« In the Name of Earth, Embrace the Fierce Urgency of Now »

We need to be impatient with plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. We need to see CO2 numbers coming down globally by 2020! We need to end them by 2030. Mother Earth is setting the schedule now. Our households, businesses, schools, and politics have been too slow. Long range schedules to reduce CO2 are just blather. “Now” has become the important word. We cannot agree with plans that do not work on Mother Earth’s schedule.

That’s why I’m encouraged to read on The Climate Mobilization website about two motions being introduced in January to the Los Angeles City Council labeled with the words, “Fierce Urgency of Now.” A great start to 2018 which must see countless actions of local governments and businesses who hear the drum of Earth.

Last June, Los Angeles Councilmember Paul Koretz, Naomi Klein and a coalition of environmental justice leaders from L.A. and beyond announced an effort to launch a WWII-scale climate mobilization of America’s second largest city.

Today Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Bob Blumenfield will introduce two “Fierce Urgency of Now” motions to the Los Angeles City Council seeking to turn that vision into reality.

The Climate Mobilization works on a hurry-up timetable like the U.S. did when, after Pearl Harbor, the nation moved quickly to mobilize for WWII. The analogy is obvious and strong. MultiEarth structures, patterns, and thinking are aggressive enemies of the planet. They must be reconfigured to fit the planet quickly, like industries had to fit a war economy quickly in 1941. WWII planning was not a 5 year or 10 year plan. It moved with the “fierce urgency of now.”

Putting feet under such a mobilization requires more than what current climate plans of many cities, farming regions, or businesses project for the coming years. The Climate Mobilization contributes to such hurry-up planning by showing it can be done. Models are given on the website for 8 cities: Hoboken, San Francisco, Madison, San Diego, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Boston, and Boulder. Every city and region has people capable of creating the same kind of plan for their area by adapting these models.

Recently, I interviewed Derek and Nancy Casady who lead The Climate Mobilization work in San Diego. You can hear the interview by clicking here.

Earth, today, behaves like an insurgent to the MultiEarth rule of corporations, regressive business models, and thinking that does not put ecology as the primary context. See the chapter on “Earth’s Insurgency,” in my book, From Egos to Eden: Our Heroic Journey to Keep Earth Livable for a more complete development of these thoughts. To MultiEarth living, Earth is an enemy insurgent. But for everyone wishing to live Earth-size, interdependent with all of life, Earth is our strongest ally.