21 Days - The Deniers Have Nothing to Gain Worth Gaining

Here in Canada, my once proud and peaceful nation that fell into the hands of war mongers and climate change deniers when we became complacent and dropped our vigilance, a small group of oil industry-funded climate change deniers (who gave themselves an official name that makes them sound scientifically official) are running denier/skeptic/ignorer/delayer radio ads across the country. Gee, right before the Copenhagen climate talks. What could their motive be?

First of all, for shame! Shame on the climate change diddlers who obfuscate the truth and tell outright lies by manipulating and confusing and cherry picking the science. The people in this and similar groups are putting the future of the children of all species at risk (risk being a scientific term: risk equals magnitude times probability).
Here's what they (as a teacher, I refuse to give them any publicity, which would be the same as rewarding a negative behaviour with a positive consequence) say about their own ads:

"The purpose of the ads is to demonstrate the futility of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They point out that global warming stopped about 10 years ago, and that the Sun is the primary cause of climate change. Climate alarmists refuse to debate the science as they have no evidence that man's emissions of greenhouse gases causes significant climate change."

They always seem to use the same old tired tactics:

1. Attack the policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (These people must really hate their children, eh? And, by the way, WHAT policies? Our policies are still to keep increasing our greenhouse gas emissions.)

2. Lie about the warming itself. (Global warming has NOT stopped. The "0.78 degrees Celsius burner" is still on and the globe is still cooking. What this group would say if they had integrity is that the global average temperature has not increased any further in the last decade or so — because the oceans are absorbing the carbon dioxide and the heat (dooming coral reefs and devastating marine food chains) and because we are conducting a giant science experiment on latent heat of melting in the Arctic and the world's glaciers.)

3. Talk endlessly about the sun (even to the point of capitalizing it!), and in this case, stop making sense. "... global warming stopped ... the sun is the primary cause of climate change." Which is it? (Without the warmth of the sun, there would be no life on Earth, but its direct contribution to recent global warming is about 10 percent. That's a good chunk, but not a chunk we can control, so why not focus on our causes of the other 90 percent?)

4. Call us climate alarmists, as though raising the alarm is a bad thing.

5. Accuse us of refusing to debate the science. (I would rather debate the policies, but they know that most people, at least in North America, are scientifically illiterate, and therefore easily bamboozled by talking about climate science rather than which policies would safeguard their children's future.)

6. Completely ignore all the millions of people in the world already impacted by climate-change-exacerbated natural phenomena such as droughts, floods, erosion and wild storms. (These deniers are heartless bastards, apparently. Well, they must be to hate their children so much.)

What do they gain by wasting precious time, money and energy in this way? I just can't get into their heads (and can't find any hearts to get into).
Finally, why do these media outlets want to be complicit in this, what could amount to the greatest crime against humanity ever? Why will media outlets reserve the right to refuse counterculture ads from groups like Adbusters, but accept money from groups who bring shame on themselves, on their country, on the complicit media outlets, on the name of science in general? Why are media outlets like this so blind and mindless when it comes to making money, except when it comes to making money by helping those who want to safeguard the future? For shame. You'll be hearing from me — and I'll be boycotting you!

34 Days - What Makes You Cry?

Mr. Ecoweenie Man and his heartless conclusions aside, I would be interested (and touched) to hear from anyone else who cries about the global climate change emergency. If we don't feel it deeply, how can we be moved to action?

It's hard to know why certain chords are struck as we read or watch the continuing bad news. My tears come from thoughts of what's happening to the children in Africa today, and what's going to happen to children in a climate-wracked future.

My husband weeps and rages at the loss of the world's coral reefs. I'm not sure why. He's not a scuba diver or a snorkeler. Perhaps it's their sheer beauty. Perhaps he knows that over one quarter of the world's marine fish species depend on coral reefs as their source of shelter and food.

But last night, he read the most absurd and shocking news. This BBC report was on his screen when I found him crying at his computer:

'Freezer plan' bid to save coral

If you can't figure out what that means, join the club. The article goes on to say, "The prospects of saving the world's coral reefs now appear so bleak that plans are being made to freeze samples to preserve them for the future."

So how is that for insanity? Spend two decades doing nothing, not calling for a climate change emergency declaration, NOT protecting the coral reefs — and then freeze them at the last minute?

Are we criminally insane as a species? Have our scientists been watching too many whacked out sci-fi movies? According to Irreplaceable: Wildlife in a Warming World, coral reefs make up less than one percent of the marine environment, but are home to 25 percent of marine biodiversity. And according to the Worldwatch Institute's Oceans in Peril online quiz, over 100,000 coral reef species are already known, named and described, but there could be as many as one to three million — all now endangered. Do we not understand that we can't live without biodiversity?

Thirty million people (the population of Canada is not much bigger) in the tropics and sub-tropics are small-scale fishers who depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods and daily sustenance. Coral reefs are a key source of food, income and coastal protection for half a billion people worldwide.

