Dear Leonardo,

I love you, man. I love the way you brought Rose back to life on the Titanic. I love the way you pushed yourself and your people to do the impossible as Howard Hughes The Aviator. I love the way you died in Blood Diamond. Most of all, I love that you took a stand for saying what needs to be said in 11th Hour.

And here is where I want to land a distinction in you. Being sincere is not the equivalent of being authentic. In 11th Hour you were sincere. You were not authentic. 

If you were authentic the viewer would come away feeling what truly moved you to make the film in the first place. You did not reveal the truth of that for us. We long for someone to speak the truth to us about what is going on in the world.

I would love to have you do a re-release, a director’s cut, that blows people out of the water with your authentic truth. You know, if it all comes down like it looks like it’s going to come down (see www.just-stop.org), what have you got to lose? It will all be gone anyway, so why not take the risk to say it like you feel it?

If you dared to tell your authentic truth with this film, then even in the opening scenes you would be sobbing. You know this. We are so sad that the polar bears are drowning, but no one will help us to feel this. You could. Your fear of losing modern civilization would pour out through your heart into ours so we could have the courage to change our behavior before it is too late. I want there to be movies for my great grandchildren to see. I love movies.  Your rage at our stupidity would sear the consequences of greed and denial into our nerves so we would be forced to wake up to what we are doing by not doing anything differently.

What drove you to make 11th Hour is your love for the possibility of humanity and for the miracle and beauty of the Earth. We know this. Please let us feel this. Please let’s make 11th Hour again with the real you in it, the man who stands for hope for all of us. You can do this. We can help you.

 

Your friend and ally,

Clinton Callahan

Munich from the USA (+9 hours) 011-49-89-74949473

www.radiant-joy.com

www.callahan-academy.com www.just-stop.org 

The following is largely extracted from two articles:Twilight of the Psychopaths, by Dr. Kevin Barrett (http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html) and The Trick of the Psychopath’s Trade by Silvia Cattori (http://www.tinyurl.com/53qjml). Both articles are recommended. Both articles reference the book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes, by Andrzej Lobaczewski. Cattori’s article is longer and includes an interview with the book’s editors, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Henry See. I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn't seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again. The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths.

