Doha Death Rattle: UN Climate Chief Urges Individuals To Act In Absence Of Gov Actions
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — The United Nations climate chief is urging people not to look solely to their governments to make tough decisions to slow global warming, and instead to consider their own role in solving the problem.
Approaching the half-way point of two-week climate talks in Doha, Christiana Figueres, the head of the U.N.'s climate change secretariat, said Friday that she didn't see "much public interest, support, for governments to take on more ambitious and more courageous decisions."
"Each one of us needs to assume responsibility. It's not just about domestic governments," she said. Her comments came as negotiators from nearly 200 countries were struggling to prepare draft agreements on how to move forward on greenhouse emissions cuts and climate aid for poor countries.
Some delegates worried that gains made at last year's climate talks in Durban, South Africa, were at risk of unraveling, as rich and poor nations bickered over how to pull the world away from a path of potentially dangerous warming.
EDIT
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h8SyVBAZNPMB-irNfDPjyO9loavg
= new reply since forum marked as read
So there is to be no hope coming from governments, no hope from world governing bodies, so now us individuals need to 'assume responsibility'.
I don't know whether to shout, cry, or find a place to hide. Isn't that why citizens of the world pay taxes, that support political salaries? Aren't they supposed to act in the interest of humanity? Well it sure as hell looks like they are throwing it back at us, to solve the problems they are supposed to manage.
OK here is my political activism on climate change that I have been involved in for many years. Maybe the politicians would like to refund my taxes for the last 35 years to help fund my actions, if they are going to punt the responsibility unto individuals.
The best activism I have found to combat global warming has been reorganizing my own lifestyle to use less energy, then offset the energy I do use through tree planting, organic gardening, and recycling nature.
Below is the first picture so you get my drift, an overview of a different lifestyle.
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Ok, so within this small 7000 sq/ft garden are 7 mandarin trees, 2 avocados, 1 sweet lemon, one sour lemon, bananas, plantain, several varieties of vegetables, numerous herbs that also serve as medicines, plants like aloe vera that is a medicine, and many ornamentals that serve to sooth and aesthetically maintain sanity, in a world gone mad.
Just doing this, transportation and production energies are saved, but there is more.
Not only has the plant density of this property increased ten fold in the past seven years, but also has accomplished the sequestration of many pounds of CO2 and other green house gases.
According to the Journey to Forever website -
http://www.journeytoforever.org/compost.html
A silt-loam soil weighs roughly 85 pounds per cubic foot. Eight inches of it weighs 56 pounds per square foot. Organic matter is about 58 percent carbon. So soil with one percent organic matter contains (hmmm, one percent of 58 percent of 56 pounds) 0.3 pounds of carbon per square foot. Soil with 7.7 percent organic matter contains 2.5 pounds of carbon per square foot. David and Judy have increased the amount of carbon in every square foot of their garden by 2.2 pounds. It's a big garden, 0.4 acres. (Actually it's a communal garden, which David and Judy share with their neighbors.) That's 17,424 square feet. Multiply by 2.2 pounds of carbon per square foot -- let's see here -- that makes over 38,000 pounds of carbon removed from the atmosphere -- 19 tons!
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This does not include the CO2 every single leaf in the garden breaths in, sequesters in growth, or the oxygen they respire.
So, my activism has accomplished just in the soil, the removal of (40% of 38,000 lbs of carbon), over the seven years this garden has been active. That is a carbon credit of 15,200 lbs of carbon. But the activism does not stop at the garden, it just begins there.
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The heart of the garden is in this green house. Here seedlings are sprouted and prepared for the garden, ornamentals propagated, and oh yes did I mention trees, well between 50 and a 100 are started every year, the best are planted out by myself or given to others with the hope of infecting them, as well.
The planting of cypress, sour lemon, nispera, mango, eucalyptus, cherimoya, and in this picture, coco bolo (rosewood) on a different property in the mountains. Over eighty have survived extended times without water, and with the rain will thrive again.
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At the side of the green house, further CO2 sequestration occurs in the Hotel Squirm, pictured here.
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Here red worms can reduce garden waste, kitchen waste, cardboard, paper, or manures into a complete very available fertilizer. The squirm can reduce 100 pounds of scrap or manure to 15 pounds of castings, and sequester green house gases without the significant production of methane or CO2. The castings feed not just the plants, but the soil as well, a sequester any carbon not used in the growth of the garden.
The Squirm - Eisenia foetida - they work for free
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And their product
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And the results -
Sweet lemon -
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Mandarins and chayote -
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Herbs for health and veggies for dinner -
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Plants for medicine - pictured, aloe vera
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Plants to relax and find your 'quite zone', aka, sanity. -
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And before leaving the garden, don't forget to stop and smell the roses!
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So this climate change activist has been doing his job, for years, with no tax breaks, no carbon credits, and obviously, no thanks from my government or other world bodies.
The fat and sassy climate activist and below him the garden supervisor of all construction and planting, and the squirrel guard.
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So politicians, my taxes pay for your wars, your weapons, your lobbyist pimps, your hydrocarbon masters, welfare; but not the climate my activism depends upon?
Doesn't seem fair. Time to 'lose time' in my garden. Anything else, no longer matters.
