– I am creating a global carbon revolution for climate security. Now who wants to join me?
“But don’t you realise: Its hopeless.” “It is simply too big.” “You are up against the world’s biggest and richest companies. Too much money involved.” “Too complicated.” “Expensive!” “According to scientists, it is even already too late. Forget it.” “We can’t do anything about it. Sad to say this, but you are wasting your time.”
These are the kind of response I get when I tell my friends we need to do something about the global warming problem. That we need to not just reduce, but to stop that carbon emission.
“Are you mad?,” they ask.
No, I am not. What I am talking about, on the contrary, is making complete common sense — but of course, only in a somewhat longer perspective. Economically as well. It is about being a responsible parent. It is about standing up for your dignity as an human being — a human being with a choice, a voice and a brain who (because of the latter) refuses to participate in what has been labelled as “the single most self-destructive act humanity has ever undertaken”.
It was an atmospheric scientist in the US, Katharine Hayhoe, who recently said that. What we are witnessing is simply the “single most self-destructive act humanity has ever undertaken,” she said.
Well, I refuse to just stand passively on the side and watch that happen. I don’t want to be part of that self-destructive act. And I don’t think that is being ‘mad’. Angry, yes. But not mad.
If angry Egyptians could create a revolution over Twitter and Facebook and meet up on Tahrir Square to topple Mubarak’s almost 30 years of dictatorship, I don’t see why we, humanity as a whole, shouldn’t be able to accumulate and cultivate enough anger world-wide — along with renewed hope — to actually topple the fossil fuel industry’s almost 100 years of dictatorship.
It may not require that we meet up on squares in our capitals to demand that the carbon-emissions which are threatening our future will be stopped. We could do that too, of course. But most of the work in this struggle is ‘home work’. It can be done by a combination of ‘clicktivism’ and action on the home front — namely where we make our choices about what we buy, and how much we use of it.
Scientists say that if we manage to cut five percent of the global emissions every year, globally, we’ll have some temperature raise, yes, but we should still be okay. So that could be a place to start — for each of us: Cut five percent every year.
“My action influences others. Changing ourselves changes others.
• The social message is as important as the 5% reduction in energy use.
• Changing how others think when they see it important enough for you to act.
• Reducing my energy use 5%, impacts business and my neighbor too.
• Asking a co-worker or neighbor’s door for a carpool ride once a month.
• Riding that bus/trolley you have outside your house that you have never ridden.
• Keeping your technology a year longer, like mobile device, laptop, PC.
• Trading out just a little more meat for vegetable in your diet.
Art Jones, commenting on one of my postings
Here’s my speech for a global fossil-free revolution
Parents of 2013. Future parents. I’m talking to you.
Youth. You know what I am talking about. You are the ones who will soon have to deal with this mess.
Rappers. I need you to back me up here.
Enter the stage now and speak up.
We need nothing but a global revolution for securing the future of humanity.
We need a global carbon revolution for climate security.
Because it is wrong to profit from wrecking the climate.
Because it is wrong to use taxpayers money, our money, to subsidise the fossil industry — as it has happened all over the world in the last 100 years — when what we should have done, decades ago, was to turn off the flames of the fossil fuel and switch over to nice and clean, renewable energy which doesn’t fill our lounges with deadly pollution and the atmosphere with climate-wrecking carbon dioxide.
We have the technology. The only thing which has been lacking — all the way — is political will. Political guts, that is, to tell the fossil fuel industry — these influencial and wealthy people who have the real political muscles in this world — that the carbon party is over. That it is time for them to pack up, because the world — most of all: the atmosphere — needs a new system now. All public subsidies therefore instantly must be switched over to support the production of clean energy and electric transporation systems. “Sorry, folks, but we can’t use your oil and coal any longer.”
Don’t believe those who say it is not possible. It is possible. Even the United Nations say it is possible. But not if we don’t act.
So, parents. And youth. Your attention is required now.
If you liked this ‘speech’, then take it just one click further: click LIKE on this Facebook page 🙂
Thank you!
And will this ever lead to one billion ‘likes’ for climate security?
Most certainly not!
But here’s the secret: That is really not the point. The point is all that which happens in-between.
That we communicate. Evolve. Elaborate. Learn. Become aware.
However we use social media to enhance that process, it is all for the enhancement of the cause. It serves a purpose. And the spirit of what we are trying to achieve will eventually circulate out there, among the millions, if not billions. It will serve its purpose.
As far as I am concerned, this all boils down to just two or three words: Introducing common sense.
Yours,
Mik
Read more: What activists and clicktivists can do