[lbo-talk] dire words from IPCC

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 4/7/07, Jim Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Perhaps I'm a stupid, incurable optimist, so I don't fit well with the
> > > doomsayer collapsism of the American Left. I think that we can make a
> > > difference, but we have to ACT now.
> >
> > Once again, I'm 100% with Chuck. Having a kid made me take global
> > warming more personally, but even before that it scared me. But not
> > to paralysis or fatalism or collapsism (I like that one!). It's as if
> > all the crisis theorists just found another pole of doom to hang
> > their hats on.
>
> Here here.  Finding the 'killer app' on climate change is a frequent topic
> of bar conversation with folks I used to work on global AIDS with.  In my
> daydreams about the subject, I find myslf thinking on how since climate
> change is fundamentally an intergenerational issue--- we harm future
> generations--- and because 'family' has the highest positives in the US,
> creating a network of families would be the key thing.  Moving the issue
> away from the fringe, the puppeteers, the sects, the artists etc--- and
> working to mobilize mass demos, civil disobediance, etc, of a specifically
> parents and kids nature.  Could organizations be formed in a few cities,
> networked together, in which membership was on a family basis, that sought
> to mobilize people into actions as parents and as children?  In my mind, the
> visual of parents and kids marching together or doing cd together on the
> issue of profound harm that one's generation is leaving to another--- that
> visual accomplishes much of the paradigm shift needed in how our society
> regards climate change.

For those who are looking for an action soon, there's Step It Up 2007,
1301 actions in 51 states saying "Step it up, Congress! Cut Carbon 80%
by 2050":
<http://stepitup2007.org//index.php>.

As for the family theme, though, if Katrina (as well as seemingly
"ethnic" wars in the global South that have in part been caused or
exacerbated by competition over water and other natural resources, the
competition intensified by climate change) is any indication, to many
in the USA, climate change is a problem for other people now and for
other people's children tomorrow.  They are probably not exactly wrong
in thinking so.
-- 
Yoshie