Durban conference, Spokane’s Green efforts show political challenges

Editor’s note: This is a continuation of series of columns showing the challenges facing political leaders at local and higher levels, especially those with a commitment to the environment who look ahead to challenges like climate change and encourage their constituents to do the same. You can read previous parts here or here. The 17th Annual Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, was a failure. But you won’t have read about it in mainstream media like the New York Times, CNBC, Fox News, what have you. As usual, U.K.’s Guardian has been covering climate change with a sense of urgency, as is Democracy Now. On the conference’s expected final day (before United Nations conference organizers “extended” talks one day), Amy Goodman interviewed Pablo Solon who headed Bolivia’s climate negotiating team for 2010’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Mexico. It was refreshing to see Solon at this year’s summit because he locked arms with climate justice activists outside the official conference. In the streets, activists demanded the U.S. and other large greenhouse gas emitters implement and follow legally binding emissions cuts: “Developed countries — like the U.S., Europe, Japan, Russia — are just trying to avoid their responsibility when it comes to greenhouse emissions cuts,” Solon said. “So that is the real outcome out of Durban, and that’s why there is so much concern because especially the developing countries —poor nations and poor people around the world, even in the U.S. — are going to be those ones that are going to suffer the consequences of this. That is why we call it a climate apartheid.” This little window into a global issue sheds light on what it takes to be mayor, governor or elected official, from dog catcher, board of regent, planning commissioner on up to U.S. vice president. People are framing much of the world this year in terms of the 99 percent and the 1 percent. In this case, the top 20 nations have and continue to emit greenhouse gasses out of whack with their total per capita totals. We are the 1 percent as far as nations go. As part of this group, our role in the planet warming and generating climatic instability and disequilibrium is huge, as well as media’s role in giving flat-earth thinkers the microphone and headlines when it comes to nonsense about denying climate change and global warming linked to the carbon cycle humanity has disrupted. They sound like idiots trying to muscle through the whole ocean acidification topic and truly nonsensical when trying to understand deforestation and hydrocarbon burning, but mainstream media gives them a bully pulpit. Think Local, Act Global Mayor Mary Verner and the lot need to begin to retrain their thinking and framing to understand what civil society is doing to steel itself with education, grassroots organizing, protest and undying resistance to social injustice. Here’s one way Democratic and Republican parties can learn to shift from 19th century thinking to 22nd century realities – “Unlike some of the governments in these negotiations who talk democracy in one voice, and engage in awful acts of human rights abuses in the other … we will show the highest tradition of peaceful, civil disobedience, which is our right,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, expelled by U.N. security after he and another 150 climate activists marched through the conference center hallways demanding legally binding laws to stop Western nations and fully-developed ones from burning up the planet. Eventually Occupy Towns will begin Occupying city council and county commission meetings, demanding real dialogue, smart thinking, and a break from business-as-usual giveaways to the construction, cement, and paving brokers and industries and out-of-town major retailers who come into towns like carpetbaggers and suck the environmental and economic lifeblood from each municipality. Post-Carbon City – NOT Mayor Verner tried to engage dialogue early in her term by hiring Post Carbon Cities to talk to the public and other stakeholders about greening the city. This group is headed by Richard Heinberg, whose book, “Peak Everything” deals with the reality of scarcity and wars over metals, minerals, food and fuel. The training wheels included Daniel Lerch from PCC and his book, “Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty.” Both Lerch and Heinberg were on my (now defunct) “Tipping Points: Voices from the Edge” radio show. Here’s what another guest on the show, friend James Howard Kunstler, says about Lerch’s book: “’Post Carbon Cities’ is an exceptionally clear and comprehensive call-to-action to those who actually work in the trenches of city governance. We don’t have any more time to waste getting ready for an energy-scarcer future, and for those who remain dazed and confused, this book is an excellent place to start.” Kunstler wrote “The Long Emergency” and “The Geography of Nowhere.” Quite the heady group of realistic a la doomsday sustainability folk. When I talked with Lerch last month, way past that 2008 sustainability task force meeting set up with the help of the city’s now defunct sustainability office, he seemed to put the sustainability movement – almost 30 years – into more urgent terms. “My goal would be to have corporate and government leaders all understand the depth of the sustainability crises we face and recognize the need for urgent, decisive, deep-reaching changes in policies and values in response. Achieving that goal would be a political/cultural achievement of unprecedented scale; I’m neither a political strategist nor a culture-influencer, so I do what I can to get useful information into the hands of people who can do something with it.” Recently, I spoke with Mayor Verner about the so-called green economy: “I not only strongly believe that green collar jobs should be a focus; I have actively worked to promote these jobs for Spokane’s economy during my time in office. Even as we were still developing our sustainability plan, I was a spokesperson for Spokane’s green retailers, service providers, architects and designers, construction companies and laborers. My administration initiated the SMART recognition program for Spokane businesses that pursue Sustainable Management of Assets, Resources, and Technology, and we have around 160 businesses enrolled and committed to SMART goals.” As a counterpoint, I asked Lerch about divides between those in civil society and social justice movements who must link economy with equity/environment/education/energy: “It’s not that there’s a growing divide between ‘true sustainability proponents’ and ‘greenwashers’. Rather, it’s that as awareness of sustainability issues continues to grow, the way people and businesses and institutions are responding to it is spreading further and further across the map. Imagine a graph where the Y axis runs from Effective Actions to Ineffective Actions, and the X axis runs from People Who Get It to People Who Don’t Get It.” Lerch continued: “Twenty years ago there was a relatively small number of people who ‘got it,’ and I’d say most also cared, but the actions they took were of only limited effectiveness: remember the emphasis on recycling and rainforests in the 1990s… but precious little about energy and climate? “Today, I’d say the majority of people (and businessess, and institutions) ‘get’ parts of the sustainability problem we face, but few get the whole picture. There are many more actions today compared to 20 years ago, but still not a whole lot of effectiveness compared to the enormity of the problems.”