For the Planet by Tish Levee - New Terms for Climate Change - June 2019

June 3, 2019

We need new terms.

In line with suggestions from Greta Thunberg and the new writers’ guidelines at theGuardian, this column will no longer use the terms “climate change” or “global warming.” Instead, I will use terms that really describe the situation: “climate crisis,climate emergency, climate breakdown, and global hotting.” We’re way past the point where we can talk about what’s happening to the climate in incremental terms. There’s no middle ground anymore.

Climate Emergency Declarations.

The United Kingdom passed a resolution declaring a Climate Emergency on May 1st, followed by Ireland. On May 6th Petaluma joined San Francisco, Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, and other Bay Area cities in passing similar resolutions. Now they need to be fleshed out with specifics. People attending the Green New Deal Town Hall meeting on May 15th (see my article “The Green New Deal Comes to Town” elsewhere in this issue) had an opportunity to become involved in getting resolutions passed in their cities.

Why is this an emergency?

Recently the United Nation's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) exhaustive report on the planet's accelerating extinction rate found that the modern extinction rate is the highest it's been in human history and is "tens to hundreds of times" higher than the normal rate of extinction over the last 10 million years. Last fall’s report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns we haveonly 11 yearsto really make a difference. Carbon dioxide levels just exceeded 415 ppm for the first time in human history.

There’s “global weirding” worldwide.

On May 11th, it was 84°F, in Arkhangelsk, Russia, 140 miles from the Arctic Circle—that’s 30° above average. A rural area east of Arkangelsk was even hotter, 87°.

Meanwhile, Greenland’s ice sheet is melting six times faster than during the 1980s, causing rising sea levels; in the 1970s it was actually growing. In Alaska two rivers smashed the record for ice breakup due to record-breaking mild temperatures.

Meanwhile, there’s been devastating flooding in the Midwest, Texas, and Louisiana; a winter snow storm's bringing a foot of snow to Northern California mountains and five passes in the Sierra will be closed through Memorial Day; fires in southeast New Mexico are raging; even with all the rain we’ve had there have been 736 fires in California already in 2019; and wildfires are roaring out of control in and around Mexico City this month. Not to mention tornadoes in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Missouri, and hurricanes that are becoming more intense due to the climate emergency.

Global emissions are rising!

In 2018 they grew nearly 3%, the largest increase in seven years. They rose about 2.5% in the US.

So what’s all this got to do with us?

We’re very fortunate to live here in Sonoma County, often considered “the California of California,” when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. But what’s happening elsewhere effects us.This column is for a Sonoma County paper, but I share ideas and events from everywhere to give us ideas of what we could adopt here. We need to take every action we can to reduce the effects of climate breakdown, both personally and politically. Some folks will say, “It’s too late, so we might as well just enjoy what we have left.” While it is too late to save some places—Southern Florida and large parts of Bangladesh are already effectively gone—it isn’t too late to save others. But we don’t have the luxury of incrementalism. We have to act now!

What can we do?

From the personal to the political there’ s much we can do. Find great ideas for personal actions at SonomaClimateChallenge.org. Formerly known as the Community Resilience Challenge, started by Daily Acts ten years ago with the goal of planting 350 gardens in one weekend (they planted 628!), the challenge has registered 81,000 actions over the last nine years—locally, regionally, and nationally. Now Daily Acts has joined the Regional Climate Protection Authority (RCPA) in the challenge, running through November. Register your actions at the website.

Politically, first be sure you are registered to vote!

Then demand that candidates for office at any level take a firm stand on the climate crisis, with plans for boldly tackling it.