Earth Day Eve Event: Climate Crisis Documentary

“If we don't act now, then, within decades, a large fraction of the world's 9 billion people will find themselves living in places whose once stable climate simply now can't sustain them - either because it is too hot or arid, the land is no longer arable, their glacially fed rivers are drying up, or the seas are rising too fast. The overwhelming majority of those suffering the most - in this country and especially abroad - will be people who contributed little or nothing whatsoever to the problem.” So writes Van Jones and Joe Romm in an Op-Ed for the Miami Herald last week.

Their commentary begins this way: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," wrote Martin Luther King Jr. from a Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963. "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." The Atlanta-based King was explaining why he was in prison for nonviolent demonstrations so far from home, responding to a critical public statement by eight Southern white religious leaders. His words are timeless and universal in part because King was a master of language but primarily because he viewed civil rights through a moral lens. The greater the moral crisis, the more his words apply. The greatest moral crisis of our time is the threat posed to billions - and generations yet unborn - from unrestricted carbon pollution. Now more than ever, we are "tied in a single garment of destiny," cloaked as a species in a protective climate that we are in the process of unraveling.”

Climate Chaos is everyone's concern. Either through natural and appropriate self-interest or through a deep sense of responsibility to the wider earth community that sustains us all – thousands more folks are realizing with each passing week that this is our greatest social challenge and moral imperative. To mark the 43^rd anniversary of Earth Day 350.org is presenting, “Do The Math” a 42-minute film about the rising movement to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis and challenge the fossil fuel industry. The evening will include an additional live streamed panel discussion with climate leaders and time for your questions.

Here on this Island our four month young climate solutions group, 350 Martha's Vineyard will be hosting the presentation, Do The Math - Climate Change is Here on Sunday April 21st at 7 PM in the main room at the Howes House on State Rd in front of the under re-construction W. Tisbury Library across from Alley's Store. Overflow parking is available on Music St. You can view the official trailer for this very dynamic new documentary film here!

The new film includes material from the national tour of the same name that traveled across the country this past winter and inspired the now firmly establish campaign by students nationwide to pressure University and College administrations to financially divest from the fossil fuel industry. And the divestment campaign has also spread now in a serious way to religious institutions, city, state and municipal government investment portfolios, etc. As the international climate action organization 350.org founder Bill McKibben says, “If its wrong to wreck the climate its wrong to profit from that wreckage.” This divestment campaign is part of the work that our local group, 350 Martha's Vineyard will be supporting right here in our community.

On April 10^th The New Yorker magazine published an essay on the history of Earth Day and our present situation. This history is very significant and it is worth quoting a passage here as some of our memories may not go back that far with clear details:

“Earth Day had consequences: it led to the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and to the creation, just eight months after the event, of the Environmental Protection Agency. Throughout the nineteen-seventies, mostly during the Republican Administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Congress passed one environmental bill after another, establishing national controls on air and water pollution. And most of the familiar big green groups are, in their current form, offspring of Earth Day. Dozens of colleges and universities instituted environmental-studies programs, and even many small newspapers created full-time environmental beats.

"Then, forty years after Earth Day, in the summer of 2010, the environmental movement suffered a humiliating defeat as unexpected as the success of Earth Day had been. The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, announced that he would not bring to a vote a bill meant to address the greatest environmental problem of our time—global warming. The movement had poured years of effort into the bill, which involved a complicated system for limiting carbon emissions. Now it was dead, and there has been no significant environmental legislation since....

"Today’s big environmental groups recruit through direct mail and the media, filling their rosters with millions of people who are happy to click “Like” on clean air. What the groups lack, however, is the Earth Day organizers’ ability to generate thousands of events that people actually attend—the kind of activity that creates pressure on legislators.

"Once you get past the cheering that President Obama aroused by mentioning climate change in his Inaugural Address (as he scarcely did during his reelection campaign), it becomes clear that his approach to climate change, in his second term, is to move still further in the same direction. That means entrusting the mission to regulators, and abandoning efforts to mobilize the public and its representatives. “I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take” to limit carbon emissions, he announced in his recent State of the Union address. Here was a President who had won reelection so decisively that there was talk about whether the Republican Party was doomed, and he was starting his second Administration by implicitly acknowledging that Congress would never pass any bill that would address the most serious and obvious environmental problem of our time.” - The New Yorker

Anyone who pays even a little careful attention to the facts of what we are facing right now because of unrestricted fossil fuel use knows that we cannot dare to let business as usual continue any longer. The thrust of the new documentary that we are screening here this Sunday is summed up by Bill McKibben, “We're building the kind of political movement that will change things. We're taking on the fossil fuel industry directly. They have 5 times more coal, oil & gas than its safe to burn.” And Naomi Klein, world famous author of the seminal book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism who also appears in the film says, “They are locking us into a future, that we can't survive.”

I have written here before that the first step for many of us in taking responsibility for our own near future and for our children’s future - is to start paying careful attention to the details of this mounting climate emergency. This is one of the first things that our local group 350MV has been trying to assist with. We have a facebook page that has new educational material and current news posted virtually every day which can help our Island community get a grip and start to deal responsibly with the crisis of increasing climate chaos. As you may have begun to notice over the last year, this Island is one of the more vulnerable bulls eyes for the ravages of a climate that humans have now pushed too far.

One of the items just posted on the 350MV facebook page is a short video clip of an interview with James Hansen, the NASA Climatologist who first warned Congress, and all of us, in now world famous public testimony about the reality of impending climate change way back in 1988. Well, this man who has been devoting his life, and thus risking his career, to the rigorous study of climate details has recently resigned from his 46 year job with the US Government in order to work more effectively to help head off this crisis.

In the video he is asked, “What is the world you hope to leave for your grand children? James Hansen responds, “Well, what we need to do is maintain a climate system that is close to what has existed the last 10,000 years. Because civilization developed during this period of stable climate which has existed for the last 10,000 years. And if we let that begin to run out of control, then its going to be climate chaos. So that's what we need to do – to leave a stable climate.”

Please join the important community Earth Day Eve event, this coming Sunday, April 21^st at 7 PM, Howes House, State Rd. West Tisbury for the premier screening of, "DO THE MATH”. There will be thousands of other citizens of earth in similar rooms watching, feeling, understanding and being inspired by the empowering news that – YES, we can still do something about this!

 

4/17/13, Chris Riger