carbon dioxide

Save Our Climate Act Introduced in U.S. Congress

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It’s been an interesting few weeks on the climate front in North America. With the backdrop of the “Occupy” movement, there were some small changes introduced that hopefully signal the start of an all-out campaign by our elected officials to tackle this issue head-on. First we had the formation of an all-party Climate Caucus in Ottawa, closely followed by the introduction of a bill in the U.S Congress that would place a fee on carbon. Here’s the response of Citizens Climate Lobby, a group dedicated to creating the political will for a sustainable climate, to the latest news out of Washington:

Citizens Climate Lobby Welcomes The Introduction of U.S. Save Our Climate Act

CORONADO, CALIF. – As the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions grows more evident each week, Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) welcomed the introduction of Rep. Pete Stark’s (D-CA) Save Our Climate Act as a critical step in efforts to stop the worst effects of climate change.

“We’re running out of time to wean our nation off the fossil fuels that are heating up the planet,” said CCL’s Executive Director Mark Reynolds. “We need to put a price on carbon that shifts energy usage to clean sources, and that’s what Congressman Stark’s bill does.”

The Save Our Climate Act, H.R. 3242, would tax coal, oil and gas based on the amount of carbon dioxide these fuels would emit when burned. Starting at $10 per ton of CO2, the tax would increase by $10 each year until CO2 emissions fall to 20 percent of 1990 levels. Most of the revenue from the Save Our Climate Act – an estimated $2.6 trillion in the first 10 years – would be returned to U.S. citizens as an annual rebate to offset higher energy costs. A portion of that revenue — $490 billion – would go toward deficit reduction.

“This is a revenue-neutral approach that Republicans should be able to embrace, as it will not increase the size of government,” said Reynolds. “What it WILL do is move massive amounts of investment money toward clean energy, expanding a sector of the economy that shows the most promise for producing the jobs Americans need.”

News of Stark’s legislation was warmly received in Canada. “We applaud Congressman Stark’s leadership on putting a price on carbon to transition the U.S. to a clean energy economy,” says Cathy Orlando, Project Manager for Citizens Climate Lobby Canada. “If successful they will join Australia and British Columbia on taking effective action on climate change and economic development. It’s time that Canada’s federal government also take similar action.”

The controversy surrounding the bankruptcy of solar panel maker Solyndra has eroded U.S. support for government programs that subsidize clean energy. The Citizens Climate Lobby believes that a clear, predictable price signal on carbon will send private investors to wind, solar and other alternative technologies, reducing the need for government funding for emerging companies.

“When it comes to clean energy, we don’t want to kill the goose that’s laying the golden eggs in our economy. But perhaps somebody besides the federal government can feed the goose, and that’s what we’ll accomplish with a price on carbon,” said Reynolds.

More links:

BUILDING A GREEN ECONOMY: The Economics of Carbon Pricing Carbon & the Transition to Clean, Renewable Fuels

Citizens Climate Lobby, U.S.

Citizens Climate Lobby, Canada

On September 24th, The Planet Is Moving. Are You Joining The Ride Beyond Fossil Fuels?

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Across Ontario and around the world, September 24th is a a day for people to rally and demand from our elected leaders action on moving beyond fossil fuels. Initiated by 350.org, Moving Planet is a day to put our demands for climate action into motion—marching, biking, skating—calling for the world to go beyond fossil fuels.

Moving Planet will be a day to put our demands for climate action into motion—marching, biking, skating—calling for the world to go beyond fossil fuels.

To find a Moving Planet event in your community, click here.

Here in Red Lake, we’re kicking off our Harvest Festival with a bike rally/rodeo around town, ending with a bike maintenance workshop. Along with all the Harvest Festival activities during the day, Saturday evening we are screening “carbon nation”, which describes itself as  nn optimistic, solutions-based, non-partisan documentary that illustrates why it’s incredibly smart to be a part of the new, low-carbon economy: it’s good business, it emboldens national and energy security, and it improves health and the environment. The screening will be followed by a Q & Q session with Director Peter Byck.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, some friends of mine have put together a fabulous event which has been kicked off by a chalk “footprint parade” around the city for the last two weeks, and culminates with a parade from the Manitoba Legislature to the Forks where music will be happening at the Main Stage. If you’re in the city, check it out – go to the Moving Manitoba event page for all the details.

So wherever you are, get out,get moving, connect with other people who are concerned about their children’s future, and have fun doing it! Remember, there is NO Planet B!

More links:

Climate Mama: The Planet is Moving: Are You Joining the Ride?

