Do or Die

 
What must be done by us, all of us in order to have a reasonable chance to continue a life worth living is clear.  It is straightforward.  Simply put, we must quit coal quickly, orchestrate the resources necessary for the rest of the world to drop coal while the developing world is helped over and around the fossil path---they can’t emulate the industrial world.  President Obama needs must call us into this necessity, both in the USA and worldwide.  The push for this imperative can come from local laterally linked and hierarchically linked groups who plan, organize and execute the simultaneous civil resistance that urges action from the President and the rest of us.

The key interlocking part of this complete and necessary plan to salvage what we can for humanity and its civilization is simultaneous and locally organized North America civil resistance to coal.  This galvanizing force should be organized, trained, supported, and executed locally. It should be horizontally and vertically integrated.  The aim is provide the concerted push to grab the president’s attention and the North America conscience.

Picture this:  On June 1, 2010, over 100 groups across North America engage in organized civil resistance to coal.  The groups demand that the President respond since their lives and futures are at stake.  These 100 groups, led primarily by the same age groups that made the Viet Nam protests successful---they were on-the-line like the next generation is on the line with climate chaos, and joined by those who experienced the successful movements of the 1960s, the 55 and over crowd, demand that President Obama lead the nation and the world to halt coal and climate chaos.  The “dump coal and accept science 100 groups” ask Obama to find out from the National Academy of Science how big, bad and brutal climate destabilization can be.  Let the current scientific data, the scientific consensus about looming climate catastrophe be the guide for future response.  These groups across the Continent will demand that leadership---Obama, science---NAS, and investment--- (see below), combine to secure a viable future.

350.org could call for the Continental Movement and provide the strategic leadership.  Local groups could organize with web 3.0 tools, catching RSS feeds from the lead 350.org organization.  The local groups can link together, publish and comment (OK blog) in collaboration, and provide information about legal and logistical support.  Simultaneous Direct Action is the means, effective action and guidance by the President is the ends.  The other three pieces of the follow-through are next.

To survive, we must agree to quit coal quickly.  This means that we must have worldwide agreement soon to give up coal.  Then we must begin to phase-out coal.  If we haven’t already passes a tipping point for runaway climate warming, we have very little time to get that agreement.  Phase out must follow soon after agreement.  While pursuing that QCQ agreement, renewables need to come online as soon as possible, far faster than the current rate.

Some explanation of reality is needed here.  Consider oil and gas.  Where wells are already drilled and deposits of gas and oil have been found, it is inevitable that these deposits and reserves will be brought to the surface and used.  So, where there are already straws in the ground with liquid gold ready to be sucked up and out, that stuff will be burned for money and fuel.  Nothing plausible will stop that ripe and ready stuff from being used.  That does not mean that we have to use all of the tiny pieces and bits of available oil-and-gas type derivatives.  Tar sands and gas fracing do not make sense for the environmental horror, multiples of CO2 thrown into the atmosphere and for the energy returns for energy invested.  These are not what is already “in reserve” when it comes to gas and oil.  They require extraordinary efforts to make them usable.  They are outliers to exclude outliers like tar sands because of the low return and heavy CO2 price.

Given the carbon budget left after these liquid and gas fuels are burned, with the temperature already built into the system from what has been burned to date, we have no alternative but to leave most of the rest of the coal in-the-ground if we want to provide a livable world for our children and theirs.  We must prevent self reinforcing and runaway climate destabilization. For example, runaway warming could happen by allowing methane to escape from permafrost.  Methane is natural gas that cannot be burned because it escapes when iced parts of the earth melt.  Arctic soils hold nearly one-third of the world’s supply of carbon, more than all of the carbon in the atmosphere now.  Good comprehensive plans to avert climate chaos exist.  James Hansen, perhaps best known for bringing global warming to the world’s attention in the 1980s, explains how best to address global warming and rapidly quit coal in January’s Nation.

