Environmentalist, educator, and author of Eaarth (because evidently one “a” is not enough), Bill McKibben, has been traveling to colleges and universities across the country speaking to students about the dire circumstances that we are facing on the planet. He has recruited the involvement of people in our religious communities and calls himself one of the “Methodist Mafia.” Introduced to the audience as “most important person in the world,” McKibben began by saying that he was there as a professional “bummer outer” (obviously taking it to a level the students would understand). He has been studying and writing about climate change since 1989 and is in a panic over the drastic changes we are seeing in the earth’s climate. Apparently, scientists underestimated how much we humans affected the climate and we must do something NOW, before all of this is irreversible.
McKibben explained that, at the rate we are going, we will see a five degree increase in global temperature within this century and that every degree of increase will reduce crop output by ten percent. We cannot let this happen for ethical, moral as well as practical reasons. The only solution is that we must get off of coal, oil and gas FAST! As it stands, food prices are going up and millions of people are starving. Americans burn more fossil fuel in two days than the people of the Sahara do in one year.
Our political leaders are not making changes because of threats from the fossil fuel industry. The “greens” are becoming desperate as they see their oh-so-carefully laid plans for wealth redistribution falling apart. McKibben’s message to the students is that they can no longer talk lightly about the very survival of the planet. He is building a movement to organize the globe and force President Obama to honor his campaign promises to reduce our fossil fuel dependence. America must reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by eighty percent by 2020. We only have five to ten years before the damage is irreversible.
Building onto the Occupy Wall Street movement, students and other environmentalists will be gathering to encircle the White House in Washington, D.C. November 6th to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline. McKibben declared that Natural Resource Management and Environmental Consultants CardnoEntrix finding that the pipeline will have no significant environmental impact proves that they are “politically filthy” and are worse than Dick Cheney! “This is a crime in progress!” According to Bill McKibben, “You could even say Wall Street’s been occupying our atmosphere, since any attempt to do anything about climate change always runs afoul of the biggest corporations on the planet. So it’s a damned good thing the tables are starting to turn.” Here is the link to their 350.org web site.
He showed slides of people around the world displaying their commitment to 350.org. One slide showed adorable children living in the Maldives but told the audience they will most likely be refugees before they are grown because the Maldives will soon be entirely underwater. The explanation of the 350 “is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide–measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM–it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.” Today we are at 393 PPM. Looks like we are all doomed!
On their website the November 6th Tar Sands Action has been organized because:
Exactly one year before the election, we want to encircle the whole White House to ask President Obama to reject Keystone XL and live up to his promise to free us from the tyranny of oil. In doing so, we want to remind him of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. This is bigger than any one person – President or no – and we will carry on, with or without him.
He ended his appeal by telling the students to take a train or bus, but get to Washington, D.C. on November 6th. “It may be too late” and “the worst thing in the world is happening.”
Our children are being indoctrinated in elementary, middle schools, high schools and colleges across the country. And the world has these pseudo-scientists running around like Chicken Little predicting the imminent end of the world unless we change our evil fossil fuel consuming lifestyles. We must make sure that they understand these radical environmentalists have an agenda and it is not “green”, it is “greed”.
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