"laggards and obstructionists"

Submitted by 900ft Jesus on April 5, 2009 - 3:24pm.

That, according to Andrew Weaver, climate expert, IPCC contributor and author of Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World, is Canadians’ international reputation is when it comes to climate change.

Whether or not you care about our reputation, you should care about what our country is doing in reference to climate change. If you expect to live at least another decade, you will feel its effects economically, socially, and psychologically. Your children, if you have any, will suffer its direct impact, and the lives of your grandchildren will be nightmarish.

If I could only write about one thing, it would be climate change/global warming. It is like time: it doesn’t stop, doesn’t take a break overall, can’t be made up for later with loads of money like other issues. It’s relentless, and it’s here, the effects growing exponentially.

There is no point in this kind of blog to try and convince those who despite their own eyes continue to deny that our climate is changing. There simply isn’t time to fight that kind of deliberate cecity, and there is plenty of material written by specialists with direct experience in the field for people to look up should they have any mind at all to know the truth.

What can we independent bloggers do to help our planet, our country, our families prepare for, and deflect as much as possible, the effects of climate change?

First, we need to keep up-to-date on research and findings, and we need to extend our readings by linking to related topics such as how climate change is and will have impact geo-politically.

There are so few articles written on the subject in main stream media, so we need to write often about the subject as well so that it becomes part of our on-going dialogue.

And we need to put massive pressure - massive pressure - on our politicians to deliver the truth obtained in reports, and act on those findings now, with sights set both on immediate issues and long term ones.

I said if I could only write about one thing, it would be climate change. That isn’t because I think it’s the most important issue, or the only issue worth discussing, but because nearly all other issues either relate to it now, or will, over the next few decades. Economies all over the globe are already affected by climate change as food production is affected and more climate related disasters demand public funds. As climates deteriorate globally and more nations are less able to feed their own people, border wars will inevitably increase. As Dyer, the author of “Climate Wars” says: starving people aren’t reasonable.

Dyer usually writes on geo-political issues. He decided to write “Climate Wars” because while researching geo-political stories, he realized many governments world-wide have been developing military plans to deal with massive problems they expect due to climate change. Our own RCMP developed such a plan around 8 years ago in which they mention civil unrest, massive disasters, and the sudden influx of climate refugees as climates change.

Other important issues such as equal rights, massive lay-offs, unfair bank charges, and even our presence in Afghanistan or whatever country our military may be in at that time will be shoved back out of sheer necessity as we are faced with very immediate challenges. And the longer we wait to prepare for the inevitable, the more disastrous will be our situation and the more difficult our ability to deal with it quickly and effectively.

The NDP presented Bill C-311, Climate Change Accountability Act recently. The Bloc supported it, and after some vacillating, the Liberals did as well. It is a modest act, if you know anything about climate change, the rate at which warming is occurring, tipping points, and the estimated temperature we must not exceed if we do not want to see climate change running far beyond our ability to cope with it.

The Act asks that the Minister of the Environment come up with a plan within 6 months laying out a greenhouse gas emissions target plan for the years 2015, 2020, 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040 and 2045.

The Conservatives, rather than respond with constructive suggestions toward a workable plan, rejected it outright, and with small-minded, partisan stupidity -

Hansard, April 2, 2009 (emphasis mine)

Jim Prentice: the coalition is obviously alive and well. Everyone in Canada, except for the opposition, knows that a responsible climate change plan turns upon our economic realities. That is why we are working together on the clean energy dialogue with the U.S. administration. That is why we took leadership with harmonized tailpipe emission standards yesterday.

Ed Fast: yesterday the Liberal Party voted in favour of an NDP climate change bill that would cripple our economy in the best of times, but will outright devastate it in the current global economic crisis. This Liberal-NDP bill will put thousands of Canadians out of work and gut our manufacturing industry.
...How low can the Liberals sink? Their willingness to again shack up with an NDP-Bloc coalition is a warning to all of us how shamefully desperate the Liberal Party is to get its hands on power. Canadians beware.

These were Members’ Statements, and very telling in their heading: The Liberal Party. Not climate change, not the environment, but the Liberal party.

Rather than address the escalating problems related to climate change, this petty, short-sighted government chose to use the vote on the Bill to ridiculously attempt to re-awaken the specter of a coalition, and to attack the Liberals.

