[Graeme]

Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he price index of 33 important commodities declined by 70% over the 100 years up to 2002 — an enormous help to industrialized countries in getting rich. Only one commodity, oil, had been flat until 1972 and then, with the advent of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, it began to rise. But since 2002, prices of almost all the other commodities, plus oil, tripled in six years; all without a world war and without much comment. Even if prices fell tomorrow by 20% they would still on average have doubled in 10 years, the equivalent of a 7% annual rise.

This price surge is a response to global population growth and the explosion of capital spending in China. Especially dangerous to social stability and human well-being are food prices and food costs. Growth in the productivity of grains has fallen to 1.2% a year, which is exactly equal to the global population growth rate. There is now no safety margin.

Then there is the impending shortage of two fertilizers: phosphorus (phosphate) and potassium (potash). These two elements cannot be made, cannot be substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, and are mined and depleted. It’s a scary set of statements. Former Soviet states and Canada have more than 70% of the potash. Morocco has 85% of all high-grade phosphates. It is the most important quasi-monopoly in economic history.


The damaging effects of climate change are accelerating. James Hansen of NASA has screamed warnings for 30 years. Although at first he was dismissed as a madman, almost all his early predictions, disturbingly, have proved conservative in relation to what has actually happened. In 2011, Hansen was arrested in Washington DC, alongside Gus Speth, the retired dean of Yale University’s environmental school; Bill McKibben, one of the earliest and most passionate environmentalists to warn about global warming; and my daughter-in-law, all for protesting over a pipeline planned to carry Canadian bitumen to refineries in the United States, bitumen so thick it needs masses of water even to move it. From his seat in jail, Speth said that he had held some important positions in Washington, but none more important than this one.


It is crucial that scientists take more career risks and sound a more realistic, more desperate, note on the global-warming problem. Younger scientists are obsessed by thoughts of tenure, so it is probably up to older, senior and retired scientists to do the heavy lifting. Be arrested if necessary. This is not only the crisis of your lives — it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave.

[Graeme]

Pstarr, Your efforts re-forests must be regarded as commendable. How many were in your group? Was it a solo effort? Perhaps greater numbers are required like this one recently in Washington:

Thousands Protest Keystone XL Oil Pipeline Outside White House

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')housands of people rallied outside the White House on Sunday calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. The Keystone XL would carry crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast, a project opponents say would produce lethal levels of carbon emissions while endangering communities along its path. Obama now faces a decision on the pipeline’s approval after delaying it until after the 2012 election. The group 350.org, as well as other environmental organizations, say the rally marked the first in a series of actions that will culminate in another major protest against the Keystone XL on President’s Day, February 18, 2013.

[Pops]

Off Topic aside...

I'm reading Brave New World in which crematoria smokestack scrubbers reclaim Phosphorus - "a kilo and a half per corpse"

[AgentR11]

financier Jeremy Grantham.... Hmm.. Somehow I doubt if JG is arrested in some protest, that he'll miss the mortgage and/or utility payments on his home. I doubt his children (if he has some) would be robbed of a debt free college education. I doubt his wife will have to go to work (if she's not currently employed) at McDonalds in order to avoid starvation, if he's arrested.

Yall want to get arrested, and be ineffectual, forgotten martyrs? Go ahead. But to listen to some guy so insulated from the consequences of such an act, is just foolishness. Yeou arrests will not stop anything that honestly matters. You will not be closing more coal plants than are opened. You will not be halting the burning of the tar sands. You will not be preventing the selling and use of personal automobiles or airplanes for recreational travel. You will not be turning off the millions upon millions of brand new air conditioners in India and China.

I'm sure those like Jeremy Grantham though would sure love to pay 10 cents on a dollar for the property that you will lose to foreclosure and tax auctions....

Anyone with personal obligations to another has no business playing the civil disobedience act today. The stakes are now much too high.

[Narz]

Hi Graeme, if you keep us abreast of environmental protests/activism in large cities I may attend one in Philadelphia or NYC.

[Graeme]

There are dates and cities on this website: http://math.350.org/

Looks like you missed out. How about other cities?

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '
')Thousands Protest Keystone XL Oil Pipeline Outside White House

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')housands of people rallied outside the White House on Sunday calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. The Keystone XL would carry crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast, a project opponents say would produce lethal levels of carbon emissions while endangering communities along its path. Obama now faces a decision on the pipeline’s approval after delaying it until after the 2012 election. The group 350.org, as well as other environmental organizations, say the rally marked the first in a series of actions that will culminate in another major protest against the Keystone XL on President’s Day, February 18, 2013.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'T')here are dates and cities on this website: http://math.350.org/

Looks like you missed out. How about other cities?

[Ibon]

I don't agree that this type of activism has no merit. Politicians do react to an agitated electorate, especially if enough take to the street. We can surely expect times up ahead where civil disobedience once again becomes an effective means of effecting public policy.

Where I am more sanguine however is getting the masses out on the streets to protest over policy changes that are diffuse and actually target every body. This is a difficult challenge compared to environmental activism 40 years ago that would target a manufacturer of DDT or specific industries related to specific environmental distresses.

