Samhain Moon of the First Snow
Keystone rejected. Booyah! Bill McKibben wrote a while back that the amount of oil slated to pass through the Keystone pipeline would be enough to push us well over the 2 degree centigrade warming some folks still see as the maximum allowable. (My understanding is that 2 degrees is baked in and the key moves now are to keep us from going very far over that mark.)
Jeff Mirkley (D-Or) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) have introduced Keep It In the Ground legislation. I like the phrase. It’s short and to the point. Fossil fuels not mined or fracked or pumped cannot add to the carbon load of our beleaguered atmosphere.
Momentum seems to be shifting, at least so it seems to me. Big coal is on the defensive. Keep It In the Ground shifts the conversation. 350.org has organized a new mass movement for climate change. The Great Work has begun to capture more and more attention. The rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline signals, I hope, a willingness to challenge big energy in specific instances, not just in rhetoric.
On the homefront Kate and I shifted our money out of energy stocks earlier this year. We’re installing solar panels. If each of us align our lives as we can, to the Great Work-creating a sustainable human presence on earth, then those larger societal trends will have a strong base of political support. No action by any one of us will stop global warming; but, no action by all of us will cook our grandchildren.
Too, individual actions like owning an electric car, supporting President Obama’s climate initiatives, adding solar panels, taking money away from big oil and big coal, can have a ripple effect. As others know what you’ve done, they will consider what they might do. And, even if they do nothing more than change a vote, support candidates with strong environmental policies, then you’ve begun to create the kind of math that can change things.
