Sometimes
Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far off farm,
I hold still and listen a long time.
My soul turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers.
My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?
What a tragedy that the voices of youth hold more courage, knowledge, consciousness, and vital wisdom than so many in positions of power. This must change. We adults must individually and collectively stand in fierce protection of our children and all the children of all the species everywhere. — Molly
The Swedish campaigner says insufficient goals and empty rhetoric represent the "biggest elephant there's even been in any room."
Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg in a video released shortly before the Biden administration kicked off a two-day virtual summit of international leaders to address the climate crisis. "The gap between what needs to be done and what we are actually doing is widening by the minute," says Thunberg. "The gap between the urgency needed and the current level of awareness and attention is becoming more and more absurd." (Photo: Screenshot/NowThis News)
Just before U.S. President Joe Biden's two-day virtual summit on the climate crisis got underway, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday shared a video message calling out the "bullshit" of world leaders who she says are failing to take the steps necessary to confront the planetary emergency.
Posted online by NowThis News, the video featuring Thunberg comes as a warning from the well-known global climate campaigner that the people of the world should not be fooled by the lofty rhetoric they will hear at the summit.
"At the Leaders' Climate Summit, countries will present their new climate commitments, like net-zero emissions by 2050," Thunberg says in the video. "They will call these hypothetical targets 'ambitious.' But when you compare our insufficient targets with the overall current best available science, you clearly see that there's a gap. There are decades missing."
Watch the video:
‘We cannot fool nature and physics’ — In this NowThis exclusive, @GretaThunberg says commitments presented by countries at the Leaders’ Climate Summit will leave a ‘gap of awareness, action, and time’ pic.twitter.com/y8qYPJKmAE
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 22, 2021
The 18-year-old founder of "Fridays for Future" and inspiration for the global climate strike movement also penned an open letter first published in Vogue on Thursday, making much the same argument.
"You may call us naïve for believing change is possible, and that's fine," Thunberg wrote. "But at least we're not so naïve that we believe that things will be solved by countries and companies making vague, distant, insufficient targets without any real pressure from the media and the general public."
Thunberg continued:
Of course, we welcome all efforts to safeguard future and present living conditions. And these targets could be a great start if it wasn't for the tiny fact that they are full of gaps and loopholes. Such as leaving out emissions from imported goods, international aviation and shipping, as well as the burning of biomass, manipulating baseline data, excluding most feedback loops and tipping points, ignoring the crucial global aspect of equity and historic emissions, and making these targets completely reliant on fantasy or barely existing carbon-capturing technologies. But I don't have time to go into all that now.
The point is that we can keep using creative carbon accounting and cheat in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what is needed. But we must not forget that while we can fool others and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics. The emissions are still there, whether we choose to count them or not.
"The gap between what needs to be done and what we are actually doing is widening by the minute," she added. "The gap between the urgency needed and the current level of awareness and attention is becoming more and more absurd. And the gap between our so-called climate targets and the overall, current best-available science should no longer be possible to ignore."
Speaking of world leaders in the Thursday video and the shortcomings of their climate proposals thus far, Thunberg said, "Let's call out their bullshit," because the gap between what their rhetoric and what's actually needed is "the biggest elephant there's even been in any room."
Along with other witnesses, Thunberg is testifying before congressional lawmakers on Thursday during a hearing convened by the House Subcommittee on the Environment.
Watch the hearing—titled "The Role of Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Preventing Action on the Climate Crisis" and slated to begin at 10:00 am ET—live:
It is essential that we research and understand the depths of radical systemic changes that are needed here, now, today if our children and future generations are to have the potential for living on a habitable planet. It is essential that we not be fooled by promises from President Biden or anyone else when those promises continue to keep at risk all that we cherish and love. Cutting emission in half by 2030 is absolutely NOT good enough. — Molly
People hold signs calling for U.S. President Joe Biden to support a Green New Deal and end his support of pipelines and the fossil fuel industry in St. Paul on January 29, 2021. (Photo: Tim Evans/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The Biden administration is reportedly planning to pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% from 2005 levels by the end of this decade, but climate justice advocates say that much more ambitious goals and policies are needed if the U.S. president wants to act in accordance with what the scientific community says is necessary.
Having rejoined the Paris agreement earlier this year, President Joe Biden is expected to formally announce a new domestic emissions reduction target for 2030 during an international climate summit with 40 world leaders hosted by the White House on Thursday.
Representatives from the world's major economies—including 17 countries that together are responsible for 80% of total global emissions—will meet virtually on Earth Day to discuss plans for limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C by the end of the century.
Although Biden has not yet officially unveiled a national emissions reduction goal, two unnamed individuals with knowledge of the matter on Tuesday told the Washington Post that the administration is "considering a target range" that could exceed 50% "at the higher end."
"A pledge to cut emissions 50% by 2030 simply isn't big enough to meet the massive scale of the climate emergency," said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in response to the reporting. "Solving the climate crisis requires applying both science and equity. On both counts, the U.S.—the largest historic polluter and one of the wealthiest nations—must do its fair share and cut domestic emissions by at least 70% by 2030."
