In 2020, Ahora joined the Anthropocene Alliance. The Anthropocene Alliance is 125 frontline communities impacted by flooding, toxic waste, wildfires, and drought and heat.
The goal of A2 is to help communities fight back. We do that by providing them organizing support, scientific and technical guidance, and better access to foundation and government funding. Most of all, our work consists of listening to our frontline leaders. Their experience, research, and solidarity guide everything we do, and offer a path toward environmental and social justice.
https://anthropocenealliance.org/about-us/
When Ahora joined A2 there less than 50 member communities. Now they are in 35 U.S. states and territories. In 2022 I was installed onto A2’s Leadership Council. Earlier this year I participated with a small group of communities to found the Mutual Aid Fund.
We stand in solidarity with these declarations from Anthropocene Alliance.
Here’s what we’re FOR:
- A phased-in (but rapid) prohibition of the extraction, refinement, sale, and use of fossil fuels.
- Abundant, cheap, clean energy: The provision of regional, local, and hyper-local supplies derived from photovoltaic (solar), wind, wave, geothermal and other low-cost, clean, and renewable sources.
- Energy savings! Energy efficiency and energy conservation are essential steps in the transition to a sustainable energy regime.
- Carbon storage. Not in underground caves, (expensive, impractical and leaky), but in soils, forests, mangrove swamps, tidal marshes, seagrass meadows, and sea mammals.
- Establishing a plant-based food system. Agriculture can be a carbon sink instead of a huge, carbon and methane emitter.
- A national plan for managing The Great Climate Migration: The likely resettlement of some 30 million Americans over the next half-century due to climate change.
Here’s what we’re AGAINST:
- Direct air carbon capture and carbon capture and storage – an experimental technology that is expensive and highly energy intensive.
- Geo-engineering to reduce global warming – Impractical, dangerous (it might kill the oceans), and a subterfuge to allow the petrochemical industry to continue business as usual and even profit from castastrophe.
- Natural gas (aka methane) as a “bridge” fuel – There is nothing “natural” about burning methane gas, (or leaking vast quantities of it during extraction). It increases global warming.
- Nuclear power plants – The manufacture of these plants burns vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Their operation is uneconomical and their wastes endanger future life on earth.
- Cap and trade – A ruse to allow low carbon businesses to profit from high carbon ones. They have little impact on overall carbon emissions.
- Carbon tax – Unless it is very high, it is ineffectual, and would require rebates to people with low income. It is an idea whose time has passed.
- Hydropower (new dams) – Release surprisingly large amounts of greenhouse gasses, and are both expensive and environmentally destructive.
- So-called “renewable” biofuels with carbon storage – These are not really carbon neutral and may devastate global agriculture and water reserves
- More efficient cows, for example fed with seaweed – No matter how much seaweed cows are fed, the dairy industry will still be a big emitter of greenhouse gases.
- Carbon offsets by planting trees – This is currently a scam. There is no effective system to ensure that the offsets (if they are even created) are maintained or protected.