All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. The inventor of civilization – the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers – was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies – especially military hierarchies. Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as their power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld – the overlapping criminal syndicates that lurk above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. During the past fifty years, psychopaths have gained almost absolute control of all the branches of government. You can notice this if you observe carefully that no matter what illegal thing a modern politician does, no one will really take him to task. All of the so called scandals that have come up, any one of which would have taken down an authentic administration, are just farces played out for the public, to distract them, to make them think that the democracy is still working. One of the main factors to consider in terms of how a society can be taken over by a group of pathological deviants is that the psychopaths’ only limitation is the participation of susceptible individuals within that given society. Lobaczewski gives an average figure for the most active deviants of approximately 6% of a given population. (1% essential psychopaths and up to 5% other psychopathies and characteropathies.) The essential psychopath is at the center of the web. The others form the first tier of the psychopath’s control system. The next tier of such a system is composed of individuals who were born normal, but are either already warped by long-term exposure to psychopathic material via familial or social influences, or who, through psychic weakness have chosen to meet the demands of psychopathy for their own selfish ends. Numerically, according to Lobaczewski, this group is about 12% of a given population under normal conditions. So approximately 18% of any given population is active in the creation and imposition of a Pathocracy. The 6% group constitutes the Pathocratic nobility and the 12% group forms the new bourgeoisie, whose economic situation is the most advantageous. When you understand the true nature of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience. In his book Political Oenology, Andrej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests), psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths. Since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power. How can we distinguish between psychopaths and healthy people? What is the portrait of a true psychopath? Such a dangerous question has almost never been successfully asked. The reason is because we mistakenly confuse healthy for normal. Human psychological diversity is the health of our race. There is no normal because healthy humans continuously evolve beyond all normalizing standards. The terrorism of searching through hierarchies for anyone deviating from normal is no different from witch hunts or Inquisitions. You must remember that hierarchies thrive on such low dramas, torturing victims until they confess to evil beliefs. Not so long ago the church and state ongoingly acquired significant income and property through witch hunts and Inquisitions. This continued for over two hundred and fifty years. Ten generations of Europeans understood pogrom as normal life. Let us not return to that nightmare. Testing for normal is guaranteed to backfire in our face. There is no normal. But there is conscience. We have very little empirical evidence to support the idea that true psychopathy is the result of an abused childhood, and much empirical evidence to support that it is genetic. The neurobiological model offers us the greatest hope of being able to identify even the most devious psychopath. Other recent studies lead to similar results and conclusions: that psychopaths have great difficulty processing verbal and nonverbal affective (emotional) material, that they tend to confuse the emotional significance of events, and most importantly, that these deficits show up in brain scans! A missing internal connection between the feeling heart and the thinking brain is detectable. Psychopaths are incapable of authentic deep emotions. In fact, when Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist who spent his career studying psychopathy, did brain scans on psychopaths while showing them two sets of words, one set of neutral words with no emotional associations and a second set with emotionally charged words, while different areas of the brain lit up in the non-psychopathic control group, in the psychopaths, both sets were processed in the same area of the brain, the area that deals with language. They did not have an emotional reaction until they intellectually concluded that it would be better if they had one, and then they whipped up an emotional response just for show. The simplest, clearest and truest portrait of the psychopath is given in the titles of three seminal works on the subject: Without Conscience by Robert Hare, The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley, and Snakes in Suits by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak. A psychopath is exactly that: conscienceless. The most important thing to remember is that this lack of conscience is hidden from view behind a mask of normality that is often so convincing that even experts are deceived. As a result, psychopaths become the Snakes in Suits that control our world. Psychopaths lack a sense of remorse or empathy with others. They can be extremely charming and are experts at using talk to charm and hypnotize their prey. They are also irresponsible. Nothing is ever their fault; someone else or the world at large is always to blame for all of their problems or their mistakes. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, identifies what she calls the pity ploy. Psychopaths use pity to manipulate. They convince you to give them one more chance, and to not tell anyone about what they have done. So another trait – and a very important one – is their ability to control the flow of information. They also seem to have little real conception of past or future, living entirely for their immediate needs and desires. Because of the barren quality of their inner life, they are often seeking new thrills, anything from feeling the power of manipulating others to engaging in illegal activities simply for the rush of adrenaline. Another trait of the psychopath is what Lobaczewski calls their special psychological knowledge of normal people. They have studied us. They know us better than we know ourselves. They are experts in knowing how to push our buttons, to use our emotions against us. But beyond that, they even seem to have some sort of hypnotic power over us. When we begin to get caught up in the web of the psychopath, our ability to think deteriorates, gets muddied. They seem to cast some sort of spell over us. It is only later when we are no longer in their presence, out of their spell, that the clarity of thought returns and we find ourselves wondering how it was that we were unable to respond or counter what they were doing. Psychopaths learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to themselves. They also become conscious of being of a different world from the majority of other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance. Think about the ramifications of this statement: Psychopaths are, to some extent, self-aware as a group even in childhood! Recognizing their fundamental difference from the rest of humanity, their allegiance would be to others of their kind, that is, to other psychopaths. Their own twisted sense of honor compels them to cheat and revile non-psychopaths and their values. In contradiction to the ideals of normal people, psychopaths feel breaking promises and agreements is normal behavior. Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others; what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor. They also learn very early how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of non-psychopaths, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of achieving their goals. So now, imagine how human beings who are totally in the dark about the presence of psychopaths can be easily deceived and manipulated by these individuals, gaining power in different countries, pretending to be loyal to the local populations while at the same time playing up obvious and easily discernable physical differences between groups (such as race, skin color, religion, etc). Psychologically normal humans would be set against one another on the basis of unimportant differences (think of Rwanda 1994, think of Israelis and Palestinians) while the deviants in power, with a fundamental difference from the rest of us, a lack of conscience, an inability to feel for another human being, reaped the benefits and pulled the strings. We are seeing the final desperate power-grab or endgame (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men – economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops and PR specialists – in short, the whole crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared. Why does the Pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. Deep down they know something is missing in them. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals. Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the healthy human being – a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish – militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely and as quickly as possible. Until the knowledge and awareness of pathological human beings is given the attention it deserves and becomes part of the general knowledge of all human beings, there is no way that things can be changed in any way that is effective and long-lasting. If half the people agitating for truth or stopping the war or saving the earth would focus their efforts, time and money on exposing psychopathy, we might get somewhere. One might ask if the weak point of our society has been our tolerance of psychopathic behavior? Our disbelief that someone could seem like an intelligent leader and still be acting deceptively on their own behalf without conscience? Or is it merely ignorance? If the general voting public is not aware that there exists a category of people we sometimes perceive as almost human, who look like us, who work with us, who are found in every race, every culture, speaking every language, but who are lacking conscience, how can the general public take care to block them from taking over the hierarchies? General ignorance of psychopathology may prove to be the downfall of civilization. We stand by like grazing sheep as political / corporate elites throw armies of our innocent sons and daughters against fabricated enemies as a way of generating trillions in profits, vying against each other for pathological hegemony.

