If you have the free Google Earth software installed on your computer, you can download a map tour of our walk so far, with accompanying audio, here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3iuIfRkjF1nd3BoVXNiUkZzMGc/edit?usp=sharing
Simply open the Google Earth program, and then click on the downloaded kmz file to begin the tour.
We plan to extend the tour as we continue our walk, so stay tuned!
Pacing the Planet -- Week 4
One hundred and sixty miles walked so far! Pacing the Planet has brought the signal call to deal with theclimate crisis north and west to our first big city, Des Moines, IA. In the downtown, many people saw us as we marched back and forth through the streets of the financial district, handing out our "Climate Crisis Information Sheet," and multiple times across the Des Moines river to the trendy East Village neighborhood.
We paced up the big hill to the Iowa State Capitol Building, where we spoke with a former politician from the first Obama administration. We staged an electrifying descent upon the city from that high place, with megaphone in hand, calling to the people of Des Moines to observe that their world is changing, their city is under threat, and that every day each one of them goes to work or goes to school or goes shopping, the fossil fuel industry is also going to work, stealing their future right out from under them. People came out from shops and apartments and restaurants to hear our news as the wheels of the Pacing Wagon thundered along the street.
We were hosted in Des Moines at the Rachel Corrie House of the Des Moines Catholic Worker collective, and it was a humbling experience to be reminded of the powerful work of witnessing and resistance that young Rachel Corrie did, eventually losing her life to an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while standing for the freedom of the Palestinian camps. The perversion of our climate needs resisters like Rachel Corrie today, to stand peacefully in the path of obdurate business-as-usual world destruction.
The Catholic Worker House collective in Des Moines is a set of four homes, landscaped with food gardens instead of lawns, where individuals dedicated to the radical teachings of Jesus serve the needs of the poor and engage in civil disobedience to non-violently resist unjust and immoral action upon the world stage. We enjoyed keeping company with the folks there, and we were able to prepare for the arrival of our other two children, now that school has let out for the summer.
That's right. Six of us -- two adults, four children -- are now Pacing the Planet. From Des Moines, we walked north to the town of Ankeny, where we have camped lakeside, and continue our trek on the High Trestle Trail, an old railroad converted to bike path that is carrying us toward Ames, IA.
Along the way, we continue to meet people who are eager to hear detailed news about the current climate situation (or debate it with us). In Ankeny, we encountered a high school biology teacher who was so moved by our project that she contacted two local television stations about us; but no TV crews have appeared yet to chronicle our journey. If the process of striking camp and recreating it ten or twenty miles down the road comes to consume less time in the future, we hope to make video contributions to this blog, knowing that Youtube is a more effective way of sharing information these days than the evening news.
Yet camp is not taking less time...it is taking more and more time. We are often confronting an adversary, the very one we set out to warn our country about: inclement weather. This freakishly persistent rain which delays the soybean planting and is flooding the Midwest is not doing our camp any favors either. A full 2/3 of our time is now occupied with camping and moving camp, and we find that our remaining funds do not adequately meet the requirements of our project.
Therefore, we are requesting donations to help the project through this tight spot. We are determined to continue, but we need your help to make the seemingly impossible become possible. As we continue our northward progress, we are looking at ways of trimming the need to set up camp so many times, including by borrowing, renting, or purchasing a small, used camper trailer. We really need Pacing the Planet to be a people's project, because we have laid everything we've got on the line to share the truth of climate change.
Donations can be made at this website, on our page called Help Our Project. Please take a moment to consider what this project means to you and your family, and what kind of world you want to live in -- then give based on that. We sincerely thank you for your help. Onward!
Ottumwa Courier, Gavain's Letter to the Editor
The Ottumwa Courier did not see fit to publish Gavain's Letter to the Editor in response to their strangely muffled front-page coverage of our project.
Yet, we can publish it here, For Whom It May Concern:
Yet, we can publish it here, For Whom It May Concern:
Dear Editor,
We appreciated your newspaper's coverage of our chance opportunity to visit with students from Ottumwa High School and share about our project: Pacing the Planet, a 1,000 mile walk north to raise awareness about our climate situation.
