Images of Change: Retreating Imja Glacier in Himalayas

From NASA:
Imja Glacier in the Himalayas, as seen from a point above Amphu Lake and from the upper slopes of Island Peak.
Left: Autumn, circa 1956.
Right: October 18, 2007.
The latter image shows pronounced retreat and collapse of the lower tongue of the glacier and the formation of new melt ponds. 
Credit: 1956 picture taken Erwin Schneider; courtesy of the Association for Comparative Alpine Research, Munich.
2007 photo taken by Alton Byers; courtesy of the Archives of Alton Byers and the Mountain Institute.

The Real Superpower: Nature

Five days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami off the northeastern coast of Japan, the country and its citizens are still reeling from those natural disasters while alarm continues to rise over a looming man-made nuclear disaster.

Japan is a country lauded for its emergency preparedness, yet although the Japanese government and people are responding as quickly as possible in an extremely difficult situation (compare the U.S. response to the comparatively smaller disaster of Hurricane Katrina), there are still countless people without access to food, clean water, and shelter. The death toll continues to rise, with more than 15,000 people unaccounted for.

All of us in the industrialized world should sit up and take note of the Japanese crisis. One lesson we should take to heart is that there’s no avoiding nature. People who live in the developing world, who are generally less cushioned from the day-to-day impacts of nature than those of us with air-conditioned houses and cars and well-stocked refrigerators, already know that. Those of us in the industrialized part of the world, who burn a disproportionate amount of the world’s fossil fuels, need to absorb this lesson before we have pulled the rest of the world with us into climate chaos.

Once we hit the climate tipping point, the cumulative effects of global climate instability will be unstoppable, like Friday’s tsunami wave that took out everything in its path. Scientists have been warning us for decades about the effects of our continued warming of the earth’s atmosphere by unrestrained burning of fossil fuels. Why wouldn’t we all be working together now, while we still have time, to stop the climate change “earthquake” from happening?

From Al Jazeera, a summary of how a nuclear meltdown could happen at the Fukushima power plant:

More links:

For comprehensive information on how to reach out to the Japanese people, to go CBC’s Japan Relief page.

Peter Sinclair over at Climate Crock of the Week has been providing excellent and frequent updates on the Japanese nuclear situation: ClimateCrocks.com

Special Rep0rt: Disaster In Japan

Lesson From Japan: There’s No Avoiding Nature

Compilation: Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Emergency 2011

Next, U.S. Republicans Vote To Repeal the Law of Gravity

Last Thursday, Democratic Senator Ed Markey responded with sardonic humour to the anti-science, pro-pollution bill introduced by Senators Inhofe and Upton to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules on climate pollution, including its endangerment finding:

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.However, I won’t physically rise, because I’m worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room.

I won’t call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Instead, I’ll embody Newton’s third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America’s importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrodinger’s cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair’s amendment pile.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHVrE1NTgxI&feature=player_embedded]

More links:

During Climate Hearing, Markey asks if Anti-Science GOP will repeal Gravity, Heliocentrism, Relativity. ThinkProgress.org

Risky Business: Will Facts Ever Drive the Congressional Debate On Climate Change?

Nature’s Might On Display in Japan: Humans Ignore It At Our Peril

Much of the world’s attention, and thoughts and prayers, are focused on the people of Japan, who are suffering from the deadly effects of last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, and are now facing a nuclear emergency. The devastation to one of the world’s most industrialized countries is unbelievable, yet it is undeniable. It is clear that the death toll will be much higher than the current official one of 2,800.  The survivors are struggling to deal with lack of food and clean water, and the loss of their shelter.

Many of us living in the industrialized world of the 21st century feel that we are we are separate from our environment. Many of us believe that “environmental” issues like water pollution, ocean acidification, and climate change are issues that we can choose to ignore without any consequence to ourselves or our families. We don’t realize that what we do to our surroundings, we also do to ourselves. We, in our hubris, have also come to feel that we are in control of nature, not the other way around. That is the only explanation for our unabated abuse of the gift of fossil fuels, and our ongoing pollution of our water and air.  If we are going to have a future without ever-increasing pictures on our t.v. screens like what we saw from Japan this weekend, and Australia in January, and Bangladesh last August, we need to all agree that what we do to our environment, we do to ourselves, and to our children and their children. Because, of course, it will eventually be us and our communities who are featured in the news headlines.

Derrick Jensen offers a different way of approaching environmental accountability, in a recent article in Orion magazine entitled “Age of Ooops”, where he proposes that environmental risks should be considered through the lens of the precautionary principle:

The solution I dreamed up to this lack of accountability is a robustly enforced legislative version of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle suggests that if an action, or policy, has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, the burden of proof that this action is not harmful falls on those proposing to take the action. They can’t act if they can’t prove no harm will come. So, for example, instead of presuming that deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is safe, and only suspending drilling when there is proof of harm, we should presume that this action is harmful until it has been proven otherwise. The same logic should apply to the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, there are thousands of examples of harmful actions that would be stopped by any reasonable application of the precautionary principle.

Click here to read the full article. (thanks to Curtis for sending it my way).

More links:

Japanese Disaster Teams Search For Bodies

Nuclear Plants Threatened by Earthquake

Japan Nuclear Plant Rocked By Second Blast

Japan’s Chernobyl: Fukishama Marks the End of the Nuclear Era

Fire and Ice: Melting Glaciers Trigger Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes

Take Time To Renew Your Spirit

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wake Up Canada!

