CONSERVING NATURE WITH WORDS & PHOTOS

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tingerhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

In 1980, The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) released its 13-episode series entitled, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage and struck televised gold.  Narrated by the indubitable astrophysicist and science communicator, Carl Sagan, the original Cosmos set a milestone for scientific documentaries, examining such enigmas as the origin of life and humankind’s place in the universe.  Along the way, Cosmos became the most popular public television series in the United States until 1990 when master documentarian, Ken Burns came along with his The Civil War.  To date, more than 500 million people in 60 countries have viewed the original Cosmos.

In 2014, Seth McFarlane, successful animator and creator of the Family Guy television series, convinced the Fox Network to produce a Cosmos remake with world-renowned astrophysicist and equally indubitable Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson assuming Dr. Sagan’s narrator role.  This move was especially apropos since Dr. Sagan was Dr. Tyson’s hero growing up and they both possessed a charismatic way of communicating that magically converted everyday people on the street into scientific stalwarts.

As Mr. McFarlane put it, he wanted to financially support the new Cosmos because he believed it “bridged the gap between the academic community and the general public”.  For anyone now watching the show, it’s impossible to disagree with this description.  Watching Dr. Tyson take complex scientific principles and spin them down for everyone to understand is indeed something to behold.  Dr. Tyson is exactly the type of person who will be most effective at explaining the complexities of Climate Change to the American public and then getting them to understand the importance of taking immediate action.

Neil deGrasse Tyson—Scientist / Communicator

What you say about a man who was captain of his college wrestling team; rower on his collegiate crew team; ballet, jazz, and ballroom dancer; natural history essayist and columnist; multi-published author; doctor of astrophysics and cosmology; public television show host; planetarium director; and a NASA Distinguished Scientist? When we first read Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s bio, we jumped out of my chair, slapped our hands together and exclaimed, “Okay, here’s just the man who can tell us how to solve the Climate Change crisis.” 

Born on October 5, 1958 in New York City, Dr. Tyson became hooked on astronomy when he made his first visit to the Hayden Planetarium—a facility he now directs—at the tender age of nine. Truly a contemporary “renaissance man”, Tyson not only has had an asteroid named after him but was also voted the “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive” by People Magazine in 2000. Educated as an astrophysicist and cosmologist, he epitomizes the oft-used cliché, “rocket scientist”.  But his skills as a science communicator and host of such PBS shows as NOVA ScienceNow, Origins, and Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey are impeccable and beyond reproach.

Tyson has also written numerous books on the universe and humanity’s place in it.   His titles include: Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries , Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, and his own memoir, The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist.

Not just a brilliant scientist, Tyson is also an awesome presenter. His vast knowledge in a variety of scientific fields, his sense of humor, rhetoric, and the manner in which he presents the shows adds to his mass appeal. The thousands of views his YouTube videos garner is a proof of his ever-growing popularity. Tyson’s professional research interests include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way—working with data from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and the Andes Mountains of Chile.

Using his quick brain, acerbic wit, and stalwart media connections, Tyson has never backed away from a good fight.  Just ask any of the “creationism” folks he’s verbally sparred with on the air. He is especially assertive when it comes to expressing his views on Climate Change.  Here’s what Tyson had to say on a May 6, 2014 episode of his show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: “We’re dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate the Earth hasn’t seen since the great climate catastrophes of the past, the ones that led to mass extinctions. We just can’t seem to break our addiction to the kinds of fuel that will bring back a climate last seen by the dinosaurs, a climate that will drown our coastal cities and wreak havoc on the environment, and our ability to feed ourselves.”

From an educational perspective, Tyson provides the absolute best demonstration of the difference between weather and Climate Change we have ever seen.  It is an astonishingly simple video showing him walking a typically curious dog along a beach. As the dog veers randomly from side-to-side on its leash, Tyson explains that the dog’s erratic movements are like weather—which may vary wildly from day-to-day.  Meanwhile, he says that his straight-line movement mimics Climate Change which captures the center line of the periodic weather patterns.  In the final analysis, Tyson summarizes that “you have to keep your eye on the man, not the dog.”

Finally, here are some of Tyson’s remarks presented on the web site, Forward Progressives: 

“One of the biggest mistakes we make when discussing Climate Change is calling it a ‘debate,’ because there is no debate—it’s real and human activity on the planet is the leading cause of it.”

“Unfortunately, the main reasons why there are so many people who deny that humans are causing Climate Change are: The issue has become political, meaning that many people shut off their brains and simply regurgitate talking points based on whatever their political party is telling them to believe, regardless of facts.”

“Religion is another issue that many use as a reason to deny Climate Change. I’ve met quite a few people who deny Climate Change is real because they believe God controls the weather. There’s really no reasoning with these people or changing their minds—no matter what sort of factual evidence you provide, they’re going to believe what they believe.”

Simply put, it would be great if we could clone at least 100 more Dr. Tysons.  While his scientifically based put-downs of unfounded rhetoric may come across to some as arrogant, they may be just the words we need to educate the general public about the potential pending ravages of Climate Change. If deniers hear Dr. Tyson’s arguments about rational logic overcoming illogical bluster enough times, we are certain to gain a few converts here and there!

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Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

In January 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer for the New Yorker and Williams College professor, published The Sixth Extinction which issued an unwavering clarion call for humans to clean up our acts … or else. As background, Kolbert explains that the dinosaurs were killed during the Fifth Extinction—which scientists suspect was caused by an asteroid. But now, we are living through an epoch that many scientists describe as the “Sixth Extinction”, and this time, human activity—emphasizing our use of fossil fuels in causing Climate Change—is the culprit. As one scientist put it: “We’re now the asteroid”.

“We are effectively undoing the beauty and the variety and the richness of the world which has taken tens of millions of years to reach,” Kolbert tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. ” … We’re sort of unraveling that. … We’re doing, it’s often said, a massive experiment on the planet, and we really don’t know what the end point is going to be.”

