Patricia DeMarco Ph.D.

"Live in harmony with nature."


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United We Stand. Divided We Fall.

The fabric of our society is torn by hatred, frayed by distrust, and tattered by fear. But the basic structure of America is stronger than any in the world. The Constitution and the rights and obligations it details have stood for 240 years guiding a society governed by the consent of the people under the rule of law. The rights entailed in the Constitution have explicit or implied responsibilities which, taken together, represent a social contract that binds all citizens in a common journey. America was meant to be a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Unfortunately, this high aspiration has been subverted and corrupted by forces of greed and hatred.

The second Amendment of the Constitution “right to bear arms” does not intend the unprovoked slaughter of innocent citizens, nor the shooting of people in the streets over trivial altercations. When did it become acceptable to shoot first and ask questions later? Such evidence of the breakdown of the basic compact of a lawful society grows from frustration, inequity and fear.

The weight of corporate and special interests over the general public interest in political decisions is manifest in both the nature of laws adopted and in the blockage of laws that protect the public. One especially insidious example is the Energy Act of 2005, with its specific exemptions for hydraulic fracturing from the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and certain provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Justified by an “all of the above” energy strategy, this set of exemptions has exposed the citizens of 39 states to the environmental and health effects of fracking. As the “anecdotal” evidence continues to accumulate, people grow increasingly frustrated when the environmental regulatory authorities appear to do nothing. Communities face failure of water supplies; workers develop illnesses from exposure to harmful wastes and by-products; fracking facilities appear next to schools, residences and business districts. The power of a regulatory agency is limited by the authorization in the law, so when the law specifically exempts an industrial activity from regulation, the regulatory agency has no authority to curtail that activity. The influence of corporations such as Halliburton, with the specific influence of Vice President Chaney, pushed through a law that runs explicitly counter to the public interest. Now, corporate interests in developing deep shale fossil gas at the expense of public health and safe drinking water seems entrenched in national energy policy as a “bridge fuel” to an undefined future. A few get rich, many get sick or lose their homes.

Corporations have received increasing rights and power by the action of the court, most especially in the Citizens United decision issued in September 2010. This decision increased the ability of corporate interests to use financial influence in elections, directly and indirectly. As more weight of corporate and special interests prevent actions favored by large majorities of citizens, trust in the ability of lawmakers to respond to the needs of people continues to grow. Failure to adopt any form of gun laws in the face of escalating community violence is one example. Failure to address climate change in the face of growing evidence of current and future harm is another.

America touts its position as the land of the free and home of the brave. But, freedom requires responsibility. Freedom of speech includes the responsibility to listen with respect to other opinions. The right to bear arms for self defense entails the responsibility to ensure safe use, not an entitlement to perpetrate violence. Freedom unrestrained by accountability and responsibility for actions results in chaos. Solidarity and empathy among Americans as people in a shared journey makes us a great country. America’s diversity is our strength. The income inequities, frustration with corporate greed over public well-being, and fear for the future are the seeds of our destruction from within. Standing together to demand justice and equity, with compassion and respect for each other, and with concern for the children of the future will return power to the people. Our children lead in this struggle. I take courage and inspiration from the Woodland Hills Academy

Woodland Hills Academy eighth graders March on April 23, 2016

Woodland Hills Academy eighth graders March on April 23, 2016

eighth grade students who organized a community march and forum “Guns and violence do NOT define US!” They deserve a better future.

This is a time when people need to reach out to restore the trust in each other as fellow citizens. This is a time to work together to restore the priority of the public interest at all levels of government. This is a time to work together for justice and equity. Without a base of mutual respect, beyond tolerance at a distance, there will be no peace. We are strong when we stand together, but vulnerable when we allow hatred and fear to divide us.


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Memorial Day 2016

“We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

– James A. Garfield
May 30, 1868 Arlington National Cemetery

These words were spoken on the first “Decoration Day” at a ceremony where people decorated the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the American Civil War. Now called Memorial Day this national holiday honors all the people who have died in service to the country. It is a good time to think of legacy and sacrifice. It is a good moment to reflect on what divides people from each other and what unites us in common purpose.

