It’s been a given for years that, regarding any particular weather-related disaster, one can’t claim it was caused by climate change. Yet, as the disasters multiply – from floods, to droughts to forest fires, to hurricanes – they confirm what climate scientists have been predicting for three decades – that this is exactly what climate change will look like.

Finally, author and climate activist Bill McKibben had enough. In this op-ed, he said it’s time to call a spade a spade – i.e., many weather-related disasters are indications of climate change.

And for the first time, on June 1 I read an article in The New York Times that said it, too. Referring to the massive wildfire in New Mexico, the brief said, “Experts say drought, climate change and shifts in land use and firefighting strategies mean that other Western states will probably see similar giant fires this season.”

And waddya know, a forest fire burning in Colorado has now become that state’s biggest in history.

McKibben’s op-ed says people around the world are beginning to connect the dots, and that was the theme of 350.org’s latest public event. The group in New Haven put on a great event across from the Wooster Square farmer’s market on May 5. Listen to a 5-minute interview I did with 350CT organizer Laura Bozzi about that (or read the transcription).

350.org and other groups have now moved on to the Rio plus 20 conference that marks 20 years since the Earth Summit in Rio. They started a petition (with one million signature!) asking world leaders to end subsidies for fossil fuels, and organized a Twitterstorm on the same subject. Visit their website to learn more and get involved.

Also, for inspiration, check out the speech 17-year-old Aussie Brittany Trilford gave world leaders at the Rio+20 Summit. She won a global contest for young people sharing their concerns about climate change. It's at Grist.org.

There’s a new documentary out that I plan to see – it’s called “Five Broken Cameras.” The title refers to the cameras owned by Emad Burnat that were smashed or shot to pieces by settlers or soldiers from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in his West Bank village of Bil’in as he recorded his village’s fight against the Israeli “separation barrier” that divided farmers from their olive trees and thus threatened their families’ livelihoods. The barrier enabled the construction of a bigger and bigger Israeli settlement nearby. (All settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.)

Burnat got his first camera in 2005 at the birth of his fourth son, and recorded the weekly demonstrations against the barrier – which started at the same time –  where villagers were joined by Israeli activists and internationals. I witnessed one such protest myself, in May 2008, on my first trip to the West Bank and Israel. They have sometimes turned deadly, as both Palestinians and their supporters have been killed by bullets or tear gas canisters fired by the IDF. On the day I was there, it was relatively mellow, with tear gas canisters fired over the fence starting lots of little fires in the dry grass, and sending protesters scattering, but nobody was shot and the IDF didn’t use sound guns at high decibels and had not yet begun shooting protesters with “stink water,” as they have on many occasions since.

Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi spent a lot of time in Bil’in doing his own filming, and the two men collaborated on the documentary. You can watch/read two interviews with both of them on Democracy Now! and see excerpts of the film. Watching Emad’s elderly parents climbing onto a military vehicle to try to rescue Emad’s brother from arrest was heart-wrenching.

In 2007 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the barrier had to be moved, and in 2011 it finally was, returning some but not all of the stolen lands to the village. The protests are continuing because the villagers want all of their land back.

On my second trip there last November, I missed the weekly demonstration but did get to view a lot of home-made videos of the demonstrations, including one in which a beloved leader of the protests, Bassem Aburahma,  was shot and killed by the IDF.

I just read that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking “a hard line” against some of the settlements his government has deemed illegal (most likely the “illegal outposts”), while allowing the expansion of many others.

I find it interesting that the whole issue of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank – now in its 45th year – has completely fallen off the agenda of any U.S.-Israeli talks, which now focus on Iran. And my Palestinian friends are disgusted with their own leadership as well, seeing it as too corrupt or too complicit with Israel (Fatah) or too rigid, too anti-woman and too fanatically religious (Hamas). They are not too excited about the impending merger of the two (if it happens).

The energy is in the popular resistance movement – the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign http://www.bdsmovement.net/, the “freedom rides” of Palestinians on Israeli-only buses  http://bit.ly/vZhfh0, and the ongoing protests in Bil’in and many other villages to the “separation barrier.”

The recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is June 5. I have a deep connection to the state: my dad's extended family is from several small Wisconsin towns, and we used to drive there from Buffalo every summer when I was a kid. Then I attended UW-Madison beginning in 1967. A month after I started, the campus erupted in an anti-war demonstration targeting Dow's recruiting on campus (Dow, the maker of napalm). It was immortalized in the documentary "The War at Home." So UW, all through the 60s and early 70s had a reputation for radical leftist politics (until a grad student was killed in an explosion in the Army Math Research Center in 1971). 

But Wisconsin's reputation for progressive politics preceded my tenure by many decades, as noted in an article from last week's New York Times Magazine, "How Did Wisconsin Become the Most Politically Divisive Place in America?" It's the home of "Fighting Bob LaFollette," who, first as governor and then as U.S. senator around the turn of the last century, supported progressive legislation, including (from Wikipedia) "the first workers' compensation system, railroad rate reform, direct legislation, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, direct election of U.S. senators, women's suffrage, and progressive taxation. He created an atmosphere of close cooperation between the state government and the University of Wisconsin in the development of progressive policy, which became known as the Wisconsin Idea. The goals of his policy included the recall, referendum, direct primary, and initiative."

And let's not forget  progressive former Sen. Russ Feingold, of campaign finance reform fame, and the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act.

In 1959 Wisconsin became the first state to allow public sector workers to bargain collectively -- the very issue over which Wisconsinites are trying to recall Gov. Scott Walker, after he pushed through legislation overturning that right. 

But the Times article failed to mention another tendency in Wisconsin -- McCarthyism, as in Joe, not Gene. Republican U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy pursued an anti-Communist witchhunt for almost a decade, ruining the lives of thousands of Americans but ultimately helping to usher in the New Left. It always amazed me that I was leafletting and marching on campus against the war in Vietnam barely a decade after McCarthy's fall from grace. So Walker's election was hardly the first time anti-progressive forces have been in ascendancy in the state.

Minnesota exhibits the same tendencies -- the Progressive Farmer Labor Party up against the likes of Michele Bachman and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty. What is it with these Scandinavians?! (Of which I am proudly one.)

Polls  show a statistical tie between Walker and the man he beat two years ago, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat.  (Milwaukee, by the way, was led by socialist mayors for much of the 20th century.)  Walker outspent Barrett 7 to 1, but the Democrats claim, "We have the people." In a few days we'll see which tendency Wisconsinites will favor.