Russ Vernon-Jones

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

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Climate Anxiety and Having a Good Life

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If you feel anxious about the climate situation, you have lots of company. Virtually everyone has some anxiety about the mess we are in with climate change, whether they want to face it or not. Google searches for “climate anxiety” went up 565% last year. A recent poll found 70% of U.S.ers are worried about climate change.

I’m going to say some unpleasant things in this post, but I promise some useful, more auspicious, perspectives and suggestions before the end, if you can get that far.

If you’ve been following the climate situation, you know that things are bad and that even under the best-case scenario they are going to get worse–everywhere. Yikes! Even if we already know that’s true, it’s a shocking statement to say that things are going to get worse. (Aren’t things bad enough already? Is anyone thinking … COVID pandemic, rising authoritarianism, racism, economic inequality, financial insecurity?)

How do we manage our feelings in this situation? What’s a healthy emotional response?

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Worth Remembering from 2021

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If you are reading this, you are one of the people who has survived another challenging year. Congratulations! Thank you for your continued caring about climate change and climate justice.

What a year it has been! The coronavirus pandemic is hard on all of us and seems endless. Our democracy in the United States is in peril. The climate crisis continues to worsen–some good actions have been taken, but they are still woefully in adequate.

President Biden has been far bolder on climate than anyone would have guessed when he first announced that he would run for President, but he’s also failed to take essential climate action steps that are within his power.

There’s been plenty of bad climate news this year and some good news too. I’m going to trust that you have some picture of how dire the situation is and not trouble you with reviewing the bad news in this post. Here are three bits of good news that are helping me stay hopeful–and committed to climate action in the coming year.

Also here are the five posts of this blog in 2021 that contain perspectives and information most likely to be important in 2022.

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Spice Up Your Talking About Climate – a Number for Each Day of the Week

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As I’ve written before, talking about climate change is critical to building a powerful people’s climate movement. Lots of people are vaguely concerned about the climate, but many of those aren’t yet speaking up or taking action. It would be good for us to talk about climate change with almost everyone. Sharing our love for the planet, sharing some information about climate change, and inviting people to join us in taking action, is vital to moving things forward. Having some key facts at our fingertips, committed to memory, can make us better communicators and enliven our interactions. Once I’ve chosen a number to remember, I find I retain it better if I make a point of sharing it often in conversations.

Here is a small collection of key numbers and facts you can use when talking with people about climate change.

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Problems with “Net-Zero by 2050”

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Many nations, corporations, municipalities, and other entities are setting goals to be “net-zero by 2050,” that is, to have zero net greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. While this may seem like an admirable goal, there are significant and dangerous problems with this whole approach.

In 2018 the IPCC issued a report in which it emphasized that in order for humanity to keep global warming below 1.5°C it was necessary for the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and to “net-zero” by 2050. The “net-zero” in this statement was an acknowledgement that no matter how vigorously we cut emissions, there will likely still be small amounts of emissions (mostly in some industrial processes) that we can’t totally eliminate and these will have to be balanced by equivalent increases in carbon sequestration. This IPCC statement was accurate, but has been distorted and misused in multiple ways.

Problem #1 – Ignoring the 2030 goal
First the 2030 goal and the 2050 goal in the IPCC report are paired with each other and must be implemented together. Many of the current adoptions of the 2050 goal are ignoring, or failing to even come close, to the 2030 target. “Net-zero by 2050” is a recipe for disaster if we don’t first reduce emissions by 45% by 2030. Here’s why:

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Reflections on COP26 – How Bad, or Good, Was It?

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COP26, this year’s UN climate conference, has ended. There has been and will continue to be a lot of analysis and opinion published about what happened and didn’t happen. The almost 200 countries represented there failed to agree to sufficient emission cuts to enable global warming to stay below 1.5° C. The developed nations also failed to commit sufficient financing to enable developing nations to adequately limit their emissions and respond to the climate crisis.

At the same time, some good commitments were made and some good steps taken. (See below for some examples.) Despite having limited access to the official proceedings, the voices of frontline nations and peoples were powerful and clear inside the conference halls and beyond. Young people and other climate activists rallied in the streets, led workshops and meetings, and expressed a clear moral urgency. Unfortunately, the delegates, especially those of the wealthy and fossil fuel producing nations, didn’t show the same level of moral clarity.

It is not surprising that what is required to address the crisis didn’t happen in Glasgow these last two weeks. What’s required is transforming the global economy from one based on energy from fossil fuels to one relying entirely on emission-free energy; upending profit and greed as the dominant organizing principles of our economies; and moving significant power and wealth from the predominantly white nations to the more than 80% of the world’s people who are black and brown.

That’s a tall order, to say the least!

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An Arrest While Protesting Climate Inaction … and GMI

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Last Wednesday I was arrested in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. while participating in a “People vs. Fossil Fuels” protest action. We are demanding that President Biden keep promises he made during the presidential campaign and use his executive power to 1) end federal support for fossil fuel projects, 2) declare a national climate emergency, 3) speed the end of the fossil fuel era, and 4) launch a just, renewable energy revolution.

We engaged in non-violent, intentional civil disobedience to …

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News About Indigenous Resistance to Fossil Fuel Projects

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Indigenous people’s resistance to fossil fuel projects in the United States and Canada has had a major impact. Many people are familiar with the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe starting in 2016 and the current struggle against the Line 3 pipeline through treaty-protected Anishinaabe land in Minnesota. Less well known are more than 20 other projects that Indigenous people have organized to fight. Some of these fights they have won, some are ongoing, and a few have been lost.

A new report has calculated that Indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed 1.587 billion tons of carbon emissions in the last 10 years through highly effective campaigns. This is an amount equivalent to the pollution of approximately 400 new coal-fired power plants, or roughly 345 million passenger vehicles (more than all the vehicles on the road in the U.S. and Canada). It is also equivalent to 24% of one year’s total carbon emissions in the U.S. and Canada combined.

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“A Code Red for Humanity” Calling for “Solidarity and Courage”

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“A code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable.” This is UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s description of the most recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The August 9th report is “a comprehensive summary of what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks” compiled by 234 scientists from 66 countries, who reviewed over 14,000 studies from thousands of scientists around the world.

Their findings include :

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Danger in the Attack on CRT

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Conservatives in the U.S. have been attacking Critical Race Theory (CRT), or what they think is Critical Race Theory, everywhere from angry school board meetings to the halls of Congress. The progressive press has derided these critics for not knowing what CRT is, but this attack is widespread and dangerous. It goes to the heart of our country’s relationship to racism, threatens efforts toward racial justice, and fundamentally seeks to interfere at all levels with teaching an honest account of our history.

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Local Climate Action Drives the Movement Forward

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On a number of occasions, I’ve encouraged you who read my blog to join a local climate organization and get involved in some project with them. A problem as large and systemic as the climate crisis is not going to be solved by individuals acting alone. There is power in numbers.

I thought you might be interested to know what my experience has been in getting involved with a local climate organization, and also to learn how one small organization has made a difference and contributed to the larger climate movement.

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