Global Climate Change Information

Oh, Canada… Dead Last in New G8 Climate Rankings

Posted at One Blue Marble by Richard 
July 1, 2009

On the latest G8 Climate Scorecard (PDF) released in advance of the L’Aquila, Italy G8 Summit, Canada has fallen into last place now that the Obama administration is reversing the global warming policies of his predecessor. The report chastises Canada as one of the few developed countries in the world with dramatically rising greenhouse gas emissions, and no real plan to control them. The scorecard also notes that Germany is the acknowledged G8 leader when it comes to climate change, and that UK, Germany and France have all been enacting successful policies to cut emissions, with all three nations expected to exceed their Kyoto obligations.

But the report argues that this still isn’t good enough. By a long shot.

WWF Climate Score Card July 1, 2009

The scorecard was released by the WWF and financial services giant Allianz SE. It noted that Canada’s emissions have risen by 26% over 1990 levels, and that telling statistic means that Canada’s per capita emissions will soon surpass the US. And the sad truth is that per capita emissions in Canada and the US are double those in Europe.

“We emit more greenhouse gases than half the countries in the world put together,” said Keith Stewart, WWF-Canada’s climate change campaign manager. “We have the resources — financially, intellectually, ecologically — to be leaders, and we’ve simply chosen not to… Canada is becoming increasingly isolated in clinging to the fossil economy while the rest of the world is moving on to green economy.”

Stewart argues that Canada’s poor showing is especially irksome given country’s inherent natural wealth. “Nowhere else on Earth do fewer people steward more resources, yet Canada now stands dead last amongst the G8 Nations in protecting our shared home from the threat of dangerous climate change.Canada’s future lies in creating green jobs on a living planet, not in becoming the energy sweatshop for the world.”

The report suggests that while some countries are pulling their weight, much remains to be done, and the lack of leadership among G8 nations is discouraging. Even the top countries are not committing to medium-term emission reductions by recent scientific studies. In the report’s foreword , James Leape, Director General of WWF International and Allianz board member Joachim Faber, urged the nations to take dramatic action now to seal the deal in Copenhagen.

“While there might be a bailout possibility for the financial system, no amounts of money will save the planet once climate change crosses the danger threshold. It is therefore crucial to limit the rise of global temperature to below two degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.”

Editor’s note: Please click here for a detailed animated version of the WWF Climate Score Card Report.

Posted at Climate and Capitalism, June 27, 2009 

“Of course, the oil companies will regroup and return – but this is an inspirational victory for the forces of sanity that will be hard to reverse.”

The uprising In the Amazon is more urgent than Iran’s -
it will determine the future of the planet

by Johann Hari
The Independent, June 24, 2009

While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

See also The Independent on June 19: Images of ‘Amazon’s Tiananmen’

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies – and, for today, they have won.

Here’s the story of how it happened – and how we all need to pick up this fight. Earlier this year, Peru’s right-wing President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 per cent of his country’s swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon’s trees: “There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle.”

There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia’s plan: the indigenous people who live in the Amazon. They are the first people of the Americas, subject to wave after wave of genocide since the arrival of the Conquistadors. They are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. The government didn’t bother to consult them: what are a bunch of Indians going to do anyway?

But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block (12A)B, said in 2007:

“My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests.” The company denies liability, saying they are “aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts”.

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to an independent report, toxic waste allegedly dumped after Chevron-Texaco’s drilling has been blamed by an independent scientific investigation for 1,401 deaths, mostly of children from cancer. When the BBC investigator Greg Palast put these charges to Chevron’s lawyer, he replied:

“And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?… They have to prove it’s our crude, [which] is absolutely impossible.”

The people of the Amazon do not want to see their forests felled and their lands poisoned. And here, the need of the indigenous peoples to preserve their habitat has collided with your need to preserve your habitat. The rainforests inhale massive amounts of warming gases and keep them stored away from the atmosphere. Already, we are chopping them down so fast that it is causing 25 per cent of man-made carbon emissions every year – more than planes, trains and automobiles combined. But it is doubly destructive to cut them down to get to fossil fuels, which then cook the planet yet more. Garcia’s plan was to turn the Amazon from the planet’s air con into its fireplace.