Elizabeth Kolbert—Educator / Communicator

When it comes to Climate Change, Elizabeth Kolbert and Al Gore have a great deal in common.  In 2006, they both used their considerable literary talents to warn the world—in no uncertain terms—about the pending ravages of a warming atmosphere.  While most people know about Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, relatively few have heard of Kolbert’s book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe.  But make no mistake, Kolbert’s writing opened plenty of eyes and changed lots of minds about the severity of the Climate Change / Global Warming threat. 

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Doug Macdougall wrote the following about Field Notes: “[Elizabeth Kolbert’s] research is thorough. She gleaned much of her information from personal interviews and visits to localities around the world. … Kolbert tends not to use alarmist language to argue for a particular viewpoint, choosing instead to let her stories and interviews do the talking. … And by the end of the book, the reader will have no doubt that the problem [Global Warming] is a serious one.”

T. C. Boyle, author of Drop City added this, “… if you know anyone who still does not understand the reality and the scale of global warming, you will want to give them this book. … The hard, cold, sobering facts about global warming and its effects on the environment that sustains us.  … Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe is nothing less than a Silent Spring for our time.” High praise, indeed!

Born in 1961, Kolbert lived in New York as a child—first in the Bronx and later moving to Larchmont, a suburb located 18 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan.  She attended Yale University for four years where she studied literature, then—after winning a prestigious Fulbright scholarship—she moved to Germany to study at the Universitat Hamburg.  

A career journalist, Kolbert began working in Germany in 1983 as a stringer for the New York Times (NYT).  In 1985 she moved back home to the NYT’s Metro Desk where she wrote the Metro Matters column from 1988 to 1991.  She then served as the paper’s  Bureau Chief in their Albany, New York office from 1992 to 1997.  

Since 1999, Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker where her pieces have included political profiles, book reviews, commentary essays, plus extensive writing on Climate Change. She has written dozens of magazine pieces, including profiles of Senator Hillary Clinton and former Mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Her series on Global Warming, The Climate of Man, which appeared in The New Yorker’s spring 2005 issue, won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Magazine Award, and also provided the background material for her Field Notes from a Catastrophe.

In addition to her work for The New Yorker, Kolbert’s stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Mother Jones.  Plus they have been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Political Writing. 

A collection of her work, The Prophet of Love and Other Tales of Power and Deceit, was published as a book in 2004. Most notably, Kolbert’s most recent book about Earth’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity—The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History—won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

In the process of describing the history of the world’s mass extinctions, The Sixth Extinction combines intellectual and natural history with reporting from field locations all over the world.  Throughout this book, Kolbert turns her emphasis away from Climate Change to focus on another snafu that’s currently bludgeoning the natural world—the widespread decline in biodiversity. Bluntly stated, we’re currently losing species at a rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than unassisted nature was doing before humans came along to contaminate the broth of global life. According to Kolbert, while humans weren’t responsible for the first five mass extinctions, our fingerprints are all over the one that’s occurring right now. 

As Kolbert alludes to in The Sixth Extinction, the fifth extinction—the one that wiped out the dinosaurs—was believed to have been caused by a six-mile wide asteroid colliding with Earth.  But this time humans appear to be  serving as the asteroid that is threatening to wipe out 20 percent to 50 percent of the world’s current species.  

This landmark work—which also first took shape as an article in The New Yorker—won many other prestigious awards, including the New York Times 2014 Top Ten Best Book of the Year and Number One on the Guardian‘s list of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of all time. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the best books of 2014.  Much high acclaim that we all should pay heed while we are trying to short circuit the Earth’s Climate Change crisis!

Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California. 

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Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

When it comes to Climate Change dedication on the legislative scene, no one can beat Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.  On January 27, 2016, for the 125^th time since he took office, Senator Whitehouse prepared and presented a passionate plea for Congress to take action against Climate Change.  This time his speech had an upbeat twist—a call for Congress to approve the “Energy Policy Modernization Act”.

Although most of his presentations are in front of a nearly empty chamber, Senator Whitehouse refuses to give up.  A sign beside him during all of his presentations reads, “It’s Time to Wake Up!” His rationale is that he represents “The Ocean State”, a moniker that places a special onus on him as a representative of Rhode Island’s current and future populace.  The diligence shown by Senator Whitehouse is exactly what we need—in spades—to really make a difference on Climate Change policy at the federal level.

Sheldon Whitehouse—Congressional Leader

If you have been wondering if all the environmental heroes on Capitol Hill vanished with the passing of Teddy Kennedy, fear not friends.  A knight in shining armor has arrived and he is taking it to the resident posse of negative nabobs that currently block everything—colored with any shade of green—that has the temerity to invade the Senate Floor. 

For climate activists—or really anyone who truly thinks Climate Change is a problem—there is a lot to love about Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. The two-term Democratic Senator from Rhode Island has assumed the role of our Climate Change Champion in Congress. As he explains it, he has to remain vigilant to protect his constituents stating that “there’s a very good reason Rhode Island is called the ‘Ocean State’”. 

Just about everything that happens in Rhode Island is strongly influenced by either the Atlantic Ocean or Narragansett Bay.  This means that Climate Change is much more than a looming future catastrophe.  Senator Whitehouse knows that it’s happening right now throughout Rhode Island and low-lying portions of other coastal states.  Beaches, tidal flats, and coastal wetlands are being inundated.  Coastal birds and marine mammals are losing their nest sites and home territories and are being forced to relocate.  Fisherman are losing their breeding grounds and harvesting territories.  Homes and businesses are being undercut and tumbling into the water. 

For the past three years, Senator Whitehouse has been introducing legislation aimed at slowing the planet’s warming.  Plus, he has routinely been presenting Climate Change speeches on the Senate floor.  Unfortunately, very few of our erstwhile, duly-elected officials would be able to vouch for this fact. According to Agence France-Presse—an international news agency based in Paris—Whitehouse usually gives these speeches to an empty or near-empty chamber. But—certainly proving his mettle for the cause—he always displays a green sign while he’s talking.  This sign warns—no, more like yells at—his colleagues that it’s “Time To Wake Up.” 

