Students Against Climate Change

Bio-char skepticism

2010-06-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

There is a strong statement against biochar at this site (below). Many objections are raised in the article. It's the first time I had seen such a statement, so I'm sharing it. Biochar seems to be a technological solution - a form of geo-engineering - with possible unintended consequences and costs. It has gained in popularity in the
last year and is being widely advanced in climate analyst and scientific circles.

http://climateandcapitalism.com/

The biochar ideas raises the ethical questions associated with other localized technological solutions: nuclear energy, sulphur particles in the atmosphere, iron filings in the seas, carbon sequestration. Not all these technologies are alike in all respects, but they do share some commonalities. Before I launch into my crtitique, I should add that I do not have the final answers. This is a provisional set of statements. I raised these points for discussion only, because it seems important to do so, and I welcome alternative points of view.

Roughly speaking, these localized technological solutions share these problematic characteristics, which need to be considered prior to their implementation:

1) They have social and environmental costs attached to them, which from a deontological ethical perspective, negates their value. From this perspective it is morally wrong to make x pay the cost for the benefit of y, if x and y are equals. All human beings are equals in this view.

In other words, the rights of individuals and minorities must be upheld and solutions to social or environmental problems must take into account those individual or local community rights. Solutions must be "universalizable." From a deontological perspective, war would not be justifiable, and nor would any development project which imposed burdens on local populations for the sake of the economic prosperity of the larger society.

However, from a utilitarian perspective, which allows for minority populations or individuals to suffer for the good of the greater happiness, such technologies - if they worked - would be considered ethically acceptable. It is this ethic which is being used (implicitly, not explicitly) right now.

The utilitarian perspective will seem practically necessary to many, given how widespread human self-interest and faith in technology appears to be, but it is still morally wrong (in my opinion) for the reasons stated above, and given limited time and resources, climate change mitigation requires the choice of one or the other perspective and set of commitments associated with it.

As I hope to demonstrate in these few paragraphs, the deontological perspective can be (roughly) associated with a no-growth economy and investment in renewables and other intermediate technologies, and the utilitarian perspective can be associated with advocacy for high-tech solutions which have localized costs and which are often used in connection with justifying the current model of unlimited economic growth.

2) There are local consequences that no one can anticipate fully, but advocates for these technologies are advancing them nonetheless as mitigation techniques for climate change. Their use in the world is being advanced as an experiment and local populations and ecoystems are part of that experiment, which raises ethical objections.

The regulatory framework and environmental assessments - if they are applied - be described as utiliarian in their bias, using a risk management methodology. The risks are borne by local populations, often without their consent, and also by future generations, who cannot give their consent.

3) Advancing these technological solutions is tantamount to accepting the unsustainable status quo of unlimited economic growth. The "magic buckshot" ethic advanced by many climate policy analysts - which is a mix of existing and experimental technologies - ignores the fact that funds spent on experimental technologies could be better spent on renewables.

The latter (renewables) are associated with energy conservation and widespread behavioral change and are therefore not considered viable of their own, within the context of the economic growth paradigm.

4) There are high financial costs as well attached to them, and in a world of limited funding for climate change mitigation, it is arguable that such funding could be better spent on proven technologies (renewables) where the social and environmental costs are relatively minor. This is especially the case with nuclear energy, but the argument may be applicable to biochar as well, depending on the costs
associated with implementing it on a widespread scale.

From this perspective, it is an either/or scenario, financially: if funds and energies are spent on experimental solutions which potentially would allow the economic growth regime to continue, they take away from relatively low-cost intermediate technology solutions which require greater energy efficiency and behavioral change (a low growth or no growth economy).

The perspective in general use among analysts and polticians right now is that we must try all possible options and see which one works, or which combination of them work, and commit to that. But in the case of nuclear energy and renewables, limited funding spent on one is necessarily not spent on the other. This could also be the case with biochar, depending on how much its implementation on a widespread
scale might cost.

It should also be added that the least expensive option available for mitigating climate change on a large scale is the elimination of factory farms and a severe reduction in meat consumption in industrialized nations which rely on factory farms for food. According to a 2007 U.N. report, 18% of global greenhouse gases from industrial meat production.

Lecture for G8/G20 teach-in on environmental justice

2010-06-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

Lecture for the G8/G20 teach-in on environmental justice

___________

Reflections on local community struggles for climate justice in the face of hazardous hi-tech technology

My contribution to this discussion is inspired in part by my experiences working with activists who came here from other countries - Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Chile, and Australia - to oppose gold mining on their lands, and in part by the experience of the residents of the San Joaquin Valley, one of the poorer areas of California, and where a lot of industrial projects, oil extraction and industrial waste is located, and where residents have organized to oppose these things.

I will begin by providing a simple but important thought: "A healthy environment is a human right." This idea was ratified in a precedent-setting court case in Colombia in 1991, (Fundepúblico v. Mayor of Bugalagrande). The plaintiffs sought to prevent actual and imminent damage as a result of an asphalt plant's operations in their town. The Constitutional Court sided with them saying: "Everyone has the right to enjoy and live in a healthy environment. This should be regarded as a fundamental human right, which is a prerequisite and basis for the exercise of other human, economic and political rights. It should be recognized that a healthy environment is a sine qua non condition for life itself and that no right could be exercised in a deeply altered environment."

As we have heard from Simia and Judy, climate change is connected to many different struggles for justice around the globe. Our presentations are intended to convey the idea that concern for climate change should not be thought of abstractly as something that could happen in some other time and place, but is happening as we speak, and it is not the "Earth" or "the planet" that should concern us so much as people who are already suffering from environmental damage caused by unsustainable industrial development.

As Oren Lyons of the turtle clan of the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy has said, "The Earth has all the time in the world; we don't. "Part of this G8 protest will be an expression of solidarity with rural and indigenous peoples already fighting climate injustice, in relation to the tar sands, Guatemala, and other regions of the world. Many of the communities already live (and have lived for aeons) in a truly sustainable way, growing their food and living within the means provided by the local environment. They should serve as an example to us of how to live, but instead our civilization is destroying their livlihood, in countless examples, largely through extraction industries. An example that comes to mind is oil spills in Nigeria, which have been as horrible as the recent BP spill, but have not received the same degree of media attention because they occurred far from the media's scope of concern.

Most of you have heard Martin Luther King Jr's words, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Another way of saying this is that the injustice suffered by an individual or isolated community should matter to us as much as injustices which affect great numbers or which have a higher profile. I will give you one example: in Papua New Guinea, the wealthy gold mining company Barrick Gold is dumping toxic mine tailings into the local river, poisoning their water supply, while Barrick guards murder local citizens and burn down their houses. That fact that they are on the other side of the world should not prevent us from acting in solidarity with them, especially since Canada allows companies like Barrick Gold to operate with impunity.

The damage caused by extraction industries is a clear case of environmental injustice, but what about a situation where there is said to be some environmental benefit that requires putting local populations at risk? As the climate crisis worsens we will hear more and more about cases where local populations protest the implementation of a supposedly beneficial technology. I am not talking about middle-class people in Canada protesting wind turbines because it obstructs their view, but rather cases such as the Western Shoshone in Nevada or the Diagatas in Chile opposing uranium mining on their lands, or the displacement of local peoples and destruction of biodiverse ecosystems to produce biofuels or eucalyptus plantations, listed as carbon sinks in carbon-trading schemes.

Throughout history we always find that terrible things are done in the name of some greater good. The history of religion provides many of instances of this, and in the same way capitalism has been described as a kind of religion which sacrifices millions of people, and billions of animals for its particular vision of a higher good. Its high priests, the economists and policy analysts, are now endorsing a "magic buckshot" solution to climate change, which preserves the existing unsustainable system and sacrifices local populations to it. The problem with the magic buckshot idea is that it assumes unlimited funding. But as opponents to nuclear energy point out, the public funds used to finance it could better be used to pay for renewables and energy conservation projects. In practice, hi-tech solutions are being given precedence, in industrialized nations, in order to prop up the existing deeply flawed system.

Countries around the globe are spending billions of their citizen’s money to carbon sequestration, while ignoring critical knowledge gaps and their potential implications. Emily Rochon of Greenpeace notes that “The future of the planet is being gambled on a technological solution that could turn out to be an end of the pipe dream. Governments need to invest in proven solutions like wind, solar and the smarter use of power.” Scientific research says that if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2015 and fall dramatically thereafter. That leaves about six years to shift energy systems to a low emissions pathway.

The centralized technologies that many of the G8 leaders endorse as solutions for climate change will take longer that six years to fully implement. They include nuclear energy requiring uranium mining, which pollutes surface air and water with radioactive mine waste, sometimes mined near aboriginal communities, causing health problems for them (at the end of the uranium life cycle a favourite dumping ground for the waste is First Nations lands); carbon geologic sequestration, a relatively new technology, places local populations and ecosystems at risk of poisoning from sequestered carbon gas leaking to the surface and into ground water; and geo-engineering schemes - one of which is to cool the atmosphere by injecting sulphur particles into it, which risks burning away part of the ozone layer - are being promoted without full consideration of all their consequences. Employing a utilitarian ethic, they are suggesting that the risks are acceptable. This is usually because those at most risk are abstract numbers to them, not living breathing individuals, whose lives matter.

According to David Orr in his book Ecological Literacy, “advocates of technological sustainability tend to believe that every problem has either a technological answer or a market solution ... [resting on] the belief that humans should be rich and in control of the forces of nature … [this belief maintains that] humans as economic maximizers are incapable of the discipline implied by limits even though they are somehow capable of the wisdom and good judgment necessary to manage all the of the earth’s resources in perpetuity. This deeply pessimistic view of human potentials assumes that we cannot control our appetites, act for the common good, or wisely direct our collective energies … [they also believe that] economic growth is essential … but growth implies an eventual impossibility in a finite system … If sustainability is a top-down process [controlled by economists, scientists and policy experts] then an active, ecologically competent citizenry is irrelevant … ecological politics is reduced to “managerial strategies.” In contrast to technological sustainability is more decentralized ecological sustainability, restoring civic involvement, borrowing from traditional knowledge, and viewing natures as a model for human designers to emulate.

A basic principle being expressed in this presentation is that everyone counts, no matter how far away, however marginalized economically, racially, culturally or otherwise, and an injustice to one is an injustice to all. And it is not only human beings who are victims of capitalism, but also animals - by the billions - and their fate is intimately tied to our own, on many levels, including the danger posed to all land-based life forms by the acidification of the oceans, and the greenhouse gases caused by factory farming. An analysis of environmental injustice affecting humanity has to include other consideration of other species, because what happens to them affects us. One way of expressing this is Aldo Leopold's "land ethic" which changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his (or her) fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such." This is something we can learn from the self-sufficient rural communities who bear the brunt of the extraction industries.

With hi-tech solutions, the short term benefit is used to justify the risk to the local population. But if we follow the principle to "always treat others as an end in themselves, not as a means to an end," such technologies cannot be morally justified, because we are recognizing the importance of these affected communities.

This is a basic idea: no one should be forgotten or sacrificed for some supposedly higher cause, however noble it seems at the time - even the noble end of climate change mitigation. If populations are sacrificed or put at risk, this is not morally consistent with the initial concern, why we think climate change needs to be addressed.

Solutions to the climate crisis need to be made which take into account the well-being of everyone, and this requires a much more democratic system than now exists. The United Nations is being used a vehicle for the voices of the many, but civil protest and forums like this one are more local methods for expressing solidarity and concern. The billion dollars spend on suppressing dissent should be been spent on renewable energy and creating green jobs.

This century will be one of unprecedented change and violence and many corporations, politicians and other guardians of power will want to implement supposed solutions, usually for the benefit of their particular constituency. They will use the existing and impending disasters to justify curtailment of civil rights - eventually leading to totalitarianism here - and as part of that they will justify the use of unproven technologies without the free and informed consent of local populations or adequate environment assessments. In fact this is already happening in more cases than any of us are aware. These essentially unproven technologies are being advanced for one reason: to allow business-as-usual to continue unimpeded, rather than go in the direction of a more democratic, just and sustainable low-growth or no-growth economy.

According to Tim Jackson in Prosperity Without Growth, “The narrow pursuit of growth represents a horrible distortion of the common good and of underlying human values. It also undermines the legitimate role of government itself. At the end of the day, the state is society’s commitment device, par excellence, and the principal agent in protecting our shared prosperity. A new vision of governance that embraces this role is urgently needed.”

The same philosopher who said "always treat others as an end in themselves, not as a means to an end" (Kant) also said "act as if the whole world depended on your actions." Protesting is doing just that. And in a way it is true: these protests are ultimately important because we are living in an unprecedented historical period of a few years, when the actions of a few conscientious individuals and groups can make all the difference for billions of people and every living thing on the planet. Meaning that we have only a short time to bring about necessary changes, and in industrialized nations, which are most responsible for the crisis, we have the greatest responsibility for mitigation effort. The temptation is to use unproven technologies, rather than change society from the bottom up. But mitigation technologies which harm local populations do not meet the test of justice, and for this reason they will not solve the fundamental problems. Environmental concern and social justice are inseparable.

A good phrase to describe the thinking behind the implementation of false solutions is "technological elitism" and even "environmental fascism" - the idea that individuals or small groups need not be consulted, and are essentially expendable for the sake of what some environmental good. But in every case we find that the local environment and thus the local population that inhabits it is put at grave risk from environmental pollutions. Environmental integrity and the preservation of human rights are complimentary through local food production, but in many of the cases of development versus the community, local food production is endangered when water is used up and contaminated.

Those who promote hi-tech solutions have created of a regulatory framework for environmental assessments, using the language or risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, which in most cases is used to justify the local risks, rather than prevent them. A utilitarian thinking is adopted, which typically fails to take into account the well-being of the local population or that of future generations inhabiting the same land or using the contaminated water. They are considered expendable, or not even taken into account. "We have without any public debate accepted all of the implications of what Ulrich Beck has called the "risk society." The risk society makes the globe the laboratory for its experiments. As we have seen, theories of nuclear reactor safety are testable only after they are built, not beforehand. – (Lawrence Schmidt)

Zygmunt Bauman points out that the language of risk is associated with gambling rather than ethics. The gambler enjoys the play even if he loses his bet. What is at stake in a risk society, however, is not merely the loss of a wager but the loss of the planet as a human habitat.

Instead of a "risk management" language governments and policy advisors would do well to heed the works of Ursula Franklin, who said that "Many technological systems are basically anti-people. People are seen as the sources of problems while technology is seen as the source of solutions." In the assessments for mitigation technologies, such as carbon sequestration, the public acceptance and the consent of local populations are seen as a barrier to the implementation of the technologies.

Another critic of nuclear technology, Fred Knellman said that "No matter how small the probability of an accident, the risk is still too large to be acceptable to present or future generations ... Only zero risk would be socially acceptable, given the fact that there are alternative options for securing society's genuine energy requirements.“

Ursula Franklin says that before a technology is implemented we should be sure it promotes justice, that if favours people over machines, that it favours conservation over waste, and that its effects should be reversible. Marginal populations should be consulted. Currently there is either a disingenuous consultation process, when it comes to these technologies - where those most affected are not notified or their concerns dismissed.

We can also understand these centralized technological solutions as insubstantial reforms, an effort to appease the public, examples of "greenwash." Imperial Oil and Barrick Gold now claim to be "sustainable" and "good corporate citizens." But mere reforms, even if they are genuinely motivated, are inadequate because these leaders subscribe to an inherently unjust and unsustainable ideological framework, capitalism, which cannot be reformed on the scale that's needed to avert global catastrophe. We could say that their blind faith in technological solutions to the climate crisis are really ways of avoiding the more substantial structural changes needed, changes that would put them out of business because their business are inherently unjust and unsustainable.

One way of expressing the needed change, is that we must go from a system dedicated to unlimited economic growth for on a planet of finite resources, created for the benefit of a few, to a truly democratic no-growth economy which takes into account finite resources, and is used wisely for the benefit of all. The no-growth economy is an idea gaining currency. The traditional economic infatuation with rising GDP is no longer rationally defensible in a world of finite resources. Instead of centralized hi-tech solutions we need more decentralized intermediate technologies, such as renewable energy.

According to Tim Jackson, "a less materialistic society will enhance life satisfaction. A more equal society will lower the importance of status goods. A less growth-driven economy will improve people’s work-life balance. Enhanced investment in public goods will provide lasting returns to the nation’s prosperity .”

The basic principle here is that the integrity and self-sufficiency of local rural populations - who are already growing their own food and living sustainably, who represent the direction humanity needs to go in - should not be compromised by these top-down false solutions.

It is up to us to use our abilities and privileges in this society to work in solidaridity with affected communities, to oppose unsustainable development. The fight against climate change will be won through grassroots activism and people's movements, not through solutions imposed through the same sort of overreliance on technology that led to this crisis. This is something the G8 leaders need to understand and take to heart. Your protest is important for reminding them and the public that solutions to our common problems must be founded on principles of justice, which take into account all people everywhere, and are not merely for the benefit of a privileged elite.

Strong critique of UTERN

2010-05-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

There is something called UTERN - or University of Toronto Environmental Network - a collection of students who get to dispense a $30,000 student levy to other students to facilitate environmental projects or events. Is this a good or bad thing for student environmentalism? I will argue here that UTERN's existence is detrimental to student environmentalism because it de-politicizes it and creates an atmosphere in which student environmentalism is identified with a kind of apolitical non-controversial acceptance of the status quo.

UTERN refuses to take a stand against the tar sands, the central symbol of environmental destruction in Canada. Collectively UTERN will not condemn the tar sands - which became evident to me a couple of years ago at a showing of a film on the tar sands which many UTERN members attended. Not one of their number spoke up against it.

The status quo is entirely unacceptable however: we are in the midst of a climate crisis and students need to be more vigilent against it and the forces responsible for it - including the very corporations that run this university. The corporatization of U of T is a fundamental part of this story. Large multinational corporations such as Exxon Mobil and Barrick Gold can be view as neutral vehicles that can be steered in many directions - thus the concept of corporate social responsibility and "green capitalism" - or we can recognize that some industries are inherently unsustainable and cannot be reformed.

Extraction industries (oil, mining, etc) cannot be reformed because what they do will always damage the environment to a degree that is unacceptable. There is no such thing as "sustainable mining." But apolitical student environmentalism says neither yay nor nay on this question - it is not spoken of at all - with the result that the status quo - unsustainable mining - continues unabated and U of T is the training ground for it.

Students Against Climate Change was founded three years ago, at University of Toronto, in response to the climate crisis. Our hope was to encourage the kind of response that students in other countries have shown. Even in the United States students have demonstrated a stronger response to the environmental crisis than in Canada. Thousands of students rally for needed change in every other country than Canada. Here such movements barely exist and after three years it is obvious why: it has been killed by apolitical student environmentalism which shies away from controversey or taking a stand on anything.

SACC put on hundreds of events on climate change and related issues: films, lectures, conferences, etc. SACC did more of these events than any other group at U of T, before or sincce. The vast majority of those who attended were not students, however. They were over age 30 and from outside the university - mostly concerned citizens, activists, some university staff and faculty. The students were conspicuously absent from all those events - especially the students in UTERN. We collected the emails of about 4,500 people at these events over three years and perhaps less than 5% were students.

Some UTERN members have said that they reject street activism as ineffective. But without it those that are female among them would not be attending university or have the vote. Street activism has always been the vanguard of social and political change, as the womens' rights movement and civil rights movements demonstrate. This is apparently unknown to them or unappreciated by them. So is the fact that street activism is done as much to bring together communities as to effect social change politically.

So what do they do instead? Do they attend and organize educational events instead - conference, lectures, etc - on the subject of climate change? A small handful have done a few things like this, but not to any great degree. There is a growing climate change movement in Toronto, but they are conspicuously absent from this movement as well, according to the more serious activists. So what does UTERN do? Of what does their so-called "activism" consist? Merely attending classes and meetings and fun social events? In what way does that constitute activism?

Perhaps UTERN is merely a stepping stone for those seeking careers in the growing environmental - a field increasingly apolitical and devoid of spirit, absorbed into the corporate worldview that is most responsible for the environmental crisis. Or perhaps it is an elite social club, funded through a student levy which pays for its social events (food, transporation for outings, plan trips to conferences overseas, etc). Why go to a climate change conference in Europe when you don't attend them here and when such trips exacerbate climate change through emissions? What does this mean for the student environmental movement at Univesity of Toronto? It means that it does not exist, or more precisely it exists in small pockets that are fragmented and ineffective.

The University of Toronto has been taken over by the very corporations most responsible for environmental damage, but instead of challenging that, most of the students have chosen to turn a blind eye to it, and to allow themselves to be absorbed into a kind of unconscious "group think" that allows for the unsustainable status quo to continue unchallenged - and they have done this without even being aware of it.

They perhaps imagine that they will be hired by governments or coprorations and change them from the inside; but they will be changed by them. They already have been, it seems. Environmentalism has been co-opted and reduced to platitudes and feel good slogans with the words "green" and "sustainable" in them. The spirit and life has been taken out of it, resulting in greenwash of corporations. There is no response to factory farming or oil spills or the dumping of mine waste in rivers or climate injustice by UTERN. They seem to avoid so-called "politics", even though environmentalism is inherently political and to act apolitically is itself a political act, in cooperation with prevailing powers, in favour of the status quo. Not everyone on UTERN is of this mind, but most are. One wonders what they really hope to acheive.

UTERN reps have said they don't represent the student envionmental movement - they just fund it - but the direction they've taken is decidely against certain tactics and views and in favour of others. They have decided to cooperate with the Administration and the corporations that run them, and make student environmentalism into a vehicle for funding for themselves (UTERN members are paid or receive work-study grants) and careerism (resume-padding).

UTERN represents the death of real student environmentalism at University of Toronto. And this at the time when the climat crisis was never worse. We see now why it is so bad, and why it gets worse every year: UTERN is a microcosmic reflection of the indifference of the larger society which produced it - a society of in which the tars sand continues to expand.

Negative corporate influence on student environmental activism

2010-05-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Ms. Song,

My main criticism of your article - which is otherwise well-written - is that you avoid the biggest change on university campuses in the last 30 years: how large corporations have take them over. A number of studies bear this out. It has changed how students react. Where before there might have been a challenge to Exxon Mobil or Barrick Gold on campus, now there is silent complicity.

Many of the younger students you spoke to are not "smarter and savvier" than their predecessors; rather, they are more afraid and less vocal and less willing to directly challenge the sources causes of environmental destruction. They are nice people, as individuals, but as a group there prevails an almost anti-activist position among them, so they can hardly be called "activists" without lessening the meaning of the word. This is generally consistent with the direction of the nation as a whole, towards a pro-tar sands pro-Harper milieau.

Your deliberate omission of the increasing power of large corporations on campuses - and especially U of T where it is more the case than any other campus in Canada and how this has contributed to the sea-change in how students respond to the issue - seems to me to be a glaring omission. You told me in the interview you would not touch the issue of corporations. Why I don't know, but I do hope that you will consider doing another story on this, and this time one that investigates this important (and heretofore) missing part of the story.

I sensed the kind of article it would be, from our interview, and that is why I asked you not to appear in it. There is something terribley wrong when students who profess to be environmentalists will not critisize large corporations that are in large part to blame for the environmental crisis - despite all the evidence that they are (e.g. Exxon Mobil's funding of climate change denial).

The fact that I appeared in the article anyway, despite my request, begs the question of jouralistic ethics. That is why I wrote this (below), to clarify the missing and crucial information, which would give readers insight into why many students choose an apolitical and deliberately non-controversial approach.

Sincerely, Paul York

From: Paul York
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:47:44 -0400
Subject: letter to the editor
To: lettertoed@thestar.ca

Letter to the editor, Toronto Star

Missing from Vivian Song's analysis of student environmentalism ("Earth Day celebrates 40 years of education and advocacy" April 22) is the fact that since the 1970s, large corporations have taken over campuses.

This has muted student activism and led to a situation in which negotiating the hallways of power is preferred by many students to protest against environmental destruction.

The danger of this more apolitical conciliatory approach is that students who tell themselves they will change things from the inside, hoping to influence the corporations to go "green", are themselves influenced by those corporations to ignore the enormous damage they cause.

Some industries are simply irredeemable and need to be phased out and green jobs put in their place. But those same industries use students and universities to greenwash themselves, and those who object are marginalized and ridiculed as unreasonable "radicals."

Those who protest do not have a less "savvy" voice (which Ms. Song's article implies); rather, they have a less co-opted more principled voice. They are thus more needed at this historical juncture, when climate change, peak oil and finite resource depletion represent an unprecedented convergence of crises.

Extraction industries do not want students to challenge them; they want them to join their ranks. But the history of successful social activism (women's movement, civil rights, etc) shows us that street activism and taking a strong moral stand is needed to effect social and political change.

Painting the portrait of this more co-opted conciliatory type of "activism" as somehow "more sophisticated and savvier" ignores the danger that its practitioners are merely absorbed into the very structures that are leading to unprecedented environmental destruction.

Sincerely, Paul York
Students Against Climate Change

Taking a break ...

2009-04-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Students Against Climate Change has been going solid for two years, organizing at University of Toronto on issues of social and environmental justice. The climate crisis is not taking a break (it is worse than ever) but we have to take a break or burn out. We will keep you posted. In the meantime, do not lose hope: a green economy is possible if everyone does his or her part to get off the green, buy local food (not meat), drive and fly less and continue to advocate for needed changes such as more renewable energy, less nuclear and fewer cars, and more public transportation and more energy conservation. We also need to end the extraction industries and recylce woods, metals, plastics and other resource based products. And continue to stand up for animal rights and biodiversity. We lose 200 species a day and not even one is acceptable.

Social & environmental justice events in Toronto that Students Against Climate Change is hosting and/or promoting in March

2009-03-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

A few social and environmental justice events in March in Toronto

These are the remaining events in March as of this date, March 15th ...

Facebook links are given after every event description.

Organized and/or promoted by Students Against Climate Change and Toronto Mining Support Group

March 24 (Tues) – Free showing of film, The Strangest Dream, about Pugwash - about the international movement by scientists and intellectuals to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, featuring Pugwash founder Joseph Rotblat. Expert panel for after-film discussion. Hart House, UofT, 7:00 p.m.

See The Strangest Dream on Facebook.

March 25 (Wed) – Panel discussion on mass murder, mass rapes and the role of coltan mining in the Congo. Coltan is a mineral found in laptops and cellphones); 5.6 million people have been murdered in the Congo within the last ten years, but few people are aware of this in the west. Location: Earth Science B-149 (basement), U of T, 6:30 p.m. Contact Paul York for location info. nearer to date.

See Panel discussion on the Congo on Facebook.

