Need for a climate emergency explained at yesterday's VCAN meeting

David Spratt emphasises this critical point
during yesterday's climate emergency discussions.

The world now faces a climate emergency. Our scientists tell us. We know it. Slowly the political elite are realising that the current international climate policy-making paradigm is dying of failure.

Recognition of the climate emergency is now written into the platform for the Democratic Party for the 2016 US presidential election.

So how does our scientific understanding guide as to constructing a new way of looking at the challenge, as to what is happening, what is safe, and how we should respond?

Check out what happened at Sunday’s Victorian Climate Action Network meeting - “The scientific case for understanding climate heating as an emergency.”

Shepparton groups join others throughout the state to demand government action on climate change

A submission to the Victorian State Government calling for action on climate change has won the support of two Shepparton-based groups.

Climate change activist, Melbourne's
Carol Ride from Psychology for
a Safe Climate.

Beneath the Wisteria and Slap Tomorrow have joined eight other groups to back an eight-page submission that responds to a Victorian Government call for comment about creating a “Climate Change Framework and vision for a climate-ready Victoria”.

Convenor of Melbourne’s Psychology for a Safe Climate, Carol Ride, and a member of the Victorian Climate Action Network, Jane Morton, who are also both members of Darebin Climate Action Now, wrote the submission.

Groups from throughout Melbourne, including CLIMARTE and Lighter Footprints along with the Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health (WATCH) body have also supported the submission.

The document explains that the world has zero budget left; zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is inadequate; the earth is already too hot and agreements reached in Paris in December to hold global warming at two degrees or less above pre-industrial levels is not safe; and accepted carbon budgets underestimate the risks.

A target of zero emissions within 10 years is called for and in explaining that the truth about climate change is “so difficult to tell”, the submission calls for bold political leadership and an informed stance that will alert policy makers and the public about the need for emergency action.

In conclusion the submission says: “We ask you to have courage and spell out in clear and evocative language both the unspeakable risks we face and the inspiring opportunities that arise from transition to a zero emissions society.

“We ask you to immediately begin on the path of the bold and transformative action we need.

“We ask you to provide the kind of leadership required at this pivotal point in history,” the submission says.

It concludes by quoting the author of 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review, Ross Garnaut, who said: “Failure to act now will haunt us until the end of time”.

(Apology: At the time this was written, I was unaware that one of Melbourne’s leading climate activists and co-author of “Climate Code Red”, David Spratt, had made a significant contribution to this submission. Knowing that, it’s obvious as his fingerprints are all over it – Robert McLean.)

Timely letter from VCAN's Andrea Bunting

T

imely letter in today’s Melbourne Age from Victorian Climate Action Network member, Andrea Bunting, of Brunswick, headed “Add your voice”.

She wrote:

"Paris is hosting the United Nations climate talks and citizens around the world are planning massive marches to demand strong action on climate change.

However, marches planned for French cities have now been banned as a result of the terrorist attacks. Climate change kills hundreds of thousands of people a year. Record-breaking heat in France this year led to about 700 deaths, while the 2003 heatwave killed about 15,000 French people.

Cars, a major contributor to climate change, kill about 3000 French people annually. The World Health Organisation estimates that 42,000 people in France die each year due to air pollution (much from the burning of fossil fuels). French voices will be silenced, but Victorians can be heard by joining the march here, from 5.30pm on Friday at the State Library."

Phillip paints word pictures to explain the complexities of climate change

P

Phillip Sutton.

ictures painted with words helped listeners understand some of the complexities of climate change and why it is what it is.

Co-author of Climate Code Red, Phillip Sutton, “painted” that picture when he spoke at “Post-Paris: Sketching a new approach” at The Carlton Connect Initiative on Wednesday, September 23.

Phillip, standing before a table of books, all of which he had obviously read, went back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to begin his illustrative story.

Phillip is an active member of the Victorian Climate Action Network and recently circulated fellow members of VCAN alerting them to a new book.

He said: “Tim Snyder, an historian, has written what I think is a very important book:  "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning".  In the concluding chapter, where he focuses on the future, Tim explores stress dynamics that could lead to new genocides.  He draws a conclusion that might surprise some of his readers - that climate change might be one of the most serious.

“Tim makes a very powerful argument, developed in the second half of his book, that the ability to rescue threatened people when genocides are underway is terrifyingly limited - so effective prevention is crucial,” he wrote.

A “long read” on the Guardian says, in commenting on the book and discussing the order both those on the left and right fear it says: “In an era of climate change, the rightwing version of anarchy, economic libertarianism, may pose the more pertinent danger.”

Read the Guardian’s long-read story - “Hitler’s world may not be so far away.”

Controversial view fails scientific tests, but engenders controversy

Climate Code Red by David
Spratt and Philip Sutton.

The idea that climate change could end the human race is provocative, an extremity some endorse and for others a concept that defies scientific realities, extinguishes hope and not helpful in building any mitigation processes.

The article: “Dahr Jamail | Are Humans Going Extinct?” published on truthout refers to and quotes a professor emeritus of natural resources, and ecology and evolutionary biology, with the University of Arizona, who has been studying anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) for nearly 30 years, Guy McPherson.

The Victorian Climate Action Network group has been alive with thoughts about McPherson’s views when Alastair Leith asked whether or not this “Pretty heavy reading” should be posted to Facebook?

“Will it just encourage the uninitiated to disengage even more on climate change?” he asked.

 

Trent Hawkins ponder similar questions.

Among those who responded was the fellow behind Safe Climate Science, Philip Sutton, who said: “I personally think it doesn't do any good at all to spread this sort of material.  For two reasons: first, because I think it's very unlikely to be correct; and two, because it is massively disempowering.

“I think that the chance that humans (as a species) will be driven extinct by climate change (no matter how bad the climate change is) is just about zero.  “Lots of humans could die (billions) but the rich/powerful/technically savvy will find ways to live in the Polar Regions and along the coastal fringes of the continents and perhaps on the oceans themselves - even in the worst case scenarios.

“But what this sort of material does also is that it chooses to put a zero probability of success on the actions of people who are trying to prevent climate change from causing fully blown catastrophe.  That is not a scientifically valid approach in my view.  It's more like a projection of personal depressive feelings. 

“And spreading one's personal depression to others is not likely to be helpful for effective action,” Philip said.

Fellow co-author of Climate Code Red, David Spratt, said, “This article has serious scientific mistakes, such as: average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change; and at this level is simply not credible, so why waste time on it?”

David said there is plenty of credible, startling material around for this sort of conversation, such as that by Kevin Anderson, which would be a better focus for conversation.