Nearly everyone who has been part of an organization working for social change has probably seen the same dynamic play out: The good and sincere work of many can be destroyed by the actions of one person. That doesn't bode well for bringing some sort of justice to the planet! In fact, if psychopaths dominate political hierarchies, is it any wonder that peaceful demonstrations have zero impact on the outcome of political decisions? Perhaps it is time to choose something other than massive, distant hierarchies as a way of governing ourselves?

So many efforts to provide essays, research reports, exposés and books to leaders so they might take the new information to heart and change their behavior have come to naught. For example, in the final paragraph of his revised edition of the book, The Party’s Over, Richard Heinberg writes:

I still believe that if the people of the world can be helped to understand the situation we are in, the options available, and the consequences of the path we are currently on, then it is at least possible that they can be persuaded to undertake the considerable effort and sacrifice that will be entailed in a peaceful transition to a sustainable, locally based, decentralized, low-energy, resource-conserving social regime. But inspired leadership will be required.

And that is the just-murdered fantasy. There are no inspired leaders anymore. And in hierarchical structures there can’t be. Assuming that you can elect men or women to office who will see reason and the light of day, and who will change and learn and grow, make compassionate decisions and take conscientious actions… is a foolish, childish dream. Continuing to dream it simply plays into psychopathic agendas.

Only when the 75% of humanity with a healthy conscience come to understand that we have a natural predator, a group of people who live amongst us, viewing us as powerless victims to be freely fed upon for achieving their inhuman ends, only then will we take the fierce and immediate actions needed to defend what is preciously human. Psychological deviants have to be removed from any position of power over people of conscience, period. People must be made aware that such individuals exist and must learn how to spot them and their manipulations. The hard part is that one must also struggle against those tendencies to mercy and kindness in oneself in order not to become prey. The real problem is that the knowledge of psychopathy and how psychopaths rule the world has been effectively hidden. People do not have the adequate, nuanced knowledge they need to really make a change from the bottom up. Again and again, throughout history it has been meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If there is any work that is deserving of full time efforts and devotion for the sake of helping humanity in this present dark time, it is the study of psychopathy and the propagation of this information as far and wide and fast as possible. There are only two things that can bring a psychopath under submission:

1. A bigger psychopath.
2. The non-violent, absolute refusal to submit to psychopathic controls no matter the consequences (non-violent noncompliance).

Let us choose path 2! If individuals simply sat down and refused to lift a hand to further one single aim of the psychopathic agenda, if people refused to pay taxes, if soldiers refused to fight, if government workers and corporate drones and prison guards refused to go to work, if doctors refused to treat psychopathic elites and their families, the whole system would grind to a screeching halt. True change happens in the moment that a person becomes aware of psychopathy in all its chilling details. From this new awareness, the world looks different, and entirely new actions can be taken. Distinguishing between human and psychopathic qualities begins the foundation of responsibility upon which we have a real chance to create sustainable culture. Clinton Callahan, originator of Possibility Management, author of Radiant Joy Brilliant Love, founder of Callahan Academy, empowers responsible creative leadership through authentic personal development. www.just-stop.org.

 

If neither governments, nor most businesses are taking effective measures to avoid global climate catastrophe, what can people do at a grass-roots level to help sustain life on earth?

After heart-breaking research, I offer these four ideas:

1. Verify the accuracy of the information in this commentary.

2. If you decide it is valid, share it as widely and as quickly as possible. (If you can help with translating it into other languages, please write to: ideas@just-stop.org.)

3. Choose which of the four personal strategies you will use (listed below).

4. If you elect to Just Stop, then begin a Just Stop Team, because we cannot Just Stop alone. (The details and implications of "Just Stop" are explained below, and at: www.just-stop.org.)

NOT ABOUT SAVING THE EARTH

This writing is not about saving the Earth. The Earth will go on with or without human beings. This writing is about saving you. It invites you to shift your lifestyle so you might live a little longer, and so your descendents might live at all.

How can six and a half billion people reorient themselves all at once to quickly take the needed steps to head off a potential disaster? They can do it by clearly understanding that there is no alternative, and by following the examples of those who go first -- perhaps you.

By now it is certain that a total reorientation of lifestyles will happen on earth whether it is deliberately chosen or not. This is because rapidly spreading Western-style consumerism is not a sustainable pattern in the long term. There are already too many people using too many resources and making too much toxic waste.

Indeed, our population has increased far beyond the carrying capacity of this planet. Therefore, the choice that awaits each of us has to do with the decision to adopt a new lifestyle proactively, or reactively. If we wait and react as separate governments, races and creeds, we will bring upon ourselves the worst kind of horror imaginable. This writing suggests that we do have an alternative.

