BE THE CHANGE Climate Conversion

This program explores how green leaders are converting to climate activism. And how you can move from spectator to citizen action.

You'll hear Forest Ethics co-Founder Tzeporah Berman in a moving speech, going to a new climate group Power Up Canada. United Church Pastor Bruce Sanguin gives us a new vision of Gaia-friendly Christianity. And Maureen Jack-LeCroix explains her calling to "Be the Change" - as host of the recent Be The Change Circles event in Vancouver. There's more... Arran Stephens of Nature's Path, and two conference guests - but first, here are some links to help you dig further.

BE THE CHANGE EARTH ALLIANCE
http://www.bethechangeearthalliance.org

You Tube video of founder Maureen Jack-LeCroix - why she devoted 10 years to Gaia and founded Be The Change Circles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smLyRHo7aS0

ECOSHOCK PROGRAMS ON CLIMATE, DRYING FORESTS AND FIRES

BURNING DOWN THE WEST Wildfires stoke the carbon load. Ecoshock Show 071116 (1 hr) Interview: Dr. Tom Gower, saying fires in N. Canada make positive feedback; speech by Temperate Rainforest activist Pas Rasmussen - why she is now a climate activist as well. Echoes by Andrea Reimer of the Wilderness Committee. New research on the Rockies burning by Lara Kueppers; were California fires climate change?
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock/ES_071116_Show.mp3

CURRENT PLAGUES - FUTURE FORESTS Can forests keep up with global warming? Ecoshock Show 070706 1 hour
Dr. Clive Welham on ravages on pine bark beetle in Rockies; Dr. Del Meidinger speech "Future Forests" to 6th N.A. Forest Ecology Conference.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/2007/ES_070706_Show.mp3

RISING SEAS, DRYING WEST Ecoshock Show 080815 Top IPCC organizer & U of Arizona Professor Jonathan Overpeck speech at Washington U. After updating the world climate report, Overpeck predicts climate impacts on North America. 1 hour CD Quality Lo-Fi 14 MB http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080815_Show_LoFi.mp3

Drying of the West with National Geographic author Robert Kunzig; the first Carbon Tax in North America in B.C. (and what it means for the U.S.); censored Canadian scientists - speech clip from Dr. John Fyfe, IPCC author. Oh yeah, and some hope. 1 hour. Ecoshock show 080222 Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080222_Show_LoFi.mp3

TZEPORAH BERMAN SPEECHES

Climate Conversion - Tzeporah Berman speech Be The Change Un-Conference, Vancouver May 23, 2009. 16 minutes Lo-Fi
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Tzeporah_Berman_090523_LoFi.mp3

A CLIMATE OF CRASH AND CHOICE Finance & elections. Mike Whitney on Wall Street mess -Bush's plan to grab the money & run. Voting for climate action. Brianna Cayo Cotter U.S. PowerVote.org; Tzeporah Berman speech introducing PowerUpCanada.ca. Also Rep Ed Markey web cast on new Green Jobs initiative. Plus some fun (e.g. George Carlin) and music. Ecoshock Show 080926 1 hour
Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080926_Show_LoFi.mp3

Tzeporah Berman at Bioneers Conference October 2006. About 20 minutes.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/ES_Berman_Bioneers_061021.mp3

POWER UP CANADA
http://www.powerupcanada.ca/


THIS WEEK'S ECOSHOCK PROGRAM BEGINS....

Dear extra-terrestrial visitor,

Things are past serious here on Planet Earth. Our top scientists, the people who study and measure, warn the web of life is headed toward utter catastrophe, possibly in just ninety years. The ocean, source of our oxygen and mother of most life, is turning acid due to our carbon pollution. Our once stable climate, the basis of our agriculture and civilization, is undergoing violent change.

As I record this, smoke from forest fires - hundreds of miles away in the mountains, is filling our great city. I can smell the distress, and it's only June, not even fire season yet. Last night, as we watched TV news, a reporter showed the tinder dry conditions on Vancouver Island. "My God" said my companion, "that is the rain forest. The rain forest, untouched by fire for a thousand years or more, could burn."

It's only a matter of short time. The great pine forests of the Rocky Mountains have been killed by global warming. They stand dead, valley after valley, each long trough visible from space, waiting to burn. Each great tree is a tower of carbon taken from the atmosphere. Now it will go back, in great bursts of fire that nothing can stop. A burp of carbon worse than the Indonesian rain forest fires of '97-'98. Greenpeace predicted this in 1994, in a report called "The Carbon Bomb". Now, it's happening. Here in the Rockies, all from California right up to the Yukon. Even the boreal forest, clothing the North, is burning out more carbon than new trees can gather. Vast forests will convert into grasslands or scrub deserts.

