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Dear Future Generations: Sorry

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This Earth Day, activist and spoken word artist Prince Ea launched his newest online video entitled “Dear Future Generations: Sorry” to motivate young citizens to take immediate action to stop climate change by protecting threatened forests through the Stand for Trees campaign.

“Climate change is an emergency situation of the highest degree and all of us share the responsibility to do something about it,” said Prince Ea.

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Last month, Prince Ea traveled to Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to witness firsthand the horrors of tropical deforestation. He also visited pioneering forest conservation projects developed by Wildlife Works that demonstrate a successful new way to stop deforestation by rewarding forest communities who conserve their forests.

The Wildlife Works projects that Prince Ea visited in Kenya and the DRC represent two of twelve forest conservation projects participating in the new Stand for Trees campaign, an online initiative created by environmental NGO Code REDD that enables the general public to take direct action to combat climate change through crowd-funding the protection of threatened forests.

“Climate change is an emergency situation of the highest degree and all of us share the responsibility to do something about it,” said Prince Ea.

Climate scientists have warned that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 17 billion tonnes annually by 2020 to avoid increasing disastrous effects of climate change. The destruction of forests currently contributes more than 7 billion tonnes of emissions.

“I made this video to inform my generation that there is something we can do right now to take back our future; that is to take a Stand for Trees,” said Prince Ea.

Local chiefs and thousands of community members enthusiastically welcomed Prince Ea to the Congo Basin Forest, which made national news in the DRC.

“The Stand for Trees campaign was designed to put the power to save forests in the hands of the people to whom the future matters most: young people,” explained Mike Korchinsky, founder of Code REDD and founder and president of Wildlife Works.

Prince Ea’s “Dear Future Generations: Sorry”debuted on April 20th via social media and garnered 25 million views on Facebook in the first 36 hours of its release.

To learn more please visit StandforTrees.org.

Inspired by the Mars One mission, Citizens’ Climate Lobby is recruiting change agents who will commit to staying on Earth to make it liveable for human beings and other species:

With your help, our global community will legislate the right policies to accelerate the biggest transformation since the Industrial Revolution.

Why I’m Speaking Out In Defence Of Two Core Canadian Values, Nature & Democracy

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On Monday, I will be joining the BlackOutSpeakOut campaign, and joining a committed group of organizations representing millions of Canadians who are darkening  our websites in protest against the efforts of the Harper government to silence our voices. The BlackOutSpeakOut website describes this action this way:

Right now, Parliament is pushing through a bill to weaken many of the country’s most important environmental protection measures and silence the voices of all Canadians who seek to defend nature. Today it’s our voice; tomorrow it could be yours.

Here are the top five reasons to Speak Out:

  1. Charities are being targeted. The government is adding $8 million in new funding for the Canada Revenue Agency to audit charities like environmental groups in spite of the fact they have simply exercised their legal right to advocate for things like laws to fight global warming. This will have a chilling effect on democratic debate. What’s more, under these new laws, citizen groups will likely be shut out of environmental reviews of big projects like oil pipelines. Key government agencies with expertise will also have less input. Well-funded backroom lobbyists and political operatives will have greater influence.
  2. Canadians’ participation in Parliament is being disrespected. Instead of following the established process for making sweeping changes, which allows for thorough public debate, these changes are being shoehorned into a massive budget law. This drastically reduces the amount of consultation on a whole variety of topics. These changes will have serious consequences for all Canadians and our voices are not being heard.
  3. Nature is being put at serious risk. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is being replaced with a totally new law. Under it, Ottawa will play a much smaller role in protecting people from harmful projects, while retaining the right to basically rubber-stamp big projects that powerful oil interests want. And the new weaker rules are being applied to review processes that are already underway–so projects like the Enbridge Northern Gateway tankers and pipeline project could get an easier ride.
  4. Too much power is in the hands of too few. The National Energy Board will no longer be able to say “no” to oil pipeline projects that are not in the public interest. Politicians in Cabinet will be able to overrule the expert energy regulator if powerful oil interests don’t like its decision. Permits that allow the destruction of habitat for fish and threatened or endangered species will now be issued behind closed doors without public scrutiny, if they are required at all.
  5. Trusted advisors to government that provide high-quality analysis for balanced policy are being ignored. The 2012 budget eliminates the funding for the last remaining government advisory body – the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE). The NRTEE provides analysis and advice on how to meet our international commitments to reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Many lakes, rivers and streams that provide habitat to fish will be at greater risk of destruction because of changes to the Fisheries Act contained within the budget implementation bill. Healthy fish habitat is important for fish and for the people and businesses that depend on them.

Send a message to the G20 Finance Ministers

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The G20 finance ministers are meeting this weekend in Scotland, and apparently climate change financing is not even on the agenda, although the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen are less than 5 weeks away and funding is a critical part of reaching a global agreement.   If you want to send a message to your minister now, and urge them to put climate change back on the agenda,  go this Avaaz.org link.

Count Down to Copenhagen

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33 days left until the first meetings start in Copenhagen, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference.  This is the world’s chance to reverse climate change before we have gone too far down the road of irreversible changes to our planet, according to leading scientists.  Unfortunately, it is politicians, not scientists, who are going to be at the table in Copenhagen.  Here in Canada, where I live, we have Stephen Harper at the helm.  Mr. Harper was a climate change denier for years when he was in opposition, and now he makes semi-politically correct noises about the environment, because Canadians do care about this issue.  But the Conservative Party’s power base remains Alberta, the home of the horribly polluting and carbon dioxide emitting tar sands.  So while Mr. Harper and his government make some sounds about doing something about climate change, there’s not much will for change there.  Canada has received the “Fossil of the Day” award from the Climate Action Network so many times that it recently received the “Colossal Fossil” or Fossil of the Year award, because of its inaction on this issue and its willingness to go the extra mile to thwart genuine action internationally on climate change.  What an embarrassment for Canadians!

As we approach Copenhagen, get active – call or write a letter/email to your elected representative – local and national.  In Canada, contact  Stephen Harper, and Jim Prentice, Minister of the Environment.   Let them know that Canadians care about the future.  Once you’ve contacted them, and you still feel that you would like to do more, find out what’s going on in your community.  The time is now.  Remember –  350 or bust!

350 or bust!

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I’m a mother, an educator, and a writer and I am very concerned about the inaction of our leaders on climate change.  So, I decided to start this blog as one carbon-neutral way of dealing with my anxiety as UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen gets closer.   I’m a newbie to blogging, so please accept my apologies for any mistakes!

I don’t understand the climate skeptics who insist, despite overwhelming and credible evidence to the contrary, that climate change isn’t happening.  Or if it is, it’s just a natural phenomenon because “the climate has always changed”.   As the 350.org website states “Two years ago, after leading climatologists observed rapid ice melt in the Arctic and other frightening signs of climate change, they issued a series of studies showing that the planet faced both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remained above 350 parts per million”.   I guess the certainty of skeptics in the face of all the evidence is disturbing because they don’t seem to entertain the idea that THEY MAY BE WRONG.

If the scientists and others who insist that climate change is real are wrong, the worst that we’ll get are some changes in the economy and less pollution (and maybe even cheaper, local energy sources).    And with regards to the economy, to echo the skeptics, one could say that “the economy is always changing and adapting”.    But if the skeptics are wrong, well, we- and future generations –  really are up the creek without the proverbial paddle.

Well, from the consequential to the prosaic, as life often is.  Time for supper.  Cheers.

Christine