Weathering Storms -- Week 3

We still are working without a camp manager or other support. It means that we have been, sometimes, traveling the same piece of ground three or more times in a day (via walking, biking, and trucking) in order to get to and from camp and wherever it is that we are in our walk. This week we decided that we feel that it is currently reasonable for us to subtract miles paced in a city from miles paced between cities. We still prefer to walk the entire distance between towns, but that form of pacing was not feasible for us during much of this week, particularly because of the rain. And the rain. Oh, and the rain, too. When there is a break between storms we can get out there, with the kids, and walk. And when we see the next storm starting to blow in...we can race-pace back to camp! 

Walking in the cities is pacing for a larger audience, and we get a lot more feedback from those people who encounter us. In the countryside, people are typically less curious about what we're up to, usually more than happy to give a half wave or a nod and keep on driving. City folk are more willing to gawk or honk with a thumbs up...or perhaps another finger. No, actually the only time we've seen that finger so far was a from an entire car full of Mennonite teenagers in Missouri. Perhaps their parents are reading this article. Other Mennonite young people from the same county yelled out to us from another vehicle to "Get a Horse!"  :)

Dana's foot protested our pacing this week...she had to "take it easy" at the beginning of the week while the minor swelling subsided and while she spent time researching her condition and developing her healing strategies. She is now using a brace at night, and a toe-spacer in her shoes for pacing, and she has a good pair pf shoes coming in the mail.

We paced in Oskaloosa, Iowa this week, where we met with a lot of support...many small cash donations made by passers-by, and "20 questions" sessions initiated by others. We got a hotel room and dried out for two days, reorganized our bags and bins, made a repair on the wagon, and caught up on our blog.

An African-American senior citizen staying at our hotel took particular interest in our message and mission, and shared with us that, although he fully agreed that the current climate is producing far more violent weather than what he grew up with in Mississippi, he never imagined that he could personally do something about it, and he felt inspired by everything we were accomplishing. In his jovial way, he kept bouncing up to us, saying "Man! I have never -- never -- seen anything like this. You guys for real? I really got an education today! I want you to know that this is changing me."

As we walked away from Oskaloosa, a woman pulled over and gave us the friendly heads-up that there was a big storm coming straight for us (she pointed to the red areas on the storm radar which was displayed on her phone). Almost as she spoke, the huge purple bowling ball was rolling into view above the treeline. We were pretty well out into the country now. There was a farm just beside us, though, with a large, inviting porch and people securing their yard furniture against the storm. We decided that it made sense to ask for help this time.

Dana went down and explained our project and the coming rain and requested some form of shelter from this storm. And we were in luck! They put us *and our carts* up in a large tractor barn where we stayed dry and monitored the storm on our internet connection. Soon after they closed up all the doors, that storm beat down something fierce on the huge metal roof. I think those locals were shy about visiting with us much directly, but a young woman came in just before we left with a handwritten note from her grandmother: a request that we keep in touch and send her a letter when we make it back home.

We have now walked about 120 miles, and have made it to Pella, Iowa, where we are camping at Red Rock State Park. Our week ended with a 24hour flu. Dana caught it first and stayed at camp with Tillwyn (Moss was away with his Papa at this time), and so Gavain paced alone, battling storms and muddy gravel roads, solo. That night, Dana's fever broke so that she was able to take Tillwyn the next day while Gavain underwent his fever and then began his recovery. 

Earlier in the week, we were written up on the front page of the Ottumwa Courier after giving a presentation about the climate situation and this project at the high school there. The article was about the teaching opportunity that our project offered as a live example of *doing something* about the things that are important to us, rather than settling into complacency. The reporter took the opportunity to sit with Gavain for a *long time* (while Dana chased the toddler around the campus). He was very personally concerned and he asked Gavain great questions about the current science and about the politico-economic dynamics which are the noose around the throat of our species. As we parted ways, he warned us that the article would not do our message justice. And, to our dismay, our message about the dire timelines of the coming climate catastrophe was obscured in eerily familiar and sinfully confusing languaging. He wrote that we were doing this because of our "beliefs". And a paragraph was inserted to "balance" our "belief" saying that climate change is a matter of "much debate". I assure you, this reporter did not believe that climate change is actually under any scientific debate...he already knew that corporate America and the fossil fuel industries have paid scientist-lobbyists to sow confusion in society about the reality of climate change -- he didn't need us to inform him of that. Yet, clearly his newspaper is under the thumb of financial power, and untoward alliances. From his perspective, he must have done the best that he could to support our work.