America has its finest hours when people unite for a cause with honor and purpose to improve human conditions or to right wrongdoing. We are a country with deep roots in the value of government acting as an agent for the good of all the people. Many came here to escape persecution, injustice, tyranny and suppression. This has been a land of hope and aspiration, a place where dreams can come true with “freedom and justice for all.” The lofty aspirations of the country’s founding hold modern Americans to a high standard because in the intervening 230 years the world has changed, expectations have changed, and the goal of “freedom and justice for all” is not as transparent as it used to be.

 

Freedom is not without a cost. To have freedom and justice together requires laws that society agrees to abide by to assure fairness. Otherwise people exploit their own advantage at the expense of others. Some people bully and tyrannize others. To be a just society requires that those with power be held accountable for the justice of their actions within the law. And having a just society requires that the laws protect the people. The People. That means real people with hearts that beat and love and aspire, who sacrifice to achieve their dreams and hopes for their children, who bleed and die for what they believe in if called in times of need. People like my Father, Michael DeMarco, paratrooper in Donovan’s Devils in World War II; Both of my Grandfathers, Angelo DeMarco who fought in Ethiopia in World War I, Michael Strutzel who fought in France in World War I. They fought for the aspirations of their children against opression and despair. Freedom without responsibility and accountability leads to tyranny and chaos.

 

Memorial Day weekend also calls to mind Rachel Carson’s birthday, May 27, 1907. She called for people to recognize and include in the definition of freedom the defense of the natural environment that supports life on earth. Freedom includes the right to fresh water, clean air, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species that constitute the web of life of which humans are but one part. Human survival to the end of the 21st century requires all people in the world to rise in the defense of our own life support system- the living earth. It is our obligation to our children to preserve the earth as a living system for renewal of fresh water, clean air and fertile ground.

 

This Memorial Day, America honors many who have died in the defense of oil fields; in conflicts over lands where the bonds of civil life have frayed and torn over massive changes in the conditions of their land from climate change; and in American cities and towns where civil strife rises with violence over injustice. This Memorial Day it is a good opportunity to reflect on what true greatness in a country means. Care for the people. The People!

 

Care for the conditions that give equity and justice to all the people, not only those with money and power. Care for the rights of people for a fair wage, safe working conditions, and communities where children can thrive and learn. The responsibilities of freedom include weaving a fabric of laws that society abides by with the confidence that society protects the life support system – air, water and land – as well as the most vulnerable and those in need. The country was founded to secure the “Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity.” If we are to provide the blessings of liberty to our posterity, we must take responsibility to protect the basic conditions of justice and take precaution in protecting our life support system for our children. Without justice, there is no peace. With out peace there is no hope. Without the Earth, there is no life.

 

 

 

 


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Earth Day 2016: Facing the Brink of Despair with Hope

April 22, 2016. A soft rain falls on ground dry for over a week, just at the time when trees and perennial plants need water to spur their awakening from winter. Here in Pittsburgh, the prospect of a dry summer bodes caution in planting, and plans for irrigation. But in the great plains and the valleys of California, the fourth year of drought holds dismal prospects for food production and personal comfort. Climate change becomes more and more difficult to deny. Yet, the rhetoric bludgeoning the airwaves from political candidates remains oblivious to reality. From the right, denial of human agency in climate change threatens an acceleration toward destructive actions. From the left, promises of structural remedies face certain defeat in a Congress paralyzed by entrenched vested interests of the fossil industry. In the middle people rise in frustration to clamor for attention to the real needs of daily life – clean air, safe water, secure food supplies, and the dignity of meaningful work. Under all the confusion, the Earth is screaming for relief of the daily insults imposed by human civilization.

 

The voice of the Earth rising is a song of hope for the future. It resounds in the chants of students to “Save the Planet NOW!” It surges through the bodies of people working together to create urban community gardens and Community Supported Agriculture. It flows with the sun and the wind to power thousands of communities and homes with renewable energy. It ripples through the gatherings of over 100 Mayors as they seek to build resilient cities. It shimmers in the eyes of children who seek a future they can thrive in. The voice of Mother Earth whispers in each of our ears, if we listen for it. The urgency and passion of that voice can empower the people to rise in defense of our own life support system. Nothing less than our own survival is at stake.

