Can our actions make a difference? Is the problem too vast? Do the actions of one individual count?
The film “Climate for Change” answers with a resounding yes. It plots out the actions of everyday people from around the globe, each with a passion for change, each willing to take the leap of faith, each knowing that no matter the outcome, they have to try.
The film features beautiful poetry by Simon Armitage. The poetry forms the narration of the film, and it is spoken as if by an angel, or some other being from above. The message is of caution and encouragement. It really struck me, so I have laid the words out for you here:
The Earth from above The face of the Earth Its range and its depth Its scope, its breadth
The Earth itself beyond belief The Earth itself an intake of breath
Such unequalled heights Unparalleled scenes Fantastical lands Incredulous seas Such extraordinary air
The Earth in fact like nothing on Earth
Inexplicably rich
Unaccountably rare
But at certain angles In certain light The Earth looks out with a different face The scratches, the wounds, the burns and the scars Apparent now in this climate of change Now the weather has taken a turn for the worse.
The Earth is the Earth And it seems not ours Dauntingly massive Out of our hands
Cart wheeling, barreling, spiraling on
Too distant to touch And too wide to embrace Beyond the grasp of just anyone
But here and now across the globe There are those who think with a different mind Who are pitching in, or drawing a line Who are underwhelmed by the size of it all Who are taking it on, one bit at a time
Atom by atom Drop by drop Little by little Grain by grain
They are making choices that make for change.
Yes the Earth is the Earth and it seems not ours Dauntingly massive Out of our hands
But the world is your world The world right there in front of your face The world you can hear and see and smell and touch and taste A knowable, local, everyday place
A world you can shape by action and deed Closer to home, belonging to each That world at least, is within your reach
I just wanted to get some Fair Trade chocolate to hand out for Halloween. I took my two young kids with me and we visited a few stores. We came up short. Way short. We found Fair Trade chocolate at an organic specialty store, but it is was in large bars for $4.50 each, nothing smaller. We found lots of small chocolate bars at the grocery store, but nothing fair trade.
Frustrated, I gave up on chocolate, and started looking for candy instead. Gummies, lollipops, licorice…
My 5 year-old son looked up at me and asked me why. “Why can’t we buy chocolate this year mama?”
I looked down at his innocent face. My heart broke. In the middle of the candy aisle in a busy grocery store on the day before Halloween, I bent down to my knees so I could look into his eyes.
Me: I am going to tell you something right now that you are probably too young to understand. Where we live in Canada, they don’t hurt little kids, but in other countries they make little kids work on cocoa farms, and some kids are taken from their mommies and daddies and don’t ever get to play with toys or go to school. It is not fair. It is not very nice. I do not want to buy chocolate from people who are not nice to little kids and hurt them.
My boy: But why don’t they go to school?
Me: Because bad people steal them and take them away from their mommies and daddies and make them work to make chocolate.
My boy: Why do those bad people do that?
Me: Because they are very poor and have no money so they make the kids work for free.
I was not sure if he understood. How could he? He was five years old. I don’t even understand it. We bought the sugar candy and started to head home.
My boy: So we can never buy chocolate again?
Me: We can buy chocolate if it is labeled fair trade. If it has the fair trade logo on it, that means that little children were not hurt to make the chocolate. So we will buy that instead.
He thought about it some more.
My boy: But what about the normal chocolate? What can we do about it Mommy? What can we do?
My heart broke again. Here is my little boy, so innocent, already thinking of solutions, and already thinking that there was something he could do to make a difference.
Me: Well we could write a letter to the grocery stores and tell them that we think they should sell chocolate that isn’t made by little kids.
My boy: Yes! Let’s do that.
Me: Let’s do it together. Maybe those people at the grocery store will listen to a letter written by a little kid, more than to one written by an adult. Maybe they will understand how important it is to stand up for little kids.
My boy: But I don’t know how to write.
