How the largest environmental groups can get large numbers of people into the streets before it is too late.
There has been important and relevant research on how to create successful social change at national levels by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University. Although this research is not definitive of certain success and the global warming emergency has some differences from the other movements Chenoweth studied, it still offers helpful direction to guide us in reaching our politicians and getting the global warming extinction emergency fixed.
This research has discovered, among other things, that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts or violent campaigns. Specifically, Chenoweth's studies found that those engaging a threshold level of 3.5% of the total population on a single focused issue in the same protest had a 50% chance of producing the desired change. Chenoweth looked at hundreds of campaigns over the last century.
Chenoweth's study primarily considered attempts to bring about regime change. A movement was deemed to be successful if it fully achieved its goals both within a year of peak engagement and as a direct result of its activities. A regime change resulting from foreign military intervention would not be considered a success. If the campaign involved bombings, kidnappings, the destruction of infrastructure, or any other physical harm to people or property, it was considered violent.
About half of the time, despite being twice as successful as violent conflicts, peaceful resistance still failed. As Chenoweth and her colleague, Stephan pointed out in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict sometimes this failure occurred because a change movement never really gained enough support or momentum to "erode the power base of the adversary and maintain resilience in the face of repression."
Regarding the "3.5% rule", Chenoweth points out that while 3.5% of the total population is a small minority, such a level of active participation probably also means many more people tacitly agree with the cause. Chenoweth also argued that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to succeed because they can recruit many more participants from a much broader demographic. This larger demographic then can cause severe disruption that paralyzes normal urban life and the functioning of society. In other words, the success of nonviolent protests was partly the result of strength in numbers.
Other researchers researching the factors that may lead to a movement's success or failures such as Bramsen and Chandler emphasize the importance of unity among demonstrators. For example, Bramsen points to the failed uprising in Bahrain in 2011. The Bahrain campaign initially engaged many protestors but quickly split into competing factions.
Bramsen forwards that the resulting loss of group cohesion ultimately prevented the movement from gaining enough momentum to bring about the desired changes. In the US, one only has to recall the Occupy Movement that eventually fell apart because it also tried to combine too many separate social movements and goals into its protests.
The influence of Chenoweth's new research can be seen in the success of the recent global Extinction Rebellion protests recently popularised by the involvement of the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Fridays for the Future and Sunrise Movement as well as other youth movements leaving school on a regular basis to protest our global warming extinction emergency. (The founders of these groups say they have been directly inspired by her findings.)
Chenoweth says groups like Extinction Rebellion are up against a lot of inertia, but she thinks that they have an incredibly thoughtful and strategic core. They seem to have all the right instincts about how to develop and teach through a nonviolent resistance campaign."
Challenge One: How do we get Chenowith's minimal 3.5% protest option to happen successfully around the world
We need to get the world's environmental groups to work together! The world's environmental groups MUST work together to get more than the rock bottom minimum of 3.5% of the national and global population protesting at the same time on a simple, clear, and accurate message. This getting 3.5% is a tall order for numerous reasons.
Here is why. Most of the world's environmental groups:
1. do not see global warming as the central or even the most destructive disruptor and driver for the worsening of most of today's environmental issues. They do not understand the complexities of the multifaceted climate system and its hundreds of tipping points. They also do not understand the many complex adaptive system characteristics of the global warming extinction emergency.
Climate science is not their area of specialty. Consequently, these organizations have not fully connected the coming extreme global warming consequences to the near-impossibility of achieving their future environmental goals. They somehow still believe they can continue with their specific eco-mission goals without focusing most of their resources on solving the rapidly accelerating global warming extinction emergency.
2. have failed to educate their members that only strict new global fossil fuel reduction laws that comply with the REAL 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets strictly enforced by all of our governments will have any realistic hope of saving us before it is too late.
3. have also failed to have the courage to tell their members that at this late stage of our global fossil fuel reduction failure, there will be no saving the world or national economies if we want to save humanity. The honest and needed 2025 global fossil fuel reductions will be extremely costly and painful, requiring great public and national sacrifice and suffering. The fossil fuel lobbyist demand that all needed global fossil fuel reductions must pay for themselves and not hurt the local, national, and global economies is, at this late extinction facing stage, a ludicrous delusion. At worst, this idea that all global fossil fuel reductions must not hurt their respective economies is a demand and delusion that is both counter-productive to humanity's survival and toxic to having a post-global warming future worth living.
4. have failed to have the courage to admit that the grossly inadequate current global warming remedial strategies and the current global fossil fuel reduction tactics are not working fast enough to save us and the biosphere from horrendous suffering and death. If we continue as we are now and our governments do not enforce the necessary fossil fuel reductions, our current remedial strategies will be far too little far too late. We will not just be dealing with an ongoing and unavoidable mass extinction event; we also will eventually be facing near-total extinction.
If we keep going as we are now, we will eventually be facing near-total extinction by way of the runaway greenhouse effect or runaway global warming. (When we say mass extinction as opposed to near-total extinction, we mean that over the next 30-50 years we will not be able to avoid as much as 60-90% of humanity will perish from starvation, the cumulative consequences of global warming, and by crossing the four most dangerous extinction-evoking global warming tipping points described on this page.