Whitehouse’s May 18, 2015 Climate Change speech is especially informative and compelling.  Check it out and we guarantee that you’ll wonder how anyone could not be convinced that Climate Change is actually occurring and that humans are the cause!

On January 27, 2016, Senator Whitehouse marked his 125^th Climate Change presentation on the Senate floor.  Only this time there was a twist.  His message had an upbeat tone based on the ongoing debate over the Energy Policy Modernization Act (EPMA).

First noting that the EPMA may become our first comprehensive energy efficiency legislation since 2007, Whitehouse provided the following rationale for its passage: “The World Economic Forum released its ‘Global Risks Report 2016,’ which for the first time ranked an environmental risk—Climate Change—as the most severe economic risk facing the world. The report found that a failure to deal with and prepare for Climate Change is potentially [our] most costly risk over the next decade.”

Of course—to date—few of Whitehouse’s colleagues have taken his pleas for action to heart. How could you seriously consider something that you’ve never bothered to really consider?  More than 56 percent of Republicans in the 114th Congress deny or question that Climate Change exists and that it is being caused by humans. And some members of Congress—such as Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)—openly mock the idea that Climate Change is posing a problem at all.

Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse are two of the Senate’s most dedicated climate change activists.

So far, none of this has deterred Whitehouse, in the slightest.  “If I look back 20 years from now and I can’t say I did everything possible, I’ll never be able to live with myself,” he told Morning Consult about his weekly speeches. All we can say about this is, “Good on you, Senator Whitehouse!” (What a great name if he decides to run for President some day!)  It is a major relief that someone up there on “The Hill” has the gumption to take a stand, even though it may not be politically expedient or a savvy incumbent choice.  Now if we could just find a few hundred more like him, we may get somewhere in solving this crisis in a timely manner!

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Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need. Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

  

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

Robert “Bob” Inglis served as a US Republican Congressman—and steadfast Climate Change denier—in South Carolina from 1993 to 1998 and then again from 2005 to 2011.  In 2010, his just-turned-voting-age son entreated him to clean up his act on environmental issues.  Taking his son’s request to heart, Congressman Inglis set about studying everything he could find on Climate Change.  His final assessment: Saving his soul—in terms of protecting the quality of life of his five children—was much more important than winning another election.

Returning from seeing Antarctica melting, Mr. Inglis introduced the “Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act of 2009”, which—according to GovTrack.us—would tilt the US taxation system away from income, specifically the Social Security payroll tax, to one that taxes carbon outputs.  According to Inglis’ rationale for this bill, while the science on Climate Change is clear— the economics are even clearer. “It is a no-brainer: Change what you tax,” Mr. Inglis said. “Get off of income, get on emissions. You can’t find a member of Congress that disagrees with that. Go look for one. The biggest subsidy of all is being able to dump into the trash dump of the sky without paying a tipping fee.”

After publicly announcing his new-found belief in Climate Change and the imminent need for finding solutions, Inglis soundly lost his bid for re-election in a 2010 Republican primary.  But instead of pouting and lamenting his choice to follow his heart, Inglis continued to advance his conservative backing of the Climate Change controversy by founding the “Energy & Enterprise Initiative (E&EI)” in 2012.

E&EI is an educational outreach organization that aims to demonstrate the power of accountable free enterprise. The basic belief is that Climate Change can be solved by eliminating all subsidies—especially the implicit subsidy of the lack of accountability for emissions. By creating a level playing field in which all costs are transparently included on all fuels, E&EI believes that the free enterprise system will deliver innovation faster than government regulations could ever imagine.

Inglis appears in the film Merchants of Doubt and in the Showtime series Years of Living Dangerously (episodes 3 and 4).  For his work on Climate Change, Inglis was given the 2015 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

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Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

Founded in 2011 by Stanford University Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, banker Marco Krapels, documentary filmmaker Josh Fox, and Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo, “The Solutions Project (TSP)” is an organization with the goal of accelerating the transition to 100 percent renewable energy use in the United States.  TSP defines renewable energy as wind power, water (hydroelectric, wave/tidal, and geothermal) power, and solar power—conveniently abbreviated as WWS.

Based on the results of academic research, TSP maintains that America is capable of meeting its entire energy needs through renewable energy sources, and that this goal can be achieved by the year 2050. Furthermore, the organization claims that the solutions that needed to achieve this objective are primarily social and political—and not technical—as most of the technology necessary to bring about the transition already exists.

TSP has proposed what it calls the “50 States-50 Plans Initiative”.  These are plans developed for each of the 50 United States specifying the precise mix of renewable energy types that—given such factors as local topography and micro-climates—would allow each particular state to receive all of its energy from renewable sources by 2050. The organization also claims that—beyond the issue of environmental sustainability—a number of significant benefits to society would come about if the initiatives in each state are adopted.  These include consumer energy cost savings, health cost savings, and millions of long-term (40 years or more) jobs.

More recently, TSP also created infographics highlighting which future renewable energy mixes will theoretically be the best for achieving the zero-emission targets for each of 139 countries worldwide. By clicking on one of these nations shown on an interactive map, much intriguing information is revealed—such as newly created employment resulting from the switch to renewable energy, current and future energy costs, and health benefits resulting from the proposed transition.

Mark Jacoboson—Innovator / Solver

Our conversation with Mark Jacobson was akin to pinning down a bumblebee. Dr. Jacobson, Director of the Atmosphere and Energy Program and Professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, is positively buzzing with frenetic scientific intensity. Plus, he is truly working at something that is as essential to our human existence as pollination. The professor has compiled decades of research on how to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050. 

