Please join us at a book talk, reading and book signing in Staunton, Virginia by Erik Curren, author of Abolish Oil Now! Get inspired, make friends and find out why more Americans are getting angry enough about climate change to finally do something about it.
Abolish Oil Now! Book Reading and Signing
Friday, October 29 from 6-7 pm
Ox-Eye Vineyards Tasting Room
44 Middlebrook Ave, Staunton, VA 24401
(540) 849-7926
Free and open to the public
Complimentary wine and refreshments
After two years of work, I’m excited that my book Abolish Oil Now! Abolitionists Beat Slavery and Can Beat Climate Change has come out this month.
My publisher thinks the timing is perfect: The COP26 United Nations annual summit on climate change is starting at the end of this month. Meanwhile, for the first time in four years, the United States is trying to pass major climate legislation.
26 Years of UN Climate Summits
World leaders will gather for the 26th year in a row to talk about how bad climate disruption is getting, renew pledges they made in the past that they haven’t kept, and make new pledges that they probably won’t keep either — unless this time is different.
It should be a big deal. Global cooperation is necessary to cut climate pollution, which doesn’t stay over the country that emitted it but travels around the atmosphere hurting everybody everywhere. Scientists say that we only have until about 2030 to make “transformational” changes in the economy to cut climate pollution fast enough to avoid the worst impacts of runaway climate disruption.
Some scientists and activists think that this year’s UN climate summit is the world’s last best chance for international action big enough and fast enough to make a difference. They’ve already met 25 times before. And yet, the problem hasn’t gotten any better. It’s actually gotten worse — twice as bad, to be specific.
That’s because the global fossil fuel lobby, as powerful in London, Paris or Beijing as it is in Washington, Moscow or Riyadh, has blocked governments from keeping their pledges to cut climate pollution. That has allowed oil, gas, and coal companies to keep drilling, pumping and mining as much as they want, pollution be damned.
The only way to make it different at COP26 will be to break the iron grip of fossil fuels on politics from national capitals up to the United Nations.
Historic Climate Legislation Debated in Congress
Here in the United States, Congress continues to debate legislation proposed by President Biden to help America, the world’s largest climate polluter, to stop being the biggest part of the problem and start leading the solution — that is, to take our rightful role as the world’s largest economy and most powerful nation.
But this historic legislation is caught in the giant sausage-making machine that is Capitol Hill, with legislators controlled by the fossil fuel industry taking every action they can to delay, water down or even completely kill any meaningful action on climate this Congressional session.
We cannot let those dirty-energy leaders succeed. If they win then we will lose. It is a matter of life and death for our nation, the world, and each one of us to avert climate chaos with its wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, and storms. If we don’t, the future of our children and ourselves looks unspeakably bleak.
How to Finally Start Winning
Going up against one of the world’s richest industries and most powerful special interests will be tough, as it has been. But it’s not impossible to win. Brave and energetic citizens of conscience showed us more than a century ago that ordinary people with right on their side can fight and win against great money and power.
Those people were called abolitionists and they successfully ended hundreds of years of slavery in the British Empire and the United States.
By following their example, using their model, repeating their tactics and taking inspiration from their heroic deeds and noble words, we can also win on climate today.
To help us do that is why I wrote Abolish Oil Now!
If you’ll be in Staunton next Friday the 29th, I hope you can join us at Ox-Eye at 6pm!