5. have not come out publically and told their members that it is far too late for individual actions by themselves. Individual actions alone will not reduce global fossil fuel use enough to save us from constant global warming consequence horrors and mass or eventual near-total extinction.
6. have allowed themselves to become overly-directed by modern marketing principles where issues are dummied down. Today's biggest environmental groups are repeatedly told by their marketing departments not to give their members too much bad or fearful news, or they will leave and stop donating. Modern marketing principles applied to environmental groups have got many of them treating their members like easily frightened children and not adults capable of dealing with or managing bad news.
Today's biggest environmental groups seem to have forgotten that telling people a painful and difficult truth is not an act of scaring them. It is an act of informing them of reality, so as adults, they can make better choices from their remaining options.
7. they are afraid to fully cooperate with other environmental groups because of the fear of the loss of staff, donors, or members who might become more attracted to another organization's mission or personalities.
8. They have not dealt with or acknowledged society's fear of change causing a huge amount of social inertia about doing what must be done to resolve this extinction emergency. (How to do this will be discussed further below.)
Other key reasons for the biggest environmental groups lack of cooperation and ineffective action on the biggest disruptor in the 21st century is because of the world's environmental groups:
a. have bought into the highly politicized and wealthy nation biased gross underestimations of how much we need to reduce our global fossil fuel use and what is necessary to save us from global warming catastrophe,
b. have bought into the gross underestimates of global warming consequences and timetables,
c. have bought into the desperate hope that a knight in shining armor on a white horse will gallop in to save us in the form of an uber-optimism and a blind faith that new technologies (yet to be proved or at the needed scale,) will come into being around 2050 and they will save us at the last minute. And maybe most importantly they,
d. have failed to develop a simple, accurate global warming message of sufficient urgency and clarity. This simple urgent message failure is critical because having the correct and right message will inspire the people of the world to quickly mobilize more than 3.5 % of our global and national population to protest in the streets.
There are workable solutions for the biggest reasons why the world's environmental groups have not mobilized at least 3.5% of the world's population to force our politicians to act.
The world's environmental groups can solve many of the reasons listed above for their failure to cooperate adequately on the global warming extinction emergency by reviewing the rest of this document, reviewing the reference links on this page and getting up to speed on the complex science of our rapidly evolving global warming condition. Once they have done that, they can make new policy decisions on how they want to educate and collaborate with other environmental groups during this emergency. Once they have set the new policies, they are ready for the critically needed global warming messaging upgrade.
Hopefully, the following information will expedite their process of doing this.
"If you can't call a thing what it actually is, it is highly unlikely you will be able to manage or fix it." Lawrence Wollersheim
Almost all of the world's environmental groups have not called our REAL global warming condition for what it is --- a runaway global heating extinction emergency. Most environmental groups are still using the fossil fuel industry lobbyist forwarded favorite climate change term to describe the global warming extinction emergency.
Climate change as a term confuses, muddles, dissipates focus, and sucks urgency out of the real and escalating dangers and urgency of the escalating global warming extinction emergency.
Because the world's major environmental groups have not accurately done this first critical "call it what it is" step correctly, their current solutions also do not match or resolve the real emergency or its urgency! Without accurately naming what is occurring today with our global warming extinction emergency, the proper deadlines, priorities, and collaboration needed to resolve this problem will not be created or executed in time.
What not to say?
Some environmental groups, activists like Greta Thunberg, and even a few progressive politicians have just taken to calling the global warming emergency "an existential threat to our future." Existential is a vague term that does not clearly answer when or how this threat comes about or, what causes it or, where it will occur.
Does an existential threat mean in the minds of the general public an imminent nuclear war, an asteroid crashing into the earth 30 years from now, or a future 100-year pandemic? Existential is too far vague and too academic and it should NEVER be used!
The definition of existential is; "relating to or concerning existence or having to do with the philosophy of existentialism." Generally, unless you are specific, an existential threat is perceived by most people as something general or fuzzy occurring at some very unclear future date.
When you say:
1. "we are in a runaway global heating extinction emergency that
2. that if left unchecked will result in near-total extinction and will unfold worldwide over the next 30-50 years. And,
3. It will be caused by crossing four critical and specific global warming tipping points, and that
4. this will occur if we fail to get close to the essential 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets,"
you are using clear terms that concisely convey the real urgency of this emergency and which everyone can understand even if they do not like what they mean.
Luckily this "call it what it is" problem can be easy to resolve based on new messaging that honestly describes the current global warming condition and emergency. It is the following new messaging that environmental groups and all global warming activists should start using as they cooperate toward getting more than 3.5% of the population of the world into the streets.
(If you are habitually saying climate change or climate crisis, please see this page that explains in more detail why you want to break that counter-productive habit. Then see this page to take the pledge to stop supporting the favorite climate change muddling language of the fossil fuel industry lobbyists.)