Why is he doing this? He was responding to intense pressure from the US, whose new Free Trade Pact requires this “opening up“, and from the International Monetary Fund, paid for by our taxes. In Peru, it has also been alleged that the ruling party, APRA, is motivated by oil bribes. Some of Garcia’s associates have been caught on tape talking about how to sell off the Amazon to their cronies. The head of the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, Rep. Daniel Abugattas, says: “The government has been giving away our natural resources to the lowest bidders. This has not benefited Peru, but the administration’s friends.”

So the indigenous peoples acted in their own self-defence, and ours. Using their own bodies and weapons made from wood, they blockaded the rivers and roads to stop the oil companies getting anything in or out. They captured two valves of Peru’s sole pipeline between the country’s gas field and the coast, which could have led to fuel-rationing. Their leaders issued a statement explaining: “We will fight together with our parents and children to take care of the forest, to save the life of the equator and the entire world.”

Garcia responded by sending in the military. He declared a “state of emergency” in the Amazon, suspending almost all constitutional rights. Army helicopters opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition and stun-grenades. More than a dozen were killed. But the indigenous peoples did not run away. Even though they were risking their lives, they stood their ground. One of their leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply:

“The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don’t fight together, what will our future be?”

And then something extraordinary happened. The indigenous peoples won. The Peruvian Congress repealed the laws that allowed oil company drilling, by a margin of 82 votes to 12. Garcia was forced to apologise for his “serious errors and exaggerations”. The protesters have celebrated and returned to their homes deep in the Amazon.

Of course, the oil companies will regroup and return – but this is an inspirational victory for the forces of sanity that will be hard to reverse.

Human beings need to make far more decisions like this: to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and to leave rainforests standing. In microcosm, this rumble in the jungle is the fight we all face now. Will we allow a small number of rich people to make a short-term profit from seizing and burning resources, at the expense of our collective ability to survive?

If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to Professor Jim Hansen, the world’s leading climatologist, whose predictions have consistently turned out to be correct. He says:

“Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with a sea level 75 metres higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration.”

Of course, fossil fools will argue that the only alternative to burning up our remaining oil and gas supplies is for us all to live like the indigenous peoples in the Amazon. But next door to Peru, you can see a very different, environmentally sane model to lift up the poor emerging – if only we will grasp it.

Ecuador is a poor country with large oil resources underneath its rainforests – but its president, Rafael Correa, is offering us the opposite of Garcia’s plan. He has announced that he is willing to leave his country’s largest oil reserve under the soil, if the rest of the world will match the $9.2bn in revenues it would provide.

If we don’t start reaching for these alternatives, we will render this month’s victory in the Amazon meaningless. The Hadley Centre in Exeter, one of the most sophisticated scientific centres for studying the impacts of global warming, has warned that if we carry on belching out greenhouse gases at the current rate, the humid Amazon will dry up and burn down – and soon.

Their study earlier this year explained:

“The Amazonian rainforest is likely to suffer catastrophic damage even with the lowest temperature rises forecast under climate change. Up to 40 per cent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050. A 3C rise is likely to result in 75 per cent of the forest disappearing while a 4C rise, regarded as the most likely increase this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are slashed, will kill off 85 per cent of the forest.” That would send gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere – making the world even more inhabitable.

There is something thrilling about the fight in the Amazon, yet also something shaming. These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow. The people of the Amazon have shown they are up for the fight to save our ecosystem. Are we?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

Future Hope column, June 27, 2009

We Need More Than ACES

By Ted Glick

Yesterday morning, on the day that the House of Representatives very narrowly passed a very problematic—a bad—climate bill, I finally became clear in my mind what I was hoping for.

My first choice was that the House leadership cancel the planned floor vote because they would decide that they didn’t have enough votes to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. If this happened, I reasoned, it could lead to a serious reconsideration of the coal-industry-and-Wall-Street-friendly, cap-and-trade framework of this particular piece of climate legislation. It could mean a much closer look by Congresspeople and civil society organizations at the better frameworks of cap-and-dividend, carbon tax and rebates, or some hybrid of those two.