If we must first quit coal then next we must assure that the industrial world supports the developing world so that it does not follow the fossil fuel development path that we have taken.  An overall climate framework designed to support an emergency climate stabilization program while, at the same time, preserving the rights of all people to a dignified level of sustainable human development free of the privations of poverty is required. This is also required by the fairness and equity provisions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty signed by the US and ratified by the Senate.

The global Southern hemisphere nations are frequently very poor and struggling to develop.    The overall carbon budget available to the South in an emergency climate stabilization framework would be severe and minimal if it cooperates with the rest of the world.  Unless it stopped economic development far below global poverty and thus dismissed their opportunity at minimal human dignity, it would consume more carbon budget than is available if it took any semblance of the traditional carbon-based pathway toward digging itself out of unbearable poverty. 

The implications are clear.   Unless the industrialized North provides considerable human and financial resources to the South, all of us will be pushed into catastrophic climate destabilization.  The North must provide the South some 2-3% of countries’ Gross Domestic Product.  This would amount to something like $300 Billion annually for the US.  This type of assistance is far beyond what is currently being considered. 

But the industrial North cannot make excuses or dissemble.  If it short-changes the South, then the South will take the traditional path to raise itself from destitution and use fossil fuels in order to develop.  That option would eliminate civilization and usher in climate chaos. Thus, the only way to secure the earnest engagement of the South is to ensure that it has the assistance necessary to support a decarbonization transition that is rapid and comprehensive, but that nevertheless allows human development to continue unimpeded. Nor is this a novel conclusion, unique to this analysis of the 350 ppm emergency pathway. Indeed, it underlies the UNFCCC commitment by developed countries to provide finance and technological support to developing countries, and it underlies the widespread NGO call for the developed countries to take on “international mitigation obligations” that are just as prominent, official, legally binding as their domestic mitigation obligations.

Arguably, however, all such estimates of assistance sent from North to South miss the point. Under the kind of “war mobilization” that would be required to achieve something like a 350 pathway, standard models just don’t yield much useful information. In fact, depending on how the necessary investments are funded, the Gross World Product might actually grow. (World War II saw the fastest US GNP growth in history!) The critical point is that an appropriate emergency climate stabilization program will require – in addition to a huge effort to reprioritize investment into low-carbon technologies – a substantial redirection of economic flows, between industrial sectors, between countries, and especially between North and South. In this context, the fundamental obstacles are not economic but political.

The bottom line? The 350 movement means that the focus must be on the demands of the science, and as that science becomes incontestable, it must shift to the political mobilization that is necessary to meet these demands. This is the realism of the greenhouse age.

Third, after beginning to phase out coal worldwide, the industrialized North must transfuse the South with massive economic, technological and human support or the whole of civilization ends and unlimited climate catastrophe ensues.

What follows is an explanation and elaboration of the last of the four requirements for a necessary 350 emergency pathway. Certainly no one would suggest that the US isn’t the key actor in this dire emergency.  Not only has it created the largest share of the looming climate crisis, but it has the most to do in terms of emissions reductions, technology transfer and economic assistance transfusing other nations.  A fair question, given how “missing in action” the US has been in the war mobilization that is required for our collective survival, is: “How can the US go from worst-to-first overnight and lead the world into a plausible chance for a livable future?”

Glad you asked.

It is easy to conjure the image of President Roosevelt driving the nation to war mobilization in the days just after Pearl Harbor.  But President Obama does not have a Pearl Harbor to refer to nor has he demonstrated the wherewithal to lead and direct the nation as yet.  What then could be the galvanizing Pearl Harbor?

Well, consider.  Suppose that President Obama asks the National Academy of Sciences, the organization established to provide advice on the scientific issue of global climate destabilization, advice that would pervade policy decisions needed to address the climate.  It could go something like this:  The President could ask “How big, how bad and how brutal is the climate crisis.  Moreover, how quickly and to what extent would we have to respond so that we leave an abundant and viable future for our children?  Finally, given our international agreements currently in force, what is our international responsibility related to this crisis?”

The President could direct the NAS to respond as soon as possible, this year, this Spring, and report the results to the American people.  Then the President could say something like what follows after getting the NAS report and response to his request.

