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During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me whether spirituality, different religious traditions, and the Bible in particular had inspired me, and influenced my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation? Were there spiritual lessons to be learned and applied to their own environmental efforts, or in their lives as a whole?

When I began this work in 1977, I wasn't motivated by my faith or by religion in general. Instead, I was thinking literally and practically about solving problems on the ground. I wanted to help rural populations, especially women, with the basic needs they described to me during seminars and workshops. They said that they needed clean drinking water, adequate and nutritious food, income, and energy for cooking and heating. So, when I was asked these questions during the early days, I'd answer that I didn't think digging holes and mobilizing communities to protect or restore the trees, forests, watersheds, soil, or habitats for wildlife that surrounded them was spiritual work.

However, I never differentiated between activities that might be called "spiritual" and those that might be termed "secular." After a few years I came to recognize that our efforts weren't only about planting trees, but were also about sowing seeds of a different sort—the ones necessary to give communities the self-confidence and self-knowledge to rediscover their authentic voice and speak out on behalf of their rights (human, environmental, civic, and political). Our task also became to expand what we call "democratic space," in which ordinary citizens could make decisions on their own behalf to benefit themselves, their community, their country, and the environment that sustains them.

In this context, I began to appreciate that there was something that inspired and sustained the GBM and those participating in its activities over the years. Many people from different communities and regions reached out to us because they wanted us to share the approach with others. I came to realize that the work of the GBM was driven by certain intangible values. These values were: love for the environment; a gratitude and respect for Earth's resources; a capacity to empower and better oneself; and a spirit of service and volunteerism. Together, these values encapsulate the intangible, subtle, nonmaterialistic aspects of the GBM as an organization. They enabled us to continue working, even through the difficult times.

Of course, I'm aware that such values are not unique to the Green Belt Movement. They are universal; they can't be touched or seen. We cannot place a monetary value on them: in effect, they are priceless. These values are not contained within certain religious traditions. Neither does one have to profess a faith in a divine being to live by them. However, they do seem to be part of the our human nature and I'm convinced that we are better people because we hold them, and that humankind is better off with them than without them. Where these values are ignored, they are replaced by vices such as selfishness, corruption, greed, and exploitation.

Through my experiences and observations, I have come to believe that the physical destruction of the earth extends to us, too. If we live in an environment that's wounded—where the water is polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, the food is contaminated with heavy metals and plastic residues, or the soil is practically dust—it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological, and spiritual level. In degrading the environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves.

The reverse is also true. In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves. If we see the earth bleeding from the loss of topsoil, biodiversity, or drought and desertification, and if we help reclaim or save what is lost—for instance, through regeneration of degraded forests—the planet will help us in our self-healing and indeed survival. When we can eat healthier, nonadulterated food; when we breathe clean air and drink clean water; when the soil can produce an abundance of vegetables or grains, our own sicknesses and unhealthy lifestyles become healed. The same values we employ in the service of the earth's replenishment work on us, too. We can love ourselves as we love the earth; feel grateful for who we are, even as we are grateful for the earth's bounty; better ourselves, even as we use that self-empowerment to improve the earth; offer service to ourselves, even as we practice volunteerism for the earth.

Human beings have a consciousness by which we can appreciate love, beauty, creativity, and innovation or mourn the lack thereof. To the extent that we can go beyond ourselves and ordinary biological instincts, we can experience what it means to be human and therefore different from other animals. We can appreciate the delicacy of dew or a flower in bloom, water as it runs over the pebbles or the majesty of an elephant, the fragility of the butterfly or a field of wheat or leaves blowing in the wind. Such aesthetic responses are valid in their own right, and as reactions to the natural world they can inspire in us a sense of wonder and beauty that in turn encourages a sense of the divine.

That consciousness acknowledges that while a certain tree, forest, or mountain itself may not be holy, the life-sustaining services it provides—the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink—are what make existence possible, and so deserve our respect and veneration. From this point of view, the environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan activist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which has trained women throughout Africa to combat deforestation, in part through the planting of more than 40 million trees. She is the author of The Challenge for Africa, Unbowed: A Memoir, The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience, and Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, from which this piece is excerpted.

Interested?

Bearing Witness: Facing our Grief for Environmental Destruction
Photographer Chris Jordan's latest project left him feeling grief and hopelessness. Now he wants more people to discover how productive those emotions can be.

How We Saved the Climate (and Ourselves)
Bill McKibben imagines himself in the year 2100 and asks what it took to save the world.

The Spiritual Uprising Taking Place in the US
Sarah van Gelder: How a spiritual uprising in the US has started conversations on poverty and the environment.

I’m Speaking Out Against The Canada–U.S. Tar Sands Pipeline

The U.S. Department of State seems likely to approve a huge pipeline, known as Keystone XL to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless sufficient objections are raised. The scientific community needs to get involved in this fray now. If this project gains approval, it will become exceedingly difficult to control the tar sands monster. The environmental impacts of tar sands development include: irreversible effects on biodiversity and the natural environment, reduced water quality, destruction of fragile pristine Boreal Forest and associated wetlands, aquatic and watershed mismanagement, habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, disruption to life cycles of endemic wildlife particularly bird and Caribou migration, fish deformities and negative impacts on the human health in downstream communities. Although there are multiple objections to tar sands development and the pipeline, including destruction of the environment in Canada, and the likelihood of spills along the pipeline’s pathway, such objections, by themselves, are very unlikely to stop the project.

An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts. The tar sands are estimated (e.g., see IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) to contain at least 400 GtC (equivalent to about 200 ppm CO2). Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO2 well above 400 ppm, which is unsafe for life on earth. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate.

Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

Governments are acting as if they are oblivious to the fact that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel carbon we can put into the air. Fossil fuel carbon injected into the atmosphere will stay in surface reservoirs for millennia. We can extract a fraction of the excess CO2 via improved agricultural and forestry practices, but we cannot get back to a safe CO2 level if all coal is used without carbon capture or if unconventional fossil fuels, like tar sands are exploited.

A document describing the pipeline project is available here. Comments, due by 6 June, can be submitted here, or by e–mail to keystonexl@cardno.com or mail to Keystone XL EIS Project, P.O. Box 96503–98500, Washington, DC 20090–6503 or fax to 202–269–0098.

I am submitting a comment that the analysis is flawed and insufficient, failing to account for important information regarding human–made climate change that is now available. I note that prior government targets for limiting human–made global warming are now known to be inadequate. Specifically, the target to limit global warming to 2oC, rather than being a safe “guardrail,” is actually a recipe for global climate disasters. I will include drafts of the following papers that I recently co–authored:

Paleoclimate Implications for Human–Made Climate Change that can be found here,
Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications that can be found here, and
The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future that can be found here.

I will also comment that the tar sands pipeline project does not serve the national interest, because it will result in large adverse impacts, on the public and wildlife, by contributing substantially to climate change. These impacts must be evaluated before the project is considered further.

It is my impression and understanding that a large number of objections could have an effect and help achieve a more careful evaluation, possibly averting a huge mistake.

James E. Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology. In 1988, Hansen’s testimony before the US Senate was featured on the front page of the New York Times and helped raise broad awareness of global warming. Hansen’s work has inspired scientists and activists around the world to fight for climate change solutions. In recent years, Hansen has become an activist for action to mitigate the effects of climate change, which on several occasions has led to his arrest. In 2009 his book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity was published.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

[1]. Australian Climate Commission, ?The Critical Decade. Climate science, risks and responses?, 2011: http://climatecommission.gov.au/topics/the-critical-decade/ .

[2]. List of countries by population?, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population .

[3]. ?List of countries by greenhouse gas pollution per capita?, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita .

[4]. Gideon Polya, ?Australian Anzac & Armenian Genocide, Australia 's secret genocide history?, MWC News, 25 April 2011: http://aljazeera-news.net/focus/analysis/10256-australian-anzac-a-armenian-genocide.html .

[5]. Gideon Polya. ?The Awful Truth?, National Indigenous Times, 14 June 2007: http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11552 .

[6]. Gideon Polya, ? Activists & pro-gas Oz Government's Carbon Tax-ETS-Ignore Agriculture (CTETSIA) climate inaction plan ?, Bellaciao, 4 March 2011: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article20616 .

[7]. ?Climate Genocide?: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[8]. Gideon Polya, ? 9 January 2010 Formal Complaint by Dr Gideon Polya to the International Criminal Court (ICC) re US Alliance Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Muslim, Aboriginal, Biofuel and Climate Genocides ?: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/9-january-2010 .

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published ?Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950? (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions ?Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality? in ?Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics? (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and ?Ongoing Palestinian Genocide? in ?The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book ?Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History? (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the ?forgotten? World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is one of the most authoritative institutes in the world on issues of war and peace. The recently-released 2011 SIPRI Yearbook provides estimates of the number of nuclear weapons in the world. It finds that only four countries have deployed nuclear warheads, by which it means warheads placed on missiles or located on bases with operational forces. Two of these countries are the US and Russia, which have 2,150 and 2,427 deployed nuclear weapons, respectively. Under the terms of the New Start agreement, ratified in 2010, each country is required to reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 by the year 2017. The other two countries with deployed nuclear weapons, according to SIPRI, are the UK with 160 deployed weapons and France with 290 deployed weapons.

The total number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world stands at 5,027 in 2011. Of these, SIPRI estimates that some 2,000 are kept on high operational alert, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so.

In addition to its deployed nuclear weapons, the US has 6,350 additional weapons for a total of 8,500. Russia has 8,570 additional weapons for a total of 11,000. The UK has an additional 65 weapons for a total of 225. France has an additional 10, for a total of 300. Four other countries have only non-deployed nuclear weapons, according to SIPRI: China with 240; India with 80-100; Pakistan with 90-110; and Israel with 80.