Me: You say the words, and I will write them down.
So we did:
Dear Grocery Store,
I am age 5. I want you to stop getting the normal chocolate. Please get more Fair Trade chocolate. I don’t want you to use the normal chocolate because they use kids to make it in Africa. Some of these kids are stolen to pick the cocoa out of the cocoa trees to make chocolate. These kids are slaves.
Please, pretty please, stop getting normal chocolate.
Since then we have gone to a convenience store and looked at chocolate bars together until we found one with the Fair Trade logo. He picked them up, one by one. “Mommy, no logo! This one doesn’t have a logo either! I can’t find any with a logo!” I am sure the lady at the counter thought we were nuts.
Finally he found one. It was a Cadbury, a Dairy Milk, the only Fair Trade option among dozens.
Many of us have a weakness for chocolate. I do. I try and eat local as I can, but I have not even considered giving up chocolate. Could you?
I do keep my eyes open for organic fair trade chocolate and buy a bunch when I see it. But it is not widely available and I usually have to go to specialty stores like Planet Organic to even find it.
Sometimes when I am feeling hungry in the afternoon at work, I will go down to the corner store and pick up a chocolate bar. Not organic, not fair trade, just a regular chocolate bar. Sometimes I will look on the back label, and see “palm oil” listed and feel another stab of guilt. I know that massive rainforests have been ripped down to plant palm oil trees, biodiversity and climate change be damned. Most high quality chocolate does not have palm oil, but most of the regular stuff does.
But there is even more to the story.
Several months ago I started thinking differently about the things I bought. So much so, that I had a mind-blowing experience in Wal-Mart that bordered on a panic attack. I looked all around me, and just saw boxes and boxes of stuff that seemed to go on forever. I looked up at the fluorescent lights, the rafters of the ceiling, down at the polished floor and wondered what I was doing there. What was everyone else doing there? Why did we all need all this stuff, and more importantly, where did it all come from? We have no idea about the story behind a toaster, or a blender or coffee maker or our next pair of jeans. If we knew, if we really and truly knew about the lives of the humans that touched these items, and how they lived so that our toaster could only be $15.99 at Wal-mart, would we buy it? If we saw the parts of the Earth that are now forever changed, forests peeled back, mines left open, would we reconsider? If we knew the true carbon footprint of the item, in the context of the specific lives that will be forever damaged due to climate change, would we stop and think?
It is with this context, that I watched a “Chocolate: The Bitter Truth“, a BBC documentary that aired on CBC tonight, also available on YouTube:
The long and short of it is – most cocoa farmers are so poor, they use child labour. These children are not paid, they are trafficked children, taken away from their mamas and sold. They work as slaves, long hours, using machetes, with no family, no one to love them, no one who cares. It is estimated that the area in West Africa that produces 60% of the world’s chocolate, employs 15,000 trafficked children.
As a result, the cocoa is cheap, and my chocolate bar down at the corner store is only $1.25. Is it worth that or should it be worth a lot more? What is the true cost, the human cost?
When you buy a chocolate bar that has the fair trade logo, there is a better chance that your chocolate did not involve child labour. But it is not guaranteed. To get the certification, the cocoa dealers have to keep records on the farmers that they get their beans from, and then these farmers are periodically audited to make sure that there are no children working. The entire system is much more transparent. However, sometimes the farmers fail the audit, and are suspended from the certification.
Put another way, if the chocolate bar you eat does not have the fair trade logo, it is pretty likely that child labour was used to produce your chocolate bar.
In the backdrop of a cocoa farming village in West Africa, the narrator of the film sums it up the best:
“Do we pay a fair price for our chocolate? And there has been a lot of number crunching about it in the West. But actually the answer lies here, in the reality of the situation in West Africa in the cocoa farms here, and the grim reality of life where they don’t have shoes to wear, they don’t have electricity, they don’t have running water. And all that begs another question – are we in the West prepared to pay a little bit more for our chocolate, so that they can enjoy a decent standard of living? And more importantly, so they don’t have to use child labour?”
