Obviously, the fight to stop climate change isn’t the war of Independence in India and it isn’t the civil rights movement. Its more vital more urgent and its worldwide. There’s never been a fight like this. In this unprecedented situation all tactics need to be considered.

Those who believe in any tactic ought to be told, in the same way Gandhi told everyone in India: if your conscience is clear and you think this is the best way then you should fight for the independence of India because the issue is that important. That’s how he wrote.

Gandhi argued in favour of nonviolence because he felt it was superior to violent resistance but he said do it, do what you believe in, let all people join this fight, and we’ll judge people according to if they live up to the standard they say they’ve set for themselves. Read him and see.

People don’t know what he argued for its all so long ago and if they just rely on hearsay and don’t go to the words of the man himself they’re just perpetuating the situation.

Gandhi felt his nonviolent tactic was going to be unstoppable. He saw that the British understood violence very well and they knew just what to do, divide and rule and gun down anyone who mobilized, keeping their advantage by keeping the people divided and scared. This didn’t work against Americans, whose Revolution had succeeded long before, but this was India. It was an ancient society all divided up into kingdoms run by potentates, split by religion and caste, sliced up like mortgage backed securities.

Gandhi thought, if you mobilized an army of people who would not shoot and would not fight back the British would try to gun them down but this was why he thought the tactic would succeed. The British wouldn’t be able to sustain the operations, and then what would they do? Gandhi would then press the nonviolent attacks home. Always, he said this is vital we need to sacrifice now, and somehow he came out looking in history like he was in the front line waiting to be killed. “Non-violence leaves an indelible impression” I believe are his words, as it transforms those who oppose it. Gandhi was killed by someone who walked up and assassinated him, and he wasn’t in the thick of a big demo at the time. By

The British couldn’t kill him it would have been a catastrophe for their side. Gandhi was hard to deal with but he wasn’t perfect. His private life was flawed. His operation took a lot of money, as one of his backers said, to keep the Mahatma poor, or I might say, looking so poor. He was a human being. I’m not saying there is any evidence he flaunted wealth, but he was the leader of a movement and he didn’t have to worry where his next meal was coming from.

One great thing Gandhi said nonviolence has as a tactic is the authorities have trouble throwing you in jail. You are trying to express a lot that is admirable in everyone, self sacrifice, caring about something greater than yourself, and working toward a goal of interest to everyone. If you are a plotter of violent revolution, ordinary people may share your overall goal but not many are going to be in favour of your tactic and you are immediately subjected to the extreme interest of police who are preauthorized by centuries of tradition backed by courts who will put you into jail. Nonviolence is difficult for courts to deal with because of this.

The British found it very difficult to deal with it. They’d pass a law, taxing the salt that was traditionally gathered on beaches by evaporation for free, enter Gandhi, he’d frame the issue, we don’t need the British here this is our country, I have a tactic with a long term chance of success, nonviolent revolution, lets go, we’ll march to the sea and evaporate our salt and not pay them any tax and we’ll do it even if they gun us down, in fact, brace yourselves we’re going to do it until they gun us down. He was probably lucky to survive in the early days, but later…. We won’t have to pay tax to a foreign power to keep us down if we have our own country, and we don’t break just any law, we break this law, as we don’t recognize the right of the British to even make law here. He’s got it all packaged up like this. Enough people went for it that it was eventually seen to be a big part of why India achieved its freedom.

The British commander faced the fact that he’d be killing unarmed people just looking for a way to get salt for their food. Anyone could see if Gandhi could just inspire enough people to believe in this tactic, the British were not going to be able to hold India, and the long long war entered a new phase with the British focussed increasingly on how to limit the success of this powerful idea. Senior British officials didn’t even think Gandhi was that intelligent when they’d talk things over with him in the back rooms. But he had something, and the world remembers.

I think Gore mentioned civil disobedience at this time to draw attention to Greenpeace and the Kingsnorth Six. If you’ve ever been involved risking your freedom like this you will find it surprising that the court in the UK didn’t convict. Courts don’t have trouble throwing high minded people into jail who say they are protecting something like say old growth forest in BC which I’ve observed people go to jail over.

In the few demos I conceived of risking my freedom I saw some of what Gore is pointing to that Hansen and Greenpeace are seeing over this coal plant demo.