So, it has been a week of being lashed about by industry-funded obfuscation, the weather, injury, and illness and yet...we are still at this, and we are getting better at it.

Arise, Sensible People, Arise

This year, I am 34 and my mother is 68. We have reached that single point in time where she is exactly twice as old as me, and I am as old as she was when she gave birth to me. From now on, the ratio of our ages will grow closer and closer to one. She has been tremendously supportive of Pacing the Planet, and I write this article in her honor.

When public speakers present on climate change, they often say some version of this refrain: "How will we face our children and grandchildren when they ask. 'Why didn't you do more to halt global warming?'" While it's true that generations to come (for at least the next 100,000 years) will face an altered climate because of human-caused global warming, the truth is that the rhetorical note about facing the disbelief and scorn of those born in the 21st century is flat-out wrong.

If they are smart, my children will not be asking me why I didn't do more about the climate situation. They will look back to 1980, and ask: "Why didn't our grandparents stage a coup to prevent the rise of corporatocracy?"

The election of Ronald Reagan should never have happened. The deregulation of industry in the 1980s should never have happened. The subsequent deregulation of the banking industry should never have happened. Why is this important? It is because we, in 2013, are facing  final checkmate by the very, very wealthy, who have, since the 1980s, orchestrated our society into their own personal bonanza. The rationale for only middling improvement on critical situations like the climate is that we can't risk disturbing the fragile economy -- but the economy is a shell game.

The economy is, in fact, working very well for those who are positioned to profit hugely by it. The very wealthy folks are not in financial trouble at all. Large corporations are posting record profits, bonuses to executives remain huge, the stock, derivatives, and futures markets continue to function as a wildly demented casino cash cow for those who have the means to play it fully. The rich are not losing social services they care about -- their children are in private school, they don't need public libraries or social security or government subsidized healthcare. And, while it's true that corporations need reasonably content and healthy workers, employers have their pick of millions of unemployed or underemployed workers, ready to labor for low wages, cut benefits; why, they're just happy to have a job at all.

In other words, the economy is exactly where the major corporations want it, those individuals who have the education and fortune to exploit the system are getting obscenely rich; massive personal debt, and a habit of living on credit, is keeping demand right where it needs to be, the hollow shell of our way of life is ossifying into just enough predictability to keep funneling the remaining wealth in the system into the hands of the few. Most of us can still afford our fortnightly dinner out at Applebee's and our internet and phone bills (we can save up for that plasma TV), and the executive class can rest secure in their wholly different reality.

So, the economy is not fragile, and it is not a reason to stall efforts on radically reforming our civilization so that we can save the climate. But it sounds like a good story, and it allows conservatives to balk at the EPA's new power to regulate carbon-dioxide, to quash plans to tax carbon emissions or end subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, to crow about the importance of energy independence and an "all-of-the-above" approach to energy supply in this country.

More insidiously, it prevents the public discussion from focusing on the true scale of the response needed to address the problem. This is because any solution to the climate crisis (or resource scarcity, or ecosystem destruction) cannot challenge these fundamental tenets:

1) The economy must continue to grow. Economic growth must be exponential and unending.

2) No limits must be placed on an individual's capacity to acquire and enjoy wealth. The "pursuit of happiness," no matter how indulgently sought, cannot be infringed upon.

(I doubt that corporate planners actually think the economy can grow without limit, yet they want to hold the window open while their executives can fleece the economy of any funds in circulation that they can. After all, they must surely be aware that, as wealth disparity grows, money circles in ever-tightening orbits. There is a one-way migration of money to the putocracy, which is why our country is engaged in a freefall binge of printing money.)

There is never a time when the economy will become robust enough to turn our attention to the environment and the climate, because the economy is robust for those who are gaming it. When we realize the truth of this, several things become apparent.

First, the government is no longer populist. There may be a populist victory here and there, but a triumph of popular government over the abuses of capitalism is so unlikely that I think even a reckless speculator wouldn't take a bet on it. Since Reagan's presidency, government has thrown its lot in with business. The American Way of Life is now defined by the twin threads of representative democracy and unleashed corporate capitalism, which means that our elected government will always represent the business interests. We no longer have a conception of a healthy U.S. with a vibrant civil code and a diminished capitalist economy.