SIPRI does not list North Korea among the countries having a stockpile of nuclear weapons, although relatively small nuclear devices have been tested by North Korea in 2006 and 2009. SIPRI acknowledges that there is a widespread belief that North Korea has separated enough plutonium for a small number of nuclear weapons, but indicates there is controversy over the amount of plutonium they have separated and the yield of their nuclear tests. They also point out that “doubts persist about whether North Korea has the design and engineering skills needed to manufacture a fully functional operational nuclear weapon.” It seems highly likely to me, however, that North Korea possesses a small number of nuclear weapons and is the ninth nuclear weapon state.

Between 2010 and 2011, the US reduced its nuclear stockpile from 9,600 to 8,500. During the same period, Russia reduced its stockpile from 12,000 to 11,000. While the US and Russia were reducing their arsenals, the UK, France, China and Israel were holding steady at lower levels. India and Pakistan, on the other hand, were increasing the sizes of their arsenals: India from 60-80 to 80-110, and Pakistan from 70-90 to 90-110. Overall, the total number of nuclear weapons in the world decreased from 22,600 to 20,530.

The trends are these: modest reductions by the US and Russia, indicating a continuing commitment to maintaining their nuclear arsenals at a relatively high level of overkill; no reductions by the UK, France, China and Israel, indicating a continuing commitment to retaining their arsenals at current levels, at least until more substantial progress in reductions is made by the US and Russia; and increases in the arsenals of India and Pakistan, indicating a continuing nuclear arms race in South Asia.

The modest reductions made by the US and Russia and the further reductions agreed to by the two countries in the New START agreement are offset by their commitments to modernizing their nuclear arsenals and improving their systems of delivery. A SIPRI media statement pointed out that “both countries currently are deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programs to do so, and appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals into the indefinite future.”

Regarding India and Pakistan, the SIPRI statement pointed out that they “continue to develop new ballistic and cruise missile systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons” and that both countries “are also expanding their capacities to produce fissile material for military purposes.” Other experts have done simulations of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan with 50 to 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons and have estimated that it could lead to a blocking of sunlight and lowering of temperatures, causing widespread drought and crop failure, resulting in some one billion deaths in the region.

While there are some ten percent fewer nuclear weapons in the world from 2010 to 2011, it is not time to breathe a sigh of relief at what has been accomplished. The overall trend is toward fewer nuclear weapons, but weapons and delivery systems that are more highly modernized – what the US refers to for itself as a “safe, secure and effective nuclear stockpile.” In reality, the only type of stockpile that will meet the criteria of being “safe, secure and effective” will be a global stockpile of zero nuclear weapons. Any number other than zero will continue to present unacceptable risks to humanity. What is needed now is a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the “safe, secure and effective” elimination of all nuclear weapons. The US and Russia, the countries with the largest nuclear arsenals, should be providing the leadership to achieve this goal.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), an organization that has worked since 1982 to educate and advocate for a world free of nuclear weapons.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/ .

As U.S.-NATO leaders are growing increasingly desperate, attacks on civilians ( mostly women and children ) have become more frequent and indiscriminate. Despite UN and Western organisations (?NGOs?) efforts to whitewash U.S.NATO crimes against civilians, media reports revealed that tens of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians have been killed by U.S.-NATO airstrikes and ground operations in various parts of Afghanistan.

On 12 May 2011, NATO troops killed a 12-year-old girl and a policeman, her relative, also in Nangarhar province. According to the girl's father: ?They (foreign troops) hurled a hand grenade at my daughter after she ran out of the room in a panic. She was killed on the spot'. ( Pajhwok Afghan News , May 12, 2011).

On 15 May 2011, U.S.-led NATO troops killed a 12-year-old girl and injured four other girls ages 8 to 15 in Afghanistan's Kunar province. The day before NATO forces killed a 15-year-old boy, the son of an Afghan soldier, in a night raid in Nangarhar province, resulting in a demonstration by local Afghans that was fired upon by government forces with four protesters killed, including a 14-year-old boy.

ON 28 May 2011, U.S.-led NATO war planes and unmanned drones struck two civilian homes in the Afghan southern province of Helmand , instantly killing fourteen people, including five girls, seven boys and two women. According to the Australian Counterinsurgency advisor David Kilcullen, 98% of drone strikes are against unarmed civilians. They are also illegal acts of aggression.

On 29 May 2011, Afghan authorities said NATO forces had killed 52 civilians in airstrikes in southern Province of Helmand. ?During the air strikes, two civilian houses were targeted which killed 14 civilians and six others were wounded,? reported the AFP . The dead included five girls, seven boys and two women.

When Afghan ?president? Hamid Karzai asked NATO to stop attacking civilians in their homes, he was rebuffed by NATO. NATO leaders rejected the demand, claiming that ?attacking Afghan homes is ?necessary' and would continue going forward?. They also claimed that the Afghan ?government? has no right under UN-mandated murderous Occupation to forbid attacks on civilians. The deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians are designed to terrorise the civilian population and to force submission and surrender. For example, deadly missiles attacks on wedding celebrations are not mistakes; they are deliberate acts of terrorism aimed at terrorising the population.

Furthermore, in neighbouring Pakistan, U.S. drone missile attacks have killed eight people in North Waziristan on 12 May 2011, after which ?locals said the dead were innocent people' ( The Nation , 13 May 2011). Two days before, ?U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles at a vehicle, killing at least five people and injuring seven others? in South Waziristan. According to a Pakistani opposition party member; ?The NATO attack was not accidental but a calculated and planned move to target Pakistan so as to hide its failure in Afghanistan. The violation of Pakistani territory indicated that the US was planning to push the war inside Pakistan? ( News International , 28 April 2011).

NATO Aggression against Libya

In Libya, U.S.-NATO illegal aggression continues in flagrant violation of international law and civilised norms. It is clear that, U.S.-NATO members have exceeded and violated UN Resolution 1973, which was initially meant to provide a cover for the aggression against the Libyan people. ?The Western [aggression] against Libya wasn't undertaken to protect human rights or foster democracy. It was launched with the aim of breaking Libya up politically so as to prevent the unification of three revolutionary Arab states ? Egypt, Libya and Tunisia ? which together might pose a threat to Israeli regional dominance?, Mohamed al-Sakhawi of Egypt's Arabic Unity Party told IPS News (18 June 2011).

Since the aggression began on 19 March 2011, U.S.-NATO forces have conducted some 11,500 air missions, including over 4500 combat sorties. In addition, hundreds of cruise missiles were launched against virtually a defenceless small African nation. These acts of terror, we are told, are legitimised by the UN Security Council, or as Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi accurately called it, the ?Terror Council?. The attacks killed thousands of Libyan civilians and wounded many more. In addition, the attacks caused a mass exodus of foreign migrants (workers) thousands of whom lost their lives at sea and many thousands more abused and terrorised by the pro-Western ?rebels?.

Encouraged by Colonel al-Qadhafi call for a cease fire, the majority of the world's nations, including African nations (the African Union) have called for an immediate end to U.S.-NATO's aggression and allow Libyans to find a political solution. Of course, U.S.-NATO leaders are not interested in the business of peace and consider the Libyan people their enemy. NATO leaders openly declared that: NATO's terror attacks will continue against the Libyan people until the Libyan leader Colonel al-Qadhafi leaves Libya. Meanwhile, Colonel al-Qadhafi continues to enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of the Libyan people, and courageously refused to be intimidated by the terrorists.

In deliberate attacks on civilian population centres on Sunday night of 19 June 2011, U.S.-NATO war planes attacked a residential area in the Arada neighbourhood of Tripoli killing several civilians, including two babies and their mother. ( Reuters/AFP , 19 June 2011).

On 10 June 2011, NATO war planes, conducted raids against Libya killed an Algerian mother, Benkacem Nicira, 41 and her two sons, Sadiki Abdelmalek, 22, and Bilal, 19 in the oil city of Ben Jawad, near Ras Lanuf. On 15 June 2011, NATO airstrike attacked a bus loaded with passengers in Kikla city, about 120 km southwest of the capital Tripoli, killing 12 civilians and wounding two others, according to Xinhua news.

Further, between 19 March 2011 and 26 May 2011, NATO air attacks had killed 718 civilians and wounded 4,067, mostly in and around the Capital Tripoli. Meanwhile, NATO members have began using helicopter gunships, U.S. Hellfire missile-wielding Predators and unmanned aerial vehicles operations in their attacks on major Libyan population centres, such as the Capital Tripoli.

On 30 April 2011, in an illegal act of ?targeted assassination', NATO-U.S. war planes attacked al-Qadhafi's family home, killing al-Qadhafi son, Saif al-Arab, his three grandchildren and several friends and relatives. The attack was in flagrant violation of international law. On 20 April 2011, U.S.-NATO air attacks on al-Qadhafi in Tripoli killed 7 civilians and wounded 18 others. Glorified by the BBC, the criminal attacks were justified as attacks on al-Qadhafi ?Command and Control Centre?. It is a lie even by the Nazis' standard. But, you wonder if the BBC will call a military attack on 10 Downing Street, an attack on David Cameron Command and Control Centre.

On 13 May 2011, NATO aircraft bombed the Libyan city of Brega, killing 16 civilians, including 11 clerics who were there on a peace mission, and wounding 45 others. Statements were made by two Imams who had driven through the night from the Brega site to Tripoli for the press conference to condemn the NATO bombing of their brethren.