President Obama’s speech to the nation after NAS reported what a threat climate chaos really is:

“The NAS has responded to my request.  That request was to advise me about the fast approaching climate catastrophe.  Just how big and how bad and how brutal is it?  The NAS, the leading scientific body of our nation composed by over 1,200 scientists, including some 200 Nobel Prize winners were unequivocal.  They explain that this looming climate crisis is the most critical challenge we have yet faced in our history; indeed it is the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced. 

Additionally, we must respond now and respond as fully as we have in moments of awesome peril; when this nation has needed to respond.  This crisis is our Pearl Harbor moment, it requires a mobilization like none we have experienced in our history, yet one we can achieve if we are to live up to the better angels of our nature.  We can respond like George Washington and his small and tattered army responded in the two weeks that changed the world and turned the tide in our own Revolutionary War.  I am referring, of course, to the last week of 1776 and the first few days of 1777 when our Forefathers were clutched in the jaws of defeat and despair.  Indeed Washington had written just previously that the ‘cause was likely lost.’  Then, like now, our nation faced a seemingly impossible challenge and rose mightily to the occasion, assuring their legacy and handing down to us, to us in this 21^st century, the inheritance we have enjoyed in this greatest country yet produced on this blue green ball called our Earth!

We together are now called, called directly to give our full measure of devotion to a cause that is perhaps even more awesome, perhaps more critical.  Certainly the future, our descendants in our own blessed Nation, and even those around the globe, all of continuing humanity depend on what we next do, depend on what we do this next year, depend on our sustained commitment for these following years. 

President George Washington and his men battled for our freedom from 1775 until 1783.  Those eight years of struggle determined the fate of our nation.  It determined whether this nation would exist or not.  We know the rest of the story.  Similarly this next eight years will determine our nation’s future.  Again, whether it will exist.  Truly, whether civilization will persist.  Actually whether humanity will enter the future free of the devastation that will be its legacy unless we respond as our Forefathers did.  Will we do less; will we give less for our children, their children and the spectacular living world upon which we all depend? 

These next eight years will determine our future and the future of humankind.  Let this be our finest period in our storied history.  Let us together set the course and lay the foundation for a world, for a civilization that will continue.  That will endure.  A continuous and determined effort is called for.  The history that I have expressed here was chosen with care.  This is our Revolutionary War and a revolution in how we operate our economy, our lives and our service both to each other and extending that service across the globe is our own Revolution and determine the legacy we leave behind.

The report from our NAS is our Pearl Harbor moment.  We know that to meet this unprecedented emergency a full WW2 type of mobilization will be required.  It will be required around the world.  And the world is looking to us.  Looking for us to take the lead and meet the challenge.  Let us respond with a resounding affirmation that will inspire the world and engender the enthusiasm needed to unite all of humanity in this effort.  I know, because I know what we are capable of, I know that we will respond, we will lead, and we will inspire!

I ask for each and all of you together to do what is needed to help each and all of us.  I ask that we learn and understand the options required, the tools we will need to fashion and use, and then to put the tools to full use on the path forward.  I ask our various media organizations, their very air space owned by us all, because they use the public’s common airwaves, since they are required to repay that use for public service, to educate our citizens about the particulars of this crisis and to explain the renewable energies that we must employ so that our future is sustainable and our civilization endures.

It is time to displace the extremes of that individualism that has been a hallmark of our history, an individualism still important, but needing the reawakening of that powerful cooperation and care for other peoples and other nations that characterized our WW2 effort and our response to the Pearl Harbor’s attack on our nation. Now too, we will need the support, the help and the cooperation of our industrial partners, as we had the support of other nations, particularly the nations of France and Spain, still our friends and partners………in our revolutionary effort to build an endurable future.

We must recognize and accept that we have created the seeds of our own destruction and the conditions that present this awesome peril.  And we must accept the responsibility for the resulting situation that presents itself now.  We needs must provide the financial, technical and human resources required to the rest of the world like we provided to our friend Great Britain during the lead up to and then the course of WW2.

