[Vision2020] U of I Sustainability Symposium Wed. 3-30-11: "McKibben calls for global uprising against fossil fuels"

[Ted Moffett]

I did not hear McKibben's talk, so I am not criticizing Holly Bowen of
the Moscow/Pullman Daily News in the following statements regarding
the impacts of anthropogenic climate warming, given how they were
depicted in the Moscow/Pullman Daily News story (pasted in lower down)
on Bill McKibben's talk at the U of I Sustainability Symposium on Wed.
3-30-11.  McKibben may not have emphasized the two points below that I
think every discussion of climate change should emphasize.

There was no mention of rising sea levels from climate change, which
should always be emphasized in discussions of climate change impacts.
Even if adaptation to negative climate changes on land (heat waves,
flooding, drought, fires, desertification, agricultural failures,
species extinction, etc.) are more successful than might be predicted,
the global impact of only a one meter rise in sea level by 2100 (and
futher future increases based on positive long term feedbacks) would
be immense, including displacement of human populations and
destruction of important coastal infrastructure and agriculture:
"Global sea level linked to global temperature" Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21527.full
----------------
To state that there will be "far more refugees" in the future "not
because of war" but because of climate change, is woefully misguided.
Climate change may be a primary cause of major wars.  I'll let some
experts on the subject comment on the probability that climate change
will be linked to causing war, military scholar Gwynne Dyer and the
Pentagon:

An amazing highly recommended series of in-depth interviews with
prominent scientists and thinkers related to climate change and Gwynne
Dyer's book "Climate Wars" is at the website first below:

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/interviews.htm
http://www.gwynnedyer.com/
--------------------
>From "Democracy Now":

Gwynne Dyer on "Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats"

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/8/gwynne_dyer_on_climate_wars_the
----------------------
>From "The Guardian" on "secret" Pentagon report, the sort of insiders
military analysis on the potential for climate change to cause war, of
which this report is only one.  Gwynne Dyer has had access to others:

"Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us· Secret
report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver

---------------------------
http://www.uidaho.edu/sustainabilitysymposium/Speakers/Featured%20Speaker

http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/1/3/156086031.html

McKibben calls for global uprising against fossil fuels

Mar 31, 2011 (Moscow-Pullman Daily News - McClatchy-Tribune
Information Services via COMTEX) -- Bill McKibben said the greatest
challenge humanity will face this century is the mitigation of climate
change.

The world can expect far more refugees than in the 20th century -- not
because of war, but because of floods, drought and other natural
disasters that are aggravated by rising global temperatures and more
moisture in the atmosphere, he said.

McKibben, author of "The End of Nature" and "Deep Economy" and founder
of the websites www.350.org and www.stepitup07.org, spoke to several
hundred members of the public Wednesday evening at the University of
Idaho for the annual President's Sustainability Symposium.

He said when he wrote his first book about climate change more than 20
years ago, scientists knew that burning fossil fuels was bad for the
planet, but they didn't anticipate how fast the negative effects would
manifest.

"Being human, our hope was it would take a while because it would be
someone else's problem to deal with, and not ours," he said.

McKibben said humans have raised the Earth's average temperature by 1
degree so far, and 2010 was the warmest year on record. Nineteen
nations broke all-time high temperature records last year, he said.

He said he knew it was bad when a 350.org team member in Pakistan said
it was 129 degrees last summer, a new record. He asked audience
members to imagine what that might feel like without the luxury of air
conditioning.

Last year's Russian heat wave caused fires and spooked the country
into halting grain exports.

"It was good for the Palouse, you know," McKibben said. "The price of
wheat jumped 70 percent, but that's not so good for most of the world.
There are a lot of people not eating as much as they would like to be
eating because they can't afford it."

He said if it can happen in Russia, it can happen in the United
States, as well.

All the recent natural disasters McKibben described happened with just
a 1-degree rise in the global temperature. Climatologists are saying
unless humans "get off coal and gas and oil far, far more quickly than
our political and economic systems are currently planning to do it,"
he said, that 1 degree will be 4 or 5 degrees before the end of the
21st century.

He said mitigating climate change is such a challenge in part because
there's been a "20-year bipartisan effort to accomplish absolutely
nothing, and it's been entirely successful."

McKibben said there's too much money behind fossil fuels, and humans
need to resist the temptation to find, refine and combust them. He
said the influence of money drowns out logic and science.

He said elites talking to other elites about climate change isn't
working, so it will take average people around the world standing up
en masse to demand a change in the system. That's what McKibben and
his colleagues are trying to accomplish with 350.org, by creating a
worldwide day of demonstrations this September.

"This is a big fight and a really serious one," he said. "I wish I
could tell you that there was some guarantee we were going to win it.
We can't do that."

He said he can guarantee, however, that there are many people across
the world who will fight as long and as hard as they can to end the
world's dependence on fossil fuels. He said he looks forward to
continuing to fight alongside them.

McKibben also praised the UI for having a team of professionals
working on mitigating climate change. The UI Sustainability Center had
three professional employees last year in addition to several student
employees, according to the center's website.

A full schedule of Sustainability Symposium events can be found online
at www.uidaho.edu/sustainabilitysymposium. Pre-registration was
required for most of the events.

Holly Bowen can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 239, or by email to
hbowen at dnews.com. Follow her on Twitter: @DailyNewsHolly

To see more of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News or to subscribe to the newspaper,
go to http://www.dnews.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Moscow-Pullman Daily News,
Moscow, Idaho Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more
information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information
Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com.

------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett