Download Climate Change December 2009

Canadians for Action on Climate Change
Change the system – not the climate
Canadians for Action on Climate Change
Government’s key role is to serve as the trustee of the commonwealth and the common
health for this and future generations. Yet …
Canada now stands out as one of the last major industrialized countries opposed to
targets for deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and one of the biggest blockers
of climate change negotiations.
Canadians for Action on Climate Change is a developing non-profit NGO of activists,
academia, physicians and citizens focusing on climate change, true cost economy and
relocalization. Our organization seeks to provide news, reports and analysis to inform,
educate and develop environmental policies for all levels of government in Canada. We
are committed to being part of an international movement against destruction of our
shared environment. Our current economy is unsustainable and an unethical catalyst to
ever increasing global warming. This model assumes endless growth and limitless potential
wealth that completely disregards the fact that the earth’s life support capacity is
finite. We respect the integrity, resilience, and beauty of the common wealth of all life as
the foundation for a new sustainable economic model for our finite planet that will
benefit generations to come.
You can contact us at [email protected]
http://canadianclimateaction.wordpress.com/
As the Coral Triangle Group calls for 50% emissions
reductions by 2015, Bolivia calls for 49% and the Small
Island States for a minimum of 45% - both by 2020 … all
based on 1990 baselines.
The following are the commitments that are now being
broadly announced. All designed around different
baselines in order to confuse the public.
Let’s look at 5 countries to start - India, China, US, Canada
& the EU.
World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists | November
18th, 2009
The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of
climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the
end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would
be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible
consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable
and threatening the basis of human civilisation.
We are headed for it, the scientists said, because the carbon dioxide
emissions from industry, transport and deforestation which are responsible for
warming the atmosphere have increased dramatically since 2002, in a way
which no one anticipated, and are now running at treble the annual rate of
the 1990s.
This means that the most extreme scenario envisaged in the last report from
the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, is now
the one for which society is set, according to the 31 researchers from seven
countries involved in the Global Carbon Project.
Although the 6C rise and its potential disastrous effects have been speculated
upon before, this is the first time that scientists have said that society is now on
a path to meet it. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/world-oncourse-for-catastrophic-6deg-rise-reveal-scientists-1822396.html
Copenhagen will formalize a great global suicide pact. We
are cutting our own throats so that the banks and fossil fuel
corporations can drain the last drop of blood out of humanity
and our living Earth. We are witnessing the ultimate
unimaginable evil - the predatory free (of ethics) market
economy that is starving more than half the world alive today
and future generations to death.
Targets are useless if we don't have a real way to meet
them. One of the only measures that can save humanity now
(in our current monetary system) is a global pollution tax / a
straight up carbon tax which – a critical tax which is being
kept off of the agenda. No trading – no selling – no profiting –
just taxing carbon to death (literally).
India announces 24% emission ‘intensity’ reductions
from 2005 baseline by 2020:
IN REALITY THIS MEANS:
Percentage relative to 1990: +34.2%
Percentage relative to 1994: +35.5%
Percentage relative to 2000: -8.6%
Percentage relative to 1005: -24.0%
Percentage relative to 2020: -61.2%
China announces 40% emission ‘intensity’ reductions
from 2005 baseline:
IN REALITY THIS MEANS:
Percentage relative to 1990: +38.0%
Percentage relative to 1994: +19.6%
Percentage relative to 2000: -8.5%
Percentage relative to 2005: -40.0%
Percentage relative to 2020: -58.2%
Even if China succeeds in improving carbon
intensity, Chinese greenhouse gas emissions
will continue to grow for some time, as the
Chinese economy itself will be growing. It's
not clear from the pledge how large China's
emissions will be by 2020, but if the country's
economy continues to grow at its typical 8%
to 12% annual rate, its carbon emissions
could nearly double between now and
then.
Carbon intensity targets are like CCS – Carbon
Capture Storage – a greenwash for the public that
looks like action but really is to continue business as
usual. Increased economic growth and corporate
output ensure that any reductions will be subsumed
by expanding operations. We all know that nature
doesn’t care about emissions intensities. The
absolute concentration of greenhouse gases is
what will determine the severity of the climate
crisis. Once we pass irreversible tipping points –
there is no going back.
US announces 17% emission reductions from 2005 baseline by 2020:
IN REALITY THIS MEANS:
Percentage relative to 1990: -3.4%
Percentage relative to 1994: -7.8%
Percentage relative to 2000: -15.7%
Percentage relative to 2005: -17.%
Percentage relative to 2007: -17.3%
Percentage relative to 2020: -15.7%
***John Schellnhuber, director of the ‘Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research’: Most recently, Schellnhuber told the 4 degrees and beyond
conference in Oxford: “Political reality must be grounded in physical reality or
it’s completely useless.” Schellnhuber recently briefed U.S. officials from the
Barack Obama administration – he states that they chided him that his
findings were “not grounded in political reality” and that “the [U.S.] Senate will
never agree to this”. Schellnhuber told them that the U.S. must reduce its
emissions from its current 20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero
tonnes per person by 2020 to have an even chance of stabilising the climate
around two degrees C.
