Maybe that is the question that needs to be asked by all.

While Al Gore has served the role of Paul Revere in this revolution, the movement lacks a Patrick Henry. Instead of “give me liberty or give me death,” we get muted voices that make it home in time for supper.

That does not mean everyone involved is not deeply committed to our cause; it simply means we lack the necessary will to affect the change our issue demands. Like most policy makers, we are all to tied to a comfort zone that interferes with saving the world.

Our movement has as much dedication as any other but unfortunately, that dedication has apparently failed in forcing the behavioral and policy changes that will result in the economic overhaul we all desire and must have if we are to ultimately succeed.

One speaker at the meeting phrased it by suggesting that the public might think that the problem was insignificant because it appeared publicly that, “no one was doing anything about it.” Although that is not an accurate characterization, it does reflect a prevalent attitude of those who rely on Rush Limbaugh and friends for their news.

The movement has come very far in a quick time. Gore has indeed primed the pump, but we all need to step it up further if we are going to succeed in both long term and short term goals. Transforming our world while assuring economic prosperity and eliminating carbon emissions is daunting but it is not impossible.

Gandhi once professed, “We must focus on responsibilities, not rights.” In our free society we believe it’s our right to waste. No one is going to tell us what we can consume or how much; but is it really a right to waste? What is our personal and corporate responsibility for that?

We do know it is not our right to harm others by our actions and we have passed plenty of laws to enforce that. Murder, assault and battery are all crimes against others.

No one has the right to kill or hurt another human being gratuitously, but that is exactly global warming’s outcome. Millions of people will become refugees due to its ravages. More will die or see their livelihoods stripped as global climate excess destroys the carbon based economy and creates global uncertainty for our future.

That brings me back to my assertion on outrage.

I remember no successful social movement that was not outraged enough to force policy makers from their comfort zone and into collective action. Suffrage, civil rights and apartheid all required outrage to show the public the scope of the problem. Would we be willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary as those who came before have done such as Henry, King, Gandhi or Thoreau?

It is unfortunate that our movement so readily rejects those who attempt to raise the rhetoric or tactics used to grab people’s hearts and minds. Even the use of certain words is ridiculed in some activist circles because they do not play well in some focus group in Bethesda. The mere mention of acts of civil disobedience is enough to result in an activist’s ostracism from the “legitimate” movement.

That is really what is missing from the current dialogue on global warming and coal.

Here we have more than 24,000 American deaths from coal burning fine particles each year and we know that coal is dumbing down our kids, giving them asthma and causing adult heart attacks and strokes. Mining destroys entire ecosystems throughout coal country and disposal of hazardous coal combustion waste contaminates and scars the earth around power plants.

We know that global warming is about to radically alter our planet in ways that will mostly be bad, but yet, we treat that and the other issues surrounding coal cavalierly, almost as something to be dealt with only during the workday.

Of course it is not good for anyone to become completely obsessed with this or any issue. It is certainly self defeating to stress over anything to the point that it causes depression or a heart attack.

I know that most of the battles won by Valley Watch in the past (our record is something like 33 wins and 3 losses) have come through dogged effort, sometimes “dirty tricks” and perseverance, but when we know we are winning is when we cause our opponents to take the issue home with them and not allow them to leave it at work. When PR flacks or corporate engineers and minions are forced to think about Valley Watch or what we are saying when they are trying to watch their favorite TV show, we know they are starting to lose the battles in which we have engaged them.

However, it is also true that they probably are not ever going to take it home with them as long as we have remained polite and completely courteous in our demeanor with them. Sure politeness gets a polite response and a coal plant that will operate long after we are gone.

It is not simply an issue of being overly polite in our dealings with the opposition; although I fail to understand why anyone who is attempting to build or permit a new coal plant in the face of the climate crisis deserves anything resembling polite treatment.