A day after the massacre, Libyan government spokesperson, Moussa Ibrahim presented strong evidence that a massacre of Libyan religious leaders by NATO was carried out in the oil port of Brega. The press conference was attended by Libyan religious leaders, mainly Muslim but included both Orthodox and Catholic representatives.

According to Moussa Ibrahim, on Friday, 13 May 2011, over 150 of Libya's most senior Imams gathered in Brega to hold a peace conference on how to end the fighting in Libya. Brega was chosen for the site because it is the closest government held town to the rebel-held stronghold of Benghazi and the Imams planned to send a delegation to Benghazi with a peace proposal following the conference.

Bombing a peace conference of Libyan religious leaders shows just how much NATO is threatened by any chance of a cease fire. Any break in the NATO air offensive will only benefit the government and hurt the rebellion, with reports from western journalists in Benghazi telling of increasing infighting between local rebels and those recently returned from exile who have been trying to take over. If Benghazi loses its water supply the clock starts ticking towards the day when Benghazi's ?rebels? must surrender or evacuate the city.

According to former U.S. Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney who is in Tripoli, NATO forces have attacked ?hospitals, universities, schools, residential houses, and other non-military sites, causing numerous civilian casualties. The aim is to terrorise the civilian population and force the people to capitulate. Hence, U.S.-led NATO air attacks are deliberately and mercilessly targeting the civilian population and Libya's civilian infrastructure.

Furthermore, NATO has adopted U.S.-Zionist policy of collective punishment, including international sanction against the Libyan people. Collective punishment is a form of retaliatory action targeting the civilian population, including women and children in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The policy was used by the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland and by the U.S.-Britain during the 13-year long genocidal sanctions against the Iraqi people that killed more than a million Iraqi civilians, including 600,000 infants under the age of 5. It is considered one of Israel's brutal policies of terrorising the Palestinian people.

In justifying the aggression against Libya, Obama claims the U.S. has the right to attack any defenceless nation wherever it deems U.S. imperialist ?interests and values? to be at stake. Unashamed of his own despicable hypocrisy, Obama asserted that the attacks on Libya are to promote ?democracy? and ?human rights? as an established Western propaganda to manipulate public opinions and to portray the West as a ?compassionate? and ?ethical? society. But, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to Yugoslavia and to Libya, America's ?human rights? record is outright criminal.

Regrettably, despite the horrendous atrocities committed by U.S.-NATO forces against defenceless civilians, people in the West, the American people in particular, remain mute and ignorant. They are consumed by endless fantasies, manipulated and diverted like a ?bewildered herd?. They have been indoctrinated ?not to get involved in politics? and to mind their own business.

Promoting Dictatorship

Finally, whether it is the ongoing U.S.-NATO aggression against Afghanistan or the U.S.-NATO aggression against Libya, U.S.-NATO aggressions have nothing to do with ?democracy?, ?protecting civilians?, or ?human rights? whatever the pretexts. The primary aim is the total control over the planet resources through military violence, terrorising the civilian population and imposing Western-pliant rightwing-dictatorships to serve U.S.-Zionist interests.

In reality, the U.S. and its Western allies fear democracy and development more than anything else. In fact, most Western leaders, including Barack Obama openly supporting the dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the rest of the Gulf despotic regimes as the kinds of ?democratic? regimes they like to ?deal? with. The U.S. and its Western allies love the Saudi Arabia model of ?democracy?. Ostensibly, this is because in addition to serving U.S.-Zionist interests, the Saudi model provides the West with an example of an ?Islamic? regime, which is often used to demonise Muslims and Islam and more importantly, ?mobilise the ?Islamophobic' aspects of [Western] public opinion?, the Egyptian ?Marxist?, Samir Amin observes. Saudi Arabia is the most oppressive, backward and weak despotic regime is the U.S.-West most ?trusted? allay.

As the U.S. and its Western allies become more addicted to war and terror, there will be far more innocent people killed by U.S.-NATO forces in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. People should not fall into media manipulation and distortion. Only resistance by people worldwide will stop NATO terror and force Western leaders to choose the path of peace.

*Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.

Notes:

[1]. Michael Mandel, ?This War is Illegal,? CounterPunch , 09 October 2001.

[2]. Marjorie Cohn, ?Bombing of Afghanistan is Illegal and Must be Stopped,? Jurist , 06 November 2001.

 Here in the City of Roses, the annual Rose Festival celebration will have to proceedwithout the roses. For the second consecutive year, there has been record rainfall on the Portland parade. The weather finally turned, but locals are wondering whether there will be more than a few random days of Spring before the advent of Summer. It's just another example of what Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe describes as "global weirding":

An upsurge in heavy rainstorms in the United States has coincided with prolonged drought, sometimes in the same location, she said, noting that west Texas has seen a record-length dry period over the last five years, even as there have been two 100-year rain events.

Hayhoe, other scientists, civic planners and a manager at the giant Swiss Re reinsurance firm all cited human-caused climate change as an factor pushing this shift toward more extreme weather.

While none would blame climate change for any specific weather event, Hayhoe said a background of climate change had an impact on every rainstorm, heat wave or cold snap.

Beyond Portland, April saw the most tornadoes ever recorded for a single month, more than doubling the previous record. In different parts of the United States, May saw record heat or record cold, record rainfall and flooding and record droughts. Global warming does not mean that everything everywhere will grow hotter. The science denialists mistakenly and often dishonestly misuse those record colds or record rains as proof that the planet is not warming, but they don't understand or don't want you to understand that climate is complicated. It's not about everything getting hotter. It's about the extremes. The weirding. The new normal. But the surface of the planet is getting hotter. Globally, April was the seventh hottest month on record. It already is being estimated that 2012 will becomehottest year on record, breaking the previous high which was set all the way back in 2010.

Among scientists, there is no debate about anthropogenic climate change. A few rogue loons with some level of scientific credentials can be found to make just about any claim denying any scientific facts, but the climate denialists only get attention because they arewell-funded by the industries most responsible for anthropogenic climate change, and because they too often are enabled and coddled by incompetent and at times corrupt and complicit major media. The corporatist tools and intellectual stooges that comprise elected and nominated Republicans have done exactly what one would expect, attempting to undermine any and all efforts even to study, much less to address, climate change. Every Republican Senate nominee from the 2010 election cycle bought into some level of climate denialism. We know that. We expect that. But Democrats are supposed to know better. Democrats are supposed to do better. And the vast majority of Democrats in Washington, DC are aware of the science, accept the science, and claim to care about the science. But that's not enough. Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions last year set a new record, leading the International Energy Agency to open pessimism about the prospects of limiting global temperature to two degrees centigrade, which would itself be catastrophic. But what are the Democrats doing about it? To its great credit, and against the usual opposition from Republicans and a few right wing Democrats, the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency has moved forward to regulate greenhouse gasses. But as the New York Times editorialized as the climate bill died last year in the Senate, even after the disastrous BP oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico:

Mr. Obama never fully committed to the fight. He raised hopes here and around the world last year when he pledged in Copenhagen to reduce United States greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent. Until a couple of months ago, he talked a good game, praising the House bill that aimed at the 17 percent target and promising to make every effort to get the Senate to follow.

Then, despite the opportunity offered by the oil spill to press for a bold energy policy, the president essentially disappeared. What has passed for advocacy by the White House in recent days has consisted largely of one op-ed article by the energy adviser, Carol Browner, and daily assurances from the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, that the White House was “working behind the scenes.”

Can the country hope for better in the months ahead? It must. The danger of global warming is not going away just because Washington’s politicians don’t want to deal with it.

That's not even close to being good enough. Nothing less than Manhattan Project urgency is good enough. This is a crisis and this president is uniquely gifted at presenting and promoting a message, but his occasional speeches aren't anything close to being good enough. People can be awakened to the urgency of addressing a crisis, and no one in the world is more capable of awakening the American public than is President Obama. He needs to treat this crisis as if it were a crisis. He needs to galvanize the Party he leads to treat this crisis as if it were a crisis. He needs to make clear that dithering and compromising are not acceptable. He needs to call out the Republicans as a threat to our collective future. He needs to make climate change the most important issue in politics because it is the most important issue humanity has ever faced. He can use science. He can use facts. He can appeal to the emotions of everyone who hopes to be alive in half a century, or who cares about anyone who hopes to be alive in half a century.

How bad can it get? Is it hyperbole to call climate change the most important issue humanity has ever faced? Do other issues even compare when climate change itself encompasses almost all of them? How important are the issues of war and mass violence and human rights? The geopolitical consequences of climate change are almost unimaginable. There will be droughts and losses of vegetation, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has warned of potentially catastrophic impacts on food production. Imagine 200 million people displaced, worldwide. Where will they go? How will they survive? How will the less endangered people and governments cope with such an unprecedented torrent of refugees? Think of the reactionary xenophobia already resulting from immigration in the United States. Consider that the wonder of Europe's open internal travel is about to end, as nations there prepare to close their borders, as their own reactionary response to the increasing numbers of refugees fleeing the violence in revolutionary North Africa and the Middle East.

Does health care matter? How will nations cope as climate change expands the territories of everything from dangerous diseases to deadly insects? One need only consider the effects of record tornados and increasingly severe hurricanes to begin to realize the human costs of climate disasters. And then there are the impacts on forests and ocean acidification, the latter threatening the base of the marine food chain, and all whose livlihoods or lives depend upon it. Back on land, the disruptions to agriculture could undermine the food supplies for billions.