March 27 (Fri) – Free showing of film Sharkwater with after-film talk by filmmaker, about the near extinction of the world’s major shark species (fins cut off 100 million per year) to make shark-fin soup. Location: OISE, Room 2214, 252 Bloor W. above St. George Subway, 7:30 p.m.

See showing of Sharkwater on Facebook.

A few important campaigns to be aware of: (this list is by no means exhaustive)

1) Against tar sands expansion – contact Rainforest Action Network: Ran.org.

See RAN tar sands campaign on Facebook.

2) Against nuclear energy, for renewable energy. Contact Angela Bischoff of Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA: angela@cleanairalliance.org)

3) Against shark finning; contact Bob Timmons: rtimmons@tnpi.ca.

See Stop shark finning on Facebook.

4) Against animal experimentation at University of Toronto; contact Paul York.

See Stop testing on live animals at U of T on Facebook.

5) Protest Barrick. To stop the human rights violations and environmental destruction of the world’s largest gold mining corporation.

See Protest Barrick online and Join the Protest Barrick group on Facebook.

6) 2010 Solidarity: No Olympics on Stolen Land – against the appropriation (theft) of aboriginal culture by mining corporations, banks, and governments in Canada while those same powers are destroying the landbase and the communities that rely on it and are continuing to destroy traditional cultures.

See 210 Solidarity on Facebook.

Contact and for all events unless otherwise specified: paulyork.2008@gmail.com 647-342-7995.

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence of the good people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Our major events in February 2009

2009-02-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

Environmental / social justice film showings and public education events at the University of Toronto in February 2009, organized by Graduate Students Union Social Justice Committee, Students Against Climate Change and Toronto Mining Support Group. Contact Paul York paulyork.2008@gmail.com for more information.

1) Feb 11 – free documentary screening of The 11th Hour, one of the best films on climate change ever made

2) Feb 18 – free documentary screening of The Greatest Silence, a film on war in the Congo, mining, and rape

3) Feb 19 – public lecture on global warming and food by Wayne Roberts

4) Feb 28 – presentation on mining at Amnesty International conference on water and human rights

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1) Wed. Feb 11 – free documentary screening of The 11th Hour, one of the best films on climate change ever made

This is best introduction to the issue, and also very inspiring, providing a much-needed message of hope in the face of catastrophic events. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Wed. Feb. 11th, 2009

7:00 p.m.

Medical Sciences building, room 2172, U of T, 1 Kings College Circle (near Queens Park subway)

There will be a brief slideshow afterwards on local and national climate change issues, and how you can get involved in the various groups working on these issues -- including Toronto Climate Campaign, Greenpeace Canada, Students Against Climate Change, etc.

http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=47310389914&ref=ts#/event.php?eid=45994539222&ref=ts

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2) Wed. Feb 18 – free documentary screening of The Greatest Silence, a film on war in the Congo, mining, and rape and mutilation as a weapon of war

Wed. Feb. 18
7:00 p.m.
Hart House, Music Room, 7 Hart House Circle, University of Toronto

Trailer from the film
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=0oGGpulYsZY

Showing of The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. Hosted by the Graduate Student Union Social Justice Commitee, University of Toronto. The film and speaker will be introduced by Sara Suliman, chair of the committee.

For over ten years now, a war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To date, over 5.4 million people have been killed, and many more have been tortured, beat, and raped – most of them women. Through kidnapping, mutilation, rape and torture, the soldiers of both foreign militias and the Congolese army are holding women hostage in their own country.

In 2006, Emmy Award winning producer/director Lisa F. Jackson spent the year in the war zones of eastern DRC. She documented the tragic situation women and girls are forced to deal with as they stand in the middle of a country's conflict they did not create, and cannot control.

Jackson was given privileged access to not only the horrific realities of life in the DRC, but was also shown the resilience, strength, courage and grace of the people of the DRC.

After the film there will be a talk by Bodia Marcharia, followed by discussion. Bodia Macharia is an active member of the GSU Social Justice Commitee. She was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo where she spent most of her early life.

* * *

The international silence regarding the human rights tragedy of the Democratic Republic of Congo, eastern part, is shameful, echoing the silence and indifference of industrial countries towards Rawanda and before that the Holocaust. The mass displacement and murder of six million people and systematic rape and mutilation of women should not have been ignored by the international community. Unfortunately, the World Bank and extraction industries are in part responsible for this atrocity, which might account for the silence of Canada, which harbours and subsidizes extraction companies that operate there. For information the role of Canadian mining companies in the Congo see:
http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php??/Congo_DR

For more information on the GSU Social Justice Committee:
http://www.gsu.utoronto.ca/activism/socialjustice.html

Take action. Please sign this petition - Stop Rape as a Weapon of War:
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/33?attempt=2&m=4854d74a&type=user

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=47310389914&ref=ts

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3) Thurs. Feb 19 – public lecture on global warming and food by Wayne Roberts

Global warming and food - a presentation by Wayne Roberts
“Some like it spicey (rather than hot): how wise and healthy food choices are cool for the climate”

Thurs. Feb. 19, 7:00 p.m.
Hart House, East Common Room, 7 Hart House Circle, University of Toronto

Wayne Roberts manages the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC), a citizen body of 30 food activists and experts that is widely recognized for its innovative approach to food security.

He's been a major player in several Toronto plans that have been crucial for public health and the environment, most notably the City's Environmental Plan and its Food and Hunger Action Plan and food charter.

Many of his most imaginative ideas, often based on extensive meetings and direct encounters with international leaders of the food movement, can be found in his newly-released book, The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food.

Dr. Roberts has been invited to speak around the world on strategies that combine food security, community empowerment, environmental improvement, social equity and job creation.

* * *

Wayne's talk will present key information on the well-kept secret that the food system is responsible for a third of all global warming emissions and the even better-kept secret that moving to less gassy foods will benefit the economy, public health and enjoyment of food as well as the environment.

Wayne's powerpoint will feature photgraphs he's taken during research expeditions in Asia and South America.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=51834316332&ref=ts

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4) Sat. Feb 28 – presentation on mining at Amnesty International conference on water and human rights – Toronto Mining Support Group presentation in the afternoon

Water: A Human Right? Let's Make It Our Business!

Saturday, February 28, 2009
O.I.S.E. Auditorium
Cost: Free
Lunch is included
RSVP: business@aito.ca

An opportunity to learn about Water as a Human Right
what are the issues?
what can we do?
what is the role of business?

Amnesty International, Toronto Business & Human Rights group hosts an exploration of the role of business in respecting water as a Human Right

Co-presented by
Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education
O.I.S.E. University of Toronto, Professor Margrit Eichler
Rotary District 7070 Clean Water Committee & the Water and Sanitation Rotarian Action Group, Students Against Climate Change, University of Toronto

Opening Remarks by Professor Margrit Eichler, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, O.I.S.E., University of Toronto

Maude Barlow, UN Senior Advisor on Water, will be the keynote speaker. She brings her broad perspective and vast knowledge about this common substance that most of us take for granted. Ms. Barlow will be available to sign copies of her latest book, Blue Covenant.

Dr. Ron Denham, Chair, Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group will describe the impact of clean water and sanitation on community development and the challenges we face in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal # 7: By 2015 reduce by 50% the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation.

Afternoon break-out sessions will provide a chance to explore an area of particular interest: Robert Lovelace, Paula Sherman, Co-chief Ardoch Algonquin - Indigenous Peoples' Water Concerns

Ben Powless, Sect'y of the Int'l Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change – Climate Change

Rotary Club Panel - Best Practices in Water and Sanitation projects

Paul York, Christian Penna, Allan Lissner, Sakura Saunder of Toronto Mining Support Group - Mining and Water

Lauren Acorn, UNA-Canada & Youth4Water - session especially for youth & youth workers

We will also network with local Toronto action groups involved with water issues. Confirmed organizations are: Council of Canadians, Rotary Club, Students for Bhopal, Youth4Water Ripple Effect, Students Against Climate Change/Toronto Mining Support Group, Lake Ontario Waterkeepers, Sanitation and Water Action Network, and Amnesty International BHR.

Join us on Facebook!

2008-12-24T22:02:00.000-08:00

A number of groups started by Students Against Climate Change, Toronto Mining Support Group and/or Paul York ...

http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=721757650&gv=12

- Includes: Indict Bush, Harper & fossil fuel CEOs for crimes against humanity & nature

- TD's Go Green Challenge is greenwash

- Toronto Mining Support Group

- Students Against Climate Change

- Resistance to gold mining in Latin America

- Good books, films and websites on the environmental and economic crisis

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Events in January ...

Free showing of Out of Balance - Exxon Mobil's Impact on Climate Change, Jan. 9th
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=721757650&gv=12#/event.php?eid=35379749499

Free showing of Sharkwater, Jan. 15th
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=721757650&gv=12#/event.php?eid=46438620751

Free showing of Rio Blanco and talk on community resistance to extraction industries
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=721757650&gv=12#/event.php?eid=47203519448&ref=ts

Benefit concert for horse refuge in Ontario
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=721757650&gv=12#/event.php?eid=48972533135&ref=ts

Update

2008-12-24T21:56:00.001-08:00

So much has happened since the last entry it's hard to know where to begin. We started Toronot Mining Support Group, did protests in solidarity with several different indigenous communities fighting open-pit mining, hosted a lecture against nuclear energy with Dr. Edwards, showed numerous films, hosted Bob Lovelace (incredible!), co-organized the student conference on climate change, and much much more. It's impossible to recount it all right now. And there is so much coming up! January is going to be very busy, with numerous films, lectures and climate change and community resistance and solidarity events. We'll keep you posted! - Paul

Tree of Life

2008-04-05T22:27:00.000-07:00

Portrait of life alienated from nature

2008-04-05T22:23:00.000-07:00

Prayer for justice

2008-04-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

O Great Spirit. O Great Creator, Source of all that is. You breathe and infuse us with life. We are mindful that we are standing on Ground, Sacred Earth here today. Root us, and ground us in Earth, that we may be mindful and respectful of Earth, all the plants and animals, and all our brothers and sisters, especially those in the First Nations. Move us and our governments to deal honourably, and bring respect and humility to conversations with First Nations that there may be Right Relations among us. Use all the efforts and commitments expressed here today to contribute to the outcomes for which we long and pray. Amen.

- delivered by Rev. Ralph Carl Wushke, Eccumenical Chaplain, U of T at rally in support of AAFN, Shabot First Nation, CCAMU and KI First Nation, against mining, on Mining Lobby Day at Queen's Park, March 19, 2008.

Hart House activites

2008-03-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

We seem to have done a lot at Hart House. We hosted the event with Dr. Harvey on global warming there, did the eco-fair there (photo below), scared away Bjorn Lomborg from speaking there, and now are going to host an inquiry into uranium mining on April 26th, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Join us!

Eco-fair at Hart House, sponsored by Toronto Climate Campaign and SACC

Urgent Call to Action!

2008-03-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

Monday March 17, 9 am - 4pm:
Flood Michael Bryant's office!

PHONE - EMAIL - WRITE - FAX
Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, Ontario

Starting on Tuesday 18 March, the second phase of contempt charges against First Nations leaders and several non-natives involved in the Robertsville protest will be heard in the Kingston Court House. Meanwhile, a Queen's University Journal article quotes Frontenac Ventures President and CEO as saying as of this date there is no drilling, but it could happen any.

Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and their allies ask all those concerned about First Nations rights and uranium mining to FLOOD Michael Bryant's office this MONDAY,Â 17 March to demand that the Government of Ontario immediately:

* admit that it was in the wrong to issue permits to Frontenac Ventures for uranium exploration on unceded Algonquin territory without first consulting with First Nations.

* follow Manitoba's example: withdraw the exploration permits that were issued without proper consultation. (The Manitoba government recently suspended drilling on the Minago Nickel Project on Norway House Cree Nation land.)

* disallow uranium exploration and mining in the Ottawa Valley, in keeping with the Algonquin people's proclamation of September 28th,
2007.

* free political prisoner Bob Lovelace and revoke his and Paula Sherman's sentences.

* stop the drilling at the Robertsville site until there is thorough consultation with First Nations.

Please be polite, and remember to request a response to your correspondence otherwise they may not reply.

Contact Info:

Hon. Michael Bryant
803 St. Clair Ave W
Toronto ON M6C 1B9

Tel: 416-656-0943
Fax: 416-656-0875
Email: mbryant.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

Please CC your emails to: AAFNASupport@sympatico.ca

------------------------------------

For reference:

The Algonquin Proclamation to the Government of Canada that was also delivered to Premier McGuinty's constituency office September 28th, 2007 read:

WHEREAS the Algonquin people were created by the Master of Life in the Valley of the Ottawa River Watershed and can look to no other place on earth to sustain their culture, language and identity and as a People regard the Ottawa Valley to be their homeland;

AND WHEREAS the Algonquin people have a sacred responsibility for the care and preservation of the land, water and all creatures great and small that
abide as their closest relations in the Ottawa Valley;

AND WHEREAS the Algonquin people have peaceably shared the Ottawa Valley with many people who have come to settle among them, offering the newcomers land and resources for their commerce and health, friendship and wisdom for the care of their land, and have compromised their own well being for the sake of peaceful relations;

AND WHEREAS the Crown in right of Ontario, Quebec and Canada has obligations, through the word of King George III in the Royal Proclamation
of 1763, to protect their allies the Algonquins in their homeland, and to protect their homeland from unwanted settlement and development;

AND WHEREAS Uranium exploration and mining currently poses great threat to the health of the land, water, people and fellow creatures of the
Algonquin homeland and the peaceful use and occupation by Algonquins and their neighbours;

The Algonquin people declare that all exploration and mining for Uranium in the Ottawa Valley shall end immediately, September 28th, 2007.

Background documents:

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=928059 (Good article: the real reason Bob Lovelace was arrested)

http://www.ccamu.ca/ (Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium)

http://www.aafna.ca/ (Ardoch Algonquin First Nation)

http://www.shabotisstillhere.com/ (Shabot First Nation)

http://www.newsweb.ca/2007/uranium.html (Indy media report)

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1414 (Indy media report)

http://ottawa.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/7040.shtml (Indy media report)

http://wiinimkiikaa.wordpress.com/?s=sharbot+lake (Indigenous solidarity report)http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/press/press-releases/greenpeace-and-first-nations-t (Greenpeace report)

Graphic representation of all the water in the world in ball, and all the air in the world in a ball. Needless to say, all life on Earth is dependant on these two substances. The implication is that if we pollute them, life on Earth will perish. From the 11th Hour website.

Uranium and gold mining protest events coming up

2008-03-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

Caption: typical Barrick gold mine - this area will be dead for thousands of years and pollute water systems downstream, harming plants, animals and human beings - all so that a few rich men can grow richer. Short of the distinct possibility that they will go to Hell, the only justice is to protest this abomination and resist this evil through solidarity with indigenous peoples the world over.

1. Peaceful protest against uranium mining at Queen's Park, March 19, 12 noon.

2. Film "Uranium" and talk with Marylin Crawford of CCAMU, March 19, 7 p.m.

3. Initial planning meeting for Citizen's Inquiry into Uranium Mining (set for April 26), Friday March 21, lounge, 5th floor of OISE

4. Planning meeting to organize protest against Barrick Gold and Goldcorp AGMS in May, and to discuss strategies and tactics for law reform around mining in Canada - date TBA (please get back to me if you're interested!)
_________________________________

This Wednesday (March 19th, 2008) you are invited to attend two events related to uranium mining, nuclear energy, extraction industries, and social and environmental justice for Sharbot Lake - a protest and a movie/talk at University of Toronto.

Students Against Climate Change is hosting these events because nuclear energy is NOT the way to go towards a sustainable future

Uranium mining is a wasteful destructive process that destroys the land and those who live on it, and nuclear power releases tritium - a radioactive substance - into our water supply and creates waste that cannot be properly disposed of for tens of thousands of years and is used in both nuclear and conventional weapons.

Native land claim struggles against mining, in Ontario and around the world, are consistent with the fight for climate justice and a sustainable future for all people.

1. Peaceful protest of Queen's Park's "Mining Lobby Day." Yes, QP has a day devoted to attracting the mining coroporations to plunder the natural resources of Ontario, at the expense of the natural environment, overriding native land claims, and creation of toxic mine tailings.

12 noon at QP. Meet at 11:30 in front of the Munk Centre, north side of Harbord, between St. George and University (the Munk Centre is funded by Peter Munk of Barrick Gold - see http://protestbarrick.net/).

Caption: solar power, the obvious alternative to nuclear. The fact that the entire world is not powered by solar and wind reveals that there must be something terribly wrong with human beings (or at least the sort who are actively destroying the world). Are we, as Freud said, in the grip of a Thanatos, a death-urge? Or as E. O. Wilson asks "is humanity suicidal?"

_____________________

2. Movie and lecture same day (Wed. March 19th), 7 p.m. at McLennan Physical Labs (MP room 118), 60 St. George St. U of T. Movie is either "Uranium" (NFB) (http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=18301)and informal talk with Marylin Crawford of the Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium (see http://www.ccamu.ca/). Co-hosted by Melodie Carew of "Uranium Is Not Worth It."

If you are interested in Sharbot Lake or social or environmental justice in Ontario, this is a good event to attend. Contact Paul York for info:

Background:

If you use electricity, drink water and live in Ontario, you are already involved in uranium mining indirectly: the Ontario government is supporting mining, supposedly for our energy needs, even though Ontario has enough potential wind power to supply 100% of our needs.

Nuclear energy leaves toxic waste which lasts 25,000 years and pollutes our drinking water with a radioactive substance, tritium. Ontario uranium also ends up in weapons systems, both conventional and nuclear. Uranium and other types of mining also destroy boreal forests and local ecosystems and they are opposed by several First Nations groups.

Issues on the table for both protest and film / talk include:

* Reforming the draconian Mining Act (http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/Ontario/Ontario_Law__Regs);

* Solidarity with First Nations near Sharbot Lake (Shabot and Alquonquins) and support for Chief Bob Lovelace (see http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=928059);

* Why nuclear energy and uranium is not needed in Ontario (see http://renewableisdoable.com/);

* Necessary reforms to Canada's laws on mining in solidarity with peoples in developing nations who are victims of Barrick Gold and other Canadian mining corporations (see http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/Frontenac/AAFN_rls_080219)

* The fact that we should not even have a "mining lobby" day in Ontario!

Join Students Against Climate Change (http://studentsagainstclimatechange.blogspot.com/) and other supportive groups (Forest Ethics, Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Student Christian Movement) for a press conference on the steps of QP; with a representative from CCAMU (one of the groups opposing the Sharbot Lake urnanium mine plans).

To get involved or for more information contact Paul York at pyork_2002@hotmail.com for info.

________________________

3. Initial planning meeting for Citizen's Inquiry into Uranium Mining (set for April 26), Friday March 21, lounge, 5th floor of OISE

Our group is working with CCAMU to help coordinate the Toronto Inquiry. Other inquires are set for other Ontario cities. See http://www.uraniumcitizensinquiry.com/

Among the topics to be addressed:

* Ontario's complicity with uranium mining
* Native land claims and mining in Ontario
* Nuclear energy versus renewable energy and conservation
_______________________

4. Planning meeting to organize protest against Barrick Gold and Goldcorp AGMS in May, and to discuss strategies and tactics for law reform around mining in Canada - date TBA.

* Barrick Gold AGM - May 6th
* Goldcorp AGM - May 20th

The tactic is simple: stage a peaceful protest outside while people go inside to raise objections, and invite the media. See this report on the last Barrick AGM (http://protestbarrick.net/article.php?id=82) and this report on our disruption of their meeting with investors over the issue of "corporate social responsibility" (http://protestbarrick.net/article.php?id=198).

There is a lot on this site and on the Mining Watch site (http://www.miningwatch.ca/) and Rights Actions site (http://www.rightsaction.org/) and The Dominion (http://www.dominionpaper.ca/search/node/mining).

The basic thing to know, beyond the fact that industrial mining is evil and violates human rights, is that the Canadian government is complicit with this and has not adequately implemented law reform to require that Canadian companies not violate human rights and desecrate the environment.

A national 'Roundtable' on this issue was the Halifax Initative. The reforms suggested there were never put in place: http://www.halifaxinitiative.org/index.php/CNCA_Roundtables

As a consequence, Barrick's lawyers held the meeting on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to ward off allegations that "Canada's reputation abroad" (the name of the meeting) is being destroyed by mining.

Of course Harper has already ensured that Canada's reputation is tarnished by its withdrawal from Kyoto and unqualified support for mining operations abroad.

What we need now are mandatory regulations -- principally to ensure the right of international parties to hold Canadian corporations accountable for crimes against humanity and environmental destruction.

If lobbying for law reform (which is doable) and supporting or participating in a fun protest against Barrick and Goldcorp interests you, please contact Paul York at

Free Bob Lovelace!

2008-03-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from Kingston Whig Standard

Why Bob Lovelace is in jail; A message is being sent to mining companies: Ontario is open for business

I know Bob Lovelace as a soft-spoken and self-reliant neighbour, devoted father and dedicated Queen's University teacher admired by his students and colleagues. He's the kind of guy who constructs a log house in the woods north of Kingston with his own skill and sweat; builds a box planter at the local swimming spot and keeps it stocked with marigolds and petunias; and provides venison for a potluck supper. He's as innately confrontational as a panda bear.

Yet much of the public knows Bob Lovelace as a nominally militant aboriginal prisoner now serving a six-month jail sentence and facing cumulative personal fines of nearly $400,000 for contempt of court. His transgression? Refusing to obey a judicial order not to continue his peaceful blockade at a proposed uranium mine site on lands Algonquin First Nations have never ceded title to under any prior treaty or land claim settlement.

Yet, as even the mine promoter's lawyer has admitted in court hearings, there is a vanishingly small chance a uranium mine will ever get built at the headwaters of the Mississippi River northwest of Sharbot Lake. Compared to other deposits in Saskatchewan, Australia, South Africa and Asia, the ore is laughably low-grade, and the cost to mine fatally high.

So how did it come to this?

In effect, Bob is in jail because he has quietly, but implacably, declined to concede that a provincial court has the ultimate authority to decide what happens on lands his Algonquin forebears have used without ecological abuse for thousands of years.

A key point is that these are not private lands in dispute. The collision has occurred because. for more than a century. Ontario governments have blithely assumed that all provincial lands are solely entrusted to it, and are thus subject to mining laws that allow any prospector or com-pany, from anywhere, to stake out land and claim any mineral wealth below. Without asking anyone else's permission.

In this case, the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources handed out the permits to a fledgling outfit called Frontenac Ventures, and the com-pany maintains that it can drill for uranium with the law on its side. Without First Nation approval.

On this, the company, a provincial court and the cabinet of Dalton McGuinty tacitly agree. That's why my neighbour is in prison as a kind of conscientious objector, his impoverished First Nation is facing additional cumulative fines of nearly $400,000, and Frontenac Ventures has the sanction to drill for uranium deposits that will never prove profitable.

This makes no sense at all - unless the real issue here is far larger and more deceptive than a puny, potentially speculative mine play that may capitalize on gullible or greedy investors fixated on the spiking world price of uranium, and the venerable flim-flam tactic of selling them sizzle instead of steak.

My bet is that the Ontario government knows - just as well as Canada's major uranium com-panies know - that eastern Ontario is essentially bereft of profitable deposits. Compared to the mammoth, rich, easy-to mine uranium reserves in northern Saskatchewan, which are known as "elephants" in industry parlance, those from Sharbot Lake to Bancroft to Elliot Lake are like scattered mice.

Perversely, because these Ontario deposits would yield far few ounces of uranium per tonne of ore mined, the volume of radioactively contaminated waste rock and other lethal pollutants would be far greater. So the public pollution risk would be high, and the financial reward small to non-existent for a private company.

The Ontario government is not blind to these facts. Or to the past legacy of uranium mining at Elliot Lake, which left more than 100 million tonnes of dangerous waste tailings for posterity, and desecrated the downstream Serpent River watershed. So what is really going on?

Caption: Chief Paula Sherma, Ardoch Algonquin at protest to free Bob Lovelace

I suspect that the Ontario government is determined to assure the bigger, richer, more experienced mining interests, and international investors, that Ontario is a place where they can come and make serious money by mining not uranium but diamonds, gold, platinum, nickel, copper and zinc - with minimal hindrance. And because most of that potential mineral wealth is in northern Ontario, where most of the population is aboriginal, the right signals need to be sent. To mining companies, the Dalton McGuinty message is: Ontario is wide open for business. To First Nations it is: get on board, or out of the way - or go to jail.

As evidence of this, consider that the lawyer for Frontenac Ventures also represents a different mining company that wants to develop a platinum prospect near Big Trout Lake in northwest Ontario, despite determined First Nation opposition. There, aboriginal leaders are also facing, like Bob Lovelace, potential imprisonment and crippling fines. The lawyer representing Bob Lovelace also acts for the Big Trout community. So the confrontation is identical, except the mineral at the heart of the showdown is different.

There are hints that the platinum mine promoter, like Frontenac Ventures, might be willing to withdraw from that mine play if the Ontario government effectively pays it to go away. If this occurs, then it will be Ontario taxpayers who end up being mined for millions. not uranium or platinum deposits.

This would be bad for everyone except the victorious speculators, and the lawyers collecting Bay Street fees for their artful advice. It would prompt other speculators to try the same trick. And it would leave Bob Lovelace with a contempt of court conviction, facing a lifetime sentence of paying court-imposed fines, and his family wrenched by trauma. (To its great credit, Queen's University has pledged to restore his teaching post when he is released.)

In the end, I believe Bob Lovelace will be vindicated because, largely forgotten in this whole sinister drama, is the likelihood that he has the highest law of the land on his side. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, after a century of plaintive petitions from aboriginal leaders from coast to coast to coast, that they collectively hold certain fundamental rights to land and resources, to First Nation cultural preservation, and to be consulted before those may be put at risk.

Uranium ore poses just such a risk. In spades. Once unearthed, it constantly emits invisible but deadly radioactive particles that respect nothing. These can bio-accumulate indiscriminately in countless plants and animals, effectively gaining lethality over time because nothing in nature can destroy them. Many of these radioactive particles mimic beneficial body chemicals like calcium or iodine, are especially perilous to children and women of child-bearing age, and can impair the human gene pool.

And finally, because the only two uses of uranium are for nuclear reactors that covert it into other forms of even more lethal, long-lived radioactive wastes, or for nuclear weapons, a strong case can be made that all uranium, everywhere, is too dangerous to be mined by anyone. Period. And that it is any sensible citizen's civic duty to prevent such future harm.

If it goes that far, I suspect that some day the Supreme Court of Canada will rule that the rights of the Algonquins were violated when the Ontario government issued uranium exploration permits on unceded lands without authentic consultation and consent.

Meanwhile, it is tragic that while my thoughtful neighbour remains in a Lindsay jail an eternity away from his kids, none of these biological, human health and legal facts seem to be troubling the mind of our premier or his minister of aboriginal affairs. Judging by their deafening silence, for them Bob Lovelace apparently does not exist.