We would also like to dispute (in a friendly way) some of the word choices in your article on us. First, and most importantly, the science of global warming is not in the least controversial. Global warming and climate change is one of the best-established, most well-documented pieces of science ever conducted. We are as certain of the primary cause of the current global warming – human emissions of greenhouse gases – as we are that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
That is a relevant point, because there are not multiple viewpoints on whether global warming is caused by humanity – at least, not in the community of scientists actively studying the issue. What we do have is an active disinformation campaign waged by the same industry-funded lobbyist “scientists” who were previously paid to dispute the connection between tobacco and cancer, the connection between industry and acid rain, the existence of the ozone hole, and, lately, the global warming phenomenon. Their purpose is to sow a false sense of doubt in the public opinion about climate change, so as to stall political movement on the issue, and buy time for industry to profit. I refer your readers to an excellent book entitled Merchants of Doubt for further information.
Secondly, in the same vein, your article misquoted me as saying that science which had been debunked has now been vindicated. What I actually said was that the 2009 event known as “Climategate,” where researcher's emails were hacked and sentences were taken out of context, has been recognized for what it was: a hitjob on climate scientists by the denialist lobby. The researchers in question were exonerated by multiple independent panels. Moreover, their original findings on global warming have been corroborated by other studies using other methods of looking at past temperature increase.
Finally, your article presented a scenario where average planetary temperature rises by 4-6 degrees C this century as our “belief.” The basis for expecting this trend is not unfounded belief at all, but is derived from both data resulting from over 40 major climate models as well as detailed study of our planet's paleo-history, observing how the Earth responded when the climate was similarly forced by greenhouse gases in the past.
The nightmare scenario of a 4-6 degree rise in average temperature is unfortunately precisely where our planet is headed, if we continue on our current trajectory of emissions that exceed even the most aggressively polluting scenarios imagined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is very important that every person who values the ability to continue their way of life in a climate such as we've known for the past 10,000 years learn about the implications of a 4-6 degree rise in temperature, because we only have a handful of years to avert that future.
Sincerely,
Gavain U'Prichard, Pacing the Planet.org
(Here's a link to the article they wrote)
We appreciated your newspaper's coverage of our chance opportunity to visit with students from Ottumwa High School and share about our project: Pacing the Planet, a 1,000 mile walk north to raise awareness about our climate situation.
We would also like to dispute (in a friendly way) some of the word choices in your article on us. First, and most importantly, the science of global warming is not in the least controversial. Global warming and climate change is one of the best-established, most well-documented pieces of science ever conducted. We are as certain of the primary cause of the current global warming – human emissions of greenhouse gases – as we are that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
That is a relevant point, because there are not multiple viewpoints on whether global warming is caused by humanity – at least, not in the community of scientists actively studying the issue. What we do have is an active disinformation campaign waged by the same industry-funded lobbyist “scientists” who were previously paid to dispute the connection between tobacco and cancer, the connection between industry and acid rain, the existence of the ozone hole, and, lately, the global warming phenomenon. Their purpose is to sow a false sense of doubt in the public opinion about climate change, so as to stall political movement on the issue, and buy time for industry to profit. I refer your readers to an excellent book entitled Merchants of Doubt for further information.
Secondly, in the same vein, your article misquoted me as saying that science which had been debunked has now been vindicated. What I actually said was that the 2009 event known as “Climategate,” where researcher's emails were hacked and sentences were taken out of context, has been recognized for what it was: a hitjob on climate scientists by the denialist lobby. The researchers in question were exonerated by multiple independent panels. Moreover, their original findings on global warming have been corroborated by other studies using other methods of looking at past temperature increase.
Finally, your article presented a scenario where average planetary temperature rises by 4-6 degrees C this century as our “belief.” The basis for expecting this trend is not unfounded belief at all, but is derived from both data resulting from over 40 major climate models as well as detailed study of our planet's paleo-history, observing how the Earth responded when the climate was similarly forced by greenhouse gases in the past.
The nightmare scenario of a 4-6 degree rise in average temperature is unfortunately precisely where our planet is headed, if we continue on our current trajectory of emissions that exceed even the most aggressively polluting scenarios imagined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is very important that every person who values the ability to continue their way of life in a climate such as we've known for the past 10,000 years learn about the implications of a 4-6 degree rise in temperature, because we only have a handful of years to avert that future.
Sincerely,
Gavain U'Prichard, Pacing the Planet.org
(Here's a link to the article they wrote)
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.
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.
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, deepgreen 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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)