WAKING FROM THE DREAM

Discovering that whatever we fondly thought of as "the success of modern technology and a gradual long-term climate change" instead threatens human existence on planet Earth now, is like discovering that Santa Claus is, in actuality, our parents. Nothing can prepare us for the dismay of waking from a great dream. The only compensation is the value of entering reality.

After reading this letter, one might feel shock, fear, rage, shame, dismay, confusion, grief or depression. Having such feelings is actually a good sign. It means you are still "human." On this account, I encourage people to give themselves permission to have these sorts of feelings, and to share the feelings with others, as well as the reasons behind those feelings. Sharing the impact of waking from the dream is an essential part of one's Just Stop Team meetings.

WE HAVE ALREADY PASSED THE KILLER TIPPING POINT THAT MAKES ALL OTHER CLIMATE CHANGE DISCUSSIONS IRRELEVANT

High in the Antarctic Troll research station in January 2008, Norwegian scientists measured earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration at 394 ppm (parts per million). CO2 is the main greenhouse gas produced by burning coal, oil and natural gas, for example, in power plants, automobiles, trucks, jets, and heating furnaces. The present 394 ppm is far above the average 280 ppm that has supported life as we know it on earth. We continue increasing our CO2 emissions as if they have no consequence – but they do.

CO2 TRIGGERS METHANE HYDRATES TIPPING POINT

Man-made CO2 now traps so much solar heat that Arctic tundra, which was frozen for tens of thousands of years, is melting. Tundra covers about 20% of the earth’s land surface. A few years ago, it was discovered that, beneath the Siberian Arctic tundra permafrost, lies 400 billion tons (gigatons) of frozen methane locked in methane hydrates. Last year, scientists detected Arctic methane bubbling out from the tundra five times faster than previously measured.

For the past 420,000 years, Earth’s atmospheric methane has remained between 450-750 ppb (parts per billion). Methane now exceeds 1750 ppb, more than double the previous maximum. Here is the danger: methane has 21 times more heat-trapping effect than carbon dioxide.

Freshly released methane traps more of the sun’s heat, that melts more tundra, that releases more methane, that traps more heat in runaway global warming. Releasing only 9 of the Arctic’s 400 gigatons of frozen methane would exceed a hidden tipping point that starts a heating avalanche. Once started, it cannot be reversed!

The most conservative strategy, in the United Nation’s IPCC AR4 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report) last November, proposes a greenhouse gas emissions reduction that would stabilize Earth’s temperature rise at 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. The lifestyle changes needed to stabilize at 2 degrees are widely regarded as politically and economically unfeasible, and yet, a 2 degrees rise already guarantees that the 9 gigatons of Arctic methane will be released.

This is because 2 degrees is a global average, but that 2 degrees is not evenly distributed. Temperatures over the cool oceans won’t rise much at all, whereas temperatures over the land will get hot enough to stop crop pollination and force trees to change from CO2 absorbers to CO2 emitters!

An increased global average temperature of 2 degrees means an 8 – 10 degrees rise exactly where the frozen methane waits in the arctic regions. As reflective snow melts it exposes heat-absorbing land or water to collect much more of the sun’s warmth. As a result, civilization as we know it will vanish under an onslaught of storms, famine, drought, disease and conflict. Likely two thirds or more of humankind will be dead in our lifetimes! National governments and economies will end and life as we know it will, abruptly, halt.

This is not written to scare people, although it will, but to call people to action on behalf of everything that they love on the Earth, for their children and grandchildren. How many will find life blighted? How will they be affected personally if this scenario comes to pass? If there was ever a time to take personal actions, that time is now.

WE HAVE NO TIME

It is not generally admitted that a level of greenhouse gases to trigger a heating avalanche has already been exceeded. Threshold tipping points were not included in the UN’s original climate change models. Official conclusions had to be approved by all signatories, and that included the US.

Original reports indicated that we had centuries to evolve out of a carbon based economy. But we were wrong. We have no time. Although lethal effects of passing the tipping point are already recognized, for example by insurance statistics, global warming will probably not be regarded as catastrophic for another 5 to 8 years. One could use this time to prepare.

Geological records show that the last time runaway heating happened (the PETM of 55 million years ago), it was triggered by erupting volcanoes pouring out greenhouse gases. Today, as China and India use coal to power up their mega-populations, and as CO2-absorbing tropical forests are burned to grow high priced bio-fuels and soybeans for cattle feed, we pump out greenhouse gases 30 times faster than the volcanoes did! Last time it took 100,000 years for life to recover on Earth.