- Paul McKay is a former Whig-Standard reporter and the author of a biography of business magnate Stephen Roman and the Elliot Lake uranium industry.
Article ID# 928059

A more well-known political prisoner of another corrupt state; the causes of their imprisonment is the same: to put money and power ahead of people and the environment

Background ...

Robert Lovelace becomes a political prisoner

On 15 February 2008, former chief Robert Lovelace began serving 6 months in jail for refusing to comply with a court injunction, while following Algonquin law to protect Creation. The charge stems from his participation in the Ardoch Alliance protest against uranium exploration on unceded Algonquin land near Sharbot Lake, Ontario.

The judge in the case handed down this harsh sentence along with heavy fines, saying "compliance with the orders of this court are not optional". The underlying issue, however, is that the government of Ontario did not consult with the First Nation community before issuing exploration licenses in Algonquin territory.

The lawyer for the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, Chris Reid, intends to appeal the sentence but at this date, Robert is behind bars at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario.

Support

Protest Rally, Saturday 23 February, 2008

Over 400 people attended the rally and march in Napanee (location of the Quinte Detention Centre, Bob's original site of incarceration). There were speeches and letters of support and inspiration by various First Nations leaders, NGOs, lawyers and political representatives followed by a short march to the Detention Centre itself.

Direct action

Call Premier McGuinty every day and ask him:

Have you freed Bob Lovelace?
Have you removed unceded Algonquin land from uranium exploration and mining?
Have meaningful negotiations with the Algonquin First Nations started?
Have you begun a review of Ontario's Mining Act?

" No? I'll call back tomorrow to ask you again...."
Ottawa constituency office: 613-736-9573

Queen's Park: 416- 325-1941

or email your questions to:
dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

Contacting Bob

Letters of support for Robert Lovelace can be mailed to:

Central East Correctional Centre
541 Hwy 36
Lindsay, Ontario
K9V 4S6

Providing financial support

Many people have asked how they can help Robert and his family in this difficult and stressful situation.

Robert has been fined $25,000, plus $2,000 per day that he is not in compliance with the order. Co-chief Paula Sherman has been fined $15,000. The Ardoch Algonquin First Nation community has been fined $10,000. You can make donations to be held in trust by sending a cheque made out to

"C. Reid, in trust for the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation"

The cheque should be mailed to:

Christopher M. Reid
Barrister & Solicitor
154 Monarch Park Ave.
Toronto, ON M4J 4R6
Tel: (416)446-9928
Fax: (416)466-1852

Getting off the grid!

2008-03-01T11:07:00.000-08:00

This family, in Toronto, shows that it can be done. They've lived off-the-grid house for 10 years. While the initial building cost was 12 per cent more than normal, the savings on utilities since then have paid for the initial costs, and now whatever they save from hereon represent additional savings. Additionally, they have almost no environmental impact. http://www.thestar.com/article/308450

Principles of U.S. campus climate change movement

2008-03-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

Great video on climate change science by American student:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpu7IZcdzXE

Students Against Climate Change endorses the following principles from http://climatechallenge.org/ Although written by and for Americans, every princple is entirely applicable to Canada. We call on our leaders to follow these guiding principles as they make decisions that will determine our future: A just climate policy must be scientifically based – The US must enact mandatory caps on greenhouse gas pollution that ensures the peak and decline of global carbon emissions before 2015 towards a minimum of 80% emissions reductions below 1990 levels before mid-century in order to avoid a climate catastrophe. An ambitious plan to revolutionize our energy, agriculture and transportation systems with measurable targets is essential. We must immediately shift all federal funding and subsidies away from dirty energy towards research and implementation of clean technologies. A just climate and energy policy cannot rely on any forms of dirty energy such as so-called “clean coal” or nuclear power. We must recognize the disproportionate impact of global warming and dirty energy on low-income, people of color and indigenous communities and ensure a just transition that improves and supports their physical, social and economic health.

If the $46 billion that Ontario plans to spend on nuclear energy were spent on wind turbines and conservation efforts, this province could get rid of coal power, nuclear power, a lot of air pollution (and health problems and costs associated with it), as well as the damaging psychological effects caused by endless economic growth through unsustainable consumption of unecessary goods. All the solutions exist. Why are they being adopted? We clearly need more grassroots organizing, especially on campuses. We must prioritize major reductions in total energy use. Cost-effective energy conservation and efficiency measures can cut energy demand by more than half. All of our remaining energy needs, including transportation, can be met by zero-emission renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. No combination of "alternative" fuels (from corn, coal or otherwise) can replace our oil addiction. Highly efficient, zero-emission electric cars and plug-in hybrids can be fueled up with wind-powered electricity more cheaply and conveniently than we can fill up with oil, biofuels or hydrogen. The development of a just climate and energy policy must include all stakeholders, not just business, government, and large environmental groups. Because every American, no matter their age or economic status, will be affected by climate change, it is crucial that a broad and diverse group, including communities that are disproportionately impacted by the energy industry, have seats at the table as this policy is crafted. As the generation that will inherit the impact of the decisions we make today, young people must be given a particularly important seat at the table. A sustainable future must inlcude frogs and amphibians. We are morally culpable if we continue to allow them to die. Invader species and habitat loss are the leading causes.

Reasons to hope

2008-03-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

The Hour Before the Dawn
by David W. Orr

Hope, says author David W. Orr, is not the same as wishful thinking. Hope recognizes hard realities, like the difficulty of inventing a new energy future, but chooses to act anyway. Here are 10 reasons to be hopeful

Recently I participated in a conference to assess the “state of the world.” I was sixth on a list of speakers, each of whom presented well-documented and plausible bad news ranging from global famine to abrupt climate change to worldwide terrorism or all of the above.

Gloom settled on the assembled like a dark cloud. I had intended to offer more of the same, but decided enough was enough. On the spur of the moment I began to list the legitimate reasons we have for optimism. I offer 10.

One. For 30 years or longer we environmentalists have been right on the big issues. Not always, but mostly. Rachel Carson was right about the effects of DDT and similar chemicals in 1962. Paul and Anne Ehrlich were right in 1968 about the possibilities for famine and ecological collapse; presently 1 billion people are malnourished, and whole ecologies have collapsed in Haiti, Ethiopia, China, and elsewhere.

The authors of the much maligned Limits to Growth were mostly right in 1972; there are limits to what we can do, beginning with overloading the ability of the Earth to absorb our wastes. E.F. Schumacher was right about the need for “appropriately scaled” technology. Amory Lovins was right in 1976 about the potential for greater energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, and we have come part way down that road against the determined opposition of the fossil-fuel industries and electric utilities.

In different ways, Randall Arendt, Jane Jacobs, Paul Hawken, Vaclav Havel, Jim Hightower, Wes Jackson, Bill McDonough, Ian McHarg, Vandana Shiva, John and Nancy Todd, Paul Wellstone, E.O. Wilson, and many, many others are right about better possibilities. It is not possible to organize the public business for long around hatred, fear, and resentment. There is some steady gravitational pull in the universe toward higher things.

Two. Public opinion polls show determined majorities over three decades favor clean air, clean water, open spaces, preservation of species, climate stability, less traffic congestion, and solar energy. There is no mandate to repeal the gains of the 20th century, although, as extremists of all kinds know, it is always possible to confuse, muddy the water and distort reality—but only for so long.

Three. There is the growing power of world opinion. The United States is now regarded by many around the world as a rogue nation engaging in state terrorism, but there are forces that will counter our arrogance and overreach. Ecological enlightenment, for one, has now grown to a global force multiplied by the Internet. How else but the Internet to explain the millions who protested the onset of war in Iraq? No matter the issue, there is a surge in public opinion in favor of a decent, peaceful, and sustainable world. I do not think this tidal wave can be stopped by any nation or any amount of military power.

Four. An economy organized around the convenience of the top 5 percent cannot be maintained for long. Tax cuts for the hugely wealthy, rising deficits, and militarization of the economy is a recipe for disaster. We do not have to rob the world and steal from our children to live well. There are better ideas for a truly prosperous economy waiting in the wings. By a similar logic, the organization of the global economy by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization is too closed, corrupt, destructive, and shortsighted to persevere. What we don't know is how it will end, whether in uprisings, collapse, reform or by some combination of these.

Five. The facts are on our side. The extremists now in power believe they can, rather like Stalin, match science to their personal predilections. It did not work for Stalin, and it will work no better for them. It is a fact that we are changing the climate and that this may lead to disaster. It is a fact that we are driving thousands of species to extinction, unraveling God's creation. It is a fact that we are losing soil faster than it can be regenerated and thus jeopardizing food security. It is a fact that toxic pollution is now global and undermines both human and ecological health. It is a fact that all oceans and fisheries are in peril and that forests roughly the size of Scotland disappear each year. And the fact is that a third of humankind live just at or below the point of decency. These facts are all well-known and well-documented, as are the technologies and policies that lead in better directions.

Six. Our technology is better than theirs. They have chosen to run the flag up the pole of nuclear energy, more fossil-fuel power plants, oil wells, coal mines, tax breaks for Humvees, to say nothing of smart bombs and Star Wars technology. They cannot do such things for long without bringing about economic ruin, endless wars, more terror, political turmoil, isolation, and finally, ecological collapse.

Meantime, there is a revolution underway built around the kinds of technology that power space-shuttles, which are being applied to offices, factories, houses, and cars. It is a revolution that will take us toward a distributed energy system based on efficiency and progress in photovoltaics, fuel cells, wind power, and micro turbines. It can be slowed by shortsightedness driven by greed, but it cannot be stopped.

Seven. The course we are now on runs counter to our history and to our best traditions. At our best we are a people defined by documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address. We do not have to be a rogue nation given to preemptive wars and assassinations. The fact that the historical record diverges so sharply in recent decades from our higher values says much about the role of secrecy in our national life, the profitability of what President Eisenhower deemed a “military-industrial complex,” and the cynical manipulation of patriotism.

Eight. The world is more complicated than the neocons and the new imperialists would have it. Women are mobilizing. The Internet is connecting a global citizenry. Information is more available to those wishing to find it. There are more wild cards than ever before, which is to say the world cannot be controlled from the center, and no amount of military power can change that fact. Imperialism is a fool's errand that is no longer possible in what Jonathan Schell has called “the unconquerable world.”

Nine. There is a global spiritual revolution underway the likes of which we've not seen before. People across the major faith traditions are organizing, talking, singing, chanting, and praying. There is power being unleashed and, despite differences, there is common ground around an agenda of peace, non-violence, fairness, protection of communities, restoration of degraded places, ecological sustainability, an extended view of human rights as well as the rights of species and nature, and the rights of our children and those yet to live on Earth.

Said differently, it is not possible for long to organize our affairs around greed, illusion, and ill will. We are called to higher things. And in silence one can hear the birth pains of a new order of things—a new enlightenment.

Ten. We have reason to think that God is on our side. Why? God, who apparently has a sense of humor, reportedly recalled for a time Rush Limbaugh's hearing, a seldom-used faculty. And God will take back all unused faculties, among them humor, wisdom, creativity, foresight, and charity. These faculties are the ones we most need to take us to a different world—not utopia, but a far better world than that now in prospect. The race has never been just to the swift, nor the battle to the merely strong (Ecclesiastes, 9:11). The better angels of our nature will prevail, and that is solid ground for hope.

David W. Orr is professor of environmental science and politics at Oberlin College and author of The Last Refuge, copyright © 2004 by the author. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C. www.islandpress.org

The LOWGROWTH economy

2008-03-01T07:43:00.000-08:00

York university economist Peter Victor, in "Managing without growth" (in Ecological Economics, 61 (2007), p. 499) notes three reasons why continued and unlimited economic growth - which our governments currently support - is not possible or advisable, and why we should move towards a "low growth" model:

"1) global economic growth is not an option because of environmental and resource constraints, so developed countries should leave room for those that benefit the most from growth; 2) beyond a point that has been passed in developed countries, growth does not bring happiness; and 3) in developed countries growth is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for achieving such objectives as full employment, elimination of poverty and environmental protection."

As income goes up, happiness does not. There are several possible reasons for this, as identified by environmental psychologists. The main point is that we don't need to increase economic growth to benefit ourselves. In fact, increased economic, spurred by greater rates of consumption, are detrimental for physical and mental health.

The LOWGROWTH model utilizies a basic modelling system used by economists to explore whether or not the Canadian economy can acheive some major social and environmental goals, for the benefit of the populace, without ever increasing economic growth. Jobs are among the indicators Victor looks at, and determines that full employment, a near elimination of poverty, and a shorter work week can be achieved, and we can stop wrecking the natural world at the same time.

A significant part of the equation is the high economic cost of unsustainable practices on health care and environmental clean-up. If these costs are eliminated through lowgrowth management (i.e. conservation and a reduction in production and consumption) he notes that "much can be accomplished in developed countries without relying on economic growth."

The GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) is a better indicator than the GDP of health and well-being. The GPI will go up as the GDP goes down, if we implement a LOWGROWTH or similar model.

Furthermore, "the paper set out the kind of policy directions that would have to be adopted to steer the Canadian economy towards lower growth while, at the same time, achieving desirable employment, anti-poverty and environmental objectives." All the solutions exist, so why isn't the public demanding a positive change? My own answer (which Al Gore also notes in his book The Assault on Reason) is that the mass media is complicit in "manufacturing consent" (Chomksy' phrase) to unjust systems, including the system of mass consumption and unlimited economic growth.

Victor's goal is to knock the paradigm of economic growth off its pedestal. The works of Herman Daly and E.F. Schumacher, thirty years ago, present much of the same vision. Another thing we should ask (and which Larry Schmidt asks in _The End of Ethics in the Age of Technology_(2008)) is why nothing has been done since Daly first spelled all this out decades ago?

Is our society completely insane and beyond redemption, as Derrick Jensen concludes, or can we find the moral courage and common sense to dismantle this juggernaut and build a just, sustainable world? A good example is the rebuilding of Germany after the war: that culture went from an orgy of homocidal and suicidal madness to a society of conservation and peace in a short time. Is bringing the Earth to the brink of total destruction really necessary to learn that an economy of unlimited financial growth (for the benefit of a minority) is suicidal madness?

Thoughts on the Great Warming Swindle

2008-02-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

Impressions after watching the Great Warming Swindle shown an the Brunswick
Theatre, followed by a rebuttal from Dr. Danny Harvey, Geography Dept. U of
T., by Paul York

After watching this film I have to admit to feeling demoralized. This is not
because I doubt the cause of fighting global warming or the scientific
consensus it is based on (and which is essentially irrefutable by any sane,
rational person), but because we (environmentalists, social justice
advocates, people of good conscience, and rational decent people) seem to be
up against such formidable and entrenched interests, which have now
developed powerful ideological defenses, as this film illustrates.

The issue is very similar to the entrenched ideology of those who exploit animals
systematically, based on an anthropocentric bias that can be explained as
"might equals right." The problem with such ideology is that it has a
preconceived end - justification of a position of power - which excludes the
possibility of open-minded discussion.

I am demoralized when I realize that reason and facts and empirical evidence will not move the ideologues and that they will continue to be committed to a culture of death. The risk of the loss of 50 per cent of the animal species on Earth due to climate change and factory farms have the same ideological underpinning of greed and criminal insanity.

Moulin in Greenland ice mass: 50 per cent of the Arctic ice has melted. Jim Hansen says we should start measuring sea rise in feet, not inches. 100 million people will be displaced (and many will die as a result of this displacement) as sea levels rise. South Pacific islanders have already been forced to move.

The latest incarnation of that ideological defense of an unsustainable status quo is the Bush Administration's promise of a technological quick-fix: "In recent years, the United States has been investing in new energy technologies that have the potential to overcome the challenge of climate change and transform our world. This has been the focus of our efforts here at home and the goal of our international diplomacy, where we have made a special effort to forge new partnerships with developing countries." - Condoleeza Rice. Source:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/09/92893.htm

In other words, they have gone from denial to the so-called "integrated approach," which places great emphasis on the promise of technology, and which has the practical effect of de-emphasizing more environmentally friendly solutions such as conservation, energy-efficiency and renewables. Now others are promoting the "integrated approach," which is problematic for the reasons stated above.

In the face of great ideological, structural and military opposition to the obvious and overwhelming need for our species to enter into an "ecological age," it is easy to lose hope. In those moments, we can turn to the example of others who have gone through great trials of faith in the face of evil: Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind, but there are many others. Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria, murdered by a
military junta in the employ of Shell, is a good example: he stood up for social and environmental justice to the end: "I'll tell you this, I may be dead but my ideas will not die." - Ken Saro-Wiwa, Port Harcourt Prison, November 1995.

Hope is a precious thing, but also very powerful. Hope, justice, love, beauty and truth -- all of these are not possible unless we find it in ourselves to include every being (human and non-human) within our scope of concern.

In the Swindle film, environmentalists were attacked, industrial development was promoted as a necessary good, and the cause of fighting global warming was undermined by the rhetoric of self-interest -- all by older white men (with the exception of the African economist) trying to protect their privelage and the ideology that supports it. Patrick Moore is a good example of this extreme self-interest and disengenuous rhetoric. Greenpeace has repeatedly disavowed him, but he keeps re-surfacing, using their name, paid by the oil companies to travel around and spread anti-environmentalist invective. Bjorn Lomborg is the latest so-called environmentalist who uses that title to attack environmentalism.

Tim Ball was also in the film, saying that he is not paid by oil interests, but that was an outright lie (see http://www.DeSmogBlog.com for disclosure on his financial complicity with Exxon Mobil. We knew that what he said was not credible, but it still hurts me to see someone sell anyone soul in that way, to make a deal with the devil for a few pieces of gold, to use the New Testament illustration. "Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Hannah Arendt's famous thesis is that great evil is often the result of ordinary people trying to improve their careers and not thinking of how their actions negatively affect others. The comparison between the historical Holocaust and current climate crisis, famously made by George Monbiot, is entirely appropriate in my view.

George Patterson in "Eternal Treblinka" makes the case that the Holocaust would not have been possible without our historical exploitation of animals - the industrial methods used to slaughter animals was harnessed to slaughter human beings, and the separation of the man from nature has led to man's exploitation and
enslavement of women and other men. Human slavery is today as big a problem
as it was 300 years ago. Patterson's point is that animal slavery makes human slavery possible because it creates that separation in the mind between "us" and "them" - which allows for dehumanization.

The use of Africa in the Swindle fim is pariculary egregious. The claim is made that environmentalists are preventing development from occuring there, which is hurting Africans' chances of becoming industrialzed. The reality is that 1) global warming is already resulting in many deaths there due to drought and an increases in malaria which is traceable to temperature increases, and 2) African poverty is caused in large part by colonial exploitation, exacerbated by neo-colonial globalization in the form resource extraction by mining and oil multinationals (e.g. Shell in Nigeria, copper mines in the Congo, gold and diamond mining in South Africa, and inequity and exploitation such as that described in the documentary "Darwin's
Nightmare"), and 3) medical doctors and eco-psychologists are showing that industrialization causes (and is also the result of) physical and mental illnesses.

African activists protest global warming on the Dec. 8th day of Action, 2007

To blame the plight of Africans on environmentalists and solar power, as is done in the film, is an outrageous and hideous distortion of the truth. What Africa needs is not industrial development, following in our footsteps, but free AIDs drugs, funding for local sustainable development projects run by women (not imposed by Christian NGOs and extraction industries), medicine and hospitals (such as provided by Doctors Without Borders), a withdrawal of extraction industries and reparation for the
damage they've caused, and a ban on the import of weapons -- among other things.

Africa also needs to be free from the drought imposed on them by industrial CO2 produced here: Africans produce on average about 0.3 tonnes per annum and Canadians about 20 tonnes, yet they are dying as a result of the way we live! This global inequity and the North's role in contributing to African poverty was conveniently ignored in the film.

Also egregious was the idea that industrialization is somehow a great good: the field of eco-psychology questions that assumption. It says that we are natural beings, evolved within a natural setting, who damage ourselves by creating artifical environments. "What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another." - Gandhi.

My favourite example is road rage: car companies promote car sales with images of freedom and happiness, people purchase SUVs at great expense to themselves and the planet, and find themselves stuck in rush hour everyday, angry, isolated from the wider community and the natural world. It is racist to assume that our culture and way of life is best. I'm glad that Prof. Harvey noted that happiness cannot be bought and sold in the marketplace. I wish we had had time after the film to discuss such things, but it went on for too long; it was difficult to watch.

Prof. Harvey provided a good scientific rebuttal of the film's erroneous scientific claims, but the "Swindle" film deserves a thorough analysis which he did not have time to deliver. It gives a good insight into what is wrong with the world and our society. Pretty much all of its claims of hype and propaganda are accurate when applied to itself; in other words, there is a good case to be made that it is an example of psychological projection.

Jung's idea of the Shadow and the theory of "hostility displacement" is helfpul to describe this projection. One of the most helpful articles towards an understanding of the claim of censorship of scientists as a manifestation of psychological
projection is provided by Monbiot:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/10/the-real-climate-censorship/
And here is Monbiot's take on the Great Warming Swindle.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/13/channel-4s-problem-with-science/

The fate of animals under the heel of man - an eternal Treblinka

2008-02-24T21:28:00.002-08:00

In all the of the following photos humans and non-humans are herded, enslaved and subjugated, through the use of force by men with guns or prods. The difference between the humans and non-humans is a conceptual category taught from an early age; in reality, human beings are but one species in the Animal Kingdom. We differ from the other animals insofar as we believe ourselves superior to them (and to one another), our capacity for willful cruelty and wanton destructiveness, and our ability to manipulate the environment in such a way as to systematically destroy life. We also have the capacity for good and enlightened behaviour, if we so choose.

Goats in a transport truck gasping for air and longing for freedom

Cattle car to Treblinka - the use of factory farm methods

A truckload of "comfort women" being shipped to the drontline for the japanese soldiers.

Modern cattle car (an eighteen wheeler) on the way to the slaughterhouse

Herding Palestinians through the use of force

Factory farm scene

"...[he] spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. 'What do they know - all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.'"

- Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, in The Letter Writer

"But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy." -Plutarch

Put a small child in a playpen with an apple and a bunny. If s/he eats the apple and plays with the bunny, s/he's normal;but if s/he eats the bunny and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. Somewhere along the line we must have been TAUGHT to do the wrong thing. --Maynard

"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love" -Pythagorus

Most animal experiments have no social or medical benefit; they are conducted as part of a vast industry comprised of scientists, breeders, pharmaceutical companies, corporations, military contractors, and complicit government bodies, for the sake of profit and careers.

"All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?" - Buddha

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet" - Albert Einstein

"He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man..." - Isaiah 66:3

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. - Alice Walker

In China dogs are systematically murdered

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. - Mark Twain

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men. - Emile Zola

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. - Leo Tolstoy

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. The more helpless the creature, the more that it is entitled to protection by man from the cruelty of man. - Mahatma Gandhi

Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul - Pythagoras

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest - Henry David Thoreau

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man - Charles Darwin

All cruelty springs from weakness. - Seneca

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that's the essence of inhumanity. - George Bernard Shaw

The lives of animals are woven into our very being -closer than our own breathing-and our souls will suffer when they are gone. - Gary Kowalski

Statement of Earth First!

2008-02-24T16:26:00.000-08:00

The very future of life on Earth is in danger. Human activities—from hunting to habitat destruction—have already driven countless species to extinction, and the process is only accelerating. The destruction of the Earth and its sustainable indigenous cultures has led to tragedy in every corner of the globe.

Meanwhile, scientists have confirmed what indigenous cultures have taught for thousands of years: all forms of life are vitally connected. Removing even a single strand from the web of life produces a widening ripple of catastrophe. On a more spiritual level, Earth First!ers under stand that we can never be the healthy humans that we were meant to be in a world without wilderness, clean air and the howling of wolves under the moon.

It is not enough to ask politicians and corporations to destroy less wilderness. We need to preserve it all, to recreate lost habitats and reintroduce extirpated predators. We need to stop and reverse the poisoning of our air, water and soil, as well as the modification of life's genetic code. It is not enough to oppose the construction of new dams and developments. It is time to free our shackled rivers and restore the land.

Earth First! formed in 1979, in response to an increasingly corporate, compromising and ineffective environmental community. It is not an organization, but a movement. There are no "members" of EF!, only Earth First!ers. We believe in using all of the tools in the toolbox, from grassroots and legal organizing to civil disobedience and monkeywrenching. When the law won't fix the problem, we put our bodies on the line to stop the destruction. Earth First!'s direct-action approach draws attention to the crises facing the natural world, and it saves lives.

Cutting down a corporate billboard

Guided by a philosophy of deep ecology, Earth First! does not accept a human-centered worldview of "nature for people's sake." Instead, we believe that life exists for its own sake, that industrial civilization and its philosophy are anti-Earth, anti-woman and anti-liberty. Our structure is non-hierarchical, and we reject highly paid "professional staff" and formal leadership.

To put it simply, the Earth must come first.

Monkeywrencher in action

___________________________________

Town in U.S. bans corporations and toxins. Yes!

(why can't we do that here ????)

Enacted to confront concerns about the proposed uranium mine in adjacent Pittsylvania County, the ordinance establishes strict liability and burden-of-proof standards for culpable corporations and government entities that permit and facilitate corporate bodily trespass. ...

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
675 Mower Road
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17202
www.celdf.org

MEDIA RELEASE
February 11, 2008

Virginia Town First in U.S. to Ban Chemical and Radioactive Bodily Trespass; Also Strips Corporations of “Rights”

Joins Growing List of Communities Recognizing
Rights of Nature

On February 7, 2008, the Town Council of Halifax, Virginia, voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance banning corporate chemical and radioactive bodily trespass. Enacted to confront concerns about the proposed uranium mine in adjacent Pittsylvania County, the ordinance establishes strict liability and burden-of-proof standards for culpable corporations and government entities that permit and facilitate corporate bodily trespass.

The ordinance also strips corporations of constitutional protections within the town. The Town of Halifax thus becomes the 10th municipality in the nation to refuse to recognize corporate constitutional “rights,” and to prohibit corporate rights from being used to override the rights of human and natural communities.

The ordinance adopted by the Halifax Town Council also recognizes the rights of natural communities and ecosystems to exist and flourish within the town and provides for the enforcement and defense of those rights, and prohibits corporations from interfering with the civil rights of residents, including residents’ right to self-government. The ordinance was drafted for the Halifax Town Council by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit law firm.

