Oregon PeaceWorks, a venerable peace and social justice organization based in Salem, Oregon, has adopted a program of action to intended to help head off the next resource war(s).
It’s called the "5% Solution to the Climate Crisis," and it makes explicit the link between a chaotic climate and the natural follow-on consequences, which can be summarized as "All four horsemen of the Apocalypse."
A destabilized climate means crop failures and loss of glaciers and fresh water (famines, precursors for disease), along with new tropical disease vectors inhabiting areas where animals and plants lack resistance to these previously unknown ills (pestilence and more famine, prime breeding grounds for disease), all of which make the final horseman, War, more likely to ride roughshod across the world.
Because of this connection, OPW has begun to recruit additional "Emissionaries," people who have themselves taken the 5% Pledge (to use one of the many carbon footprint calculators available to monitor and reduce their carbon footprint by 5% a year, starting now) and who will work to spread the message to their families, friends, churches, jobs, civic groups, local governments, etc. so that they, too, will take and act on the pledge.
OPW just posted the slides for the basic 5% Solution presentation to the website, along with the pledge form and information about how to go about it.
If we want the next president and Congress to "get it," and if we want our cities, towns, and states to "get it," we have to show that we get it, and there’s no amount of words that show it as well as actually getting up to "do what needs to be done," with or without your Powdermilk Biscuits.