It's certainly enough to make at least one grown man cry. Isn't it tragic that scientists can come up with plans to freeze coral (to "allow them to be reintroduced to the seas in the future if global temperatures can be stabilised") but we can't come up with plans to save coral reefs. Alas, I guess not enough people care — or cry.

ADDENDUM: I just asked my husband why the coral reefs are so precious to him. "Back in the late 1980s," he said, "when we were starting to discuss this stuff, everyone knew that if the coral reefs went, the whole planet would go. Now, no one seems to care."

The coral reefs are going, folks. Do we really want to lose the whole planet, too?

64 Days - Five Things Everyone Ought to Know

According to British author, David Edwards (as explained by Derrick Jensen, "leading voice of uncompromising dissent" in How Shall I Live My Life? On Liberating the Earth from Civilization), there are five things that everyone ought to know. I hope that Jensen and Edwards won't mind me listing them here. I've only just started reading the book, but so far it's delicious.

Here are the five things that everyone ought to know:

1. "The planet is dying." Coral reefs doomed. Sea mammals and sea birds going extinct. Global warming dooming other ecosystems.
2. "Huge numbers of intelligent, motivated people are working all out to obstruct action to save the planet." Here, Edwards quotes a mining company executive who admits, "We think we have raised enough questions among the American public to prevent any numbers, targets or timetables to achieve reductions in gas emissions being agreed here... What we are doing, and we think successfully, is buying time for our industries by holding up these talks."
3. "The death of the planet is symptomatic of a deeper, institutionalized subordination of all life — including human life — to profit." And people aren't talking about this crucial question of valuing profits over life.
4. "The same economic and political forces that profit from these atrocities also profit from the suppression of truth." And Edwards believes that the role of corporate mass media and politicians is to keep us from digging up the truth. "It only takes a moment of honest reflection to realize that when a world is being ravaged by corporations, a corporate media system is the last place to look for truth."

And then he gets so busy explaining these four that he forgets to give the fifth! But I've chosen one from the rest of this brilliant interview:

5. "It's a great kindness to be honest." In other words, telling the truth, when the money powers want to control what we know and believe, is a gift.

I would add that sometimes it's an unwelcome gift. Many people are so ensnared in the propaganda that they don't want to hear the truth, because it makes them uncomfortable. Therefore you make them uncomfortable when you speak the truth. So truth telling can be a lonely place. Edwards suggests that there is "a certain bliss that comes from telling the truth," but it's an inner bliss, an I-can-sleep-at-night-and-look-myself-in-the-mirror sort of bliss.

105 Days - 2Years4LifeonEarth Solutions

Here are more solutions to the problem of climate change apathy or ignorance that we came up with during our Sunday brunch (see yesterday's post). You'll notice a distinct "Sunday" feel to some of these suggestions.

"What can I do, now that I'm aware of climate change?" is a common lament.

• Well, what do people do after they've had a spiritual conversion? They change their behaviour (start going to church), learn (read the Bible), and raise their awareness (take Bible study classes). They accept being told how to act (for example, the Ten Commandments). Can we create something like this - only for global rather than personal salvation?


• Talk it up. Ask people to talk about climate change with their friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, strangers, fellow club members. Talk is action when it's spreading the word.


• Pray. (Why not, eh? It's not exactly an action verb, but it's got more force behind it than hoping.)


• Start imagining a world without fossil fuels. We must have a revolution to renewable energy. (Otherwise, back to the caves and thatched huts with us!) (That's a joke, by the way. A perpetual energy economy, if we make the transition in time, will be a wonderful transformation.) 


• Realize (is realizing an action????) that we're creating a mass extinction of life. This despite the fact that we depend upon biodiversity. We are pushing thousands upon thousands of species of plants and animals to extinctions - and it looks like our species is going to be among them. START THINKING LIKE A SPECIES! START FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL!


• Think like an ancestor. We've been so lucky as a generation - between world wars, lots of economic prosperity (at least in developed countries). It's time to burst the bubble and understand that we're killing the future and committing progenycide.


• Insist on massive public spending to kickstart this revolution to a renewable energy economy. If we willingly go into debt for war, why not go into debt for life? That would be a debt that future generations will be grateful to pay off.


• Protect carbon sinks! (First, learn about carbon sinks and why they're vital.)


• Protect the remaining rainforests and coral reefs. Insist on them being protected, damn it!


• Get emotional! Get angry! How can we talk about pissing away the future of our species and the beauty of life's diversity without getting emotional???


• Insist that environmental and social health costs be internalized in our economics. Enough of externalizing environmental and social health costs so that WE have to pay for them with our health and our lives and the future of our children and grandchildren. Let the corporations or their shareholders or their consumers pay for them.


• Understand that our goal must be 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible - if we're to save the future. We can't wait til the last minute.


• The only hope is action. If you love your children/grandchildren, you will become part of the solution.