[Sustain] New Report: Must -Reduce- CO2 To Avoid Catastrophe

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

New data that I had guessed would emerge, finally has.

James Hansen of NASA (who was the first to broadly alert the world to
the accelerating greenhouse effect) and many other scientists, have now
released a report that gives a much more urgent warning on the global
carbon/climate crisis than previous releases; especially by comparison
to the very weak reports that emerged from from the International Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC).

Previous recent releases by scientists suggested that as a planetary
civilization we needed to hold CO2 to 400 parts per million (ppm) in the
atmosphere (the planet is currently at 387ppm) to avoid a planet wide
climate catastrophe. The new report shows that, because of new
understandings about rapid feedback effects in the planetary system, it
is now clear that we must instead -reduce- levels of CO2 in the
atmosphere from their current levels -down- to at least 350ppm, and
possibly even lower than 300ppm.

This new information gives us iron clad credibility in our renewable
energy, mass transit, localization and efficiency campaigns to sharply
state that catastrophic climate, and therefore planetary and human
civilizational change is unavoidable unless we immediately switch to a
zero carbon emissions economy and food system, AND use rapid soil
building, biodynamic agriculture and forest watershed management, in
order to draw carbon back -down- out of the atmosphere as rapidly as
possible. (Among other realities, this clearly amplifies that biofuel
crop production, which is inherently monocultural and forest/soil
disturbing, is even more untenable than we have already begun to realize
from the serious warning signs of the planetary food crisis.)

The previous alarm that I and others sounded that we must cut our CO2
emissions 100% by 2030 is now outdated.

The new alarm is that we must both reduce our emissions to zero as
quickly as possible, and, completely reform our global agriculture
systems to become biodynamically self sustaining (using zero fossil fuel
inputs) -and- designed to rapidly pull carbon back down into the soil
creating new -feet- of topsoil in decades. (Note that there are already
permaculture agriculture techniques that are actively achieving this
amount of soil building - we now must simply make these techniques our
new global way of life.)

To see a report about the new release go to:
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/740711

To see the scientific release itself go to:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

This all gives us the best argument we have had to date to insist that
our communities take immediate action.

Instead of talking in generalities of how global CO2 output must be
reduced by various percentages, we can now simply focus on our own local
infrastructures and food systems and start setting more immediate rapid
targets for specific changes; such as 100% mass transit accessibility by
2018, 100% zero carbon electricity by 2023, a local biodynamic food
growth and distribution system by 2028 etc.

We can now shift from setting vague targets for climate composition, and
instead start setting specific dated targets for specific critical
municipal tasks.

We have now moved from and age of climate activism based on amorphous
scientific figures, to a new phase of climate rescue based on actual
near term and large scale infrastructure tasks in our own communities
and food systems.

The new mantra can now be: Specific complete infrastructure changes must
be made - as quickly as possible.

peace

Eric Brooks

-- 
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate
themselves." – Che Guevara