Copenhagen Failing or Failed, PLEASE Sign Petition for Posterity Regardless!

There comes a time when one’s integrity dictates speaking one’s truth with brutal candor. For me, the voice and Chairman and CEO of Green Education Network, the time has come to speak the voice of Gregory Hilbert, just a man like so many men and women who have given their all, and a man who will continue to give all he can for the sake of his children and all life now and ever to be born on this, our Mother Earth, the womb God gave us, but not to destroy.

I BELIEVE COPENHAGEN IS FAILING, AND WILL FAIL NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLIONS NOW SIGN THE STROKE-OF-MIDNIGHT PETITION I NOW ASK YOU TO SIGN AND TO BE DELIVERED BY ANOTHER ORGANIZATION IN COPENHAGEN. Here is the link, please click it and sign to add your name to the 11 million and counting who already have, PLEASE SIGN IT EVEN IF COPENHAGEN IS OVER AND WEEKS, MONTHS OR YEARS HAVE PASSED, AND IF THE SITE IS DEFUNCT PUT  YOUR SIGNATURE IN YOUR WILL OR A SCRAP OF PAPER YOUR CHILDREN WILL FIND WHEN YOU ARE GONE: http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_copenhagen_now/?cl=402340316&v=4920 

Below is the message I now deliver to posterity, in it’s most sarcastic and irreverent and black-humor form. Please know it does not reflect any opinion but my own, and certainly not that of the man to whom I first delivered it, Bob Williamson of Greenhouse Neutral Foundation, author of Zero Greenhouse Emissions, winner of numerous awards, GEN’s Honorary Adviser and partnering fellow-traveler, and a man with whom I have a deeper and more enduring bond than many a brother. Nor to Suzanne Sparling who works so givingly and ably with him, with whom I now have like bond, and who was the second to see it in like form. It’s just that I am free to say to them whatever is my truth and not necessarily GEN’s to say. Now I MUST take my freedom to say it to you:

“Will do Bob, should’ve known ZERO Greenhouse would already have the petition posted on the Greenhouse Neutral site, Green Education Network’s home page is frozen and I can’t raise my webmaster! Yes, Copenhagen is failing, worse than I anticipated from what I can tell. Looks like we’re going to need some of those good ol’ inarguably catastrophic dominoes to start falling before the political will gets strong enough. You know, the kind of dominoes that take a few million Western-nation lives, drive up the cost of a can of tuna to $9.99US and ribeye steak to $49/lb, bankrupt ALL property insurers, stuff like that, kinda stuff gets the TV-camera frenzy headed for the Arctic and Antarctic instead of the latest Paris Hilton  revelation or Superbowl trivia quiz. Now go get some sleep because you can’t stay awake for the next 20 years! I put this in quotes Bob because I want to keep this message and yours below for posterity. I’ll ask my children to have it inscribed on the brass urn they use to scatter my ashes on the bone-dry soil of what used to be the Colorado River. Yup, want ‘em to stand atop the useless Hoover dam for the scattering, so the ashes catch a good butterfly effect when my son Joshua gives my Excalibur sword a swing and my daughter Michelle recounts the best God-has-a-wicked-good-sense-of-humor-story I ever told.
 
– Gregory Hilbert near the U.S. Atlantic Coast to Bob Williamson     in Australia on December 16 in the year 2009 of mankind’s self-crucifixion.

PS. But hey, Bob, it ain’t over till the Fat Lady sings and the only Fat Lady I know worth capital letters just ain’t gonna sing for a few trillion years yet anyway. She told me so Herself during a chat with my Kingman AZ shaman, who got pretty riled when I recounted the  rationale of that book you told me about last night. Bob, she’s urging me to find the fullest integrity of my voice. She notes I moved crowds to sobbing-joy-Hallelujiah-I’m-goin-outta-here-with-fire-in-my-eyes-and-do-somethin’-bout-this when I spoke passionately from the heart in NYC and Kansas City not THAT long ago. I’m already half of a mind to hook up with Fox Elipsus  (the climate-aware singer who criss-crosses the country on a shoestring performing at Borders stores for maybe 10-or-so attendees at a clip. He told the gathered — when I accepted his invite to  come hear him and brought Joshua along– about MY work (!).  He sang a song dedicated to me and another to Joshua because I’d told him ’twas Joshua who brought the stranded polar bear photo to my attention. That song was about a polar bear swimming an open sea trying to find salvation of ice, his mate beginning to succome to exhaustion and nearing her slip beneath the waves. I wept. Then Fox asked me to speak. I composed myself but refused to steal his thunder.  Instead I said something laudatory of his music, gave him $100 bucks — which I said I really couldn’t afford to give and you know that’s true — and said “Thank God for people like Fox Elipsus!” You know me, I boomed it out but my voice faltered and eyes filled with tears. Everybody in the store was crying and cheering even though I forewore it with ardent gestures as I strode out the door with Joshua in tow.”

“Bob, I listened to Al Gore’s “from the heart” address at Copenhagen. After you, I think him the greatest figure to walk the earth since the days of Jesus Christ, but his impassioned speech was passionateless! I kept saying to myself, heck, more good would’ve come if you’d stolen the mike from Al Gore in Copenhagen and warmed people up and given them the facts and the heart, then handed me the mike for the THUNDER that make’s Thor’s hammer seem a toddler’s toy, and Joshua’s trumpets before the walls of Jericho sound like somebody forgot to plug in the amplifiers and loudspeakers!!! Anyhow Bob, about the Fat Lady. Ain’t no way I’m sittin’ in heaven for an eternity without my bro bein’ there to celebrate the day of the big win. No way. Nope. So, in case I get there ahead of you, do you like a nutty brown ale or raspberry-tinged champaigne or what exactly?”
Copenhagen, Green Education Network, Gregory Hilbert, Copenhagen failing, Copenhagen failure, Copenhagen failed, AVAAZ petition, Copenhagen petition, Copenhagen protest, Copenhagen sit-in

Okay, there you have it, I said what I felt compelled to say to YOU, but I’m not done yet. Do you see that photo above of the starving little girl trying to crawl to a feeding station? For me it symbolizes what is coming. I suffer terribly when I look at it, who wouldn’t who doesn’t have a stone for a heart? The man who took the photo suffered so much he took his own life weeks after he won a Pullitzer prize for it. How do I bear the pain and come out the other side to the joy needed to carry on the good fight? Well, I “get by” and then some with the help of my loved ones and friends. But the day I chose that photo of that suffering little girl knowing I had to use it here, I listened to the song I Can See Clearly Now, and I had to listen to it easily 100 times before I could reliably keep a smile through the whole song. Here’s a link to the version I listen to on Youtube, so you can listen if you want just by clicking the play button (if I haven’t messed it up):

Listen, please, I’ve taken some hits in my life, who hasn’t, but I’ve lived many lifetimes in mine, and I’m one of the wealthiest men you’ll ever meet, not in money, but in the sheer number of extraordinary people I’ve been blessed to make a connection with at one time or another. Many have been made in the crusade to save mankind’s future, many are famous, many are not. The list is incredible. I have photos of only a scintilla of them, and even that is to great to post below, because it would freeze the entire site with the digital weight of it. So I’ve posted some them on Mediafire as a PDF, and all you have to do is click below and then click the download button when you get there. I promise it won’t mess up your PC, and I promise what you will see is astonishing but true. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT KEEP S ME GOING AND MAKES IT ALL WORTHWHILE AND GLORIOUS!