Professor Jacobson, along with twelve peer-reviewed studies, has proven that this switch is economically and technologically viable. In the process, he has debunked the myths that we lack sufficient storage capacity to provide sustained reliable energy and that fossil fuels are cheaper than renewable energy sources.  Not only are renewables 100% viable, transitioning to them will create nearly five million new 40-year construction and operation jobs, avoid nearly $590 billion in annual mortality and illness costs, avert nearly 45,000 air pollution deaths annually and will pay for itself in as little as two years from air pollution and climate cost savings alone. Climate Change problem? What Climate Change problem? Unfortunately, the social and political obstacles are blocking this amazing plan from being implemented—more on that later.

Jacobson’s fascination with air pollution and climate issues started on a visit to Los Angeles as a teenager. The air pollution in the city hit him and he thought, “why should people live like this?” This launched him into decades of detailed research on environmental engineering, aerosol microphysics and chemistry, climate microphysics and chemistry, radiation transfer, and weather and climate on global through urban and local scales. He discovered a key insight that cancelled out many fuel options—black carbon from diesel exhaust, burning biofuel, burning biomass and kerosene burning was the second most important cause of Global Warming after carbon dioxide, ahead of methane. He studied renewable energy options extensively as well, and then began comparing different energy solutions to Global Warming, air pollution and energy security. His conclusions were that wind, water and solar (WWS) are the best solutions to Global Warming, air pollution, and energy security; and that electric vehicles are the best vehicle options.

Scientific American brought Jacobson’s research into the limelight when they published a paper he wrote with Dr. Mark Delucchi, A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables. This became the backbone research of The Solutions Project (TSP), providing a plan for one hundred percent WWS for all 50 of the United States and recently 139 countries. 

As part of this analysis, Jacobson looked at job creation, health benefits, climate benefits, policies that could be implemented, land area required—and even the number of devices needed for each type of energy—wind turbines, solar panels and so forth. TSP’s website (www.thesolutionsproject.org), has an interactive map where you can see exactly what the plan is for your state and how you can participate. Sarah Shanley Hope, Executive Director of TSP says, “three years ago, he [Jacobson] got a lot of ‘oh, that is not possible’” when people examined his proposed plans, “But the crystal clarity of his model—that through the technology today for wind, water and sun, along with the energy efficiency upgrades required and the efficiency gained by transferring to clean renewable energy—we can actually power not just our electric grid, but by electrifying that grid we can power our transportation systems, our heating and cooling systems, and our industrial uses of energy. It really is a whole system transition that we have the potential, and it is totally possible…. to achieve over the next thirty-five years.”

Jacobson frequently notes the clear technological and economic feasibility of a transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030, but notes that it is unlikely due to social and political reasons.  The public is on board for the most part—a recent poll showed that seventy percent of people are in favor of wind and solar, while coal and nuclear are way down at the bottom with gas close to the bottom. The bottleneck is in the politics suggests Jacobson, “you have mostly extremists in government that are not necessarily representative of what the public wants. Plus you have some people who have some financial interests who will oppose.”

A lot has gone on that is beneficial toward a transition to renewable energy. Since Dr. Jacobson wrote the Scientific American paper in 2009, there has been a huge drop in the energy cost and electric power prices of renewable energy technologies. “Solar is now in the United States, at the utility scale, cheaper than natural gas. Slightly cheaper, it is almost the same, but slightly cheaper. Wind is now half the cost of natural gas. Since then [2009] we also have more electric vehicles on the road, more choices, longer mileage, and lower cost vehicles available. Heating and cooling is starting to be electrified more. And also more people are talking about it, and more policies put in place to implement clean, renewable energy,” says Jacobson.

Though the science about Climate Change can be dark and the solutions seem far away, Jacobson’s work gives us a light—powered by wind, water, and solar, of course—at the end of the tunnel!

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Mark Ruffalo—Actor / Organizer

A meme circulated on the Internet depicts The Incredible Hulk gritting his teeth next to the quote, “The Credible Hulk: You wouldn’t like me when I am angry because I always back up my rage with facts and documented sources.” Mark Ruffalo, the actor who played Bruce Banner (The Hulk) in Marvel’s The Avengers, witnessed injustices that moved him, maybe not quite to the level of a raging hulk, but certainly in a way that he could not turn from.

To learn more about Mark Ruffalo and his work for Climate Change solutions, we spoke with Sarah Shanley Hope, the eloquent and passionate Executive Director of The Solutions Project (TSP), as described above. As a recap,TSP is the non-profit group, which Ruffalo co-founded, dedicated to the transition to 100% renewable energy –wind, water, and solar – ­solutions.

Ms. Hope categorized Ruffalo’s initiation into the cause as forming most strongly at a town hall in Pennsylvania where community members spoke of how terribly fracking was polluting their water. She says for Mark, “being face to face with the dignity and resilience, but also the powerlessness from a political perspective, of these people who were being so immediately affected in life and death consequences … he could not turn away from the inhumanity of the situation. And so he stepped into his humanity. That is the kind of leader he is. He shows up for people. He understands the power of the platform that he is fortunate to have through a successful acting career, and so he is constantly bringing that asset.”

Mark Ruffalo has placed himself deeply into the opposition to fossil fuels in a way unmatched by many celebrities other than Leonardo DiCaprio. He and Leonardo marched with the indigenous, first nations leadership in the New York City climate march two years ago, knowing that their presence would draw much needed media attention to their cause.  Ruffalo used his presence to call attention to Detroit a year and a half ago when the water was shut off in low-income African American communities—one of the only people outside of the state to attend, let alone a celebrity.

The Solutions Project hosts countless pictures, tweets and blog posts of Mark Ruffalo alongside workers, families and community members, fighting for their rights to clean, affordable, healthy communities and resources such as air, water, and energy. “I mean you talk about a leader who is giving 100% for 100%—giving everything he can for this beautiful diversity of people we have in our country—Mark Ruffalo is one of those people doing that…he is a rare celebrity for sure, but also a rare human being in general.”