ONE SMALL WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

We have one ridiculously small chance to avoid self-extermination from runaway climate change. The chance is to suddenly cease 90% of worldwide carbon emissions now. Just stop. This involves not only 90% of personal and corporate emissions, but also 90% of the oft forgotten other half of greenhouse gas emitters: government and military operations.

Although 90% reductions by 2015 far exceeds the cuts proposed by California, Europe, and the UN’s IPCC meeting in Bali, 90% is urgently endorsed by many researchers including George Monbiot, James Lovelock and John James. (Source references for all the information in this letter are available through www.just-stop.org and many other web sites. For a sampling, just google the two words: melting permafrost, and start reading.)

POPPING THE EVERYTHING IS FINE BUBBLE

Thousands of the world’s smartest scientists have been tracking the earth’s biosphere for decades. I, too, was trained as a scientist. I know and trust the methods used to make measurements. Nevertheless, the results that scientists are finding are almost too shocking for me to accept.

I wake up in the morning and look at the trees, the sky, and ordinary people going about their daily lives in the village where I live in southern Germany, and I shake my head. The looming climate disaster feels like science fiction. It is like a doctor telling you that he found high cholesterol in your blood even though you don't feel anything related to it. Suddenly the everything is fine bubble pops; the whole world looks different.

The whole world has just been told to go on the equivalent of a permanent low cholesterol diet. Ignoring such a warning is perilous. Not taking immediate decisive action during our tiny window of opportunity guarantees that everything that we know, everything that we have taken for granted, everything of which we are proud teeters over the edge into extinction.

MOST PEOPLE EXPECT THE GOVERNMENT TO SOMEHOW SAVE US ALL

We assume that our elected officials are intelligent enough to avoid letting us die in such a well predicted and easily avoidable Malthusian collapse. But look at the jets streaking across the sky, the cars and trucks roaring down the highways, the smokestacks pouring out gases, and the brand new homes leaking heat like a sieve. Look at the daily pile of garbage each household throws away, and the army of advertisements imploring everyone to consume more. Then shift your view to governmental and business leaders wantonly wringing the last drops of profit out of the earth rather than the last drops of carbon out of their lifestyle.

Do you really think governments in America, Asia and Europe will end the competition for who can consume remaining resources the quickest? Do you really think that governments or other groups, in countries with rapidly increasing populations, will prevent two or three billion more babies being born?

No. They won't. None of them. Don't be stupid. Do overweight people stop eating? ...almost never.

GOVERNMENT OF CHILDREN

When children make a mess, who cleans it up? Not the children! 192 nations are making huge messes with no intention of cleaning them up. We are 192 nations operating at child-level responsibility. There are no adults in charge, not even at the highest levels of government. We don't even know what adult level responsibility is.

We have arranged no global Mom or Dad to say "Stop now! Don't touch that, ever! Put that back! It is not yours! Share that equally with the others! No fighting!" There is no organization taking consequent global-level responsibility. Nobody out there will save us. Therefore, it remains up to us, individually and collectively, to act.

FOUR STRATEGIES FROM WHICH TO CHOOSE

There are four basic strategies for dealing with climate change: Wait for a Miracle, Last Man Standing, Change the System, or Just Stop. Which do you choose? (The idea of four strategies and a few of these phrases come from Richard Weinberg’s book Powerdown.)

1) Wait for a Miracle: This is the strategy of the ~ 90% of humanity who either never heard of global warming, or who approach climate catastrophe through philosophizing, theorizing, or proselytizing, or by fantasizing that someone will discover a technological breakthrough to save us all. These people choose to do nothing.

2) Last Man Standing: This is the strategy favored by the elite, wealthy, power holders in the corporocracy. The plan is already being implemented: business as usual while ruthlessly competing for dwindling resources as the world "goes down." Survivor takes all. However, no amount of money, nor guns, assures survival from ecological collapse.

3) Change the System: This is the strategy favored by intelligent, compassionate, political activists in NGO's lobbying for regulations to change the socio-economic system. Workable scenarios for international cooperation, conservation, and resource sharing might indeed be developed, but implementation fails in practice due to too much compromise. When the cat has no claws, rats rule the world.

4) Just Stop, Build an Ark: This is the strategy of a small minority, relying on alternative sources of information, who realize that the entire system of industrial civilization is inherently unsustainable. Of these people, most will simply watch helplessly and cynically as the world disintegrates. Only a small subset of this already marginal group will take total personal responsibility for having caused the present conditions in the first place, and will then Just Stop creating them. Out of the ashes of their lives, they will gather in small sustainable social systems beyond the reach of globalization and create parallel culture "lifeboats," the "arks."

