fasting in solidarity with climate change victims, present and future.

summary: Some of the deaths in the Philippines are attributable to climate change, that makes all of us murderers. Rather than send everybody to jail, I propose restorative justice: Contraction and convergence.

On Tuesday I learned that the climate change negotiator for the Philippines, Yeb Sano, was fasting in solidarity with the victims of Typhoon that hit the Philippines and future victims of climate change. I immediately thought I should try and add my voice to his. Since I already have a sustainable ecological footprint (i.e. use less than one 7 billionth part of the resources that nature produces), doing more must take the form of convincing others, therefore, since Tuesday I've been fasting as well.
So, who to convince? Obviously, those who are convinced there is a climate change problem that we're causing but that predominantly others will suffer from, but who are still using more than their fair share of resources, i.e. most of the readers of resilience.org.
I'm not asking you to start fasting as well. I'm asking you not to buy anything unless it's to survive. So, only buy food if it's organic, only buy clothes if you haven't got any without holes in. Pretty much everything else you can do without. I say this from six years of experience. Give the money that you'll have left over to charities.
One of my pet peeves is people who do something for a year, write a book about it, then forget about it. Climate change is going to be with use for at least the next 7 generations. So the changes that you make need to be changes that you keep at. It's fine to experiment, and find that some things don't work for you. But do things with the intention to keep decreasing your footprint until greenhouse concentrations are going down. We're all different, it took me 8 years from the intention to the reality.
I'm talking equity here. We only have the one biosphere, and if you get/take more than your fair share, someone else will have to do without, it doesn't matter whether that someone else is alive now or still to be born, it's the same direct relationship that equates to murder. So no, I'm not trying to convince you how great it will be. There will be compensations, but all in all I think there comes a point where you have to put maximizing your own convenience in the balance against other people's right to life. For some in the Philippines it's already to late, but at least their deaths could be our call to action.