Using their large social media influence, TSP entreats everyone to give 100% for Climate Change solutions. “How we achieve the transition to 100% [renewable energy] is really about it being led by 100% of people, and is for 100% of people….tapping into engineers, artists, teachers, cooks…everyone has a role to play in this transition.”

TSP employs an ecosystem approach, working across sectors to find solutions. “It is not the people by themselves, it is the people leading the call and bringing that moral clarity, that energy that only parents fighting for their kids, or neighbors fighting for their community, bring to any problem, and then it is matching that people power with the innovation and energy of business and the policy levers and the infrastructure to scale that only government has,” explains Shanley Hope.

According to Ms. Hope, TSP focuses on “positive, attractive, solutions-oriented stories and calls to action that keep us all lifted up, hopeful, and squarely focused on the choice that we actually have right now.” At the individual level, TSP strives to tap into our human energy, spirit of perseverance, resilience, creative thinking and commitment to the safe, healthy, thriving future of our children and children’s children.

And it is working. “If you start to look at those places that are adopting policies, removing those political barriers to transition—people in those states [such as CA, NY, AZ, NV and IA] are starting to have greater access to affordable, clean energy…and so those solutions are being adopted at ever increasing scale and speed.” TSP clearly illustrates that the economic benefits from switching to 100% renewables can be achieved without subsidies or incorporating the externalities from fossil fuels.

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Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need. Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

In 2010, Science Historian and Harvard Professor, Naomi Oreskes released her boldly eviscerating book, Merchants of Doubt.  Later made into a movie, Merchants exposed the anti-Climate Change lobby for exactly what they are—paid naysayers posing as professional scientists to line their own pockets with money from the fossil fuel industry.  Remarkably, the same scientists who stated—for the record—that “smoking was not detrimental to human health” and that the “ozone hole didn’t exist” were now proclaiming to the world that Climate Change was a “liberal-inspired hoax”. Their main ploy involved capitalizing on real climate scientists’ reluctance to state their findings with 100% certainty—hence fabricating an ongoing pall of doubt over the Climate Change debate.

Naomi Oreskes—Professor / Oracle

The instant we walked into Professor Naomi Oreskes’s office, her office mates knew exactly whom we sought. Naomi “Engaged Scholar” Oreskes has been lighting up the media. The media attention burgeons from her irrefutable courage to throw herself squarely and vociferously into the climate debate that most career-minded scientists give a wide berth.

Dr. Oreskes is a Professor of the History of Science and an Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 1990 in the Graduate Special Program in Geological Research and History of Science. Oreskes’ career as a historian led her to an in depth examination of the role of dissent in the scientific method. To investigate the legitimacy of the climate science reports, she did a search of 1,000 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific literature over the past ten years—a novel action in regards to global warming.  Out of all of the reports that she pulled, not a single paper provided dissent against the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) statement: “Most of the observed warming over the past fifty years is likely to have occurred due to greenhouse gas emissions”. When Oreskes published these results in Science in 2004, titled “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change”, she found herself under immediate political attack.  In regards to the article, she said, “It ignited a firestorm.  I started getting hate mail….at the same time, Al Gore talked about my paper in An Inconvenient Truth.  Suddenly, I was a hero to the left because of Al Gore and a demon to the right because I was now part of the conspiracy to bring down capitalism.  I thought I’d entered a parallel universe.”

The wild backlash to her paper made Oreskes realize that there was something weird going on. She explains how in the hate mail she received, “I would be accused of all kinds of strange things [e.g. being a Stalinist and a Communist]”. That was her first clue that there was something more to the story than just public misunderstanding of the science. “Most scientists thought that this was a problem of scientific illiteracy… People had no idea that the reason there was so much confusion and doubt was because there had been an organized, well financed, well structured, professional campaign to create confusion and doubt.” she explained, shaking her head. When she realized that there was enormous public debate about something so important, she knew she needed to tell the full story in a big way.

Dr. Oreskes critics were scientists, but not climatologists, nor did they study any form of climate science, yet they spoke on the issue of climate change as if they were experts.  These were the same folks that engineered doubt for the “tobacco wars”, as well as ozone depletion.  They worked off of a “playbook” of strategies—“insist that the science is unsettled, attack the researchers whose findings they disliked, demand media coverage for a ‘balanced view’”.

Why would they go to such great lengths, you might ask? These “merchants of doubt”, as Oreskes named them, intentionally targeted and undermined science cited to support new government regulations.  The battle that this group waged against Climate Change, a destructive force that threatens the livelihood of all of us, was not about science, but economics.  These physicists were strong believers in the unfettered free market and felt that without free markets we could not have democracy.  What was the link between the topics they were doubt-mongering?  Oreskes said, “Each was a serious problem that the unregulated free market didn’t respond to”.  To stop any of these problems, tobacco use, acid rain or climate change, regulation is required—and that is anathema of this group of doubt-mongers. 

To compound the problem, the community of climate scientists did very little to speak out against these myths. According to Oreskes, when asked why they didn’t do more, the scientists she spoke with said “’we knew it was garbage so we just ignored it’. Well that does not really work you know. You have to take out the garbage…and that’s where the scientific community has been a bit slow.” So Oreskes did. Her prime target was to educate the broader scientific community. The secondary target was journalists, “because journalists were presenting the issue as a big debate and I wanted to say to the journalists, look this is wrong, you are misrepresenting what is actually going on in the scientific community” said Oreskes.

She thinks that the climate challenges we face can be solved, but as we hear often from our heroes, “the hour is late”. To solve the problem, she says, “nearly all economists agree that we need a price on carbon. I would like to see that as a first step, and see how far it takes us”. Also, market-based mechanisms have the potential to appeal to a wide variety of people, including those who fear that Climate Change is an excuse to dismantle capitalism. In the long run though, she thinks we need to change the way we think, “We have deified markets, and made the profit motive not only the dominant one, but the only one that the right wing does not consider suspect. This is a strange state of affairs. Once upon a time altruism was honored, greed was suspect. In the past 30 years, the ideologies of neo-liberalism have turned that on its head”. 

Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

On the upside of the still ever-present denier regime, Katharine Hayhoe came out of the closet in 2009.  This outing involved the revelation that—as a devout Evangelical Christian, married to a church pastor—she was a staunch believer in Climate Change and the immediate need for the world to do something about it.

Actually, Hayhoe’s announcement was not all that surprising to many people who knew her as a Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University.  Instead, the surprise hit Evangelicals throughout the Nation—many of whom steadfastly believed that Climate Change was just a liberal hoax.  

Professor Hayhoe not only talked the talk but she walked the walk, producing a Conservative Christian landmark book entitled, A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. The book won widespread praise, including from this rather unusual combination of bedfellows—religious leaders, fact-based scientists, and environmental activists.  The book’s supporters included the past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the president of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF).

As an offshoot of her book, Director James Cameron recruited Professor Hayhoe to narrate and appear in portions of his Climate Change Showtime documentary, Years of Living Dangerously. She also parlayed her new-found reputation as a Climate Change expert into appearances on talk shows and at scientific conferences across the Nation.  

Katharine Hayhoe—Unifier / Trailblazer

Professor Katharine Hayhoe is first and foremost, a Christian. She outlines her beliefs in no uncertain terms in her book A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-based Decisions written with her husband, Andrew Farley, a pastor at a Christian church in Texas. She worships the Creator of the universe, believes that God spoke the world into existence and sustains it by His power; that Jesus Christ is the way to eternal life, that the Bible is God’s Word, and that the message of the gospel is of the highest import.

Dr. Hayhoe also enumerates what she does not believe, “we don’t believe that life came from nothing or that humans evolved from apes. We don’t believe in government running our lives or in destroying the economy to save the Earth…”. One other really important thing that she does not believe in— Climate Change. When asked if she believes in Climate Change, she gave an ebullient laugh, smiled mischievously and exclaimed, “NO! I do not believe in Climate Change! Book of Hebrews: ‘Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’[11:1, King James Version], science is the evidence of what we do see. As a scientist, I crunch the data. I study the world around us. I look at the projections to the future, I do not believe that the climate is changing, I know that it is, I know that humans are responsible, and I know that we have an important choice to make”.

For the faith-based community, which Hayhoe is deeply connected to, this is a critical distinction. When you ask someone if they “believe” in something, you are using faith-based language, in her opinion. By using this language, you are essentially offering people an alternate religion and then asking them if they believe in this alternate religion. More than eighty percent of people in the United States and six out of seven people worldwide have a religion already.

Hayhoe has made many important contributions to the science and study of global Climate Change. She is an atmospheric scientist who has authored more than sixty peer-reviewed publications and served as an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report. Dr. Hayhoe has worked at Texas Tech since 2005 as an associate professor of political science and director of their Climate Science Center. 

Hayhoe is policy agnostic as a scientist, in the sense that any solution is better than no solution. But as a human, not an expert, she thinks that we need to take the massive subsidies and taxes off of all of the different types of energy and put a price on carbon that equals the cost we are paying through taxes already. She asserts that the price we assign to carbon should account for the price we are already paying in terms of our health, in terms of crop insurance, in terms of FEMA bailouts and so forth. “We are paying those costs, make no mistake, but we need to be paying them in a direct way so that you and I, when we make our decisions about what car to buy, or how much energy to use, we can make that decision with the correct price signal”, Hayhoe explains. 

The problem with this solution, according to Hayhoe, is “in the United States, politics has become so polarized that half the country would probably cut off their right arm rather than give the government any more power than it already has… Climate Change and its associated impacts and health issues has become a casualty of the polarization of society that has occurred over the last 30 years. People feel like it is incompatible with their identity and who they are to agree that we have to do these very common set of things [politically] …to have clean air, healthy kids, and avoid all of these health costs. We live in this polarized society where people won’t even admit something is true because they would have to give up who they are as a person.”

Something that decidedly does not work, is telling people that if they do not care about Climate Change, they do not have the right values. Find and understand their value system and then connect it to Climate Change issues. As a corollary to this, Hayhoe mentions that Climate Change is fully understandable without believing in evolution. 

Professor, Author, and Climate Activist, Katharine Hayhoe standing with Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and President Barack Obama.

There is no need to ascribe a birth date to planet Earth to provide scientific evidence of Climate Change. “As we go back in Earth’s history, our satellite, thermometer, natural and written records consistently validate the dramatic and unprecedented nature of the recent increase in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. And this recent increase corresponds directly with the dawn and growth of our industrial age less than three hundred years ago.” So if evolution is something you support (as we, the authors, do), you can still connect with someone who believes in creationism using this bridge.

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Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

The 2008 US National Election brought many precedent-setting changes to Capitol Hill when Barack Obama was elected President.  In addition to being the first African American to serve in the White House—an astonishing turn of events given our country’s muddled history of race relations—Mr. Obama was a progressive environmentalist in every since of the word. After his election, he stated that “We are not acting as good stewards of God’s earth when our bottom line puts the size of our profits before the future of our planet.” Then, after his January 2009 Inauguration, he immediately jumped onto the 350.org bandwagon, pledging that 25% of energy consumption in the US would come from renewable sources by 2025 and that GHG would be reduced by 80% by 2050.

President Obama’s success in the environmental arena—while not living up to his ambitious campaign promises—was the bellwether of the early years of his presidency.  He demonstrated his astuteness in environmental matters—especially the battle against Climate Change—by stating the following in his 2010 State of the Union address: “I know there have been questions about whether we can afford (energy efficiency) changes in a tough economy.  I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on Climate Change.  But here’s the thing—even if you doubt the evidence—providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

In general, the American public either undervalued or just flat out failed to notice the supreme environmental efforts and successes being made by the Obama Administration.  In fact, Carl Pope—National Executive Director of the Sierra Club—had this to say: “This is by far the best first year on the environment of any president in history, including Teddy Roosevelt. Most presidents have done their best environmental work late in their term.  This is a very, very strong opening.”  