 

The first Earth Day was marked by a confluence of movements coalescing around a movement. The choking smoke of Pittsburgh, burning rivers of Chicago, oil-blackened beaches of Santa Barbara, and fish kills in Mississippi were impossible to ignore. Ten million people clamored for change. The voice of the public outweighed the influence of vested interests to pass laws to protect clean air, safe drinking water, endangered species, and protect from toxic substances in the environment. Many of these laws have received amendments over the years, mostly to offer exemptions, or to weaken specific provisions. In the intervening fifty or so years, the pendulum has swung back to protecting private business interests over public interests. The foundational environmental laws of that time addressed mostly the symptoms of the obvious pollution- corks in smokestacks, stoppers in effluent pipes, liners in landfills, parks and refuges with resource extraction permissions.

 

It is time for a New Earth Day! – a commitment to save our life support system with tangible actions by 2020. Hindsight 20/20 vision offers ample lessons of ways human civilization has seeded its own destruction. Using that insight to plan forward for a sustainable future will require not a re-tinkering of the 1970’s laws, but a new consensus based construction of laws. The system changes necessary for a sustainable future move the economy from a fossil-fueled base to a renewable energy system, including buildings designed with zero net energy, water and waste elements. Agriculture practices will move away from the pathological addiction to herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers to practices based on restoring fertile ground, wasting less, and reducing the amount of meat in the American diet by half. The endless stream of toxic chemical products and byproducts of consumer goods move away from the resource extravagant industrial practices based on plastics and fossil based polymers to green chemistry solutions inspired by biological systems. Enzymes and bio-synthesis rather than high temperatures and harsh chemical treatments will design consumer products that can be reused, recycled and repurposed in a circular economy to replace the modern culture of converting raw material to trash. These kinds of pathways offer endless opportunities for local jobs that add value and create local economies and strong communities. None of them require new technology, only new values, new choices.

 

To make system changes requires the will to seek a just transition for people living today, and a commitment to provide a viable planet for our children and their grandchildren. For the interests wedded to the fossil world, laws that change the value of investing in the ways of the future will give greater returns. We face the moral imperative to provide a viable future for the next generation. Preserving the functions of the living Earth guided by laws of nature tested over millions of years will save humanity. Restoring our life support system calls for people to rise in response to the screams of Mother Earth. Renewable energy, sustaining fertile ground, green chemistry – these are the pathways to a sustainable future.

 

 


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Reflections on Takashi Morizumi’s “Strange Beauty”

 

 

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 March 21, 2016 Spring Equinox – Reflections on Takashi Morizumi’s “Strange Beauty”

 

 

“Strange Beauty” autoradiography images from Fukushima by Takashi Morizumi

In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, houses, roads and buildings intrude on the deciduous forest that once covered these hills. Where I live, in Forest Hills, hundred-year-old oaks rise to intertwine branches over the house and yard. Soft snowflakes settle on white daffodils yielding to the warming sun of this Spring morning. The fragile beauty of new growth asserts the vitality emergent from the Earth. Sunlight sparkling through dewdrops on new leaves encapsulates in miniature all that is needed for life. How starkly different from the sparkling radiance captured through the decay of Cesium-137 on objects left abandoned after the tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan in March 2011. The poignant pictures of Takashi Morizumi, displayed briefly at the Frick Fine Arts Gallery, made the tragedy of that distant place feel close, and unspeakably sad.

