Getting ‘back to normal’ is not a desirable goal for many people — back to polluted, unhealthy environments, wages that cannot sustain, prejudices and lack of opportunities that stifle one’s humanity. Returning to ‘business as usual’ is a pathway to an uninhabitable planet in the not-too-distant future, as evidenced by the current acceleration of species extinction, environmental refugees, climate chaos and worsening social inequality.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is regarded as the most reliable and comprehensive source of scientific climate-change information. According to the IPCC, we have less than 10 years to make urgent and unprecedented changes to reach a modest target, which is affordable and feasible. But it will require significant policy and systems change. The IPCC makes clear that climate change is already happening. The cost of not responding appropriately will be economically debilitating and moral bankruptcy.
All sustainable pathways require the end of fossil fuels, as well as land use, technological and system changes. Reforestation is essential to all of them as are shifts to electric transportation systems and greater adoption of carbon-capture technology. Our house is on fire, and people are stepping up in community-led movements everywhere to create the political will needed to address this emergency.
Build Back Fossil Free is one such movement, championed by large and small organizations across the country, and have youth, indigenous people, women and people of color at the forefront. The goals, similar to many of those in The Green New Deal and The Poor People’s Campaign, are to avert further climate devastation while helping people recover from the pandemic as well as address systemic inequalities and racism. The focus of the campaign is on what President Biden can do in his first 100 days in office. Here is what is being asked:
1. Protect and invest in the Black, indigenous, brown and working-class communities that have borne the brunt of fossil-fuel pollution and climate disaster;
2. Reject new fossil projects, eliminate giveaways to oil, gas and coal corporations, and end the era of fossil-fuel production;
3. Launch a national climate mobilization to Build Back Fossil Free, delivering jobs, justice and opportunity for all with job guarantees.
See the BBFF website for specifics under each of these actions.
What Biden has done thus far:
• Through executive order, established the White House Environmental Justice Council, with recommendations to direct 40% of “overall benefits” of certain federal investments towards disadvantaged communities;
• Halted oil and gas leasing on federal lands and launched a “comprehensive review” of the entire fossil-fuel-leasing and permitting program, and revoked permits for the Keystone XL pipeline. He has directed Office of Management and Budget and other agencies to eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies from future budget requests to Congress;
• Created a new Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization and the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy;
• Directed agency heads to make a plan to reach 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and signed an executive order for the U.S. to re-enter the Paris Agreement, along with other measures to address the climate crisis and other injustices.
Still, much more needs to be done given the environmental and social crisis we are facing. BBFF is demanding rapid and broad-reaching action. Specific action activists are now rallying, running (a 100-mile run by indigenous people to deliver petitions), marching and calling for the revoking of permits for Line 3, Dakota Access Pipeline, and other major fossil-fuel projects.
On Kaua‘i, we need to look at our carbon-intensive tourism industry. Kaua‘i’s dependency on tourism has been questioned then kicked down the road for decades. Now the pandemic, as well of the reality of the climate crisis, is forcing us to examine it with new urgency.
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Laurel Brier is involved with the Kaua‘i Climate Action Coalition, previously known as Apollo Kaua‘i. The KCAC meets the third Monday of the month at 5 p.m. For more information, email kauaiclimate@gmail.com. KCAC joins with Surfrider and Zero Waste Kauai to offer a monthly educational series on the climate crisis and related topics the second Wednesday of the month on Zoom and the ZWK Facebook Live page.
Got your message loud and clear. (1) I’m a racist, (2) I’m a polluter and should be driving a vehicle that will produce record numbers of discarded batteries that end up in foreign countries, (3) Falsely dream that killing jobs creates jobs, and that anyone who doesn’t agree with you will be punished as if they were a criminal, (4) Biden is increasing energy taxes on me because I’m a racist, (5) Biden killed thousands of jobs for people that didn’t vote for him, (6) Biden created more bureaucracy that will be funded by higher taxes, and will have the role of raising taxes on energy, (7) Biden sold the US out to other countries with the poorly hidden agenda of raising taxes on energy, (8) I should be marching, rioting and looting in support of an evil agenda hidden behind a veil of lies.
No thank you.
Loud and clear. I feel the same as you regarding this hit piece. By this social justice eco warriors who doesn’t understand how the majority of the us population lives. Not the tiny echo chamber on twatter.
It’s so telling what you get out of that.
The world needs to comprehend that energy is more than intermittent electricity from wind and solar.