Let us not demur nor delay.  A “CODE RED” call to action has been given.  This is our Great Work.  This is when we show who we are and what we are made of.  Now is when we build the foundation and show the way.  It is up to us.  Together.  And as we now can see, ‘we are the ones we have been waiting for.’

Your President and our Administration, joined by our Congress with your urging will help and support your education and your action.  Join me.  Join your neighbors.  Join your community.  Let’s build a future that gives our children and theirs the same natural beauty and full opportunities that we have had. 

Thank you all.”

Now, that ends my fantasy of what Obama might actually say to all of us.  And it may have no effect unless the simultaneous and coordinated civil resistance continues unabated.  The assumption is that the Congress is completely bought and sold by the polluting interests and those who don’t want us to know what’s coming or its import.  So the people must lead and the President must have the heart & mind to see the truth and exercise his leadership.  It’s the people and the President.  Franklin D. Roosevelt said in1932: “Go Ahead, Make Me. I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”  So, let’s make Obama do it!

This suggested Obama speech is not a complete fabrication.  A number of similar presentations have been given that really do summarize the mess we are in.  For example Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat is On, had a 14 minute brilliant talk in 2009.

To summarize, the four elements discussed in this essay, interlocking and required, provide the roadmap and tactics necessary for survival of the human endeavor. They are interconnected.  Without the Direct Action, simultaneous and vigorous across the Continent, the conscience of the President and the country will not be moved.  If we do not agree soon to quit coal and then set about phasing it out as soon as possible after that agreement, then continuing civilization is not possible.  No matter what pundits and beltway “green” groups say about how to frame the issue or debate the pros/cons of climate legislation, dramatic action is required.  Unless we support the Global South with massive financial support and with massive human resources, the global South will take us all down with themselves. We must provide the emerging nations, the neglected family of humankind, with resources that give them substantial help and hope, or we all drown.  Isn’t it true that we are all in the same boat and there is no way that only half of the boat is going to go over and drown? 

Do or Die

 
What must be done by us, all of us in order to have a reasonable chance to continue a life worth living is clear.  It is straightforward.  Simply put, we must quit coal quickly, orchestrate the resources necessary for the rest of the world to drop coal while the developing world is helped over and around the fossil path---they can’t emulate the industrial world.  President Obama needs must call us into this necessity, both in the USA and worldwide.  The push for this imperative can come from local laterally linked and hierarchically linked groups who plan, organize and execute the simultaneous civil resistance that urges action from the President and the rest of us.

The key interlocking part of this complete and necessary plan to salvage what we can for humanity and its civilization is simultaneous and locally organized North America civil resistance to coal.  This galvanizing force should be organized, trained, supported, and executed locally. It should be horizontally and vertically integrated.  The aim is provide the concerted push to grab the president’s attention and the North America conscience.

Picture this:  On June 1, 2010, over 100 groups across North America engage in organized civil resistance to coal.  The groups demand that the President respond since their lives and futures are at stake.  These 100 groups, led primarily by the same age groups that made the Viet Nam protests successful---they were on-the-line like the next generation is on the line with climate chaos, and joined by those who experienced the successful movements of the 1960s, the 55 and over crowd, demand that President Obama lead the nation and the world to halt coal and climate chaos.  The “dump coal and accept science 100 groups” ask Obama to find out from the National Academy of Science how big, bad and brutal climate destabilization can be.  Let the current scientific data, the scientific consensus about looming climate catastrophe be the guide for future response.  These groups across the Continent will demand that leadership---Obama, science---NAS, and investment--- (see below), combine to secure a viable future.

350.org could call for the Continental Movement and provide the strategic leadership.  Local groups could organize with web 3.0 tools, catching RSS feeds from the lead 350.org organization.  The local groups can link together, publish and comment (OK blog) in collaboration, and provide information about legal and logistical support.  Simultaneous Direct Action is the means, effective action and guidance by the President is the ends.  The other three pieces of the follow-through are next.

