Monbiot: Canada the Real Villain in Climate Talks

George Monbiot is the author of the best-selling books Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Monbiot is in Canada this week to participate in a public debate in Toronto with climate change skeptics.  He and one of the skeptics, Bjorn Lomberg from the Copenhagen Business School, were on CBC radio’s The Current on Tuesday.  Click here, and go to “listen to Part 2” to hear the discussion.  (Lomberg’s argument seems to be that yes, global warming is a problem but the world must choose between helping the poor and addressing climate change?!).

On December 1, on Monbiot.com , Monbiot wrote that the most urgent threat to world peace right now is Canada.  He observes that Canada:

is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man.

Monbiot goes on to describe how the Alberta tar sands, and the dirty oil that they produce, are dominating our national government’s agenda, and determining Canada’s international strategy of disruption and intransigence at international climate negotiations.  The tar barons are holding the rest of us Canadians ransom.

To read more about the tar sands and their toxic effects, go to Monbiot.com or  click here or here.

Meanwhile, the tar sands continue to contaminate fresh water at an alarming rate. The tailing ponds that hold this contaminated water are so toxic that in 2008 a flock of migrating ducks landed on them and died, and are so large that they can be seen from space!  Downstream, animals and people are being poisoned, and ecosystems are being destroyed.  One of the affected First Nations, Beaver Lake Cree Nation, is challenging the Alberta government in court. The Indigenous Environmental Network put it this way:

Animals are dying, disappearing, and being mutated by the poisons dumped into our river systems. Once we have destroyed these fragile eco-systems we will have also destroyed our peoples and trampled our treaty rights.

Syncrude oil sands mining operations. More than 3,500 square kilometres of land has been leased for mining operations similar to this one. Photo: David Dodge, Pembina Institute

Remind Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Environment Minister Jim Prentice that Canadians want a diverse, healthy, and green economy.  The majority of us don’t think that the toxic tar sands are worth the price of our future!

As the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen approaches, check out 350.org and click on “find a vigil” for the weekend of Dec 11 & 12.  If there isn’t one being organized in your community, sign up to organize one!

Hope from Africa: Whatever Happens, Don’t Ever Give Up

Tcktcktck – 5 days until Copenhagen.  And the global warmer deniers continue to be hot and bothered.  They persist in their focus on the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia which I wrote about on Monday. Senator James Inhofe is one of the people leading U.S.’s denial lobby; and he also happens to be the U.S. senator who receives the most money from the oil and gas industries.  Inhofe thinks that “global warming is debunked everytime he drinks a slushie and gets a brain freeze” (Jon Stewart).

As Copenhagen gets closer, if you are anything like me, you might be feeling the need for a dose of encouragement. Here’s some:

William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer’s book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has made it to Amazon’s top 10 Best Books of 2009, as well as Publisher Weekly’s Best Book of the Year.  It tells about how Kamkwamba, “a simple farmer in a country of poor farmers” built a windmill about of bicycle parts and other scrap pieces when he was 14, after being forced to drop out of school because of a severe drought in Malawi. He built his windmill to pump water and generate electricity for his home. Now every home in Wimbe, Kamkwamba’s hometown, has a solar panel and a battery to store power. His message to  “all the people out there – to the Africans, and to poor people” is to never give up.

Trust yourself, and believe.  Whatever happens, don’t ever give up.”

Click here view a video of Mr. Kamkwamba speaking at the TED Global Conference this past July.

The situation that we are in is too important to let the deniers sidetrack us. Let’s take Mr. Kamkwamba’s words to heart, and keep up the good fight for a real, fair and binding treaty on global warming. Check out the links on my blogroll and take action.

Global Warming Denier Nonsense Amusing, If It Weren’t Deadly

A recent response to one of my posts questioned my statement that there were fewer trees in the world than 200 years ago, saying I had provided no proof.  This same person questioned why it was important to point out that trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen when discussing global warming.

This is amusing, on the face of it.  Except that there is a relentless disinformation campaign going on, funded by the companies that have the most to lose if our economy switches from fossil fuel-based to greener, less polluting energy sources.  Lest you think I’m just a paranoid conspiracy theorist, let me remind you of the tobacco companies’ example.  For years, they poured millions of dollars into denying that cigarette smoke is linked to cancer, paying scientists and PR people alike to muddy the waters.  Can we really assume that the oil, coal and gas companies are any different?  They have taken a page out of the tobacco companies’ book, and are trying to divert a solutions-focused climate change discussion.

Exxon Mobile is the largest and wealthiest corporation in the world.  Rather than retreating in the face of mounting evidence of global disaster, there is evidence that it continues to put money and effort into denial of global warming.  In 2006  Exxon was called to account before the Royal Society of London scientific body for its funding of  so-called “think tanks”, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).  CEI produced commercials extolling the virtues of carbon dioxide; set to the background of sunrises and little girls blowing dandelions, the commercials state boldly “Carbon dioxide.  They call it pollution.  We call it life.” (If I can find a current link to them, I will post it.)

Obviously, carbon dioxide is a part of life.  But the CEI ad – and similar denial claims – ignore that fact that it is not carbon dioxide itself that is inherently harmful, but it is excessive discharges of the gas that scientists argue is harmful to the atmosphere. And excessive discharging of carbon dioxide is what we humans, mostly in Europe and North America, have been doing with our increased rate of fossil fuel consumption since the Industrial Revolution over 200 years ago.

In “Climate Change Cover-Up”, James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore offer this analogy:

Read more

The Queen in on Climate Change Conspiracy

Queen Elizabeth II addressed the Commonwealth leaders meeting in Trinidad and Tobago yesterday by urging the heads of state to lead on climate change.  She told the delegates:

The threat to our environment is not a new concern but it is now a global challenge that will continue to affect the security and stability of millions for years to come.”

Not known for her fanatical, unconventional ideas, it seems that even the Queen of England can be duped by the lefty, liberal, radical, nazi, communist, terrorist, world-wide conspiracy of scientists trying to fool everybody into believing that the burning of fossil fuels is affecting our environment, and that the window of opportunity we, as a global community, have to act is swiftly closing.  Those lefty/liberal/nazi/communists/terrorist scientists are obviously in it for themselves.  And the corporations that make money from all of us burning those same fossil fuels are pure as the driven snow, wanting nothing but to save us from these nasty people trying to gain financially from pulling the blinders over our eyes and getting us to swallow anthropogenic climate change whole.  These corporations want to help us out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s not like they having anything – like billions of dollars in profits every year – to gain by continuing along this path that we are currently on.  Nope, not them.  It’s those nasty scientists getting rich off of us suckers.

Want to learn more?  Check out James Hoggan’s book Climate Cover-Up – The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Or go to the DeSmogBlog website, whose mission is to clear “the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science“.