Zug Island, downriver of Detroit, Michigan - it has been likened to Mordor, in Lord of the Rings

Ben Price, Projects Director for the Legal Defense Fund commented that "The people of the Town of Halifax have determined that they do not consent to be irradiated, nor to be trespassed upon, by toxic substances that would be released by Virginia Uranium, Inc., or any other state-chartered corporation. The people have asserted their right and their duty to protect their families, environment, and future generations. In enacting this law, the community has gone on record as rejecting the legal theory behind Dillon's Rule, which erroneously asserts that there is no inherent right to local self-government.

The American Revolution was about nothing less than the fundamental right of the people to be the decision-makers on issues directly affecting the communities in which they live. They understood that a central government, at some distance removed from those affected, acts beyond its authority in empowering a few powerful men –privileged with chartered immunities and rights superior to the people in the community – to deny citizens’ rights, impose harm, and refuse local self-determination. The people of the Town of Halifax have acted in the best tradition of liberty and freedom, and confronted injustice in the form of a state-permitted corporate assault against the consent of the sovereign people."

Shireen Parsons, the Legal Defense Fund’s Virginia Organizer, commended the action of the Halifax Town Council, stating that, “The council members demonstrated courage and solidarity in their commitment to justice and their duty to govern in the interest of protecting and preserving the health, safety and wellbeing of the people from whom they derive their power. This is the beginning of something wonderful in Virginia.”

Toxic Trespass: a film about the hundreds of deadly chemicals put in our bodies by air pollution from vehicles and industry.

Halifax Town Council member Jack Dunavant said of the decision, “This is an historic vote. We, the people, intend to protect our health and environment from corporate assault. It’s time to invoke the Constitution and acknowledge the power of the people to protect our own destiny and end this era of corporate greed and pollution.”

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, located in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, has worked with communities resisting corporate assaults upon democratic self-governance since 1995. Among other programs, it has brought its unique Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools to communities in 26 states in which people seek to end destructive and rights-denying corporate acts routinely permitted by state and federal agencies. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 100 municipalities have enacted ordinances authored by the Legal Defense Fund.

The responsibility of intillectuals

2008-02-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

"Intillectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privelage minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of intillectuals then, are much deeper than [the responsibility of other peoples] given the unique privelages that intillectuals enoy . . .

"It is the responsibility of intillectuals to speak the truth and expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass without comment. Not so, however. Martin Heidegger writing, in a pro-Hitler declaration of 1933, that "truth is the revelation of that which makes a people certain, clear and strong in action in its action of knowledge" . . ." (Chomsky, 60).

Chomsky then goes on to expose the lies of the American government during the Vietnam era.

Source: Noam Chomksy, "The Responsibility of Intillectuals" in The Chomsky Reader, ed. James Peck. New York: Pantheon Book, 1987.

My commentary:

According to Heidegger, truth is that which serves the interests of the powerful. We find this distortion of the truth also prevalent in this culture in myriad forms, as noted by Jensen (next post). Clearly, our class and species' interests are protected by such distortions. But if, as moral persons, we recoil from this definition of truth - if instead we say that the truth involves morality - then is it not necessary to defend the truth from those that would so willfully distort it for their own ends? In other words, is it not necessary to become an activist for truth and goodness and to defend life against those that destroy it? Is it not necessary to move from the quiet complicity of inactivity to some sort of action, by using our intillectual skills to "expose the lies of governments [and other powerful entities, such as corporations], to analzye actions according to their causes and often hidden intentions"?

Chomksky says that he give "intillectual ammunition" to those who fight for social justice in the Middle East and elsewhere. An environmentalist has the same responsibility. During the 1930s intillectuals had the choice to go along with Hitler or renounce what he stood for; the same choices face us now with regard to issues such as natural resource extraction, foreign policy, energy policy, environmental policy, and consumerism -- all of which forces murder human beings and animals and the natural world that we are a part of, and are therefore fundamentally unjust. From a religious perspective, we are destroying God's Creation and making ourselves into gods - the worst sort of idolatry. Helping to dismantle this violence and insane civilization is the moral responsibility of every person who can think and act with reason.

Jensen's Endgame premises

2008-02-04T12:37:00.000-08:00

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources —gold, oil, and so on— can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living —industrial civilization— is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash —or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down— the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation).

Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence.

Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default.

Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world.

Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life. [Note: Freud called this Thanatos]

Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture —civilization— has been a culture of occupation.

Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim.

A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth —whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics —not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself— drives social decisions.

Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

If you dig to the heart of it —if there were any heart left— you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

Radical solutons from Derrick Jensen

2008-02-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

The problem ...

If we hold with the premise that civilization is built upon a massive degree of violence against the natural world and its weaker members (animals, the poor, etc), and the further premise that civilization is not likely to reform and will likely use up and destroy a good portion of the Earth before collapsing, where does this lead us (other than to despair)?

Derrick Jensen was recently in town and answer these kinds of questions. He is advocated a return to agrarian economies (called bioregionalism) and (controversially) destruction of insfrastructure which contribute to the destruction of life on Earth but which upon which our physical survival is not dependent (e.g. cell phone towers, dams - many more could be named).

Pretending that we are not facing the possibility of civilizational collapse due to climate change, natural resource depletion, war over scarce resources and peak oil seems to me to be wishful thinking, token reforms (such as the discussion over imposing carbon taxes) notwithstanding. How can one reform a civilization predicated on violence? I speak with a lot of people who believe it will all somehow resolve itself - that "they" (who is "they") will solve things. I would prefer not to rely on the benevolent "they" to the same degree. It is easier to pretend that some technological fix is in the works than to admit the possibility that it is not. Faith in technology to deliver us from evil flies in the face of historical evidence (nuclear weapons, coal factories, for example).

Furthermore, a great many so-called environmentalists believe that minor reforms are sufficient; I am often told that it "takes time" to effect reforms. In fact it doesn't, if we recall that within nine months the U.S. industrial economy had gone from a peace to a war economy after the bombing of Pearl Harbour (a point made by George Monbiot in _Heat_. See http://www.monbiot.com/). The climate scientists tell us that we do not have time to spare: the next five years are critical in determining the fate of innumerable species and billions of lives, yet climate talks are stalled and governments and corporations (and institutions such as U of T) either resort to denial or "greenwash" (disingenuous claims to be sustainable).

For the serious environmentalist the war against the natural world has reached such epic proportions that any reform which is implemented could be likened to a temporary reprieve from genocide: the violence is so immense that even the best reforms cannot be thought of as real solutions, but only a lessening of the violence. The world "sustainability" is so widely misused it has become laughable. When coal and nuclear energy can claim to be "clean" without widespread denigration from the public, Orwell's vision of a docile population ruled by "thought police" does not seem far off.

The efforts of those who valiantly attempt to reform society are routinely met with indifference and resistance. Whether nor not wind turbines are built or garbage bags are banned, factory farming, deforestation, mass extinction, and anthropogenic climate change continues unabated. Already we know that the coral reefs around the world are effectively dead, for they cannot withstand even a slight rise in temperatures. We also know that tens of thousands continue to perish in Africa due to drought caused by industrialization. In Canada, the tar sands and Arctic exploration and development are effectively unchallenged except by small numbers of protestors who the mass media ignore.

Given this state of affairs, how then are we to respond? It is not satisfactory to me to be one of the indifferent and culpable members of this society, and nor is it satisfactory to lapse into debilitating despair over this. One must do something, but what?

The solution ...

Jensen's lecture is available on video (below). It provides insight into one possible response that none of us, for various reasons, have chosen to engage in: going to agrarian lifestyles (in cities, through the use of green rooves); there is a growing movement in this direction as food prices increase and people find themselves psychologically and physically sick from pesticides, toxic air and water and the anxiety caused by car culture.

Jensen also advocates destroying the infrastructure that makes this unsustainable civilization possible (in order to save those parts of the natural world that are left), or beginning to prepare for the collapse by beginning to grow food and cultivate skills necessary to weather the collapse sustainably for the greatest number of people and animals. I am not given to false optimism regarding the fate of this civilization and so find this outlook refreshing and necessary, but the more radical tactics raise questions for me. Is he right to advocate blowing up dams and cell phone towers (or other forms of infrastructure which perpetuate violence against the natural world)?

Returning to agrarian communities is not a far reach (it is a logical necessity), but the idea of blowing up dams gives one pause for thought, and invokes debate over violent tactics. I have not found one person who agrees that this is the right thing to do, except one anarchist friend who is frequently in jail for such acts already. Certainly none of my Christian friends feel it is right. But is it right to allow this society to continue along the path to collective suicide?

Jensen provides an honest and plausible argument against non-violence. Clearly he invokes violence in defense of the sacred. Ought it to be considered "just war" to do so? Is violence against property rightly considered violence? What of the morality of endangering those who are dependant on unsustainable civilization? A common argument is that innocent people would be injured, but what of the fact they that are already being hurt?

Jensen refers to what is often called "institutional violence" such as the carcinogens in our systems (and in the systems of loved ones) as form of violence that we ought to resist. Is it immoral not to resist in some way (violently or non-violently)? Is Gandhian non-violent resistance a preferable option? If so, what more ought we to do to promote non-violent resistance? If someone is against violent tactics, does not help effect reforms, and is also against or does not contribute to non-violent forms of resistance, what are they really standing for, if anything?

These are the questions I have after watching Jensen speak. I am fortunate to be in a position, as a privelage human being and student, to explore them at length. These ideas are not even questioned by the untermenschen of this world: they would destroy what oppresses them in an instant if they could.

Jensen -- if you watch through the second part of the video -- has a response to these questions, but while I agree with his basic premises (that the status quo is unacceptable and things must change) I think we have to test his conclusions as philosophers. Complicating the task of doing so is the reality of our own complicity in human culture and the possibility of anthropocentric bias, not to mention a naturally healthy fear of the legal repercussions of challenging an inherently violent system!

This line of questioning also invokes the classic debates between proponents of social ecology and deep ecology. Yet even if we reject a deep ecology perspective, the field of eco-psychology points to the psychic damage caused by dependence on industrial civilization, and climate change predictions point to the necessity of substantially changing the way we live.

"The Mission" (with Robert DeNiro) raises the queston of violence vs. non-violence.

An honest critique of technological solutions available, points in the direction of the necessity of behavioral reform. Given that this reform is not forthcoming on the scale that is necessary to avoid catastrophe, this leads us back to the question of whether Jensen's solutions are worthy of serious consideration. This kind of discussion is normally avoided for obvious reasons, but given the state of the world, I believe it is worth raising.

Already, I know of a few people moving out of the city to the country to grow organic vegetables. This will be increasingly the path of thousands and then later millions as high gas and electricity and food prices, and the "growing gap," create urban ghettoes.

In asking these questions I am suggesting that this issue is worthy of serious thought for all conscientious people, and that the answer (if one can be determined) is critical for determining how we ought to respond to the onslaught of environmental devastation that show no sign of abatement.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8649250863235826256&q=derrick+jensen&total=87&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

See this essay as well. Though not excellent, it nonetheless addresses Jensen's thought from a Christian perspective and raises some good points.

http://anarchism.jesusradicals.com/primitivism/endgamereview.pdf

The Environmental Philosophy

2008-01-19T09:37:00.000-08:00

Email: climate-change@hotmail.com * Tel: 647-342-7995

The environmental philosophy is described by distinguished biologist Edward O. Wilson:

"Environmentalism sees humanity as a biological species tightly dependent on the natural world. As formidable as our intellect may be and as fierce our spirit, those qualities are not enough to free us from the constraints of the natural environment in which our human ancestors evolved. We cannot draw confidence from successful solutions to the smaller problems of the past . . .

“Natural ecosystems, the wellsprings of a healthful environment, are being irreversibly degraded [despite the fact that] human physical and spiritual health depends on sustaining the planet in a relatively unaltered state.

"Earth is our home in the full, genetic sense, where humanity and its ancestors existed for all the millions of years of their evolution. Natural ecosystems, forests, coral reefs, marine blue waters maintain the world exactly as we would wish it to be maintained.

"When we debase the global environment and extinguish the variety of life, we are dismantling a support system that is too complex to understand, let alone replace, in the foreseeable future." (See E. O. Wilson. "Is Humanity Suicidal?" New York Times Magazine May 30 1993).

A true environmental philosophy is not opposed to human interests because human beings are part of the natural world. It is in the best interests of human beings to reproduce less, consume less, and live sustainably.

Those who advocate more consumption are de facto opposed to the true interests of humanity because more consumption of unecessary goods is already destroying the lives of millions and as the climate crisis worsens will kill billions.

Environmental activism is motivated by an ethical concern for current and future generations of human beings, as well as for non-human life forms. It entails the moral imperative to engage in or support political activism to lobby for better governmental policies, including carbon taxes; limiting emissions; ending wasteful resource extraction, phasing out fossil fuel use; mandatory energy efficiency retrofits; stimulating local food and energy production; ending unnecessary air travel; and phasing out car culture.

Students Against Climate Change opposes the following: greenwash (disingenuous claims to be green); climate change denial and skepticism (promoted by the fossil fuel industry); destruction of the natural world through extraction industries (e.g. mining, forestry), habitat destruction and the waste caused by over-consumption (e.g. e-waste); profligate fossil fuel consumption; foreign oil wars; the tar sands; factory farming; corporations (such as Imperial Oil) that contribute to these problems and governments (e.g. the Canadian federal government) that facilitate this destruction and waste.

We envision an ethical global community in which social justice and respect for the natural world (which includes both human and non-human life) is the norm. This can be achieved through the creation of local bioregional communities which abandon wasteful consumption patterns and energy use.

We must collectively strive towards the ideal (and necessity) of energy and food independence. This is not a choice; it is a necessity for human survival. These communities can be either urban or rural. In an urban setting they include green rooftops, geothermal units, and solar panels.

People who live in cities and suburbs will have to grow their own food and create their own energy; if they don't they will die. We should start doing this today, right now - using the cheap energy we now command to create the windmills and solar panels needed for power in the future.

We are instead using that energy for war, cars, buildings that waste energy, and the production and consumption of useless disposable goods. Humanity is commiting suicide. We need to wake up. Students have the opportunity to create change; right now they are a sleeping giant. Most students fly around the world, buy electronic goods and rack up credit card bills.

This club is a vehicle for students to opt out of this madness and become truly responsible, both personally and politically. Wilson says that future generations will never forgive us if we do not take this seriously enough to effect real change.

Climate injustice in Canada and the U.S.

2007-12-23T20:02:00.000-08:00

New Orleans

It is well known that the Bush Administration refused to pay for repairs to the New Orleans levies, resulting in mass death and homelessness when Hurrican Katrina struck and then bungled the disaster relief effort. Less well known is that the hurricane's intensity was a result of global warming (although Gore alluded to this in An Inconvenient Truth):

"Global warming accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a minor factor, according to a new analysis by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The global warming influence provides a new background level that increases the risk of future enhancements in hurricane activity. The study appears 27 June in Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union. global warming related disaster

Since the disaster, hundreds of billions of dollars have been slated for the war in Iraq but almost nothing for public housing in New Orleans. Tenants who tried to get into a City Council meeting to stop the demolition of existing housing were met with tasers.

"What’s at stake is the bulldozing of 5000 homes, or what politicians and reporters euphemistically call “units”, of public housing. These units, some moderately damaged, some unimpacted by Katrina, have been neglected by government for decades, but nonetheless were homes for some of New Orleans neediest and most disenfranchised people before the storm. Since the storm, rent prices are up by 50% and the homeless population is far larger than pre-storm levels.

"After nearly 2 and half years of all types of neglect and abuse toward survivors of a global warming related disaster this has become a hugely symbolic battle against the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans. And it has been the last straw for many of New Orleans’s most oppressed people." - from It's Getting Hot in Here.

Further commentary:

When Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, there were 5200 families living in apartments administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). There were an additional 2000 low-income public housing apartments that were temporarily vacant at the time of Katrina because they were scheduled for renovation. HUD took control over the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) years before Katrina. HANO is under HUD Administrative Receivership.

Since HUD’s takeover, HANO has had a one person board that makes all decisions. The one person HANO board is a HUD employee. That person selects all personnel and approves all contracts. HANO’s annual budget has been about $125 million annually.

The current 4605 low-income public housing apartments will be the replaced by 744 low-income public housing apartments. That results in a loss of 3,861 low-income public housing units – or 82%. Even including the market rate and mixed income apartments – there is a total loss of 2,764 apartments to New Orleans. The $762 million spread over the 1841 apartments comes to well over $400,000 per apartment. So, HUD’s plan is to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars to reduce public housing in New Orleans by 82%.

See Justice for New Orleans,

SACC commentary: This is surely a taste to come of the climate injustice that the most wealthy Americans have planned for the poor. Already, three years ago the Pentagon came out with a report on climate change, which tellingly advised Washington to build up its security against boatloads of refugees, but did not advise that Washing mitigate the actual causes of climate change (which of course include the military!).

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Canada aboriginal communities oppose open-pit mining

Meanwhile, things are not much better in Canada; climate injustice and racism are occuring every day among land claims slated for development. The tar sands fight and Sharbot lake uranium mine are two key examples.

Tar sands and First Nations

Many First Nations communities are adversely affaected by the tar sands. Among them, the Dene, Cree and Metis.

Grand Chief Herb Norwegian of the Dehcho First Nations, called on Canada and Alberta to support a moratorium on further development of the massive oil producing Athabasca Tar Sands “until some sanity can be brought into this situation.” Source.

The Woodlands Cree First Nations takes legal action agains the Alberta government over tar sands development.

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Uranium Minining in northeastern Ontario

For an introduction to the issue see Algonquin Resist Uranium Mine Also see Raging grannies video of their visit to Donna Dillman at the beginning of her hunger strike; and fascinating amateur protest video on Youtube by uranium mine protesters. Here is a NIMBY site against the uranium mine: No Uranium Mine with lots of info.

Two First Nations communitiesare countersuing the mining corporation and government: "Two First Nations communities have launched a $1-billion lawsuit against the province and a $10-million countersuit against a mining exploration company that is suing them for blocking access to a potential uranium mining site in eastern Ontario. The Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwan Algonquin First Nations allege that Ontario breached their aboriginal rights and failed to consult them before granting a company mining rights to land they say belongs to them. The land is located near Sharbot Lake, about 60 kilometres north of Kingston. The countersuit against Frontenac Ventures is intended to send a message to the company that launched its own $77-million lawsuit against the two communities in July, said Doreen Davis, chief of the Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation."

The Declaration of the Indigenous World Uranium Summit (2006) says "Past, present and future generations of Indigenous people have been disproportionately affected by the international nuclear weapon and fuel industry. The Nuclear fuel chain poisons our people, land, air and waters. It threatens our very existence and our future generations." Source: site of the Sharbot Lake Algonquin First Nation.

Also see First Nations Drum report on uranium mining.

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The Arctic and the Inuit

The Innuit of Canada's far north, are witnesses to the most dramatic changes in Canada: the loss of Arctic ecosystems due to climate change at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world. The Arctic's temperature is expected to increase 4 t 7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures this century.

The negative impacts on their health and culture have prompted one community to launch a human rights campaign:

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents all 155,000 of her people inside the Arctic circle, said: "We want to show that we are not powerless victims. These are drastic times for our people and require drastic measures."

As a result of global warming many species will become extinct under the stresses. The loss of some species (such as seals) is an example; the entire Innuit way of life is based on hunting of certain species - as these dissapear, Innuit culture dissapears. "Human heath and food security" are also at risk from changing conditions.

Species at risk include the walrus, ice-living seals, polar bears, snowy owl, many species of lichens and mosses, lemmings, voles, arcitc fox, marine birds.

Northern fisheries (Arctic char, Arctic broad whitefish, Arcic cisco) are declining.

Ozone depletion and ultraviolet radiation (a 30% increase in one generation) also have an impact - UV rays cause skin cancer, immune disorders and cataracts in human beings and disrupt photosynthesis. This is one of many expected health stresses.

A massive release of GHGs from the soil and vegetation ("positive feeback") and loss of reflecting ice and snow (decrease of "the albido effect") increase warming.

Insects and fires will increase, old growth forests will be lost.

The Innuit's history with European culture provides ample evidence of the negative impact of new development and loss of culture. This is expected to increase as ice melts and seaways open up, paving the way for oil extraction industries.

As thawing ground (permafrost degredation) threatens existing infrastructures (roads, buildings), and more natural resource extraction occurs more industrial development will occur, further threatening existing habitats.

Also, storms are expected to increase in frequency and severity.

The combined effect of the multiple stresses will amplify them. Source: ACIA report.

Loss of sea-ice could harm walrus

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Conclusion

Truly, our collective response to climate change must take into account the needs of every member of society, not be used as an excuse to build more walls and weapons.

The climate crisis is an opportunity to create a just society or a totalitarian society; that choice lies in the hands of everyone who is capable of free thought and action. The fight for democracy, peace and the Earth go together.

Coral reefs dead; against shallow environmentalism; animal rights; war and climate change

2007-12-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

-"It's time to buy a mask and snorkel, and see coral while it is still there." - The Economist, 2000

According to Prof. Danny Harvey (Geography Dept. University of Toronto) it is probably too late to save the world's coral reefs. They are very sensitivie to temperature; the world's temperature will continue to increase to a degree that is fatal to the corals, and consequently to the millions of species that rely on them.

"Since the phenomenon of coral bleaching was first noted over twenty years ago, coral reef bleaching events have increased in frequency and intensity on a global scale (Wellington et al. 2001)."

And the cause?

"Most agree that elevated ocean surface temperatures are the main cause of this coral/algal dissociation on a global scale, with increased solar irradiance, specifically ultra violet radiation, also contributing significantly (Brown 1996)." Source.

Harvey notes that ". . . the argument can be made that a two-degree global average warming is too much, as it threatens the widespread devastation of coral reef ecosystems and risks triggering the irreversible melting of Greenland and the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet — with a collateral rise in sea level of more than 10metres.

"According to a recent assess - ment by 19 ecologists based in Europe, North and South America, Africa,and Australia,a global mean warming of two degrees by 2050 will bring about the extinction of from one-sixth to one-third of terrestrial animal species. This is a staggering impact!" Source: Cutting the fossil fuel umbilical cord.

Now it appears that the world is moving beyond a 2 degree threshold: the IPCC suggests 2.4% Celsius as a goal. There is understandable skepticism that even that can be acheived, given the continuing hegemony of the fossil fuel industry.

Harvey adds that although the corals cannot be saved, there is much yet that can be saved, and that we have to move towards energy conservation measures and renewable energy immediately. See this short documentary. In this video he says that we need politicians who care, who have guts and who are willing to act.

Dead reef

Live reef

Map of distribution of coral reefs worldwide. Source. See slideshow on how Australians are measuring coral reef death rates.
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Worth repeating ...

Shallow Environmentalism: Nature is more than just a “resource”

By Ben Cole

E.F. Schumacher’s 20th-Century book Small is Beautiful first introduced the term “natural resources” to a mass audience as part of his criticism of the assumption that the environment exists solely for economic benefit. Schumacher portrayed natural resources as finite capital, refuting the common belief that they were a form of dispensable income that held no value unless consumed.

Today, Schumacher's message seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Although in the last half-century governments and private citizens around the world have stepped up efforts to curb pollution and species extinction, the rhetoric of non-radical environmentalism still focuses solely on how to ensure continued exploitation of the environment while taking absurdly high levels of energy consumption for granted.

Central to this problem is our the tendency to equate the environment with its sum of “natural resources,” which implies that nature only has an instrumental value gauged by these “resources' ” usefulness in production. As a result, in order for a conservation policy to be politically salient, it must include some utilitarian calculation that proves human economies to be its ultimate beneficiaries. A policy that explicitly seeks to curb growth in order to protect the environment becomes a magnet for ridicule from pro-development economists and property-rightists alike.

Pro-business extremists, such as Robert Bidinotto, a senior adviser for the Libertarian Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise are the main source of anti-environment mudslinging. Bidinotto declares that most common Americans who identify themselves as environmentalists merely “[see] the earth and its bounty as resources… for intelligent human use, development, and enjoyment.” He demonizes real environmentalists for their position that “nature exists for its own sake” and charges them with taking advantage of their co-citizens’ “innocent” views in order to further a radical agenda.

Although some may charge that Bidinotto’s stance is radical in its own right, his assessment of conservationism’s place in modern politics is quite accurate. When the environment is pitted against any form of economic growth, no matter how insignificant that growth may be, anybody who sides with the environment is a misanthropic loony. If it is not a natural resource, it is not worth protecting.

Take, for example, the case of the [U.S.] Endangered Species Act, revered by environmentalists and increasingly attacked by “advocates of economic progress.” In 2002 a political battle emerged in New Mexico over the fate of the native silvery minnow protected under the act. When severe drought wracked northern areas of the state, efforts to divert water from local reservoirs to the endangered fish’s habitat were met with fierce opposition by business interests and homeowners. The ESA was blamed for caring more about fish than people, and even for creating the water shortage itself. Meanwhile, the absurd percentage of water that went to irrigating lawns, street medians, and golf courses went almost unnoticed.

Unfortunately, conservation groups seem to be aware of mainstream Americans’ preference for unimportant conveniences over endangered species and continue ceding philosophical ground rather than attempting to fight materialism head-on. “Green innovation”, the idea that companies respond positively to government regulation by competing over the logistical discoveries that meet regulations in the most cost-effective way, is an argument increasingly used by environmentalists to convince businesses that their interests are aligned. [NB - The Canadian Green Party platform is a key example]

In a foreword to the widely-circulated essay The Death of Environmentalism, Peter Teague grumbled that “the conventional wisdom among environmentalists is that we mustn’t frighten the public but rather must focus…on technological solutions, like hybrid cars and fluorescent light bulbs.”

Ironically enough, the environmental movement that started off by revealing the ecological damages of unquestioned growth and development is now paralyzed by a fear of scaring people. At a time when the political discourse of our nation has such a conservative, pro-business tint, it may be difficult to convince people to abandon such a convenient way of life by immediately cutting carbon emissions by 70 percent. But the environmental movement isn’t even trying. It is attempting to paint itself as a friendly, pseudo-capitalist institution that wants to make the planet a little bit better and save American citizens some money on gas and electricity. Meanwhile, the dominant view of the planet as an all-you-can-eat buffet of natural resources continues.

Environmentalists must be willing to go on the offensive. They must argue that nature has intrinsic value that far outweighs many of the conveniences we enjoy as a result of its destruction; that the Brazilian rainforest is far more precious than the beef of fast food cows that graze on its ashes and that a couple years’ worth of fossil fuels is not worth the permanent destruction of pristine Arctic wilderness. Furthermore, they must answer the ridiculous charges of anti-environmentalists that saying such things constitutes misanthropy. It is our choice whether we wish to live in the natural world or in spite of it.

Source

Good analogy: Right now, we are going full steam ahead into the iceberg of climate change.

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Do animals have rights? Below: two of the most charismatic of mega-fauna ...