President Barack Obama stands with climate activists—Professor Katharine Hayhoe and Actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

This was high praise indeed for Obama’s diligent, workman-like efforts on the environmental front.  In fact, if the Republican controlled Congress had not been repeatedly sticking to Mitch McConnell’s often stated “one and only goal” of keeping Obama from winning a second term—and thereby opposing everything the president tried to do—we believe that Obama would be celebrated as the most accomplished environmental president to ever serve in the White House. 

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Author’s bio:For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest award-winning books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

In 2007, renowned Climate Change activist, Bill McKibben, started a nationwide environmental campaign that he called “Step It Up”.  Step It Up’s primary goal was demanding that the US Congress take action on Climate Change.  On April 14, 2007, McKibben organized hundreds of rallies in cities and towns all across America.  The “battle cry” of Step It Up was “Curb Carbon Emissions By 80% By the Year 2050”.  The Step It Up Campaign spread like wildfire and quickly earned the unified support of a wide variety of environmental, student, and religious groups.

On November 3, 2007—again under McKibben’s leadership—Step It Up 2 took place.  In addition to the “80% by 2050” slogan from the first campaign, the second added a 10% reduction of emissions in three years (“Hit the Ground Running”), a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, and a “Green Jobs Corps” to help fix homes and businesses so those targets could be met.

In the wake of Step It Up’s achievements, the same team announced a new campaign in March 2008 called 350.org. The organizing effort—aimed at the entire globe—drew its name from the now famous contention from climate scientist James E. Hansen that any atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) above 350 parts per million was unsafe. “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that.” With offices and organizers in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, 350.org attempted to spread the 350 warning number in advance of international climate meetings in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

On Oct. 24, 2009, 350.org coordinated over 5,000 demonstrations in more than  180 countries. It gained wide acclaim for its creative use of Internet tools, with Critical Mass’s website declaring it to be “one of the strongest examples of social media optimization the world has ever seen.” Additionally, Foreign Policy Magazine lauded it “the largest ever globally coordinated rally of any kind.”

Because of all he has done in devoting a significant portion of his life to Climate Change awareness and response, Bill McKibben is featured as one of our premiere Climate Change Heroes.

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Bill McKibben—Climate Change Hero #1

We tracked down Bill McKibben in a windowless makeshift basement conference room in Paris, France. This ad hoc office space was the hub for 350.org’s massively successful civil disobedience actions at the COP-21 Climate Changeconference. At well over six feet tall, signature Red Sox ball cap included, McKibben’s presence is commanding, yet gentle. We could sense his exhaustion—he and his team had been working around the clock, doing everything (tweeting, texting, emailing, posting on Facebook) they could to raise awareness for strong civil disobedience actions at COP-21 to stop Climate Change.

When we asked him what brought him to the cause he said, “I was a journalist and this seemed such a huge story to me—the most interesting possible story. But partway through writing the first book on it, I realized that I was not objective in the strictest sense. I did not want the world to heat up, dry up, and blow away. At some other level, perhaps I was even more objective than in the past. You know, I sort of understood what the basic reality was so… (he grows quiet) I mean, there are times when I wished that I hadn’t stumbled across all this, because there are other things that I may have wanted to do with my life. But you know, this has been a good place to be engaged in a good fight.”

Some of our heroes strategically avoid the words fight, conflict, battle as too incendiary for the politics around Climate Change. But for McKibben, this is a fight and indeed, it is personal. It is becoming apparent that many of the fossil fuel companies have known about the science for over twenty-five years. In his opinion, they have robbed him of a life that could have been devoted to something different (vs. “rhetorical battle with retrograde congressmen” as he puts it in Oil and Honey). 

More than that, climate change may rob him of the beauty that satiates and fills his soul. McKibben says, “I think the next big front in the climate fight…may be trying to peel back all that we can learn about Exxon and what it and other oil companies knew twenty-five years ago. And I think I take that one fairly personally in a sense because I have been working on this a very long time. I wrote the first book about climate change, so I am getting uncomfortably close to thirty years of steady work on this, and knowing that twenty-five years ago, Exxon could have ended the whole faux/phony debate about it, simply by saying what they knew, makes me aggravated. Because then we could have spent the last quarter century working on solutions. We would not have solved the problem by now, but we would be well on the way. We would have turned the corner. And instead, we wasted what may turn out to be the crucial quarter century of geological history on this.  In summary, McKibben believes we have already lost lives, species and landscapes that could have been saved twenty-five years ago.

McKibben is adamant that it is far too late to stop Global Warming. That is not one of the possibilities at this point. The temperature of the planet is already 1°C warmer, and there is momentum that will raise it further than that. For him, the pertinent question now is “Can we still stop it short of damage so severe that it threatens our ability to have civilizations like the ones we are used to?”

There are only so many large physical features on Earth that can absorb carbon. Once you have run through the Arctic, the Antarctic and the world’s oceans it becomes a runaway train. The question now is not are we going to make the changes and transitions needed to head toward a renewable future. We clearly are. The question is—are we going to do it quickly enough to even begin to catch up to the physics of climate change. “That I am less convinced of, and that is why we have to keep pushing hard!”.

And McKibben has been pushing hard—really hard. We gave you the background about 350.org and its inception in Part Three. 350.org has now “organized more rallies than Lenin, Gandi, and Martin Luther King combined”. What McKibben has done with 350.org has been “the most satisfying work of my life, endlessly difficult and endlessly interesting”. He has won countless victories, the biggest of which was Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline on November 6^th, 2015.

McKibben takes great hope in the fact that the movement keeps growing and it is working. If one builds big movements, then change starts inexorably to happen. He wants it to continue to grow until it is big enough that everybody’s part in it makes sense. His optimism is cautious, however. He explains, “It is anybody’s guess whether we can build it in time or not. As I say, we will find out, and we will find out in our lifetimes. It is going to take many generations to win this fight, but we can easily lose it in the next five or ten years if we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere”.

