#chinaEARTHusa - Radical Change? or Planetocide?

Several weeks ago I began writing about how the fate of the Earth is intertwined with the ability of BOTH China AND the U.S. to reverse their addiction to carbon.

I think this linkage is so critical that it deserves its own word: maybe "chinaEARTHusa" or something like that.

It has been announced that China and the U.S. will hold a top leadership meeting at the beginning of June. If the past is any indication, we will get a lot of cautious, lukewarm pronouncements about cooperation that don't begin to address the reality.

It's time for activists in the U.S. and China to join hands and start to militate for radical change.

We need a zero-carbon USA and a zero-carbon China. Anything less is planetocide.


Related posts


Climate: China's Response to the West

We need to confront the fact that, as things stand now, neither the U.S. nor China has an ethics that is powerful enough to cope with a species that is hurtling toward self-destruction. THAT is what our shared dialog should be about.





#chinaEARTHusa -- Solar Panels at the Crux

Right now, the U.S. -- as well as the EU -- is playing a 20th century game with a 21st century problem. It is using dumping law to quibble with the Chinese about the terms under which solar panels can be sold in the U.S. Here's why that's all wrong . . . .




Two Sides to the Obama-Xi Bargain on HFCs

Part of me feels that the agreement on HFCs announced after the Obama-Xi summit in Rancho Mirage this past weekend is too little, too late. Despite the fact that it involves some big numbers, and the fact that HFCs have a high degree of warming power, it is little more than a fig leaf that dodges the real need: to discuss fundamental shifts in our paradigms about economic and social success.



Obama's Climate Action Plan: How Do You Say "Yawn" in Chinese?

The U.S. idea seems to be, "We'll show a good faith effort to clean up our act, and then lean on China to cut emissions. After all, that's where the really big gains are to be made!" But the United States is going to have to doing something really shocking to get China's attention. Like: go on a crash program to cut carbon emissions to zero in a decade (and, somehow, to achieve a sort of "economic invincibility" -- whatever that means -- in the process).


5 Fundamentals on the Climate Crisis

It was a beautiful day in Chicago yesterday. Sunny, cool . . . . "Maybe everything's gonna be okay?" I thought. "Who worries about the climate crisis on a day like this?" And then it struck me: "Don't believe it. Just 'cause it's not miserably hot, people had better not think for a minute that the climate crisis isn't for real."


More #chinaEARTHusa posts

Here are some more of my posts about the need for radical change by the U.S. and China on climate:

China and USA - Like a Moth to the Flame

Obama and Xi: Get to the Point!

Cadillac Desert (Don't Try This At Home)


More Posts on the Climate Crisis

NJ Sense and Wising Up to the Climate Crisis

NYC + H2O = Uh-oh!

Does "God" "care" about the climate crisis?


Some background . . .

The 1992 Clinton campaign team famously had a slogan: "It's the economy, stupid!"

After I got involved in planning a Climate Crisis conference in Chicago, I adopted a slogan of my own: "It's the global warming, stupid!"

Moreover, I've thought deeply about my experiences with China, and concluded that a way that I can contribute to addressing the threat is to encourage a radical approach to the way the U.S. and China address the climate crisis.

After all, the future of the Earth is literally held in a vice by the behaviors of two leading countries: the U.S. and China.


More related posts

  It was a beautiful day in Chicago yesterday. Sunny, cool . . . . "Maybe everything's gonna be okay?" I thought. "Who worries about the climate crisis on a day like this?" And then it struck me: "Don't believe it. Just 'cause it's not miserably hot, people had better not think for a minute that the climate crisis isn't for real."

(See 5 Fundamentals on the Climate Crisis)

Oil companies are valued by the market based on their reserves. The problem with this approach is that the total reserves claimed by the oil companies is FIVE TIMES what can possibly be burned without driving up the temperature of the atmosphere up by a catastrophic amount and, as McKibben puts it, "breaking the planet." How can the value of oil companies be a function of reserves that can never be used?

(See The REALLY Big Short: The Jig is Up with Oil Companies)

Does "God" "care" that the ultimate outcome of the damage to the Earth's climate may lead to the end -- not of the Earth itself, nor of life on Earth, but of the existence of the human species on Earth?

(See Does "God" "care" about the climate crisis?)











More related links

September 23, 2014 - "Obama: U.S., China Must Lead on Climate Change Efforts; President Says U.S. 'Will Do Our Part' to Combat Climate Change" by William Mauldin and Jeffrey Sparshott in The Wall Street Journal. "President Barack Obama on Tuesday said the U.S. and China have a special responsibility as the largest carbon-dioxide emitters to lead a new effort to curb emissions, as he sought to enlist nations around the globe to combat climate change."