There are basics to the new messaging for all environmental groups and activists like Greta Thunberg, Bill Mckibben, Al Gore, etc relating to global warming:
i. Because of wasting the past 35 years of scientific warnings (when we still could have acted, and the necessary fossil fuel reductions would have been much more gradual and comfortable,) the critically needed 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets will now be extremely steep, costly and painful. Therefore, we need to call the people of the world to rise to the shared sacrifice and suffering necessary to meet the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets.
ii. By 2025 we must get very close to these required global fossil fuel target reductions to avoid crossing four critical global warming tipping points. Crossing these four tipping points will take us beyond our already ongoing mass extinction process and lead us to the vestibule of near-total extinction and into the runaway greenhouse process.
iii. If we do not radically reduce our global fossil fuel use immediately to meet the unbiased 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, we will cross four critical tipping points and a global warming mass extinction process will continue to unfold! (By Mass extinction, we mean that as much as 70-90% of humanity will suffer and die within the next 30-50 years if we fail!
Some of our more courageous scientists are already calling our current emergency the sixth mass extinction, aka the Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction. Extinction due to global warming is not a merely theoretical extinction outcome that could never happen. There have been five earlier mass extinction events in Earth's history.) And finally,
iv. Because of our collective waste of 35 years of scientific warnings and other factors involving both climate system momentum and human system inertia (resistance to change,) we are already most likely facing unavoidable severe global warming consequences, mass starvation, and mass extinction of a large percentage of humanity and our animal species. Because this mass extinction process is unavoidable at our current level of global fossil-fuel reductions, we must now also adapt and prepare for what is coming. We must prepare and adapt while we do our best to prevent near-total extinction and our mutually assured destruction (MAD) from occurring.
In the most simple of terms, our new message should be clear that:
It is time for the world to act to reduce fossil fuel use radically. It is also time to prepare for, adapt to, and migrate away (where possible) from our unavoidable runaway global heating-caused mass extinction process while simultaneously doing everything possible to prevent the even worse near-total extinction process from beginning.
Our Plan B strategy here is also simple. If we fail to hit the 2025 targets, then we need to do everything we can to save and salvage as much as we can for as long as we can.
The above "deeper truth" new messaging will mobilize far more people or get them "mad as hell" that we have already let global warming get this bad. It will get them into the streets. We also need far more than 3.5% of the population to understand the above messaging. When people understand the survival simplicity that "this is their last practical chance to save themselves and their children from global warming mass or near-total extinction within their lifetimes," they will fill the streets.
This upgraded message is a powerful, accurate message that should also motivate the media to give the new global warming extinction emergency protests more coverage as well. Past messages like "ending coal energy generation" or "stopping the Keystone pipeline" or "instituting cap and trade agreements," "using less fossil fuel," or the "Green New Deal" have already failed and will not sufficiently excite or unite the world to act.
If we can get at least 3.5% of the national and global populations to come out and protest on the global warming extinction emergency on the next Earth Day (unless someone can argue for a more suitable date,) maybe we can get our politicians to act in time to save some part of humanity and civilization for the future. (If Earth Day is the best day for the protests, it also must be focused exclusively on the global warming extinction emergency, or we will lose the needed single issue impact effectiveness of the protests as discussed above. Please also note that because of the Coronavirus pandemic it may not even be possible to schedule these protests until 2021.)
How we do this also includes all of the world's environmental groups united with activists like Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, Bill McKibben. etc and the new youth groups like Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for the Future and the Sunrise Movement which have momentum and have managed to get an estimated 7 million people worldwide protesting on one day in 2019. Some of these groups have also presented very close messages to the global warming extinction emergency message being presented here although they still have a way to go yet/
The minimal 3.5 % protestor numbers we need are staggering. The time for our governments to act to meet our last chance, 2025 targets grows shorter every day. The challenge of meeting these 2025 targets is near overwhelming!
We need to cooperate and at least meet the minimum 3.5 % protester targets this year to mobilize about 14 million in the US, about 14 million in Europe, and about 280 million protesters worldwide. These amounts are needed to reach the minimum 50% successful change rate described above.
To get the minimum 3.5% of the population in the streets protesting is going to require the following in addition to the correct new message mentioned above:
1. Only the most substantial and best-resourced environmental organizations with the most extensive global reach in coordination with the other largest, best-resourced environmental organizations should begin immediately to plan and set the dates for the first of these global protests. They will have better infrastructure to facilitate the largest coordinated protests the world has ever seen.
2. Once the dates have been set, and the essential coordination and communication infrastructure is in place, all of the other environmental groups around the world need to be contacted and invited to participate. Their members will need to help promote this protest day as well.
3, the largest and best-resourced environmental organizations would next coordinate with their media connections and then with the smaller worldwide environmental groups' media connections to develop the most extensive media coverage of a global protest ever achieved.
Nothing less than a total involvement of almost all worldwide environmental groups will be needed if we are ever going to get just to the minimum 3.5% of the population protesting threshold. But...
Challenge 2: There is still a significant problem with getting 3.5% of the population to protest!