We don't know how far all this new carbon, coming in the next decade, will push the climate.

The carbon whirlwind is still of our own making. Will you be a witness? Or will you be the change we need?

This is Radio Ecoshock. I am your host, Alex Smith.

READ MORE

Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. Today you'll hear two green broadcasters meet on air. Matt and Alex ask how cities can work in the climate energy crunch. Should you get out - and what can we learn from the back-to-the-land movement of the late '70's. I'll toss in the mental survival tips I use to survive the awful knowledge of climate change.

Matt and I also talk about Derrick Jensen and so-called "Eco-Terrorism". Non-violence hasn't worked (our life support system is going into the crapper) - do we need to go further?

We'll top that off with 15 minutes from the master. Al Gore's latest testimony to the House Energy Subcommittee April 24th. The last minute American hope to save the climate.


I'm Alex Smith, wading through the deep green with green broadcaster Matt. His long-running show "Healing the Earth" runs out of the University of Guelph in Canada - but his guests - some of them controversial - come from all over the world.

I hope you enjoyed that exchange with Matt. It's not easy doing radio about a gorgeous ecosphere under attack, in decline. My hope is lame, but it's still there. Maybe hope is built into us, the ultimate survival trait.

Here's someone who never gave up: Al Gore. We go now to his testimony to the House Energy Subcommittee, chaired by the remarkable Ed Markey of Massachusetts. As the Obama Administration rounds up the evidence for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, Chairman Markey gets the best, keeps it moving. You can find the whole 2 hour video on C-Span.

Here's Al. (The key 15 minutes of testimony, 4 MB)


Next week we'll interview climate scientist and activist Bill Hare. His new report says the world may have to stop using fossil fuels completely in just 20 years - or face a drastic climate shift. The latest science, the most alarming.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for caring about your world.

THIS IS IT! The ship is going down.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith with eye-popping headlines on the triple crisis: Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse.

While America basks in Obama, Europe quietly fell further apart over the week-end. On Martin Luther King Day, the British government announced more hundreds of billions to prop up banks and bad bets. Stocks in Barclay Bank fell to 25 percent in less than an hour. The largest, Royal Bank of Scotland, is already 80 percent owned by the government.

The same in Ireland. Both countries look close to nationalization of their banking system. Even some government officials wonder whether Britian itself faces either bankruptcy or a complete collapse of the British pound. Unthinkable stuff.

Jim Rogers, the famous expatriate American billionaire, says the big American banks are bankrupt themselves. Hardly anyone argues that point any more. The U.S. government tossed another 20 billion dollars to the Bank of America, and guaranteed more than a hundred billion dollars in worthless paper generated by the former Merrill Lynch. The world's largest bank, Citi Group, has lost more billions, and is splitting up into two.

At least a dozen countries, national governments, are close to bankruptcy. Not just former success stories like Iceland and Ireland. The credit rating of Spain has been downgraded. Italy may be technically bankrupt. The Balkans are a mess, as is most of Eastern Europe, right up to Latvia and Lithuania.

We haven't even discussed economic chaos in the Middle East and Asia.

This is it friend. The great ship of modern production has hit the iceberg. The band may still be playing sweetly in the First Class Ballroom, but the cold sea water is filling the holds below.

It will settle by degrees, no doubt. A wave of closures this March. Quiet desperation over the Summer. A lot of dancing, new announcements, the most reckless spending moves. All stalling the inevitable revaluation. We have yet to live the leaden doldrums, the years of suffering, before the real reformation comes.

In today's program, the Head of the International Energy Agency admits oil production has peaked out, and time is running out for the planet's climate. While we were all enthralled with non-stop coverage of the U.S. elections, this speech by Fatih Birol got buried. Are you ready to cut your energy use by 9 percent every year? Get ready, because the oil is running out.

Here is the Youtube video (about an hour) of Fatih Birol speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations on December 1st, 2008. Our program runs his 15 minute speech, with notes and exclamation points added.

In our second half hour, I'll interview Christine MacDonald, author of the book Green Inc. She claims the biggest environmental groups have been covering for multinational corporations, in cosy relationships, for giant salaries. What will we see in the green mirror?

