Environmentalists, civil society must unite, adopt stronger tactics to fight climate change

Note: I'd appreciate your feedback after you've read this. Contact Nick at: fillmore0274@rogers.com

The 311,000 protestors who took part in the exhilarating Climate Summit march through Manhattan and those who blocked some entrances to Wall Street have returned to their homes.

The leaders of the more than 120 nation states that made pie-in-the-sky, non-binding promises for reductions in carbon emissions at the UN meeting and dozens of powerful corporations have moved on.

And across Canada and other countries, news about the greatest threat ever to humanity’s survival

'Big Green' Hard at Work

has returned to the inside pages of our newspapers.

But people who strongly believe that the earth is in the initial stages of a downward spiral cannot allow conditions to return to the norm of the past.

A draft of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report raised new concerns. It said that climate disruption is here, and will dramatically worsen unless something is done immediately - and that something is on the level of a wartime response.

Because environmentalists are badly losing the battle to keep carbon emissions to liveable levels, campaigning strategies must be totally re-thought. On its own, the UN process cannot be trusted because much of it is driven by corporate interests.

While the New York march encouraged millions of people, a march is still a march. One possibility is the formation of a huge global network or coalition that would give groups and ordinary citizens the power base needed to begin winning the environmental war.