Canada announces 20% emission reductions from
2006 baseline by 2020: (I had to use 2005 as a
baseline as 2006 stats were not available)
IN REALITY THIS MEANS:
Percentage relative to 1990: -1.2%
Percentage relative to 1994: -6.2%
Percentage relative to 2000: -18.5%
Percentage relative to 2005: -17.%
Percentage relative to 2007: -21.7%
Percentage relative to 2020: -23.6%
EU announces 20% emission reductions from
2006 baseline by 2020: (I had to use 2005 as a
baseline as 2006 stats were not available)
IN REALITY THIS MEANS:
Percentage relative to 1990: -20.0%
Percentage relative to 1994: -13.7%
Percentage relative to 2000: -11.8%
Percentage relative to 2005: -12.8%
Percentage relative to 2007: -11.7%
Percentage relative to 2020: -4.6%
Cutting carbon intensity was George Bush’s proposal
for tackling climate change. The minority Harper
government followed. In Canada, industry and
government alike have championed carbon
intensity targets instead of placing absolute caps on
emissions to mitigate the climate change impact of
extracting oil from tar sands. This is simply a
greenwash.
Carbon intensity targets merely distract from the
reality that tar sands should be shut down. Because
they are the dirtiest and most destructive energy
source on the planet, carbon intensity targets are
meaningless in the face of plans to triple production
between now and 2020. If Canada was serious
about climate change, it would leave the tar sands
in the ground and invest in true renewables.
Agriculture Collapsing:
63–82% cut in US crop yields for temperature alone !
Wolfram Schlenker and Michael J. Roberts
Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe
damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change
PNAS 2009 106:15594-15598; published online before
print August 28, 2009, doi:10.1073/pnas.0906865106
Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe
damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change
The United States produces 41% of the world's corn and 38% of the
world's soybeans. These crops comprise two of the four largest
sources of caloric energy produced and are thus critical for world
food supply.
We pair a panel of county-level yields for these two crops, plus
cotton (a warmer-weather crop), with a new fine-scale weather
dataset that incorporates the whole distribution of temperatures
within each day and across all days in the growing season. We find
that yields increase with temperature up to 29° C for corn, 30° C for
soybeans, and 32° C for cotton but that temperatures above these
thresholds are very harmful.
The slope of the decline above the optimum is significantly steeper
than the incline below it. The same nonlinear and asymmetric
relationship is found when we isolate either time-series or crosssectional variations in temperatures and yields. This suggests limited
historical adaptation of seed varieties or management practices to
warmer temperatures because the cross-section includes farmers'
adaptations to warmer climates and the time-series does not.
Holding current growing regions fixed, area-weighted average yields
are predicted to decrease by 30–46% before the end of the century
under the slowest (B1) warming scenario and decrease by 63–82%
under the most rapid warming scenario (A1FI) under the Hadley III
model.
The only science that is recognized for
Copenhagen 2009 is ‘IPCC 07 AR4’ on science up
to the year 2006. While this is insane - there has
been no objection made to this. The most
compelling science on ever accelerating climate
change is all most recent. However - the torrent of
scientific data to emerge since IPPC 07 has led
many scientists to sound the alarms.
http://www.planetdiet.org/pdf/Slideshow_Climate%
20Change%20and%20Livestock%20Farming-opt.pdf
The greatest single opportunity for reducing
emissions and retaining carbon is the reform of
global food production. Food production is the
largest source of GHG emissions and so must be
addresses as a priority.
We need a conversion of all fossil fuel subsidies to
organic agro forestry that does not raise livestock
for slaughter.
METHANE
Livestock causes over 50% of global warming GHG emissions according to a
the just published Worldwatch paper. This huge increase in past estimates is
because the IPCC underestimates the warming effect of methane by
stretching it out over 100 years. This is future discounting of methane's warming
and is not scientific.
World watch used a 20 year IPCC number of 72 X CO2.
http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.p
df
While the IPC uses a global warming potential for methane of 25 X CO2
(CO2 being 1) the actual global warming effect of methane emissions that last 12
years in the atmosphere is close to 100.
http://fixtheclimate.com/component-1/the-solutions-new-research/methane/
Research (not related to above) published this month by Drew Shindell increases
methane warming by another 40%.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earthenvironment/article6895907.ece
Main methane sources include livestock
landfills. We can stop both of these.
A global transition from the livestock industry to
plant agriculture will stop the main cause of
deforestation (80%) therefore will drastically reduce
CO2 emissions.
A plant based diet would be a catalyst to immense
benefits in human health. We would see a
immediate, steep decline in a health care crisis we
currently face in developed / developing countries.
(obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc.)
The IPCC makes no recommendations - as Rajendra
Pachauri, (Chairman of IPCC) confirmed in a recent
public statement on 350 ppm[1].
This means that Copenhagen has no formal
recommendations from the IPCC. The IPCC states
that the only policy recommendations can come
from policy makers.