Pathetically, they refer to three parties cooperating to fight climate change as “shacking up.”

They refer to the Liberal support as “sinking low.”

They attempt to deceive the public through scare tactics, saying our economy would be crippled. That’s an out-right lie, and they know it, but they don’t want to lose the support of the idiot fringe or their big industry money folk.

(Canadian meteorologist Jim Bruce, who for years was a director of the weather service at Environment Canada) said Canada is paralyzed by the worry that fighting climate change will hurt the economy. "But European countries have shown that if you take action you create new businesses in the green economy," he said.

Not only is it possible to have a healthy economy while taking action, it’s essential to do so. If we don’t, climate change runs away on us, and the economic impact will be devastating.

In the summer of 2007, a large portion of Arctic Sea ice - about 40 per cent - simply vanished. That wasn't supposed to happen. At least not yet. As recent as 2004, scientists had predicted it would take another 50 to 100 years for that much ice to melt. Yet here it was happening today.

It raised the question: Had global warming suddenly pressed the gas pedal to the floor? If so, the world was in for quite a climate ride - dramatic, jarring changes in climate much sooner than expected. Climate scientists were deeply worried.

The ice melt of 2007 seemed to confirm Warwick's fears. Reports since then claim the Arctic ice could be gone by 2013.

We have already crossed some critical climate thresholds. The world not only has to drastically cut back its greenhouse gas emissions but also begin to take steps to deal with the inevitable changes that global warming will cause. The much-feared tipping points - which would cause massive icecap and ice shield melting, and plunge the world headlong into severe weather systems, causing broad devastation and rising seas - seem increasingly probable.

This is why, scientists say, the United Nations climate talks that began this week in Bonn, Germany, and will culminate in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, are so important. They are a last chance for the world to come to its senses and negotiate an agreement to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Many scientists...say that even if we make cuts over the next two decades of 80 per cent in GHG emissions, our children and grandchildren will still have to cope with rising sea levels, creeping desertification and violent storm surges, not to mention the geopolitical pressure that will be placed on governments trying to deal with human migration away from devastated areas of the globe.

"Some people are saying we have already crossed this threshold (into unstoppable, jarring changes)," Ford, who is also an IPCC contributor, said. "Others are saying ... we haven't crossed it yet, but it's pretty close. The climate is definitely changing faster than we thought, especially the Arctic. Globally as well. This really caught the scientific community by surprise. In 2002, what was involved was this idea of gradual climate change: We may see dramatic changes but towards the end of the century, not today.

"That is now changing, we are now thinking these changes are occurring quite rapidly today. Quite a few people are speculating that we are going to see even more dramatic changes quite soon."

Pretty grim outlook. And our government is doing less than nothing to help.

Canadian scientists who have contributed to the IPCC reports on climate change over the last 20 years say the Canadian government in particular has been dangerously lax in addressing climate change and must show world leadership in reducing GHGs.

Dr. John Stone, a chemist at Carleton University and a leader of an IPCC working group, said Canada simply has no policy on climate change. "They promise regulations. We still have not seen those." He added: "I think this issue is regarded as a bit of a nuisance, in fact a big nuisance (to the Conservative government). They wish it would go away but it's not going to go away. There is a lack of action and engagement."

Stone also noted that no IPCC scientist has been asked (by Harper’s government) to brief the government on climate change. "When I was a civil servant I was forever briefing all the people," he said.

Weaver said that when it comes to climate change, Canadians have an international reputation as "laggards and obstructionists."

"We have had so far policies of inaction, obstructionism and in some sense denial that the problem actually exists. ... I think most Canadians don't recognize how serious the issue of global warming is."

Read the entire article for the general picture that scientists have laid out with a high degree of certainty. It’s not just a well written article, it’s essential reading.

We need to do what we can, while there is still some brief time left to convince our politicians to act. The UN climate change talks are being held next week in Bonn. We need to make ourselves heard before that. One, strong letter, sent to any politician remotely related to this subject. Not just Canadian politicians, either. Let the world know, that unlike our present government, we aren’t all "laggards and obstructionists."

To find out more about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Bonn, go here.

Source: A Creative Revolution