The Future of Life

Considered by many to be the father of the modern environmental movement, Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson has made enormous contributions to the field of conservation. In this new presentation, he draws on the ideas of his best-selling book, The Future of Life, to make a passionate and eloquent plea for a new approach to the management and protection of our eco-system. Marshalling arguments from science, economics, and ethics, he demonstrates that proper stewardship of the earth's bio-diversity is not an option -- it is a necessity, and a choice we must make if life is going to continue to thrive on the only home we have.

Source Edward O. Wilson asks Is humanity suicidal?

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The war with Iraq versus investment in renewable energy

Something close to two trillion dollars has been been spent on the war in Iraq, compared to $1.5 billion in spending on environmental technologies. The climate crisis could have been solved with 2 trillion dollars. As it is the war, makes climate change worse: See why the Iraq war means inaction on climate change.

Cutting to the chase:

Paul Gipe estimates that 60% of the U.S. energy needs could be met with windpower if the money spent on the Iraq war was spent on windpower. If the U.S. reduced its energy needs by 40% (which it could do easily) the U.S. could get by with 100% wind power!

Additional readings: how far could 68 billion go toward securing energy independence? Pretty damn far And the original article by Gipe: Beating swords into wind turbines. Gipe, who asks, "What could we have accomplished toward building a renewable future here in North America instead of launching a war in the oil-rich heart of the Persian Gulf?"

Paul Gipe, solar energy expert

Failure of U.S. government to control vehicle emissions matched by Canada at all levels of government

2007-12-21T17:59:00.000-08:00

The Environmenal Protection Agency in the U.S. just ruled against vehicle emissions controls: as recorded in this news article.

In Canada we are also dissapointed with all levels of government when it comes to controlling vehilce emissions:

The Federal failure to regulate vehicle emissions

The biggest failure is at the federal level. By expanding the tar sands, the government is supplying oil to millions of American vehicles, not to mention generating massive GHGs on the tar sands site (the size of Florida). The Harper government's Clean Air Act or Bill C-30 was slammed by environmentalists and even moderates Al Gore and David Suzuki as a "fraud." As a result Harper allowed it to be modified by the opposition parties, but then failed to endorse it. Here the Sierra Club addresses the fact that it provides no accountability on vehicle emissions standards:

The Sierra Club slammed the vehicle emissions plan as too little too late. "The proposed federal regulations presented today by the Harper government line up with the outdated and weak standards of the Bush Administration, not the stringent standards of the state of California," the group said in a news release. "No targets means no accountability," said John Bennett of the Sierra Club. "This announcement is nothing more than a recipe for delay. Adopting the Bush administrations standards will not lower emissions from vehicles." On the sensitive issue of targets for large industrial emitters, the government is moving cautiously, with a three-phase consultation process in coming years. Source: Nativemaps.org

The province failure

The province is doing better in many areas, but is weak on vehicle emissions: Provincial government (Ontario) fails to follow California's lead on emissions. McGuinty gave $6 billion to the auto makers to make hybrids, but is that really the answer? The car culture is reinforced by this, included unsustainable urban sprawl, energy wasted on vehilce production and money that could be better spent on renewables. See these critiques of car culture: Car Criticism; Suzuki's critique of car culture; and ecoSanity's car culture march with Streets Are for People.

Caption: close-up of Streets Are For People petition car at Queen's Park

The municipal failure

The municipal government (Toronto) fails to impose road tolls to reduce traffic, despite relatively ambitious move towards "adaptation" to climate change through its Clean Air and Climate Change Act. Mayor Miller says provincial and federal investment in public transporation needed: "The [City's] report also talks about bringing in road tolls to increase transit usage, but there was no vote on specific toll proposals." Source: To. Star They also ingnored a well thought out proposal to reduce traffic by 25% in the City of Toronto as well as the Take the Tooker platform.

Chernobyl, Ontario

2007-12-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

Renewable is doable

The Ontario provincial government is planning to spend $46 billion on nuclear energy over the next twenty years, even though it has been shown that all of Ontario's energy needs can be met without coal and without nuclear power: see Renewable is Doable.

"Saying we need nuclear plants to meet base load demand in Ontario is like saying you need a mainframe computer to access the internet, It may have been the case in the past, but countries around the world are showing that the next generation energy system is more diverse, greener and a lot more flexible." - from Renewable is Doable report.

Caption: charts which illustrates that the green energy plan, proposed by WWF and Pembina, is less costly and pollutes less than the coal-phase and nuclear plan advocated by the province. Click on charts to enlarge or go to source site.

Caption: Three different scenarios in the Renewable is Doable plan - Ontario Power Authority (OPA) plan, which keeps coal until 2014 and introduces nuclear energy, and "soft green" and "deep green" alternatives, both of which supply Ontario's energy needs at less cost than the OPA plan and with fewer emissions.

Another Chernobyl?

Advocates of nuclear energy say that another Chernobyl won't happen. But there is a risk that it could. The Darlington and Bruce power plants are a CANDU design. In 1993Greenpeace issued a report Nuclear design flaw could lead to CANDU core meltdown. For additional articles which cast substantial doubt on the safety and viability of Ontario's nuclear energy industry see Energy Probe on nuclear power.

Here is the critical question: if there is a risk that the CANDU reactors could become unstable, is it not better to decommission them (shut them down)?

A further problem is that the nuclear waste lasts for 25,000 years! These advocates will not be able ensure that the waste does not contaminate future generations or be used for nuclear weapons. Canada cannot even limit the use of CANDU reactors for nefarious purposes right now! Do the benefits of nuclear energy justify the risks? See the photos below and ask yourself it is possible to put a cost on this suffering.

To see the effects of radioactive contamination, see this video: Slideshow of photos from Chernobyl and these photos: Pictures from Chernobyl

Students Against Climate Change is sending all of these photos to every Member of Provincial Parliament, along with the Greenpeace report and an essay by Prof. Larry Schmidt on the ethics of nuclear energy and the WWF report showing that 100% renewable energy is possible in Ontario and that it can supply the "base load" for this province's energy needs. If the MPPs are people of integrity they will oppose nuclear energy as irrepsonsible.

Why, you ask, did Ontario endorse nuclear energy? Their consultants all come from the nuclear energy sector.

Caption: BELARUS. Minsk. Children’s Home No 1. This hospital receives many of the most deformed babies soon after birth. Nurse Alla Komarova hugs 3-year-old Yulya, whose brain is in a membrane in the back of his head. Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos

To help contact: Canadian Aid for Chernobyl

And to prevent this in Ontario contact your MPP.

William Lawless, whistleblower extraordinnaire - effectively shut down the radioactive waste containment industry in the U.S. when he revealed that the waste was leaking. To this day, the nuclear industry has still not developed a safe method of storing nuclear waste (and probably never will because the half-life of the waste exceed the capacity of any material to store it). Acts of personal courage against the evils of the military-industrial complex, should be honoured.

Climate Day of Action photos

2007-12-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

Students at Global Climate Day of Action, in front of Sidney Smith U of T - feeder march organized by a coalition of groups and individuals, including Students Against Climate Change, UTSU, CFS, OPIRG. Special mention goes to Pieter Basedow, Brett Rhyno, Rita Bjons, Susanna Lim, Sharon Howarth, Doug & Paul, and Daniel Tseng, without whom it would not have been possible.

U of T students meet up with Ryerson students at Ryerson U, Dec. 8. CFS and CESAR and Jordan Matchett (Ryerson enviro. collective) helped get students together. U of T and Ryerson students then joined forces and marched to Dundas Square.

Global Climate Day of Action march to Queen's Park. The banner says "Green Energy. Binding Emissions Targets." It was painted by SACC. It shows greenhouse gases trapped in Earth's atmosphere.

12 year old Misha Hamu speaks at the Dec. 8 rally in Toronto on species extinction. About 2,500 people attened the rally, the largest environmental rally in Canada this year.

Eco-fair at Hart House. About 300 people showed up for this. Hot Yam made free vegan food. There were about 20 community groups represented. There was music and speeches. All in all the biggest eco-fair set up volunteers in Toronto this year.

D8 in Germany

D8 in Greece

D8 in China

D8 in Africa

Commentary on Canada's role in obstructing progress at climate talks in Bali. Click on this image to enlarge.

Climate talks have been happening since 1992 (Rio Earth Summit) but little has been accomplished due to obstruction by the U.S. delegations, and now Canada.

Argument for reduction of Canadian emissions despite China's contribution to the problem

2007-12-19T19:26:00.000-08:00

Caption: Chart showing substantial difference in per captia emissions by nation. Using this standard, Canadians cannot used the excuse that their country contibutes 2% of the worlds GHGs. Rather, the per capita standard ought to be used as a measure of responsibility. Note: this chart is now outdated - Canada is now matching U.S. emissions levels per capita.

The most commonly used excuse for inaction by Bush and Harper is China's rising emissions. Here is a valid response to that argument, in addition to the moral argument that we Canadians produce a per capita emission:

Chinese emissions are caused in large part by production of goods for the North American market. See critique of overconsumption of natural resources" by World Wildlife Federation.

If we consume less Chinese emissions will necessarily go down. Proof? WalMart is the biggest retailer in the world and a majority of its goods (84%) come from China.

In other words, Chinese emissions don't happen in a vaccuum: they are a direct result of over-consumption in Canada and the U.S. for good we don't need with money we don't have (i.e. credit cards). We can lower our emissions and China's at the same time buy buying less crap.

Further viewing: check out this video: Buy Nothing Day

Further reading: a report on the ecological damage caused by Wal-Mart due to illegal logging:
How Wal-Mart causes illegal logging and threatens endangered species"

Caption: Poster from documentary "WalMart: the high price of low costs"

Caption: Coal fields in China. Edward Burtynksy photo of Bao Steel #10, Tanggu Port, Tianjin, China, 2005. Chinese coal and steel industries are the fastest growing in the world.

Why can't we go in the direction that Germany is going in?

In early 2007 Dr. Hermann Scheer, the German parliamentarian who wrote energy efficiency legislation which Germany put into force in 2000 AD, spoke at Queen's Park. He strongly advocated our transition to renewables and conservation. Since that time, little has been done. There is a real disparity between speech and action at all levels of government. The McGuinty "green plan" is woefully inadequate and appears to be designed more or PR value than to effect real change.

Meanwhile, since 2000 Germany has made major strides towards a sustainable culture and recently announced plans to acheive a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, based on 1990 CO2 levels. This, so far, is the most ambitious plan by a G8 nation for emissions reductions, although as this article illustates coal plants are still being built in Germany, and Germany's direction is not without difficulties. Despite this, Canada ought to follow Germany's lead on a number of initiatives. See what Germany is doing to conserve energy in detail. It seems that the main thing they have there that we do not have here is political will to change. Germany wants to be a world leader on energy efficiency and this desire is spurring much of the change. See this article as well.

Caption: photo of Dr. Scheer

Solar Pioneer in Germany: Hermann Scheer, the man behind this revolution in Germany, is a veteran of the Bundestag, the German parliament. After 20 years of selling the concept to the German public, his revolutionary ideas were legislated in 2001 when the Renewable Energy Sources Act was passed. Scheer attributes the success of the program to what he calls an "irresistable combination of freedom and autonomy" - freedom for individuals to generate their own power and do good for the environment at the same time, two values that often conflict. Source: CBC artile on solar power.

Eco-friendly Christmas ideas

2007-12-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

Caption: collage of Amazon animals endangered by climate change. Scientists estimate that the Amazon will be gone by 2100 A.D. as a result of global warming.

Tips to reduce your ecological impact (send by activist group Prevent Cancer Now).

· If you buy a tree, get it from a grower who does not use pesticides.

· Avoid receiving gifts you don’t want or need by arranging to exchange “Gift Exemption Vouchers” with friends or loved ones.

· Don’t buy gifts that are over-packaged!

· Consider making a donation to a good cause in your friend’s or loved one’s name, or give a membership to an organization you support.

· Give a certificate for a service you can provide – free snow shoveling, gardening, or babysitting are all welcome to over-worked, stressed out friends.

· Don’t be afraid to give second-hand – pass along a book you loved or a funky tea cup you found at a garage sale.

· Support local organic agriculture – give a gift certificate for fresh local produce to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)Farm or local Food Box Program

· Buy locally produced goods, artwork, and crafts.

· Tickets to a play or concert can help make happy memories.

· Re-use wrapping paper and gift bags, or use a pillow case tied with a ribbon for sweaters or bigger items

· Use LED lights for your decorating

· Thread popcorn and cranberries as decorations that the birds can enjoy after the holidays.

OR [my note] you can just BUY NOTHING! See Buy Nothing Day

Correspondence with Donna Dillman after her hunger strike to protest uranium mining

2007-12-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

Photo of Donna Dillman and march to Queen's Park, Dec. 13, 2007.

For videos of the event see ecoSanity.org (warning: lound sounds on this site, so turn down your speaker first)

Donna Dillman ended her two month long hunger strike to stop uranium mining after several environmental NGOs (notably Greenpeace) said they would hold a public inquiry into the matter. SACC will participate in that inquiry and we welcome you to take part as well, when it is scheduled.

Look for updates on this site, or write to for notice of when the inquiry will occur. The following is part of an exchange with Donna in chronological order. See the CCAMU site for more information as well: CCAMU

Or go to their petition: CCAMU petition

In November, Students Against Climate Change hosted a talk with noted expert Dr. Gordon Edwards on nuclear waste and tritium leakage, at Hart House. See the following site for more information: Nuclear waste It has information from the group that Dr. Edwards founded with Dr. GoldinRosenberg and others scientists: Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Also see this exposee on uranium mining by Dr. Edwards.

Letter to Ontario premier Dalton McGunity in support of CCAMU from Students Against Climate Change, copied to D. Dillman:

Dear Mr. McGuinty,

The University of Toronto campus club Students Against Climate Changes supports Donna Dillman's call for a moratorium on uranium mining in Ontario.

Ms. Dillman and the organiation she represents, CCAMU, have put forward many sound reccommendations that your government ought to abide by, and which are consistent with the reports issued by Dr. Keith Stewart, Dr. Dorothy Goldin-Rosenber and Dr. Gordon Edwards. Clearly, we do not need nuclear energy in Ontario for many reasons. Here are a few:

* You and your ministers seem to know little or nothing about the environmental and health effects of tritium and radioactive waste. Your choice to embrace nuclear technology in Ontario is based on the advice of a few consultants who come from the "revolving door" of the nuclear industry and who are predisposed to committing public funds to their industry. This is not based on a sound committment to the public good, either in terms of how their funds are to be spent, or in terms of their health. It is like Haliburton advising the Bush Administration on how to proceed in the Middle East; there is a serious conflict of interest which by itself should be enough to put an end to nuclear energy and uranium mining in Ontario.

* 85% of the uranium is exported, and there is absolutely no guarantee that it will not be used for nuclear weapons in the future. Dr. Edwards says that paper agreements are meaningless for future generations, and any reasonable person would concur: how can we provide guarantees that weapons won't be built from Ontario uranium 1,000 years from now, or even 100 years from now? We cannot. This waste will be here long after Canada is gone, and will continue to poison human beings and animals, and be incorrectly used.

* You will be allowing uranium mining operations to poison ecosystems with toxic mine tailings and radioactive waste (which enters into our drinking water in the form of tritium) in order to enrich the uranium mining and nuclear industry in Ontario, at a great expense to taxpayers, the public, the environment and future generations. And there are serious environmental concerns around mining (including
destruction of boreal forests and water contamination) which your government has not addressed. This is a morally, economically and environmentally unsound direction to take.

Caption: open-pit uranium mine

* The 15% which is used for reactors in Ontario is unecessary since we now know it is possible to supply 100% of Ontario's energy needs (including the base load) through wind power (see http://www.renewableisdoable.com/) The biggest argument, by far, is that public funds spent on nuclear, take away from funds that could be
better spent on renewables and conservation. Additionally, uranium is a non-renewable resource and not a sustainable solution in terms of meeting long-term energy needs. The direction taken by Germany, California and Denmark provide far better solutions. It is hypocritical of your government to claim that it is fighting to mitigate climate change and at the same time invest $46 billion in nuclear energy and allow uranium mining in Ontario, when neither is a viable solution.

* There are outstanding aboriginal land claims issues (relating to Sharbot Lake) with the Algonquin first nation which your government has not addressed. This is a question of social justice which Ontario must look into before precipitously moving ahead with new development projects.

Caption: No swimming sign near Bruce nuclear facility, due to water contamination

History will view Donna Dillman as a courageous individual willing to risk her life for future generations and for social and environmental justice. You, on the other hand, will be viewed as a schill for big business and that unique group of opportunistic climate criminals, the nuclear industry. That is, unless you decide to stop uranium mining, put an end to the investment in nuclear energy, and do what any sane responsible leader ought to do: commit to renewable energy, conservation, environnmental preservation, and consultation with relevant stakeholders such as environmental and community groups such as CCAMU.

_____________________

Caption: Photo of radiation poisoning. In the early 1950's, approximately 100,000 immigrant children received X-ray radiation treatment for ringworm upon their arrival in Israel. It was later discovered that these treatments caused high rates of infertility, cancer and death. See film The Ringworm Children.

Caption: photo from Chernobyl. Four year old Sasha has no lymph nodes.

Caption: Twins Michael and Vladimir, aged 16, near Chernobyl. One has hydrocephalus, the other is deaf. According to Prof. G. V. Brukhinat at the medical facility at Chelyabinks, Russia, "most of the congenital diseases are caused by debilitating circumstances in the unborn child's environment." According to Prof. Dorothy GoldinRosenberg at U of T allowable tritium levels in Ontario are 100 times higher than in Europe. Tritium in the water, can cause damage to unborn children. The danger of building nuclear reactors, according to Prof. Larry Schmidt at St. Michael's College, is that we cannot predict how that technology will be used or disposed of beyond three generations. Problems like those at Chernobyl are a real possibility for future generations, for hundreds of years in the future.

Caption: Abandoned kindergarten. Some areas around Chernobly are so contaminated they will have to be closed off for 900 years.

Caption: Bayan, now 16, was 5 when diagnosed with a brain tumour. She now has a second brain tumour. For more information see Chernobyl Info.; Focus Chernobyl

______________________

Mr. Guinty, you claim to be a Christian, but to allow this to happen is decidedly contrary to Jesus' ethical teachings to love our neighbours. Those neighbours include people at risk from tritium poisoning and future generations at risk from nuclear waste. Like Robert Oppenheimer, you are unleashing a dread force on the world, and like him you are personally and morally responsible. And like him you
can reverse yourself and try to make amends. It is not too late. Confession of sins and redemption is an integral part of the Christian experience that you may wish to explore more fully. In this case it will necessarily entail reversing yourself on nuclear energy, destruction of Ontario's boreal forests, and aboriginal land claims.

Sincerely, Paul York, on behalf of
Students Against Climate Change
University of Toronto campus club
email:
tel: 416-922-0035

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Photo of Donna Dillman

Letter from D. Dillman to P. York:

You may have heard that some very stellar environment organizations Greenpeace, Suzuki Foundation, Sierra Club, Students Against Climate Change, etc, etc.) came to the rescue and will be coming together with Citizens Coalition Against Mining Uranium (CCAMU) to call a Citizen's Hearing on the issue, so that I was able to end my protest and eat (baby food, baby quanitities, until my stomach adjusts to receiving food again). Please be in touch with the folks at UofT. They'd love to
hear from you. You can also check out CCAMU's website for more info and for my daily blogs, letters to the Premier and more perspective: www.ccamu.ca. You can also sign up to the Uranium News to keep up to date.

Thanks again Paul, it was fabulous to have met so many keen and caring people in the big city. Please stay in touch as we move toward organizing the Inquiry.

Donna

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Letter from P. York to D. Dillman:

Dear Ms. Dillman,

Thank you for this thorough update. I look forward to the Inquiry as well and will be happy to lobby for it and promote it if it is scheduled. Please keep me updated on that. It was a great pleasure to meet you and be involved in this cause. We will never meet the future generations, far in the future, adversely affected by nuclear waste, but we have established a permanent bond with them, in support of their well-being, for the sake of social justice. This adds great value and meaning to our lives, far more than if we focused only serving ourselves. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to be part of that your actions and example. You have my deep admiration and thanks.

Sincerely, Paul York

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Letter from D. Dillman to P. York:

I'll put your name with the list of folks coming forward to be apart of the inquiry. Hopefully, the government of the day will sit up and take notice
at some point. I refuse to believe that, as a society, we are destined to
let big business/industry/lobbyists destroy my grandchildren's (your
children's) futures.

Take a look at my husbands site: www.SustainWellBeing.net. He has been at
this work (the bigger picture) for over 35 years and the hope lies in your
generation.

blessings
Donna

Photo from CCAMU site showing protest in Ottawa with native group, against uranium mining

Silkscreen workshop a success

2007-12-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

We had about 30 participants over 2 full days at the OPIRG office doing revolutionary and environmental silkscreens with activist clowns / artists Txus and Sarah before they head off to Chiapas Mexico to join the revolution there. Saw many new faces at this event, organized by Brett Rhyno (he is also going away to Australia to learn how to do climate activism on a grand scale - their rallies have 100,000 people). Pieter and Paul made screens against Barrick Gold and climate change and against animal testing. Almuth, an exchange student from Germany, made a screen that contains the German word for the name of the sound of the ocean. She is travelling back to Europe via freighter to avoid the cost of air travel. James, an enivronmentalist from the Kyoto Now, rally made a shirt of a photo of his father holding a French sign in support of Kyoto. Baby's coat got a new design: Animal Peace. All in all, it was a great success.

The Great Carbon Illusion

2007-12-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

Photo of Prof. Harvey, U of T Geography Dept., global warming expert and contributor to the IPCC. Two videos from CBC well worth watching. The first features scenes from the lecture with Danny Harvey arranged by SACC last month:

CBC documentary on the problem with climate talks, with Prof. Harvey

For more information on Prof. Harvey's work see Danny Harvey

The second video (below) is on the proposed tar sands expansion.

Also see: Tar sands edition of The Dominion which is everything you ever need to know about the tar sands.

and Toronto Star article on the latest government subsidy to the tar sands estimated at $700 million.

Bali conference a success?

2007-12-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

Caption: Canada won the "Fossil Award" at the Bali conference 25 times, matching U.S.A. for "Fossil of the Year" award. See http://www.avaaz.org/fossils/

There is so much to report from Bali, it is hard to know where to begin.

See Globe & Mail coverage for an overview: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071215.wbalidealyork1215/BNStory/International/home

Warning: the G & M report puts a positive spin on Bali, which masks the problem of agreeing to limit emissions with no mechanisms in place for doing so.

One one level Bali was a success in that it helped acheive some degree of international solidarity against the Axis of Evil (which now includes Canada). But it was also a failure insofar as binding targets of 80% or more were not committed to. The agreement is only as good as the willingness of the participants to enforce it. A strong criticism of the Bali talks can be found at Monbiot's site:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/17/hurray-were-going-backwards/

Canada (through John Baird) obstructed the entire proceeding, but then at the last minute backed down in the face of international solidarity against the United States' intransigent position. What it means is that yet again Canada as signed onto something they have no intention of keeping. Would the Liberals do better? It remains to be seen.

The Baird/Harper deference to the fossil fuel industry is criminal and easily comparable to the Holocaust in terms of its implications for human life (a comparison first made famous by Monbiot).

Caption: Young environmentalists at D8 warn of the ill health effects caused by climate change: malaria is predicted to come to Canada in their lifetimes due to rising temperatures. Toxic fungi are also expected to flourish in the 40 degree Celsius temperatures.

The reality of the urgency of global warming is now forcing world leaders towards solidarity against the Axis of Evil: Japan, Saudi Arabia, United States and Canada. Real mechanims for change exist but are not being put into place on a wide scale. The key issue is implementation. Signing on and implementing these promises are two different things.

Meanwhile, Germany's latest reforms (40% by 2020 based on 1990 levels) and strong enforcement mechanisms puts Canada to shame. The German government appears to take its committment seriously; clearly we need a government in place that will do the same.

Despite the failings of the Liberals (hypocrisy, corruption, inactoin) Dion seems committed; at this point Canada could not do worse than it has in recent years under Harper.

The sooner we have an election in Canada the better. This will require the Canadian people to think and act conscientiously; it is not entirely certain whether they will do so. Canadians are among the most wasteful people on the planet. It will take more than an election or an international agreement to change them: it will likely take a sharp increase in the price of commodities and fuel to spark real change.

____________________________

Caption: Photo of Streets Are for People organizer Michal Johnson playing his trumpet in front of 2,500 Kyoto Now activists at Dundas Square on Dec. 8, 2007.

Why do we not protest?

The Toronto D8 rally last Saturday had about 2,500 to 3,000 people participating in it, but the media only reported 500 (To. Sun) and "hundreds" (NOW mag). Why? I can understand the Sun, but not NOW. It is strange, probably reflective of the bias of a single reporter.

The Toronto D8 was a relatively big environmental rally because it pulled in a lot of labour and peace activists. In Toronto it was the result of a lot of volunteer organizing by non-environmentalists and environmentals working together. Around the world, some 70 nations participated, making it the biggest worldwide rally for the environment in history.

The fact that it was not 100,000 to 1 million in Toronto alone (which it ought to be, given the gravity of climate change) is simply a result of the fact that Canadians, and especially Torontonians are for the most part politically inactive as compared to western Europeans for example. Have you ever wondered why? Here are three answers:

1) The government is to blame. George Monbiot says in one of his columns, "I looked up from the paper [warning of immanent global catastrophe], almost expecting to see crowds stampeding through the streets. I saw people chatting outside a riverside pub. The other passengers on the train snoozed over their newspapers or played on their mobile phones. Unaware of the causes of our good fortune, blissfully detached from their likely termination, we drift into catastrophe."

Monbiot, in the rest of the column, blames the government for this predicament (see http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/03/a-sudden-change-of-state/). He suggests that the UK government misleads the public by promising to address climate change and failing to do so. That is certainly true here as well (i.e. Harper's greenwash), but not the entire picture. Citizens are responsible, ultimately and they must hold governments accountable. As Al Gore says, "political will is a renewable resource."

2) Technology and capitalism are to blame. A deeper answer is that entertainment through television (as an instrument of unsustainable capitalism) is to blame: according to several theorists, we are continually distracted from the reality of our collective condition by ads, Internet, tv, and entertainment masquerading as news. See Jerry Mander's _Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television_. Or see this video in which Mander addresses future generations and compares corporate hegemony and sustainable societies.

Al Gore has made the connection between inaction on climate change and the distraction that television provides in his book The Assault on Reason. In it he diagnoses the failure of American participatory democracy, which includes "low voter turnout, rampant voter cynicism, an ill-informed electorate, political campaigns dominated by 30-second television ads, and an increasingly conglomerate-controlled media landscape."

Thomas Berry notes that "The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends."