[1] As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because
we do not make recommendations,” said Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported calls to keep
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 ppm. “But as a human being I am fully
supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world
must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target,”
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-08-25-pachauri-call-for-350-breakthrough-moment-for-climatemovement/
The IPCC states it cannot define or declare
what dangerous interference is[1].
[1] Indeed, the 2007 IPCC report never mentions the word "dangerous," apparently
substituting the term "reasons for concern." The IPCC itself does not define a level at
which climate change becomes "dangerous."http://www.climate-changeemergency-medical-response.org/defining-dangerous-climate-change.html
The Copenhagen Science Congress which is fully
aware of the post IPCC science still states it cannot
declare what dangerous interference is. They state
that only 'society' can decide[1].
[1] “It is crucial that in Copenhagen in December 2009 governments from across the world reach agreement
on tackling the challenge of climate change on a collective basis. The United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has as its central objective actions to avoid a level of
human interference with the earth's climate system that could be termed as dangerous. Yet, after 17
years of agreement on this Convention the world has still not agreed on what would constitute a
dangerous level of anthropogenic interference.” http://blog.rkpachauri.org/blog/13/WhyCopenhagen-is-important-for-the-future-of-human-civilization.htm
The IPCC mitigation calculations that are being
referred to by all countries, have omitted the
additional warming from all carbon feedbacks
which is beyond dangerous.[1]
[1] Cf. Annex 1 p. 31
It is no measure of health to be well
adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
APATHY – THE CANCER OF OUIR SOCIETY
We are now at a crossroads. Some citizens have such a deep
sense of entitlement that they actually fight for their ‘right’ to
harm our shared environment. Such individuals are so
disconnected from nature that they do not understand that
their perceived ‘right’ to pollute and degrade our shared
environment is at the expense of not only their own health, but
the health and welfare of their own children and the people
they love. Such perceived ‘rights’ and senses of entitlement
are the root cause of climate change which now kills 300,000
people per year.
Late 2008: Hadley Centre (UK) researchers
announced new calculations that suggest a rise of
up to +7 ºC by 2100. And in early in 2009, so did MIT.
If these projected potential increases occur, climate
extremes will render the planet UNLIVABLE for most
life by around +6 ºC (or less) which, incredibly, could
become a reality BEFORE THE END OF THIS CENTURY.
In short, the fate of perhaps the next 100 billion
people to walk the Earth rests with scientists (and
those who understand the science) trying to
communicate the dire nature of the climate
problem (and the myriad solutions available now)
as well as the ability of the media, the public,
opinion-makers and political leaders to understand
and deal with that science.
Two additional papers were published by ‘Nature’
in April 2009. While governments and the United
Nations set targets for cuts by a certain date, this
science measured something quite different. It
measured the total volume of carbon dioxide we
can produce while still standing a good chance of
avoiding more than two degrees of warming.
The obvious conclusions from these three papers
are glaring. Firstly - The trajectory of cuts is more
important than the final destination. An 80% cut by
2050, for example, could produce very different
outcomes. If much of the cut were made towards
the beginning of the period, the total emissions
entering the atmosphere would be much smaller
than if most of the cut were made at the end of the
period. Secondly - The measure that counts is the
peak atmospheric concentration. This means that
emissions must down to zero, as soon as possible.
Why would any rational person wait until 2015 to hit
‘peak’ emissions?
This means that what the governments hoped
about the trajectory of temperature change are illfounded. Most, including Canada’s, are working on
the assumption that we can overshoot the desired
targets for temperature and atmospheric
concentrations of CO2, then watch them settle
back later.
What this science shows - is that wherever
temperatures peak, that is more or less where they
will stay. There is no going back.
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the
December climate conference in Copenhagen is
being set up to fail. There is thus far no mention of
the need to achieve virtual zero CO2 emissions as
quickly as possible and there is an ongoing denial
that the world has reached a state of emergency
beyond the point of “dangerous interference” with
the climate system that threatens the ability of
vulnerable populations (e.g. children, not even
mentioned), future generations and most other life
to survive.
None of this is currently on the table. The targets and
methodology being used by governments and the United
Nations - which will form the basis for their negotiations
at Copenhagen - are not even wrong; they are
irrelevant.
If we do not set the record right on dangerous
interference now it never will be corrected and there will
be no hope for the future. Time is not on our side. We
are rapidly shifting the composition of the atmosphere,
raising levels of carbon dioxide higher than they’ve been
in at least the past 800,000 years.
Climate scientists have discovered a particularly
inconvenient truth: by the time definitive predictions
of climate change are adopted by scientific
consensus, the climate system may have reached
a tipping point at which climate change begins to
feed on itself—and becomes essentially irreversible
for centuries into the future. The trajectory of current
melting plummets through the IPCC graphs like
giant meteorites falling to earth. As the ice
disappears, the region becomes darker, which
means that it absorbs more heat. White ice and
snow reflect 80 percent of sunlight back to space,
while dark water reflects only 20 percent, absorbing
a much larger heat load. A recent paper published
in ‘Geophysical Research Letters’[1] shows that the
extra warming caused by disappearing sea ice
penetrates 1500km inland, covering almost the
entire region of continuous permafrost.
Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon
as the entire global atmosphere. It remains safe for
as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting
has begun. Methane gushers are now gassing out
of some places with such force that they keep the
water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter.[2]
The rapidly melting permafrost is unleashing
methane chimneys from the ocean floor along the
Russian coastline. Methane is a greenhouse gas 25
times more toxic than carbon dioxide.
•
[1] Lawrence David M., Slater Andrew G. Tomas Robert A., Holland Marika M., Deser Clara, “Accelerated Arctic land warming and
permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss”, Geophysical Research Letters, June 2008.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL033985.shtml
[2] Methane Gas and Arctic permafrost http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/arctic-gas-leak-time-bomb-discovered13980581.html#ixzz0TdluA5SX
The effects of melting permafrost are not
incorporated into any global climate models.
Runaway warming in the Arctic alone could flip the
entire planet into a new climatic state. The Middle
Climate could collapse faster and sooner than the
grimmest forecasts proposed.
September 2008 - The first evidence that millions of
tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than
carbon dioxide is being released into the
atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has
been discovered by scientists.[1]
The Arctic permafrost holds more carbon in its
frozen soil than is currently in the entire atmosphere
today that being 1672 BILLION TONNES.
[1] Methane Gas and Arctic permafrost: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climatechange/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html /
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hundreds-of-methane-plumes-discovered-941456.html
August 2009 - Arctic sea ice thickness down 53
percent[1] - Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere
program manager, added: "A fantastic change is
happening on Earth -- it's truly one of the biggest
changes in environmental conditions on Earth since
the end of the ice age. It's not an easy thing to
observe, let alone predict what might happen
next."[2]
[1] Arctic sea Ice thickness: United International press, September 2009
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/09/02/Arctic-sea-ice-thickness-down-53-percent/UPI80181251899105/
[2] Arctic Sea Ice thickness: http://canadianclimateaction.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/arctic-sea-icethickness-down-53-percent/
The Arctic summer sea ice is now expected to melt
entirely within the next five years — 80 years earlier
than predicted in the 2007 IPCC report.[1]
[1] IPCC, Observations: change in snow, ice and frozen ground, Fourth Assessment Report, 2007
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch04.pdf
Fact - as you read this, global average
temperature is already higher than at
any time over the last 2 MILLION
YEARS.
We must HALT man made greenhouse
gas emissions to as near to ZERO
(virtual 100%, also stated in the 2007
IPCC report) as fast as possible through
conservation and carbon rationing.
Scientist Bill Hare has had the scientific and human
integrity to say this – many more scientists are now
starting to speak out. (Mr. Hare is with Germany’s
Potsdam Institute and a Lead Author for the IPCC’s
Climate Change 2007).
It has been determined that only zero carbon
emissions can bring about a reduction in
atmospheric carbon concentrations. However, we
know at present time it is technically impossible to
achieve this – therefore we need to set ourselves on
the pathway that will get us there as fast and
effectively as possible.
Only two scientists have stated publicly we are now
beyond dangerous interference - John Holdren and
James Hansen. The Climate Action Network FCCC
(Framework Convention on Climate Change)
submission does not state we are beyond
dangerous. We need more scientists to state this
position if we are to influence the political realm.
Copenhagen assumes dangerous climate
interference is some time in the future.
Speaking at the Kennedy School of Government on
November 6, 2007, Dr. Holdren stated the disruption
and its impacts have grown more widely than
anyone ever expected a few years ago.
‘The world is already experiencing dangerous
anthropogenic interference in the climate system’.
The question now is whether we can avoid
catastrophic interference.
James Hansen: Invited to testify before the United
States Congress, in June of 2007, the chief
climatologist of NASA declared: “Special interests
have blocked transition to our renewable energy
future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable
energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt
about global warming, as tobacco companies
discredited the smoking-cancer link. CEOs of fossil
energy companies know what they are doing and
are aware of long-term consequences of continued
business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should
be tried for high crimes against humanity and
nature. ” Putting profits and super-profits before the
climate: the scandal is enormous.
Speaking in Washington on the twentieth
anniversary of his historic testimony, James Hansen
had a sharp warning for policymakers: “If we don’t
begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the
next several years, and get on a very different
course, then we are in trouble....This is the last
chance.”
If we are to RACE BACK TO a 'safe' climate balance
of not more than +1 ºC -- FAST (Bill Hare,
Worldwatch Institute, State of World 2009, Chapter
2), the world community must peak emissions as
soon as possible, rapidly reduce to virtual ZERO
emissions, AND REMOVE much of the carbon from
the atmosphere that has already been released.
John Schellnhuber, director of the ‘Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research’:
“Policymakers who agreed to a two-degree C goal at the G20
summit easily fool themselves about what emission cuts are
needed,” Schellnhuber said. Even with a two-degree rise, most
of the world’s coral reefs will be lost, large portions of the
ocean will become dead zones, mountain glaciers will largely
vanish and many other ecosystems will be at risk,
Schellnhuber warned. And there is the risk of reaching a
tipping point where the warming rapidly accelerates.
