How Do We Win the Planetary Endgame?

Sebuah wacana yang menarik (atau genius?) untuk dibagi atas dasar keprihatinan akan bencana alam yang melanda negeri ini.. Turut berduka cita atas semua korban gempa dan Tsunami di pesisir laut selatan dan semua korban bencana alam Indonesia. Di copy-paste dari Adbusters.org, susah ditranslate (kuatir artinya akan berbeda jauh). Ditulis oleh Terry Glavin salah seorang kontributor Adbusters untuk buku "Waiting for the Macaws and Other Stories from the Age of Extinctions". Bercerita tentang akibat sebab akibat Bencana Alam yang melanda planet bumi ini... hmmm selamat menikmati!


How Do We Win the Planetary Endgame?
By: Terry Glavin

Ecological collapse, mass extinction, epidemic disease, global drought, crop failure, desertification, famine.

That’s the global-warming whirlwind that we’re about to reap, a majority of the world’s climate scientists say, unless we act very quickly.

It all seems just so daunting, so unutterably overwhelming, that it’s tempting to succumb to the narcissism of paralysis, panic and despair. So, if you’re one of those people who are resigned to the prospect of a climate-change apocalypse, here’s what you should do.

1. Shut up. 2. Get out of the way.

As for the rest of you, you can join those people all over the world who have decided that we actually can and will steer this ship of Earth well clear of the shoals ahead. There really are solutions to the crisis, and they’re readily available to all of us.

True, the United States, Canada and Australia have betrayed the rest of the industrialized world by thumbing their noses at the greenhouse-gas reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol. But 163 nations have ratified the treaty. And in a perverse twist of luck, the first-round “rich nation” target of bringing greenhouse-gas emissions back to 5.9 percent below 1990 levels has actually been met – mainly because so many of Russia’s Soviet-era factories have fallen apart.

The European Union, meanwhile, has established a carbon-trading system to keep within its targets, and some countries are going a step further. Iceland continues to harness more of its geothermal power resources and is investing heavily in hydrogen engines for its transportation sector. The country plans to be oil-free by 2050. There is good news from the climate change front, everywhere.

Even in the United States – which remains the world’s worst greenhouse-gas producer – hundreds of industries, towns, and counties have pledged to meet or beat Kyoto’s targets. In Britain, Newcastle – the city formerly famous for its coal mines – is going even further, with plans to become the world’s first “carbon neutral” city.

Individuals, too – especially North Americans and Europeans – can make enormous contributions to the struggle. Just trading in an SUV for a hybrid-fuel vehicle is an act that reduces an individual’s CO2 emissions by 70 percent. Most of us could easily exceed our per-capita Kyoto obligations by “lifestyle” changes so minor we wouldn’t even notice.

All over the world, new and effective initiatives are springing up that offer industries, corporations and individuals the capacity to radically scale back their net contributions to global warming. “Carbon offsets” is just one method. Every time you take an airplane, for instance, you can offset the greenhouse-gas impact of your flight by investing a small amount of cash in a developing-world green-energy project.

These small acts of defiance against institutional climate-change intransigence will not win the war against global warming by themselves, but small acts of defiance can and will make a difference. They always do.

Yes, we have to hold government accountable. Every single politician, at every level, must be called to account, every day. But that’s not going to be enough.

So don’t wait. Don’t cling to the faint hope that climate-change skeptics might be right. And don’t go all bleary-eyed and useless about humanity’s mistreatment of the mother-goddess Gaia, either. Those are peacetime activities. And this is something very much like war.

Terry Glavin is a regular Adbusters contributor whose most recent book is Waiting for the Macaws and Other Stories from the Age of Extinctions.

"Mungkin kita tidak bisa selalu membantu langsung dengan segala keterbatasan, setidaknya ada "sesuatu" untuk berbagi... kita tidak sempurna tetapi setidaknya kita mencoba.."