Door Mary Pipher, Alternet, 20 oktober 2012Had we been in a trance? I wanted to shout, 'Wake up! Please wake up! Our old future is gone. Matters are urgent. We have to do something now.'
[...] I read Bill McKibben's Eaarth, in which he argues that our familiar Earth has vanished and that we now live on a new planet, Eaarth, with a rapidly changing ecology. He writes that without immediate action, our accustomed ways of life will disappear, not in our grandchildren's adulthoods, but in the lifetimes of middle-aged people alive today. We don't have 50 years to save our environment; we have the next decade[*].
[...] What pulled me out of my despair was the desire to get to work. I didn't know what I was going to do. I felt unqualified for virtually everything involving the environment, but I knew I had to do something to help. It was unclear how much my action would benefit the world, but I knew it would help me. I've never been able to tolerate stewing in my own anxiety. Action has always been my healing tonic.
I invited a group of people to my house to discuss what we could do to stop TransCanada from shipping tar-sand sludge through our state via the Keystone XL pipeline. We called ourselves The Coalition.
Zie ook:
Boek Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Bill McKibben, Time Books, 272 pagina's, 2012
A global movement to solve the climate crisis
Campagne 350.org
Volg Bill McKibben op Twitter.
Later toegevoegd:
Wetenschappers alarmeren: massa-extinctie gaande
Trouw, 25 juli 2014
En m'n blognotities:
Onze morele verplichting in actie te komen tegen klimaatverandering
Bill McKibben over actie tegen klimaatverandering
Hansen: aanpak CO2-uitstoot over 10 jaar is te laat
12000 mensen omsingelen Witte Huis: geen pijplijn voor teerzandolie
Noot
[*] Bill McKibben (en James Hansen) bedoelt daarmee niet dat als we fossiele brandstoffen blijven opstoken over tien jaar 'het einde van de wereld' aanbreekt, maar dat dan de atmosfeer van de aarde zoveel CO2 bevat dat de opwarming op de langere termijn vrijwel zeker onvoorstelbaar desastreuze gevolgen zal hebben.
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