[p2p-research] Fwd: Reflections one year after the launch of the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jim Garrison <jgarrison at worldforum.org>
Date: Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:51 AM
Subject: Reflections one year after the launch of the 2020 Climate
Leadership Campaign


Dear Friends,

This month marks a year since the launch of the 2020 Climate Leadership
Campaign in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 12 – 14, 2009.  We launched with
great enthusiasm and with a commitment to an integral approach in tackling
the very complex issues associated with global warming. We set as our goal
working to persuade our governments to commit to Lester Brown’s assertion
that to save civilization, we must reduce CO2 emissions by 80% by 2020,
which meant a radical transition to clean and renewable technologies and
mobilizing the public to adopt sustainable lifestyles. We began to attract
various initiatives from around the world dedicated to this and related
goals.  In fairly short order, we mobilized a nascent network of activists
internationally.

But over the past twelve months, our efforts have been thwarted and we
failed to convene our intended gatherings in Washington in February and
Salvador, Brazil in May.  We assembled the network of activists but could
not raise the requisite money.  At first, I thought this was just the 2020
Campaign and took the matter intensely personally. It was the first time I
had so publicly failed. Then as I began to consult with others and observe
the over-all situation, I began to see that there was a larger much more
troubling picture of which our campaign was only a part. Simultaneously with
our effort, a huge coalition of major groups commanding hundreds of millions
of dollars, at the helm of which was Al Gore and a range of VIPs and
celebrities as well as all the major environmental, labor and social justice
organizations, failed in their effort to secure a treaty in Copenhagen last
December. They were in an alliance with a massive international effort. This
same coalition then worked furiously to ensure passage of the Senate Climate
Bill, only to see it dropped by the Senate this July without even a peep
from the president. The airways have been full of “Climategate” and the
histrionics of the climate deniers.

The big climate coalitions had all the money they needed, some $600 -- $700
million from what I understand, and they failed. The 2020 Campaign had
almost no money and we also failed. Such has been our collective failure
that the climate movement itself has been set back, particularly with
revelations that many of the biggest environmental groups have been in bed
and in league with the major corporations throughout the drama.  Probably
the biggest factor, however, is that we were unprepared for the tenacity and
nastiness of the vested interests and climate deniers, and we could not put
together a winning coalition in the media, Washington, or internationally to
either counter their claims or set forth a credible agenda.

I think it is also fair to say that President Obama failed us.  The last
twelve months have been corrosive for his presidency. One of the casualties
of his diminishment has been his Administration’s ever weakening support for
the climate agenda, even though he has pumped billions in Federal funds into
clean energy. I think we all expected stronger leadership on progressive
issues from Obama, especially with something as obvious as the BP oil spill,
but little has been forthcoming. This temerity on his part has played a
substantive and contextual role in the failures of Copenhagen and the
Climate Bill as well as contributing to the ascendency of the climate
deniers. His failure also gave cover to leaders all over the world to
renege, delay and obstruct meaningful change.

The stark fact before all of us is that none of us have made any meaningful
difference in the over-all equation.  None of us have succeeded in creating
a way through to real effect. In fact, the climate situation now stands as
worse than ever before both in terms of government willingness to engage
meaningfully and in the equally obvious fact that the climate crisis is
dramatically escalating with one blow after another, whether heat waves in
Russia, floods in Pakistan, or the decimation of the oceans.  We are headed
deeper into catastrophe and our governments are asleep at the wheel and the
populace, while concerned and actually knowing there is a problem, prefers
to stay satiated with private concerns.

So I come with no certainties in this note to you, no calls for action. Only
the sense of urgency abides. I simply want to express closure on the moment
just passed and the bitter lessons we have all suffered as fate, whether
through the efforts of the 2020 Campaign, or with Copenhagen, or the U.S
Climate Bill, or setbacks in related issues in other countries. Let us set
these things now to rest while using them as learning opportunities as best
we can.

The question now is how do we move forward.  How do we somehow gain momentum
again?  One small victory from the last year was what Bill KcKibben
accomplished with 350.org last October and subsequently.  He managed to
create an imaginal cell. At least we now have a global network of grassroots
climate groups upon which we can build. I’m sure there are myriad examples
of other imaginal cells, and perhaps some of you can delineate these.  But
before jumping off our next cliff, perhaps the most prudent act of courage
is simply to stop and reflect upon the gravity of our situation and what
options there might be for skillful and integral movement going forward.

The axiom of Einstein about consciousness pertains as much to us as to the
corporations and governments.  Perhaps we should simply throw away all our
old strategems and tactics. We ourselves need a new consciousness in order
to create new means.  How can we obtain this? Where do we go for
inspiration? How do we create truly effective imaginal cells?  We need to
create as many as we can, but from where and how, I simply do not know. I am
in a posture of unknowing, of deep inquiry.

Imaginal cells are easy to imagine and are desperately needed, but here
again we need caution. Arguably, Obama was an imaginal cell, but he has
gotten eaten alive, and so any notions of the audacity of hope, or
transformational leadership, must be filtered through the complex reality in
which we find ourselves. This is not to succumb to pessimism or despair, it
is simply to remind ourselvesa that we are running out of time and few of
our methods have worked. Audacity can easily morph into defeat when hope is
ungrounded.

In closing, I feel I need to say the most basic thing I can say, that as a
matter of principle, I personally and the State of the World Forum
institutionally, as well as Wisdom University in which I am also involved,
remain committed to addressing climate change. We launched a ten year
campaign to this effect, we are one year into it, we have taken some hits,
we remain in the arena, we have a long way to go. We are on a long march.
 We know that sooner or later the accumulated toll of the climate crises
will wake the public up and compel our governments to take action.  We
intend to be in the arena when that happens. That was our commitment at the
beginning. This is our commitment now.

In this spirit of both inquiry and commitment, I invite a conversation
amongst us of what might constitute the best paths moving forward.  I do so
with deep humility and profound gratitude for all of you similarly motivated
and concerned.  We have an extraordinary challenge ahead of us and I feel
honored to be in the arena with you. Let us pray that out of our collective
wisdom, meaning not just us but the entire movement for planetary
transformation, truly powerful imaginal cells will be conceived, take root,
and change the world.

In the end, I am convinced that we will be proven right. Lester Brown is
correct, and so is Bill McKibben. Somehow we have to wake the public and/or
the governments up to this fact. It’s  80% by 2020 and it's 350 ppm.
Reaching these goals will ensure the continuity of human civilization on
this planet, transformed by the very act of reaching these goals into a
civilization living in harmony with the natural systems of the earth.
Somehow we have to make that clear, somehow we have to catalyze this to
happen. The how is where the next imaginal cells will come in.

I am as convinced today as I was in Belo Horizonte a year ago that the fate
of humanity’s sojourn on this earth will turn on our capacity to deal with
the climate crisis.  I am more convinced than I was in Belo that we are
passing the point of no return and that primordial forces are being
unleashed from the Deep that no human power can remove or control. Mother
Earth is quaking, literally, all around us, almost as if she is seeking to
shake our increasingly malignant species from off her now despoiled body.
 Thus despite the complexities, despite the disappointments, we must all
remain in the arena and support all efforts everywhere designed to wake the
public up, promote government action, and develop the breakthroughs in
consciousness that will motivate sustainable lifestyles and bring us into a
redemptive alignment with the very Mother we have so wounded and ignored.

I salute each and every one of you and hope that together we can nurture the
network we have created and work collaboratively through the increasingly
turbulent days ahead.

With deep respect and warm regards,

Jim Garrison

President

State of the World Forum



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