I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory. Thousands of research studies performed by thousands of scientists provide evidence of human-generated activities that define the reality of climate change already despoiling our air, fresh water, land, and ocean. Thousands of extreme weather events attributed to climate change -- drought, storm, fire -- desiccate our agricultural lands, inundate our coasts, burn our forests, and distribute the toxic consequence via the atmosphere and the sea. Thousands of lives are lost; thousands of communities are disrupted; thousands of jobs are destroyed; thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of property value and financial resources are consumed by indifference and denial. Thousands of organizations, communities, churches and professional associations have expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of any meaningful political response to the accelerating evidence of dramatic negative consequences of climate change -- across the world and at every level of society. Thousands of news reports, editorials, legislative initiatives, alternative technologies, and innovative proposals have been put forward, only to be ridiculed and ignored. Thousands of individuals have petitioned, voted, demonstrated, and volunteered, expressing their concern with this critical condition, their anger with this political irresponsibility, their demand that necessary steps be urgently taken to address this challenge to future survival. Thousands of thousands of thousands add up to millions and millions worldwide. Indeed billions, as the fate of all of us -- and our children -- may be at stake. The usual tools for communication seem not to serve. Thousands of letters and calls to legislators do not convert to political results. Thousands of individuals engaged in specific social media campaigns are ignored. Thousands of people in the streets hardly make the nightly news. Thousands of strangers affected in faraway places seem of no significance. Thousands of urban victims of super storms are quickly forgotten. What will it take? On May 6, 2014, the United States announced the results of a National Climate Assessment with this statement: “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the arid Southwest, city dwellers from Phoenix to New York, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska. This National Climate Assessment concludes that the evidence of human-induced climate change continues to strengthen and that impacts are increasing across the country." This may be our climate moment, the point when American public opinion might be turned toward full understanding of the climate change implication for the future. But how do we make it so? What if we foment a viral revolution, an “electronic climate spring,” where we concentrate our advocacy in one place until we are heard? What if we combine all our thousands of voices in one place, a “virtual square,” where we actively and repeatedly demonstrate our collective power, unite in a digital chant, bringing together every American citizen who believes that the United States, as a responsible nation, a moral nation, must meet the threat of climate change now with real, substantive, proactive policy and legislative action in every aspect of governance? What if we collect and concentrate our discontent and aspiration in one revolutionary space where the full length, breadth, and depth of our demand will be so strong, so loud, so incontrovertible, so constant, and so politically powerful that our cause cannot be denied? Here is the message to President Obama: As a Citizen of the United States, I urge your immediate national and international leadership, full executive commitment, and uncompromised personal support for direct action at every level in every department of government to meet the challenge of climate change in every aspect of our lives. Here is the e-mail address: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments What if thousands of us accept this challenge to respond? What if we “occupy” the White House electronically with the reality of our commitment and expectation? What if we engage the full network of climate-concerned organizations and their collective members? What if we use the collective audacity of our voices to transcend the inevitable volume of deniers, the narrow-minded legislators, the captive representatives of vested interests, the paralyzed bureaucrats, and the fearful political advisors, and speak directly to the President? Call him out. Make him do more than speak his mind through intermediaries and releases. Make him demonstrate his personal understanding of the profound challenge we face in climate change by his every action. Make him respond without equivocation or compromise. Make him turn the last two years of his presidency into a relentless exercise in global statesmanship that will make far more difference to the world than anything else on the modern political agenda. Our health depends on it. Our wealth depends on it. Our national security depends on it. Our standing in the world depends on it. Our survival as a civilization depends on it. I’ve sent my message. Will you? We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
