🌎THER Everyday!
I was a volunteer for the peace keeper, police liaison &; street medic team on my bike later that night for the local Day of Resistance. Another member of our team is a veteran compact medic, who served in Iraq. She also was a street medic at the G-20 protests in Seattle. Our team included several nurses and paramedics too. We all had a 2 hour long meeting a few days before the march. We were prepared for a home-made explosive device, for example, or for something seriously scary to go down and people panic and start crushing one another. We had lots of tournequetts and good contact with the police through out the march. Some people suggested that it wouldn't be a real protest until the window of Starbucks got smashed. Maybe what they really mean is it won't be a REAL protest until people start giving a damn and not just sucking back milk and sugar $7 Starbucks in a plastic cup, with a plastic straw? If you think that it was paranoid that we should have been prepared to deal with a home grown terrorist attack check out this coverage of the ACC Police having to dispose of home made pipe bombs found by a son cleaning out his deceased father's home: http://onlineathens.com/slideshow/2017-01-26/photos-acc-police-uga-bomb-disposal-unit-dispose-pipe-bombs#slide-1
The people of this country kept right on driving through the decades of war for oil...hundreds of thousands of people dead and the planet continuing to roast. Seventy degrees in January? Great! The planet is experiencing a mass extinction, the collapse of the food chain...and most people could care less if it means having to give up their own comforts. Most people won't even refuse a drinking straw and put their lips to a glass.
Here are a couple of shots I was able to take early on as the crowd as it swelled to 4,500:
The fact of the matter is that until people start changing their own lives and insisting on their neighbors doing the same, the planet will keep roasting and we will keep molesting each other in a thousand different ways as we a die, and watch our children, grandchildren and all life on Earth die in the very near future. That's why I went. To be a peace keeper on my bike and to keep insisting of my neighbors that they if they are gonna Sing It they better also Bring It! For instance, if they don't want Exxon in charge they better stop filling up their gas tanks and driving everywhere to buy anything they want, 24 hours a day wrapped in plastic, made half way around the world by people enslaved, or working for nearly nothing, often at gun point, the guns provided by our industries and our government . We need people to practice pre figurative politics. Actually install solar on your home, business, church, on the schools, AND conserve energy. Take your money out of the corporate banks! Be ready to chain yourself to the machines that are drilling under the rivers right now - as we wave our hands and make noise! Be willing to put your body on the line, not just the mouth. For that matter, try putting your body on a bike and bike to work. Bike to the store. Bike to church. Athens is so small you can bike across it in about 45 minutes! " Who wants change?" "WE DO!" "Who wants TO change?" *crickets*
There are thousands of scientific organizations around the world tracking the dynamic flux of our planet. It is thanks to them that we know that we have less than 2 years before the saturation of C02 in the atmosphere will cause the temperature rise above the already deadly 2 degree C mark the Paris Climate Record recognized as too high. Beyond this level the Earth will not be a stable environment to support life as we know it. We have less than 2 years to stop burning fossil fuels. That mean we must NOW stop driving our cars, start buying local foods, the majority of our diet must be plants, we can not use disposable plastic anything: not bags, not packaging, not drinking straws. We must install solar panels and stop burning coal NOW. We must compost all of our food waste, and if you eat out tell the owner to do so, and the grocery store. Tell the manager, call to corporate office. Start living a life-syle the conserve water and energy, Bathe once a week, install on demand hot water heaters, use a chest freezer with a temperature controller instead of a fridge, ride a bike, walk, take the bus or car pool. Do not fly. Insist that your landlord install solar and sell the power to you as the tenant. Insist that your church organize carpools and install solar on the congregation hall. Call the School District and insist they they invest in solar on the schools. They will surely be running the AC this year. Show up at the next Mayor and Commission meeting (Feb 7th, 6pm @ City Hall ) and insist that they approve the funding for the Greenway expansion and attend the Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan input sessions , 1st Monday of every month, 6pm at 120 Dougherty Street. We have 2 years before it is literally GAME OVER, and our world, and all life on it will ROAST.The clock is ticking. The carbon clock of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) shows just how little time is left for political decision-makers. Visitors of the MCC website can set out to explore which policy objectives under which scientific assumptions would allow for how much time to implement effective action.
The MCC carbon clock demonstrates just how much carbon can be released into the atmosphere if global warming is to be capped at 1.5°C, or 2°C. By selecting a choice of temperature targets and estimates, you can see how much time remains in each scenario.
In the Paris Agreement, all countries worldwide decided to limit global warming to well below 2°C (ideally as much as 1.5°C) compared to pre-industrial levels. This is extremely ambitious and essentially means that we are tightening our carbon budget. In concrete terms, it means that reaching the 2°C target with a high probability would allow us to emit at maximum only about 980 gigatons of CO2 between 2016 and 2100 into the atmosphere.¹ However, at present the world is still emitting 40 gigatons of CO2 every year.⁴ This corresponds to 1268 tons per second. In that context, the remaining budget is shrinking rapidly.
Visit the MCC website @ https://
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