I can’t eat that kind of chocolate again; I just cannot be a part of it. Why is this happening? Why don’t we demand better? Chocolate is a luxury item, a decadent item, something we like but do not need. Why can’t we pay more for it, why can’t we pay a fair price?
Sometimes the world we live in just makes me so angry.
How dare the chocolate companies let this continue. How dare our governments in the West not hold these chocolate companies to task for selling products that involve child labour. Why is it even sold here? Why does this seem like yet another example where corporate profits and low consumer prices take precedence over human lives?
Now for Halloween – do they even sell fair trade Halloween candy? Time to find out!
So, as luck would have it, #OccupyEdmonton is facing its second eviction threat from Melcor Developments. The first time around was 2 days after the encampment began (which was averted!) and now they are threatening them again with a deadline of Sunday at 11 pm.
Image by Ian McKenzie via Flickr
Wanting to support the local movement in my city, I just fired off this email to Melcor (info@melcor.ca) and to the mayor, Stephen Mandel (stephen.mandel@edmonton.com).
To whom it may concern,
#Occupy Edmonton is a movement by some people, for many people. They have a broad base of support across Edmonton, that goes deep and wide. These are people who are sacrificing their time and comfort to stand up for democracy on behalf of all of us.
It is not right that oil companies get a break on royalties because they are cozy with the Alberta government. It is not right that Alberta is allowing foreign workers to stream in to work in the oil sands for much cheaper wages, leaving some Albertans unemployed. It is not right that the Alberta’s environmental monitoring of the oil sands is catastrophically lacking, such that even the Federal Environmental Commissioner agrees. It is also not right that Canada lags the developed world in doing something serious about climate change, and that much of that policy is for the emission requirements of oil sands companies.
Alberta has banked it’s future on being the peddler of dirty oil, and the Alberta Government is right behind them, funding oil PR campaigns in the millions.
I am not a hippie or some wing-nut clinging to the next cause. I am a professional, I am an accountant, I have a business degree from the U of A. I am also a mother to two young children who deserve a better future – one where climate change remains a threat and not a reality, and one where the people decide in the direction of this province, not the corporations, not the oil companies.
Let them stay.
I am begging you, for the sake of real democracy in this province, let them stay.
They are peaceful, they are respectful, they are non-violent. They represent the opinions of many Edmontonians.
Please – as a citizen of Alberta, Canada and the world, LET THEM STAY.
Building communities
Realizing we are all in this together
Realizing we all have a shared stake
Standing up for what we believe in
Knowing in our gut, what is right and what is just wrong
Hoping for a better world
Standing behind those who dare to demand it
Knowing that this might be our last chance to get it right
Wanting a world where people come first
Where the life giving properties of this planet are protected
Where the rights of the children and future generations are heard
Where we don’t let greed and money and power get in the way
Where we love one another
Where we save each other.
In a previous post, I wondered and hoped, if the kind of uprising that we saw last spring in Egypt would ever come here, in the name of climate change. When would people draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough? When would they get off the couch, turn off the TV, and take an active role in their democracy? When would the companies and governments of the world stop for a minute – and listen to the people?
The Occupy Wall Street movement is not about climate change, not really. It is about standing up to corporations who seem to have a relationship that is just a bit too cosy with the government. The government should not be looking out for the best interests of corporations. The government is for the people, it is supposed to represent the people. It is supposed to keep the people safe, by ensuring there are regulations on products and work practices and environmental destruction. It is supposed to protect and maintain the basic infrastructure of our society – roads, bridges, education, phone service, internet, electricity, and yes, banks. It is supposed to do things that are in the best interests of the people. It is not supposed to put corporations first.