[1] Climate Code Red : http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2009/10/4-degree-world.html
Margot O’neill, Countdown to Copenhagen, ABC news, 2009
http://blogs.abc.net.au/events/2009/10/taking-the-temperature-of-our-climate-scientists-part-1.html
Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at University of
Oxford’s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics
Department: “The climate negotiators heading to
Copenhagen in December must accept the fact that the
world’s carbon emissions must eventually stop – and stop
completely. There is no sustainable per capita carbon
emission level because it is the total amount of carbon emitted
that counts. Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for
many centuries, which makes it the most important
greenhouse gas to reduce and eliminate. The current focus on
CO2 concentrations like 450 ppm or 350 ppm is the not the
right approach since it is the total cumulative emissions that
determine how warm the planet will get. If climate negotiators
only look at slowing rates of carbon emissions, then natural
gas will be substituted for coal because it has half of the
carbon – but the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere
will continue to increase.”
Researchers say that global
temperature is likely to rise more than
3.5C even if every country enacts all
climate legislation promised to date.
The EU has long stated that 2C is 'not safe', and that
2C 'does not exclude runaway climate change, it
minimizes it'.
- 2ºC is now insane because we have Arctic carbon
feedback from both permafrost and methane
hydrates at today's 0.78ºC. Permafrost is now
estimated to contain 2 times atmospheric carbon.
At today’s 0.78ºC we also have Arctic summer ice
meltdown, which will add up to another 2C to
heating by 2100.
At today’s 0.78ºC we have most all planetary ice
masses melting at an accelerating rate.
At today’s 0.78ºC we have all of Antarctica
warming.
The term ‘Dangerous climate interference’ is
agreed to mean a safe concentration of
atmospheric GHGases (UN FCCC secretariat).
Today's atmospheric GHG concentrations
determine that today's global temperatures will
practically double (a commitment of an additional
75%) and the increase will last over 1000 years along
with global climate disruption. Sea level rise and
ocean acidification will last thousands.
Therefore - the one thing we must have out of
Copenhagen is an agreement that ‘we now need
an emergency response because we are in a state
of emergency beyond dangerous interference
risking catastrophe’[1]
[1] John Holdre, Harvard University JKK Multimedia Forum http://www.iop.harvard.edu/MultimediaCenter/By-Program/JFK-Jr.-Forum/Global-Climate-Disruption-What-Do-We-Know,-What-Should-We-Do
The only emergency response is an
immediate reduction of emissions with
our target being zero.
Some would call this impossible.
However – the resources, technologies,
and human capacity for change are
all in place…
We need a greater Than World War 2-Equivalent,
Emergency Global Mass-Mobilization
Humanity must launch a multi-pronged 'Marshall
Plan/ Manhattan Project/ Apollo Program'equivalent venture on the greatest scale ever to
confront the climate crisis -- research and rapid
development/ transference/ implementation of
clean, renewable technologies, emergency
assistance for/ cooperation with fast-developing
countries and those on
the front lines of devastating impacts, and much,
much more -- and we must initiate it NOW in order
to survive.
The missing ingredient is political will,
and that is a renewable resource.
This is a breathtaking opportunity
disguised as an insoluble problem.
Solving the climate problem will create
the largest wave of new industries and
jobs the world has seen in decades.
Quotes from scientists who are speaking out…
"We are unleashing hell on Australia,"
said Neville Nicholls, Monash
University's Professor Neville Nicholls, a
world expert and lead author for the
IPCC.
"... many, many scientists now ... are
frantically, hysterically worried," said
Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers, the
former head of the UN’s World Climate
Research Program, now at Macquarie
University.
Neville Nicholls: "We feel like Cassandra (able to see
catastrophe but doomed to be disbelieved). I think this is
especially the case with Australian scientists, where certain
sections of the media would prefer to have an article about
climate change written by the drover's dog rather than by a
real climate scientist. Earlier this week I was contacted by a
climate scientist friend at Columbia University in New York. He
was being asked to participate in a briefing on climate
change science for Australian Parliament members and
senators, in New York on 6 October and wanted me to brief
him on the scientific knowledge and political leanings of the
politicians in the delegation. I am happy that Australian
politicians are seeking briefings from real scientists. But I am
bemused that they thought they needed to travel to New
York to get a briefing from a climate scientist."
“Two degrees C is already gone as a
target,” said Chris West of the University
of Oxford’s UK Climate Impacts
Programme. “Four degrees C is
definitely possible…This is the biggest
challenge in our history,” West told
participants at the “4 Degrees and
Beyond, International Climate Science
Conference” at the University of
Oxford last week.
