Russ Vernon-Jones

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

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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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3 Things We Can Do About Racial Injustice

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Whatever our feelings about the present situation, the reality is that racial injustice as been a major feature of the Unites States from long before we were a nation, right through to the present. No attempt to build a sustainable, just, healthy society can go forward successfully without making dismantling racial injustice central.

I’m often asked by white people, “What can we do?” There are many answers to this question. Here are three that are close to my heart today. Each of them I learned from African Americans who have guided and corrected me.

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The Only Path to Climate Success?

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Good news abounds on the climate front. More solar and wind power is being installed all over the world. The international financial industry is slowly but surely withdrawing support for fossil fuel projects. The President of the U.S. is aiming for net-zero carbon emissions from the electric grid by 2035 and is moving legislation forward to support climate action.

Yet the overall picture with our climate is still quite dire and getting worse.

Seven things you can do to make a difference.

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News Items – Troubling and Encouraging

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Some recent climate news items seem particularly noteworthy. I’ll start with some bad news, but I promise some encouraging items in the remainder of this post.

For thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, the atmosphere held about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. (From studying air bubbles in ancient ice scientists have determined that for most of the last 800,000 years carbon dioxide levels were even lower than that.) Once humans started burning fossil fuels at the beginning of the industrial age, the carbon dioxide level started rising. The news item is that in May the global level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a new dangerous high–50% higher than the pre-industrial level.

This undesirable benchmark is particularly problematic because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for 1,000 years or more. Worse yet, the average rate of increase is faster than ever. Carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere are the primary cause of climate change and all its harmful effects.

Also in May, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a landmark report. The IEA has traditionally ….

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A Conversation with Isioma

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Last week, through the wonders of Zoom, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Isioma, a Black woman in Lagos, Nigeria. She told me that the rains that traditionally fall reliably at this time of year in her country are not falling and that disaster looms for farmers and cattle herders. She said that because of drought many grazing lands have been exhausted. Conflicts are arising as herders seeking dwindling reserves of pasture clash with farmers and each other. She shared her sadness that so many Nigerians have been made homeless by the effects climate change. She called them “refugees within their own country.”

I’ve read about these things in news reports, but it was a new experience for me to be sitting in comfort in my home in the United States developing a friendship with this woman, while she was in Nigeria experiencing climate disaster firsthand. I began to think about the fact that my country, the United States, has played a big role in causing the suffering being experienced around her. Cumulatively the U.S. has emitted more climate-change-causing greenhouse gases than any other nation.

Just as I was pondering the responsibility of the U.S., she said to me, “I don’t think we can stop climate change without doing something about racism. The wealthy white nations don’t care what happens to us. It’s racism that makes them not care.” Even though I’ve made similar statements myself, it cut right to my core to hear it directly from her. I’m still shaken by it.

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