3.5% of the people protesting in the streets only gives a 50% chance of getting our politicians to enact the necessary global fossil fuel reduction laws to save us from near-total extinction. Having only a 50% probability of avoiding the near-total extinction of humanity and the end of civilization is simply an unacceptable risk to reward or penalty ratio. This risk to danger level is insane when the future of all life on the planet is at stake.
No one would get on an airplane where there was a 50% chance of crashing and not landing successfully. We need to raise the percentage of your nation's and the world's population protesting at one time much higher by getting a far more significant portion of the world into the streets!
What we really should be targeting is about 5- 7 or 10% or more of the population acting at one time. With those numbers, no politician would dare take the side of the vested interests in the fossil fuel-related industries over the wellbeing of the people for fear of being removed from office in the next elections. Although 3.5% of the US or the European Union is about 14 million people, the real targets should be about 28-40 million people to ensure our politicians act to save their own families and us in time!
On a global level, 3.5% is about 280 million people, 7% about 560 million, and 10 % about 800 million. Targeting for only 3.5% is grossly insufficient and may likely be targeting for failure.
We must target for far higher percentages of humanity protesting in the streets. I believe it will take between 15% to 30% or more to finally get our politician s to act!
Challenge 3: To get the kind of real numbers of protesters we need one more key ingredient
We may also need to get the world's major and minor celebrities in the areas of movies, music, and sports from every country and ethnicity working to promote and attend the scheduled day of world global warming extinction emergency protests. This celebrity effort means that every environmental group that has connections to these types of national and global celebrities must contact them and get them involved in promoting the global day of protest in their media appearances and in their independent events. This also means that any individual who has a direct relationship with any of these kinds of celebrities must contact them and get them involved and active.
We must get the world's celebrities involved, or we will not get enough pre-event media coverage to get enough protestors at these simultaneous protest events all over the world. All eco-organizations and their members also need to coordinate on finding and utilizing celebrity contacts in the fields of the world's sports, music, and movies for appearances at the actual days of protest making speeches, or even performing.
Only by making this day of protest the greatest single collection of celebrities united for one cause and purpose protesting with the general population in the streets, do we have a realistic hope of getting the 3.5% and the beyond percentages that are needed. Only by making these protests also the largest day of global protest in human history will we have a decent chance of saving the future.
One final idea for making this day of protest successful is to also have a musical anthem for the protests. Sometimes the world needs an anthem to promote a worthy cause – look at how the music of Live-Aid and Band-Aid had such a powerful impact on Ethiopia. As Woody Guthrie once said, "A folk singer's job is to comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable" Here's a link to an example of a new original modern-day folk song that highlights the need for awareness and action on global warming extinction emergency. Hopefully, it may also provide ideas for the final anthem selection.
View this musical anthem for the global warming movement here on Youtube: There Is No Planet B
Challenge 4: There is still another major problem remaining to get enough protesters in the streets!
Even with their resources, the world's largest environmental organizations with broad global reach will need help. This is where the world's largest philanthropies and corporations need to step up and help them finance the expanded global logistics to coordinate these massive simultaneous demonstrations in cities over the world with thousands of other environmental organizations and their members and volunteers. (Click here for a new article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy on why philanthropies need to do this.) And finally,
Challenge 5: There is a super problem remaining here! How to get our motivated politicians to get our governments to immediately act upon practical deadline-driven steps that will remove the near-total extinction threat from humanity.
Keep in mind that getting at or above the 3.5% public protest threshold is only the beginning of a long and challenging global fossil fuel energy use reduction process that our governments must first enact into law and then rapidly enforce. Right now, most of what they are doing are actions that, at best, amount to far too little far too late to save us from near-total extinction.
The needed government actions are multifaceted, complex, and challenging. To see a summary of ALL of the challenging and practical steps that the governments must enact and enforce simultaneously to manage this extinction emergency, click here.)
The probability of getting enough (3.5%, 5%, or 10% or more) of the population protesting in the streets at the same time to give us a fighting chance even to get our politicians started on the problem is going to be a herculean challenge. But, what other rational options do we have other than to try?
At worst, getting close to the target 3.5%, 5%, or 10% or more of the population protest levels should at least get our governments to slow down many of the now unavoidable coming mass extinction global warming consequences so more of us have time to prepare, adapt and live out as much of our lives as we can as comfortably as we can.
Scenario 2: Global warming consequences need to get much worse before our politicians and governments will get it and act.
Societies and nations are a lot like individuals. Most individuals will only change their lives and behaviors when the pain of going forward is less than the pain that they are currently experiencing. It is often referred to as the point where an individual reaches "rock bottom" and finally becomes willing to make the necessary and challenging life changes.
It is highly probable that because nations and societies are like individuals, they too will not heed the global warming extinction emergency warnings until the pain of experiencing repeated ever-worsening global warming consequences is more than the fear of change and the pain of our current global fossil fuel reduction changes. Our governments will not enact and enforce the laws necessary to achieve the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets until our governments:
1. call the global warming extinction emergency what it is, and
2. at least, 3.5% of the national and world's population is out in the streets demanding change, or
3. experience global warming consequences that cost between 1/2 to one trillion dollars per single incident, and a shockingly massive number of individuals (100,000 or more) are killed or made homeless in the same event.
