Russ Vernon-Jones

love, justice, and climate change … I know you can make a difference.

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How to Talk About Climate Change

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I recently asked some friends what they found hard about starting conversations about climate change. One said they just didn’t know how to begin. Others said they were afraid they’d get asked a question they didn’t know how to answer, or feared triggering a disagreement, or they just didn’t know how to react when people were hopeless.

I recognized all of these as difficulties I’ve had in various situations. However, the experts say it’s really important that we talk about climate a lot. “The first step to action on climate change is to talk about it, that’s the number one thing we can do,” said Lucky Tran, who’s in climate communications at Columbia University. “We can’t solve any problems, especially at the global scale, if we don’t talk about the problem and the best way to address it.” This will be key to building a movement large enough to insist on action on the scale that is needed.

We used to think that the goal in communicating about climate was to convince people that climate change is real and caused by humans. That’s no longer necessary with most people. Polls show that a huge majority of people in the country understand that climate change is happening and are concerned about it. Our big job now is to make the topic more salient, let people know they are not alone with their concern, and enable people to express their desire for bolder climate action.

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Climate Action: Move Your Money & Switch Your Credit Card

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One Friday night in the fall of 2012 I found myself in a room at Amherst College with Bill McKibben, a good number of college students, and some local residents, many of them in their later years. I was only just beginning to really pay attention to the issue of climate change and thought of myself as a visitor or observer in this gathering. McKibben looked like a very ordinary guy, but once he started to speak, the power of his vision and persuasion transformed the room. At that point, no college or other institution had committed to divest from fossil fuels, but McKibben announced his intention to start a nation-wide divestment movement.

It seemed unlikely that such a movement could have much impact on an industry as wealthy as the fossil fuel industry. McKibben explained that he didn’t expect to bankrupt the industry, but rather to cause them to be seen as moral pariahs for their climate-destroying business model and to delegitimize the power they wield through political donations. He thought college students and alumni could effectively pressure colleges and universities to divest, and he announced a cross-country tour to enlist them. This made sense to me and I soon wrote to my alma maters encouraging them to divest from fossil fuels.

Fast forwarding to the present … the divestment movement that Bill McKibben announced in Amherst that night has grown. More than 1500 institutions–colleges, pension funds, faith-based organization, etc.– whose investments total more than $40 trillion, have ….

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White Supremacy Fuels Both Police Violence and Climate Destruction

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A friend of mine recently talked to me about white supremacy. He said the white supremacy groups like the ones that marched with torches in Charlottesville in 2017 at the “Unite the Right” rally really scare him. “But when people start talking about white supremacy being everywhere, I don’t get it. We’re not all like the KKK.”

His confusion is understandable. The term “white supremacy” is often used today in two rather different ways. On the one hand it refers to the beliefs of various right-wing hate groups that are quite explicit about wanting the U.S. to be a country for white people and seeing black and brown people (and sometime all Jews, LGBQT+, Asians, and Indigenous people) as the enemy.

On the other hand, “white supremacy” is also used to describe the, often implicit, ideology that has been prevalent throughout the United States, from the beginning, that has led to laws, policies, and institutions that have favored white people. This more common, often unexpressed, way of thinking has affected all of us. It has led white people, in general, to feel more comfortable with other whites, and to see most white people as more responsible, trustworthy, and intelligent, and less violent than black and brown people. Even those of us who are committed to racial justice can find these ideas arising in our minds against our will. Studies show that even a significant percentage of black and brown people have internalized some of these messages, as well.

Some of the primary features of white supremacy ideology are superiority, domination, and entitlement. Especially entitlement for white people to pursue what they want and to seek their personal wealth, power, and comfort without regard to the effects of their actions on other people (especially black and brown people) or on the natural environment.

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Our Food and Climate Change

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I thought it might be interesting this week to return to a very personal topic that we all encounter daily — food. What we eat, and don’t eat, impacts climate change. The diets of people around the world affect climate change.

More people in the U.S. are eating diets that include more plant-based foods. A recent survey found 63% making efforts to eat less red meat. Many are eating more plant based foods because a plant-based diet is healthier–and the “best way to avoid heart disease.” Increasing numbers of people are turning to more plant-based foods to help the environment. A diet made up mostly of foods from plants is both healthier and better for the climate than the traditional family diet in the U.S.

What does this term “plant-based” mean?

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Mia Mottley and Her Proposed Overhaul of Global Climate Finance

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Mia Mottley was born in Barbados, a small island nation in the Caribbean. She completed college in Barbados and then went to the London School of Economics at age 18. One of her classmates at the time remembers meeting her– she was on a couch in a student apartment in London talking with everyone. He was “slightly enthralled by this person because she was like a queen, even at age 18. And people would come and pay homage. It was like a court visit.”

