
environmental gains to be made by planting trees -- to resist environmental
degradation, keep soil in lumbered areas from blowing away, enrich soil, and
reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere because trees absorb CO2 in process
of photosynthesis.
But we will never be able to plant
enough trees to match the global warming deficit caused by destroying earth's
oldest ecological systems. Old forests in the tropical, subtropical and
temperate regions are the most densely 'green' places the planet will ever see. The
concentration of biota in these regions far outweighs anything man-made. All that green takes greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
Green plants terra-formed our planet millions of years ago to make it livable for animals like ourselves by sucking carbon out of the
atmosphere and sequestering it at the bottom of the ocean. And ever since their appearance here, the green life in earth's forests
cleans our atmosphere.
The world's governments and businesses should by all means be working hard and fast to replace fossil fuels and the greenhouse gases they produce with renewable, non-polluting energy sources.
But we need -- as human societies -- to develop a shared data bank of wisdom that recognizes that our survival is based on developing ways to preserve the earth as a living system independent of, and more powerful than, our species.
To do this we need the assistance of first peoples who have lived with the earth before, and for longer periods, than modern Western society has done.
Some examples of that 'first people's perspective are provided by speakers attending the San Francisco "Rise For Climate" march for a fossil-free world. Mirian Cisneros, president of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in Ecuadorean Amazon, called for a "Permanent protection of all forests and life in our ancestral lands" of the Kichwa people:"I want to tell all of you that I come from those forests, rivers, lakes and mountains that have life. I come from there, where the human being and Mother Earth live in harmony. I come from Kawsak Sacha. I come from the Living Forest. I also come from a people who has fought for years and years the threats of oil exploitation. I come from the land where we have defended millions of lives. And today we are here to leave you with our Kawsak Sacha proposal, Living Forest...
"We are also here because we want the world to know that indigenous communities like ours, Sarayaku, possess innovative solutions, such as our own proposal of Kawsak Sacha, a permanent protection of all forests and life in our ancestral lands. The world requires just and noble solutions, such as this one, to confront climate change. And also we ask for respect for our indigenous rights, self-determination and our autonomy. In this way, we can guarantee the life of humanity and to live in peace."
At the same event Chief Ninawa Huni Kui stated:
"I’m from the Huni Kui people, and I am from the Brazilian Amazon in the state of Acre. I’m here to unite with other indigenous peoples and the peoples of the world, because we’re here to defend rights. The governments are going to hold a summit to decide the future of the world and the future of our peoples. Their vision of the future is just about profits, making money. And they make money by polluting and destroying this world. So I’m here to bring the voice of the Amazon rainforest to this discussion."
Let's put these people in charge of saving nature. For only by saving their homes will we be able to save humanity.
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