For instance, I took on McDonald’s over their broken promise to remove ozone depleting substances from their hamburger containers because the radiation shield around the entire planet was in jeopardy – I was distributing pamphets outside a McDonald’s restaurant pointing out to customers they weren’t living up to their promise. The police dragged me away, put me in their “paddy wagon” mobile jail truck, drove a few blocks away and released me saying they agreed with me. It was basically just me and I didn’t succeed in inspiring people to join in and press this campaign home but I did see that the courts are reluctant to interfere when it is the citizen protecting his planet offering his freedom not showing violence.

A. of course frustrated by our wanna-be leaders who like to tell us what we need to be doing but won’t put themselves in harms way.

B. am equally frustrated by the arrogance of those who assume that if we’re chaining ourselves to things that we must be politically unengaged.

And I would also like to say that now is absolutely the time for civil disobedience. No matter how may individuals realize that they need to start conserving, without serious action by industry and government to shift (quickly) the way we produce and consume, individual action is meaningless. The number of new coal plants somewhere in the permiting or construction process is actually around 100 (http://www.sierraclub.org/ environmentallaw/ coal/ plantlist.asp). If most of them go online then we’ve ruined our chances of avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Stopping these plants, and using the resources going to build them (sticking us with another 50 years of dirty energy) to catalyze a transition to clean energy production is the only way I can see us getting out of this mess.

So cheers to everyone else out there who is part of this movement that is using all the tools in the tool box (including civil disobedience) to hold industry and government accountable for dragging their feet at this critical moment.

…and don’t worry, I’m sure that as we continue to build this mass movement sooner or later the “leaders” will cut to the front of the line.

Joe

Our children’s future is being mortgaged and put at risk by leaders in my not-so-great generation of elders. Is there no end to arrogance and adamant avarice of the greedy kings of wealth concentration, their bought-and-paid-for politicians, their many minions in the mass media?

Somehow we and our children have got to find more effective ways of communicating about threats to human wellbeing that are being perpetrated before our eyes by self-proclaimed “Masters of the Universe” among us.

Good and able people are not saying loudly, clearly and often enough what they know to be true………not speaking truth to power.

Many too many politicians are posing for the public and pandering to those with great wealth; too many investment brokers are devising economic bubbles and pyramid schemes, skimming millions for themselves…….”breaking” the financial system and threatening the real economy; and the mass media has been turning a blind eye to the entire mess.

Such woefully inadequate leadership needs to be named, shamed and replaced.

Perhaps more people will stand up, remain standing, and speak out loudly, clearly and often about what they see and know to be happening.

Our children could soon be confronted with an economic and/or ecological wreckage of an unimaginable kind; but, because so many people are not reasonably, sensibly and responsibly communicating with one another now, the chances for taking the measure of certain ominously looming economic and ecological challenges and finding adequate solutions to them appear to be diminishing day by day.

Perhaps there are at least three questions worthy of consideration by young people and their elders today.

Is it possible that the wondrous planetary home we inhabit was given unto the stewardship of humankind simply for the purpose of allowing the greediest people on the planet to fulfill their unending wishes and insatiable desires, come what may for a good enough future for their own children, coming generations, billions of less fortunate people in the family of humanity, global biodiversity, Earth’s body and environment? Are the greedy kings of wealth concentration and power politics, who consume, possess and hoard a lion’s share of the world’s wealth, the only people who matter? Are the selfish among us, the ones who are about to be “bailed out” this week despite their unbridled avarice and obscene behavior, supposed to be source of our primary concern?

At least to me, it is crystal clear how so few have stolen so much from so many.

Not ever in the course of human history have so few people been so greedy by having taken surreptitiously and then hoarded so much wealth that rightfully belonged to so many less fortunate people.

Clearly and evidently, the colossal global economy is an ever-expanding, artificially designed, manmade construction. For whom does the world’s human economy exist? To fulfill the wishes and insatiable desires of those with ill-gotten gains? Only to provide security for the greediest among us?

And, of all things, for many too many leaders of my not-so-great generation of elders to extoll the virtues of their unbridled avariciousness and applaud each other by passing out ‘awards’ to each other for the triumph of their greed, all of this is plainly outrageous.

In light of what has occurred in the both the financial system and the real economy in recent years, can someone please explain what the terms “fairness” and “equity” mean? Can anyone find examples of these phenomena in the distribution of wealth by the organizers and managers of the world’s human economy today?