Business As Usual Is Over: Value Change Required For Survival

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Today’s blog posting was initially posted on 350orbust on June 30, 2010:

Chief Oren Lyons said, when speaking about Climate Change at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the UN Headquarters in 2007:

We’re talking about change. People have to change. Directions have to change. Values have to change. There is no mercy in nature; nature has none. It has only law, only rule. You don’t abide the rule, you suffer the result…it’s what you do, and how you live. Business as usual is over…Value change for survival. You’re either going to change your values, or you’re not going to survive. You’re going to abide that law or suffer the consequences…Business as usual is over. Carbon is over. Oil is over. We better find something else. We better find some equity. We’re not going to have the luxury of spending $200 billion in a war. You’re not going to have the time or the money. because you’re going to be paying for the environment, for damages coming. You want to talk about the economy, you’re going to wreck the economies of the world…Change or else…Tell your leaders to get off their ass, let’s get on with life.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWiRFAvxu3k]

Chief Lyons is an Associate Professor in the American Studies Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is  Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy). Chief Lyon has been active in international indigenous rights and sovereignty issues for over three decades at the United Nations and other forums. He is the publisher of “Daybreak”, a national Native American news magazine.

More links:

Earthkeeper Heroes

What If Everything Ran On Gas? Or What If Everything Didn’t?

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A new Nissan LEAF ad poses the questions “What if everything ran on gas?” and “Then again, what if everything didn’t?”  Check it out:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0sCCJFkEbE]

*thanks to my wonderful husband Mark for sending me this link*

More links:

Nissan LEAF Ad: If Gas Powered Everything: Clean Tech News and Analysis

Warming Atlantic Linked To Hurricane Igor Devastation in Newfoundland

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Much of the east coast of Newfoundland was devastated by Hurricane Igor on Tuesday. Roads have been washed out, electricity is gone, communities have been cut off from help, and one man has been washed out to sea. By now, at least 30 communities have declared a state of emergency.

The news coverage that I heard yesterday had locals emphasizing the unusual strength of Igor. The town clerk from Bonavista interviewed on As It Happens on CBC radio said he’d never seen winds that strong or rainfall that heavy in his lifetime – and Bonavista is on a windy, wet peninsula! Sam Synard, the Mayor of Marystown was quoted in The Star as saying:

“We’ve never seen such a violent storm before.” Synard reported that more than 200 millimetres of rain was dumped in 20 hours, “and very few, if any communities in the country, could deal with that amount of rainfall.”

My heart goes out to Newfoundlanders – “The Rock” is one of my favourite places on earth. The header photo on my blog was taken during a visit last September.  I wish the good people of Newfoundland Godspeed in their recovery from this devastation.

Unfortunately, the warming of the atmosphere and the resulting warming of the ocean which has happened as a result of our unbridled burning of fossil fuels in the last century is making severe weather events like this more and more frequent. The economic as well as the human toll will only increase (the Newfoundland government is predicting it will take at least $100 million to repair the damage from this storm). Recent research has shown that we are experiencing more storms with higher wind speeds, and these storms are more destructive, last longer and make landfall more frequently than in the past. This is our new reality, in Canada and around the globe, as the Arctic ice and the permafrost melt, and the oceans get warmer.  We are starting to reap the destruction that we have sown, and it’s not going to be pleasant.

It’s time for all of us to demand that our governments, particularly at the federal level, start addressing this issue in more ways that just preserving Canada’s claim to the Arctic so we can dig up more oil and gas! For ways to do this, check out Cheryl McNamara’s recent post on Bill C311 – the Climate Accountability Act, or go to my “Action not Apathy” page.

More links:

National Geographic: Is Global Warming Making Hurricanes Worse?

Union of Concerned Scientists: Hurricanes and Climate Change

Popular Science: Hurricane, Climate Change Link Explained

Real Climate: Hurricanes and Climate Change – Is There A Connection?

Canada, Russia expected to win Arctic claims at UN

The following photos were taken around Marystown, on the Burin Peninsula, by Andrew Lundrigan, and posted on the FB page “Hurricane Igor Hits Marystown”

Bjorn Lomborg Joins Growing Group of High Profile Former Skeptics

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I’m on a cross-Canada road trip these days, so don’t have much time to spend on my blog. Bjorn Lomborg’s u-turn on climate change is significant enough, though, to merit an on-the-fly posting:

From The Guardian last Monday, the headline:

Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune: With his new book, Danish scientist Bjørn Lomborg has become an unlikely advocate for huge investment in fighting global warming. But his answers are unlikely to satisfy all climate change campaigners.

