DID YOU HAVE ANOTHER PLANET YOU CAN MOVE TO?

It's snowing on the first day of spring in NYC. Not such a big deal. But factor in the drought in California, Colorado and Sao Paolo--the freaky snowfall in Boston and parts of the south this winter. Then remember that one of our two political parties denies that climate change exists. Florida recently banned government employees from saying "climate change." You can ban the word and say it doesn't exist, except that now it's actually here--not in the future. The drought in CA is the worst in 1,200 and with 1 year's worth of water left, the rationing of water is imperative. Ice bucket challenge, anyone?

The island of Vanuatu was just hit by cyclone Pam, as many South Asian countries have been hit over the last decade. Do you not see more drastic weather conditions in your lifetime? Maybe you haven't lived as long as I have, but I can see it. Vanuatu lost 80-90 of it's buildings and about half of the island nation's population is now homeless. Often, the emissions of wealthy nations like the US and China are hurting poor countries the most.

So here's Bill McKibben of 350.org suggesting what you and I can do, since governments are too greedy to shift towards clean, renewable energy. A movement is starting to divest or stop investing in fossil fuel companies. The UN now supports this movement. I guess investors have to take their money away from fossil fuel companies and then the companies won't have as much money to bribe our politicians with. Anyone with a brain knows we have to do something.

Bill McKibben: "I don’t think that Paris in December, the next big negotiations, is the absolute key. I think what happens in Paris will depend on what kind of organizing we do before that, how much we stand up to the real powers that be, which are the Shells and the Exxons and the fossil fuel industry. They’re the guys who are playing the politicians, not the other way around. And so, this fight around divestment, around things like Keystone, putting ourselves in the way of every new fossil fuel expansion—what we’ve been calling a fossil freeze—is absolutely crucial. It’s hopeful, because that fossil freeze comes in a moment when we’re also seeing a solar thaw, Amy. The price of solar panels is dropping so fast that their spread is now—the amount of solar power in the U.S. doubled last year. We could do this. If we can break the power of this industry, if we can throw off its dead weight, then the world actually has a fighting chance not of stopping global warming—it’s, as Vanuatu illustrates, too late for that—but of keeping it from getting entirely out of control. It is the greatest fight we’ve ever been in. And though we don’t know how it’s going to come out, we know that we’re all needed to make a real, real part in that battle."