We have already had global warming-related storms in the US like Hurricane Sandy that cost of 300 billion dollars in damages, and we are having wildfires and flooding year after year coming close to that amount. However, this pain level is still not enough to offset the tremendous economic, political and social pain as well as the fear of change of making all of the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel reductions we need to make to keep the future safe.
The good news of Scenario Two is that the rapidly worsening reality of the global warming extinction emergency will soon become one of humanity's biggest allies. The financial and personal pain of both cumulative and ever-escalating global warming consequences will continue to steadily increase (by trend) in severity, frequency, and scale. They will keep rising until society, and the nations of the world are so depleted, beaten down, and shell-shocked by the continuous global warming consequences that they can no longer bear the ever-increasing pain and losses as things continue to worsen. At this "rock bottom" point, our politicians and governments will finally become willing to make the real and honest changes.
The bad news of Scenario Two is that unless the cumulative global warming consequences (like the 2020 massive wildfires in Australia.) do not increase quickly enough to the single incident 1/2 to 1 trillion dollar level with 100,000 people or more dying or homeless, we still will not pay sufficient attention to our runaway global heating extinction emergency to enact the government-enforced actions need to reduce global fossil fuel use in time. Our governments will not act in time to save us from a mass extinction nightmare of our own making. (Click here to see a comprehensive multistep overview of all that we have to do to make the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel reductions in time.)
Without a doubt, Scenario Two will happen will continue to develop and unfold all by itself. The only questions that remain in Scenario Two are:
1. How long will it take us to get to 1/2 - 1 trillion dollar global warming single instance disasters with 100,000 or more killed or made homeless, and
2. Will even those levels of massive loss and destruction be enough to get the world's politicians and governments into action on global warming before it is too late!
The bad news: Every legitimate runaway global heating solution strategy is going to cause lots of pain and financial loss!
The question is, are we willing to endure a natural and appropriate transitional pain and financial loss for the lives and comfort of our children and future generations? Will our leaders educate us and invite us to be brave and make the necessary sacrifices. Will they inspire us to have the courage to do what is right, but painful?
There are already many environmental and global warming leaders who will speak the necessary truths. We now need to move them to the foreground!
Getting us Out of The Misleading "We are Making Climate Progress" Trap Before it is Too Late
The following is another area we need to be willing to disrupt. There are many remedial climate and runaway global heating tactics and strategies being forwarded by well-intentioned and honorable non-profit environmental groups making incremental progress on runaway global heating. Their progress cannot be denied, but we are also in the 11th hour to prevent humanity's near-total extinction!
Making some climate progress that looks good and feels good to the climate-science unsophisticated is easy to promote and keeps the supporters, members, and staff happy. But, putting resources toward feel-good incremental improvement is no longer enough if we want to survive.
We must discipline ourselves as a movement. We must focus on completing the deadline prioritized government-driven climate actions to prevent climate extinction before it is too late (in about another 3-9 years, 2025-2031.) We must focus all of our climate remedial resources onto the action path of only what must be done by specific critical extinction preventing deadlines!
We cannot lose our focus on "nice to have" or feel-good non-critical path smaller pieces of the overall climate extinction solution or, we will all be dead soon.
So, it is now up to our climate leaders. Will they continue allocating valuable resources onto "too little too late" and feel-good tactics that do produce some progress but will not get us anywhere close to what we need to do to prevent near-total human extinction!
No matter how much climate organizations and activists are making incremental "too little too late" and feel-good climate progress, these off-critical path actions and tactics will become totally meaningless if we fail to prevent near-total human extinction!
Unfortunately, the discipline and focus to stay on critical path critical deadline actions still appears challenging for many climate organizations and climate leaders. This means as part of our necessary climate disruption, we must also call this future-dangerous and misleading climate progress reality to the attention of all climate activists, peers, and organizations before it is too late.
New Technologies will not save us in time.
Nuclear power is not the solution. It is another cool new set of problems that avoid the real solution which is radically reducing global fossil fuel usage to the levels mentioned above. Additionally, there is no possible way to physically scale-up building enough new nuclear reactor energy generation capacity to replace ALL of global fossil fuel use in the amounts needed (mentioned above) and, in the time needed to save us from the worst consequences that will occur over the next 30-50 years.
In spite of the grand promises that are being touted about how new geoengineering technologies may help us suck carbon out of the atmosphere, there are critical warnings about any rushed or desperate implementation of these new and unproven technologies. A myriad of unsolved problems attend the proposed “geoengineering” technologies, not the least of which is they are still in the “theoretical drawing board stage,” have no economically proven working models, they cannot be scaled up adequately and in time to draw down carbon as computer-modeled, and much more.
Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) are particularly troublesome, and these currently nonexistent technologies are built into current IPCC prediction models. One overwhelming reason they are not feasible any time soon is that some examples of them require growing carbon crops on land the size of India, each and every year for decades. The world does not have anything close to this amount of land to lend to a carbon capture scheme, because the land is already being used for food crops for human use and consumption. When the choice is starving hundreds of millions of people to grow carbon-capture crops to remediate what humans did in the past, then we must say that this plan is non-sense and look for other technologies. And as Professor Kevin Anderson explains in his lucid video in March 2017,[2] that nonsense is just what many of the international IPCC models now suggest.
The key warnings about planning for nonexistent or economically unproven new technologies (particularly those that will save us by sucking carbon out of the air,) to resolve the runaway global heating extinction emergency are:
We cannot allow new, nonexistent, or economically unproven technologies to lull us into a false sense of comfort that we can continue to pour more carbon and methane pollution into our atmosphere—or preserve the dying fossil fuel energy generation business model. The emphasis on the development of these new technologies must always be to move past the fossil fuel energy generation age. There can be no turning back! We have entered the age of green energy generation, and we need to go forward full speed to get us out of the existing runaway global heating extinction emergency.
Before demonstrations at scale with proven economic viability, we cannot expect that “theoretically drawing board” of geoengineering technologies will save us from what is coming. Relying heavily on miraculous new technologies to save us is a dangerous strategy and should never replace the primary focus of doing the most in-harmony-with-nature actions and the other systemic actions recommended in the Job One Plan. These actions do not carry the potentially disastrous side effects of many new technologies employed as last chance solutions suggested in the most desperate of times and situations.
We must never forget that almost all new technology is based on mechanical, three-dimensional engineering principles that are far simpler than the principles of complex adaptive systems like the biological and climate systems of our precious planet. Engineering is generally a simple and linear three-dimensional set of cause-and-effect actions. Biology and the climate are complex adaptable systems with nonlinear, self-organizing, and unpredictable spontaneously emergent They should be seen as having many more non-cause-and-effect “dimensions.” They also have far more unknown and complex tipping points, interconnectivities, and interdependencies than are found within the limited mechanical rules and solutions characteristic of the nonliving, mechanical world. Frequently, applying mechanical solutions to complex adaptive systems such as our biological and climate systems results in unpleasant surprises in the form of unintended negative consequences.
We cannot allow our individual or collective hubris about our many great mechanical engineering accomplishments to blind us to the risk of overlooking the possibility that new mechanical technology solutions applied to global warming’s complex adaptable systems may, in fact, produce equal or even greater damage than the problem they're meant to solve. For example, placing massive amounts of sun-reflecting particles into the complex adaptive system of the atmosphere and global climate is being widely discussed as a mechanical new technology solution to the runaway global heating extinction emergency. What if, as an unintended side effect, those particles blocked the normal rainfall in a nuclear-armed country like China and caused immediate mass starvation and death? With its own population dying before its eyes, where do you think the Chinese government would point its nuclear weapons, or from whom would they demand immediate restitution? The unintended risks could easily and quickly get out of hand, leading to unpredictable and potentially worse consequences if any of the nations harmed have nuclear weapons. Additionally, once our ecological and climate systems have been stressed beyond their respective tipping points and points of no return, it will be far too late to develop or deploy any technologically useful geoengineering repair or cooling For additional information on the many problems and dangers of geoengineering solutions to the runaway global heating extinction emergency, see these articles by Andrew Revkin,[3] Chelsea Harvey,[4] and John Vidal.[5]
We also cannot expect to extend the use or lifespan of fossil fuels by increasing fossil fuel consumption efficiency. Collective experience and research have repeatedly shown that using technology to increase fossil fuel consumption efficiency or conservation frequently increases overall fossil fuel use rather than reducing it. This is because of the economic savings that increased fossil fuel energy efficiency or conservation provides, acting to create more cash resources to buy or use more things dependent upon using more fossil fuels. This is known as Jevons’s paradox.[6]
In further qualification to what is been said in the section above, it is necessary to state that:
New technology will always play some role, but not the role everyone is hoping for --- the role of the miracle last-minute savior. The essential role that new technology will play will be in providing breakthroughs that will allow increased food production in the poor soils and the sunlight-poor growing seasons of the far north and the far south. New technology will no doubt also provide new solutions to moving our infrastructure to the safe zones as well as creating new types of more sustainable infrastructure and energy generation and use. New technology will also supply many other breakthroughs that will facilitate those who do survive living longer and more comfortably.
Click here to see why Carbon Capture tech will not save us in time
Click here to see why current net-zero strategies will not save us in time.
What can you do to distribute this critical article and help get the needed number of global protesters into the streets?
Every one of the world's environmental organizations and each one of us is responsible for acting with urgency in this extinction emergency. You are also accountable, especially if you know or have a positive influence on politicians or you know the key managers or directors of any environmental group or, you know, any movie, sport, or music celebrities. If you know anyone in any of these categories, get this article to them as fast as possible and, where possible, connect them to the big environmental groups coordinating the next big protest.