If all this isn't enough, and for those that care only about money, the economy often is an excuse for doing little or nothing about climate change. The presumption is that what's good for the environment is bad for the economy. It's another of the fundamental lies used by the narrow special interests whose riches do indeed depend on harming not helping. But however politically dominant the fossil fuels industries may be, their business strength does not translate into wider economic strength or even stability. Climate change is an economic crisis. One cannot honestly discuss the future economy without giving climate change primacy. The Stern review on the economics of climate change could not have been more clear, and the economic bottom line says it all:

Lord Stern of Brentford made headlines in 2006 with a report that said countries needed to spend 1% of their GDP to stop greenhouse gases rising to dangerous levels. Failure to do this would lead to damage costing much more, the report warned - at least 5% and perhaps more than 20% of global GDP.

But speaking yesterday in London, Stern said evidence that climate change was happening faster than had been previously thought meant that emissions needed to be reduced even more sharply.

This meant the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 500 parts per million, said Stern. In 2006, he set a figure of 450-550ppm. "I now think the appropriate thing would be in the middle of that range," he said. "To get below 500ppm ... would cost around 2% of GDP."

Two percent now or five to twenty percent later. And from a political standpoint it also isn't hard to sell the truth that responsibly addressing climate change not only would prevent that GDP disaster, it would stimulate the economy in new ways and begin to define what should be a new modern economic model for the future. If only someone somewhere in a position of serious authority would only make the effort to sell it.

On so many important issues, the impacts of climate change overwhelm other factors. Climate change is about war and peace and human rights and poverty and hunger and immigration and health care and natural disasters and in more ways than can be counted, climate change is about the economy. No other issue has ever had so many ramifications in so many areas. The Republicans have their collective heads buried in something other than mere sand, but for the Democrats being better than the Republicans is not nearly enough. Acknowledging the existence of climate change is not nearly enough. If anything, it highlights an even more disturbing level of irresponsibility and negligence, because unlike the Republicans, most Democrats at least know to some degree what is happening. They have no excuses for not doing absolutely everything in their collective power to awaken the ignorant and to galvanize popular support for the radical changes that are necessary, lest even more radical and much more dangerous changes become inevitable. This moment in history demands leadership, and leadership does not mean a wink and a nod and business as usual. Imagine if President Obama had the vision of Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard:

Friends, the second US President John Adams once famously said that “facts are stubborn things.” No opinion poll can change the fact that climate change is real. It is caused by human activity. And we must cut carbon pollution. In a nation rich in fossil fuels, I wish it were not so. But it is. Greenhouse gas levels are one-third higher than before the Industrial Revolution,and higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

As a result, global temperatures have risen 0.7 degrees celsius over the past century and continue to rise. The last decade was the world’s hottest on record, warmer than the 1990s which were in turn warmer than the 1980s. In fact, globally 2010 was the equal warmest year on record, tied with 2005 and 1998. 2010 is the thirty-fourth consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th Century average. In Australia, average temperatures have risen almost one degree since 1910,and each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the one before. That warming is real. Its consequences are real. And it will change our lives in real and practical ways. More extreme bushfire conditions and droughts. Falling crop yields. Loss of species. Increased cyclone intensity. More days of extreme heat. Coastal flooding as sea levels rise. Bleaching of our coral reefs. And a substantial decline in alpine snow cover. Indeed, Professor Garnaut’s latest report indicates that the need to act is greater than ever. And the scientific consensus is stronger than ever....

I learnt to have faith in the creative and optimistic spirit of this nation and its people. To believe that we are a smart, competent, resilient nation. A nation that has done great things in the past, and which can do even greater thingsin the future. A nation that understands when the soft options are gone, only hard choices remain. That is why we choose action over inaction. We will cut carbon pollution. We will not leave our nation stranded by history. We will not live at the expense of future generations. We will get this call right and get this job done: For our nation. For our people. For our future.

But as Joe Romm commented:

Obama, sadly, now refuses to explain to the American public the high cost of inaction, the myriad benefits of swift action, and the shameful, pitiful strategy adopted by the pro-pollution, anti-science deniers in the GOP political leadership — although he did give pieces of what needs to be said in various speeches back in 2009 (see links at end).

Gillard’s speech is an excellent combination of substance and rhetoric.  The whole thing is worth reading since we’re unlikely to hear such a blunt and courageous speech in this country by any major U.S. political leader for a long time.

But it's even worse than that, because as Bill McKibben just pointed out, President Obama has actually pursued a policy of expanding coal mining and oil drilling. Which continues to bestaggering, given that the man is smart enough and aware enough to know what is actually happening. We need his leadership. The world needs his leadership. No one else can do what he can do, but not only is he making only partial efforts to help, he is also making partial efforts that exacerbate the problems.

We as Democrats, as activists, and as political junkies cannot stand silently by. On the most important issue humanity has ever faced, and with disruptions to our very way of life looming and perhaps now unpreventable, our president and our leaders are not leading. We have to make them. We have to change the nature of how we live, but we also must demand better from those we send to Washington. Every important issue is trumped by climate change. Every important issue is impacted and many will be defined by climate change. We must find those Democrats who have the courage to lead on this unprecedented issue. We must make climate change the issue by which we define Democratic leadership.

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As for the bad news: the world faces an array of intractable energy problems that, if anything, have only worsened in recent weeks.  These problems are multiplying on either side of energy’s key geological divide: below ground, once-abundant reserves of easy-to-get “conventional” oil, natural gas, and coal are drying up; above ground, human miscalculation and geopolitics are limiting the production and availability of specific energy supplies.  With troubles mounting in both arenas, our energy prospects are only growing dimmer.

Here’s one simple fact without which our deepening energy crisis makes no sense: the world economy is structured in such a way that standing still in energy production is not an option.  In order to satisfy the staggering needs of older industrial powers like the United States along with the voracious thirst of rising powers like China, global energy must grow substantially every year.  According to the projections of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), world energy output, based on 2007 levels, must rise 29% to 640 quadrillion British thermal units by 2025 to meet anticipated demand.  Even if usage grows somewhat more slowly than projected, any failure to satisfy the world’s requirements produces a perception of scarcity, which also means rising fuel prices.  These are precisely the conditions we see today and should expect for the indefinite future.

It is against this backdrop that three crucial developments of 2011 are changing the way we are likely to live on this planet for the foreseeable future.

Tough-Oil Rebels

The first and still most momentous of the year’s energy shocks was the series of events precipitated by the Tunisian and Egyptian rebellions and the ensuing “Arab Spring” in the greater Middle East.  Neither Tunisia nor Egypt was, in fact, a major oil producer, but the political shockwaves these insurrections unleashed has spread to other countries in the region that are, including Libya, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.  At this point, the Saudi and Omani leaderships appear to be keeping a tight lid on protests, but Libyan production, normally averaging approximately 1.7 million barrels per day, has fallen to near zero.

When it comes to the future availability of oil, it is impossible to overstate the importance of this spring’s events in the Middle East, which continue to thoroughly rattle the energy markets. According to all projections of global petroleum output, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states are slated to supply an ever-increasing share of the world’s total oil supply as production in key regions elsewhere declines.  Achieving this production increase is essential, but it will not happen unless the rulers of those countries invest colossal sums in the development of new petroleum reserves -- especially the heavy, “tough oil” variety that requires far more costly infrastructure than existing “easy oil” deposits. 

In a front-page story entitled “Facing Up to the End of ‘Easy Oil,’” the Wall Street Journal noted that any hope of meeting future world oil requirements rests on a Saudi willingness to sink hundreds of billions of dollars into their remaining heavy-oil deposits.  But right now, faced with a ballooning population and the prospects of an Egyptian-style youth revolt, the Saudi leadership seems intent on using its staggering wealth on employment-generating public-works programs and vast arrays of weaponry, not new tough-oil facilities; the same is largely true of the other monarchical oil states of the Persian Gulf.

Whether such efforts will prove effective is unknown.  If a youthful Saudi population faced with promises of jobs and money, as well as the fierce repression of dissidence, has seemed less confrontational than their Tunisian, Egyptian, and Syrian counterparts, that doesn’t mean that the status quo will remain forever.  “Saudi Arabia is a time bomb,” commented Jaafar Al Taie, managing director of Manaar Energy Consulting (which advises foreign oil firms operating in the region). “I don’t think that what the King is doing now is sufficient to prevent an uprising,” he added, even though the Saudi royals had just announced a $36-billion plan to raise the minimum wage, increase unemployment benefits, and build affordable housing.

At present, the world can accommodate a prolonged loss of Libyan oil.  Saudi Arabia and a few other producers possess sufficient excess capacity to make up the difference.  Should Saudi Arabia ever explode, however, all bets are off.  “If something happens in Saudi Arabia, [oil] will go to $200 to $300 [per barrel],” saidSheikh Zaki Yamani, the kingdom’s former oil minister, on April 5th.  “I don’t expect this for the time being, but who would have expected Tunisia?”

Nuclear Power on the Downward Slope

In terms of the energy markets, the second major development of 2011 occurred on March 11th when an unexpectedly powerful earthquake and tsunami struck Japan.  As a start, nature’s two-fisted attack damaged or destroyed a significant proportion of northern Japan’s energy infrastructure, including refineries, port facilities, pipelines, power plants, and transmission lines.  In addition, of course, it devastated four nuclear plants at Fukushima, resulting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, in the permanent loss of 6,800 megawatts of electric generating capacity.

This, in turn, has forced Japan to increase its imports of oil, coal, and natural gas, adding to the pressure on global supplies.  With Fukushima and other nuclear plants off line, industry analysts calculate that Japanese oil imports could rise by as much as 238,000 barrels per day, and imports of natural gas by 1.2 billion cubic feet per day (mostly in the form of liquefied natural gas, or LNG).

