Climate Change Draft Program for the RC Communities (proposed changes 3/2/23)
These are the proposed changes to the short version of the Climate Change Draft Program. You can see a version showing the "tracked changes" proposed from the previous version here.
A vast accumulation of data clearly indicates that, to avoid catastrophic consequences, we must act quickly to stop global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C by 2030. A temperature rise greater than that would damage and destabilize the world’s natural ecosystems and have devastating effects on the environment, agriculture, all humans, and all of life. To prevent it we must swiftly and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase carbon
capture and storage. This is possible if the vast majority of people decide to care, cooperate, unite, and take action.
Our economic systems, with their embedded drives for profit regardless of the damage done, have shown themselves to be incompatible with an ecologically sustainable society. To protect our environment and the species that depend upon it, we must fundamentally change these systems and end the oppression and exploitation they are built on.
To do this, we will need a coordinated global effort to reduce emissions as we end inequities rooted in oppression and create a rational economy—one that allows everyone to have a good life while living interdependently on the Earth. This will require an inclusive joining of mass movements with leadership that includes frontline populations* and youth.
The populations most vulnerable to climate extremes are the ones that have been targeted with genocide, colonization, oppression, exploitation, and war. Therefore, solutions to the climate emergency must center the thinking, perspectives, and leadership of these frontline people. What we do in the next few years will have big effects on all future generations and all species. We can play a significant role.
The actions we need to take follow.
TAKE ACTION AS CO-COUNSELORS
As Co-Counselors we can
• build solid home RC communities that make it possible for us to identify and discharge the distresses that keep us from facing the present situation and working together with everyone to implement solutions—ones that always address the connections between climate change, oppression, exploitation, and genocide;
• develop a strong personal foundation for sustainably engaging in the transformation of society, that includes: study of past and current mass movements to gather useful information that sharpens our ability to think freshly in rapidly changing conditions; support movements that implement a diversity of strategies and tactics that are pro-human liberation, end oppression and/or resolve the climate emergency; and build teams of people both in and outside of RC who can think together with us and about us;
• listen to and communicate with people everywhere about climate change—the causes (including human distress recordings), results, disparate (markedly distinct) impact on frontline communities, and solutions—in a way that will move them to join in taking individual and collective actions;
• thoughtfully apply and share RC tools, theory, and insights widely as we build the RC Community (assist people to recover and deepen their ability to listen, care, cooperate, act powerfully, and to stop targeting and blaming while tackling internalized oppression in mass movements);
• discharge any worries and fears that could interfere with our thinking and acting rationally, with integrity and courage, in the development of our program, the actions we take, and the widespread social upheavals that are likely as the climate crisis progresses.
• hold out hope in terms of what is possible and counsel people to discharge dispair on the crisis of the climate emergency and its effects on human existence and all life.
ORGANIZE WIDELY
Our program is to:
• support the sovereignty of Indigenous nations, Native, and tribal peoples;
• support the leadership of frontline populations and youth;
• organize locally, regionally, nationally, and build a global movement to end the climate emergency and rid society of exploitation and oppression, creating a sustainable, equitable future for all humans that sustains all life and the planet;
• ensure that the globally dominant and more industrialized countries provide resources for global solutions to climate change, including technological and financial assistance needed for locally appropriate initiatives;
• develop programs for people to collectively and rapidly transition off fossil fuels, reduce GHG emissions, and reduce their personal emissions—especially in the globally dominant and more industrialized countries, where individual greenhouse gas emissions have been the highest.
ORGANIZE FOR THE ADOPTION OF THE FOLLOWING POLICY CHANGES:
ENERGY
• Rapidly and drastically phase out the exploration for fossil fuel and the production (including fracking), transportation, and consumption of it, and remove the subsidies that encourage its use;
• electrify everything and make renewable, cleanly sourced electricity a common good for everyone;
• reduce energy consumption to the level of rational need and make all energy use more efficient;
• support a planned and coordinated transition to publicly-owned, renewable clean energy, sharing technical energy knowledge and expertise globally;
• only decommission nuclear reactors (unless they cannot safely be kept online) where they will be replaced with renewable energy, not fossil fuels.
RESILIENT, SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
• Protect the Earth’s water and use it for sustaining all life;
• make communities climate resilient—by providing everyone, especially frontline and vulnerable populations (people with disabilities, children, older people, homeless and displaced people, and people in institutions), the resources they need to adapt to and reduce the impacts of climate change (these resources would include affordable housing, health care, education, jobs with good pay and benefits, job training, food, and clean water);
• support communities impacted by climate crises, including refugees from hardest hit areas;
• encourage and support lifestyle changes and zero-waste strategies that reduce consumption—primarily in the wealthy countries, where consumption is the highest and most wasteful;
• move to zero or negative growth economies in the globally dominant and more industrialized nations;
• create the conditions where women and girls have their basic needs met to maintain their health, have control over their own bodies, and can decide how and if they will use their capacity to reproduce without compromise, including through voluntary family planning, human rights for women and girls, and education and opportunity for girls and young women;
• end war and support universal demilitarization; use military budgets to fund the transition to a sustainable, renewable, clean energy future.
AGRICULTURE, OTHER LAND USE, & FOOD
• Adopt climate-friendly farming and livestock-raising techniques, and agroecological methods (agricultural practices, such as growing different types of crops together, that don’t hurt people or sacrifice ecosystems) that store carbon in soil and perennial plants, like trees;
• in the wealthy countries, reduce the consumption of livestock to healthy, sustainable levels and put strong limits on biofuels;
• protect and restore natural carbon sinks (such as oceans, forests, peatlands, and wetlands) with the engagement and leadership of the people who inhabit these places;
• reduce and compost food waste.
TRANSPORTATION
• Provide access to widespread, affordable public transportation that is powered by renewable clean energy;
• develop alternatives to fossil fuels for commercial shipping and aviation;
• reorganize our societies so that people live and work in their local communities and thus rely less on travel and shipping.
1 Frontline communities are historically and currently targeted and most heavily impacted by our extractive economy, racism, genocide, and industrial pollution, including from the fossil fuel industries. They have a long history of targeting by oppression and experiencing the “first and worst” consequences of climate change and environmental destruction. Frontline communities include Native and Indigenous, Global Majority, poor, working class, women, and people living in globally less dominant and least industrialized nations. When organized and supported with resources, they can move decisively to build their power towards transforming society, creating sustainable ecosystems and winning liberation.