3) Activists are too optimistic. Ross Glebspann, in a recent article, offers another point of view, which starts out unfairly critical of the "hollow optimism" of climate activists to promoting the idea that we can solve the climate crisis. Perhaps he is referring to the glib kind of environmental activism which is a kind of hobby.

For example, the climate talks represent a delusional sort of thinking: agreements are made which are not kept; the public is satisfied but little is accomplished.

In any case, Glebspann provides a thought-provoking and honest meditation on the state of the climate crisis, emphasizing that we are entering "uncharted territory": http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=280 Glebspann has to be given credit for saying that we have to face up to the reality that much is already lost. Perhaps if we acknowledged the gravity of the situation the public would start to pay attention?

4) Human nature is tragically flawed. Freud advances this idea with his concept of Thanatos, the "death-instinct." We are predisposed to self-destruction, he essentially says. Perhaps this true, I don't know. A good post-apocalyptic meditation is provided native elder Oren Lyons. He turns the thesis that the Earth is fragile on its head: we human beings are fragile and instruments of our demise. Humanity may become extinct, but the Earth will eventually "regenerate. The rivers, the waters, the mountains; everything will be green again. Because the Earth has all the time in the world. But we don't." To see all the interviews ("time capsules") from that movie go to http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=11thhouraction

Conclusion: whether or not we disappear from the face of the Earth, we do have to keep trying to do what is morally just by living more sustainably. In a way, the D8 experience is a microcosm of the course that humanity needs to embark on: an attempt, despite difficult circumstances, to make things right. There will be difficulties along the way but in the end we have no choice but to work with one another towards a life-affirmative socially just solution.

Caption: Photo of Streets Are for People "petition car" at D8 rally, Toronto.

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Caption: Photo from D8

Thoughts occasioned by calling the PM's office on the last day of the Bali talks

I just called the PM's office over the climate talks, as suggested by Barbara Hayes of CYCC. I was transferred to automated voice mail which did not take a message because the machine was full. I called back and was transferred again and this time left a message.

I urged Minister Baird to stop blocking progress at Bali and to work with the rest of the world (Japan and the U.S. excluded) towards targets that are absolute and science-based (not intensity-based), based on 1990 levels (not 2005 levels) and which exceed 20% by 2020. Germany just announced a plan to go for 40% by 2020, based on 1990 levels. Why can't Canada move in that direction?

It is fairly obvious to any and everyone inclined towards rational thought that the PM is intransigent on this issue, and needs to be voted out of office (or better yet impeached). He had his chance and blew it. Baird's performance at Bali is nothing less than criminal.

It is entirely possible that in the distant future Canada will be remembered for only one thing: our role as climate criminals. In this sense, Baird is somewhat like Adloph Eichmann: an unremarkable man in a position of great power who is using that power to commit a great evil for the sake of self-interest and careerism.

With the exception of CYCC and other such activists, the vast majority of Canadians sit by while our representatives help the fossil fuel industry to destroy irreplaceable biodiversity, murder billions of human beings, and endanger life on this planet.

In this sense Canadians are comparable to a majority of Germans in the 1930s in terms of their complicity in allowing murder to occur in their name. I do not think the Holocaust comparison (first made by George Monbiot and echoed by Elizabeth May) is too strong if you consider that 1) people are already dying in droves due to c.c., 2) many millions more will die before this century is over. We may very well see the equivalent of a Nuremburg Trial for climate criminals in our lifetimes.

Let us hope that we can correct this mess before it comes to that. Like you I am not overly optimistic, but we have to keep trying. After all, what other options are there?

Caption: Photo of DianneLynn Cartwright, clown activist, at D8. Dianne was helped in the student march from U of T on Dec. 8th.

Photo of environmentalist Angela Bischoff in a reflective moment

Posting from Angela Bischoff from last week

"When you warn people about the dangers of climate change, they call you asaint. When you explain what needs to be done to stop it, they call you acommunist." -

George Monbiothttp://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/04/what-is-progress/

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The Canadian wilderness is set to be invaded by BP in an oil explorationproject dubbed ... 'The biggest environmental crime in history' -- the tarsands.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/article3239364.ece

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Quebec is the first Canadian province to adopt California's stringentauto-emissions standards for cars and light trucks (including mini-vans). The new standards will come into effect between 2010 and 2016. Manufacturers will have to reduce emissions by 30 per cent. Will otherprovinces follow suit? Can your premiere and ask him to follow the lead ofQuebec!

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=0a917fe1-c448-4e8d-8d26-3cb249e7108a&k=47112

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FOSSIL WINNERS FOR THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13 (in Bali)

US, Canada now tied for first place in running for "Fossil of the Year" Third prize:

CANADA Canada takes third for walking out of a high-level negotiation meeting long before the end of a crucial discussion. Yesterday, a "Friends of the Chair" meeting brought together 40 key ministers to work through tough issues that officials had not been able to resolve. In the midst of this, Canadian Environment Minister John Baird abruptly got up and left. Where was he going? He was spotted moments later holding a drink at a negotiation-free cocktail reception.

Second prize: UNITED STATES of AMERICA The United States seizes second place for taking 20 of its alotted 5 minutes at this morning's high-level roundtable on technology transfer -- and using the time to talk about, well, anything but technology transfer. (Highlights included a discussion of the joys of nuclear energy and "clean coal.") Throughout the COP, the USA has praised technology, but prevented progress on funding its spread through the developing world. On climate change, the USA is all tech, no transfer.

Dishonourable Mention for AUSTRALIA Australia wins a rare "dishonourable mention" for claiming leadership onclimate change -- yet staying silent as the US, Canada, Japan, and Russiastrip the Bali road map of the one piece of truly critical substance: the emissions cut range of 25-40% by 2020. As the saying goes, all it takesfor Bush to flourish is for good prime ministers to do nothing. Australia:leading through silence.

First prize: USA, CANADA, JAPAN, and RUSSIA The USA, Canada, Japan, and Russia share top honours--er, bottom dishonours--for relentlessly blocking any reference to the 25-40% cuts by 2020 in the Bali road map. The science couldn't be clearer that cuts in this range are necessary to avert the worst of the climate crisis. Russia initiated the removal of the targets several days ago, and the USA, Canada, and Japan have fought to ensure that they don't come back in. It's like they're piloting the Titanic, refusing to change course; except instead of merely hitting icebergs, they're melting them.

The Fossil-of-the-day Award is given nightly at 6pm at to countries that block progress at the United Nations climate change negotiations. The winners are chosen by a vote of the Climate Action Network, which comprises more than 400 NGOs from every world region, each afternoon. The awards are presented by the international youth delegation and MC'd by Ben Wikler of Avaaz.org, an international online advocacy group. find past winners listed at: http://www.avaaz.org/fossils

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FREE SANTA -- STOP CLIMATE CHANGE

Just after 6:30 pm, Wednesday, December 12, Santa and several of his elves were arrested for trying to deliver lumps of coal to Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper. ACT for the Earth is calling for their immediate release and an end to Canada’s sabotage of the UN climate talks in Bali, Indonesia.

At the UN Climate Talks in Bali, Canada has become an international pariah. For it's actions at the crucial negotiations to determine a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the Canadian government has been harshly criticized by diplomats, environmentalists, the European Union and many others, including Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Not only were there no milk and cookies, but I wasn’t even able to deliver little Stephen’s gift,” said Santa in a statement relayed from an Ottawa jail by Donner and Blitzen, after he and his elves were arrested for engaging in non-violent civil disobedience. “If anyone has broken the law it is Stephen,” the statement continued, noting the Canadian Prime Minister’s disregard for Canada’s legal obligations internationally to the Kyoto Protocol and domestically to the Kyoto Implementation Act. Santa who has drawn a line in the Tarsands is calling on all good Canadians to tell Stephen Harper to stop being naughty in Bali. “It istime for Canada to stop blocking the climate consensus in Bali that could save the North Pole and the rest of the world,” Santa concluded.

Caption: Santa and an elf in the police paddy wagon, Dec. 12th.

TAKE ACTION NOW CALL ON STEPHEN HARPER’S GOVERNMENT TO STOP THE CLIMATE SABOTAGE

Stephen Harper at the House of Commons (613) 992-4211 Stephen Harper's Constituency Office (403) 253-7990 John Baird: 613-990-7720 Prime Minister’s Privy Council Office: 613-957-5153

To send messages of support to Santa and his elves contact: campaigns@actfortheearth.org

Caption: the fate of many a good activist trying to improve the world.

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MEDIA RELEASE For Immediate Release

December 12, 2007

MPs SHOULD NOT OVERRIDE NUCLEAR SAFETY REGULATOR OTTAWA

In an open letter to the Prime Minister and opposition leaders, Greenpeace, the Canadian Environmental Law Association and Ecojustice(formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund) today urged federal Members of Parliament not to override the decision by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to shut down the nuclear reactor at Chalk River. Thegroups are calling for a public investigation of mismanagement by AtomicEnergy of Canada Limited (AECL) in failing to commission replacement reactors for the fifty-year-old NRU reactor, and its failure to adhere to CNSC safety regulations.

“Canada’s Parliament has sent a clear signal to the nuclear industry: Canada's nuclear safety regulator has no teeth or authority,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Energy and Climate campaigner with Greenpeace. Last night, all parties agreed to fast-track Bill C-38, which will allow AECL to bypass the requirements of the CNSC and restart the National Research Universal (NRU) Reactor at its Chalk River Laboratories, 100 km north-west of Ottawa.

In November, CNSC staff discovered that AECL had failed to install emergency power systems to the 50 year-old reactor aspromised, and required AECL to meet safety requirements before restarting the reactor, causing the cessation of radioisotope production. "The Harper government and the opposition parties have put the fox incharge of the hen house,” said Stensil. “The CNSC is typically a lap dogto nuclear industry.

When it says a reactor should be shut down, there is clearly a significant threat to public safety." Canadians are rightfully outraged by the current shortage of radioisotopes due to AECL's failure to properly maintain safety standards at the NRUreactor, but an independent regulator is needed to ensure nuclear safety. Any solution to the current radioisotope shortage must include a public investigation of the root cause - AECL’s failure to build two new reactorson time and on budget. This forced AECL to ask the regulator to extendthe life of NRU, which was set for shutdown in 2005 and shares design flaws with the Chernobyl reactor design.

"The bargain Canadian society has made to operate highly risky nuclear technology is that there is oversight by an independent regulator. Whilefar from perfect, it is the only assurance the public has that nuclear plants are being held to a set of safety standards. Bypassing the CNSC onserious safety issues completely undermines the basis for nuclear plantoperation in Canada," said Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. “The existence of an independent expert regulator to oversee nuclear operations is essential,” said Ecojustice lawyer Hugh Wilkins.

“An immediate resolution of the radioisotope shortage is crucial, but it must not come at the expense of the independence and credibility of theregulator or the safety of Canadians.”

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For more info, please contact: Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Greenpeace, cell (416) 884 7053 (English/French)Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director and Counsel, CELA (416) 662 8341 Jode Roberts, Ecojustice (416) 368 7533 ext 25

Caption: photo of tar sands from Tar sands edition of The Dominion out of Halifax.

D8 rally turned out well but what of the world?

2007-12-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

Caption: Bangladesh during flood which killed 5,000 this year (2007).

Caption: while the world's fresh water supply diminishes, Coke gets licenses to tap underground aquifers in Ontario for the small price of $500, put it into bottles and sell it thousands of times above cost. The bottled water industry is criminal, given the world's water problems, but it is sanctioned by public officials at the Ontario Ministry of Environment. For info. on this problem see Inside the Bottle campaign and the petition to Coke. Additionally, Coke contributes to climate change through HFCs for refridgeration.
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Our rally got 2,500 people at Dundas Square, followed by a march and another rally at Queen's Park and an eco-fair at Hart House. A full day to be sure, and it got lots of good media coverage. See this site for photos.

Meanwhile Baird is isolated in Bali and being pushed by the international community to adopt binding science-based targets. It is shameful that Canada is part of the "Axis of Evil" on climate change (now Japan, U.S and Canada). Here is an excellent article on the entire state of affairs: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/10/165845/92

Do these climate talks have effect at all? It seems doubtful.

So the question is "what's next?" We have to keep fighting. What else can we do?

Lomborg backs away from Students Against Climate Change, but appears on CBC and at Frasier Institute

2007-12-12T16:18:00.000-08:00

Caption: Adding insult to injury - Lomborg minimizes the plight of polar bears. They are not amused.

Caption: Lomborg at the Frasier Institute, which funds his trips to Canada and has funded climate change denial and is in turn linked to Exxon. Photo of Bjorn Lomborg and Mike Walker, founder of the Fraser Institute. Here is a short paragraph from this organization, which has links to Exxon Mobil, which clarifies their denial position in scientific language:

"A review of the scientific literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most prominent greenhouse gas contributed by human activities, leads to the conclusion that increases during the twentieth century have produced no deleterious effects upon global climate or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased the growth
rates of plants as inferred from numerous laboratory and field experiments. There is no clear evidence, nor unique attribution, of the global effects of anthropogenic CO2on climate. Meaningful assessments of the environmental impacts of anthropogenic CO2 are not yet possible because model estimates of global and regional changes in climate on interannual, decadal and centennial time-scales remain highly uncertain." Source: Frasier Institute study.

Lomborg backs out of U of T talk

Since the last report, Lomborg backed out of the lecture at Hart House citing "scheduling conflicts" and saying he couldn't be at events in Toronto. But we found out that he spoke at the Frasier Institute the day before, which leads me to believe that he backed out of the U of T talk because of our criticism of him on Facebook.

Since that time, we have written to the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Regulatory Commission) twice: once to object to climate change denier Tim Ball appearing on CTV-TV and now today to object to CBC's The Hour featuring Lomborg (uncritically).

On Tuesday December 11, 2007, at about 11:05 p.m., George Stroumboulopoulos (The Hour) interviewed climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomborg. Given that the world's scientific community has said unanimously (through the United Nations IPCC) that climate change is in fact very serious, Mr. Stroumboulopoulos' choice to interview Mr. Lomborg is a matter of concern. There ought to be some "quality control" at CBC!

The IPCC says that climate change is both "serious" and "dangerous." The World Health Organization tells us that already some 150,000 people die from climate change every year and the number is expected to grow.

The IPCC consists of 2500 of the world's top scientists on climate change issues. Mr. Lomborg, by contrast, is not a credible source of information on climate change (see Lomborg errors) and he has been charged with "scientific dishonesty" in his own country of Denmark: Danish Committee cites Lomborg for scientific dishonest. It is remarkable that Mr. Stroumboulopoulos did not do adequate research on this matter.

Short letter to the host of the Hour

Do you not feel a sense of moral responsibility? Mr. Lomborg is paid indirectly through the fossil fuel industry (Frasier Institute and CEI) to tour around and spread climate change skepticism. His commentary, like the climate change deniers before him, is heavily weighted in favour of the fossil fuel industry and helps reduce the chances of survival of current and future generations. Were you aware of that?

Sincerely, Paul York
Toronto Ontario

What you can do: write to the CBC, CTV, National Post, CRTC (go to CRTC or sign this petition that will go to all reporters, which refers to the fact of nearly 3,000 stories in the American election, only 3 mentioned global warming: U.S. media bias petition

Check out:

Why isn't anyone laughing at Lomborg?: a short article that illustrates how the White House is imitating his arguments that global warming helps people.

Rebutall of Lomborg's arguments by an American politician (who is the 'Chairman of the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming') Nice to know that the U.S. has such a committee, but wish they would do a better job!

Another rebuttal of Lomborg

Background info. on Lomborg's connection to Exxon Mobil through CEI, Frasier Institute"

Lecture on climate change science and politics

2007-11-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

Caption: Surface melt on the Greenland ice sheet descending into a moulin. The moulin is a nearly vertical shaft worn in the glacier by surface water, which carries the water to the base of the ice sheet. See this science article which explains the dynamics of global warming in detail.

Climate Change: a scientific and political overview of the new IPCC report and the Canadian political terrain

A lecture by Dr. Danny Harvey, climate scientist and member of the IPCC

Wed. Nov. 28, 6:00 p.m. Hart House (east common room)

Prof. Harvey will give an illuminating slideshow on the current science of climate change, its catastrophic implications for the natural world and human societies, and comment on the political implications. Specifically he will address what the Canadian government can and ought be doing to mitigate climate change, and provide an overview of some the major political controversies, as well as discuss solutions.

Dr. Harvey teaches at the Department of Geography at University of Toronto. He has been a climate scientist for 30 years, and has published in peer-reviewed journals, including Climactic Change (2007) on the topic.

This event is hosted by Students Against Climate Change: 416-922-0035

Please post these items. Thank you.

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Further to the Lomborg lecture, next Thursday. For those planning to attend the following information may be of interest. It has been compiled by Students Against Climate Change for public distribution.

Lomborg has been found guilty of scientific dishonesty by a panel of scientists in Denmark, his native country:

Lomborg's errors.

Nobel winning scientist Edward O. Wilson says Lomborg is distorting the truth on climate change and mass extinction:

Edward O. Wilson on Lomborg

Lomorg argues against mitigation of climate change, but the latest IPCC report urges immediate action on this issue to avoid catastrophe:

article on IPCC report"

It is therefore irresponsible and morally reprehensible for Lomborg to suggest that we avoid taking immediate action on climate change.

Lomborg's idea that the cost of mitigating global warming is not economically vialbe is wrong.

The Stern Report shows that if we do nothing the economic costs will be far greater.

Not acting will condemn tens of millions of human beings and half the animal species on Earth to death, through drought, disease, flooding, etc.

Government inaction means that they will occur. The science is very clear on this. See Stern Report:

Stern Report conclusions

To put it bluntly, Lomborg is defending the political agenda that best serves the fossil fuel industries, which have a hand in promoting his worldlwide lectures.

The Frasier Institute, which is bringing Lomborg to Toronto, is an ultra-right group known to have hosted climate change deniers:

Frasier Institute and fossil fuel industry

My environmentally biased report on recent climate conference

2007-11-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

A quick and dirty report on the climate change conference at U of T (Nov. 1-3)

Please note: this is my personal report -- some others who were there saw it differently (see comment by an engineer below) -- but everyone who has commented so far agrees that the direction of geo-engineering and opposing Kyoto is worrisome. Even more worrisome is that no one in the audience thought this problematic enough to say anything -- in fact all the speakers received warm applause.

Economists' message is appealing

What I saw was that many conservative people who are not stupid enough to deny the threat of climate change are nevertheless concerned that the measures taken to mitigate will infringe on their privelaged way of life, which is built on cheap energy. They agree that behavioral change is necessary but are not willing to change themselves or are skeptical of the willingness of the rest of the world to do so. They are therefore receptive when eloquent economists like Scott Barret come along and tell them that technology is the answer.

Adaptation over mitigation

The new (and highly problematic) direction is to argue for "adaptation" over mitigation. While adaptation is necessary, recourse to technological adaptation is problematic if it releives us the responsibility of implementing mitgation for the sake of future generations. Adaptation can include waiting for new technoligies to emerge, even though existing technologies (i.e. renewables) are readily available. The use of adaptation to the exclusion of mitigation requires no change in lifestyle and allows the fossil fuel companies to continue with business-as-usual -- and this is the very source of the problem. It is a foolish direction built on an unjustified faith in technology.

Caption: The "carbon supersucker" (yet to be invented). See this cute video which illustrates carbon sequestration technology.

Conservation and renewables given no weight

I mentioned conservation and renewables several times in Q & A and many of the speakers claimed they support both, but in reality they gave them no weight. They preferred a technological solution, which has a seductive allure: it promotes the idea that more serious action (conservation and change of lifestyle) is unecessary.

Scott Barret and other speakers at the conference said renewables are not adequate. What they mean is that renewables cannot supply the necessary "base load" of our energy needs. The reality is that they can, but only with real conservation efforts, such as those advanced by George Monbiot. But talk of real conservation and changing the structures of society to bring about a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is not popular with those whose wealth is built on inequity and natural resource extraction.

Stacked panels

At this event, a dozen or so high-level speakers -- experts on policy and economics and energy issues -- either endorsed nuclear power, geo-engineeering, and technological solutions to the climate crisis, or said nothing against those options. The whole conference was stacked in this direction. To be fair, there were a few speakers were not in this vein, maybe one per panel. Each panel consisted of 4 or 5 speakers and there were four panels and two keynote speakers in the main event. The student event on Nov. 3rd was entirely different and not as noteworthy as the main conference.

Anti-Kyoto, pro-technology

None of the speakers appeared to be very strongly in favour of regulations to ensure conservation, energy efficiency measures and renewables. Kyoto was dismissed by the first speaker, Scott Barrett (of John Hopkins U), not because it didn't go far enough, but because international regulation to impose mandatory emissions reductions was deemed ineffective. Barret opted for the technological route and the second keynote speaker, Thomas Homer-Dixon (U of T) hammered the message home with the introduction of the idea that geo-engineering the planet's surface is an route we ought to seriously consider.

Scott Barret: "what I'm trying to do is steer the global system to a new place." Whether he would acknowledge this or not, what he is doing is helping the big corporations want to maintain an unsustainable status quo. Barret defends the Asia-Pacific conference and its R & D treaty. He said on Kyto: "you're not going to get it right the first time. A huge problem is that the U.S. walked away from the table." Such statements effectively endorse Harper's stance. In fact, Barret said don't blame Bush and Harper; blame the Kyoto protocol for being inadequate!

Technology is the answer, in his view. He uses the analogy of the oil tankers that used to dump their oil and some technology changed to allow them not to - all the international treaties for 50 years on this issue failed to do what this one technological innovation did. The problem with this analogy is that it refers to one issue; global warming is multi-faceted, requiring an overhaul of the way we life fundamentally, not a quick fix.

Caption: technology is the answer!"

No debate on ethics of technology

There was no discussion or debate regarding the ethical problems associated with the technological solutions endorsed -- which include poisoning 8,000 generations with nuclear waste and the possibility of creating "dead zones" in the oceans or burning off the ozone latyer through massive geo-engineering projects. A blind faith in technology prevails; debate is dismissed in this context.

A pro-technology and adaptationist point of view is to address symptoms and not the cause of global warming. This is much like taking prescription drugs, but not changing one's diet or exercising -- in the end, one is still unhealthy and subject to the side-effects of the drugs. A moral stance on these questions is absolutey necessary. The economists dismiss morality and environmentalist concerns as childish. "An economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde.

The goal: maintenance of the status quo

Every solution offered was consistent with maintaining the current system of endless production and consumption and waste through globalization; this is why the Bush Administration recently endorsed technological solutions at the APEC conference. Barnett and others like him are advising the White House and they are now opting for the 'magic bullet.'

What it amounted to -- and this cannot be stated strongly enough -- is that they were looking for ways to solve the climate crisis without changing the over-consuming lifestyle and system of social injustice that it is built on. They would rather risk destroying life on Earth (a possible consequence of the Teller-Dyson stratosphere reflection idea) than challenge capitalism. They are operating within a narrow ideological range, which views the natural world as existing only for human consumption -- an anthropocentric ideology.

Caption: The "biofuel" solution now being promoted based on corn and palm oil takes food away from those who need it to fuel cars for the rich, destroys forests, causes mass homelessness, and produces substantial GHGs.

Why "realism" is in fact selling out

In their defense we could say that they are "realistic" and "pragmatic" about the state of the world and international politics -- but (and this is critical) what this position omits is a consideration of the free will of individuals to make morally good (or evil) choices. They are really protecting their class interest and abdicating the personal moral responsibility to act for what is right and morally good: a solution that is just and sustainable, not a "magic bullet" technological quick fix that protects the unjust and unsustainable "business-as-usual" model.

A universally agreed on magic bullet does not yet exist, and if even if it did, what are the unforsee consequences? Real solutions do exist; why not pursue them? They cite cost but spend trillions on militarization and now propose to spend tens of millions on R & D, even though renewable conservation solutions exist.

"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?" - Jesus. "Climate altering" is a form of selling your soul because it transgresses on the sacred balance of nature and on human rights.

Caption: Geo-engineering solutions brought to you by the same folks who developed this nifty experiment

Dissent effectively supressed

I wrote a critical note a week before the event worrying that it was anti-Kyoto. It was sent to several students and lists. A law student who received it on a list wrote me back, saying that the organizer was pro-Kyoto. On the strength of this note I remained open-minded regarding the conference and did not invite harcore activists to protest it. I was dissapointed that I had not done so, however, because the keynote speaker, Scott Barret, said that the problem was not with Harper but with Kyoto and essentially sided with Harper in consigning it to oblivion. I addressed him at Q & A and his answer was to suggest that I speak with him at the bar after the event.

Tough questions dismissed

I spoke on four occasions at Q & A and at every turn I was refuted by the speakers, either in a patronizing way or a more rude, dismissive way: they either said that they used to feel as I did but were no longer so idealistic (the patronizing stance) and that environmentalists such as me are to blame for obstructing the real solutions: nuclear and "clean" coal (the dismissive stance).

John Drexhage was one of the latter. He said, "we need nuclear energy and vigorous clean coal capture technology." Referring to me specifically he said that "environmentalists like that have held up progress for years." He spoke against the "environmental contingent in Canada" because Greenpeace and others opposed nuclear energy. On this he said on nuclear: "you can't have it both ways" (meaning c.c. mitigation and no nuclear). Of course this is not true. If you decrease the demand on the base load through conservation an energy future without nuclear is entirely possible. Drexhage also advocated "sustainable development" and more funds for "R & D" even though much technology exists that is adequate to solve the problem (e.g. renewables) - they are just not being implemented widely. He works for Suncor and the pipeline / oil industry in Canada.

Environmental NGOs absent

No one from the established environmental movement (Greenpeace etc) was there to refute nuclear in Q & A. Only Mark Winfield (formerly of Pembina) was there on the environmental side, but he said nothing against nuclear, for which I was critical of him in Q & A. He then admitted the issue, but then this exchange evoked some environmentalist-bashing by John Drexhage, a policy wonk also sat on the panel. It reminded me of OCAA's endorsement of the Portlands Energy Centre -- a narrow-minded solution to a single problem without consideration of HOW the problem is solved.

The illusion that we are seperate from nature

Thomas Homer-Dixon's message was good in terms of emphasizing the science that goes further than IPCC and showing that the crisis is real and dangerous for Canada -- but his suggested solution (geo-engineering) was premised on the idea that nature is there to be sacrificed for our self-preservation -- without consideration of the fact that "eco-cide" also condemns us to death in the end. It is a quick fix that fails to address the root problem. Some who listened to him thought that he did not advocate geo-engineering but instead thought it worth consideration under the circumstances. However, I understood him to mean that he endorsed its use.