If you do not know someone in any of the previous categories, you are still responsible to get this document to all of your friends. Post it to newsgroups and contact everyone else you can to ensure we get a large portion of your area, nation, and the world's population into the streets protesting the global warming extinction emergency.
Never forget that the 3.5% level of protests only gives us a 50% chance of getting our politicians to enact the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and laws to save us from near-total extinction. We need to raise that protest participation level to 5-7-10 % or even higher to improve our 50/50 chance of saving the world. A 50% chance of saving humanity and our civilization is ridiculous and an unacceptable risk, threat, and uncertainty when the stakes are everyone and everything on Earth as well as all future generations.
Please embrace your responsibilities to inform others and connect the people who can make a difference:
1. Spread the word and send this article to the key directors and managers of every environmental group you know.
2. Please contact every celebrity you know and get them this article!
Don't worry if these organizations or individuals get multiple articles or other personal contacts from many different people. It will only call the extra needed attention to the urgency, importance, and necessity that their involvement requires for the future survival success of humanity as well as the success and survival of all animals and biological life on Earth.
Other than the environmental groups, unfortunately, generation Z and the Millenials are probably most responsible for getting this done. This burden of responsibility is not because they are ones or the generations who have created this extinction emergency, but because they are the ones who will suffer the most and die far too soon because of it.
Here is what the Job One for Humanity nonprofit organization (the author of this article) is willing to do
We are a small nonprofit climate research analysis organization with few staff and volunteers. Still, we are eager to use our mail lists (about 10,000) to help promote these protests once other nonprofit environmental organizations far larger than ourselves set a date, update their global warming reality-aligned messages for these protests, and set up the communication and coordination structures needed to have the protests be peaceful, global and successful.
We also have allies with mail lists that could potentially add another 100,000 to 400,000 email contacts to the effort for promoting these protests. Job One for Humanity will do everything within its power and resources to help make these last chance protests successful before it is too late.
Last thoughts
You, your family, and your children, as well as your businesses and nations, will endure ever-growing financial losses and suffer ever-escalating calamities as global warming consequences accelerate as they most certainly will. Millions then billions will starve and die in an already unfolding mass extinction event.
What most people fail to realize is that the worst global warming consequences will not increase slowly or gradually as they have done over the last 35 years while we ignored the warning of what was coming. As we cross more and more global warming tipping points, the worst global warming consequences will increase faster and faster, growing exponentially over time. (In the graph below, the red line is an example of linear growth and the green line an example of exponential growth.)
The exponential growth of global warming consequences after crossing these four most crucial tipping points after 2025 means that few people or governments will be able to stay up with the escalating consequences if we do not come close to hitting the future-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
The only question remaining of true importance is, how long will it be before our big environmental organizations collaborate with each other to make the needed new minimum of getting at least 3.5% of the population protesting at the same time to get our politicians to act to save us from extinction?
If either Scenario One or Scenario Two does not happen in time because our politicians did not enact and enforce the laws needed to get very close to the 2025 targets, the global warming mass extinction war is lost. At that point, the only remaining battle will only be to prevent near-total extinction because mass extinction will be assured.
If you are still wavering in deciding what to do, please see where we are now on the Climate Change and Runaway Global Heating Doomsday Clock!
Your Personal global warming extinction emergency "Plan B" and other ideas
If we fail to achieve either Scenario One or Scenario Two in time or come as close as possible to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, there is no guarantee that we'll be successful in preventing near-total extinction. Therefore if failure to meet the 2025 targets is a possibility to you, it is time also to start thinking about or preparing your personal global warming Plan B.
Even though our fossil fuel reductions must be government-driven and government-enforced to save us in time from mass or near-total extinction, every reduction, no matter how small, still has value. In every situation, despite all the obstacles, the only way we save any part of a liveable future for even a tiny part of humanity is to radically and immediately cut fossil fuel use. These fossil fuel use reductions will slow down adding more carbon to the atmosphere enough so that we have more time to prepare, migrate, and adapt as well as possible. Every reduction in our personal, business, or governmental fossil fuel use means that more people will live longer, or more people will suffer less.
We are in deep trouble! If the world's environmental groups do not cooperate to get 3.5 % - 10% of the world's population into the streets protesting on the same day, there is only a small hope left to prevent mass extinction from happening. This means that there will be no surviving mass or near-total extinction without mass and near-total cooperation.
If the world's environmental groups do not work together to save us in time and the world does not come together to tell its politicians to act now, we may discover that mass, and near-total extinction is the Earth's natural evolutionary and final solution for the destruction that its human virus is causing to the balance of wellbeing of all Earth's species. If we do not act now, the Earth's average global temperature will keep rising until it burns off the offending virus (us.) This is much like a fever in humans kills off our dangerous germs.
In summary
1. Scenario One and Scenario Two will develop concurrently. Which one reaches a tipping point first is anyone's call. The real challenge is Scenario One or Two reaching fruition before it is too late to avoid near-total extinction.