Along the way, somehow our capitalism has got mixed up with democracy. Democracy should always be the most important thing. The people, not corporations, must decide what is in their best interests. The people must decide what are the best policies for them. They must decide what regulations protect them the best. It is should be by the people, for the people.
But somehow we have gotten to a place where capitalism is the most important thing. Democracy has been demoted. Now the economy rules supreme. And who runs the economy? Corporations. So what does the government do? It tries to create an environment where companies can thrive. It reduces business taxes, putting more of the tax burden on the middle class. It keeps minimum wage pretty low. It has regulations that are relaxed over time, in the name of competition (look at America’s banking system and how that turned out). It keeps environmental regulations pretty lax. It disregards what 97% of climate scientists are telling us about climate change.
But is this a race to the bottom? To have lower minimum wages, lower standards, lower business taxes, and a blatant disregard for climate change? Are all these things the best thing for people?
Here in Alberta it is about oil. The oil royalties in Alberta are some of the lowest in the world – this is good for corporations, as they can take it out the ground and not have to pay as much to the government for it. This royalty regime has caused rapid development of the oil sands, and so the companies are up there, pulling it out, faster than the environmental agencies can determine the long-term effects, faster than the town of Fort McMurray can grow, and faster than the Woodland Caribou can adapt to their reduced habitat, putting them on the endangered list. Why so fast? There is so much development in Alberta that workers are coming in from other provinces, and foreign workers are streaming in. So why so fast? For the people of Alberta? I don’t think so. To please the oil companies so they keep growing the economy quickly? Now maybe we are on to something…
So how does the Alberta government score on environmental monitoring? Well, for starters, it uses an agency that is self-funded by the oil companies to do the monitoring. Independent scientists like Dr. Schindler’s team have said the monitoring is sorely lacking. The formal federal environment minister, as well as Canada’s environmental commissioner, have even said it is lacking. So it is definitely lacking. Why? Well tighter regulations make it harder on companies and then the economy doesn’t grow at such a high clip. But the economy is for the people of Alberta, who already have enough jobs. And the people of Alberta, are sick of being the world’s peddlers of dirty oil.
So yeah, you can say that the Occupation Wall Street movement has really got to me. I now can see change more clearly on the horizon. People are standing up for democracy, putting it ahead of capitalism. They are standing up for each other, for me and for you and for our shared lot in this world. This is so inspiring and amazing. It is exciting how fast this has grown. I can’t help but wonder how it will all unfold.
Tomorrow it starts in Canada, in 15 cities. In my own city of Edmonton, they are meeting at noon at Churchill square to march and then settle in for a longer term encampment. Can you believe it? Occupy Edmonton. It is amazing to me really. Camping here is no small feat, with temperatures dipping below freezing at night, and winter quickly upon us. It will be interesting to see how long they can last.
Occupy Wall Street is occupying my mind. As those occupiers chant, all over this continent:
We are the 99%.
We the people will never be defeated.
…I think of them with love, hope, and optimism. Indeed.
For those of you who are unaware, Alberta has been governed by the Progressive Conservative party for 40 years. So same government, since before I was born.
The hard truth is that if you want to have an impact on who is elected premier in Alberta, you have to become a member of the party and vote for their leader. The first ballot was last Saturday, and I signed up and voted for Alison Redford, the most progressive of the bunch. She is the only one that says anything about sustainability, and she is the only one that agrees that we need to get more teachers back in schools (with my son’s kindergarten class at 27 kids, I agree).
In party leadership elections, if one candidate does not get over 50% of the vote in the first ballot, then the top three contenders move to a second ballot. So Alison Redford came in second, and we vote again this Saturday, October 1st.
So who came in first? Gary Mar. He is the least progressive of the bunch, but the name that most people recognize, as he has been in government for a long time. I heard comments he made on the radio about the Keystone XL project and Alberta’s oil sands, so I decided to write him a letter:
Dear Gary Mar,
I heard your recent comments on CBC radio about the protests over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. These particular protesters (as there are many) are Albertans who feel that we should not be shipping our raw bitumen to Texas for refining, that we should be refining it here in Alberta instead, to create jobs for Albertans. Your comment was that it was not an “either/or” scenario; that we can ship the raw bitumen to Texas and refine it here in Alberta as long as we continue to increase the development of the oil sands.