 

Five years ago, the Fukushima Prefecture was rent asunder by a 9.0 magnitude Great East Earthquake and tsunami that shook foundations all along the coast and inundated the Fukushima Prefecture. The nuclear power complex at Fukushima though fortified and built with protections, was no match for the force of the water that poured over the area. As the reactors’ auxiliary generators were inundated by the floods, the emergency systems failed, the cooling systems failed, and hydrogen explosions rent the facility spewing radioactive material across the countryside. The fuel core of two reactors melted, with radioactivity levels so high, even five years after the event, robots sent to take measurements and inspections cannot function. (http://fukushimaupdate.com/radiation-so-high-at-fukushima-tepcos-robots-cant-survive/)

 

In the aftermath of this disaster, 159,128 people were evacuated from the “exclusion zone” area where the radiation continues at levels unsafe for constant exposure. Cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years contaminates an area of 11,580 square miles, making the land uninhabitable for at least 300 years. Thyroid cancer rates of 20 to 50 times the national average have been experienced in the Iodine-131 exposed population, especially those who were children at the time of the accident. Iodine -131 has a half-life of only eight days. Its effects can be lessened by immediately giving people iodine tablets to block uptake of radioactive iodine, but enough tablets were not available to all the exposed people. Scientists have called for large-scale independent epidemiological studies to collect better information about the exposure levels and the health effects that may unfold over time. It is difficult during an emergency to collect information systematically, or to respond to the needs of so many people when the basic infrastructure of the society has been disrupted by the twin emergencies of the earthquake and tsunami itself, compounded by the nuclear power plant failures.

 

Other communities around the world have experienced the tragedy of tsunami and earthquake disasters. The water goes down, people return to their neighborhoods and rebuild, or sell and move on. The compounding complications of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failure makes return impossible. People suffer from the grief of separation from their land, the destruction of the human network of communities, and the uncertainty of their fate from unknown amounts of nuclear exposure. The disaster has left a miasma of fear and despair. Once fertile fields of the Fukushima Prefecture lie idle, their topsoil scraped into black plastic bags in an attempt to reduce the radioactive contamination. Even as areas are cleaned, the rain and snowmelt re-introduce Cs-137 from untreated areas. The sea water being pumped into the crippled plants becomes radioactive, and is being stored in thousands of tanks, with much leaking through the bottom to flow into the ocean in a radioactive plume that has not been stopped or contained yet. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, essentially contaminating the core site of the melted reactors forever. Takashi Morizumi’s images capture the heartbreak of those who can never come home, and the tears of the Earth laid waste for hundreds of years.

 

The promise of nuclear power, using atoms for peaceful generation of electricity, rings hollow in such a place and time. There are 328 nuclear power plants operating worldwide, 104 in the United States. Of these, 63 are of the same design as the Fukushima Daiichi plants. The Price Anderson Act protects the nuclear power plant operators from liability with a government-backed insurance policy. But what happens to the communities, if the worst does occur? Each power plant in the US has a “spent fuel” pool nearby to store the highly radioactive spent fuel rods removed from the reactor cores. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fact sheet on nuclear power states, “There are no permanent disposal facilities in the United States for high level nuclear waste.” Several nuclear plants around the world are situated along earthquake fault lines, including the Diablo Canyon plant in California. Even the Fukushima plant remains in the path of future earthquake or tsunami events. There is no way to assure that such disasters will not occur again. The most advanced technology is no match for the full force of nature.

 

The unintended consequences of using nuclear power technology are subtle. They unfold over long periods of time and the effects are not immediately obvious. Radiation can accumulate in food chains and concentrate in biological systems. Chronic exposures to phytoplankton and zooplankton in contaminated ocean waters, even at low doses, can magnify up the food chain. As the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues to leak, long-lived radionuclides spread through the biosphere. Environmental effects can accumulate over generations. There is no way to be sure what the ultimate effects will be over time. The saddest part of this story is that the power requirements of this mostly agricultural area can be easily met with solar and wind power for irrigation, domestic uses and heating. Generating large amounts of electricity in remote areas to send away to large cities has placed the burden on poorer people, living simply. The injustice of their burden gives pause for the future of nuclear power. The probability of an accident may be very low, and the risk small compared to other kinds of exposures, but in case of a nuclear disaster, the effects are catastrophic.