Sometimes, we have had to resort to dirty tricks. I guess I rationalize most of this as considering it necessary to “play hardball” with our opponents. I should say that I am proud that I have never treated my opponents with any personal dislike or hatred since I do understand that they are only doing their job as they see it. However, I have no compunction in seriously attacking their institutions, whether it is a government unit of polluting corporation.

We usually look closely for their vulnerability, the proverbial soft underbelly where we can stick our symbolic knife and make them suffer. In 1988, for instance, we were successful in running the German corporation, BASF out of Indiana when they wanted to build a hazardous waste incinerator in one of two Indiana venues.

First, I had the unsavory job of grabbing their trash every week before it was picked up. Reading through their throwaways, amidst coffee grounds and used Kleenex, I discovered lots of invaluable information that ended up being sufficient to make them go away.

It was also during that war, that I suggested that BASF, which had a history of being a fascist corporation, who along with a couple of others had developed and ran the concentration camp at Auschwitz, was not to be trusted. I will admit that I was not loved when I suggested the union labor who was actively supporting the construction of the plant would have built “Hitler’s Ovens” if they thought there was work in it for them.

Yes, the building trades were angry with Valley Watch and myself for making such a claim but BASF had said they wanted a 100 year relationship with my community and I thought it only right to call them out on something they had done just fifty years before.

Yes, we ended up winning (they never did build the plant in either location) and that was the outcome Valley Watch sought, unseemly as it had to be.

Do the ends justify the means?

That is only for each of us to decide within the context of our own morals and conscience.

I personally believe in civil disobedience as a tactic, usually of last resort. I would much rather get arrested doing some symbolic and nonviolent action against a corporation that is seeking to harm my neighbors and family than attempt to sit comfortably on the sidelines watching pollution ravage the health of my community.

In fact, I see it as a duty of citizenship much the same as Henry David Thoreau who, when quizzed by Ralph Waldo Emerson as to why he was in jail for one of his protests, said, “Why are you out there?” referring to Emerson’s freedom outside of jail.

Thoreau ultimately won and Walden Pond was saved. He did break the law to help save it and so it goes.

Thoreau had a sufficient sense of outrage to take a social and moral stand that resulted in his incarceration. Gandhi had the same sense as did Geo. Washington, Patrick Henry and Martin Luther King.

There will come a time when we will all be forced to stand firmly against our opponents. If we do it politely, without a sense of outrage, I predict the outcome will be a perhaps slowed but ultimate loss to climate change that will irrevocably worsen the lives of our children and their children.

If we do everything we can to up our rhetoric and actions to a level commensurate with the problem, it will be no problem to match our outrage with actions that drive home the point to even the most skeptical naysayer on global warming.

When I consider human history, I see no other choice. I sure do not want my kids to ask one day why no one was doing anything about it. That choice rests with each of us as we seek solutions to a planetary train wreck that I s already beginning to happen.

The time has come to take the gloves off in the way we treat the politicians and people who continue to acquiesce to the industries and those responsible for staying this apparently do nothing course.

Sure it is important to reduce our emissions of CO2 by at least 80% by 2050 but reaching that goal some 42 years from today will leave us in a huge quandary as a species unless we begin to make substantial headway in those reductions immediately.

From my perspective that means:

1. We must universally call for a moratorium on all new coal plants, whether they claim to be Capture and Sequestration ready or not. The only exception might be the FutureGen facility which is the taxpayer funded project designed to demonstrate the veracity of their claim of zero emissions. All other coal proposals should be universally opposed if we are going to make any headway in this most serious issue. It is certain that no new coal plants should be built unless they are not only equipped but can capture 100% of their carbon emissions and store them permanently.

2. Existing coal plants should be completely phased out over the next twenty years, beginning with the oldest first, while allowing research on ways to capture the carbon emissions from those newer plants. Once, we have proven that pulverized coal can be adapted for carbon capture, then we must use the demonstrated technology to sequester it that is proven by FutureGen to immediately capture and store the carbon from those plants. If it is not economical or physically practical to do that, then those plants should also be taken out of service, perhaps mothballed until the economics or the technology allows then to return to service without emitting carbon.