Richard Betts of the Climate Impacts Research Team: The
models are based on human emissions alone, and do not
include heat-amplifying feedbacks from melting ice or
changes in carbon sinks. When those are factored in, it moves
the timetable forward so that “reaching four degrees by 2060
is a plausible, worst-case scenario” with the median being
2070. By 2100, 5.5 degrees is possible, he said. Few places
would experience the global average temperature, Betts
cautioned, noting that the computer models show the Arctic
warming 15 degrees while many other regions of the world
would experience 10 degrees of additional warming. These
scenarios do not include potential tipping points like the
release of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon in northern
permafrost or the melting of undersea methane hydrates.
• the entire world is beyond dangerous
climate change
• we all are facing a real and rapidly
rising risk of total catastrophe
• we are in a state of dire emergency
• the only target that can possibly
prevent total catastrophe is zero
carbon emissions
• no measures can work without
measures to tax carbon
It is now more than thirty years after
the first cries of alarm of climatologists,
seventeen years after the Summit of
Rio, twelve years after Kyoto – and we
are still talking. Little to nothing has
been accomplished and now we are
now out of time. We are on the Titanic.
The largest, most widely known and
discussed report of its kind, the Stern Review
warns that climate change threatens to be
the greatest, most far-reaching market
failure ever because the costs of fossil fuel
emissions are not incorporated into free
market accounting and polluters are not
forced to pay for the social/environmental
impacts of their pollution.
Since this report, several other sources
(including the International Energy Agency,
IEA) have quoted figures from $250 to over
$300 a tonne of carbon as the penalties that
would be necessary in order to drive the
conversion of our fossil fuel-based energy
economy to one of conservation and
renewables. In contrast, the best policy
proposal from the environmental movement
is one tenth this amount.
Stern is now the first public leader to state that
agriculture worldwide will collapse this century
unless drastic action is taken to slash greenhouse
gas emissions. While damages to agriculture are
not even recognized as a danger of global climate
change in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s (IPCC, 2007), ‘reasons for concern’, it is
clearly the top threat to humanity’s survival.
Our political leaders are pretending that we can
‘find a balance’ between the short-term economic
interests of the big polluters and maintaining a safe
climate that is capable of sustaining life. As former
Government adviser on climate change Ross
Garnaut said, ‘the failure of this generation to act
will ‘haunt humanity until the end of time’[1]. Just as
‘business as usual’ will destroy our future, so will
‘politics as usual’. In the present system global
economic growth is directly linked to emissions and
yet this suicidal model continues to be promoted
growth at all costs.
[1]Cosmos magazine, Failures on Climate Change will haunt the humanity, Agence France Press. 2009
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2227/garnaut-failure-climate-change-will-haunt-humanity
Our governments are lying through
their teeth.
Could it be that citizens could sooner see
the end of the world than the end of a
capitalist system that is literally killing
us? Positive changes are being witnessed as
societies around the world are now
embracing memes such as degrowth,
steady state economies, the new
economics foundations, genuine progress
indicators, the happy planet index and
others. We can build a world that places the
health, happiness and welfare of people
ahead of profits.
A sustainable economy is possible. The barrier to
accomplishing a better world is not the economical
or technological constraints, but by political power
and the will of the people.
Resistance is not futile – it is essential.
Do we want to be remembered as the
generation that had money for
subsidies of big oil and fighting wars
yet we let the biosphere collapse?
In the last few weeks, President Nicolas Sarkozy has
asked world leaders to join a revolution in the
measurement of economic progress[1], Sir Nicholas
Stern has warned ‘at some point we would have to
think about whether we want future growth’[2], and
John Prescott has called the current economic
growth model 'immoral'. The debate about
economic growth has really begun.[3]
[1] Worldpress:
http://article.wn.com/view/2009/09/15/Sarkozy_wants_happiness_used_as_economic_in
dicator/
[2]Watts Jonathan, Stern: Rich nations will have to forget about growth to stop climate
change, The Guardian, September 2009 http://www.businessgreen.com/businessgreen/news/2249397/stern-rich-nations-forget
[3] Watts Jonathan, Current economic growth model is 'immoral', says Prescott, The guardian,
September 4, 2009
In Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite
Planet Tim Jackson offers a new vision of a shared
prosperity: the capability to flourish as human
beings - within the ecological limits of a finite
planet. Fulfilling that vision is simply the most urgent
task of our times.
The New Economics describes the problems and
bizarre contradictions in conventional economics
as well as the principles of the emerging new
economics, and it tells the real-world stories of how
new economics is being successfully put into
practice around the world.
Canada and the US together represent less
than 5 percent of humanity yet consume
over one-quarter of the world’s oil, and
contribute to more than one-quarter of the
world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon is
the most significant greenhouse gas, and
Canada’s per capita carbon footprint is
more than twice that of the average
European, roughly five times the world
average, and more than 20 times that of
many developing countries.
Climate policy and environmental
policy is characterized by the
habituation of low expectations and a
culture of failure. There is an urgent
need to understand global warming
and the tipping points for dangerous
impacts that we have already crossed
as a sustainability emergency that
takes us beyond the politics of failureinducing compromise.