 

There is no “Planet B.” We need to take precaution to protect the living earth and the essential life support systems of fresh air, clean water, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species that form the interconnected web of life. In Rachel Carson’s words, “Underlying all of the problems of introducing contamination into our world is the question of moral responsibility – not only to our own generation but to those of the future.” (Rachel Carson. ”On the Pollution of Our Environment” in Lost Woods. Linda J. Lear (ed.) 1998. Beacon Press. Page 242.)

 

(Summary of remarks made at University of Pittsburgh, Frick Fine Arts Center, March 15, 2016.)


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Green Roofs: A National Policy to Help Address Climate Change

Roof of Chicago City Hall

Roof of Chicago City Hall

Since 2009 the City of Toronto has required commercial and industrial new buildings to have green roofs. France recently adopted a law requiring new commercial and industrial buildings to have at least partial green roofs and solar panels. This kind of policy direction helps to move the climate change response incrementally forward. As more and more buildings comply with these laws, the detailed refinements in response will begin to emerge.

In the US, many buildings are adopting green roofs as part of a sustainability strategy, but the response is scattered, and financing is an issue in many areas.  The standards and initiatives vary tremendously among the 50 states.

Here is a summary of the benefits of green roofs compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists

Benefits of Green Roofs

There are so many benefits to green roofs. Here are just a few:

  1. Adding natural beauty and major aesthetic improvement to buildings, which in turn increases the investment opportunity.
  2. Helping contribute to landfill diversion by prolonging the life of waterproofing membranes, using recycled materials, and prolonging the service of heating, ventilation, and HVAC systems through decreased use.
  3. Green roofs assist with storm water management because water is stored by the substrate, then taken up by plants, and thus returned to the atmosphere through transpiration and evaporation. They also retain rainwater and moderate the temperature of the water and act as natural filters for the water that does run off. They delay the time at which runoff occurs, which results in decreased stress on sewer systems during peak periods.
  4. The plants on green roofs do a great job of capturing airborne pollutants and other atmospheric deposition. They can also filter noxious gasses.
  5. They open up new areas for community gardens, commercial and recreational space in busy cities where this space is generally quite limited.

Combining green roofs with solar installations on rooftops has been tested and shown to be mutually beneficial.  See the installations at Scalo Solar, for example. Here the Sunscape rooftop in Crafton PA, acts as a “showroom” for various configurations of solar arrays and technologies, including several versions of green roof installations. The various arrangements are fully instrumented and monitored to compare efficiency and effectiveness. The data stream is available to university students in Pittsburgh for research.images


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Wildtending, Earth Healing, and Gathering and Sowing the Seeds

Dana presents a wonderful and inspiring perspective on our critical role in tending the land. Preserving and restoring the Living Earth strengthens the life support system of the planet. Plants taking inert materials plus free sunshine are the miracle that makes life possible on Earth. Become a true wildtender!

Dana's avatarThe Druid's Garden

Calling all land regenerators, earth walkers, and friends of the weeds!  You can help heal our lands, today, with the resources you have and the love you have to give.  What if, instead of doing less harm or less baad, we could do good?  We could work to heal?  In this post, I’m going to talk about the process of gathering, scattering, and sowing seeds, nuts, and roots in regenerating our lands. This perspective is of the wildtender, the seed scatterer, the weed wise wo(man). This is four-part series on Wildtending that I’ll be presenting over the next month–the first giving the “how to” and philosophy (this post) spiraling from my earlier writings throughout this year. So, grab a handful of seeds, nuts, and roots and let’s get started.

The Man Who Planted Trees

I recently came across a story called “The Man who Planted Trees and…

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Resolve to Cut Plastic Bags from Your Life in 2016

Between Asia and North America is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is about twice the size of continental United States.  Located inside the North Pacific Gyre, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is filled with at least 100,000,000 tons of micro plastics,marine debris, and fishing gear. A gyre is essentially a natural vortex in the ocean. Lots of the trash we do not throw away often ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by wind and ocean currents. The trash is severely harming the marine ecosystems of living things. Plastics leach Bisphenol A , an endocrine disrupting chemical.

garbage gyre in Pacific Ocean

garbage gyre in Pacific Ocean

Plastic bags have been around for about 30 years. The average American family takes home 1,500 plastic bags a year (Natural Resources Defense Council). Americans use and throw away 100 billion plastic bags every year, which requires 12 million barrels of oil per year to manufacture. (The Wall Street Journal). This is a huge environmental problem because the plastic is not biodegradable, a single plastic bag can take 500 years to degrade. The ocean ecosystem is especially hard hit by the vast accumulations of plastic debris.