Technologists are willing to create dead zones in the oceans to preserve the way of life in North America. In ethics this is called "instrumentalism" and allows for people and animals to be sacrificed for the use of an elite. The worst part is that it is unecessary -- if these same very eloquent men added their voices to those calling for solutions which address the source of the problem, it could save both human beings and the natural environment. We simply need to get rid of politicans who are standing in the way of solving this problem.

I spoke with Homer-Dixon after the talk. He cited China as a reason that he did not emphasize a major conservationist direction and why he preferred the technological route. He said that until last year he was arguing against geo-engineering but that now we can't avoid it. But how do we have the moral authority to steer China and India in the right direction (conservation, renewables, respect for human rights and the environment) if we don't go there ourselves? Moral force is a vastly underestimated force in the world - one that has a lot of political power.

Here is Dixon's comment in The Globe & Mail on geoengineering, which he admits it is "appalling" but essentially says that we have no other choice (meaning that he has given up on mitigation efforts?)

The one thing you can say about geo-engineering is that presumes that human beings (some scientists and politicians) believe that they know the physical systems of the Earth so well that it is acceptable to manipulate them. This same arrogance is what informs much scientific and technological manipulation of the natural world from Descartes and Bacon onward: putting "nature on the rack."

On a positive note some speakers mentioned the need for carbon taxes, which I thought was good -- certainly better than what we have now.

The medium is the message

As if to underscore the fact that changing the way we live in not an option to even be discussed, many of the speakers were flown in (despite the option of video conferencing) and there was a lavish banquet served (not vegan or 100% local food, needless to say). There was a lot of prestige. Waiters served hors d'ouvres and alcoholic beverages, to underscore the class status of the speakers. There was a fine exclusive dinner served afterwards on the Hart House patio. Nothing was environmentally friendly.

The use of academia to legitimize injustice

Many of the speakers used public policy and law in the service of maintaining the status quo, not ever really addressing the source of the problem -- our separation from the natural world, and a consequent system of injustice built on the privelage of a minority over a majority.

Caption: The Munk Centre is uncritical of globalization and open-pit mining. Coincedentially, it is funded by Peter Munk, globalization advocate and mining baron.

The same critique has been applied to Peace & Conflict Studies: it provides not strong critique of war, but instead envisions itself as providing neutral commentary -- this academic treatment of war acts as a de facto endorsement of armed conflict.

In the same way, public policy on climate change and the environment talks about the Kyoto treaty, for instance, without consideration of the fact that such talk actually influences political discussion in a particular direction -- in other words, without recognizing the agency of academics to effect change.

But to acknowledge this would be to also acknowledge one's personal contribution to the problem and move to correct it -- in other words, to become an advocate of a particular direction. There is no such thing as neutrality when failure to take a stance in effect endorses the status quo.

Caption: Harper's legacy - climate change denial and false promises on the environment. They are continually citing the case of China, but Chinese emissions are still much less per capita than ours. See Rich nations urged to ante up

The risks of geo-engineering

Geoengineering, it should be noted, includes mirrors in space, iron filings in the sea to increase CO2 absorption, and other such experiments. This option is all about changing the planet rather than changing ourselves. It is the extreme of human hubris and arrogance to engage in "climate altering." See WWF opposition to these experiments, already under way in the Galapogos Islands.

One of early geo-physicists was Edward Teller, the guy who invented the hydrogen bomb; he wanted to put reflective ballons in space - until someone showed that doing so would burn off the ozone layer. A lot of these guys have no problem with mass murder for the sake of advancing their particular technology.

Teller's 1998 article advancing sunlight-reflecting particles into the upper atmosphere:

Teller's article

IPCC's 2001 comment on Teller's idea:

"... most papers on geo-engineering contain expressions of concern about unexpected environmental impacts, our lack of complete understanding of the systems involved, and concerns with the legal and ethical implications (NAS, 1992; Flannery et al., 1997; Keith, 2000). Unlike other strategies, geo-engineering addresses the symptoms rather than the causes of climate change."

Source: IPPC on Teller idea

Here is Greenpeace's take on the issue:

Ocean Iron Fertilization

Also, see this critique of geoengineering

And this: commentary by climate scientists

Listening to the wrong guys

Prof. Larry Schmidt's strong critique of technology is important in this regard but it is not well known (at this time). Other critiques of technology were not aired.

Meanwhile, the speakers, Thomas Homer-Dixon and Scott Barrett (and David Hughes on the peak oil side of the debate) are using using their great erudition and academic prestige to advance technological solutions that could be very problematic.

Barrett and other economists have the ears of the world leaders right now; it eases the politicians' job with voters in developing nations who want quick fixes. Those who have a more ethically sound message are ignored as flakes.

Careerism and social status within academia

I got the feeling that the speakers used a technical language to establish rank over the audience and affirm their status as experts. The sociology of science confirms that is actually happens.

What I had to do at that conference is reveal my bias for a solution which rejects the status quo (in terms of established social and political hierarchies), which in their eyes made me look naive and foolish.

At the breaks I chose to hand out D8 flyers (many of which were rejected). In doing this and speaking as an activist I risked diminshment of social status with suit-and-tie academic cirlces, while most of the students in our group schmoozed with the "important people."

The same thing will be happening in Bali for the climate talks: schmoozing over drinks and public policy exchanges. Environmentalists have been going to these things for years and are probably used to getting sidelines. I read an account of this at the Rio Summitt in 1999 by Jeremy Legget (Carbon Wars); the Greenpeace delegate physically collapsed at the time!

For the policy wonks, this issue is a vehicle for them to live a fine life, get research grants and good job. It is a great shame that self-interest has infected the human race so thoroughly.

Some of the speakers and audience reminded me of Harper's conversion to action on climate change: motivated only by political expedience and perhaps the recognition that their personal fortune is at risk. See Harper's climate change denial record. Also see this excellent piece on The Seven Stages of Greenwash. I would say that many in the audience are at stage six and seven, that it is the fault of the Chinese and that it may be too late to act. I would add an eighth stage: It's not too late to act, but that action should not infringe on the way we live. Let nature bear the burden (i.e geo-engineering) and this can be fixed through a manipulation of markets and public policy (which of couse must include clean coal and nuclear!)

Rejection of morality, environmentalism, activism

One speaker actually dismissed the "moral imperative" of environmental activism that I brought up and said that instead that only politics would prevail. In so saying, however, she reinforced a negative message: that activism is meaningless -- when in fact is the most meaningful thing anyone can do at this time. Their solution -- technology -- simply creates more problems because it is premised on seperation from the natural world.

Environmentalists dismissed

Admist this posturing, anyone who identified himself as an environmentalist was dismissed. There was an uncomfortable silence on the part of some students when I ask them hand out flyers; they take them and pocket them. The best activists in the room were not students -- Sharon Howarth, Pieter Basedow, Rita Bijon -- except for James Nugent who was also good.

The problem with liberal reformers

The funny part is that the liberal reformers regard themselves as good enlightened people because they are tackling these issues in a very nuanced way which gives lip service to justice and ethics, while their more crass colleagues in the economic and business department are openly biased in favour of the interests of the ruling elite.

An alternative global warming conference should include

* Problems with the technological solutions (nuclear, R & D spending, hydrogen, geoengineering, geosequestration, clean coal)

* Conservation & energy efficiency & renewables: how they are already successfully in use

* The use of adaptation and technology arguments to exclude mitigation and conservation

* Moving policy from a narrow ideological framework (law, economics) to a holistic, ecological framework that includes considerations of social justice, community participation and mitigating biodiversity loss.

* Greenwash and use of narrow ideological debate to implement potentially totalitarian solutions

* A critique of the lack of debate and lack of environmental assessment in the introduction of new technologies

Basically, we have to correct the path of the climate change movement from nuclear and geoingeering and to conservation and renewables. The issues have been hijacked by anti-envrionmentalists for obvious reasons: money, power. This has to be a cooperative effort by all environmentalists and those who care about social justice -- basically anyone with with a conscience.

Conclusion?

p.s. Check out this weird radio message against geo-engineering for fun.

See this great article on how a small discrepancy in NASA data was seized by climate change deniers in feeding frenzy of exaggeration: Climate Change: Deniers Jump on NASA Gaff, While Greenland on Verge of Meltdown.

Activists infiltrate and satirize climate criminals

2007-11-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

Here, famous activists the Yes Man, pose as Exxon Mobil, to satirize the oil giant's evil ways at an oil industry conference in Calgary:

Vivoleum by Exxon Mobil

This group, no doubt inspired by the Yes Men, infiltrates a carbon-trading conference in NYC:

Greenwash infiltrators

Climate woes threaten human survival: UN

2007-10-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Caption: Portraits of the plight of humanity due to climate change

Caption: the responsible way to avoid a disasterous future

UN report says some progress, but not enough in cliamte change, extinction or destruction of oceans

October 25, 2007 / Peter Gorrie, Environment Reporter

Earth’s environment has tumbled downhill to the point where “humanity’s very survival” is at stake, a branch of the United Nations said today.

In the 20 years since the first major report urging sustainable development, progress has been achieved on a few “straightforward” problems such as air and water pollution, according to the latest “Global Outlook” from the United Nations Environment Program.

Despite many conferences and negotiations, “there are no major issues raised (in the 1987 document) for which the foreseeable trends are favourable,” the report warns, citing failures in areas such as climate change, extinction of species and destruction of ocean fish stocks.

Today’s 540-page report is the fourth issued by the UNEP since a commission headed by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland published the groundbreaking call to action, “Our Common Future,” two decades ago.

Brundtland’s commission recommended that, since they are so closely linked, the environment, economic and social issues must be integrated into any decisions about development, so it occurs in a way that protects the environment.

That hasn’t happened. The result, states the new Outlook, is not only that “in too many countries, environmental policy remains secondary to economic growth,” but also that environmental degradation is undermining economic development and “threatens all aspects of human well-being.”

The report’s authors state that their aim “is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for action.” But because the main environmental concerns are complex and there’s little appetite for anything that upsets the status quo, solutions will be hard to come by they say: “The scale of the challenge is huge.”

Among changes since 1987 that have impacted the environment:

Earth’s human population has grown by 34 per cent, from 5 billion to 6.7 billion. That has led to destruction or depletion of water, soil, forests, species and almost every one of the planet’s resources.

International trade has tripled. Its benefits are offset by its contribution to the spread of invasive species in the Great Lakes and almost every other water body.

The world’s average per capita income has risen by 40 per cent, but the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.

_______________________________

Caption: Our glorious leader

"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." -President Bush, Sept. 23, 2002, Trenton, New Jersey, speech

"First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country." -President Bush on the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, Washington Post, April 24, 2001

"Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods." -President Bush, Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
_______________________________

Air quality has improved in some places, most noticeably in the rich developed countries, but often because polluting industries have moved to poor nations. Although measures to control ozone-depleting substances are considered a success, the ozone hole continues to grow. And bad indoor or outdoor air is estimated to kill 2 million people each year.

Greenhouse gas emissions have risen by a third, leading to much higher concentrations in the atmosphere and the threat of catastrophic climate change.

________________________

Caption: Emissions created by planes - a growing problem.

Caption: Streets Are For People activist liberates trees from concrete enclosure, allowing more rain water to seep into the ground.
________________________

The yield from an average hectare of cropland has increased to 2.5 tonnes, from 1.8 tonnes in 1987, but “unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change.”

Intensive ocean fishing is devastating some species very quickly and, increasingly further down the food chain. Worse, the demand for fish is expected to increase by about 1.5 per cent a year.

By 2025, nearly 2 billion people will live in countries faced with absolute shortages of water.

A major obstacle to progress is the resistance to change by governments and large polluting industries, the report states.

Negotiations on environmental agreements frequently fail because of disputes over who is responsible for problems and who should pay for solutions.

That, the report states, is part of one of the major environmental issues: justice.

“The question of justice is perhaps the greatest moral question emerging in relation to environmental change and sustainable development,” the report states.

“Growing evidence indicates that the burden of environmental change is falling far from the greatest consumers of environmental resources, who experience the benefits of development.”

Meanwhile, “people living in poverty in the developing world, suffer the negative effects of environmental degradation.” And, “costs of environmental degradation will be experienced by.....future generations.

“Profound ethical questions are raised when benefits are extracted from the environment by those who do not bear the burden.”

Caption: As oil prices rise and resources become scarce, totalitarianism will become worse. The role of citizens in standing up for human and environmental rights is therefore necessary.

The report is not as certain about solutions as it is about problems.

“We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental problems is increasing faster than our policy responses,” it states. “To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences in the future, we need new policy approaches.”

Caption: In the wake of a Tsunami. Natural disasters caused by weather increase in frequency and intensity as a result of climate change caused by human activity. They are, in a sense, no longer "acts of God."

The basic aim must be to move environmental concerns from the edge to the centre of decision-making. As well, instead of trying to cope with the impacts of environmental damage, the focus should be on reducing the causes, including economic and population growth, resource consumption and social values.

That can be done through measures such as “green” taxes and economic measures that take into account the value of Earth’s resources and the cost of pollution and other damage.

“Determined action now is cheaper than waiting for better solutions to emerge,” the report states.

Science vindicates Gore, finds UK judge in error

2007-10-23T05:17:00.000-07:00

According to climate scientists, UK judge's verdict on Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is in error on several points:

first Vindication of Gore".

second vindication of Gore.

D8 is coming! Global Climate Day of Action

2007-10-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

Next organizing meeting for U of T:

Fri. Oct. 26, 6:00 p.m. Hart House (room TBA).

Main message (now decided on by city-wide group) ...

KYOTO NOW!

Global climate rally

Green energy. Mandatory emissions reductions.

Sat. Dec. 8th. 12 noon. Dundas Square (Dundas & Yonge)

http://www.actfortheearth.org/climatechaos/

The 11th Hour: help get this important film out on DVD!

2007-10-19T15:33:00.001-07:00

This film is not in the theatres anymore and not yet available on DVD (as of this writing). Warner Bros. is not sure if they're going to put it out. Please email them and urge them to issue it on DVD immediately! Go to their customer site at http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/main/help/customer_service.jsp
and fill in comment page with something like the following "I'd like to request that you issue The 11th Hour on DVD. I would buy a copy and I know many others, who are concerned about the environment, who would as well. Thank you!"

Film Review By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

The 11th Hour
Directed by Leila Conners Petersen, Nadia Conners

The 11th Hour boldly takes us way beyond An Inconvenient Truth with its incisive and cutting-edge examination of the global environmental crisis. It explores the larger picture of what's happening in all areas of the planet — climate change, species extinction, soil degradation, loss of forests, pollution of the oceans, and more. But it doesn't stop with the bad news. This documentary ends on a real note of hope, offering a visionary road map to a sustainable future. We may be in the 11th hour, the last moment when change is possible, but change is possible.

The documentary's directors. Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners, interviewed 50 leading scientists, thinkers, designers, historians, and leaders, then created a film collage of their knowledge and commentaries on the present-day crisis and their sound ideas for saving the planet from a catastrophe which may result in the extinction of human beings. Producer and narrator Leonardo DiCaprio challenges us to change our consciousness and transform our lives by living lightly upon the earth in harmony with nature. The 11th Hour is a deeply spiritual film that proclaims the evolutionary importance of love, compassion, mindfulness, reverence, and connectedness with all living beings.

An ancient Chinese proverb states: "If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed." David Suzuki, an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster, says in one segment of the documentary: "It was the human mind that was the key to our very survival. Now when you think that we evolved in Africa about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and compared to the other animals that must have been born on the plains of that time, we weren't very impressive. We weren't very many, we weren't very big, we weren't gifted with special senses. The one thing, the key to our survival and our taking over the planet, was the human brain. But because the human mind invented the concept of a future, we're the only animal on the planet that was able to recognize: we could affect the future by what we do today."

But over time, and especially since the industrial revolution, we have separated ourselves from nature. Add to the mix the belief in continuing progress understood as limitless growth and limitless expansion, the population explosion, and new technology, and the results have been breakdowns in the ecosystems — floods, hurricanes, drought, deforestation, desertification, and the melting of the polar ice caps. Recent disasters have created more than 150 million environmental refugees, and that's only counting humans.

Wangari Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, appears in the documentary. She says, "In my own part of the world, I keep telling people, 'Let us not cut trees irresponsibly. Let us not destroy especially the forested mountains. Because if you destroy the forests on these mountains, the rivers will stop flowing and the rains will become irregular and the crops will fail and you will die of hunger and starvation.' Now the problem is, people don't make those linkages." She and the other commentators calls for a change in our consciousness. The entire human population is now confronted with a convergence of crises which require us to work together. Instead of living in denial or sinking into despair, we can act in concert with others to save the planet.

Caption: compassion for one another and the Earth is the answer

Real change will require our understanding the motivations and confronting the forces and institutions that resist change, including corporations, government, economies, and cultural influences. For example, American children, exposed to television ads daily, may recognize 1000 corporate logos and not known the names of any native plants in their backyard. Psychologist James Hillman observes that "We have lost the beauty of the world so we try to possess the world." Bioneers founder Kenny Ausubel puts it bluntly: "We have the possibility of blowing it on a global scale."

But humans also have caring, compassionate, and inventive sides — capacities desperately needed in these times. In a transformative moment in the documentary, author, environmentalist, and green entrepreneur Paul Hawken says that this is actually an exciting time to be alive because we get to "reimagine everything we do. This generation gets to completely change this world." Wade Davis of the National Geographic Society agrees: " All of these forces sweeping over the planet are the forces created by human beings. And if human beings are the source of the problem we can be the foundation for the solution." A number of scientists then present very pragmatic things that individuals can do and also big ideas that could reverse such problems as soil degradation. The ozone layer, once thought to be permanently damaged, is healing, and the rest of the ecosystem can recover as well. But it will take the application of our technology and ingenuity to new ways of living.

All this will require a change of perspective and concerted ethical action similar to the civil rights movement of 40 years ago in America. And it would be wise to remember the words and deeds of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: "Love is humankind's most potent weapon for personal and social transformation."

Love for the Earth and all living beings will stir us to drive less, be more frugal, eat organic and local, and clean up trash and our other messes. Love for the Earth will encourage us to redesign urban environments and regulate corporations that are terrorizing the earth. Love for the Earth will help us restore the notion of the commons and compel us to work together with people everywhere on our fragile yet resilient planet.

Why nuclear energy is not the solution to climate change

2007-10-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

Tim Flannery and George Monbiot are fine environmentalists -- both have written influent books on climate change -- but both are wrong to consider nuclear energy viable. The pro-nuclear position is logically and morally bankrupt and cannot, in good conscience be supported, if you consider the following:

The waste storage problem has not been solved and will not be solved. Right now there is no way properly store the waste, which is lethal to human beings and remains so for at least 25,000 years. This negatively effects 8,000 generations of human beings for the sake of 3 or 4 generations of energy users.

Our governments are told by the nuclear lobby that they will find the technology to safely dispose of the waste -- this is based on a blind faith in technological process -- the same faith that is responsible for much of the world's ills.

Why take the risk in case they will fail? I see them pushing ahead blindly with no consideration for future generations, unable to deliver on their promise. And if our opposition to climate change is based on the moral argument that it is wrong to kill human beings (not to mention biodiversity) the argument for nuclear power is logically inconsistent because there is no way that the risk to future generations can be guaranteed.

If you start playing utilitarian games -- that the lives of this group is worth more than that group and so that group has to be sacrificed -- you fall into the trap that the nation-states and corporate giants are already in: justifying harm to some based on the argument of a 'greater good' being served.

The more just position is that all human lives are equally valuable and that any technology which causes irreparable harm is not justified, especially when truly clean, safe alternatives exist.

Renewables might not produce as much energy as the industrialists want to fuel their 24 hour factories for making good that none of us need, but I'd rather do without these factories and these useless goods than sacrifice the lives of future generations.

Caption: Victim of Hiroshima / Nagasaki bombings

It is logical to assume that this civilization will collapse under its own weight (aided by climate change and peak oil, leading to rising energy prices and increasing wars over scarce resources) leaving 8,000 future generations with the legacy of radioactive waste.

Furthermore, when you consider that main demand for nuclear power is coming from big industries which want cheap power for the manufacturing and processing base, and that this furthers a society of unnecessary consumption and waste, the argument for nuclear energy appear to be little more than a ploy by industrialists and nuclear lobbyists to use the climate crisis for their own ends, at the expense of the public who are being asked to pay the enormous costs of building the reactors.

This cost, by the way, comes at the expense of the true solution to the energy crisis: renewables and conservation. The money that could be spend on these things is instead spent on nuclear. In Ontario the provincial government plans to spend $43 billion in public funds on nuclear energy, which will benefit the big industrial energy users, who represent 1.2% of the user base and consume 55% of the energy in Ontario and get it for a cheaper rate (3.2 cents per kilowatt hour) than the public (a fluctuating price of 4 to 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour).

The same $46 billion could have been spent on renewables and conservation -- but these received only token funding because it is mistakenly believed that they cannot meet "base load" demand. The government had a choice: investment in decentralized renewables or investment in centralized nuclear. They chose nuclear based on the "base load" argument.

Caption: Almost every news outlet in Ontario purposely chose to ignore debate on the question of nuclear energy, despite the fact that it was the single largest expenditure in the world ($46 billion). Instead, we were inundated with information about religious funding for schools - the average Ontarian did not question what they were told (or not told) or did not care - not unlike the proles in Orwell's 1984.

Dr. Keith Stewart of the World Wildlife Fund produced a report called "Renewable is Doable" that showed three possible scenarios in which Ontario could achieve base load demand without nuclear or coal, depending on the dates for coal phaseout. He projected a possible coal phaseout in 2009 as opposed to the McGunity government's 2014 (which is suspect).

The point is that the world has enough potential wind and solar power to meet base load if we combine that with cogeneration methods and a massive conservation push -- and this would hurt ONLY the big industrialists who rely on cheap energy, and the nuclear lobby. But in fact a more just sustainable society would also help them by forcing them not harm other human beings ... they would have less money and would have to live like the rest of humanity and this ultimately, would benefit them as well as us.

Ontario and other governments are choosing nuclear because it doesn't serve the needs of the industries they cater to and renewables and conservation -- which actually solve the problem -- require a new sort of thinking, one that does not favour endless consumption and production and blind faith in technology.

Furthermore consider that drinking water is contaminated by miniscule leaks from the power plants into drinking water -- traces of tritium are in the drinking water as we speak -- in Canada the allowable level is 100x more than in the EU.

I haven't even gone into the risk posed by nuclear power plants -- the fact that they make great targets for terrorists and that the risk of fallout from such an attack is that we have another Chernobyl. Now, if the world were a kind and loving place and terrorism was not being stimulated by likes of George Bush and Osama bin Laden, this would be no concern, but it is naive to think that such an attack will not occur this century.

Wind and solar power, on the other hand, are decentralized and do not make good targets. And they give municipalities and individual users "energy sovereignty" so they don't have to rely on a centralized grid.

Tim Flannery and George Monbiot are fine environmentalists but they haven’t thought their way through this issue thoroughly. To sum up:

The waste disposal problem is unsolved and will remain unsolved, renewables and conservation can meet the base load demand if we eliminate wasteful production and consumption (which is also a good in itself!), nuclear energy usurps limited funding for renewables, and the fact of drinking water contamination -- all point to logical reasons for why nuclear is not a good idea -- unless you believe that the benefit to a few capitalists outweighs the good of 8,000 generations of human beings.

Caption: Nuclear energy feeds nuclear weapons proliferation, now and for thousands of years to come, long after the current governments (and civilizations that bred them) are gone.

The whole argument for nuclear is premised on the continuation of a system of endless consumption and production without consideration of finite resources, and faith in technology - that the waste problem will be solved. Where does this faith come from?

Cheap energy has allowed us burn through the renewable natural resources more quickly resulting in overfishing and deforestation, as well as the overconsumption of less renewable natural resources such a healthy topsoil and fresh water. Nuclear energy would allow that to continue and leave us with a legacy of radioactive poison.

No fresh water, no oil, no trees, no biodiversity, no arable land, useless waste products leeching poisons into the ground, toxic mine tailings -- this is why E.O. Wilson and others say (correctly) that "future generations will not forgive us."

Protect human rights and the environment by regulating Canada's extraction industries

2007-10-18T18:01:00.000-07:00

Attn: Toronto Burma Roundtable

We represent a group of volunteer activists in Toronto trying to raise awareness of the necessity of implementing government regulations of Canadian extraction companies operating abroad. This includes mining, oil and natural gas extraction.

We spoke breifly at the first Free Burma rally at City Hall, referring to Barrick Gold. We would like to speak with the Toronto Burma Roundtable representatives about urging the Canadian government to change the law with regard to mining and oil interests. This would represent a positive step towards isolating the military junta in Burma, who depend on funds from the mining corporations. Apparently, they were given 50% of a joint venture with Ivanhoe.

Now Ivanhoe has apparently suspended its operations in Burma temporarily, but in order to effect a permanent solution -- meaning getting that company out of Burma permanently -- Canada needs to enforce international human rights and environmental standards of Canadian companies operating abroad. The most relevant document to refer in this regard to is the Halifax Initiative. See http://www.halifaxinitiative.org/dirtypractices/ For an overview of Ivanhoe and Burma see http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/Burma

We know that the Harper government is not likely to change the law willingly, since that government is openly cooperative with Barrick and the open-pit mining industry. The mining industry favours voluntary (not mandatory) compliance with human rights laws. What this really means is that they are interested in ignoring those laws as much as they can. The claim of voluntary "corporate social responsibility" is, in our opinion, really a way of skirting the law. That is why regulations as suggested by participants in the Halifax Initiative are necessary.

The opposition leaders in Ottawa can demand a change in the law and make this a platform issue vis-a-vis the question of Burma. Pushing through government regulation in Canada will hurt the dictatorship by requiring that Canadian companies not do business in Burma while the illegal regime is in power. Along with an arms embargo, there is no better way to non-violently disempower this regime than by taking away their sources of funding. This would not only go a long way towards solving the problem in Burma, by helping to cut off support for the military who profit from unsustainable extraction industries, but it would also help tens of thousands of people in other countries, such as Chile, Ecquador, South Africa, Phillipines, etc. Currently 60% of the world's major mining corporations are in incorportate in and have head offices located in Canada. Oil extraction and refining is another major source of pollution that needed law reform would address. These industries not only pollute local environments; they also add to global warming through CO2 emissions. Much good would be served by regulating them.

It is also important to note, in a few words, why open-pit mining is problematic. It uses up all the fresh water in a region, depriving local farmers and villagers of needed water, and it produces toxic mine tailings which then poison the region and the local people, with horrible results. The employment provided by the mines is temporary and dangerous and not worth the health risks and environmental damage.

We were glad to see that Jack Layton and Olivia Chow are involved. Perhaps they can bring this matter up in Parliment: specifically the need to impose mandatory regulations on Canadian extraction industries operating abroad in accordance with the recommendations in the Halifax Initiative. This would be a concrete way of dealing with the military regime.