After graduating, Mottley went back to Barbados. She’s from a political family there and in 1994 became the youngest Barbadian ever elected to Parliament. In 2018 she became Prime Minister. She won a second term in 2022 with her party sweeping all of the seats in the legislature with 73% of the popular vote.

I first became aware of her when I saw an 8-minute video of a powerful speech she gave at the opening session of COP26 in Glasgow. It’s worth watching if you want some inspiring and engaging straight talk from a powerful leader who is a person of the global majority*.

Now Mottley has made a proposal that could lead to billions of dollars becoming available to finance climate action in frontline nations. These climate-vulnerable nations need funds to recover from climate disasters, prepare for the next disaster, and to transition away from fossil fuels.

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Climate Good News – 2022

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Writing about climate, or even just thinking about climate, can pose a challenging dilemma for any of us. If we focus too much on what a desperate climate emergency humanity is facing, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or discouraged and pulled to give up. On the other hand, if we focus too much on the good news and signs of hope, some may be tempted to become complacent and feel that others are taking care of what needs to be done.

At our best, we develop an ability to simultaneously: 1) remember the magnitude of the crisis, 2) find hope in the good news, and 3) maintain a commitment to sustained action. We then engage both in lowering our own carbon footprints and in joining actions to accelerate the systemic changes that are essential.

Emotionally this requires what for many of us is a new approach — acknowledging our feelings of overwhelm and hopelessness, while at the same time, choosing to be hopeful. As we do this we can feel more fully alive, more connected with others, and full of purpose.

I trust that my readers will remember that climate change is causing severe suffering in many parts of the world and that almost everywhere, including in the United States, corporations, governments, and individuals are still doing things to make the crisis worse. With that awareness, I offer some highlights of good news from the year 2022 to help us all stay hopeful as we engage in making a difference.

The climate-destroying deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is expected to …

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Do We Understand the Problem?

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How do you feel when you find out someone has lied to you? How do you feel when you find out someone claiming to be doing something good is actually doing something else–something truly harmful?

While the election lies in the U.S. have been getting a lot of attention (as they should), the lies and deceit of the big oil and gas companies are much less well-known and remembered, but are every bit as disastrous for the health of our society.

A new report last week from the House of Representatives Oversight Committee details what they learned in their investigation into the big oil and gas companies. Their key finding was that while these fossil fuel corporations are falsely portraying themselves to the public as committed to going green, they are continuing to seek to expand drilling and sales of climate-destroying fossil fuels. The Committee actually got the big oil CEOs to appear (from ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron and Shell), put them on the spot, and got lots of previously hidden documents released.

The Committee report says, “Big Oil has doubled down on long-term reliance on fossil fuels with no intention of taking concrete actions to transition to clean energy.” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Chair of the Committee said, “Even though Big Oil CEOs admitted to my Committee that their products are causing a climate emergency, today’s documents reveal that the industry has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come.”

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8 Billion of Us! – Population Growth and Climate Change

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Sometime on November 15th, according to demographers, a baby was born somewhere in the world who brought the number of humans living on the planet to 8 billion. That’s a lot of us!

How does population growth relate to our efforts to solve the climate crisis? This is a sensitive subject. It can bring up differing viewpoints and strong feelings about everything from women’s rights to religion to racism.

There’s no question that, all other things being equal, more people means more consumption; and more consumption means more stress on multiple global systems, including the climate. However, population growth does not have as large an impact on the climate crisis as one might suspect.

First of all, worldwide population growth has slowed significantly and is now less than 1% per year.

Secondly, most population growth is occurring, and will occur in the coming decades, in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia–areas of the world where per-capita greenhouse gas emission rates are very low. Population growth in these areas contributes to climate change, but the contribution is extremely small compared to the amount of climate change driven by the consumption patterns of people in the wealthy nations. In other words, our over-consumption problem in the wealthy nations is far greater than the population growth problem elsewhere.

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Stories From COP27

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The nations of the world just met in Egypt at the UN climate conference, COP27, for over two weeks to try to come to agreements on addressing the global climate crisis. It was a particularly contentious conference, with agreements hard to come by, and negotiations continuing past the planned end date.

Coming into the conference the delegates found encouragement in the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, who has pledged to eliminate the deforestation of the Amazon, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, the largest climate bill ever, with billions of dollars for renewable energy. On the other hand, the urgency of the crisis has been brought into sharp focus by the flooding of one-third of Pakistan (the 5th most populous country in the world); recent flooding in Nigeria which displaced 1.4 million people; and lethal drought, famine and heat waves in many parts of the world.