Sea animals attempt to eat plastic debris, resulting in choking, or intestinal blockage and death.  Sea animals can become caught in plastic debris, such as the webs that bind six-packs of soda or beer. Toxic pollutants absorbed, and transported in plastic waste, when consumed by marine animals become part of the human food chain. 80% of the marine garbage originates on land.  It is time to stop using the ocean as a garbage bin.

For 2016 resolve to stop using plastic bags.  Here are five ways to do that immediately:

  1. Carry your own re-usable bags.  For groceries, it is simple to carry reusable bags, some even adapted for cold and thermal insulated goods. Keep a small collapsable nylon bag for miscellaneous purchases.  Chico makes a wide variety of them, and many places sell them in styles from whimsical to sturdy. Even the French string bag takes little space in a purse or pocket.  Get in the habit of carrying bags to transport purchases.
  2. Use glass containers or jars for storage. These can be used repeatedly, and are recyclable when you finally need to discard them.  They do last a very long time.  I have a row of glass topped wire bale canning jars from the 1920’s to store bulk purchased items like beans and cereals. Use reusable storage containers for things like bread and baked goods.
  3. Recycle. When you must use plastic containers, choose ones that can be recycled, and diligently recycle.  If your community does not have a municipal recycling program, petition to have one started. In America, only 0.5% to 3% of plastic bags are recycled.
  4. Take Responsibility. Set a specific goal to use less plastic packaging.  Make a conscious effort to purchase goods that are not over packaged. For example, buy bulk foods in re-usable containers. Decline to take a bag for items that can be easily transported without a bag.
  5. Hold Producers Accountable. Customers can contact producers to ask for less packaging and more recyclable materials in packaging.  Ultimately, there will need to be a change in the culture of hyper-packaging everything.

It is important to begin thinking through the fate of what we buy.  Do we really need all this stuff? Know that we do really need a healthy living ocean ecosystem! The only way to keep garbage from ending up there is to control what we throw out. Join me in taking a pledge to Cut Plastic Waste in 2016!


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The Voice of the Earth Rising

As 2015 comes to a close, we mark a rare congruence of awareness and a call to action on climate change. In advance of the COP-21 talks in Paris, the leaders of all of the world’s major religions have called for true stewardship of the Earth.  The Encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si

 http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html,

the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change http://islamicclimatedeclaration.org/islamic-declaration-on-global-climate-change/

and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth from the People’s Climate Conference in Cochabamba,  https://pwccc.wordpress.com/programa/

calls to action resound with increased urgency. The COP-21 Accord, though non-binding, united the voices of 195 nations to strive for a 2 degree ceiling, with many advocating a goal of a 1.5 degree limit, in temperature rise by mid-century.

imagesIt is my hope for the new year that we can recognize the critical importance of the living Earth. We hear the voice of the Earth not in words but in the songs of birds and of whales; in the intricate ballet between flowers and pollinators; in the exhalation of forests and phytoplankton; and the sweep of landscapes. Earth speaks also in pain as forests are felled; oceans become acidic; mountaintops are scraped off; and the carbon dioxide of human energy production and agriculture pollute the air and water.

As we celebrate our Holidays and make plans for the New Year, may we remember that we are more alike in our humanity than different in cultures, religions or customs. May we reach out to work together to preserve and restore the life support systems of the living Earth- fresh water, clean air, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species that constitute the global web of life. May we work together for justice and equity as we face the necessary transitions from despoiling to preserving the resources of the Earth.

To my Colleagues who have helped me in so many ways this year as my manuscript has come together, I offer thanks for gifts beyond measure. Thank you for all you are doing to build a Pathway to Our Sustainable Future. May we all hear and embody the great power of the voice of the Earth. The children of the 21st century deserve our fullest effort to preserve our beautiful living Earth. To my grandchildren, and the nieces and nephews of my family, I solemnly promise my whole life to protecting your future.