Then we'll wrap up with Van Jones. He has a vision for those left behind in America's poverty ghettos. It's a green vision, where those with the most need, produce what America needs most: carbon-free energy. Van Jones testifies to Congress.

Here's just a few of the headlines that got my attention recently.

The managing director of the world's biggest bond fund, Bill Gross of Pimco, admits the whole economy was really a Ponzi scheme. Gross said the U.S. had been running, quote "our Ponzi-style economy".

Another bright light, Meredith Whitney - the stock analyst who bravely said the Emperor of Wall Street had no clothes - now says all of the 300 billion dollars of U.S. government TARP money has simply disappeared, covering banking losses. No wonder there is no money to loan. Pretty predictable really. Coming generations will be harnessed to debt for absolutely nothing. At least until they refuse.

Meanwhile, on the climate front, Indonesia has announced over a billion dollars for new railroads. Does that sound like good news? It's not. The rails will move coal reserves from South Sumatra to the coal ships. Onward to Asia's multiplying coal stations, and runaway climate change.

Climate blogger Joseph Romm, recently a guest on Radio Ecoshock, points out a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists from South Korea's Pohany University found, quote, "Sudden, considerable reduction in recent uptake of anthropogenic CO2 by the East/Japan Sea." If true, the ocean burial ground for our carbon binge may be full. Next week on Radio Ecoshock, we'll talk with a top American scientist who questions this research. He should know. Pieter Tans is Chief Scientist for NOAA's global carbon monitoring program.

At climateprogress.org, Joe Romm also says: "China announces plan to single-handedly destroy the climate. China to increase coal production 30 percent by 2015"
That big increase in coal power was just announced by the government of China. The increase, Romm writes, will be "an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire coal consumption of the United States -- an amount that surpasses all of the coal consumed today in Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America."

Mommy, how do you spell "toasted planet?"

As the Titanic settles, there are more fancy balls to attend. Kate Sheppard wrote about two supposedly Green inauguration parties in Gristmill, the environmental blog, for January 19th. I quote her now:

"Tonight's dueling balls showcase an interesting dichotomy within the green movement. Gore's ball, which has more of an activist bent, is co-hosted by the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, the Vote Solar Initiative, and Youth for Environmental Sanity, among many other groups and businesses. Wal-Mart, KPMG, and the American Gas Association are also on board, but these and other corporate sponsors have incorporated green practices into their businesses, say the Gore folk. The organizers are decorating with tree seedlings, using recycled-fiber carpet, recycling and composting waste, and offsetting their carbon emissions. The food is going to be organic, and cooked across the street, to lower the carbon footprint, natch. Will.i.am and Maroon 5 will serenade the crowd.

The International Conservation Caucus Foundation's ball is hosted by The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and WWF, among others, and will be just a few blocks down the street. "Roses will be flown in from Ecuador. Marinated beef is being flown in from Texas to Virginia, where it will be grilled and then trucked to the auditorium," reports the Times. "We are not into symbolism," said caucus president David H. Barron. "We are focused on a much bigger impact." As the Times puts it, "the caucus gala sticks to its philosophy that the environment and wildlife are most effectively protected by governments and businesses." To that end, sponsors include ExxonMobil, Chevron, International Paper, and Wal-Mart (which appears to be hedging its bets). Famous anticipated guests include Robert Duvall, Bo Derek, and Ed Norton."

That's a report from Kate Sheppard at gristmill.grist.org.

And that leads us to our next report, with Christine MacDonald. She worked for Conservation International, and didn't like the company it keeps.

[Interview with Christine MacDonald, author of "Green Inc"]


I'd like to take you now to the Committee Rooms of Congress, to hear another great African American voice, Van Jones. This is the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Ed Markey. They get the best.

In this brief testimony on January 15th, 2009, Van Jones explains how to beat America's energy poverty, while giving work to those who need it most.

[Van Jones]

Van Jones is both a civil rights activist and environmental advocate in Oakland, California. His Green Jobs program came out of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He's got a web site at vanjones.net.

I'm Alex Smith. You can find my kingdom of free green audio at ecoshock.org

Save yourself, your neighborhood, or just a lonely planet. Load up your Ipod or computer with free mp3 files on the triple threat: the environment, peak oil, and the new hard times.

Mother Earth will thank you.

Until next week.

Alex Smith

Radio Ecoshock