At the opening session of the COP UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted that global greenhouse gas emissions keep growing and that global temperatures keep rising. He said,
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

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VOTE and a Quiz to Help You Find Your Role in Climate Action

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Today is Election Day in the United States. If you are eligible to vote and have not yet voted PLEASE VOTE TODAY. Many states and districts have very close election contests where every vote will count.

Even if it seems that the elections in your area are not close, there is a reason I think it is very important for people who care about climate to vote. The Environmental Voter Project estimates that 8 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2020 presidential election and 12 million didn’t vote in the 2018 midterms. Clearly these voters could have had a very large impact if they had all voted. More important now, is that the more climate voters everywhere vote, the more it will be clear to politicians that leading on climate will be vital to electoral success in the future.

Taking action on climate is clearly important. It’s important to solving the climate crisis. It’s important in helping each of us feel more purposeful and less despairing and hopeless about climate. But lots of people don’t know what to do. Street protest isn’t for everyone, neither is lobbying your state legislators.

Now two climate author/activists have designed an engaging “quiz” that leads the reader through a series of options that helps you identify what sort of climate action might best fit your preferences and personality. The quiz became available on the Yale Climate Change Connections website in October 2022. It’s reminiscent of the simple identification keys that are available for helping to identify flowers.

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The Upcoming U.S. Election and a Bit of Good Climate News

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Once again, as most of you know, we find ourselves facing a critical election in the United States. It’s not clear whether the Democratic Party can hold onto either or both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections in November. If they don’t, it will be disastrous for the climate and for racial justice, as well as for other key issues. It may well be disastrous for democracy as well, given the Republican party’s current move toward authoritarianism. Some states are also voting to choose the person who will run future elections in their state. These contests may have a big impact on the 2024 elections.

I find these to be scary times. Rather than writing a long blog post, I want to first thank you for anything you have already done to help get good outcomes in the upcoming election. And, if you are not already engaged, I want to encourage you to get involved in some way in supporting fair elections and candidates who are committed to climate action, racial justice, and democracy. You may want to send letters or post cards to voters; you may want to donate more money to good candidates or political organizations; you may want to join phone banks or text banks, or go door-to-door. Please choose some way to get involved. There are so many opportunities to be found online with a quick search.

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Seeing Ourselves as a Part of Nature May Be Essential

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I’ve been interested to learn about the indigenous people on whose land I live in western Massachusetts. As far as I know I don’t have any Indigenous heritage myself. I’ve learned that this area was home to the Pocumtuc and the Nipmuc people. Nipmuc people still live in Central and Western Massachusetts and have an elected tribal government.

There is some debate about dates, but indigenous people apparently moved into what’s now called New England more than 10,000 years ago, soon after the last glacial ice sheet receded. They have lived here ever since, despite disease, warfare, and displacement brought by European settler colonizers. (The 2020 U.S. Census found more than 13,000 American Indians living in Massachusetts, although other studies put the number higher. It found that the number of people in the U.S. who identify as Native American and Alaskan Native, alone and in combination with another race, is at least 9.7 million.)

It struck me that Indigenous people lived in my area for more than 9,500 years without damaging the environment nor creating environmental crises. Clearly they found ways to live in harmony with their environment–ways that allowed humans and the rest of the natural environment to thrive together. Things have gone less well for the environment since the Europeans invaded North America.

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Can Compassion Help Us Personally and Globally?

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Climate change is causing a lot of human pain and suffering in many parts of the world. In order to be healthy and effective I think we need to limit our consumption of the news, but also stay sufficiently informed to make good decisions about how to be engaged in helping to create more just and sustainable societies. We need not follow every detail of each climate catastrophe, but I do think it’s healthy to face the extent of the crisis we humans face as a result of climate change. Trying to turn away from the reality of it seems to leave us ungrounded, alienated, and anxious.

Facing the disastrous effects of climate change may cause us to feel fear, grief, or other painful emotions, but it keeps us grounded in reality. Facing our feelings and sharing them with others can be healing and lead us to be more open-hearted, appropriately vulnerable, and connected with others.

I recently listened to an audio book titled, Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman. One of the things I found helpful in his book is the recommendation to “train your compassion.” He advises that in the face of other people’s suffering, rather than trying to share in their pain, we strive to call up our compassion — our feelings of “warmth, concern, and care.” These are much more likely to energize us and help us feel more connected.

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