And now for some Saturday comedy – amazing American comedian Janeane Garofolo, an American who reads that fabulous Canadian magazine “The Walrus” (not even many Canadians can claim that!) on right-wing politicians in her country, and ours. It was recorded in September, 2008:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-B4JRlkMDs&tracker=False]

In Harper Budget, Big Oil Gets Subsidized While Environmental Monitoring Is Gutted

Cameron Fenton from the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition developed this helpful diagram to illustrate the dramatic way the Harper government is shifting taxpayer’s money. In the upside-down world of our current federal government, funding is slashed to programs that benefit all Canadians, like environmental monitoring. Instead, this government prefers to keep padding the pockets of their corporate pals, and to carry on a concerted campaign to turn Canada’s criminal justice system into a clone of  the dysfunctional America one by increasing spending on jails by over $500 million. This, at a time when statistics show the Canadian crime rate is dropping, and after this government cut funding to rehabilitative programs like prison farms.

Here’s Cameron’s diagram, reposted with permission. Take a good look at it, fellow Canadians. This is our future if we continue to have Harper as our Prime Minister:

Cameron put it this way in his article on Media Co-op:

In early March 2011, the federal government of Canada announced that it would be cutting over $10 billion dollars in spending in the upcoming 2011 annual budget. This includes massive cuts to environmental monitoring bodies like Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada. Also included in these cuts is a $2.6 billion cut to employment insurance recipients.

At the same time, spending for the national security apparatus is ballooning, with the military expenditures projected to cross the $20 billion mark this year. The March announcement also included a 10% increase in spending across the board for public safety departments and national security agencies, building on the $7.9 billion forecast to be spent last year. This includes a 21%, or $521.6, million increase in spending on prisons and a 14%, or $227 million, increase in spending at Canadian Border Services.

All the while, the government is also giving away $1.4 billion each year to oil and gas companies, the majority of which goes directly into the Alberta tar sands.

Check out this new video from Citizens Climate Lobby (Toronto) on the same topic:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0UVyJBu-sU]

More links:

Info-graphic: Parts per million: Big Oil Gets Subsidized While Environmental Monitoring is Gutted

Citizens Climate Lobby: Canada

Climate Action Network Canada: End Fossil Fuel Tax Breaks

Canada’s Military Spending Highest Since World War II


The Climate Crisis: The Time To Act Is Now

Last August, 1000 little ice figures made an artistic stand against global warming in Berlin, Germany. Such a show had previously been performed in Brazil where Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo carved 1000 little ice men as a project for the World Wildlife Fund. It has also been replicated in France, Japan and Italy, but this is the first time that the public has been allowed to participate. The video brings home the message that time is running out to deal with this problem, which will affect each and every one of us.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjVQfth76ss]

More links:

FourYearsGo

350.org

Help A Woman, Help The Planet

The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world.”

In honour of International Women’s Day, and all of the amazing women I have the privilege and honour of knowing, here’s a repost from It’s Getting Hot in Here, written by Caroline Howe and entitled “Half the Sky: Women and Climate Change”:

When drought parches wells and streams,
someone must carry water. When storms bring devastation
and disease, someone has to nurse the sick.
Climate change hits hardest on the planet’s vulnerable edges.
If women hold up half the sky, what do we do
when it seems the sky is falling?

– Barbara Kingsolver, Ripple Effect Images

On International Women’s Day, it’s hard not to think about the most vulnerable, the women all around the world whose lives are being most impacted by climate change. As Kingsolver described, it’s women and girls who are travelling farther to bring water to their homes, walking for hours a day, eliminating many girls’ already-slim chance to attend school. It’s women who cook for hours in their kitchens, breathing in the smoke from cookstoves that pollute their lungs and their air. And, it’s women who are often last to eat, even when the first responsible for putting food on their families’ plates, even in the face of increasing food scarcity.

Hillary Clinton recently echoed Madeleine Albright in saying that issues of gender equality are issues of national and global security, and the impacts of climate change are woven tightly between the two. We cannot solve the challenges of climate change without empowering and educating women, and we cannot solve our other global challenges without addressing climate change. As Time recently wrote, “If you want to change the world, invest in girls.”

Empowering female entrepreneurs and political leaders has never been more needed nor more possible. There’s Solar Sister in Africa and Barefoot College in India, training women as solar engineers and entrepreneurs; Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement, planting trees and hope across Africa; dozens of groups of women constructing rainwater harvesting and catch dams. See the impact of giving female leaders better information about development decisions, training women on basic green technologies, and getting cleaner cookstoves into women’s homes.

These programs not only make women stronger, but help their families and communities. The World Food Programme reports that women who earn, invest 90 percent back into their families, and back into their communities. Investing in women means investing in communities, in truly sustainable development. Today, the problems and their solutions are closer than ever: “Help a Woman. Help the Planet.”

The following video features a Cameroonian woman talking about how climate change is affecting women in her country:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XJ3WOUsKnc]

Take Action:

From Oxfam Canada: Demand climate justice for women:

Canada will soon be joining with other world leaders to establish a climate fund to help poor countries adapt to the droughts and floods caused by climate change.

We want to make sure this fund recognizes that women are often the first and worst affected by these disasters. Go to Oxfam.ca for more info and to email Minister of the Environment Peter Kent to ensure that women play a key role in envisioning and implementing climate change solutions.

More links:

It’s Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement

Women and girls in developing countries bear the biggest burden as climate change impacts the world. It is in the daily lives of these women that the battle to save their family, the planet, and the future is played out. These women and girls are forces of nature, and Ripple Effect Images is telling their stories. RippleEffectImages.com