Finally, while we grasp with how we
can cut back our emissions let’s look at
annual tons of CO2 per person and
reflect: Annual tons of CO2 per
person…
Ethiopia .01
India 1.1
China 3.2
Sweden 5.6
France 6.2
UK 9.4
Japan 9.7
Germany 9.8
CANADA 17.9
USA 19.8
It’s us, the one billion affluent people of the
world whose footprints are crushing the
planet. Surely we can all agree this is grossly
unethical. Climate change today accounts
for over 300,000 deaths throughout the
world each year.
Children are the most vulnerable in our
society. It is the responsibility of every
adult citizen on our global planet to
take every precaution to protect our
children and mitigate against climate
change.
Climate Change is systemic of a much bigger problem.
We are part of a cultural phenomenon, a culture of self entitlement
and our ‘choice’ to destroy our shared environment. Our shared
natural environment has become a toxic dumping ground.
We are paying the highest price…
Today we are living in what scientists call ‘the sixth extinction’. The
fastest die off of species the Earth has ever seen. The biodiversity crisis
is due to the destruction of ecosystems, the overexploitation of
species and natural resources, overpopulation, the spread of
agriculture and livestock, and pollution - all contributing to ever
accelerating global warming caused by humans.
We are conducting a vast toxicological experiment in which our
children and our children's children are the experimental subjects…
Ecology and economy are interdependent. Both words have a common root: the
Greek word "oikos" which means home. A whole earth economy is an economy
based on the happiness, the health and essential needs of the people and its
inhabitants – an intensification and a flourishing of of all the service and trading
activites that create and support the integrity, resiliance and beauty of life’s
commonwealth. It recognizes the earth has ecological limits and that if these limits
are not respected there will be a negative effect on the social systems and
ecosystems that make up the commonwealth of life on which we depend. We have
wildly surpassed these limits in an unprecedented way. We must stop counting the
consumption of natural capital as income. Bold new visions of interrelated
environmental, economic and social challenges, including economic reform and
ethical governance is only possible with bold, visionary leaders. There is no reason in
the world we cannot build a green, healthy economies where all life flourishes.
LISTEN: Download "The New Ecology" podcast and get the extended "What if ecology mattered?"
conversation with William Rees.
http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/podcasts/the-new-ecology-issue-354
William Rees, co-author of Our Ecological Footprint, is a human ecologist and ecological economist at the
University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
“If you want to know who is going to change this country, take a look in the mirror.’
Maude Barlow
A Transition to A Whole Earth, Steady State Economy is Essential
Everything began with the industrial revolution in 1750, which gave birth to the
capitalist system. In two and a half centuries, the so called “developed”
countries have consumed a large part of the fossil fuels created over five
million centuries.
Competition and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are
destroying the planet. Under Capitalism we are not human beings but
consumers. Under Capitalism mother earth does not exist, instead there are
raw materials. Capitalism is the source of the asymmetries and imbalances in
the world. It generates luxury, ostentation and waste for a few, while millions in
the world die from hunger in the world. In the hands of Capitalism everything
becomes a commodity: the water, the soil, the human genome, the ancestral
cultures, justice, ethics, death … and life itself. Everything, absolutely
everything, can be bought and sold and under Capitalism. And even
“climate change” itself has become a business.
“Climate change” has placed all humankind before great choice: to
continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of
harmony with nature and respect for life.
Redesigning the Way We Think & Live:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/engage/charter.html
http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/
Evo Morales | Save the Planet from Capitalism
Today, our Mother Earth is ill. From the beginning of the 21st century we have
lived the hottest years of the last thousand years. Global warming is
generating abrupt changes in the weather: the retreat of glaciers and the
decrease of the polar ice caps; the increase of the sea level and the flooding
of coastal areas, where approximately 60% of the world population live; the
increase in the processes of desertification and the decrease of fresh water
sources; a higher frequency in natural disasters that the communities of the
earth suffer[1]; the extinction of animal and vegetal species; and the spread
of diseases in areas that before were free from those diseases.
One of the most tragic consequences of the climate change is that some
nations and territories are the condemned to disappear by the increase of the
sea level.
Read Full Opinion Piece Here:
http://councilofcanadianslondon.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/climatechange-save-the-planet-from-capitalism-evo-morales/
Achievements You Will Not Read About in the MSM
(Main Stream Media)
Ecuador first to legislate rights for nature |10 December 2008
Ecuador Approves New Constitution: Voters Approve Rights of Nature
Ecuador | First Country in the World to Shift to Rights-Based
Environmental Protection, Working With Legal Defense Fund
By an overwhelming margin, the people of Ecuador today voted for a new
constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights
of Nature, or ecosystem rights. The Community Environmental Legal Defense
Fund is pioneering this work in the U.S., where it has assisted more than a
dozen local municipalities with drafting and adopting local laws recognizing
Rights of Nature. Ecuador is now the first country in the world to codify a new
system of environmental protection based on rights. With this vote, the people
of Ecuador are leading the way for countries around the world to
fundamentally change how we protect nature. Article 1 of the new "Rights for
Nature" chapter of the Ecuador constitution reads: "Nature or Pachamama,
where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and
regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the
recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies."