Second, the police and the military will reinforce the position of the government, and therefore the business interests in this country. We are as close to having a fascist social system now than we have ever been. Effective protest is curtailed or outright prohibited, the police secure the "rights" of the corporations to pursue their business models (no matter the public cost) far more often than they protect the rights of the people to decide what will and will not happen in this country.

If we cannot count on the government, as it is, to rein in climate abuse to the degree necessary to avert catastrophe -- that is, to cast out the fundamental tenets of the current economy -- then the people must rise up for their own salvation.

At the end of his 2009 documentary, Capitalism: a Love Story, Michael Moore says that he cannot continue to do his crusading for truth, fairness, and the welfare of the common people if the common people do not join him, give up the ghost of a hope that they will become wealthy someday, and stop participating in an economic system that abuses them. Unfortunately, he doesn't mention climate change in his film, but it is surely the way that industrial capitalism most abuses us, for it sets up the certainty that our own homes and lives will be stolen from us.

You are losing the shell-game. Your way of life has disappeared under one cup, and you will never find it again. If you are lucky, you'll lift the wrong cup and find only that the cost of your debt to the rich purse holders has grown huge while your wage has stayed stagnant. If you are unlucky, like the people facing flooding, drought, storms and wildfire this year, you'll find that when the joker lifts his cup, there is a lethal dose of climate emergency waiting for you personally.

The time to revolt is now.

Pacing the Planet: The Second Week

Pacing the Planet is beginning to have wider engagement with the country. While based at the beautiful, deep
green forest of Lacey-Keosauqua State Park in Iowa, we walked north and west through Amish villages and rolling hills.

Our children are adapting to the routine of riding in our covered carts fairly well, although our youngest adventurer continues to want to lobby very fiercely for the right to walk along the shoulder of the road with her parents, even though she is not yet two. At our rest stops, she sneaks up to the cart and tries to pull it out of camp.

We have encountered a share of passers-by who stop and ask us about our mission, and take our photograph; they often express an intention to post about our project on social media. Pacing the Planet is already appearing on multiple sites on the internet.

On Sunday night, as lightning flashed above the manically swaying trees in the state park, we watched on our portable internet connection as the front-line of storms, spawning tornadoes from Nebraska to Iowa, approached our location. After hearing of a tornado spotted nearby, we made the decision to relocate from our two tents to the cinder-block bathhouse at the campground. Surprisingly, our tents endured the 60 mph winds and driving rain unscathed. In the bathhouse, we waited out the storm with an older couple and their two Labrador Retrievers; they agreed with us that the climate emergency is being seriously underplayed in the media.

It wasn't until Monday night that we learned of the tornado which struck the suburbs of Oklahoma City earlier that day with 200 mph winds, flattening schools and houses, burying kids in rubble, ruining lives. The truth is, the increasing, unusual fluctuations of the jet stream lead to particularly intense spring storms, spawning the F5 tornadoes we've seen devastate towns almost every year now. Those movements of the jet stream are tied to the melting of the Arctic, and that is the frontline of climate change.

On Friday, we moved camp to Ottumwa, and were delighted to find geese and ducks nesting around the ponds at the city campground, as we've had to forgo keeping our own waterfowl this year, so that we could do this walking. Friday morning, we brought our carts to the grand, old city high school, perched on a hill above the city, and gave a short presentation to 30 students. We allowed them to try pulling our carts, and they took many photos of themselves posed inside and out of our vehicles. We also gave an interview to a reporter from the Ottumwa Courier, who will be writing a short piece on us.

We welcome the shedding our relative anonymity, as the message we bring about the state of the climate needs to spread very quickly indeed. There is hope in our hearts as we continue to walk. Photographs of our journey can be found on our website: www.pacingtheplanet.org.

Week 1 - Missouri

Today we completed the first week of Pacing the Planet – our 1000 mile walk north, from Edina to Northern Ontario. After a good bit of practice, building on our experience walking short distances last Autumn, our mission finally seems doable.

We are writing from the Memphis library, and nearly falling asleep standing because we've not quite adjusted to our new schedule of waking at quarter-to-five in the morning to take advantage of the cool, for walking.
We've traveled about 50 miles, going out of our way to the east, visiting friends at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage and in Gorin, before deciding to head more northwesterly, toward Ottumwa, IA.