To survive, we must agree to quit coal quickly.  This means that we must have worldwide agreement soon to give up coal.  Then we must begin to phase-out coal.  If we haven’t already passes a tipping point for runaway climate warming, we have very little time to get that agreement.  Phase out must follow soon after agreement.  While pursuing that QCQ agreement, renewables need to come online as soon as possible, far faster than the current rate.

Some explanation of reality is needed here.  Consider oil and gas.  Where wells are already drilled and deposits of gas and oil have been found, it is inevitable that these deposits and reserves will be brought to the surface and used.  So, where there are already straws in the ground with liquid gold ready to be sucked up and out, that stuff will be burned for money and fuel.  Nothing plausible will stop that ripe and ready stuff from being used.  That does not mean that we have to use all of the tiny pieces and bits of available oil-and-gas type derivatives.  Tar sands and gas fracing do not make sense for the environmental horror, multiples of CO2 thrown into the atmosphere and for the energy returns for energy invested.  These are not what is already “in reserve” when it comes to gas and oil.  They require extraordinary efforts to make them usable.  They are outliers to exclude outliers like tar sands because of the low return and heavy CO2 price.

Given the carbon budget left after these liquid and gas fuels are burned, with the temperature already built into the system from what has been burned to date, we have no alternative but to leave most of the rest of the coal in-the-ground if we want to provide a livable world for our children and theirs.  We must prevent self reinforcing and runaway climate destabilization. For example, runaway warming could happen by allowing methane to escape from permafrost.  Methane is natural gas that cannot be burned because it escapes when iced parts of the earth melt.  Arctic soils hold nearly one-third of the world’s supply of carbon, more than all of the carbon in the atmosphere now.  Good comprehensive plans to avert climate chaos exist.  James Hansen, perhaps best known for bringing global warming to the world’s attention in the 1980s, explains how best to address global warming and rapidly quit coal in January’s Nation.

If we must first quit coal then next we must assure that the industrial world supports the developing world so that it does not follow the fossil fuel development path that we have taken.  An overall climate framework designed to support an emergency climate stabilization program while, at the same time, preserving the rights of all people to a dignified level of sustainable human development free of the privations of poverty is required. This is also required by the fairness and equity provisions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty signed by the US and ratified by the Senate.

The global Southern hemisphere nations are frequently very poor and struggling to develop.    The overall carbon budget available to the South in an emergency climate stabilization framework would be severe and minimal if it cooperates with the rest of the world.  Unless it stopped economic development far below global poverty and thus dismissed their opportunity at minimal human dignity, it would consume more carbon budget than is available if it took any semblance of the traditional carbon-based pathway toward digging itself out of unbearable poverty. 

The implications are clear.   Unless the industrialized North provides considerable human and financial resources to the South, all of us will be pushed into catastrophic climate destabilization.  The North must provide the South some 2-3% of countries’ Gross Domestic Product.  This would amount to something like $300 Billion annually for the US.  This type of assistance is far beyond what is currently being considered. 

But the industrial North cannot make excuses or dissemble.  If it short-changes the South, then the South will take the traditional path to raise itself from destitution and use fossil fuels in order to develop.  That option would eliminate civilization and usher in climate chaos. Thus, the only way to secure the earnest engagement of the South is to ensure that it has the assistance necessary to support a decarbonization transition that is rapid and comprehensive, but that nevertheless allows human development to continue unimpeded. Nor is this a novel conclusion, unique to this analysis of the 350 ppm emergency pathway. Indeed, it underlies the UNFCCC commitment by developed countries to provide finance and technological support to developing countries, and it underlies the widespread NGO call for the developed countries to take on “international mitigation obligations” that are just as prominent, official, legally binding as their domestic mitigation obligations.

Arguably, however, all such estimates of assistance sent from North to South miss the point. Under the kind of “war mobilization” that would be required to achieve something like a 350 pathway, standard models just don’t yield much useful information. In fact, depending on how the necessary investments are funded, the Gross World Product might actually grow. (World War II saw the fastest US GNP growth in history!) The critical point is that an appropriate emergency climate stabilization program will require – in addition to a huge effort to reprioritize investment into low-carbon technologies – a substantial redirection of economic flows, between industrial sectors, between countries, and especially between North and South. In this context, the fundamental obstacles are not economic but political.