Could We Pass Such a Law in North American? Probably Not. Why?
1- Apathy caused by a complete disconnect from our shared natural
environment
2- Entitlement which has been cultivated in the very essence of our being in North
America
3- Corporations are now more powerful than our governments
4- The average citizen is being kept in the dark on the severity of climate change
and the implications
Solutions:
1- Seek out Independent Media
2- Reconnect Children with Nature
3- Mandatory ecoliteracy courses including ‘precautionary principle’ in work
places and all levels of government
4- Utilize waiting times in the health sector with education. Replace television
shows in waiting rooms with documentaries. Replace irrelevant reading
material / magazines with those which focus on climate change and health.
Teach Ecoliteracy in all Levels of Government
For those in leadership roles and decision making
capacity - knowledge of climate change,
sustainability and environmental degradation
should not be optional
The City of Albuquerque began delivering Sustainability
Awareness Training in fall of 2007. Training sessions were
available daily from October 8-12 and November 13-17,
during which time 3,800 employees were trained.
http://www.cabq.gov/albuquerquegreen/see-it-green-reporting
Direct Action
“…I believe we’ve reached the stage where it is time for civil
disobedience.”
Al Gore, Clinton Global Initiative, Sept. 25, 2008
The Reverse Graffiti Project | ‘Art less pollution’
This is what you may call reverse graffiti. Brazilian streetartist
Alexandre Orion removes soot to draw skulls and create ‘Art less
pollution’.
At dawn on July 13, 2006, Brazilian streetartist Alexandre Orion started
working on a intervention in the Max Feffer tunnel Sao Paulo and
created ‘Art less pollution’. The intervention was through a process of
subtraction, scraping off layers of soot from vehicle exhaust built up
on tunnel walls to produce images of human skulls.
Read more about the intervention and see pictures at Alexandre
Orion’s website.
VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwsBBIIXT0E&eurl=http://www.fa
cebook.com/home.php#
Capitalism strikes again… Note that since this time – ‘GreenWorks’ [Clorox
Corporation] has purchased this video for an advertising campaign.
Under the Radar | Le Clan du Néon
Lights Out Activists on Anti-Neon Crusade in France. By Adam Sage, Times (UK),
November 8, 2008. "Meet Le Clan du Néon, an increasingly popular environmental
movement that wants to make the City of Lights a little darker. One tactic is to turn off
neon shop signs at night by reaching the external fire switches that control them, usually
found two or three metres up the façade... Le Clan was set up in Paris, but its lighthearted and low-tech activist approach to ecology has been a hit across the country
with students, many of whom see the antineon activity as a nocturnal lark. Groups have
sprung up in Normandy, Bordeaux, the Alps and Dordogne. Members from the latter
have posted an internet video that says that in a region bereft of night life, turning out the
high street lighting is as good a way of passing the time as any... The thousands of shop
signs left on at night in Europe consume tens of gigawatt hours of electricity a year. In
France, where the nuclear industry supplies 80 per cent of electricity, the result is more
radioactive waste. Elsewhere, it is hundreds of tonnes of CO2 emissions. 'If all the neon
signs in the world were turned off, the impact on global warming would be very
significant,' said Nicolas, 28, another Le Clan member. 'There ought to be a law against it,
but since there isn't, we have to go around doing it ourselves.’
Full Article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5110640.ece
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq6j3O6wAdE
Today's protesters, tomorrow's saviours.
It is pertinent to ask what view our great-grandchildren will take when
they look back in 100 years. The slow cooking of the planet is quite
distinct from other disputes today. With climate change, the ultimate
question is whether humans can continue to live on this planet at all.
Plane Stupid Direct Action Group. They were disruptive and controversial to say the
least. Spied upon, locked up and lambasted by the establishment of their time. The
state considered them to be dangerous terrorists and, as Tony Benn put it, "Newsnight
would have treated the suffragettes as trouble-makers." But those women who battled
for gender equality were later vindicated by history. I suppose it's a testament to their
success that the Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, was citing them as an
example of the sort of movement we need on global warming, adding, "Maybe it's an
odd thing for someone in government to say." Certainly an odd thing for someone in
government. Put against a context of the average Brit emitting 11 tonnes of CO2 a
year, today's activity didn't just get the nation talking, it had a real impact. Like the
Kingsnorth 6, who shut down one of the dirtiest coal plants in Britain and were later
acquitted by a jury of 12 ordinary people, Plane Stupid just made history. Seriously what
people will think about this protest in 100 years from now? Will that generations'
politicians be lauding today's action as a model for defeating their eras' defining
challenge?
Direct Action Becomes Cool
Interesting enough – ‘Lush’ produces a product called the
charity pot where all the proceeds are donated to worthy
causes. One of the groups to benefit is Plane Stupid. Others
range from Butterfly Conservation to Reprieve, the human
rights charity.
Lush states they believe that there is a long tradition of using
non-violent protest to create change where other means
have failed. Highlighting the constant growth of habits we
know we can't sustain, as Plane Stupid has, they see as
laudatory.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/12/the
airlineindustry-climatechange