We are continually trying to assess the best route: the flatter the better! Hauling rickshaw carts over the local inclines is a time-consuming and arduous physical challenge. One of our carts, styled after a traditional covered wagon, is perhaps heavier than is really practical; it gained about 150 lbs in weight when we added the Amish-made carriage wheels that made it very maneuverable, but burdensome. We note that two walkers devoted to pulling it could manage the cart quite easily – we continue to hope for more participants in our action! Either that, or we will come home ready for Ironman contests.

We have been conquering the hills, nonetheless. After even just the first two days, we found that our muscles are developing more definition, and we are less sore today than we were yesterday, or the day before that. We are getting in shape and getting strong.

The cooperation of it is, not surprisingly, bringing our family ever closer. The children are getting great attention and finding their parents in a more spacious and patient state. Life at walking-speed is just slower...there is more time to stop and peek in at the cow dairy or to meditate on the dark swirling water passing under a bridge.

This morning, as we paced with our toddler, Tillwyn, we passed a horse pasture. A blond-maned horsie came springing out from some trees and Tiwi began laughing with delight...she had never seen a horse do this before. We were surprised and tickled by her commentary, “Dina!”...which means “Dinosaur” when she says it. She probably thought the horse looked like a long-haired carnivorous dinosaur, similar to the ones she has seen in her big brother's dinosaur movie.

Our two biggest difficulties are different in nature from each other. One is purely logistical, and one is more about the purpose of our walk. The first problem is that we need at least one more participant in order to efficiently transport our camp supplies in our vegetable-oil powered truck, as we progress in our walk. As it is, our days begin with one of us driving forward 8 – 10 miles, parking the truck, bicycling back to the walking party, and then proceeding to march up to the new location of the truck. Then, we must drive the truck back to the day's starting position, collect the bicycle, and return to the new camp.

The second problem is one of etiquette and honesty. We are encountering numerous people who are in disbelief of global warming in its entirety, let alone the seriousness of the crisis. Comments of this type are typical: “You know, don't you, that climate change is a fraud invented by lying scientists?”

Having intensively studied climate science for quite awhile now, we have much more information on this subject than most people – enough to know the undeniable reality of global warming and climate change. We have learned enough to know that accusations of fraud hurled at climatologists have long been disproven by independent investigation, and by independent scientific studies that have found the same environmental changes to be happening, when other ways of looking at the data are used.

Scientists are always improving their methods of research, and are required to be the harshest of critics, pointing out any uncertainties in findings—their own as well as their peers (this is the process of “peer review”). However, the uncertainties as to whether or not the climate is changing have been long-settled in the scientific community.

So, we are in a tricky position, because we are sometimes asking for a favor of the same people who assure us that climate change isn't real (they are amused by us, and they think of us as “alarmists”). We might be asking to store our carts on their land overnight, or to leave our truck parked near their place for a few hours. Pacing the Planet is working on a simple way to convey that we understand why people would doubt climate science, but we believe everyone can understand the truth that climate change is really happening.

It is the radio talk-show hosts and “merchants of doubt” on the internet who believe that we – all of us “commonfolk” – are suckers. They think, for instance, that we are not capable of doing our own investigation, in which we would easily learn that at least five independent panels have long-ago absolved the “Climategate” researchers of any wrongdoing. The radio shock-jocks continue to spew the lie that a scam was uncovered which invalidates concerns of dangerous global warming. They scoff, and call the hundreds of thousands of scientists who are studying the climate “alarmists”. They laugh at anyone who thinks that humanity could change the climate. They fire off false facts at a practiced speed that functionally blurs reality. They are the ones who are misleading you.

We continue to pray for guidance as to how to proceed in these conversations with strangers on the road in a way that is tactful and respectful, but that also represents the truth that we are here to share: the world is changing faster than it ever has and in the biggest way it ever has since human history began. It is alarming.