Sincerely, Paul York and Pieter Basedow

Letter to Ontario's mass media, regarding their failure to report on energy issues in the provincial election

2007-10-18T17:44:00.001-07:00

This letter is addressed to the major mass media players (newsprint and television) in Toronto and Ontario.

All of your editors had ample opportunity to air public debate over the most important issue in the provincial election, the world's single largest investment of nuclear energy $46 billion), which affects the health and pocketbooks of all Ontarians and will have a huge negative impact on the environment.

The voters could have and should have been told what the issues were, but they weren't. There was no shortage of press releases, protests, all-candidates debates and citizens' forums on this issue, so that wasn't the problem.

The problem was not the environmentalist and activists and people of good conscience. No, the problem was you: you didn't show up to anything and you ignored the issue from the outset. Coverage, if there was any, was biased and one-sided in favour of nuclear energy.

For example, it was scientifically demonstrated that 100% of Ontario's energy needs could be met by renewables and conservation (by Dr. Keith Stewart of WWF), and yet this was never reported. There was a protest of nuclear energy at Queen's Park. There were pickets againt coal power. There were dozens of well-organized public meeting and debates and forums on the issue. There were dozens if not hundreds of press releases. This was a massive failure of journalistic responsibility.

This silence and bias by the mass media in Ontario effectively sanctions lethal smog (which kills 1700 per year). It sanctions the dumping of nuclear waste on native lands, affecting 8,000 generations (25,000 years of radioactive waste leeching into ground water). It sanctions lack of investment in renewables and conservation because $46 billion spent on nuclear was $46 billion NOT spent on renewables -- this consequently hurt the environment and furthers inaction on climate change. It sanctions a massive tax burden over twenty (or more) years to pay the bill for nuclear energy so that a few big industries can have cheap power at the expense of the rest of us and the environment. Don't believe me? Read the article below.

So my only conclusion is that your editors and newsdesks are guilty of silencing debate and sanctioning this evil. I used the word "evil" because it is appropriate to describe murder -- climate change and radioactivity kill and inaction against them adds the casualties overseas and in the future. The provincial Liberals will not be here in 10,000 years to ensure that nuclear waste they plan to create will not poison children. We now know that nuclear energy actually hurts our chances of fighting climate change, which is already lethal. By not reporting the truth, you the media, became complicit with those who guilty of killing future generations through radioactive waste and climate change.

To all editors and reporters who shirked their moral obligation to report the facts in an unbiased manner and whose implicit or explicit endorsement of nuclear energy has led to this gross betrayal of the public good and the voters' right to be informed of the real issues at stake: shame on all of you!
___________________________________________

Why isn't nuclear energy an election issue?
The Record (Kitchener, Cambridge And Waterloo)
Friday, October 5, 2007
Page: A15
Section: Insight
Byline: DAVE CAMPANELLA
Source: FOR THE RECORD

The most important and least discussed issue of the upcoming election is
the province's energy crisis. If Ontario remains on its "business as usual"
trajectory of energy use, demand will soon dangerously exceed supply.

While the NDP and the Green party support alternative options, both the
Liberals and Progressive Conservatives prefer the easy way out by continuing to
rely on nuclear energy as a major source of our electricity. These pro-nuclear
parties adhere to the view that nuclear is cost effective, reliable, and an
environmentally friendly option to fight climate change. These claims are
questionable.

Calculations that show nuclear energy to be cheaper than alternatives rely
on favourable assumptions regarding construction costs and performance rates,
as well as omitting costs of handling nuclear waste and decommissioning
reactors. Ontario's past offers more of the real-world experience.

The actual costs of constructing Ontario's five existing nuclear reactors
were, on average, 100 per cent over the original estimates, while their
performance rates have been about half of what was expected, and
unforeseen shutdowns meant increased reliance on coal plants.
The $19.4 billion debt Ontario Hydro suffered, largely due to its nuclear
investments, was then off-loaded on to consumers who continue to pay
it off on every energy bill.

Such results are not isolated to Ontario. Globally, most investors and
governments have been avoiding the technology. Investment in new
capacity has dropped off steadily since peaking in the 1980s, with more
megawatts of wind power now being added worldwide than nuclear.
The average age of the 442 reactors in operation in the world today
now corresponds with the average age a reactor is shut down.
An Massachusetts Institute of Technology study concluded
that with current policies nuclear power "is just too expensive" and The
Economist found that it is "too costly to matter" as a potential energy
supply option.

Because the full lifetime of a reactor, from initial planning to final
decommission, could be over a century, committing to nuclear power for
base load supply determines the future mix of the energy supply far into the future.
As revealed by the 2003 blackout, nuclear plants have difficulty reacting to
emergency shutdowns. The United States has suffered from 51 reactor
shutdowns that have lasted for over a year. Additionally, a fire in a reactor after
Japan's recent earthquake and the flooding of a reactor in India after the
2004 tsunami show that nuclear power is vulnerable, especially to increasingly
erratic weather.

Nuclear advocates often describe nuclear power as "green" because the
fission reaction that takes place in a nuclear reactor releases no direct carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions. The Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA) claims that nuclear
energy "emits no pollutants into the air." But life-cycle analysis, which
includes emissions from relevant uranium activities and reactor
construction, show that Canada's nuclear system releases between 468,000 and
594,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. In fact, so much energy is used during
supporting processes that a recent study for the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change concludes a reactor built today is likely to consume more
energy, mostly carbon-based, during its lifetime than it produces. That makes
nuclear energy an inefficient investment to fight climate change.

Uranium mining to fuel nuclear power in Canada is also responsible for
100,000 tonnes of radioactive tailings, the leftover sludge, 2.9 million tones of
waste rock, and associated contamination of groundwater and surrounding
environments. Nuclear reactors are huge water users, with the Darlington and
Pickering facilities alone estimated to use 8.9 trillion litres per year. As well,
they are sources of routine and accidental releases of radionuclides, sulphur
dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrazine into the air. And "green" nuclear
power also generates radioactive wastes including highly-toxic substances such as
plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,300 years.

As of 2003, 1.7 million used fuel bundles were in temporary storage in
Canada, and that number is growing. More than 50 years after Canada decided to
develop nuclear power there is no long-term management plan in place. Although
burying the waste deep underground has been proposed by the Nuclear Waste
Management Organization (NWMO) and is the favoured response globally, no such
facility yet exists anywhere in the world. Such facilities must be designed to last for
approximately a million years and to secure the waste not only from the
outside environment, but also from people who might use the material for weapons,
or other destructive purposes. The NWMO estimates its proposal would cost $24
billion and take 300 years to be fully implemented.

Moving the radioactive waste from temporary storage at the different
reactors to a central storage site would require 50 truck trips per month, for 30
years. The potential for an accident or sabotage during transportation, with resulting
health and environmental damage, makes the plan risky. But most of the
risk is deflected to future generations, who must carry the burden of our
generation's electricity generation in the form of hazardous waste.

Better options exist. In order to ensure flexibility, many energy experts
favour a diverse, decentralized energy supply combined with strong demand
reduction and management programs. This is the "soft" path.

Nuclear energy, in contrast, is heavily centralized, has long lead times
and high capital costs, requires remote locations, and relies on projections of
rising demand to justify expenditures. It epitomizes the inflexible "hard"
path option.

A sustainable energy future would be based on a diverse supply -- including
wind, solar, geothermal, heat and power cogeneration, biomass, small hydro,
natural gas, efficiency -- and demand management.

A recent study by the Pembina Institute has shown that investing $18.2
billion in Ontario over 15 years could reduce projected energy demand by 41 per
cent, and the vast majority of that cost would be recovered by consumers through
energy savings. The same study found that those energy savings combined
with wind, solar, biomass, hydro, could meet 79 per cent of Ontario's projected
energy needs in 2020. With improved technology and lower costs, that
percentage would continue to grow, leaving little room for the inflexibility of
nuclear power.

Institutions around the world are showing us how, with more aggressive and
empowering policies. Spain has mandated solar PV and hot water heating in
all new construction. California has set a target of a million solar roofs by
2017. And in Austria and Sweden over a quarter of energy is supplied through
renewable sources. Germany has recently passed legislation requiring its public
utilities to buy a fixed amount of renewable energy, with the aim of replacing at
least 20 per cent of the supply by 2020. The costs of wind, solar, and geothermal
systems have all dropped exponentially over the past few decades, with a
corresponding rise in installed capacity, even in the face of receiving only a taste of
the public subsidies given to nuclear power.

Ontario is at a difficult juncture in its energy future. But that juncture
represents an opportunity for a new direction. Instead of choosing what we
know doesn't work, let's learn from other's successes and try something that
does. Instead of choosing the easy way, let's choose the smart way.

Dave Campanella is a recent graduate from University of Waterloo's
environment and resource studies program .

Warming happening faster than expected

2007-10-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

Warming is happening faster than expected because of increased industrial activities around the world. That means the target of 94% emissions cut by 2030 (Monbiot, circa 2005) is no longer good enough. Many are calling for 100% reductions of GHG emissions by 2020. The reality is that barring a miracle we will not acheive it. Another disaster of epic proportions, such as Katrina, will be needed to wake the world out of its stupor enough to DEMAND that governments start acting. Even then it is uncertain if they will act: the media will try to spin the story in a direction consistent with the interests of the wealthy elite that own them, and peaceful mass protests may very well be met with riot police. Greenwash and voluntary measures appear to be the strategy of choice for avoiding mandatory binding targets. Canada and other industrial nations are on a collision course for disaster on several fronts: peak oil, climate change, waste production and natural resource depletion. See http://www.thestar.com/article/264903

Letter to CTV-TV regarding anti-environment stance of broadcaster

2007-10-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

Attn: CTV News and editors

It concerns me that CTV broadcaster Lloyd Robertson two weeks ago stated on TV, in response to the APEC climate talks, that "Stephen Harper doesn't really want climate change. Doesn't he have a point? Canada produces only 2% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Why should we hurt ourselves economically [by complying with Kyoto?]"

Needless to say I was shocked by this commentary. This is hardly an objective or balanced point of view, especially when you consider that Canadians are among the highest emitters of CO2 in the world.

Furthermore, Canada's international reputation is now tarnished by Mr. Harper's climate change denial and position at the climate talks in favour of the Bush Administration's position -- which is effectively support Exxon Mobil, Shell and the oil and coal industries.

In fact, it seems that Mr. Robertson acted as a de facto apologist for the Harper government and the oil industry which that government has decided to represent against the wishes of the majority of Canadians. I would call this biased reporting.

If Mr. Robertson cannot relay the news regarding the APEC climate conference without adding biased comments which misrepresent the issues, his journalistic credentials are highly suspect.

And earlier this week CTV interviewed climate change denier Tim Ball, implying that he represented one side of a "debate among scientists" on the issue of global warming, but failing to inform us that Ball is funded by Exxon Mobil and that his views are overwhelmingly rejected by the vast majority of climate scientists worldwide.

Nor were we informed by CTV that Mr. Ball's "research" has never passed muster in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, whereas the emperical evidence that global warming is caused by human activity and is already resulting in global catastrophe (which will only get worse) is peer-reviewed by every major scientific body addressing the issue in every industrialized nation. The peer-reviewed consensus on climate change is overwhelmingly indisuptable. CTV, by airing Mr. Ball's interview, falsely portrayed a debate where none exists and is therefore (again) biased and irresponsible.

Additionally, I found an online article at your site on climate change denial, reprinted from the from the Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20021113/anti_kyoto_scientists_021113/20021113/

Again, it is an altogether biased article in that it fails to mention that their work is not peer-reviewed and is therefore entirely without scientific merit) and fails to articulate the peer-reviewed scientifically accurate account of what is actually happening.

Additionally, I have reviewed CTV's online coverage of the issues at
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070214/kyoto_faq_070214/20070425?hub=Specials&pr=showAll

This is far more balanced than the other online piece, and it is a shame that Mr. Robertson and the editors of the CTV News do not reflect this more balanced perspective.

Even so, I have a few words of criticism for this article. I find that it focuses far too much on the idea that there be will some great economic burden placed on Canada by complying with Kyoto targets. This is an idea advanced largely by the Harper government, but it fails to acknowledge 1) the argument for a thriving market based on green technology, as exemplified by California, 2) the economic costs of not acting, as illustrated by the Blair government's famous Stern report (which applies to global economies), and 3) it fails to mention the rather obvious point that economic benefit will mean very little if human civilization collapses as a result of catastrophic climate change. These are well known points that the article
could have covered.

The economic argument, used in this way, is the result of a narrow-minded worldview -- that of some economists and politicians -- and to suggest that it should be the primary consideration of news commentary is misleading. Of course the new media tends to focus on conflict and the economic debate is where the conflict is, but if so then at least present an alternative economic perspective, as exemplified by the Stern Report.

Lastly, your online article mentions George Monbiot's suggested target of 90% by 2030, but does not mention that he illustrates that it is both possible and necessary to do this. Please read the first few chapters of the book to understand why this is so.

I am writing primarily to ask that your new broadcasters not continue with biased reporting in faviour of Stephen Harper's position or in defense of continued action on global warming, since that is not good journalism and nor is it socially or morally or environmentally repsponsible.

Paul York
on behalf of Students Against Climate Change, U of T

_________________________

Caption: The U.S. mass media has climate change deniers on TV and in print everday. They are all paid by the fossil fuel industry. CTV appears to be part of the much larger climate change denial industry. To see videos of Republicans in Washington D.C. who employ this rhetoric, see the Think Progress website.

Exxon Mobil: the world's largest and most evil corporation, contributing more than any other entity (besides the United States government) to inaction on climate change, by funding the climate change denial (and skepticism) industry. This illustration equates Exxon with crucifixion - an appropriate symbol for killing life on Earth (See Matthew 25:40 for Biblical support for justice for "the least of mine")

Global Warming Sucks! For U o T life science students

2007-10-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

Caption: A "moulin" ice-melt river in the Greenland ice mass. It is melting faster than scientists first anticipated, leading to fears that rising ocean levels will displace tens of millions of people by 2050 AD.

Caption: victim of Katrina

Caption: Our violent culture, killing one another and the natural world. Perhaps Freud was right, that we human beings are possessed by a "death instinct" (Thanatos)? Or is it the technological culture we have created? Non-violence and justice must go hand in hand with sustainability - both require a shift in our ethics and culture, at a fundamental level.

Caption: Greenland ice melt illustration

Caption: According to one measurement, 35 million cars have so far been produced in 2007. See World Clock, which also measures global temperature increase.

Caption: as flights decrease in price, worldwide, more and more people are flying. There is no known technology to make aviation emit fewer GHGs now being implemented. The only way to drastically reduces CO2 and water vapour (a GHG) is to not fly.

Caption: native American protestor being brutalized by police. Non-violent native protests over land claims are an emerging facet of what is now termed "climate justice" and "climate racism." Protests at Sharbot Lake, Caledonia, and the tar sands have demonstrated a clear link between the struggle for indigenous rights and environmental preservation from development.

Caption: Asulan Glacier National Park showing receeding ice due to global temperature increase. Dozens of glaciers across the world are melting. They supply water to hundreds of millions of people. Drought and diseases caused by lack of fresh water will be the number one source of famine and death in this century and the next.

GLOBAL WARMING SUCKS!

We are living on this planet as though we have another one to go to

Peer-reviewed science confirms the effects of man-made climate change:

• Catastrophic loss of both human and non-human life
• Loss of 15 to 37% of all species / loss of biodiversity
• Economic and social collapse / wars over scarce resources
• Man-made climate already kills 150,000 + per year
Source: United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Canadians are morally and politically obligated to act:

• Canadians emit 17.9 tonnes of CO2 per person per year, or
about 100 times more than the average person in Africa
• Alberta tar sands is a major supplier to the U.S. oil market
• The Harper government has continually hindered critical
progress at international climate talks and is now considered
a member of the “Axis of Evil” (Canada, U.S. and Australia)
Source: www.monbiot.com

Are you sick and tired of political inaction by corrupt politicians?
You can do your part by helping us organize and educate on campus.

Global Climate Change Day of Action, December 8th (D8)

Demand the following:

• That Canada abide by its Kyoto obligations
• Invest heavily in clean safe renewable energy, not fossil fuels
• Invest in public transportation and conservation programs
• An end to public subsidies of the tar sands and their expansion
• An end to oil exploration in the Arctic and wasteful militarization
• Better protection for boreal forests and endangered species
• And closer to home: demand that U of T stop investing in Exxon Mobil
which finances climate change denial) and others fossil
fuel corporations

Canadians want real action and tough laws on the environment!
Students should be leading the climate fight. It is our future at stake!

Brought to you by Students Against Climate Change at U of T
Tel: 416-922-0035 / Email:

Caption: illustration showing gasoline use. The U.S. consumes more gas than many other nations combined. Most of the tar sands oil is exported south of the border to feed the U.S. war machine and car culture.

Caption: Energy Autonomy by Dr. Hermann Scheer, outlining his solution for Germany. There is no reason Canada cannot emulate this model. The reality is that, despite the rhetoric of politicians here, we have not even begun to try. Suburbs which cannot be heated 100 years from now are still being built, the auto industry is still be subsidized at the expense of public transportation, renewables are not being invested on a scale they deserve, and conservation is non-existant.

Caption: A real danger of the climate crisis, beyond the disasterous effects caused by climate change itself, is that it will be used as a pretext for totalitarianism by centralized states, working with corporations. The U.S., with its Patriot Act and infringement on civil liberties, is headed toward a future not unlike that depicted in Orwell's 1984.

The students have to be leaders ...

2007-10-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

This article appeared in "The Underground," a U of T newspaper, Sept. 04

U of T students take one step at a time
by Anthony Geremia

“The students have to be leaders; there’s a lot riding on this."

Sarah Dover, environmental lawyer and member of Greenpeace, is aware of the hardships that come with being an environmentalist. “If you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and powerless,” she said, “you are having a healthy reaction to the fact of environmental crisis in our time.”

University of Toronto activists,Students Against Climate Change (SACC), had one of their weekly meetings on July 20 at the St. George campus.

The group, in the words of one of its founders, Paul York, was created out of “a need among the student population. What’s shocking [to] me is that we don’t have mass movement on campuses across the country.”

SACC recently joined the Closed Doors Campaign, which travels to downtown Toronto to convince retailers to shut their doors in the summer to reduce air conditioning.

Sarah Dover, who said she leads a funky professional life where she does environmental campaigning, was present that night to discuss the dilemma of nuclear energy in Ontario, warning about the crisis to come.

“Our nuclear system is aging and failing,” she said. “The lie or liability of nuclear power is being revealed.”

With an Ontario provincial election on Oct. 10, this becomes even more important, Dover said. She said the fate of power generation in Ontario literally rests on its outcome, one of the key components of the election being the direction Ontarians move in, nuclear or otherwise.

“Globally, the nuclear industry is dying and its great hope for breakthrough is Ontario,” Dover said.

Dover talked about the Vote for Clean Energy campaign, describing it as a group devoted to taking direct action, keeping the voters informed, and hoping to influence the election for the better.

According to Paul York, people are still skeptical that air and windpower can provide the province with enough energy, and that nuclear power is the only way to keep the lights on. In reality, he said, Ontario has more than enough renewable resources to keep things running smoothly, it is just that people have not taken advantage them.

“If we’re not working on it, I can guarantee you no one else is,” York said. “You can’t count on [the governments] to do anything, they have to be lobbied constantly, and they’re followers, not leaders. The students have to be leaders...building a clean, safe, renewable future, and there’s a lot riding on this.”

Caption: the nuclear industry got a 'sweetheart deal' with McGuinty's promise to hand over $46 billion in taxpayers' money.

We should all be doing more than we are ...

2007-10-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

Al Gore, James Hansen, and Civil Disobedience

by Gordon Clark, September 01, 2007

In his recent global warming op-ed in the New York Times ("The Big Melt," August 16, 2007) , Nicholas Kristof reported on a conversation with Al Gore in which the former Vice-President said: "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." His comment was a reaction to the ever- quickening pace of polar ice meltoff, with all its catastrophic implications, and the huge role played by coal-fired power plants in advancing our demise through global warming.

Gore's comment was also strikingly similar to a recent quote from Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA: "It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty (no CCS) coal-fired power plants."

What does it mean when one of the top scientific leaders ringing the alarm on global warming, along with a top political leader, both suggest, in so many words, nonviolent direct action (or civil disobedience) to confront the challenge of climate change?

Clearly both men must realize the importance of nonviolent resistance in social change efforts of this magnitude and agree, if only subconsciously, with historian Howard Zinn's observation that "Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy. It is absolutely essential to it." (Dr. Hansen, for his part, goes on to quote the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution at some length.)

Gore and Hansen must both know that nonviolent direct action has been a significant catalyst in nearly every major social change movement in U.S. (and world) history, starting in this country with the Boston Tea Party and extending through the anti-slavery, woman's suffrage, labor rights, civil rights, environmental and anti-war movements. Nonviolent direct action can dramatize an injustice or danger to the general public as few other actions can. It both provokes other people to act and speak - often people who had previously been silent - and it opens up political space for them to do so. Nonviolent actions are acts of courage that inspire others to follow. They are acts of leadership.

The twin quotes also reflect the extraordinary urgency of our predicament. As Jay Gulledge, senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, notes in Kristof's column, "Over and over again, we're finding that models correctly predict the patterns of change but understate their magnitude."

Or their speed. According to the May 2007 report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, polar ice is melting significantly faster than computer models of climate calculate, and the Arctic Sea could be free of summer ice by 2020 - 30 years earlier than the recent prediction by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Clearly, we are running out of time.

What is strikingly curious about the quotes, however, is the suggestion by both men that "young people" need to be doing this. Clearly young people will have to suffer the disastrous effects of global warming longer than older people. But that does not make the responsibility any less on the older heads among us to take any and all actions necessary to stop the planet-destroying calculus of carbon emissions. Indeed, one would think that those who are older are more culpable for the current condition of our planet than those who are younger, and therefore more responsible for taking dramatic action to confront the crisis.

I would also imagine that young people (and I can only imagine, being middle-aged myself) are, while grateful for recognition of their vital role in the movement, probably less than enthusiastic to have this particular imperative dumped on them and them alone.

Personally, I pray for and will gladly follow leadership from any quarter and age group. But I expect it from those in the climate change movement who are older, more experienced, and more influential. Especially when it comes to nonviolent resistance. I know, for instance, that when I or younger activists organize nonviolent direct actions, a relative few people will hear and join us, and we are lucky to get more than a few stories outside the independent media. If Al Gore were to actually call for and lead such an action it is likely that thousands would join him, and the story would be splashed across the mainstream media for all of America to see.

None of this should be read as criticism of Mr. Gore's incredible efforts on global warming. He has arguably been the single most effective (and active) person on the planet in raising the clarion call. But perhaps now his leadership is requiring even more of him. After all, if you truly recognize the extreme emergency and catastrophic danger inherent in global warming, how long can one wait before taking the most dramatic, effective and necessary actions in response - as opposed to wondering out loud why those younger and less influential than yourself aren't doing so?

Of course, this is a question that everyone who understands the reality of global warming needs to be asking themselves right now. How long can any of us wait? As with all revolutionary changes, forging a new, sustainable society will require us to take risks, make sacrifices, and endure suffering - all hallmarks of nonviolence. And nonviolent blockades of coal-fired power plants, Mr. Gore and Dr. Hansen are correct in noting, would be an excellent place to start.

Gordon Clark is the convener of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, www.iraqpledge.org

Canada's new militarism

2007-09-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

The problem is that Stephen Harper is militarizing Canada. Aside from the ethical issues associated with a "war without end" (the war on terrorism or Fourth World War), this expenditure is problematic environmentally because it creates emissions by doing the following:

1. Using energy to make war machines and war machines themselves emits CO2, as does their transportation; 2. their use is to prop up the U.S. war machine, used to defend oil interests, which contribute to more emissions;
3. all the funds thus used could be put toward renewable energy; 4. war machines create many other types of toxins during their production and use and they destroy natural habitats.

See News article on militarization of Canada and 2nd news article

SACC hosts two major events for Environment Week

2007-09-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

SACC is hosting two educational events in September as part of Environment Week.

The first is a lecture called "The Religious Ethics of Climate Change" held on Friday September 28th at 3:00 p.m.

The speakers are Prof. Danny Harvey of the Geography Dept. U of T, and Profs. Larry Schmidt, Stephen Scharper, Harry Fox, all of the Religion Dept. U of T, and Prof. Martin Adam, professor of religious studies at University of Victoria.

Prof. Harvey, a researcher on climate change since 1978, will give us an overview of the science and provide some practical public policy solutions for determining carbon emission quotas. He teaches courses on climate change at U of T.

Prof. Schmidt will give us an overview of the necessity of adopting a universal "ethic of limitations." He teaches courses on the ethics and technology and ethics and the environment.

Prof. Scharper is an expert on the intersection of religion and the environment and the works of eco-theologian Thomas Berry. He will provide valuable insights into eco-theology. He teaches this subject, and Liberation Theology.

Prof. Fox will give us a Jewish perspective; he teaches a course on Judaism and ecology at U of T.

Prof. Adam is an expert on Buddhism. He will present a paper on Buddhist ethics and climate change. He will be joining us via videoconferencing to avoid the necessity of CO2 pollution through air travel.

Each lecture is about 20 minutes long; some presenters will have a slide show prepared, to illustrate catastrophic climate change and ethical concepts relevant to our discussion of it.

Date: Friday, September 28th, 2007

Time: 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. followed a dinner break. We will convene after the break at 7:00 for a discussion on the lecture and to view a movie on climate change, "Refugees on a Blue Planet."

Location: Room 1069 of Sidney Smith / Student Life Centre (100 St. George)

This event is free to the public. For more info. call Paul York at 416-922-0035.
___________________________

The second event is "The Power to Choose: A Citizen's Forum on the Energy Future of Ontario" to be held the next day, Sept. 29th, starting at 9:00 a.m.

This event is based on the event of the same name a few months ago at Metro Hall, but this event is decidely oriented towards the U of T campus and is organized by our club, a U of T campus club.

For a description of the original event see http://www.planetfriendly.net/calendar/item.php?id=7253

For videos of the original event see
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9BE76A561F368F5D

When: Saturday, September 29th, 2007 - 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Where: OISE, 252 Bloor St. W. Room 4-414 (fourth floor, room 414) next to St. George subway.

Members of the public who have something to say on the McGunity plan to invest $43 billion into nuclear energy without public consultation will have their chance to speak.

Several expert speakers are invited, including Dr. Keith Stewart of the World Wildlife Fund and speakers from the Pembina Institute, Greenpeace and Ontario Clean Air Alliance, and faculty from the Engineering Dept. of U of T.

This event is free to the public. Free feed as well.

For more info. call Paul York at 416-922-0035.