Without realizing it, we already participate in one of the above strategies. Through seeing the options more distinctly, we gain an opportunity to make a more conscious choice. Which do you choose?

FOUR ACTIONS THAT YOU CAN TAKE TO SUSTAIN HUMAN LIFE

1. The first thing you can do is assess the information in this letter through researching websites, reading articles, studying books, and connecting with a wide assortment of people. Seek independent sources. Decide whether or not this information is accurate.

2. If you conclude that this information is not valid, then do nothing. If you conclude that this information is valid, then send this essay to every person whom you wish could have a chance to live. Tell especially the people who least expect you to tell them. Tell truck drivers, petrochemical engineers, soldiers, bureaucrats, American coal diggers, Australian uranium miners, Siberian gas workers, farmers in Borneo and Brazil. Tell talk-show hosts, movie producers, network leaders, periodical and web site editors, and your neighbors. If people trust their information source, they can completely change their viewpoint and their lifestyle. I know this is so because I changed mine.

3. The third thing you can do is figure out which of the above four strategies you will use.

4. If you decide on strategy four, to Just Stop, then the fourth thing you can do is begin your Just Stop Team. We cannot Just Stop as isolated individuals. We need to rely on each other while we exit Western consumerism and create sustainable-culture arks. You can download the Just Stop Team Meeting Guidelines from www.just-stop.org.

RADICAL RESPONSIBILITY

Many recognized authorities agree: We must change, we must act, we must stop. But such sure-sounding proclamations only guarantee that nothing changes, no one acts, and nobody stops.

Why? Because THERE IS NO WE WHEN IT COMES TO RESPONSIBILITY.

Only one person in the world can stop. That person is me. I can stop.

At first it seems too radical to take responsibility for creating global warming, myself. Yet if I take full responsibility for creating global warming, without excuses, without avoiding the shame, without being a victim, then I can stop creating it. Through radical responsibility, I gain the capacity to Just Stop.

JUST STOP UNSUSTAINABILITY

If I worked in certain countries' governments, I would be too embarrassed to continue promoting denial and hypocrisy. I would Just Stop showing up for work ever again. My quitting would be non-negotiable. There are plenty of other things to do with my life than to protect an organization that has been hijacked to serve reprehensible purposes.

If my job supported the nuclear power industry or involved Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) or weaponry with Depleted Uranium (DU), I could no longer contribute to world contamination and would suddenly cease working there.

If my job was in the oil, coal or gas mining, refining or power industries or involved building or driving petroleum-fueled cars, trucks, ships or planes, I could no longer endure promoting greenhouse gas emissions in this way. I would Just Stop.

If my work supported a military that was directed to stockpile armaments and strangle other nations so my own nation could keep its petrodollars in circulation while selfishly sucking down the last drops of the world’s oil, I would find it beneath my dignity to continue and I would immediately change careers.

Almost every aspect of modern capitalist consumerism is unsustainable, so almost everything that I do in modern daily life leads to planetary suicide. If I walk away from a ridiculous carbon economy job now, I am like the police who opened the gates and walked away from the ridiculous Berlin Wall in 1989. Those police are heroes now.

JUST STOP GLOBAL WARMING

Trying to find compromises and being satisfied with halfway solutions is a typical human tendency. That is strategy three, Change the System. If I choose strategy three, then I do strategy three.

Just Stop is strategy four, and it is uncompromising: Just Stop.

Doing my own research about what to stop makes my decision to stop more reliable. It is simple: Find sources of greenhouse gases and stop sponsoring them.

The economics is simple too: if fewer people buy products that emit greenhouse gases during their manufacture, delivery, use or recycling, then fewer products will be produced!

Just Stop is such an obvious solution to global warming, yet such a difficult choice to consider. Prepare to be shocked when reading these sample ideas for what to Just Stop. Try to avoid pre-deciding that Just Stopping is impossible. Awareness takes time to grow. Give these ideas time to sink in.

Embracing the Just Stop strategy would look like this:

- Stop buying things that are made of or packaged in plastic. Most plastics come from petroleum. Bring a backpack or a basket to the store, and buy items that are not prepackaged. Start noticing how much plastic is in your car, your kitchen, your office, your yard.

- Stop all mail order catalogs. Colored inks can contain heavy metals and are buried in the ground after you toss them in the garbage. You poison the earth and cause whole forests to be chopped down each day to make catalogs. Living trees absorb CO2. Dead trees made into paper give off CO2.

- Stop accepting the free grocery and hardware store ads that get shoved into your mailbox. Bring them to governmental meetings and demand that your city or town revoke permission to distribute promotional circulars because they increase greenhouse gases.