The bottom line? The 350 movement means that the focus must be on the demands of the science, and as that science becomes incontestable, it must shift to the political mobilization that is necessary to meet these demands. This is the realism of the greenhouse age.

Third, after beginning to phase out coal worldwide, the industrialized North must transfuse the South with massive economic, technological and human support or the whole of civilization ends and unlimited climate catastrophe ensues.

What follows is an explanation and elaboration of the last of the four requirements for a necessary 350 emergency pathway. Certainly no one would suggest that the US isn’t the key actor in this dire emergency.  Not only has it created the largest share of the looming climate crisis, but it has the most to do in terms of emissions reductions, technology transfer and economic assistance transfusing other nations.  A fair question, given how “missing in action” the US has been in the war mobilization that is required for our collective survival, is: “How can the US go from worst-to-first overnight and lead the world into a plausible chance for a livable future?”

Glad you asked.

It is easy to conjure the image of President Roosevelt driving the nation to war mobilization in the days just after Pearl Harbor.  But President Obama does not have a Pearl Harbor to refer to nor has he demonstrated the wherewithal to lead and direct the nation as yet.  What then could be the galvanizing Pearl Harbor?

Well, consider.  Suppose that President Obama asks the National Academy of Sciences, the organization established to provide advice on the scientific issue of global climate destabilization, advice that would pervade policy decisions needed to address the climate.  It could go something like this:  The President could ask “How big, how bad and how brutal is the climate crisis.  Moreover, how quickly and to what extent would we have to respond so that we leave an abundant and viable future for our children?  Finally, given our international agreements currently in force, what is our international responsibility related to this crisis?”

The President could direct the NAS to respond as soon as possible, this year, this Spring, and report the results to the American people.  Then the President could say something like what follows after getting the NAS report and response to his request.

President Obama’s speech to the nation after NAS reported what a threat climate chaos really is:

“The NAS has responded to my request.  That request was to advise me about the fast approaching climate catastrophe.  Just how big and how bad and how brutal is it?  The NAS, the leading scientific body of our nation composed by over 1,200 scientists, including some 200 Nobel Prize winners were unequivocal.  They explain that this looming climate crisis is the most critical challenge we have yet faced in our history; indeed it is the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced. 

Additionally, we must respond now and respond as fully as we have in moments of awesome peril; when this nation has needed to respond.  This crisis is our Pearl Harbor moment, it requires a mobilization like none we have experienced in our history, yet one we can achieve if we are to live up to the better angels of our nature.  We can respond like George Washington and his small and tattered army responded in the two weeks that changed the world and turned the tide in our own Revolutionary War.  I am referring, of course, to the last week of 1776 and the first few days of 1777 when our Forefathers were clutched in the jaws of defeat and despair.  Indeed Washington had written just previously that the ‘cause was likely lost.’  Then, like now, our nation faced a seemingly impossible challenge and rose mightily to the occasion, assuring their legacy and handing down to us, to us in this 21^st century, the inheritance we have enjoyed in this greatest country yet produced on this blue green ball called our Earth!

We together are now called, called directly to give our full measure of devotion to a cause that is perhaps even more awesome, perhaps more critical.  Certainly the future, our descendants in our own blessed Nation, and even those around the globe, all of continuing humanity depend on what we next do, depend on what we do this next year, depend on our sustained commitment for these following years. 

President George Washington and his men battled for our freedom from 1775 until 1783.  Those eight years of struggle determined the fate of our nation.  It determined whether this nation would exist or not.  We know the rest of the story.  Similarly this next eight years will determine our nation’s future.  Again, whether it will exist.  Truly, whether civilization will persist.  Actually whether humanity will enter the future free of the devastation that will be its legacy unless we respond as our Forefathers did.  Will we do less; will we give less for our children, their children and the spectacular living world upon which we all depend? 