This is one major short-term effect of the tsunami.  What about the longer-term effects?  The Japanese government now claims it is scrapping plans to build as many as 14 new nuclear reactors over the next two decades.  On May 10th, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that the government would have to “start from scratch” in devising a new energy policy for the country.  Though he speaks of replacing the cancelled reactors with renewable energy systems like wind and solar, the sad reality is that a significant part of any future energy expansion will inevitably come from more imported oil, coal, and LNG.

The disaster at Fukushima -- and ensuing revelations of design flaws and maintenance failures at the plant -- has had a domino effect, causing energy officials in other countries to cancel plans to build new nuclear plants or extend the life of existing ones.  The first to do so was Germany: on March 14th, Chancellor Angela Merkelclosed two older plants and suspended plans to extend the life of 15 others.  On May 30th, her government made the suspension permanent.  In the wake of mass antinuclear rallies and an election setback, she promised to shut all existing nuclear plants by 2022, which, experts believe, will result in an increase in fossil-fuel use.

China also acted swiftly, announcing on March 16th that it would stop awarding permits for the construction of new reactors pending a review of safety procedures, though it did not rule out such investments altogether.  Other countries, including India and the United States, similarly undertook reviews of reactor safety procedures, putting ambitious nuclear plans at risk.  Then, on May 25th, the Swiss government announced that it would abandon plans to build three new nuclear power plants, phase out nuclear power, and close the last of its plants by 2034, joining the list of countries that appear to have abandoned nuclear power for good.

How Drought Strangles Energy

The third major energy development of 2011, less obviously energy-connected than the other two, has been a series of persistent, often record, droughts gripping many areas of the planet.  Typically, the most immediate and dramatic effect of prolonged drought is a reduction in grain production, leading to ever-higher food prices and ever more social turmoil.

Intense drought over the past year in Australia, China, Russia, and parts of theMiddle East, South America, the United States, and most recently northern Europehas contributed to the current record-breaking price of food -- and this, in turn, has been a key factor in the political unrest now sweeping North Africa, East Africa, and the Middle East.  But drought has an energy effect as well.  It can reduce the flow of major river systems, leading to a decline in the output of hydroelectric power plants, as is now happening in several drought-stricken regions.

By far the greatest threat to electricity generation exists in China, which is suffering from one of its worst droughts ever.  Rainfall levels from January to April in the drainage basin of the Yangtze, China's longest and most economically important river, have been 40% lower than the average of the past 50 years, according toChina Daily.  This has resulted in a significant decline in hydropower and severe electricity shortages throughout much of central China.

The Chinese are burning more coal to generate electricity, but domestic mines no longer satisfy the country’s needs and so China has become a major coal importer.  Rising demand combined with inadequate supply has led to a spike in coal prices, and with no comparable spurt in electricity rates (set by the government), many Chinese utilities are rationing power rather than buy more expensive coal and operate at a loss.  In response, industries are upping their reliance on diesel-powered backup generators, which in turn increases China’s demand for imported oil, putting yet more pressure on global fuel prices.

Wrecking the Planet

So now we enter June with continuing unrest in the Middle East, a grim outlook for nuclear power, and a severe electricity shortage in China (and possibly elsewhere).  What else do we see on the global energy horizon?

Despite the IEA’s forecast of diminished future oil consumption, global energy demand continues to outpace increases in supply.  From all indications, this imbalance will persist.

Take oil.  A growing number of energy analysts now agree that the era of “easy oil” has ended and that the world must increasingly rely on hard-to-get “tough oil.”  It is widely assumed, moreover, that the planet harbors a lot of this stuff -- deep underground, far offshore, in problematic geological formations like Canada’s tar sands, and in the melting Arctic.  However, extracting and processing tough oil will prove ever more costly and involve great human, and even greater environmental, risk.  Think: BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster of April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.

Such is the world’s thirst for oil that a growing amount of this stuff will nonetheless be extracted, even if not, in all likelihood, at a pace and on a scale necessary to replace the disappearance of yesterday’s and today’s easy oil.  Along with continued instability in the Middle East, this tough-oil landscape seems to underlie expectations that the price of oil will only rise in the coming years.  In a poll of global energy company executives conducted this April by the KPMG Global Energy Institute, 64% of those surveyed predicted that crude oil prices will cross the $120 per barrel barrier before the end of 2011.  Approximately one-third of them predicted that the price would go even higher, with 17% believing it would reach $131-$140 per barrel; 9%, $141-$150 per barrel; and 6%, above the $150 mark.

The price of coal, too, has soared in recent months, thanks to mounting worldwide demand as supplies of energy from nuclear power and hydroelectricity have contracted.  Many countries have launched significant efforts to spur the development of renewable energy, but these are not advancing fast enough or on a large enough scale to replace older technologies quickly.  The only bright spot, experts say, is the growing extraction of natural gas from shale rock in the United States through the use of hydraulic fracturing (“hydro-fracking”).

Proponents of shale gas claim it can provide a large share of America’s energy needs in the years ahead, while actually reducing harm to the environment when compared to coal and oil (as gas emits less carbon dioxide per unit of energy released); however, an expanding chorus of opponents are warning of the threat to municipal water supplies posed by the use of toxic chemicals in the fracking process.  These warnings have proven convincing enough to lead lawmakers in a growing number of states to begin placing restrictions on the practice, throwing into doubt the future contribution of shale gas to the nation’s energy supply.  Also, on May 12th, the French National Assembly (the powerful lower house of parliament)voted 287 to 146 to ban hydro-fracking in France, becoming the first nation to do so.

The environmental problems of shale gas are hardly unique.  The fact is that all of the strategies now being considered to extend the life-spans of oil, coal, and natural gas involve severe economic and environmental risks and costs -- as, of course, does the very use of fossil fuels of any sort at a moment when the first IEA numbers for 2010 indicate that it was an unexpectedly record-breaking year for humanity when it came to dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

With the easily accessible mammoth oil fields of Texas, Venezuela, and the Middle East either used up or soon to be significantly depleted, the future of oil rests on third-rate stuff like tar sands, shale oil, and extra-heavy crude that require a lot of energy to extract, processes that emit added greenhouse gases, and as with those tar sands, tend to play havoc with the environment.

Shale gas is typical.  Though plentiful, it can only be pried loose from underground shale formations through the use of explosives and highly pressurized water mixed with toxic chemicals.  In addition, to obtain the necessary quantities of shale oil, many tens of thousands of wells will have to be sunk across the American landscape, any of one of which could prove to be an environmental disaster.

Likewise, the future of coal will rest on increasingly invasive and hazardous techniques, such as the explosive removal of mountaintops and the dispersal of excess rock and toxic wastes in the valleys below.  Any increase in the use of coal will also enhance climate change, since coal emits more carbon dioxide than do oil and natural gas.

Here’s the bottom line: Any expectations that ever-increasing supplies of energy will meet demand in the coming years are destined to be disappointed.  Instead, recurring shortages, rising prices, and mounting discontent are likely to be the thematic drumbeat of the globe’s energy future. 

If we don’t abandon a belief that unrestricted growth is our inalienable birthright and embrace the genuine promise of renewable energy (with the necessary effort and investment that would make such a commitment meaningful), the future is likely to prove grim indeed.  Then, the history of energy, as taught in some late twenty-first-century university, will be labeled: How to Wreck the Planet 101.

Copyright 2011 Michael T. Klare

The following is excerpted from the recently released book, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, produced by the Council of Canadians, Global Exchange and Fundacion Pachamama. This book reveals the path of a movement driving transformation of our human relationship with nature away from domination and towards balance. This book gathers the wisdom of indigenous cultures, scientists, activists small farmers, spiritual leaders and US communities who seek a different path for protecting nature by establishing Nature's Rights in law and culture. In addition to this excerpt, the book includes essays from Vandana Shiva, Desmond Tutu, Thomas Goldtooth, Eduardo Galeano, and many others. Copies of the book may be obtained through Global Exchange.

The prime anchor of the proposed Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth is that every element in Nature is interdependent and one cannot ignore the rights of the other without consequences. A grasping of this truth brings clarity to the fact that the Earth herself is finite and limited. It also helps us to grasp that if the resources of the Earth were used sustainably there would be enough to sustain every creature and living being in a continuously renewing manner.

Mahatma Ghandi rightly said that there is enough on Earth to meet everyone's need, but not enough to meet everyone's greed. This saying gets to the root of the matter. The interconnectedness in Nature demands that we deal respectfully with the bounties of Nature as well as with every other person. This is the pathway to sustainability.

The inordinate desire of man to dominate, accumulate and destroy has led to the emergence of many catastrophic events on Earth including climate change, hunger, disease, and a multiplicity of conflicts. The spirit of competition negates every element of solidarity and builds an insatiable taste for natural resources. To sustain this track of plunder, policy makers and their think tanks adopt delusory platforms that insist that humans can always find a fix for everything and therefore do not need to see the limits that exist on the highway of unrestricted exploitation.

The United Nations, in a bid to provide a socio-political environment in which minimum rights can be respected, has proclaimed a number of rights including the important Universal Declaration of Human Rights and more recently the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and now water has been declared a human right. The declaration of water as a human right is a milestone in the life of the august body. However, when the vote on the human right of water was taken, it is instructive to note that 41 countries abstained from raising their flags. These abstentions signalled the unpreparedness of some people to recognize the sanctity of life since water is such a basic element both in our make-up as humans, and a necessary element for the survival of all living beings. An Arab saying states, "The greatest crime to commit in a desert is to find water and to hide it." Anyone who uses water as a tool for subjugation, exploitation and strangulation of others commits a heinous crime against humanity.

After acceding to water as a human right, it is time for the world to take the next necessary step to proclaim the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. This, in a manner of speaking, is the mother of all rights.