The Fix Earth Myth

There is a dangerous hope circulating in the world of people, that technology is going to save our hide at the last moment, ingenuity will slip us a file in our prison, that we will escape the momentous event in Earth's history that we've let loose to stalk us on the surface of the Earth. This hope is predicated on a deceptively simple wish -- that we can clean up our messes if we really, really want to. The tenet of this philosophy supposes that we must be able to assume the mantle of responsibility if we are able to don the sorcerer's cloak of power. This is a comforting myth because it suggests that there is an ordained program of education built into the planet; it means Earth is built to withstand our learning curve. Even more seductively, it implies that the narrative leads inexorably to our acquisition of supreme authority and capacity, once we are ready -- with the gems of our self-realized priorities cemented in our crowns. All we have to do is be very, very clever, figure out how to mop up after ourselves.

Looking around at the planet, we can easily observe the massive scale of our reworking of the natural world. The land is shaped in our image, and much of it has the look of a creature that was learning on the job. Two-thirds of the planet is ocean, however, and it is there that our heavy imprint hits hardest. The small shreds of plastic that populate all our seas and Great Lakes is just a piece of very large puzzle for which we've lost the box with the big picture on it. Beyond the acidification issue, and fishing the waters to their bitter end, there is our sheer ignorance of that environment. It is a strange truth that we have a greater certainty about the conditions inside a black hole than we do about the Mariana Trench (let alone the thousands of sea-mounts that have not been explored, yet are scoured by dragnets every day).

Rather than the "Sorcer's Apprentice" story-line, imagine rather that we have entered a fiddling contest with the devil, and he has provided us the instrument -- a thousand strings, stops and frets we've never heard of, tuned to a scale that sounds almost familiar, but isn't -- and now he shoves us out on stage as the orchestra launches into the most sublime and intricate movement...the Music of the Spheres, perhaps. Our last 150 years of notes were not exactly off, but now the tempo is furious and the harmony hangs by a thread.

What do we do now? As far as mitigating disastrous climate change goes, we have to create room in the carbon budget within these next four years. If we can't halt the machinery of progress (or haven't the stomach to halt it), then the only other option on such short notice is decreasing the amount of energy coming into our greenhouse atmosphere.

This is the hope that "geoengineering" offers us right now. Specifically, there are chemical aerosols we can spew into the stratosphere which will increase the Earth's albedo -- the amount of sunlight reflected directly back into space before it is absorbed by the Earth and re-radiated as heat. We can call this "Global Dimming." A flurry of research has sprung up, studying the most effective and practical methods of delivering these aerosols to the stratosphere. When we imagine doing this, we intend to imitate the natural cooling effect that volcanic plumes have upon the atmosphere.

There are dangers to geoengineering; do it wrong, and we can create conditions of extreme drought in localized areas on Earth, we can rain poisonous sulfates down upon the land and the water. Do it for a time and then stop the program abruptly, and the Earth will experience sudden, intense global warming. (The Greenhouse Effect takes centuries to play out, whereas aerosols fall out of the atmosphere in a matter of days or weeks.) Do it unilaterally, and the lopsided distribution of wealth, and even sustenance, on Earth will worsen. Unfortunately, there is a lot of motivation for a country or small group of countries to act unilaterally. Our track-record for demonstrating altruism with respect to the climate is abysmal. Many sociologists and ethicists fear we haven't the moral fortitude to become responsible gods of weather.

That gets to the most looming danger of geoengineering: if we shape it to fit the Sorcer's Apprentice story, if we pretend that geoengineering is our way of being clever enough to clean up our climate mess, then we will really be adrift in a rough sea without a rudder. This is because geoengineering is not a clever fix; to think so is to miss the humongous size of the lever that we have pulled. To give just one example, Greenland is now spotted all over with softball-sized holes containing a mixture of slushwater and carbon soot (primarily from Northern Hemisphere factories and vehicles). These are melting Greenland from the inside out, as it were, and are accelerating the collapse of the ice-sheet there -- a truly massive transformation of our planet that will be felt everywhere.

The long train of consequences that begins with changing the Earth's energy balance will follow an altered course for hundreds of millennia to come, not just this one century we are looking at in our studies. At best, geoengineering can buy time to implement a carbon-capture regime and steer our way to carbon-neutral energy. That is enough reason for people to come out from the shelter of their own private lives and demand that our government throw its weight into geoengineering research and implementation now.

However, we are not going to be filling the atmosphere with aerosols for the next 300,000 years or more. And even if we started the program today, the Earth has absorbed enough heat to raise the surface temperature by about another 0.8 degree C, which is almost double the temperature variation of the last 10,000 years of civilization, and may be enough to cross the threshold into triggering other climate feedback. So, although geoengineering is a useful lighthouse to set our course by in a stormy sea, we must not aim for it as our only strategy, or we will be like moths sailing for an open flame.