- Stop buying newspapers and magazines. Go online for news and e-zines. Do not put newspaper compost or ash on your garden as the colored inks can be poisonous and will be absorbed by your vegetables, and then by you.

- Stop accepting a paper telephone directory. Go online to get phone numbers. We need more trees, not less! Spend your holidays planting trees!

- Stop making garbage altogether. Compost your own bio-waste and recycle everything else. If it cannot be recycled, don’t buy it.

- Stop buying furniture or household items made of tropical hardwoods. That wood was once a tropical forest and you paid them to chop it down! Use local wood from sustainable forests.

- Stop buying products transported by jets, ships or long distance trucks. Adjust your diet towards unprocessed foods grown within 200 miles of your house. Unless you live in the tropics, adjust to life without bananas or pineapples.

- Stop eating beef and pork, especially in fast food restaurants. Better yet, go vegetarian. The cattle and pig industries produce huge amounts of greenhouse gases. And the paper and plastic packaging of fast foods is unconscionable.

- Stop installing compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) to replace incandescents. The mercury in fluorescent lamps is a poisonous heavy metal and is not recyclable. Mountains of dead poisonous CFLs does not equate to sustainability! Instead, unscrew half of your incandescent bulbs and get in the habit of only turning on one light when you absolutely need to. Unplug all appliances when not in use.

- Stop owning stocks in any company having anything to do with the consumer economy, mining, petroleum, lumber, uranium or weaponry. Each stock owner is personally responsible for every misconduct of the company that he owns and could eventually be sued accordingly. Irresponsibility is an illusion.

- Stop using electricity that is generated from coal, gas, oil or nuclear power. Get off the public energy grid! Decrease your electric power consumption by 95% and figure out feasible ways to generate whatever electricity you need by researching about alternatives.

- Stop driving a car. Allow much more time for travel. Walk. Attach a cart to the back of your bicycle for carrying small children and loads. Use the bus or train and carpool in large groups.

- Stop flying in jets or airplanes. The jet age is over.

- Stop traveling in ships. Ocean liners produce even more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than jets. Go overseas by sailboat.

- Stop living in a house heated by electricity, oil, gas or wood. Live in a super-insulated passive-solar poured-earth home that requires no added heating. Stop owning any other kinds of buildings.

- Stop going to work anymore, if your work has anything to do with mining, coal, oil, harvesting wood, electric power, air or ship transportation, cement, or the military. Just stop. Find another vocation.

- Stop sending your kids to public school. What they learn in today’s public school won't help them live in the near future. Teach them the practical skills they will need to know. You probably need to learn them, yourself. With your kids at home, you can learn them together. The goal is self-sustainability whether in small family units or small communities.

See what I mean? This is shocking. Please remember that these are not rules. They are some of the lifestyle choices that will come to a stop either accidentally or intentionally, because they simply are not sustainable in the long run. The suggestion is to experiment with stopping now, while you have time to adjust to the coming circumstances.

IF...

If the corporocracy had redirected its trillion dollar war budget to developing and implementing renewable energy 15 years ago, we would be oil free by now. Instead the ruling regime implemented "Last Man Standing," so far contaminating 8% of the earth’s surface with permanently radioactive Depleted Uranium (DU) and assuring that millions of people or more will die over the next decades from increased global warming.

How could it possibly be worse than this to Just Stop and let non-sustainable culture collapse so that sustainable alternatives could emerge? If I Just Stop supporting the carbon economy, and many others joined this action, the whole carbon economy would vanish in a week. As Eddie Izzard so succinctly asks, "Cake or death?" Stupid question, or…?

AFTER I STOP, THEN WHAT?

If I Just Stop, my natural entrepreneurship and new actions can create a wide variety of sustainable cultures. Since almost all of modern Western-style culture is unsustainable, the actions of any sustainable culture will seem unconventional. Therefore, it is okay to have little idea about how to implement sustainable culture. It is okay to feel completely lost at first.

I have felt lost at other times, afraid that I would never find my way home. Yet here I am. I may be having that "lost" feeling now, asking myself: If I Just Stop, what will I be doing? Where will I get money and food? Where will I live? Who will be my friends? New and workable answers will come as I let the questions, themselves, propel me into taking appropriate actions.

One appropriate action could be to invite the people with whom I would like to talk about these things to a weekly Just Stop Team meeting. Each Just Stop Team is a small social system beyond the reach of globalization. Each Team is the seed for a sustainable "culture lifeboat" or an "ark." In the least, such an approach seems worth exploring, it would seem. Guidelines for a Just Stop Team can be found at www.just-stop.org.

