|
Prime Minister Harper once announced that the greatest threat to global security was terrorism. That was nonsense of course—every year, malaria kills approximately 660,000 people, mostly children, and AIDS 1,700,000 people. Terrorism is a trivial threat compared to the big killers. And the biggest of all, if we don’t act preemptively with sufficient vigour, will almost certainly be climate Embarrassing our country more than Toronto Mayor Rob Ford would seem to be an impossible task. Yet our prime minister has done just that. On November 12th, the federal government issued a formal statement that included the following remark: “Canada applauds the decision by Prime Minister Abbott to introduce legislation to repeal Australia’s carbon tax. The Australian Prime Minister’s decision The World Economic Forum (an elite organization in itself) recently released a study, The Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014, based on a survey of 1,592 leaders from academia, business, government, and the non-profit world. The elite group offered their opinion of the top 10 trends for 2014. Number two was “widening income disparities” about which the group concluded, “The difference between rich First the bad news, even if it’s old news. Stanford University scientists report that not only is the Earth undergoing one of the largest climate changes since the dinosaurs disappeared, it is occurring 10 times faster than any other change in that period. Many species will have great difficulty making the behavioral, evolutionary or geographic adaptations necessary to survive that rate of change There is no question: this generation will be held responsible for our actions, and even more, for our inaction. Apathy, complacency and denial are morally unacceptable. In fact, at this time in human history, they are nothing less than complicity in the worst of collective atrocities. We must act now. There are no more excuses. […] Earlier this week, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington and B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced their Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, “committing their governments, and a region that represents the world’s fifth largest economy, to a comprehensive and far-reaching strategic alignment to combat climate change and promote clean energy.” The plan makes significant As the Earth inexorably warms up due to human folly, one species after another pays the price. The most iconic example is of course the polar bear. And why not—what is cuter and cuddlier than the bear with the thick white coat and the black nose? But less cuddly creatures are also suffering. For example, the ungainly moose, one of nature’s least handsome, but no less precious, beasts. According pablo lopez luz photographs the concrete waves (or carpet, as he puts it) of Mexico City The unbelievably sprawling concrete carpet of Mexico City seen in these photos make me think… Gorgeous country, beautiful culture and people, horrible government, amazing capital city – but utterly unsustainable, as most cities are. Watch for the ruins […] 
 Activism, alternative, alternatives, analysis, anthropology, collapse, consciousness, conservation, crash, disaster, ecological crisis, Ecology, empowerment, end-game, global warming, Mexico, Mexico City, must-read, photo, political economy, politics, politics of oil, post-carbon, social theory, sociology, sprawl, Sustainability, tipping point, truth This week, Deutsche Welle Living Planet broadcast the first of my audio diaries from the Students on Ice 2013 Arctic Expedition. This first audio postcard captures the reflections of Canadian high school student Gerrit Wesselink as he travels up the western coast of Greenland and across the Davis Strait to Baffin Island and the eastern Canadian Arctic. Gerrit talks about his experiences on the trip, which include polar bear sightings, zodiac cruises in a field of giant icebergs and witnessing first-hand the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. DW Living Planet is an award-winning international program that explores environmental (Read more…) United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calls it the “greatest collective challenge we face as a human family.” He is, of course, referring to climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented the first installment of its Fifth Assessment Report Friday and it has much of interest to say about the “greatest collective challenge.” This includes the stark warning that “ Read this - ”Scientists. A minimal, marginalized lot these days. It’s almost prehistoric the way we’ve become immune to the warnings science offers us. As soon as the System realized that the prognosis was bad, and would make them perhaps look bad in turn, voila; they started an intensive propaganda campaign in the press, fostering as much sarcasm as possible with respect to anything scientific. That was when the scornful expression ‘scientific paranoia’ came into being. Anything could be labeled ‘scientific paranoia,’ Being an illustrious, scientist of conscience became tantamount to being a Jew in Nazi (Read more…) My August Canadian EV car sales stats update went up recently. Which was cool. Cooler still, I had a chance to wax poetic about sustainability, and my new-found optimism that we’ll avoid the worst of our dystopian horrors. I was invited to be a guest lecturer for an engineering course at UBC (APSC 150) where I had the privilege to slightly shape the minds of about four hundred first-year students. And show them how, here in the first world, #WeAreWhales. (The cryptic comment is described in the slide deck, here.) Coolest of all, I’ve achieved a Wiki-immortality of sorts! (Read more…)
