Is Global Warming Like Vietnam?

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing."
-Jack Kerouac

I just signed an emergency petition to try and stop President Bush from blocking crucial UN climate negotiations in Bali. The rest of the world has agreed on a schedule for carbon emissions cuts to stop catastrophic climate change, but with only 48 hours left Bush is blocking the agreement!

The petition is from Americans to world leaders at Bali, saying that Bush doesn't represent us -- it's going to be delivered directly to summit negotiators as well as in an ad campaign and demonstrations by activists there. It will help other countries to refuse to give in to the Bush team by showing they don't have the support of Americans.

There's just 48 hours to turn this around - sign up at this link! -
http://www.avaaz.org/en/please_ignore_bush/98.php?cl_tf_sign=1

So, how does all this relate to the title of this post?

There always has to be a grassroot start to fighting a war - and that is what is being waged right now - a war against the earth, a war against the future, a war against the generations that will need to live in a diminshed world if change doesn't happen soon.

The same was true of Vietnam. It took a grassroots effort, unpopular at the time, to start a mass movement to oppose the war and force the change that eventually brought millions of people to the streets to protest the actions of those that were waging a war that made no sense.

I often wonder what it will take to get that same level of commitment to forcing change to bring massive amounts of people into the streets to protest short-sighted governments that exhibit a failure of leadership.

Am I in the streets? No, but if I was in Bali right now, I would be out there with the activists, doing what I could to activate some kind of change.