This has been a difficult and painful text for me to write; it has taken me weeks. It may also have been horrible for you to read. If so, I am sorry. A version of this letter with reference links is posted at the www.just-stop.org website for further reading.

All the best,

Clinton

WHO, UN, US, DU and NGOs By Clinton Callahan The World Health Organization (WHO) clearly defines characteristic actions of a psychopathic megalomaniac. In particular, such persons should not have access to weapons of mass (and in the case of DU dirty bombs, permanent) destruction.  There is an institution designed to protect the world from such creatures: the UN. When reasonable international laws are being flagrantly broken, the UN is empowered to take immediate action to protect humanity. That is what the UN is for.  Given that the US political military regime used illegal DU (Depleted Uranium) weapons to make 8% of the world’s surface (1) uninhabitable for all eternity in the most horribly unthinkable way – radioactivity – immediate sanctions against the US and war crime trials for its present regime are now in order. Especially since the same regime is busily arranging to continue its warmongering. The 14 states suing the US government over car emission limits should be suing the US government for war crime trials over using DU weapons in Lebanon, Serbia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in testing and training grounds in USA and Australia, blowing tons of lethal radioactive dust into the atmosphere around the entire globe – in our names! There is a petition to the UN: A Call for a War Crimes Tribunal at the United Nations, found at this link: http://www.petitiononline.com/qu9p0205/petition.html By the filename it looks like the petition went online in 2005. To date there are 135 signatures on that petition. Not 135 million, not 135 thousand. Just 135 people in the whole world are aware or brave (or stupid) enough to put their names on such a petition. How many possible signers have been too afraid to identify themselves as someone who encourages the UN to take actions against the US because they fear being the first ones rounded up and taken to the homeland security prison camps? Is that the America you want to live in? It is the UN's job to manage any country that gets so out of control that it cannot manage itself. The US is not managing itself. Unconscionable actions by the US have already gone far beyond the domain of mere politics. Do you think that the millions of rounds of DU munitions stockpiled in US military bases in South Korea and Japan (2) are intended to remain just sitting there? The potential contamination force of these illegal weapons represents the genocidal plans of a madman regime.  How much does it take to inspire the UN leadership to reclaim its integrity and disallow the subversion of US-paid indecision makers? How many hundreds of thousands of cancerated soldiers and civilians, and babies born with no brains and organs outside their bodies will finally cause the UN to step up to its rightful responsibility to protect the world's peoples from being victimized by power crazed psychopaths?  When the cat has no claws, the rats rule the world. How much more disgrace will the UN endure before it springs into appropriate action with righteously swift claws? Got any ideas? Because there are hundreds of thousands of dedicated people around the world right now working through more than 40,000 NGO’s (3) having tremendous success in helping others. Courageous groups are inventing and adopting a wide variety of sustainable cultures in experimental ecovillages, providing blueprints that we can follow for carbon free and therefore sustainable lifestyles. But none of these positive seeds of human hope can grow on land contaminated by Depleted Uranium weapons fired by twisted minds in a world already suffocating in the greenhouse gases of the future’s squandered oil reserves. Please protect us, UN. Please.  Remember, over 23,000 citizens of 23 nations polled in 2004 overwhelmingly demanded that you change your bylaws to eliminate the veto power of any one nation, particularly the US (4). Stop ignoring your people and your mission, and get with it. You have a higher duty than being entangled in confusion.  NOTES:(1) http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/03mar/DU.html DEPLETED URANIUM IN INDIA, SPREADING WORLDWIDE1000-mile radius means a total area of 3.14 million square mile. The two circles in the map represent an area of 6.28 million square miles and, deducting say 20% for the overlapping area, the net affected area is just over 5 million square mile. The total land area of earth is about 57.3 million square mile, which implies that roughly 8% of total land area of the earth is now severely contaminated. And I am not including Bosnia and Kosovo theatres of war, which has seriously affected the Balkans as well as the NATO troops.Callahan’s note: He is also not including the equally contaminated military testing and training grounds in USA, Australia, and etc. and their downwind areas. More Australia DU info in the DVD Blowin’ In the Wind. (2) Original article: http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?term=du+bombs+du-bombs++&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/200512/kt2005122317370310230.htm&media=kt as quoted in:http://members.shaw.ca/rolfwitzsche/canada/depleted_uranium_50-fold.html  (3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo  (4) http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/03_march/21/un.shtml Clinton Callahan is affiliated with www.callahan-academy.com. Author of the book Radiant Joy Brilliant Love, trainer, naturalist and activist currently living in Germany, he can be reached at: clinton@callahan-academy.com.