This, of course, didn’t happen. The House leadership rolled the dice and just barely prevailed, 219-212. Four changed votes would have meant defeat for ACES.

This was my second choice, the passage of ACES by a narrow margin. My reasoning was that this would keep open the possibility of coming up with a stronger bill as it moved from the House to the Senate but without “big mo,” lots of momentum behind this particular way of addressing the climate crisis.

But climate and environmental activists who know the Capitol Hill scene are very aware that the odds of our getting anything better than ACES out of the Senate are very long. Indeed, the more likely result of Senate consideration is that ACES will get even weaker UNLESS this near-defeat in the House leads to an urgent reconsideration of the approach and the tactics used over the next 3-4-5 months.

Having been in the midst of the campaign to get a good bill out of the House for the last seven or so months—a campaign that failed, we have to honestly acknowledge—these are the four things I would see as essential to the possibility of getting something out of the Senate that comes much closer to what the climate science says is needed:

First, we have to call upon Barack Obama to “lead from the front, not the rear,” as Mike Tidwell has put it. During his 2008 Presidential campaign and up until four months ago, Obama was publicly strong in support of a 100% auction, with no giveaways, of permits for polluters to emit carbon. He supported the return of 80-85% of the hundreds of billions raised by this auction to American taxpayers and consumers to help us deal with the higher prices this would bring, with the remainder used for various clean energy/green jobs/international assistance programs.

Second, many more of our groups have to be less willing to align so closely with the desires of the Democratic Party leadership, more willing to say “no” when asked to support a really bad political compromise. Indeed, we need to be willing to do what a number of groups—to their credit—did before the House vote yesterday, come out saying publicly that we are against this way-too-weak, polluter-influenced piece of legislation.

Our power to force the political powers-that-be in Washington, D.C. to take our demands seriously is directly proportional to our willingness to refuse to go along with bad things.

Third, those scores of groups which have already come out publicly in support of either cap and dividend or carbon tax and rebates have to move immediately to find the ways to work together more collaboratively and more effectively as the struggle moves to the Senate. Groups which have been unwilling to break with the cap and trade orthodoxy need to take a much harder look at these clearly preferable policy alternatives.

The fact is that there is a lot of concern among U.S. Senators about cap and trade. At a Senate Finance Committee hearing in mid-May the major question asked in various ways by a number of Senators had to do with if a carbon tax is a better, simpler and more efficient way of putting a price on carbon. The four people who were testifying all agreed that yes, it was.

Finally, we need street heat!! We need people visibly demonstrating for science-based, strong legislation. We need sit-ins and marches. Actions on October 24th (http://www.350.org) all over the world need to be big and strong. We need to act as if the next six months, leading up to the big United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, is the most important half-year of our lives for those of us who get it on the urgency of the climate crisis.

We Need More. We need a strong, not just any, climate bill. We need to take what happened yesterday in the House and turn it into something that history will record as not so much the culmination of our many years of hard work but a breakthrough that opened the way for a flood of people power, a broad and deep clean energy revolution in the months and years ahead.
Ted Glick is the Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and is a co-founder of the Climate Crisis Coalition, but these views are solely his own. Past writings and other information can be found at http://www.tedglick.com.

As many know, NASA’s James Hansen was arrested in a protest on mountaintop removal in West Virginia on June 23, 2009. For details, click on the story at Yale Environment 360, and the article posted by Joe Romm at ClimateProgress.org.

Joe says, “Readers know that while I don’t agree with everything Hansen says, particularly his approach to U.S. climate policy, he remains our top climate scientist, the scientist who has been right in his warnings about global warming longer than just about anybody else.
“We need to get off of dirty coal as fast as is humanly possible, literally.”

For images of mountaintop coal removal, click here.

