Some Thoughts On Atlanta’s Climate Reality Project Conference
First, I’d like to thank the organizers of the three day Climate Reality Conference for putting on such a fine, outstanding event at the World Congress Center in which all left more educated with a stronger sense of community. I know that I am planning on being as active as I can with the Atlanta chapter, which should be expanding greatly. The chapter will be my “new family.”
Many of the participants I met were very pleased that I had published a “clifi” or climate fiction children’s climate primer entitled World of Thermo-Thermometer Rising meant to raise interest of kids around age 10. The book does present “climate facts” after each chapter, so perhaps “clifi” is a bit of a misnomer for my work. Hopefully some of the people I met at Climate Reality can help me market Thermo so the project will be viable for children’s education. I was so pleased to meet many youth at the conference, who are beginning to get celebrity status. Levi is one of them:
Vice President Al Gore had several youth panels on stage including Levi Draheim, who at age 11 is already a big climate activist in Florida. Youth at this point in time, dear diary, know what peril their future’s hold given the immensity of the climate crisis. I hope they won’t rest until every internal combustion engine is replaced by electrics, and every coal fire plant is shut down worldwide. I so feel and grieve for them going into the teeth of what will be a protracted war to save the planet, probably lasting for generations to come.
This 40th Climate Reality Project Conference was said to have interwoven climate and social justice issues more than any previous gathering. Certainly the Old South where I grew up has produced some of the world’s most outstanding social justice leaders since the start of the Civil Right’s Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, most notably Martin Luther King Jr. Many current social justice champions from the New South were brought on stage. Atlanta has stamped its place in history as being a Mecca for Civil Rights, and now is being hailed as one for “Green Rights” going into the 2020s. Besides meeting climate kids the highlight of the conference for me was when Bishop Barber, II and V.P. Al Gore got on stage together:
I’ve written posts for the last two MLK Days honoring the work of Dr. King thinking that we can no longer separate the climate issue with that of social and economic justice. I do think that eventually fossil fuel companies should have to pay restitution for the damage they have done to us all, particularly since science got settled in the 1980s. One of the biggest points driven home by the conference was how badly the poorer people of this planet are getting hurt by just the initial bouts of Climate Change, such as Katrina in 2005 and Maria in 2017.
I was a little disappointed that more hard science was not presented during the conference besides Al Gore’s famous slide show. I suppose that this is being left to such conventions as those held by the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. Activism was stressed more since the science, beyond just tying up a few regional loose ends and determining exactly how fast and how quickly environmental damage will be occurring, is frankly settled.
We know what must be done, so the climate problem now needs to be solved via good policy stemming from politics. As promised I will not give up hope unless the U.S. pulls out of the Paris Accords the day after the next President is sworn in as of January 2021, and/or Trump is re-elected. V.P. Al Gore’s very last thoughts were that “America needs a new President.”
Enough written and said.
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”