I believe that this situation is an “either/or” scenario (or better, a “neither/nor” scenario), for the following reasons:
The pace of development of the oil sands has already happened too quickly. Habitats are being destroyed. Certain animal populations, such as Woodland Caribou, have been put into endangered status due habitat loss directly attributable to oil sands development. We think that Alberta’s wilderness is vast and resilient. The fact is, it is not.
The pace of development has happened too quickly. Fort McMurray cannot keep up with the required growth in homes, roads and schools. Communities there are fragmented with transient workers who never intend to put down roots, urban work camps are everywhere, 20% of the residents have no fixed address, and alcohol and drug addictions remain high. Will this community pay the price?
The pace of development has happened too quickly. Proper water monitoring procedures and programs have not been put into place. Dr. Schindler of the University of Alberta conducted the most extensive study ever conducted in the area, and his results revealed that the current program is hugely lacking. Even former federal Environment Minister Prentice agreed that a better system is required to properly monitor the water pollution in the area.
The pace of development has happened too quickly. Forests are being peeled back, faster than they can be reclaimed. Habitats are being lost forever. An ecosystem is very delicate, once you destroy it; it is unlikely to return with the same vigor. The amount of reclaimed land is a tiny percentage of the total land used by the project.
The pace of development has happened too quickly. The water and air pollution are directly impacting the health of people who live downstream from the oil sands. The residents of Fort Chipewyan have abnormally high rates of cancer, cancers that are specifically linked to petrochemical exposure. Why has development charged ahead without full consideration to the lives of these people?
The pace of development has happened too quickly. Tailings ponds are growing larger and larger. New technology to replace the 30 year old technology of tailings ponds is not being widely used. Tailings ponds are leaking into the river and water systems, as evidenced by Dr. Schindler’s important study. What if tailings ponds broke their containment, unleashing rivers of pollution? What is the plan for that?
The pace of development has happened too quickly. The oil sands are already emitting more carbon emissions than the entire country of Switzerland. Why are we rushing to emit more? In a world where the countries of this planet are looking for cleaner and greener ways of producing energy, why is Alberta banking their future on being the supplier of the world’s dirtiest oil? What if we wake up one day and the world has moved on? Why would we put all our eggs in one dirty basket?
The pace of development has happened too quickly. There are already 392 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the sky. Climate scientists agree that we need to reduce this to 350 parts per million to keep the warming at only 2 degrees. If we don’t change course, we are headed for a planetary warming of 6 degrees, which would be catastrophic for life on Earth. 97% of scientists agree that carbon must be reduced to avoid the disastrous effects of climate change. If we pump all that oil out of Alberta’s sand, and put it up into the sky, we will most certainly warm the planet past 2 degrees. We most certainly will put future generations in a dangerous position. Imagine, years from now, the world putting partial blame on Alberta, for its reckless plundering of oil sand. What will our children’s children think of us, when they inherit a hot planet?
Further, Alberta does not need more jobs. Even as the economies of the world are crumbling down around us, Alberta has jobs. We have more jobs than people. So much so that you are campaigning to change foreign worker laws to enable the oil companies to grow larger, faster. You have missed the key point. The economy is there to serve the people of Alberta, not the other way around. If we are charging ahead with growth in the oil sands, reckless in the face of the wildlife, human, community, water, ecosystem and carbon emission damage that it is causing, most surely we would not do it over and above Alberta’s need for jobs. Where is the common sense? Do you have the best interest of the people or the oil companies, at heart?