"Combating the climate emergency at home also requires transforming our economy by moving immediately to end the fossil fuel era and create a renewable and anti-racist energy system that advances justice first," Su added.
Mitch Jones, policy director at Food & Water Watch, agrees that Biden's approach to confronting the climate crisis "is not good enough."
"While these White House goals are being lauded as aggressive, they are inadequate," Jones said Wednesday in a statement. "As the world's historical largest emitter of climate pollution, we have a duty to do much more, and to act with greater urgency."
"These goals—based on comparisons to exceptionally high 2005 emission levels—will be meaningless without policies that explicitly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels," Jones continued. "Biden can make real headway on that front by fulfilling his campaign pledge to end fossil fuel extraction on public lands. He must also halt all new fossil fuel projects, which are polluting frontline communities and driving up emissions, and should join the push to ban fracking everywhere."
In a statement, Sunrise Movement political director Evan Weber said that "the science is clear—if the U.S. does not achieve much, much more by the end of this decade, it will be a death sentence for our generation and the billions of people at the frontlines of the climate crisis in the U.S. and abroad."
Referring to a landmark 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Weber noted that "in order to have even a 50% shot of staying under 1.5°C of warming to avoid the worst of the climate crisis, we must halve global emissions by 2030."
"If the U.S.—the country with the most historical responsibility and greatest economic capacity—only halves our own emissions by then, we are doomed," he added. "We must do much more, as quickly as we can. A new report (pdf) outlines that in order to truly meet our global historic responsibility, we'd have to reduce global emissions by the equivalent of 195% of 2005 U.S. levels."
Greenpeace also said the Biden administration's reported plan to limit the country's emissions reduction goal to 50% by 2030 would be woefully inadequate and inconsistent with what climate scientists say is absolutely necessary.
"To be a true climate leader, Biden has to show his commitment to addressing today's interlocking public health, racial inequity, and climate crises," said Janet Redman, climate campaign director for Greenpeace USA. "That means slashing U.S. carbon pollution by beginning the transition away from fossil fuels now, while ensuring no worker or community is left behind."
"Science and justice demand that we reduce emissions by 70% from 2005 levels by 2030 on the road to zero emissions by mid-century," she explained in a Wednesday statement. "The White House can get this done by removing government subsidies to fossil fuel companies, investing in an equitable and sustainable economic recovery, and stopping fishy carbon offset deals like the one Biden is considering with Brazil right now."
Stressing the importance of stopping deforestation and restoring biodiverse ecosystems in addition to quickly phasing out fossil fuels, Greenpeace International's executive director Jennifer Morgan said that "our survival depends on real climate action—voluntary net-zero targets and offsets are just delaying tactics."
Agnes Hall, global campaigns director at 350.org, said "there can be no meaningful climate action if world leaders don't make a decisive move to keep all fossil fuels in the ground," and that necessitates bold leadership from the U.S. president that goes "beyond promises" and includes concrete actions to put a halt to polluting projects, end subsidies for climate-destroying industries, and urgently fund the renewable energy transition.
"The Biden Summit is a critical meeting of world leaders ahead of COP26 this November," Hall said Wednesday. "Talk of 'net-zero' won't cut it: we demand more from our world leaders than false promises, false solutions, and empty negotiations."
"The task now is to hold politicians to their lofty words," Hall added. "To do that the global climate movement needs to keep up the pressure on our governments at home as well as on the international stage to take urgent action now to reduce carbon emissions and ensure a just recovery by creating a sustainable, fossil-free world."
Looking ahead to Thursday's meeting and emphasizing that international cooperation is essential to averting climate catastrophe, Greenpeace's Morgan said that "history has to be made at Biden's Earth Day Summit."
"The world's richest countries must do more than just halve their emissions by 2030, having profited from extractive and polluting industries leading to the climate crisis," she added. "It's time for the wealthiest nations to repair the damage and show solidarity with vulnerable countries."
Sunrise agreed. Alluding to the Green New Deal resolution—reintroduced this week by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), along with several related bills, including the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act—Weber implored Biden to deliver "a groundbreaking jobs and infrastructure package to put people to work decarbonizing every sector of our economy, including electricity, transportation, buildings, manufacturing, and agriculture, in the next decade."
But "this economic mobilization cannot stop at our borders," Weber added. He called on Biden to direct "international finance to support a just and accelerated transition to renewable energy abroad."
Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/04/21/climate-groups-warn-reported-biden-plan-cut-emissions-half-2030-not-good-enough?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
Kindness
Before
you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the
future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What
you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all
this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between
the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus
will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will
stare out the window forever.
Before
you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You
must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who
journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that
kept him alive.
Before
you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know
sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with
sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread
of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is
only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties
your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only
kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to
say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you
everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
We will not understand how to strengthen our hearts and to experience ourselves and our world with our eyes, minds, hearts, and souls open until we are able to hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. Francis Weller's loving, compassionate, and wise voice is but one deep gift which can empower us on our journeys. Bless us all on our paths of awakening and growing into the sacred wholeness of who we most truly are. — Molly
Art credit: C. Lynn Reese
The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.
