According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), if we are to have a 67% chance of limiting global heating to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, then on January 1st of 2018 we had only about 420 gigatonnes of C02 left to emit. At our current emissions rate, that budget will be exhausted in 8 years, although many scientists reason that these numbers are too moderate. A recent climate model by 100 of the top French climate scientists outlines a worst case scenario of a 6-7 degree Celsius rise in temperature by 2100, a figure well above the worst case scenario in the IPCC reports.

And yet with red lights flashing and alarm bells ringing It has become clear that our political institutions are either unwilling or incapable of responding to this crisis with the scale and urgency demanded by the science. In response to this reality, last September saw the largest climate protests in the history of the movement. Catalyzed by the youth led school strikes, an estimated 4 million people participated in actions in over 99 countries. Here in DC, a coalition of social justice and climate activists occupied intersections across the city and shut down business as usual.  Speakers from various local climate groups (Extinction Rebellion, #ShutDownDC, Beyond Extreme Energy, The Climate Mobilization) will be presenting about upcoming plans for further “Non-Violent Direct Action” (NVDA). In the words of Greta Thunberg, “…if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself.”