These next eight years will determine our future and the future of humankind.  Let this be our finest period in our storied history.  Let us together set the course and lay the foundation for a world, for a civilization that will continue.  That will endure.  A continuous and determined effort is called for.  The history that I have expressed here was chosen with care.  This is our Revolutionary War and a revolution in how we operate our economy, our lives and our service both to each other and extending that service across the globe is our own Revolution and determine the legacy we leave behind.

The report from our NAS is our Pearl Harbor moment.  We know that to meet this unprecedented emergency a full WW2 type of mobilization will be required.  It will be required around the world.  And the world is looking to us.  Looking for us to take the lead and meet the challenge.  Let us respond with a resounding affirmation that will inspire the world and engender the enthusiasm needed to unite all of humanity in this effort.  I know, because I know what we are capable of, I know that we will respond, we will lead, and we will inspire!

I ask for each and all of you together to do what is needed to help each and all of us.  I ask that we learn and understand the options required, the tools we will need to fashion and use, and then to put the tools to full use on the path forward.  I ask our various media organizations, their very air space owned by us all, because they use the public’s common airwaves, since they are required to repay that use for public service, to educate our citizens about the particulars of this crisis and to explain the renewable energies that we must employ so that our future is sustainable and our civilization endures.

It is time to displace the extremes of that individualism that has been a hallmark of our history, an individualism still important, but needing the reawakening of that powerful cooperation and care for other peoples and other nations that characterized our WW2 effort and our response to the Pearl Harbor’s attack on our nation. Now too, we will need the support, the help and the cooperation of our industrial partners, as we had the support of other nations, particularly the nations of France and Spain, still our friends and partners………in our revolutionary effort to build an endurable future.

We must recognize and accept that we have created the seeds of our own destruction and the conditions that present this awesome peril.  And we must accept the responsibility for the resulting situation that presents itself now.  We needs must provide the financial, technical and human resources required to the rest of the world like we provided to our friend Great Britain during the lead up to and then the course of WW2.

Let us not demur nor delay.  A “CODE RED” call to action has been given.  This is our Great Work.  This is when we show who we are and what we are made of.  Now is when we build the foundation and show the way.  It is up to us.  Together.  And as we now can see, ‘we are the ones we have been waiting for.’

Your President and our Administration, joined by our Congress with your urging will help and support your education and your action.  Join me.  Join your neighbors.  Join your community.  Let’s build a future that gives our children and theirs the same natural beauty and full opportunities that we have had. 

Thank you all.”

Now, that ends my fantasy of what Obama might actually say to all of us.  And it may have no effect unless the simultaneous and coordinated civil resistance continues unabated.  The assumption is that the Congress is completely bought and sold by the polluting interests and those who don’t want us to know what’s coming or its import.  So the people must lead and the President must have the heart & mind to see the truth and exercise his leadership.  It’s the people and the President.  Franklin D. Roosevelt said in1932: “Go Ahead, Make Me. I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”  So, let’s make Obama do it!

This suggested Obama speech is not a complete fabrication.  A number of similar presentations have been given that really do summarize the mess we are in.  For example Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat is On, had a 14 minute brilliant talk in 2009.

To summarize, the four elements discussed in this essay, interlocking and required, provide the roadmap and tactics necessary for survival of the human endeavor. They are interconnected.  Without the Direct Action, simultaneous and vigorous across the Continent, the conscience of the President and the country will not be moved.  If we do not agree soon to quit coal and then set about phasing it out as soon as possible after that agreement, then continuing civilization is not possible.  No matter what pundits and beltway “green” groups say about how to frame the issue or debate the pros/cons of climate legislation, dramatic action is required.  Unless we support the Global South with massive financial support and with massive human resources, the global South will take us all down with themselves. We must provide the emerging nations, the neglected family of humankind, with resources that give them substantial help and hope, or we all drown.  Isn’t it true that we are all in the same boat and there is no way that only half of the boat is going to go over and drown?