Blog Action Day – The subject is getting hot

It’s not to keep remembering “immemorial times”, but haven’t been so long since the countries got together its representatives in a great ecologic conference, the greater of all times, in Rio, in 92, with the city symptomatic taken by the Brazilian army to assure “the safety” and an agreement, from the governor in that time, Leonel Brizola, with the barons of the city to legalize it…

In that time, when we’re talking about global warming we had to face the economic lobby of oil with a whole block of renowned scientists that defended the increase of concentration of greenhouse effect gases by the use of energy after the industrial revolution, the human territorial occupation model and the negligence with the absorption capacity of the environment which would have little to do with the global warming. This is a natural cycle of the earth, irreversible and not related with humans and their way of life.

Well, 17 years after, the Kyoto Protocol in the ways for renovation, many things have changed.

Today is difficult to find someone that doesn’t have an understanding even rough about the greenhouse effect and its causes and it’s already a regular knowledge to know that the environment doesn’t support anymore, that we pay a high price for deforestation, that Brazil is among the 5 great emitters of greenhouse effect gases in the world and is still reluctant to assume a position to cut exemplary emissions, the same fears of the consequences of it for economy already satanized by the United States.

Greenhouse effect and global warming contribute for the melting of the ice caps and ecologic unbalances that are already a reality on our Planet

About my life on it, I’ve passed from a young engineer that talked about a distant and incomprehensible subject (it could look like a crook’s thing) to a professional with experience in this area of current and future climate changes, being asked to talk, write, discuss, inform and educate new professionals and decision makers about the subject.

More… particular things due to advances in solutions, as emissions compensations, neutralizations, and names as Carbon Free (created in the living room of my house), have become world terms that are associated to the most famous brands in the world, the main corporations and have turned into a new economy, the economy of payment of environmental services, the forest economy, not that about deforestation, but about the recovering and preservation of forests!

Well, so it’s alright, we advanced a lot, as human kind, if we think about that the formalization of environmentalism was marked with the book Silent Spring and the governmental structures as ministries and offices of environment are recent not only in Brazil, but in the world…

It’s alright if we are not talking about a goal, to hold the increase of average temperature in the globe in 2 C degrees in 2100, by the idea of a cooperative effort between the countries for that and if we didn’t know that we will reach the very 2 C degrees in 2050, just considering the inertial result of greenhouse effect gases already emitted.

It’s alright if into the sceneries of human behavior in the fight and decrease stipulated by the IPCC (International Panel of Climate Change, Peace Nobel with Al Gore in 2007) we didn’t find ourselves in the worst case scenario, which leads for an increase of temperature even greater or a necessity to extrapolate the solutions…

It’s alright if the geo-economy of the planet didn’t was suffering already meaningful changes, the Islands in the Pacific wasn’t submerging, if the occurrence of cataclysms with great probability to be caused by climate change wasn’t exponentially growing…

And it’s alright if the speed of decision of our governmental representatives didn’t obey anymore the political and diplomatic dynamic rather than the urgent necessity on the weight of the problem and its potential escalate for social exclusion…

Not that bad if the amazing capacity of awareness that the humanity had developed by the availability of information and speed of its medias could mean a coordinated action (or not?) that passes by the asking to elected, to the associations and local, regional and global actions.

Families mobilize and protest on the streets following manifestations all over the world against the global warming

In this year of 2009 we’re living a happy blooming of the action of the society about the subject, and that is a great difference.

We already had the Ecologic March, in São Paulo, we had the movement Global Climate Act, that begun at the World Social Forum and ends in a great event on December 12th, during the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, which the very march and others took part. We had the planet day.

Mobilizations spread out through the Internet and now this beautiful Global Action Day.

This great difference is the notion of that the change isn’t only in the economy, politics and diplomacy.

It’s, before everything else, a cultural change that we’re all involved and interested, because it results in a change in the way of life and perception of things that compose this very life, dreams and expectations.

And this time isn’t possible to pretend that we are not seeing and to wait for ready solutions.

We’ve to notice that if the world doesn’t fit us, we’re not fitting on this world.

We’ve to discuss the essential, to qualify again the luxury and to review the beauty.

We’ll get through, because our capacity to surprise is huge.

But it’s right there, with the willing to do, the necessity to express and the mobilization.

Let’s keep moving!

Francisco Maciel, chairman of the Iniciativa Verde ou Txai Brasil, musician and poet