The next phase in the climate fight for McKibben is to get companies to pay for their injustices – which we can all hope will fund the transition towards renewable energy sources. He says, “The most important thing is the mobilization of a big movement. Once that happens it opens up all kinds of space. Now there are lots of politicians who are suddenly moving in the right direction”.  Bill stated his great optimism for the world’s ability to solve the Climate Change crisis. Ever the realist, however, he couched it by saying we have about a five year window to take swift actions before the warming trend is irreversible.

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Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.

Text excerpted from the book: PROTECTING THE PLANET-Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change (ISBN 978-1-63388-225-6)

by

Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG98CCWF / http://www.buddtitlow.com

An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former US Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to educate citizens about Climate Change and Global Warming.  To accomplish this educational endeavor, Gore presents a comprehensive slide show that he estimates he has given more than a thousand times. 

Premiering at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006, the documentary was a critical and box-office success, winning two Academy Awards for “Best Documentary Feature” and “Best Original Song”. The film grossed $24 million in the U.S. and $26 million in the foreign box office, becoming the eleventh highest grossing documentary film to date in US history.

The idea to document Gore’s efforts at educating the public about the hazards of Global Warming came from producer Laurie David who saw his presentation at a town-hall meeting which happened to coincide with the opening of the feature film, The Day After Tomorrow. Laurie David was so inspired by Gore’s slide show that she, along with producer Lawrence Bender, met with Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film.

Since the film’s release, An Inconvenient Truth has been credited for raising international public awareness of Climate Change and reenergizing the US Environmental Movement. The documentary has also been included in science curricula in schools around the world, which—as you might expect—has also spurred significant controversy.

In fact, since its release, “An Inconvenient Truth” has had a pronounced dual effect—sharpening the understanding and sense of foreboding in believers while further polarizing and alienating deniers.  

Al Gore—Communicator / Leader

If we were asked to select a “poster boy” for the Climate Change movement in the US, that person would be former Senator and Vice President Al Gore, Jr. In a highly unusual move among typically image-conscious politicians, Mr. Gore stood up and—with his PowerPoint presentation turned into a 2006 Oscar-winning documentary film entitled An Inconvenient Truth— told the world that Climate Change was real, that humans were responsible, and that we needed to take action immediately to preserve our quality of life on the planet.  In the process, he endured a barrage of slings, arrows, hate mongering, and insults unlike few other US politicians have ever had to contend.

Al Gore making one of his more than 1,000 presentations of “An Inconvenient Truth”.

As a creature of the Washington, DC establishment, Al Gore, Jr. has been involved in politics his whole life.  He was born on March 31, 1948 and raised in Washington, DC where his father, Al Gore, Sr., served on Capitol Hill from 1939 to 1971—first as a US Representative and then as a Senator from the State of Tennessee.  As a result, the junior Gore spent his boyhood attending prestigious private schools in the District of Columbia with summers working on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee.

Then as a student at Harvard University during the 1960’s, Gore roomed with future actor Tommy Lee Jones and actually stumbled into the issue of Climate Change and associated Global Warming. In his senior year at Harvard, he took a class with oceanographer Roger Revelle, who sparked his interest in Global Warming and other environmental issues. Gore grasped the Climate Change science quickly and—as his political star rose—never relented in his determination to alert people that we’re baking our planet and ourselves with our lust for fossil fuels.

Beginning his career in public service in 1977, Gore was elected to represent the State of Tennessee in both the House and then in the Senate, serving from 1977 to 1993. Early on, he became one of the first politicians on Capitol Hill to grasp the seriousness of Climate Change. In fact, he held the first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s. 

During his tenure in Congress, Gore also co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978–79, and then organized more hearings on Climate Change/Global Warming in the 1980s. In 1989, while still a Senator, he published an editorial in the Washington Post, in which he lamented, “Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world’s forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate.”

In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators representing over 42 countries seeking to create a “Global Marshall Plan”—”under which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment.” In 1992, he wrote his first book, Earth in the Balance. It became the first book written by a sitting Senator to make The New York Times “bestseller list” since John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.

While serving as Vice-President in the Clinton Administration, Gore launched the GLOBE program on Earth Day 1994.  This was an education and science activity that— according to Forbes Magazine—”made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment”. Then in the late 1990s, he strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions. As we have previously described in Part Three, despite Gore’s staunch efforts, the US totally botched the Kyoto Protocol.

In 2000, Gore famously lost one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. History to George W. Bush.  Having an election as the world’s most powerful leader in the palm of his hand only to see it mistakenly and churlishly—in his mind and the mind of many Americans—ripped from his grasp, initially devastated Gore. 

While fate may have kept Al Gore from the US Presidency, his tenacity created something few politicians ever achieve: a genuine cause that they feel passionate about. In Gore’s case, of course, this passion was Climate Change. In 2005, he founded the “Climate Reality Project” (originally the “Alliance for Climate Protection”) which is a non-profit organization devoted to solving the Climate Change crisis. Through grassroots leadership trainings, global media events, digital communications, and issue campaigns, “Climate Reality” works to spread the truth and raise awareness about Climate Change. Today, Gore serves as the group’s chairman and works with the organization to promote awareness of the ongoing dangers posed by Global Warming pollution and to develop solutions for Climate Change.

Gore also created a global media brand around his An Inconvenient Truth, which became the fourth highest-grossing documentary film in US History.  A 2006 book with the same title became a bestseller. 

In October of 2007, Gore was named as joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—together with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  As part of the award, he was recognized for being “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted to combat Global Warming.”

In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards Global Warming awareness and prevention. His keynote presentation on Climate Change consistently receives standing ovations, and—according to his writing in, An Inconvenient Truth—he has presented it at least 1,000 times.

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Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need. Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.