Who knows, perhaps change toward common sense, fair play and sustainable behavior is in the offing.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

CO2 released into the atmosphere has a blanketing effect on the planet, which in turn affects the climate. This is a known and widely accepted phenomenon called the greenhouse effect. It is very real, as without it our planet would not be hospitable to life. Any additional CO2 we produce (and we produce a staggering amount of it) will enhance that effect. It’s pretty easy to understand when your head’s out of the sand.

The theory of anthropogenic global warming has science behind it, has current data following predicted trends, it has heuristic data supporting it, has the majority of reputable scientific organisations WORLDWIDE backing it. Why? Because there is more evidence for it than there is against it. Deniers, like yourself, have nothing but ridiculous ad hominem “straw man” attacks on Gore, socialist political conspiracy theories and cherry picked arguments.

It seems it is you and you who clings to dogmatic, pseudo-religious-fundamentalist attitudes based on nothing in the face of science and irrefutable observational evidence. Furthermore, your rant boils down to nothing more than ignorant zealotry.

People in the future are going to look back at the crap that people like you shoveled and curse your very existence.

People in the future are going to unnecessarily suffer because people like you impeded the process of slowing global warming.

Maybe you are making too many assumptions. It’s quite possible those you think “don’t care” instead simply don’t believe the ridiculous notion that an atmospheric gas measuring in at less than a tenth of one percent is going to have dramatic effects on Earth’s climate if it increases by a few parts per MILLION. Many are not as gullible and/or stupid as that.

Gore’s call to action is another classic example of his ultimate hypocrisy. The man lives in a 20,000 square foot house that consumes enough electricity to power a small town, much of which comes from the very coal-fired power plants he deems unfit for operation due to their evil CO2 emissions. Please don’t bother telling me about his recent modifications (subsidized, like all economically challenged “alternative” energy options currently available, at taxpayer expense, of course) to add solar, etc. to his mansion, or his purchase of “carbon credits” (from his own company, set up to take full advantage of the scam). If he gave a flying f**k about CO2 emissions, he would put his money where his big, very fat mouth is and relocate to a small, modest home like us regular folk who don’t live on the backs of the productive before he spouts on about what others should do to solve the non-existent “crisis.”

The people of China and India aren’t stupid enough to believe this tripe, and any reductions of CO2 emissions that the charlatans that unfortunately have conned their way into elected office in the West can manage will be more than “offset” (pardon the pun) by the growing China and India economies. They’ll be more than happy to prosper at our expense. Ask yourself the questions that should truly be your yardstick of whether this is as serious an issue as you say: Are you willing to go to war with China and India to stop the growth of atmospheric CO2? Are you willing to send your children to die in this war for the “climate crisis” cause? Are your children ready and willing to die for this cause? If you can’t answer an enthusiastic “yes” to all of those questions, then stop trying to force your pseudo-religious belief system about “anthropogenic” global warming, for which no actual evidence (as opposed to ASSUMPTION that warming “must be” due to CO2 that “must be” increasing due to human activities) exists down the throats of the rest of the world!

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence, clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken

“The urge to save humanity is normally a false front for the urge to rule.” – H.L. Mencken

“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.” – Czech President Vaclav Klaus

Next step: like those Vietnamese Buddhist monks who burned themselves alive in Vietnam during the war there in the 60s to protest the war, some very very very alarmed activist or religous person might just turn to pouring gasoline on himself herself in front of the UN to protest climate change inaction.

It will be a sad day when that happens, but get ready. His or her act will huge headlines too. I hope he doesn’t die.

Civil disobedience is just the first step, next is self-immolation protest.

Maybe in Geneva, maybe in NYC, maybe in Tokyo, but watch!

It’s not the 1959-1975 Vietnamese War, it’s the 2008-3008 CLIMATE WAR!”

Best,

D

“I can see where this is heading. Civil disobedience, yes. Next step: like those Vietnamese Buddhist monks who burned themselves alive in Vietnam during the war there in the 60s to protest the war, some very very very alarmed activist or religous person might just turn to pouring gasoline on himself herself in front of the UN to protest climate change inaction. It will be a sad day when that happens, but get ready. Civil disobedience is just the first step, next is self-immolation protest. Maybe in Geneva, maybe in NYC, maybe in Tokyo, but watch! I hope it does not have to come to that, but some passionate person, maybe young, maybe old, will do it. It’s not the Vietname War, it’s the CLIMATE WAR!”

— Climate Blogger 749