The urgency for this Declaration cannot be overstressed. Man's exploitation of Mother Earth has left indelible scars that may never be healed. The actions of man through deforestation and the over-exploitation of water resources, for example, have caused the drying up of water bodies. Man-made climate change further compounds the situation. Massive accidents resulting from extractive industry activities, as well as other acts, show the limit to how man can exert control over the monsters that we create. Genetic engineering of crops, including the patenting of seeds and production of infertile seeds to secure control of the food chain on the altar of profit, hasten biodiversity and erosion. Highly depleted sources of fossil fuels have today led to the creation of false solutions including agro-fuels that are encouraging land grabs across Africa and other regions, raising the spectre of further conflicts in the midst of other crises.

Respecting the Rights of Mother Earth would make clear to all that over-exploitation of the Earth's resources and the destruction of our environment are nothing short of criminal, and that those who engage in these acts should have their day in the dock of an environmental crimes tribunal. The Declaration recognizes that: "To guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her in line with existing cultures, practices and laws. Declaration also empowers human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings;" and seeks the establishment of "precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles." This is the holistic declaration needed to halt our reckless slide.

Mother Earth has been kind to us. We have been nothing short of prodigal in our relationship to her and to one another. The path we have beaten for ourselves is one that leads to annihilation. But it is not too late to pause, correct our ways and take the right route. We have come to a major crossroad and the sign is clear. A choice must be made. If we choose to work for the sustenance of life as we know it, we must all demand the urgent Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.

The Climate Challenge

Without any doubt, climate change is a signal challenge to humankind and all of Mother Earth. Indeed, climate change demands a change of all humans and our societies. Based on peculiar reasoning, rather than fighting climate change, many policy measures being put forward and promoted are aimed at making profit out of the crisis. Rather than retracing from the path that stokes the atmosphere with more carbon, we appear determined to continue in the same mold that created the problem in the first place.

It is known that climate change has been triggered by the mass of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and that these have been released mainly through the burning of fossil fuels and other anthropomorphic activities. Rather than moving into renewable energy modes of production, wars are being fought to secure supplies of crude oil and gas. Rather than reducing consumption levels, people are fighting to maintain their current and increased levels of utilization of polluting fuels. In fact, it appears that the carbon utilization level of a nation is the key measure of how advanced a nation is. The right to pollute continues to negate the right to life. There is a critical need and demand for climate justice, that the atmosphere must be decolonized, and the historical ecological (and climate debt) must be paid.

The climate challenge places heavy burdens on vulnerable communities that contribute little or nothing to the crisis and that are often not even aware of the causes of the catastrophes they are condemned to confront. Some people refer to freak weather events as "acts of God," whereas they are basically caused by man's actions that upset the balance in Nature and unleash reactions that we cannot resist and can hardly contain. The proposed Declaration rightly states in Article 2(2) that, "each being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her harmonious functioning." The Rights of Mother Earth are not limited to things that we conveniently label as "living things." Every element in Mother Earth is living, has a right and deserves to be respected.

The systemic roots of climate change cannot be denied. The model of civilization that is hinged on uncontrolled development will only compound the crisis. Wasteful consumption means higher energy needs; it ignores efficiency and elevates people's capacity to buy what they want, and not what they need.

Negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change continue to gloss over the role of industrial agriculture in climate change. When agriculture is mentioned, the slant is usually that agriculture contributes so much to climate change. We hardly hear the truth that the culprit is industrial agriculture with its dependence on chemical fertilizers and predominantly monoculture modes. Meanwhile small-scale farmers continue to utilize local knowledge developed over centuries of practice on agro-ecological models that respect the environment, socio-economic and cultural systems.

While the official negotiations on climate change continue to drag, the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth issued "The People's Agreement" at the end of the conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2010. The agreement clearly took into consideration the Rights of Mother Earth as the true context for tackling climate change. The people spoke loudly and it is time for governments to listen.

The climate challenge requires binding targets for emission reductions and these cannot be met through the so-called carbon offsetting methods, or through the voluntary emission reduction targets such as what is suggested in the Copenhagen Accord. Those measures merely promote business as usual and set the stage for unacceptable temperature increases. As the Bolivian government consistently states, "the need to establish an adequate limit to global warming and that with an increase in global warming of two degrees Celsius, there is a 50 per cent chance that the damage caused to our Mother Earth would be totally irreversible."

The dominant proposals being officially put forward to combat climate change are all based on market forces. Rather than redirect civilisation from its carbon path and leave fossil fuels in the soil or in the holes where Mother Earth has put them, the world promotes the drilling of oil in pristine and delicate environments and continues to intensify destructive mining activities. By these means waterways are polluted onshore and offshore. Aquatic lives are poisoned with toxic chemicals including crude oil dispersants, smothered under drilling mud, and killed by seismic explosions. The extraction of fossil fuels increases deforestation and destruction of terrestrial habitat. The major factor behind the persistence of this mode of civilisation is profit at the expense of life.

When a slight attempt is made to move from fossil fuel propulsion, it has been into moving within the same industrial logic of refineries, pipelines, gas stations and combustion engines through agro-fuels. We hear talk of ethanol made from crops being held up as a clean and renewable energy source. Little attention is paid to the fact that the entire set up is the same as that driven by fossil fuels. Little attention is paid to the fact that agro-fuels compete with food crops for arable land and remove farm labour from producing food for hungry populations. Even when it is said that the crops cultivated are not staples and are grown on marginal lands, this turns out to be another way of marginalising the poor so as to meet the needs and greed of others. As mentioned earlier, agro-fuel production has triggered land grabs in places such as Africa that reveal the immoral bent of man in seeking to maintain consumption patterns that are unjust, unsustainable and grossly infringe on the Rights of Mother Earth.

Technology is hoisted as the silver bullet that would solve all the evils pushed forward by the carbon economy. This is the logic that speaks of carbon sequestration and even holds forth such an oxymoron as "clean coal." It is also this logic that breeds ideas such as the seeding of the atmosphere to reflect and thereby cool the Earth and seeding of the oceans to create carbon sinks.

Where technology does not provide the answer, other false solutions are brought up through mechanisms that allow the polluter to continue to pollute while performing penance by investing in so-called carbon sinks elsewhere in the world. In this guise, one such concept is Reduce Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD). Through this, speculators and carbon traders pounce on community forests and exclude peoples from their territories and access to their means of livelihood. Little attention is paid to the huge gaps in the REDD proposal. First, it merely seeks to reduce deforestation in the short term, whereas the world urgently needs to stop deforestation. It has no inherent mechanism to ensure that any deforestation being reduced is not merely deferred only to happen in the future. Neither does it have a way of tackling deforestation in any particular territory in a holistic way. This means that deforestation may be reduced in one region while it is being accelerated in another.

The Declaration of the Right of Mother Earth demands a paradigm shift and a conscious effort on the part of man to own up to our errors and settle on amending our patterns of production and consumption. The respect of Nature and socio-cultural contexts would have far-reaching implications and would result in the building of healthy societies where harmony is maintained and the rights of all beings are respected.

At the heart of the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth is the much needed assertion, promotion and protection of the sovereignty of peoples and other beings on Earth to grow in mutually beneficial relationships and support systems. For humans it would promote food sovereignty, energy sovereignty and sovereignty over territories and resources. It would truncate destructive exploitation, build resilience and strengthen the defence of all rights. This Declaration will provide the essential tool for the growth of global solidarity to take humankind into a civilisation based on sustainable principles.

In sum, the seeds of the real strategies to tackle climate change are embedded in the proposed Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. It is time for humankind to humbly accept that we have arrived at the precipice of reckless living, exploitation and destruction of Mother Earth and that even if water is found on other planets only the very rich may make it there. And we must accept that even those who make it there may need more than one lifetime to make the distance. We have only one Earth, the blue planet floating in space. The future security of nations will be based on the global solidarity, and not competition and domination. As one environmental and social activist said, "Without local, regional and global solidarity and vice versa the substantial transformations in the bosom of humanity will never be made."

The machine of war will not provide security. And the vast resources being poured into the building of machines of war would be better invested in works to repair the open wounds on Mother Earth. It is time to tackle the structural causes of climate change on the principles of equity and justice. The Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth provides the manifesto and a roadmap to a liveable future if we must be rescued from the brink of runaway climate crisis. It is time to stand up to support this cause.

The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, has been confronted by the power elite with two kinds of self-delusion. There are those, many of whom hold elected office, who dismiss the science and empirical evidence as false. There are others who accept the science surrounding global warming but insist that the human species can adapt. Our only salvation—the rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry—is ignored by both groups. And we will be led, unless we build popular resistance movements and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience, toward collective self-annihilation by dimwitted pied pipers and fools.

Those who concede that the planet is warming but insist we can learn to live with it are perhaps more dangerous than the buffoons who decide to shut their eyes. It is horrifying enough that the House of Representatives voted 240-184 this spring to defeat a resolution that said that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” But it is not much of an alternative to trust those who insist we can cope with the effects while continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Horticulturalists are busy planting swamp oaks and sweet gum trees all over Chicago to prepare for weather that will soon resemble that of Baton Rouge. That would be fine if there was a limit to global warming in sight. But without plans to rapidly dismantle the fossil fuel industry, something no one in our corporate state is contemplating, the heat waves of Baton Rouge will be a starting point for a descent that will ultimately make cities like Chicago unlivable. The false promise of human adaptability to global warming is peddled by the polluters’ major front group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which informed the Environmental Protection Agency that “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” This bizarre theory of adaptability has been embraced by the Obama administration as it prepares to exploit the natural resources in the Arctic. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced recently that melting of sea ice “will result in more shipping, fishing and tourism, and the possibility to develop newly accessible oil and gas reserves.” Now that’s something to look forward to.