There are a growing number of Albertans, who no longer agree with being the peddler of dirty oil. There are many Albertans who want to be part of the solution to climate change, not the cause of it. There are many Albertans, regular hardworking people, who disagree that Alberta’s future must be in oil sand to be successful.
If you are elected Premier, I hope you will look into the eyes of your children, and do what is best for their future. We must think long term, for their sake. We need to invest in a better world, a cleaner and greener world, where the threat of climate changeremains a threat and not a reality.
For the sake of my two young children and children everywhere, I hope you choose life and sustainability over climate change. Oil revenues are just not worth it.
Sincerely,
Sherry
Edmonton, Alberta Wife and mother to 2 young Albertan children
Live in Alberta? Want to vote for Premier on October 1st? Just show up your polling station with $5 and you are good to go.
Our food system has to change to be more sustainable. It has to respect the farmer, it has to respect the soil, it has to respect the animals, and it has to respect the fact that there is just way too much carbon in the sky already, to justify shipping food all around the world. In most places, food can be grown near where we live. We need to eat what is grown close, we need to eat what is grown without polluting the sky and earth, and we need to eat more whole foods to improve our health.
In short, we need to go back to the start. We need to go back to the way people used to farm, the way people used to eat. People used to eat food grown close to home, from their own backyards, from the neighbour’s farm that also sold to the local grocery store. Fertilizer was not used, GMO foods did not exist. Large and powerful food corporations did not exist.
Chipotle, an international food chain, thinks we need to go back to the start as well. That is why they filmed this short video. To be honest, it left me a little misty, as it is an issue so near and dear to my heart:
*thanks to Scott at Batshite for sharing this video!
What do you think? Do we need a reboot to go back to the start?
So I checked out the Climate Reality Project last night. I stayed up way to late, like until 2 am. I think they were in Hawaii or something at that point…
The whole thing ended tonight, with a presentation from Al Gore, so I had to tune in again. I wanted to hear him present on this issue after hearing him all those years ago in the Inconvenient Truth. I can honesty say that Al Gore was the one who opened my eyes to the climate change issue. I just was not aware of the importance of it before.
When I first watched the Inconvenient Truth back in 2006, it kinda hit home and I felt like I needed to change my ways a bit. So I grabbed a jiffy marker and a scrap of paper and wrote a list of 5 things that we should all do as a family, and put it up on the fridge. It went something like this:
Use reusable bags
Change light bulbs
Recycle
Turn off the lights
What else???
I did some of those things from time to time. I was good about the recycling, but that was so easy since our municipality just has us throw every single thing that can be recycled into a blue bag and then toss it to the curb. As for the other things on the list, I tried to do them, but over time, I mostly just forgot.
But still. My thoughts on the issue had changed. I started voting for the Green Party.
So, Al Gore kinda has a special place in my greenie heart. Although I have come a long way since then, I heard it from him first. He raised awareness in a big way, not just for me, but for many people all over the world.
As part of this 24 hours of Climate Reality project, he filmed another video, titled “Grassroots”. It really resonated with me, so I need to share. Here he reminds us that the voice of the people is the strongest thing, stronger than any other special interest or power, and that when people stand together and draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough, change will happen. Look at Martin Luther King, the Berlin wall, Egypt… These are examples where people stood up for change against huge obstacles. It happened before and it will happen again.
In the last year, so much of my reality has changed.
I really can trace that change to a day last November, when I picked up a book called “Now or Never” by Tim Flannery, read it in one night until 3 am in the morning, and was crying by the end. My reality changed. My way at looking at the world changed. In the course of about 5 hours to read that book, it had all changed.
Before, I would find entertainment and enjoyment in going shopping, wandering through the malls with my kids, looking at cute tops for me and new outfits for them. We would come home with bags of stuff, and I would manage to find somewhere in our house to put it all. It was fun looking at all the new designs, the patterns, the colours. I liked seeing new things designers came up with.