2. Scenario One is also based on the principle that when one is in an emergency, one bypasses the typical structures designed to handle the emergency, and one directly intervenes and handles the emergency themselves. Our politicians were supposed to be protecting us but have failed. Therefore, we have to bypass their inaction by going to the streets in such numbers demanding action that our politicians must act for fear of losing their jobs.
3. Resistance or denial is what you add to reality to make it hurt more and last longer! That is what we will be doing with the global warming extinction reality if we continue to resist or deny its truth or, we fail to acknowledge we must come as close as we can to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. These 2025 targets are our last credible chance to prevent crossing the four key extinction-evoking global warming tipping points to prevent human genocide and animal biocide.
4. In the future, if we survive, when the world looks back at the global warming extinction emergency, those who continued to burn fossil fuels indiscriminately or did not cooperate to resolve this emergency while we still had time left will surely be considered guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide. This is because millions then billions will die in the following decades soon after we cross the four post-2025 extinction-evoking global warming tipping points and experience the cumulative effects of all global warming consequences.
5. If the environmental movement and the world's key global warming activists are unable to call the global warming extinction emergency what it really is, there is very little hope that the world and our political leaders will hear our message in time to save us from the ultimate catastrophe.
If you took the time to read this document and review its supporting links and notes, you now have an honest view of the challenge that now lies before us in:
1. what will it REALLY take for the politicians and governments of the world to finally act in an effective way to fix the global warming extinction emergency, and
2. how difficult it be to reach our politicians and get them to make all of the needed government-driven changes in the little time that we have left.
In spite of all of the challenges and difficulties, what other options do we have? We either work together, or we die together in the mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the accelerating global warming extinction emergency!
Relevant supporting links:
The correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets necessary to meet to prevent mass extinction.
The unthinkable four key extinction-evoking global warming tipping points that will occur soon after 2025 if we miss reaching the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
Why geoengineering and carbon capture technologies will not save us in time.
The gross underestimating of current global warming consequences and their timetables by governments and IPCC discussed here,
Why climate change as a term confuses, muddles, dissipates focus, and sucks urgency out of the real and escalating dangers of the escalating global warming extinction emergency.
What are ALL of the things our governments must do to save us in time from global warming extinction?
What are the most difficult challenges for meeting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets?
To understand more on how the fear of change and cultural trauma affect the current social inertia surrounding making changes needed to resolve the global warming extinction emergency, click here for a new study.
Is it time to start preparing your personal global warming extinction emergency Plan B?
Why philanthropy must do more to support accurate global warming education link https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Philanthropy-Must-Stop/247761
An expanded summary of Chenoweth's 3.5% fruitful change movement research article is here.
Click here for a possible anthem or anthem ideas for the worldwide protests.
Key human system inertia factors relevant to making global warming solutions more challenging to achieve have been described at the bottom of this page and also on this page and in the book Climageddon.)
A description of the various climate system momentums pushing temperatures ever higher has been described in numerous studies as well as in the recently published book Climageddon.
Key Notes:
Note # 1. We are releasing this article under our policy of respectful disruption described here. It has and will be sent to the management and boards of environmental groups worldwide. Should those groups ignore this effort at updating their positions and education on global warming we will have no hesitation of implementing the second more public phase of respectful disruption also described here.
Note # 2. It is shameful that the new youth movements mentioned above in this article are leading protests and building awareness of the real global warming extinction emergency. This extinction threat awareness should have been the job of our most prominent environmental organizations!
Note # 3. Society's fear of change is also a major cause of the social inertia concerning doing what must be done to resolve this extinction emergency. The following is how Part Three of the Job one for Humanity plan handles this issue:
We must create adequate national and international new job transition training and recovery subsidies and funding that would assist all individuals, businesses, and nations that will suffer significant financial losses or closures because of the rapidly falling use of fossil fuels. For example, carbon Fee and Dividend revenues will help compensate and assist developing nations in stopping using fossil fuels. It will also help developing nations leapfrog over the building or expanding any current fossil fuel energy generation systems directly into building or expanding green energy generation systems like solar or wind power.
We cannot forget to financially both compensate and subsidize and actively assist all of those individuals, businesses, and nations who will be harmed financially in this rapid transition away from fossil fuels. This support would naturally also include providing new job training in positions for the new green economy or positions in other industries.
This step is critical to the success of all global fossil fuel reduction procedures, especially when the needed 2025 reductions are so severe. It is the unsurfaced fear of change and how it will harm the current status quo, which is a major source of the inertia that has prevented humanity from effectively managing the global warming extinction emergency over the last 35 years.
If we do not handle this fear of change by assuring those whose jobs, livelihoods or assets are threatened we will assist them in this transition and help minimize any losses, it is highly unlikely we will be successful making the required 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (Please see the following research article on cultural trauma, social inertia, and climate change for a deeper understanding of the critical early importance of implementing this fear of change management and compensation step.)
This document was prepared by the Job One for Humanity research team. Job One for Humanity is a non-profit organization dedicated to analyzing all relevant global warming research and then formulating successful strategies to remedy the current global warming extinction emergency.
This article was published as part of our organization's necessary disruption policies.
Be the first to comment
Sign in with