“It is good that at least those guys are taking it seriously, far more seriously than the federal government is taking it,” said the author and environmental activist Bill McKibben of the efforts in cities such as Chicago to begin to adapt to warmer temperatures. “At least they understand that they have some kind of problem coming at them. But they are working off the science of five or six years ago, which is still kind of the official science that the International Climate Change negotiations are working off of. They haven’t begun to internalize the idea that the science has shifted sharply. We are no longer talking about a long, slow, gradual, linear warming, but something that is coming much more quickly and violently. Seven or eight years ago it made sense to talk about putting permeable concrete on the streets. Now what we are coming to realize is that the most important adaptation we can do is to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere. If we don’t, we are going to produce temperature rises so high that there is no adapting to them.”

The Earth has already begun to react to our hubris. Freak weather unleashed deadly tornados in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. It has triggered wildfires that have engulfed large tracts in California, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. It has brought severe droughts to the Southwest, parts of China and the Amazon. It has caused massive flooding along the Mississippi as well as in Australia, New Zealand, China and Pakistan. It is killing off the fish stocks in the oceans and obliterating the polar ice caps. Steadily rising sea levels will eventually submerge coastal cities, islands and some countries. These disturbing weather patterns presage a world where it will be harder and harder to sustain human life. Massive human migrations, which have already begun, will create chaos and violence. India is building a 4,000-kilometer fence along its border with Bangladesh to, in part, hold back the refugees who will flee if Bangladesh is submerged. There are mounting food shortages and sharp price increases in basic staples such as wheat as weather patterns disrupt crop production. The failed grain harvests in Russia, China and Australia, along with the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, have, as McKibben points out, been exacerbated by the inability of Midwestern farmers to plant corn in water-logged fields. These portents of an angry Gaia are nothing compared to what will follow if we do not swiftly act.

“We are going to have to adapt a good deal,” said McKibben, with whom I spoke by phone from his home in Vermont. “It is going to be a century that calls for being resilient and durable. Most of that adaptation is going to take the form of economies getting smaller and lower to the ground, local food, local energy, things like that. But that alone won’t do it, because the scale of change we are now talking about is so great that no one can adapt to it. Temperatures have gone up one degree so far and that has been enough to melt the Arctic. If we let it go up three or four degrees, the rule of thumb the agronomists go by is every degree Celsius of temperature rise represents about a 10 percent reduction in grain yields. If we let it go up three or four degrees we are really not talking about a planet that can support a civilization anything like the one we’ve got.

“I have sympathy for those who are trying hard to figure out how to adapt, but they are behind the curve of the science by a good deal,” he said. “I have less sympathy for the companies that are brainwashing everyone along the line ‘We’re taking small steps here and there to improve.’ The problem, at this point, is not going to be dealt with by small steps. It is going to be dealt with by getting off fossil fuel in the next 10 or 20 years or not at all.

“The most appropriate thing going on in Chicago right now is that Greenpeace occupied [on Thursday] the coal-fired power plant in Chicago,” he said. “That’s been helpful. It reminded people what the real answers are. We’re going to see more civil disobedience. I hope we are. I am planning hard for some stuff this summer.

“The task that we are about is essentially political and symbolic,” McKibben admitted. “There is no actual way to shut down the fossil fuel system with our bodies. It is simply too big. It’s far too integrated in everything we do. The actions have to be symbolic, and the most important part of that symbolism is to make it clear to the onlookers that those of us doing this kind of thing are not radical in any way. We are conservatives. The real radicals in this scenario are people who are willing to fundamentally alter the composition of the atmosphere. I can’t think of a more radical thing that any human has ever thought of doing. If it wasn’t happening it would be like the plot from a Bond movie.

“The only way around this is to defeat the system, and the name of that system is the fossil fuel industry, which is the most profitable industry in the world by a large margin,” McKibben said. “Fighting it is extraordinarily difficult. Maybe you can’t do it. The only way to do it is to build a movement big enough to make a difference. And that is what we are trying desperately to do with 350.org. It is something we should have done 20 years ago, instead of figuring that we were going to fight climate change by convincing political elites that they should do something about this problem. It is a tactic that has not worked.

“One of our big targets this year is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is the biggest front group for fossil fuel there is,” he said. “We are figuring out how to take them on. I don’t think they are worried about us yet. And maybe they are right not to be, because they’ve got so much money they’re invulnerable.

“There are huge decisive battles coming,” he said. “This year the Obama administration has to decide whether it will grant a permit or not for this giant pipeline to run from the tar sands of Alberta down to the refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. That is like a 1,500-mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet. We have to figure out how to keep that from happening. The Obama administration, very sadly, a couple of months ago opened 750 million tons of western coal under federal land for mining. That was a disgrace. But they still have to figure out how to get it to port so they can ship it to China, which is where the market for it is. We are trying hard to keep that from happening. I’m on my way to Bellingham, Wash., next week because there is a plan for a deep-water port in Bellingham that would allow these giant freighters to show up and collect that coal.

“In moral terms, it’s all our personal responsibility and we should be doing those things,” McKibben said when I asked him about changing our own lifestyles to conserve energy. “But don’t confuse that with having much of an impact on the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. You can’t make the math work one house or one campus at a time. We should do those things. I’ve got a little plaque for having built the most energy-efficient house in Vermont the year we built it. I’ve got solar panels everywhere. But I don’t confuse myself into thinking that that’s actually doing very much. This argument is a political argument. I spend much of my life on airplanes spewing carbon behind me as we try to build a global movement. Either we are going to break the power of the fossil fuel industry and put a price on carbon or the planet is going to heat past the point where we can deal with it.

“It goes far beyond party affiliation or ideology,” he said. “Fossil fuel undergirds every ideology we have. Breaking with it is going to be a traumatic and difficult task. The natural world is going to continue to provide us, unfortunately, with many reminders about why we have to do that. Sooner or later, we will wise up. The question is all about that sooner or later.

“I’d like people to go to climatedirectaction.org and sign up,” McKibben said. “We are going to be issuing calls for people to be involved in civil disobedience. I’d like people to join in this campaign against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It’s very easy to sign up. If you don’t own a little business yourself, you probably shop at 10 or 20 of them a week. It’s very easy to sign those guys up to say the U.S. Chamber doesn’t speak for me. We can’t take away their [the Chamber’s] money, but we can take away some of their respectability. I would like people to demonstrate their solidarity with people all around the world in this fight. The next big chance to do that will be Sept. 24, a huge global day of action that we’re calling ‘Moving Planet.’ It will be largely bicycle based, because the bicycle is one of the few tools that both rich and poor use and because it is part of the solution we need. On that day we will be delivering demands via bicycle to every capital and statehouse around the world.

“I wish there was some easy ‘end around,’ some backdoor through which we could go to get done what needs to be done,” he said. “But that’s not going to happen. That became clear at Copenhagen and last summer when the U.S. Senate refused to take a vote on the most mild, tepid climate legislation there could have been. We are going to have to build a movement that pushes the fossil fuel industry aside. I don’t know whether that’s possible. If you were to bet, you might well bet we will lose. We have been losing for two decades. But you are not allowed to make that bet. The only moral action, when the worst thing that ever happened in the world is happening, is to try and figure out how to change those odds.

“At least they knew they were going to win,” McKibben said of the civil rights movement. “They didn’t know when, but they knew they were going to win, that the tide of history was on their side. But the arch of the physical universe appears to be short and appears to bend towards heat. We’ve got to win quickly if we’re going to win. We’ve already passed the point where we’re going to stop global warming. It has already warmed a degree and there is another degree in the pipeline from carbon already emitted. The heat gets held in the ocean for a while, but it’s already there. We’ve already guaranteed ourselves a miserable century. The question is whether it’s going to be an impossible one.”

Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”

2011 has already become the deadliest year for tornado outbreaks in the United States since 1953, with more than 500 people killed. Extreme weather has made headlines across the world, as well, with megafloods occurring in Colombia, Vietnam, Pakistan and Australia, even as the Amazon just faced its second hundred-year drought in the past five years. News audiences are seeing the warning "severe weather" increasingly flash across TV screens, but little connection has been made to the role humans have played in driving climate change. We speak with environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign, 350.org. "We’re making the earth a more dynamic and violent place," McKibben says. "That’s, in essence, what global warming is about."

JUAN GONZALEZ: Extreme weather across the United States has been dominating the news for weeks, from tornadoes to floods to drought. This is just a sampling of some recent news reports.

PETER MANSBRIDGE, CBC: Now more than 1,500 people are still unaccounted for following Sunday evening’s tornado in Joplin, Missouri. The storm killed at least 122. Both huge numbers, given how many people live there.

CBS REPORTER: The massive tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, Sunday, flattening entire neighborhoods and claiming an untold number of lives. Eleven bodies were pulled from just one location alone. The storm was so powerful, it reportedly ripped the bark from trees as wind speeds approached 150 miles per hour.

REPORTER: The latest information I have from Oklahoma City is that there are now two confirmed dead in the state of Oklahoma tonight, 122 confirmed dead in Joplin, Missouri, from the storm that hit there Saturday, 1,500 missing, according to a fire captain in Joplin. And the tornadoes are said to be still breaking out tonight. ....

JUAN GONZALEZ: This is how environmentalist Bill McKibben begins his piece in the Washington Post this week. "Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

"It is [far] better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas—fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been—the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected."

AMY GOODMAN: Those are the words of Bill McKibben, as he begins his Washington Post piece this week. Bill McKibben is founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and author of many books, including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Bill is joining us from Long Island, New York, though he is a Vermonter.