The article goes on to describe how Lomborg, in his new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits, states that climate change must be addressed now (Lomborg has written in the past that climate change is a problem but not one that should be a top priority for governments). Now, Lomborg has changed his tune enough to say that “man-made global warming exists” and “we have long moved on from any mainstream disagreements about the science of climate change.” This last statement is particularly interesting because Lomborg has often been quoted by anti-science climate deniers in their arguments against the reality of climate change.

Climate Progress has an interesting and in-depth analysis of Lomborg’s shift in position, and Joe Romm isn’t convinced that Lomborg is anything but an opportunist who has only changed his position slightly. The substance of Lomborg’s argument remains the same, Romm argues, and quotes Howard Friel, author of The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight on Global Warming, who wrote recently on Common Dreams:

While spanning the globe for “smart solutions” to climate change and to improve the human condition, Lomborg ignores an obvious major source of human suffering, economic deprivation, human rights violations, and vast amounts of wasted money-that is, perpetual war and global military spending-which now totals approximately $1.5 trillion per year. While Lomborg argues on cost-benefit grounds, by citing a select group of climate economists, that it is too expensive for the world’s economies to reduce CO2 emissions, he voices no opposition to the state of perpetual global war and sky-high military expenditures.

Lomborg is not a responsible climate commentator, and it would be good if responsible news organizations finally figured that out.

It seems it is still good to be skeptical of the “Skeptical Environmentalist”, as Lomborg titled one of his books. Having said that, The Week published an interesting articled on the heels of Lomborg’s apparent change of heart entitled 6 Global Warming Skeptics who changed their minds. Here’s an excerpt:

With 2010 shaping up as the warmest year on record and unprecedented heat waves gripping the planet, global warming skeptics have suffered another blow with the defection of the “most high-profile” member of their camp, author Bjorn Lomborg. But Lomborg isn’t the first doubter to accept the scientific consensus that human carbon emissions are warming the planet and need to be curtailed.

The article goes on to list 5 other high-profile skeptics of anthropogenic global warming, including Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Click here to read the full article.

More links:

Green Groups Cautiously Welcome Bjorn Lomborg’s Call for $100bn Climate Fund

The Lomborg Deception: About Yesterday’s Front-Page Story in the Guardian


Devastation in Pakistan is Unimaginable – But You and I Can Make A Difference

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U.S. Senator John Kerry has just returned from a trip to flooded Pakistan, and is shaken by what he saw. This is an excerpt from a posting on his Facebook wall:

I just got home to Massachusetts from seeing the floods in Pakistan — and what I saw there was as devastating and gripping as the last humanitarian crisis I emailed you about. Even as I sit here I’m shaken by the fact that this is Pakistan’s Katrina.

It’s not just that one fifth of the country – an area larger than all of New England, New York, New Jersey and Maryland combined – is submerged under historic flooding, or that with weeks left in the monsoon season, it could get even worse.

None of that captures what I saw and heard when our helicopter touched down. I went to Multan in the Punjab plains. This is no isolated hamlet, but an ancient city, a district capital with a population of over 1.5 million. And it’s inundated with water.

I spoke to the people, heard their stories, their desperation for food and water. They talked of the joy when they saw American Chinook helicopters – distinctive for their two big rotors – because they knew help was arriving. But the scale of the disaster hit me as I flew over the city and surrounding valley, mile after mile of Punjabi plains turned into a massive lake, this large city covered in water. Roads were washed out, vehicles abandoned, tall buildings turned into places of desperate refuge. Any flat surface high enough to escape the waters became a life-raft, often packed with people willing to bake in the hot sun rather than face the barrier of the flood-waters. The scene stretched on and on.

You can get a look at some of this – just get a small sense of it – watching this NBC News piece.

Senator Kerry goes on to encourage generosity in response to this disaster. I’ve posted some links on the bottom that enable you to do this, and if you are Canadian keep in mind our federal government is matching donations to Pakistan relief dollar for dollar. But please consider doing more than donating  money; talk about the link between climate change and extreme weather events like this one with your friends and family. Lower your own carbon footprint, then join together with other members of your community to lower its carbon footprint. We are all in this together!