The environmental distress today is the sheer gravity of 7 billion consuming and getting by eating and defecating and trying to struggle for a better life.

It is kind of like getting folks out on the street to protest against pathologists who haven't yet released a more virule predator germ to help increase the die off of our species?

How do you do that?

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'T')here are dates and cities on this website: http://math.350.org/
Looks like you missed out. How about other cities?

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '[')b]Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he price index of 33 important commodities declined by 70% over the 100 years up to 2002 — an enormous help to industrialized countries in getting rich. Only one commodity, oil, had been flat until 1972 and then, with the advent of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, it began to rise. But since 2002, prices of almost all the other commodities, plus oil, tripled in six years; all without a world war and without much comment. Even if prices fell tomorrow by 20% they would still on average have doubled in 10 years, the equivalent of a 7% annual rise.

This price surge is a response to global population growth and the explosion of capital spending in China. Especially dangerous to social stability and human well-being are food prices and food costs. Growth in the productivity of grains has fallen to 1.2% a year, which is exactly equal to the global population growth rate. There is now no safety margin.

Then there is the impending shortage of two fertilizers: phosphorus (phosphate) and potassium (potash). These two elements cannot be made, cannot be substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, and are mined and depleted. It’s a scary set of statements. Former Soviet states and Canada have more than 70% of the potash. Morocco has 85% of all high-grade phosphates. It is the most important quasi-monopoly in economic history.


The damaging effects of climate change are accelerating. James Hansen of NASA has screamed warnings for 30 years. Although at first he was dismissed as a madman, almost all his early predictions, disturbingly, have proved conservative in relation to what has actually happened. In 2011, Hansen was arrested in Washington DC, alongside Gus Speth, the retired dean of Yale University’s environmental school; Bill McKibben, one of the earliest and most passionate environmentalists to warn about global warming; and my daughter-in-law, all for protesting over a pipeline planned to carry Canadian bitumen to refineries in the United States, bitumen so thick it needs masses of water even to move it. From his seat in jail, Speth said that he had held some important positions in Washington, but none more important than this one.


It is crucial that scientists take more career risks and sound a more realistic, more desperate, note on the global-warming problem. Younger scientists are obsessed by thoughts of tenure, so it is probably up to older, senior and retired scientists to do the heavy lifting. Be arrested if necessary. This is not only the crisis of your lives — it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'f')inancier Jeremy Grantham.... Hmm.. Somehow I doubt if JG is arrested in some protest, that he'll miss the mortgage and/or utility payments on his home. I doubt his children (if he has some) would be robbed of a debt free college education. I doubt his wife will have to go to work (if she's not currently employed) at McDonalds in order to avoid starvation, if he's arrested.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', 'A')s for the efficacy of protests and civil disobedience, results can vary obviously, but there are PLENTY of examples in US history where protesting and CD led to positive change. Ever heard of the Civil Rights Movement? No? Google it and learn.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '
')As for the efficacy of protests and civil disobedience, results can vary obviously, but there are PLENTY of examples in US history where protesting and CD led to positive change. Ever heard of the Civil Rights Movement? No? Google it and learn.

[Graeme]

Climate change won't wait

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ocietal change usually happens slowly, even once it's clear there's a problem. That's because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in leisurely currents. Change often requires going up against powerful, established interests, and it can take decades for those currents to erode the foundations of our special-interest fortresses. Think civil rights, gay marriage, equal rights for women.


With climate change, however, there simply isn't time to waste. It's not a fight, like gay marriage, between conflicting groups with conflicting opinions. It's a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn't care less if precipitous action raises gas prices or damages the coal industry in swing states. It couldn't care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China or made agribusiness less profitable.


Those of us in the growing grass-roots climate movement are moving as fast and hard as we know how (though not, I fear, as fast as physics demands). Thousands of us will descend on Washington on Presidents Day weekend [16-17th February] for the largest environmental demonstration in years. And young people from 190 nations will gather in Istanbul, Turkey, in June in an effort to shame the United Nations into action.

We also need you. Maybe if we move fast enough, even this all-too-patient president will get caught up in the draft. But we're not waiting for him. We can't.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'T')housands of us will descend on Washington on Presidents Day weekend [16-17th February] for the largest environmental demonstration in years. And young people from 190 nations will gather in Istanbul, Turkey, in June in an effort to shame the United Nations into action.

[Graeme]

My quick response is that these protests, if widely reported and publicized, will raise awareness of the problem.

I can only offer 2 "solutions" at short notice. If I think of others, I will add. Can you think of any?

The first is to contact your local and federal political representative either by email or letter. Keep sending until you get a response. For example, here is what the League of Women Voters did in Hawaii. They put an ad in the local paper.



They also wrote a letter to President Obama. Grist didn't think this would work so they suggested that the LWV should have Redditing, Twittered, Snapchatted or Flickr’d him.

If you don't think that will work, make sure that your pension funds only include investments in renewable energy as this article suggests.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'M')y quick response is that these protests, if widely reported and publicized, will raise awareness of the problem.

[Graeme]

OK. If you think everyone is aware, then change will come. Just watch.