Ever since the discovery of the versatility of products available from petroleum derivatives, and the beginning of manufacturing and assembly of cars, trucks, airplanes, and military equipment in the early 1900’s, the world has had almost 200 years to develop clones or generics to replace the crude oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products that are the basis of lifestyles and economies around the world.
The social needs of our materialistic societies, both stateside and worldwide, are most likely going to remain for continuous, uninterruptable, and reliable electricity from coal, natural gas, or nuclear electricity generation backup to the intermittent renewables, and for all those chemicals derivatives that get manufactured out of crude oil, that makes everything that’s part of our daily lifestyles and economies.
hahahahaha……
Thank you for your insightful contribution, as usual.
Brilliant article Laurel Brier. Thank you very much. Fossil fuel burning, which occurs most in the USA compared to other nations, is causing the world wide coral bleaching (death) crisis that is happening now. Coral dependent species like the Hawaiian sea turtle will also be killed by the destruction of our coral ecosystems by fossil fuel burning. The upper layer of the ocean is heating up by the hotter atmosphere, which is killing our world wide coral. Also rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere from fossil fuel burning is absorbed by the upper layer of the ocean which acidifies the ocean, thereby killing the coral. The most intelligent and most ethical solution is to convert world wide to solar power. Once the solar power collection technology is implemented everywhere, the energy from the sun is free. Also human health will improve by less fossil fuel toxins contaminating breathing air. There is a huge benefit to international economies by creating for example conversion to electric cars powered by solar power. Thus by converting to solar in Kauai, the US, and the world we not only will save our precious ecosystems like coral and dependent Hawaiian green sea turtles, but we also experience a huge boost to our economy and jobs by creating solar power technologies and converting to 100 % solar powered electric vehicles.
Nice opinions however non factual. You’re pushing agenda
Run for your life, Laurel, the sky is falling…only 10 years left!
This nonsense (especially labeling the IPCC as “the most reliable and comprehensive source of scientific climate-change information.”) is more utopian pipe dreaming colored with naivety. It belongs in the dust bin along with the totally discredited Malthusian rantings of Paul Ehrlich.
Ending the use of fossil fuels is absolute folly and reflects the thinking of people flatly ignorant of how the world economy functions.
RG DeSoto
CalJoe,
Please stay in your own lane in California. We neither want nor need your opinions here.
“giveaways to oil, gas and coal corporations, and end the era of fossil-fuel production;”
There is not going to be any cars and airplanes around if this climate change project worked out. Starting with the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Of which consist of about 10 million people inhabiting the lands in Oceania. This may work in Oceania. But I don’t think the land goers like Pennsylvania would buy into this deal. They’d rather keep making cars so that people can have jobs around. And continue…
So…this woman laurel who wrote this whos spouting off all the far left progressive talking points probably provided to her by the CAC (climate action committee) with its roots being in the PNW which is a hot bed for these identity politics. It seems her partner or a household member has filed for the KCAC to become a nonprofit with tax exemptions under the title 501c3. This is the avoid paying taxes on any and all of the “donations” and wages paid to their chapter board members. Most likely family members. It’s such hypocrisy that you want to increase taxes, take away jobs from people who desperately need them, the green job sector isn’t developed to take any significant amount of new employees. You support the shut down of new safer oil pipelines and would prefer they use old outdated ones or increase our dependency on foreign oil, that I don’t know if you know….requires it to be transported to the us by ships. Which sometimes sink, capsize, run aground, much for risky than an oil pipeline.
Anyways by becoming a not for profit to push this CRAPPY ACTION COALITION on kauai. You’re gaming the system.
You seem to think that “green” industries don’t supply jobs. Do you have any numbers to support that?
If I were to give up car, blender for using too much electricity, TVs for using too much high frequency signals that support 100s of network in space. If I were to give up going shopping, that supports huge generators and transformers across the island. If I were to give up scrambled eggs and salads during the day, that supports TGIF restaurants.
What would we have left? One less pc, and one less letter. Which is you.
This is an idea. But far fetch yet. Water is in abundance on this earth. Any kind. Sea water or regular drinking water. What if H2O, the substance water, they can somehow separate the Hydrogen from the Oxygen. Then combine the carbon with the oxygen to make methane. CH4. This would be the hypothetical solution. A solar panel machine might convert this. Then change it back into solar heat. To run the airplane. Not any more substance lost. But could they do this?
Here is the equation again.
H2O + C1 ↔ CH4 (Methane) Airplane fuel.
Reconvert this into solar heat. And you got your solar panels to fly the airplane.