APSC 150, Canada, Chevy Volt, coal, electric cars, energy, engineering, EV, EV's (incl. PHEV's), global warming, guest lecture, Hinduism, Indra, Nissan LEAF, nuclear, plug-in electric cars, plug-ins, science, slide deck, solar PV, technology, Tesla Model S, Tesla sales, ubc, Wikipedia, Wind energy * After blogging about climate change from my perspective as a mom for nearly four years, I’m taking a hiatus from 350orbust. For more on this, check out my July 31 blog post, Shift Happens. I would love to meet you in Ottawa in November for Citizens Climate Lobby Canada’s first national conference. Click on […] This is really too much. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, all aggravated by climate change, and now the cruelest blow of all—it’s ruining our tea. India produces one-third of the world’s tea with the state of Assam producing over half. Now increasing temperatures and diminishing rainfall are reducing Assam’s production and fouling the taste of the tea. The once ideal climate is changing. An * After blogging about climate change from my perspective as a mom for nearly four years, I’m taking a hiatus from 350orbust. For more on this, check out my July 31 blog post, Shift Happens. I would love to meet you in Ottawa in November for Citizens Climate Lobby Canada’s first national conference. Click on […] * After blogging about climate change from my perspective as a mom for nearly four years, I’m taking a hiatus from 350orbust. For more on this, check out my July 31 blog post, Shift Happens. I would love to meet you in Ottawa in November for Citizens Climate Lobby Canada’s first national conference. Click on […] The clock is ticking and countries around the world need to take action now. Chris Hayes did a documentary on Global Warming on August 16, 2013. I watched it and it is an eye-opener. Since then I have been looking for clips of this documentary but MSNBC has not posted them yet. I found this clip where Chris Hayes discusses his views with Michael Smerconish of MSNBC. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy . . . → Read More: LeDaro: Chris Hayes of MSNBC on Global Warming It was more than two decades ago when tobacco companies were defending cigarette-smoking. Now opponents of global warming are not much different. They will say maybe under oath that greenhouse gases don’t create global warming. Oil/gas companies such as Exon-mobile spend hundreds of millions of dollars on groups who will deny global warming. Chris Hayes is a very well informed gentleman. I watch his program “All In” on MSNBC whenever I get a chance. His program provides critical analysis of U.S politics and other public issues. His upcoming documentary on Global warming will be worth watching. “The Politics of Power,” Chris Hayes declares: “Climate change is a problem without borders; and developing countries are feeling the heat even more than the first world.” Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Read more here. . . . → Read More: LeDaro: Chris Hayes: On global warming – an upcomming documentary
Ray Grigg, a weekly environmental columnist and author of seven internationally published books on Oriental philosophy, discusses the “tragedy” of Canada’s environmental denial. The post The tragedy of Canada’s environmental denial appeared first on The Canadian Progressive. * Here in Northern Ontario our lovely boreal summer is in full swing. The blueberries are starting to ripen, the ethereal call of the loons drifts up to our windows at night, and the zucchini are plentiful. This summer in my community we are lucky to be growing some “really cool old squash” that Winona […] It looks that mother nature is very angry. Few days ago we had a lot of thunder and rain storm. It is still cloudy and rains a lot. Some communities near the Bay of Fundy were flooded. It looks like another symptom of Global Warming. by Gareth on July 24, 2013 Reading this press release about a new paper in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology spoiled my day. It might not be obvious to a casual reader just glancing through the morning news — but a couple of paragraphs leapt out at me: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations recently reached 400 parts per million for the first time since the Pliocene Epoch, three million years ago. During this era, Arctic surface temperatures were 15-20 degrees Celsius warmer than today’s surface temperatures. Ballantyne’s findings suggest that much of the surface warming likely was due to ice-free conditions in the (Read more…) Of all the events that occurred during my blogging hiatus, the one that struck me as the most significant, even including the massive flooding of my hometown, was the Earth experiencing for the first time in millions of years an atmosphere containing 400 ppm carbon dioxide, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii on May 10th. As important as the Calgary flood was, it was a local event |
||
|
Copyright © 2013 Progressive Bloggers // Blogues progressistes - All Rights Reserved |
||