12daysofcopenhagen

Isn’t that what the 7th day is for?

On Saturday, day 6 of Copenhagen, the world marched and chanted and took to the streets. Fascinating to see the whole world paying attention to this critical issue.

Of course there is so much more to say…

For a while, I couldn’t figure out what I was going to say about this most important day.
The “Five more degrees” day.

And I wasn’t even planning it this way…
… but I started the day going to traffic court,
and witnessing the injustice of stupidity,

and then I ended up with ice in tow
on the steps of my hometown hall
for 350.

Day 5 is justice day.

At least by this poet.

~ C

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n6vnMLbV5c&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

12 galciers melting
11 pipellines leaking
10 driller drilling
9 heads-a-talking
8 years of air
7 cities swimming
6 greenhouse gasses
5 more degrees
4 billion years
3 coutries stalling
2 melting arctics
and a penguin in a palm tree.

My meditation today was to parade a block of ice around downtown San Francisco, near my office.  Came from the south, through the Buena Vista Gardens, by MOMA and on down Market, watched the skateboarders at the Ferry Plaza, watched the ice skating, sat with the messengers at New Montgomery, then back to the MANOVAN.  Didn’t make a big deal of it.  When I stopped with it, was when people asked what it was.  Got my shoes shined by the guy who is always hounding me to shine my shoes.  As I was leaving, he asked, “Where are you going with that block of ice?”  “Wherever.” I said.  He smiled.  That was nice.  Meanwhile, whispers of verbal notice and obvious turned heads indicated that the ice was not invisible.

Meanwhile, it seems the obstructionist Republican deniers are acting on their plans, and are about to run into the meeting and really, well, insult all our intelligence.  It’s amazing, no?  If you’ve got a hole in the boat, how much time do you have to waste with someone who it disrupting the discussion of what to do now, by someone who doesn’t believe the boat has a hole, or is listing …when you’re already having the conversation standing at an angle?

But it has always been my contention—(and fascination)—that the denial is perfectly natural and unavoidable.  We 9 billion humans, no longer live in the world we thought we knew.  We’re watching it change before our eyes.  That’s a pretty big loss, and it should therefore be no surprise that we are, individually and in groups, acting on that denial.  That there are deniers, is itself evidence that this climate crisis is the real challenge of man’s future.

On this opening day of Copenhagen, otherwise known as COP15, the next big negotiating meeting on an international climate treaty, I find myself pondering.

In 2000, while considering the fact that my newly born daughter was likely to live to see the summer melting of the Arctic ice cap, I decided to commit the rest of my life to the climate crisis.  I came at it with a sense of frustration about the general conversation happening at the time around the issue.  It seemed to me we were only scratching the surface of grasping the magnitude of the issue and the degree of imagination we would need to adjust to it.

Some 9 years later, I find my initial assessment of the situation largely unchanged.  I am both a pessimist and an optimist.  Pessimistic because we already have let the carbon out of the bag, so to speak.  The scale of our industrialized civilization of 9 billion persons is already orders of magnitude out of balance.  Simply put, the ice is going to melt, and there is, realistically, little that can be done to stop it at this point.  My optimism?  The potential to surprise ourselves.  The absolute excitement at what will emerge in our global culture and philosophy if we are even remotely successful.

So what better time to attempt to articulate what I mean than these 12 days of Copenhagen.  Let the unpacking begin…