As a big fan of post-apocalyptic movies, I am super excited about 2012.  It’s like every great apocalyptic movie rolled into one, minus zombies.  (It would be even cooler if there were zombies.  Zombies make everything better.)

Yesterday, I was struck when the preview came on my TV and I heard Danny Glover’s voice ring out through my living room:

“Today, we are one family.”

I stopped short.

It struck me because I don’t need a global apocalypse to recognize that all the people on this planet are one family.

The thing about climate change is that I will be okay, at least at first.  The weather may change, my food may get more expensive.  But I am extremely privileged; I will not go hungry and I will not lose my home.  In fact, most of us in developed countries will be able to adapt to the initial effects of our changing climate.

The thing about climate change is that it is people in the developing world who will be hit the hardest.  Those who are already the poorest.  Those who already struggle in ways that most of us cannot begin to imagine.  We will turn up our air conditioning as they begin to starve.  We will be inconvenienced.  They will become climate refugees.

The thing about climate change is that it is our mess.  The development and consumption of the “global north” are the reason that atmospheric CO2 levels are heading steadily upward from 387ppm.  And they are going to spiral upward yet, as we continue to consume and as people in developing countries strive to raise their own standard of living.

Climate change is our problem.  But they will be the first to pay the price.

I think it is here that “us” and “them” must end.  Because if they are my family, then I can no longer rationalize myself away from them.  And it becomes unacceptable to ask them to pay with their lives for my privilege.

Yesterday, as I sat on my couch and heard those five words, I felt hungry.  I was hungry because I was taking my turn fasting in support of the Climate Justice Fast hunger strike.  During my two-day fast, I learned a little bit about hunger.

I began to understand that we don’t grok hunger.  We may talk about hunger, say we are hungry, but very few of us ever go a day without food.  Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for us to discuss the potential human costs of climate change.  Because it’s not going to be “us.”  It’s going to be “them.”

Even a two-day fast doesn’t begin to resemble the kind of hunger that millions of people face every day.  Climate change is going to make that so much worse.  And hunger will be just one of the human costs of this environmental disaster.

The opportunity is ours.  I think that it’s time for us to be one family.  And it’s time for us to seize this moment, because our family is already paying the price for our choices.

Related posts:

1. Is the Climate Justice Fast hunger strike extremism?
2. Blog About Climate Change!
3. Ten Climate Change Terms Everyone Should Know

I have been a bit absent this week, pondering the questions posed in my last post, as well as the fascinating discussion going on over at Worldchanging in the comments of Transition Towns Or Bright Green Cities? I now seem to have arrived at a temporary peace within myself, even in the midst of trollish comments (not here, at least not yet) and heartbreaking election news that I take very personally.

It was in this state of internal equilibrium that I heard about Climate Justice Fast and the hunger strike undertaken by hundreds of people around the world in the days before the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.  On November 6th, the Climate Justice Fasters began a hunger strike that is scheduled to last through at least the end of the Copenhagen Summit on December 18th.

The Climate Justice Fasters have been labeled by some as extremists.  I can say honestly that I understand this point of view.  I would not classify myself as an extremist.  I am a researcher and a questioner.  I am, at heart, a bit of a skeptic.  If anything, I am too cautious in making assertions about what I believe, and I probably think for far too long before I act.  But I also perceive that the we live in extreme times and are confronted by extreme circumstances.  Given our current reality, I often feel that my moderate, measured action falls short.  Which is one of the many reasons that I admire the Climate Justice Fast hunger strikers, and the fact that they are taking action proportionate to the degree of threat that climate change poses to civilization as we know it today.

It is out of this admiration that I am joining a small group of people who will be participating in a rotational solidarity fast for the length of the Climate Change Justice hunger strike.  Each of us will be fasting for a small number of days and will be writing and/or speaking out about climate change during that time.

At the Climate Change Fast press conference in Barcelona on November 6th, a woman from Zambia spoke out.  She said she was touched that people from northern countries would voluntarily go without food to draw attention to this issue.  But where she is from, people are already going without food and even starving because of climate change.  (Press conference video – longish, she speaks at 20:25.)  Climate change is not a future issue.  It is a here issue.  It is a now issue.  Faced with the extreme reality, Climate Justice Fast’s hunger strike ceases to be extremism.

Our little group’s commitment of mini-fasts in solidarity with the Climate Justice Fasters greater action is but one small step in raising global awareness of this issue as Copenhagen approaches.  But it is a step, and a scalable one at that.  The more people who are involved and engaged, the better.  So if you would be interested in joining our group and helping us collectively fast, write and speak-out in support of the Climate Justice Fasters and their mission, please either leave a comment here, or hop on over to the initiatory post on Greenfyre’s blog and let him know you’d like to participate.  He will also be posting updates written by each of us as we take our turn and lend our voices to the cause.

(My first shift is this Thursday and Friday, the 12th and 13th.  I may attempt my first video post.  But only if everyone promises not to make fun of my hair.)

For more information about climate change, check out:

• 19 Simple Ways To Start Thinking About Climate Change
• Climate Change Is Just Like Raising Baby Mice
• Ten Climate Change Terms Everyone Should Know

Related posts:

1. Blog About Climate Change!
2. Ten Climate Change Terms Everyone Should Know
3. Climate Change Is Just Like Raising Baby Mice