I admit, I still like it. But now I realize that looking at this stuff, and appreciating the design, can be separate and apart from plunking down my cash to take it home with me. I can look and be interested by something, without having to own it. Looking at this stuff fulfills something in me that perhaps we all have but have not noticed before – an appreciation for art, design and innovation. This does not necessarily have to translate into ownership.
Okay, so now I don’t really buy stuff. Like ever. And it is not hard, either. I don’t see things and think ohhhh, I want that, I want that! I see things and appreciate them, but don’t even think of buying them. I just don’t care anymore. I just don’t want it in my house. I just don’t want it. I want nothing to do with it. I don’t want to be part of what it took to bring it to this store, where I am standing, looking at it now…
That is what I mean. My reality has changed. I cannot look at any object in any store and not think of its history. Where did it come from? Like really, WHERE. Where on Earth was it derived? Everything came from the Earth somehow, so how was this thing cobbled together? How far did it travel? Who made it? Were they paid a fair wage? Were they exposed to dangerous conditions, to chemicals? Where was it mined? What happened to the place on this planet where it came from? Was wildlife disturbed? Were forests peeled back? Was fresh water used and used and used? Was carbon put up into the sky?
Again I ask myself – am I a crazy person for thinking this way? Like I cannot look at a sweater in a store, and not think about where it came from, what it took to get it to me, and what the real cost was. The REAL cost, the cost to people, the cost to the planet, the cost to wildlife, the carbon cost to our atmosphere. If the REAL cost was presented to us on price tags everywhere, we probably would not buy much stuff at all…
And so I do not. I don’t buy, because I cannot be a part of it anymore. What makes me sad is that I feel like I am the only one. I realize that I might sound crazy for opting out of our consumer culture, but in fact, I am sad because I feel like everyone else is crazy. Everyone else does not realize what we are doing. Everyone else does not see the course we are on. Everyone else does not seem to care that our everyday actions, have real consequences somewhere else, where we cannot see them. The stuff we buy impacts other people that we will never know, it impacts forests that we will never see, and mines that we will never even know existed. It all impacts the carbon in the sky, which of course too, is invisible.
So most of us just turn a blind eye. We don’t want to think it.
Sigh.
So when I walk around now, outside, downtown at my lunch break, in my neighbourhood with all the cars rushing past, or in the store to pick up milk, I look at all the people around me and I feel so different. Different from everyone else. Different from what I used to be. Different from how I used to think. It is like I am walking through the Matrix or something, and everyone else does not know the true reality, and I do. It is a strange and scary feeling all at once. I know. They don’t. Or perhaps they do, but cannot face it.
Thank goodness, I am not the only one who sees things this way. There are others that share my view, my reality. They might not be walking around in the grocery store, but they do exist! They are the people organizing a Climate Reality Project, an online streaming 24 hour event that starts tonight at 7 pm CT. The first presentation is from Mexico City, in Spanish. Every hour after that, the presentations move west, by one time zone. So the next presentation is from Boulder, Colorado and after that it is from Victoria, British Columbia and then from Kotzebue, Alaska. Then over the Pacific we go, with a message from French Polynesia in French, and then from Hawaii in English. These presentations continue over the globe, each starting at 7 pm local time, and the whole thing ends in New York, at 7 pm ET on September 15th, with a message from Al Gore.
24 presenters. 24 time zones. 13 languages. One message.
If you want, you can Like this on Facebook, and tweet about to spread the word.
I am a Canadian mother who wants to secure a sustainable future for her children - and for all children. I have been inspired by Gandhi's quote: "You must be the change you want to see in the world". So here I am. We all need to change. For me, it starts right here.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. Its not." -Dr. Seuss
“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.” - Jack Layton
"Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
I am a Canadian mother who wants to secure a sustainable future for her children - and for all children. I have been inspired by Gandhi's quote: "You must be the change you want to see in the world". So here I am. We all need to change. For me, it starts right here.