Bill, your state is making history today, about to pass single-payer healthcare, and you’ve been doing that quite a while on the issue of the environment, as you travel the world to bring attention to two words that we don’t see screaming across our TV screens. We see "severe weather." We see "extreme weather." We see the horrible scenes of destruction. But we don’t see the words "climate change." Talk about these connections.

BILL McKIBBEN: Sure. Look, what’s happening is we’re making the earth a more dynamic and violent place. That’s, in essence, what global warming is about. We’re trapping more of the sun’s energy in this narrow envelope of atmosphere, and that’s now expressing itself in many way. We don’t know for sure that any particular tornado comes from climate change. There have always been tornadoes. We do know that we’re seeing epic levels of thunderstorm activity, of flooding, of drought, of all the things that climatologists have been warning us about.

And of course they’re not confined just to our continent. You know, even in the last week, the Chinese have pointed out that they’re suffering through the worst drought in the center of the country that they have on record. In Colombia, the president went on TV last week to say, "We’ve gotten so much rain in the last year, it’s washed away so much of our infrastructure that it’s as if we haven’t been doing any development work for the last 10 or 20 or 25 years."

The scale of this stuff is immense. And as long as we just think about it as just a series of one-off, isolated disasters, we probably are not asking ourselves the most important questions. What can we do to stop this destabilization before it gets much worse?

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Bill, you’ve also—you also mention in your article what’s happened in the past year in Pakistan and Australia and other parts of the world. Could you talk about that, as well?

BILL McKIBBEN: Flooding is probably, Juan, the biggest example of what we’re doing. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold. On average, the earth’s atmosphere is about four percent wetter than it was 30 years ago, which is an astonishingly large change in a basic physical parameter. What it does is load the dice for downpour and deluge and flooding, and one country after another has been crapping out in the last year, throwing snake eyes.

I mean, you saw the pictures from Queensland in Australia, because Queensland in Australia has a lot of white people and TV cameras. You didn’t see similar pictures from Sri Lanka, from Vietnam, from the Philippines, from Brazil northeast of Rio, where they’ve had similar kinds of megafloods, now Colombia. There were some pictures from Pakistan, because it was such an epic event. There were, last year, last summer, about a quarter of that country under water. The Red Cross said in February that there were still four million homeless people from those floods in Pakistan. Of all the big things that have happened in Pakistan in the last year, the biggest one, by far, was that epic, biblical flood that came pouring down the Indus.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill, in your piece, you go on to talk about, well, the connections you shouldn’t make. And you say, "Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade—well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining?" And you go on with a series of questions. First, talk about the Amazon. This is always what is linked, raised, on those who are questioning climate change. You’re talking about a drought in the Amazon, and you’re talking about these massive floods. "Obviously there is no connection," they say. But talk about government policy under President Obama.

BILL McKIBBEN: Sure. First of all, just two connections. The atmosphere gets moister. That means that in some areas there’s more evaporation, and hence more drought. And in other areas, that stuff is coming down.

Now, to President Obama, look, the guy has done a better job on climate change than George Bush. That’s not an enormous claim to make, but, you know, happily, he’s doing something. He’s also doing a lot of things that are very, very damaging. He has opened this vast swath of the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming to coal mining. The early estimate is there’s enough coal there to be at the equivalent of having 3,000 coal-fired power plants running for a year. His administration is currently considering allowing a permit for a huge pipeline across the center of the country that will run from Canada from the tar sands in Alberta down to refineries in Texas. That’s the equivalent of lighting a fuse on the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.

So, we need the President and the rest of his administration to focus a lot harder on climate change. It’s nice that they’ve talked about green jobs, and so on and so forth, but we need them to understand that global warming right now is the most difficult problem that we face, and we can’t do anything that will make it worse. The Congress, at the moment, is clearly preventing us from doing much that will make it better, but we’ve got to do everything we can to engage that battle. That’s what we’re doing at 350.org now, and with some increasing success, I’m happy to say. The movement itself, at least, is building. It’s not big enough yet to defeat the fossil fuel industry, but we’re getting larger.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Bill, you mentioned Congress, and yet this spring the House of Representatives voted by a 50-vote majority against a resolution that says climate change poses a significant risk to human health. Where are our political leaders?

BILL McKIBBEN: They were more—I mean, they voted by that 50 votes to basically say that climate change wasn’t real. I mean, we’re entering one of those moments. You know, it’s like Lysenko in the old Soviet Union or something, when there are too many people willing to believe that their ideology can trump physics and chemistry. That is a painful delusion to be laboring under. It’s one that we won’t labor under for very long, but these are crucial years, and we really, really have to engage this battle. By that, I mean since we’re never going to outspend the fossil fuel industry—and that’s what owns Congress—we’re going to have to figure out some other currency to work in. It’s not going to be money. It’s going to be bodies and creativity and spirit.

So, at 350.org, we’re in the midst of planning for this next huge global day of action. It’ll be September 24th, and it’ll be mostly on the backs of bicycles all over the world. We’re calling it "Moving Planet." We’re in the middle of this big fight against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is the number one front group for the fossil fuel industry. And we’re getting thousands upon thousands of small businesses across America to simply say, "The U.S. Chamber doesn’t speak for me," because they’re being—they’re the reason that Congress is being as willful and blind as they are. We’ve got to engage these big forces, and we’ve got to do it very dynamically, because the time, as this chain of freak weather events makes clear, is running out.

And it’s making it clear, by the way, not just to scientists and not just to activists. The head of one of the country’s biggest insurance companies was quoted just a week or so ago as saying, "Look, it’s very clear to us that the level of thunderstorm activity across the country is off the charts. We’re going to have to be raising our premiums, and there’s going to be lots of places where we’re not going to be able to underwrite anymore, simply because the earth is changing so fast."

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, 350.org, the significance of the name of your group?

BILL McKIBBEN: Three-fifty is the—good question, Amy. Three-fifty is the most important number in the world. The NASA scientists told us three years ago that any value for carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million was not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted. That is strong language. It’s stronger still when you know that everywhere, outside your studios, up on top of Mount Everest, in the Antarctic, right now we’re at about 390 parts per million CO2 and gaining fast. That’s why this is not some future problem. It is the most pressing present crisis that we have.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill McKibben, I want to thank you for being with us, founder of 350.org. His new piece, "A Link between Climate Change and Joplin Tornadoes? Never!" appears in the Washington Post, and we will link to it.

Also, just this small point, though it’s a big point for us, is that Democracy Now! broadcasts from the greenest internet/TV/radio studios in the country. We have gotten LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. It’s the highest level of green building that can be done in this country.

Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from the recently released book, The Rights of Nature: The case for a Universal Declaration on the rights of Mother Earth, produced by the Council of Canadians, Global Exchange and Fundacion Pachamama. This book reveals the path of a movement driving transformation of our human relationship with nature away from domination and towards balance. This book gathers the wisdom of indigenous cultures, scientists, activists small farmers, spiritual leaders and US communities who seek a different path for protecting nature by establishing Nature's Rights in law and culture. In addition to this excerpt, the book includes essays from Vandana Shiva, Desmond Tutu, Thomas Goldtooth, Eduardo Galeano, and many others. Copies of the book may be obtained through Global Exchange.

The world needs the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and all humans need to internalize its key principles if the planet, and we, are to survive.

While it is true that many people still live on the land in harmony with the natural cycles of Nature, it is also true that with every passing year, more and more people around the world are moving into the "modern" consumer economy, seeking out a living based on capital exchange and no longer living in sustainable communities and traditional societies. In 2008, the number of city dwellers equalled the number of rural dwellers for the first time in history. By 2030, says the United Nations (UN), more than half the population of the large urban centres in the Global South will be slum dwellers with no access to sanitation. There is a huge scramble by the private companies of the Global North to convert the lands they leave behind into free trade zones to serve a global economy based on the doctrine of economic globalization, unregulated markets, more and cheaper consumer goods and unlimited growth.

Unlimited growth assumes unlimited resources and this is the genesis of the crisis. From fish in the sea, and old growth forests and wetlands, to oil, clean air and water, we are plundering our planet's natural resources. Quite simply, to feed the increasing demands of our consumer-based capitalist system, humans have seen nature as a great resource for our personal convenience and profit, not as a living ecosystem from which all life springs. So we have built our economic and development policies based on a human-centric model and assumed either that nature would never fail to provide or that, where it does fail, technology will save the day.

Even when we recognize the effect of our behavior on the natural world, we pass inadequate laws based on curbing the worst practices, but leave intact the system of economic globalization at the heart of the problem, which gives transnational corporations almost unfettered and unregulated access to the genetic, mineral, timber and water resources of even the most remote parts of the Earth. Thomas Linzey, a U.S. lawyer working to develop the new legal framework to protect Nature, explains that the dominant form of environmental protection in industrialized countries is based on the regulatory system, legalizing the discharge of large amounts of toxic substances into the environment, and is not working. Under a new regime recognizing the Rights of Mother Earth, compensation would not be measured in terms of an injury to people, but according to damage to the ecosystem.

In the absence of such fundamental protections for Nature, political leaders and their big business advisors continue, for instance, to promote international trade and investment agreements that not only limit the ability of domestic governments to protect the natural world for fear such protection may be seen as a "trade barrier," but also award the trade in "green" technology that will be needed to clean up the ecosystems we refuse to protect. If the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth were firmly entrenched in international jurisprudence, nation-state constitutions, and the hearts and minds of decision-makers, trade agreements would be very different than they are today and would be built around the need for more local sustainable systems of food and industrial production, and the protection of natural ecosystems.