Then, too, there is the larger lesson: not everything we've done on Earth can be corrected in a way that is convenient to our preferred story of ourselves. Some of it cannot be corrected at all, for such an amount of time that our intentions and priorities will be dust past broken by then. The rapist who offers his victim an Advil afterward is not absolved of crime. We've known a long time that what we're doing to Earth is obscene. Geoengineering will not fix the sorrow in our hearts the way that renouncing the abuse of the Earth will. For, our hearts and our story come not from our own grandeur, but from the Earth itself.

  

Why We Are Walking

Our world is changing forever. At least, the length of time that it will be different from anything we've ever known is so much longer than civil history that we might as well call it forever.

That is enough reason by itself to warrant walking many miles; why not do a ritual that testifies to the colossal transformation that is engulfing us? Climate change is perhaps as near to seeing the overt power of creation, across all its scales, as we will ever witness. Who would not walk a thousand miles to see the face of god?

Yet, it is becoming clear that many of you are confused why we are walking at all. We are frequently fielding comments that question what walking has to do with raising awareness of anything, and how we will manage it and keep our home life intact. Others assume that no one else will care if we walk, that it is a waste of our time, that we must be doing it because there is a fatal flaw with our living situation as it is.

Of course, there is a fatal flaw with our living situation – that is, with almost everyone's way of life. Where the trouble starts is in our minds; people are challenged to know how to abandon our crippled lives and step out on the road, as challenged as if we instructed you to start living in five dimensions instead of three.

We have a Waiting for Godot society here on much of Earth, where the daily habits of our lives, our chores and responsibilities and entertainments, loom like outsize fetishes because we've been priced out of the larger rhythms, participating in the true freedom of our lives is beyond our pay-grade to understand; and, if courage won't take our hand and show us the way to save ourselves, then lives stage-managed by corporate design teams and focus groups will have to do.

This passive society dies on the altar of change, just the same. For a while, authority figures get to ply the “Silent Treatment,” choosing non-reponse as the most expedient way to clear the board of protest, resistance, debate. Big Business, working with government, has stripped away the inconvenience of having to give mind to the conscientious law-breakers who demand attention. But, they are multiplying their wealth under the shadow of the biggest inconvenience of all, forgetting that they too are naked to the larger scale of change.

Unfortunately, when we confront the aggression of our lifestyle with non-violent protest, we are reinforcing the Waiting for Godot society, because a key principle that underlies non-violent action is “Good things come to those who wait.” With patience, we believe that we can reflect the dignity and justice of our position.

Last night, I had a dream which wove all these threads together. Like the TV commercial of a couple decades ago, I saw climate activists inverting a ketchup bottle, and waiting for the contents to slide out. But when I look closer at what's in the bottle, I see it is not ketchup after all, but glaciers the size of Manhattan that are collapsing, spoiling into nothing. When it comes to climate change, very bad things come to those who wait.

Given the pressing advance of climate change, and given that our world is changing forever, this is not the time to resist greed with non-violent action. We haven't the time, the profiteers of the Waiting for Godot world haven't the listening, the physics of the world is not sentimental.

A better model for bringing the needed remedy to our crisis is Aikido. Aikido is a Japanese martial art whose guiding principle is the use of force to bring one's adversary into parallel viewpoint with your own. In other words, an Aikido student does not attack an opponent to cut them down; every action, every move is employed to redirect the opponent's energy into bring them into common ground with yourself. There are thousands of actions that involve violence to the machine of suicide that is driving our society which can be carried out with the Aikido principle of love and respect for our opponent.

Our walking campaign can be understood as an aikido action better than as an action of non-violent resistance – it will make more sense that way. We are doing violence to our own participation in the Waiting for Godot world, we are dismantling our own fetishized habits and assumptions. We are doing this publicly and on the road. We will go as far as we have to, until our own silent treatment and disregard of the planet is devastated, and we can hear the voice of creation again. It will tell us the next step to take.

