Three Reflections on COP21 (Paris Climate Summit)

1) Regarding calories, one push up, no matter how carefully monitored, does not equal five cheesecakes.

2) Voices of children around the world make more sense than our Harvard and Yale trained "leaders."

3) In his Day of Affirmation Address against injustice of apartheid in 1966, Robert F. Kennedy said, "Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. [ . . . . ]  I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world."

You Too Can Depress Family, Friends, and Coworkers

by sharing my new book of eco-reality from Amazon, the publisher, or local bookseller. Thanks to Joseph O'Brien at the San Diego Reader for publishing three poems from Industrial Oz: Ecopoems. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! is doing an excellent job covering the meeting of over 190 nations at the Paris climate summit. The latest draft reminds me of the joke about a camel as a horse designed by a committee. It's obvious we need a binding agreement, and developed countries need to help poorer nations. These two things need to happen now.

Meanwhile, in the United States the fate of Earth's community of species decided in Paris is not very newsworthy.  I would hope the facts that over 12 million trees have died in the California drought, and that California is experiencing its worst drought in 1,200 years, would be enough to distract people from iPhones.  Maybe in dreams and nightmares they are, but these are forgotten by morning.

Still, seeds are being planted.  I recall Jakob Bohme wrote, "For according to the outward man, we are in this world, and according to the inward man, we are in the inward world.... Since then we are generated out of both worlds, we speak in two languages, and we must be understood also by two languages."  My book leads with this quote from Norman O. Brown's Love's Body, Chapter 1, "Liberty,": "For the reality of politics, we must go to the poets, not to the politicians." 

Writing this blog post along the sea, I noticed roots taking back the street.  

"UN on wrong track with plans to limit global warming to 2C, says top scientist [James Hansen]" -- The Guardian

"Might makes right" has worked for politicians for thousands of years, but not this time. Hansen is right in noting " [ . . .] we are screwing the next generation."  I'll be reading at the March & Rally for Climate Justice on Dec. 12 at Balboa Park in San Diego with poets Sandra Alcosser, Julia Julima, and others.  If you would like to join over 700,000 people who marched the weekend of Nov. 28 and 29, click here for the nearest action to you.  Update Dec. 7, 2015:  The Guardian reported today "US, China, Canada and EU among big carbon emitters at UN summit supporting 1.5C target to protect most vulnerable countries such as small island states."  However, talk is easy.  As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”