Growing Civil Disobedience On Climate Change?

Will a big demonstration coming up soon
push the needle on climate change activism?  

Scientists, activists and others are getting very, very antsy on the lack of movement on climate change.

It looks like more and more people are ready to hit the streets to at least try and combat inaction on climate change.

Some of the political leaders are there, but things aren't happening because of an ideological stance among many conservatives that climate change doesn't exist, or isn't dangerous, or isn't something to worry about.

That leads to gridlock, and too few people are generating ideas or action plans on how to minimize the threats climate change pose.

Never mind that most climate scientists are getting more and more alarmed with regard to climate change.  There was the news this week, for example, that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at a record pace in 2013.

While we in the eastern half of United States were blessed with a cool summer and it's currently snowing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, that only amounts to a couple of exceptions.  (Even in the worst case scenarios of global warming forecasts, occasional cold waves will still happen. Winter won't be repealed.)

The world as a whole keeps warming, with most months so far this year placing in the top 10 warmest, if not THE warmest. Through July, the year 2014 was tied with 2002 as the third hottest year for the Earth on record. 

Meanwhile, there hasn't been much meaningful debate as to what to do about climate change. The debate among politicians is whether it's happening, or whether it's some strange conspiracy among climate scientists to rake in federal grant money or something.

Climate scientists recently lent
their name and quotes to distributing
facts about climate change.  

Hint:  A lot of scientists I've met tend to be ornery on occasion and love to bring up problematic facts.

If there were such a big conspiracy to grab the government dough, we would have heard someone loudly giving us proof of that by now.

With nothing else to force the issue, is it time for civil disobedience in regards to climate change?

A lot of people thing so.

It'll be interesting to see how many people show up on September 21 for what organizers hope is a major scene in New York City called the People's Climate March.

It's timed for September 21 because the UN is holding a major climate meeting on that day.

Say the organizers:  "We'll peacefully flood the streets in historic numbers, both in New York City and in solidarity events around the world."

I guess flooding the streets of New York with demonstrators is better than flooding the streets of New York with water from the Atlantic Ocean, due to rising sea levels.

A main organizer of the People's Climate March, journalist and activist (and a fellow Vermonter!) Bill McKibben, sure seems optimistic. He Tweeted yesterday: "Home in Middlebury tonite with a church full of people prepping for #climatemarch VT sending 14 buses!

Yeah, Vermont is full of activists, but not that many of us live here. So 14 buses is pretty impressive.

People's Climate also said they anticipate about 1,500 events in 130 countries to coincide with the New York march.

If the People's Climate March is huge, it could be a turning point, as political leaders will begin to feel more pressure to do something with climate change.

There's already some interesting local developments.  The other day, in Massachusetts, Bristol District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter dropped charges against two climate activists who blocked a 40,000 coal shipment to a local power plant.

Said Sutter, as quoted in the Boston Globe:  "Because of my sympathy with their position, I was in a dilemma... I have a duty to go forward to some extent with this case and to follow the applicable case law, but they were looking for a forum to present their very compelling case about climate change.

"I do believe they're right, that we're at a crisis point with climate change."

In other words, the D.A. decided that climate change is a worse problem than a couple of environmentalists delaying a coal shipment. He kinda put a stamp of approval on climate change civil disobedience.

Climate scientists are getting more and more outspoken, too. (Although some, like James Hansen and Michael Mann, are not exactly excessively shy with their warnings about climate change)

This past week, Skeptical Science did a series of online cartoons quoting climate scientists, who happily  lent their name to the cause, to outline lots of facts about climate change to the public.  So yeah, scientists seem to be getting a little more activist, too.

Meanwhile, a few former climate change deniers are starting to accept that climate change is happening. However, the disheartening piece of that is, many of those guys think that rising levels of carbon dioxide are a good thing.

According to the Washington Post, the  conservative Cato Institute thinks rising carbon levels in the atmosphere is cause for celebration.

The Post quotes Paul Knappenberger from the Cato Institute as follows:

"Carbon dioxide is building in the atmosphere and rising to levels that have probably not been seen in a long time (hundreds of thousands of years)

OK, Knappenberger's got that totally right. But he goes on:

"The rise is a continued reminder of the steady drumbeat of human progress. The carbon dioxide that is building in the atmosphere, at least in part, gets there through human emissions of carbon dioxide that are the by-product of burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to produce the vast majority of the energy that has powered mankind's industrial and technical ascent since the Industrial Revolution."

Yes, the Industrial Revolution, all in all, generally worked out well for humans. But throughout millenia, humans have used things to advance civilization, then abandoned those things for something they discovered works better.

Is Knappenberger suggesting we should stay stuck in the Industrial Revolution and not move on to something that works better, something that minimizes the consequences of global warming that threatens human progress?  Should we not at least not look into technologies that might advance humans further?

Maybe it will take civil disobedience to help prove Knappenberger wrong.