Buon Natale!


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The Critical Agenda for COP-21 in Paris

In addressing the opening session of the COP-21 session in Paris, President Obama has called for “A world that is worthy of our children.  A world that is marked not by conflict, but by cooperation; and not by human suffering, but by human progress.  A world that’s safer, and more prosperous, and more secure, and more free than the one that we inherited.”

Lofty aspirations designed to engender a spirit of cooperation make excellent rhetoric. The reality is quite different.  America retains an “All of the above” energy strategy, as reported in the 2015 Energy Outlook by the EIA: “While the overall energy history of the United States is one of significant change as new forms of energy were developed, the three major fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal, which together provided 87% of total U.S. primary energy over the past decade—have dominated the U.S. fuel mix for well over 100 years. Recent increases in the domestic production of petroleum liquids and natural gas have prompted shifts between the uses of fossil fuels (largely from coal-fired to natural gas-fired power generation), but the predominance of these three energy sources is likely to continue into the future.” The effects of the Clean Power Plan noted by President Obama in his remarks in Paris are not included in the 2015 Energy Outlook, and in fact the CPP was rejected by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. Our country is a house divided, conflicted and distracted in its focus. Climate change remains a partisan, divisive issue, with no consensus on action in sight.

Changing the frame of reference of the discussion may be helpful. While the political forces vie over the pace of continued exploitation of fossil resources for fuels, the systems of the living planet earth show signs of breaking down.  If the Milankovich cycle estimates are accurate,  our planet is in the period of its orbital cycle most closely spherical, a period between ice ages when life flourishes. But, this period of stability has been compromised by the combustion of fossil reserves for fuel, and the simultaneous destruction of oxygen producing forests and phytoplankton. The components of the planet that provide the life support system of oxygen-rich air, fresh water, fertile ground and the complex biodiversity that connects all living things are being compromised by human actions. The negotiations at COP-21 in Paris focus on sharing rights and responsibilities among nations, and seeking compensation and balance for development in differing economies.  There is no discussion about the rights of the living earth on which all of humanity depends.

The People’s Movement for the Rights of Mother Earth are bringing the following Universal Declaration to the negotiations at COP-21 with a tribunal on December 7th.  Here is the preamble to that declaration:

We, the peoples and nations of Earth: 

Considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny;

Gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well;

Recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation, abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change;

Convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth;

Affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so;

Conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth;

Proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt it, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching, education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms, national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance among all peoples and States in the world. ( See full text here of the Articles of the Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth)

https://pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/the-proposals-of-%E2%80%9Cpeoples-agreement%E2%80%9D-in-the-texts-for/

This declaration was created at the People’s Climate Conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2010, signed by 288 organizations from around the world, and carried to the COP-21 talks with even greater support of nations, individuals and more organizations.

We must recognize that only by preserving and protecting the ability of the living earth to serve the vital ecosystem functions will we survive and thrive on this planet. The services that generate oxygen-rich air, filter and purify water, create food and fiber from photosynthesis, and many others, come from the interconnected operations of the living systems of the planet.  Humans are one part of that interconnected web of life. Extracting resources without any thought to replacement, restitution of disruptions, or protection to vital components has brought our civilization to the bring of extinction.  From billions to none can happen within a generation, as is evident from the loss of creatures such as the passenger pigeon. We are witnessing the extinction of nearly 25,000 species this year alone.

Recognize this challenge to control the excesses of consumption and waste. Seek to unleash the imagination and aspirations of the most wise among us in the ways of living within the constraints of the resources of the living earth, without continuing to exploit non-renewable components of the earth’s crust. Apply technology with the goal of regenerating and renewing the life support systems of the living earth, not subduing and suppressing them. If we in America can apply our ingenuity and expertise to solve the issue of controlling greenhouse gas emissions, stability and prosperity will follow.  Greed is the enemy.  It is time for a just transition to a renewable and sustainable way of living.