3. We must undertake a massive program to educate people of the seriousness of the climate change issue and the importance of their personal commitment to conserving energy and reducing their personal carbon footprint. We need to change the paradigm that conservation is some relic from 1975 or World War 2 and that the only way that we can maintain even a semblance of our current wasteful lifestyles will be to eliminate wasteful consumption and attitudes universally throughout the world.

4. We must demand increased production and end-use energy efficiency, pushing congress to pass mandatory efficiency standards that are significantly higher than those in place today. While the market should probably force the necessary changes, once we have accomplished #3, it will probably require some sort of government backed “incentives” to encourage development of new technologies that will supplant existing wasteful living.

5. As people who are demanding a better way, we, the environmental movement, should set a major example for the rest of the world and declare that we will not have a single new conference on global warming that does not incorporate video conferencing so that we do not have to travel long distances to discuss how others should cut back on their carbon emissions. The first video conference I attended was in 1991. It worked then and is significantly better now. We could all equip our own personal work stations with the hardware and software necessary to permit this sort of advance in our mission. Tell me why twenty or two hundred people should hop on airplanes and travel to some distant city to discuss the seriousness of any problem when we can do the same function electronically?

To accomplish the partial solutions I have outlined, my group, Valley Watch offers the following two campaigns for your perusal and use.

CONSERVATION IS COOL!

There is something wrong when the slightest mention of the word conservation brings admonishment from environmental leaders just because some uninformed focus group thought that conservation conjured up images of jimmy Carter sitting by the fireplace in his cardigan sweater asking us to personally sacrifice to save energy. Frankly, I wish we had a leader like that today who would tell the truth even though it might hurt him/her politically.

By changing the paradigm to Conservation is Cool! and getting all those celebrities who pledge to help us win this battle to join in, we can make a certain level of personal sacrifice seem not only like a duty but also a blessing. Once people begin thinking about ways to Conserve, then a whole new generation will understand that waste is no longer an option.

Such a paradigm shift could yield huge economic opportunity with its decentralized production and consumption of goods and services. We may even find that such an “ethic” actually yields reduced reliance on fossil fuels and thus might even promote peace as well as prosperity. Wouldn’t that be a huge dividend?

20X10

To prod people toward a more Conservative path of consumption and to eliminate waste, Valley Watch has initiated a program where we solicit personal commitments from people to cut their personal energy use by 20% by the year 2010.

If you think that is too lofty a goal, my experience says that it is not. For years, I have made the easy efforts to conserve electricity and gas for home heating. I thought I was doing pretty well until I started telling whoever would listen that they should cut their own consumption of energy if they wanted to have a decent world for their grand kids.

Hoping not to be perceived as a hypocrite, I made my own commitment to reducing my energy consumption by 20X10. Guess what, it did not take anywhere near three years. I was able to do that much by simply consolidating trips, replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps and by using my head, looking for additional ways to conserve. Turn out the lights, Stupid!

My energy consumption at home has been reduced between 25 and 30% in 2007 over 2006. My lifestyle has only changed in the fact that I wear sweaters and jackets in the winter and use less air conditioning in the summer. Actually, my family has not used our air conditioner for the last five summers, but that is another story.

Frankly, there has been NO sacrifice involved in this effort. Now, I am trying to afford an EnergyStar refrigerator which could put me over the 30% mark when I do.

My point is this, since we have already passed the threshold we hoped to hold greenhouse gas concentrations to by 2050, it is time for serious action. It is time for serious policy and it is time for a level of personal commitment from all of earth’s human population to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

We’ve already gone past the tipping point, now it is a matter of the survival of our species and all the others that share on this earth. If we cannot make those personal choices to protect ourselves and our progeny, we certainly do not deserve the mantel of dominion over this earth and we will likely perish from it as a result.

Sometimes such choices are hard but I would rather give myself a choice because doing so at least gives our kids a chance.