About

Why “350 or bust”?

“The basic matter is not one of economics. It is a matter of morality — a matter of intergenerational justice. The blame, if we fail to stand up and demand a change of course, will fall on us, the current generation of adults. Our parents honestly did not know that their actions could harm future generations. We, the current generation, can only pretend that we did not know.”

~Dr. James Hansen

On December 7 – 18, 2009, leaders from 192 countries met in Copenhagen to negotiate a limit on fossil fuel emissions that are causing our planet’s climate to change. They failed to reach an agreement at that time, and there is still no international agreement, although China and the United States (the world’s two biggest carbon emitters) did sign a historic climate accord in November of 2014.

The best science out there says that 350 is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.   Scientists measure carbon dioxide in “parts per million” (ppm), so 350 ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.   Don’t just take my word for it – check out this link to the scientific paper presented by NASA scientist Jim Hansen at American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December 2007.  You could also check out this article at Grist.org which includes a list of the scientific organizations that endorsed the 2001 IPCC report on anthropogenic climate change.  Or, if you prefer the data translated into layperson’s terms, check out Bill McKibben’s blog entry, “The Science of 350, the Most Important Number on the Planet”, or this summary of the science at 350.org. It was McKibben’s organization, 350.org, that inspired me to become a climate activist in the fall of 2009.

I’m not a scientist or an expert in climate change.  I am a regular citizen, a mother who would like to see a habitable planet for my children, and all future generations.  I worked as a registered nurse for over twenty years before returning to school to complete a degree in education, and I now work as a researcher and writer.

I believe that climate change is a moral issue, and building the grassroots global movement for an ambitious, fair, and binding global climate deal is the most important thing that any of us can be doing at this time in human history. We have the unique opportunity to be part of what Paul Hawken calls the awakening of the immune system of the planet, the vast and nameless uprising of peoples and organizations fighting for justice, future generations, and biodiversity. There is no higher calling.

With Bill McKibben, Healing Walk, Fort McMurray, July 2013
With Bill McKibben, Healing Walk, Fort McMurray, July 2013

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In the fall of 2010, I and two other Canadians, Cathy Orlando and Cheryl McNamara, started the first three chapters of Citizens’ Climate Lobby in Canada, in Toronto, Sudbury, and Red Lake Ontario. Three years earlier Marshall Saunders, a retired real estate broker and Grameen Foundation Humanitarian Award Winner, founded Citizens’ Climate Lobby after he saw a lack of citizen engagement with government on the issue of climate change (you can read more about Marshall’s founding vision on CitizensClimateLobby.org). Since then, CCL has been growing exponentially, and retired NASA climate scientist Dr James Hansen has become one of our biggest champions.

Dr James Hansen and CCL

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Our moral obligation to fight climate change is to build a collective solution, not to purify ourselves as individual consumers.

~Margaret Klein, “What Climate Change Asks of Us: Moral Obligation, Mobilization, and Crisis Communication” CommonDreams.org

Citizens Climate Lobby is focused on creating the political will for a liveable climate by empowering regular citizens like me to participate in our democracy, and giving us the tools to do so in a more skillful way. It is the cure for climate trauma, an antidote to hopelessness and despair.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”     

~ Margaret Mead, American anthropologist, 1901 – 1978

Mark and me with Dr James Hansen, Washington DC, June 2013
Mark and me with Dr James Hansen, Washington DC, June 2013

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Christine Penner Polle, Red Lake, Ontario

25 thoughts on “About”

  1. Hi Christine–

    This is from Menno Creation Care Network. I am listing your congregation and mentioning your blog in the next MCCN newsletter, but I’m not sure where you are. I thought Hope Mennonite was in Winnipeg, MB, but I have an email from you that indicates you are from Red Lake, ON.

    Please help sort out a confused American.

    Reply
  2. An Open Invitation To Compose “Dying Sayings” in comments at http://soaringdragons.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/dying-sayings/

    This is an invitation that I am posting into the comments of the “About” pages of 188 randomly selected blogs. How did I find you? From Tag Surfer under “Spirit.”

    The inspiration for this request comes from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, Centenary Edition, Revised, 1981, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York. This book has 187 “Dying Sayings,” and I’m sure living WordPress bloggers and blog readers can write no less inspiring self-composed epitaphs than the historically famous.

    Among the “Dying Sayings,” pp. 369-372, are the below fourteen entries plus my own:

    Newton: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

    Richard I: “Youth, I forgive thee!” (Said to Bertrand du Gourdon, who shot him with an arrow at Challus. Then, to his attendants, he added): “Take off his chains, give him 100 shillings, and let him go.”

    Augustus (to his friends): “Do you think I have played my part pretty well through the farce of life?”

    Beecher (Henry Ward): “Now comes the mystery.”

    Goethe: “Light, more light!”

    Hannibal: “Let us now relieve the Romans of their fears by the death of a feeble old man.”

    Jackson (“Stonewall“): “Let us pass over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”

    More (Sir Thomas): “See me safe up [i.e. on ascending the scaffold]; for my coming down, let me shift for myself.”

    Mozart: “You spoke of a refreshment, Emile; take my last notes, and let me hear once more my solace and delight.”

    Poe (Edgar Allan): “Lord, help my soul!”

    Roland (Madame; on her way to the guillotine): “O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”

    Saladin: “When I am buried, carry my winding-sheet on the point of a spear, and say these words: Behold the spoils which Saladin carries with him! Of all his victories, realms and riches, nothing remains to him but this.”

    Webster (Daniel): “Life, life! Death, death! How curious it is!”

    Wordsworth: “God bless you! Is that you, Dora?”

    Soaringdragons: “I have been waiting for this moment since my youth, and it is with extreme anticipation that I wait now.”

    Feel free to compose as many of your own “dying sayings” as you wish in comments. Please bear in mind that this blog is P.G. and contains 19,000 words, none of which are swear words. So, the rule is that if your response includes ‘swear words’ (my own private definition being the standard) I will either edit the response or delete it, my option.

    I hope everyone contributes. Cheers!

    Reply
  3. btw i was forwarded over here through scottbar…something LOL (dont mind scott im screwy with names)…i am finding more and more canadians everyday!

    i am not canadian btw. people have a misconception about that when I talk about canada….yea. idk lol

    Reply
    • Welcome here, Eva. We Canadians are known to be a friendly, polite bunch on the whole so usually finding a Canadian is a good thing (our current Prime Minister, on the other hand, is quite a different story!)

      Reply
  4. Hello Christine, I visited your blog and found your content stimulating. My blog will feature something similar, from an engineering and LEED point of view. All the best and hope to read more of your articles.

    Reply
  5. Hi! I heard about your blog while reading the latest issue of Canadian Mennonite and thought I’d check it out. The interview was very interesting and I look forward to reading more about your very worthwhile mission.

    Reply

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