Donation links:

Interaction

MCC

More links:

Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Pakistan: Living on the Edge

Waterborne Disease a Threat To Pakistan’s Children

Climate Change Has Arrived: Drowning Today, Parched Tomorrow

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The Earth leads the news again. Fire & flood across continents. The nation-states are only supporting actors. What matters is people and our relationship with all of life. The nations and corporations and religions are losing their position. The Times says “Climate change has actually arrived.” No, at long last the Earth takes over completely.

The paragraph above from Reverend Billy Talen’s Facebook page today. Talen, founder of the Church of Life After Shopping, is a modern-day prophet, visionary, and performance artist who has been pointing out the dangers of the North American over-consumptive lifestyle in creative, attention-grabbing ways since 1996.

My scientist husband compared this summer’s weather to an experiment done in Chemistry class. Supersaturation occurs when a solid is added to a liquid and appears to be dissolving without visibly changing the liquid until the liquid becomes so saturated that, just by lightly tapping the side of the flask, the dissolved solid immediately crystallizes and sinks to the bottom. The earth is close to her “supersaturation point”, as the extreme weather events demonstrate. This analogy can also be extended to include the possibility that the number of weather catastrophes around the globe this summer, combined with the ecological and economic disaster of the BP oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico, could crystallize in people’s minds the reality of climate change and the limits of our finite planet. This shift in understanding needs to happen now, before we are any further down this planet-destructive, and ultimately self-destructive, path. Could this be the summer? Or, as someone commented on Rev Billy’s page, “I think we are being voted off the planet”.

credit: Doug Grandt

More links:

Four Years Go

In Weather Chaos, a Case For Global Warming

Reinventing Repower America: Our Only Hope For Winning the Climate Battle in America

Sonnenschiff Solar City Produces 4 Times The Energy It Consumes

Drowning Today, Parched Tomorrow

“Russia’s Problem Is Our Problem” As Drought and Fires Devastate Country

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Tyler Hamilton’s column in The Star yesterday made the point that Russia’s current struggles with fire and drought could well become our problem in the future, if moves are not made to address the rapid climate changes that are occurring from our warming of the atmosphere. He posits this scenario:

Dozens of cottages have been destroyed and smoke from the affected regions has engulfed Toronto. Premier Dalton McGuinty declared a state of emergency and warned residents to stay indoors.

Meanwhile, low water levels and unprecedented power demand from air conditioning have forced rolling electricity brownouts across the province, with Ontario’s coal fleet – scheduled for complete shutdown by 2014 – operating at full capacity and making the pollution much worse.

Ontario is in no way alone. Heat and drought have devastated this year’s prairie wheat harvest, causing market prices to double on fears there will be a global wheat shortage.

Go to The Star.com to read all of  “Russia’s climate problem is our problem“.

In an follow-up to this article on Clean Break, Hamilton said that he received an email from a frustrated Environment Canada scientist with regard to the data that his department has available on the rising temperatures. The email mentioned the current muzzling of climate scientists and  said:

“government scientists were very unhappy” that this science, funded by Canadian taxpayers, was not being made known and easily accessible to the general public.”And yes, I fear reprisals if my name is attached to anything,” he wrote.

One of the links provided by the scientist shows that the Canadian national average temperature for the spring of 2010 was 4.1°C above normal, based on preliminary data, which makes this the WARMEST SPRING ON RECORD since nationwide records began in 1948. The previous record was in 1998 which was 3.2°C above normal. THIS IS THE SECOND SEASON IN A ROW TO SET A RECORD FOR ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES.

I’m posting the graph full size here, because in the past links to Environment Canada information on our changing climate have been changed or deleted when I revisit the site.

The second link shows graphically how temperatures are expected to rise between now and 2100 in Canada and throughout the rest of North America.

As Hamilton states,

This data, against the backdrop of the Russia heat wave and Pakistan flooding, should be front-page news.

Why isn’t it?

From the NASA Earth Observatory, satellite pictures of the fires and smoke in Russia from August 4:

This could very well be in our future, if our leaders don’t start to lead on this issue.

Go to 350.org for ideas and inspiration on what you can do to encourage them, or check out my action not apathy page. We’re all in this together – remember that you will have to look your children and grandchildren in the eyes in 20 years when they ask you what YOU did about the climate crisis while there was still time.

Bill Maher on BP Disaster: Our Children Are Part Of The Clean Up Crew

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Bill Maher on the BP Disaster:  “What has to happen before people change?…We shouldn’t be drilling offshore at all…In 50 years when there’s no fish and we’ve killed all the animals and there’s just cockroaches and jellyfish, that’s what we’ll be eating…”

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

I am away this week on a low-carbon canoe trip in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park. Enjoy the video!