Onward

It is spring, and Pacing the Planet is picking up the standard again, setting out to raise the alarm about impending and utter climate transformation. We have at last decided on a route for our long journey. We will be headed north from the Pacing the Planet headquarters; our family intends, if possible, to walk 1,000 miles north to the tiny town of Pickle Lake, Ontario (population 425).  Pickle Lake is the most northerly community in Ontario that is accessible year-round by paved road, tucked in the midst of the boreal forest.

Why are we headed there? To represent human migration.  In a world where the average sea-surface temperature is 4 degrees C hotter, the whole planet is going to shift 1,000 miles toward the poles. That is, climate zones are going to move northward and southward by at least 1,000 miles. In our hemisphere, the tropics will spread. The mid-latitudes will creep northward. The arctic tundra will disappear.

Throughout natural history, plants and animals had free range over connected habitats.  Even before humankind broke up these natural corridors, 10 miles is the very farthest that most non-migratory species could relocate in a given year.  Trees can only spread their seeds so far;  birds and mammals can only move when the plants and animals that they feed upon move with them.  We expect to travel an average of 10 miles a day.

It will take us four months, minimum, to cover 1,000 miles, and it would take plants and animals 100 years. But, we don't have 100 years before the average temperature reaches 4 degrees C. We have only 30 years. Unfortunately, with today's decimated environment and broken habitats, with roads and agricultural fields and fences and towns in the way, many species will not be able to keep up with the rapidly shifting planet. Whole ecosystems hang in the balance.

This past fall and winter has shifted the national debate on what to do about global warming. Following the disastrous growing season of 2012, New York City experienced firsthand the destruction of a major storm system enhanced by global warming. Suddenly, a small, but growing, number of courageous politicians are ready to speak out in favor of decisive action. The federal government has put in place the most stringent requirements ever for fuel-efficiency in automobiles. And for the first time, the EPA will have the power to regulate carbon-dioxide as an “atmospheric pollutant”, starting in 2015. In addition, every federal agency has been directed to calculate for climate change when assessing the environmental impact of the projects they review.

At the same time, our civilization's emissions of carbon-dioxide and methane continue to increase exponentially. The battle lines have been set, as the fossil fuel industries press their political agenda, and their opponents challenge them in Congress, in court, and on the street. ExxonMobil, TransCanada, and Peabody Energy (based in St. Louis), in particular, are in the crosshairs as they attempt to hold on to government subsidies of their industries while doing what they can to tighten their grip on the energy market in this country and abroad.

A decision to approve or reject the Keystone XL Pipeline is expected from the Obama administration in the next couple of months, but oil-pushers in Congress are attempting to claim authority to approve the construction project before the administration has a chance to weigh in on it. The pipeline is the subject of much propaganda currently, including the suggestion that it will improve our domestic energy independence, even though the Tar Sands oil will actually be shipped overseas for use, and profits will go to energy giant TransCanada. If the pipeline is approved by either Congress or the president, it will mark the beginning of an all-out struggle for the future of our planet. Those who understand that we are losing the climate we have depended on for the last 10,000 years will know then that they cannot count on politicians to implement even the most basic sensible policies to save us. We shall be keeping track of the situation as we walk north.

We are currently making preparations for our adventure. We are opening the invitation to people who would like to walk with us part way (or all of the way). We also could use a passionate volunteer to drive our vegetable-oil powered supply truck to each day's camp site, and help set up camp there. If you might be interested in participating, let us know. Or, if you want to cat-sit, house-sit, or make a bid on the project of mowing our grass as we pace, now's the time.

Before we begin our journey, Pacing the Planet is offering some exciting events this April. First, on the 19, we will be giving a presentation at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Then, on April 22, Earth Day, we will be presenting at Quincy University. We are currently arranging our second presentation at Truman State University in Kirkville, also during Earth week.

Finally, we are organizing a special event on Saturday, May 4, in Kirksville: the only NEMO big-screen showing of the amazing documentary "Chasing Ice," which is currently in limited release. "Chasing Ice" tells the story of one team's effort to document the dramatically changing landscape in the Arctic, due to global warming. We, who are alive today, are the last living people who will ever see that landscape the way it has been since the last ice age, and you do not want to miss this film.  Many people who were climate change skeptics have left the theater after seeing this film with their beliefs radically transformed, now understanding that climate change is the most critical emergency humanity has ever faced. You can reserve tickets to the film by clicking on the appropriate tab at the top of this page.  We would love to share this one-time showing with you:  our last event before we set out on our walk.