For James Hansen’s update, his 23 June 2009 remarks at Coal River Mountain, and the Declaration of the demonstrators, click here: An excerpt follows:

Coal River Mountain Action

Several people asked for more information about the 23 June civil disobedience near Coal River Mountain. We need Dickens to describe the local situation, but you can glean something from the first attachment (“June 23 Declaration”), a statement I was reading at the time we were arrested. Local  pollution effects and regional environmental destruction should be enough to stop the practice of mountaintop removal. Vernon Haltom vernoncrmw@gmail.com, head of coal River Mountain Watch, provided the details therein. Email contact for the office is coalriver@crmw.net. Website is vernoncrmw@gmail.com, head of coal River Mountain Watch, provided the details therein. Email contact for the office is coalriver@crmw.net. Website is www.crmw.net. They can make good use of any support.

The bigger picture, including climate change, makes it clear that mountaintop removal, providing only 7 percent of United States coal, makes no strategic sense whatever. Better leave the coal holding up the mountains. The second attachment has the remarks I made at the rally. There has to be some leadership from the top. We cannot continue to give President Obama a pass on this much longer. On the other hand, he needs broad support in order to do what is right.

As for the local people, we found them to be very friendly, and the state police were courteous and professional. Massey employees were out in force making as much noise as possible to try to drown out the speakers at the protest. If Gandhi had the sequence right (first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win), we are already three-quarters of the way there. I noticed that it was only a handful of Massey people who were really vocal.

But that’s not to say that it isn’t a dangerous situation for the local people who oppose mountaintop removal – they are the courageous ones. Some barrel-chested noise-makers seemed pretty close to going over the edge. One of the Massey wives assaulted (sucker-punched) Julia Bonds, Goldman Prize winner for North America and co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch. I went up the mountain with Larry Gibson, who refuses to sell his property, which includes a 200-year-old cemetery containing scores of his relatives. He has been the target of drive-by shootings as recently as last week, and I saw two bullet holes in the side of his house.

The FBI should be investigating. On the way down the mountain some thick-necked Massey employees gave us a vigorous one-finger salute – but others a friendly nod on passing. Larry mentioned that when Bobby Kennedy Jr. looked at the scalped mountain he said “if any foreign nation had done this to us, we would have declared war on them.” Instead what we have in Washington is (coal-fired) Senators who advocate for the abominable practice.

Don Blankenship, Massey CEO and seemingly a role model for a few of his employees, suggested he would like to “debate” me about global warming. I agreed to a discussion in which I could make a presentation (of order 40 minutes) of the science, he would have as much time (before or after), followed by discussion and interaction including audience. Mountain State University eagerly agreed to provide the auditorium. It seemed fool-proof, because if Blankenship failed to show, I could give a bit longer talk and have discussion with the audience.

But, after I got a room in Beckley, staying an extra day, Blankenship decided he would only do a debate in a television studio with his favorite moderator. When Mountain State University learned what Blankenship wishes were, they withdrew permission to use their auditorium. I turned on the television news and heard: Blankenship offered to have a discussion with me, but “Dr. Hansen was still trying to check his schedule” – this was a television station that knew exactly what had actually happened. It seems that even the media is owned by coal.

When the strategic interest of the nation and the world is so clear, can a few gluttons with a few bucks really drive our policy? Does this great country not have better leadership than that?

Op-ed on mountaintop removal is at http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2168#comments
[Read the rest of this entry...]

Report: Global climate disaster is moving closer

The world faces a growing risk of ”abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts”, a scientific synthesis report released Thursday warns.

Michael von Bülow
June 18, 2009

With unabated greenhouse gas emissions, the world faces a growing risk of ”abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts”. This is one of the conclusions in a scientific synthesis report released Thursday, June 18.

Based on more than 1,400 studies presented at a congress in March in Copenhagen that attracted some 2,000 scientists from more than 70 countries, the report presents the newest scientific evidence that has emerged, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report came out in 2007.

”The report gives an important overview of what science can tell us today about global warming, and perhaps most importantly what we can do about it,” Professor Katherine Richardson, Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the congress and the writing team, said in a press release.

”I hope the busy negotiators will have time to study the report carefully before they meet in Copenhagen, because a lot of new data have emerged,” the Science Faculty Vice Dean at the University of Copenhagen added.

According to the report, rapid, sustained and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid ”dangerous climate change”.

”Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of serious impacts, including the crossing of tipping points, and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult and costly,” the report warns.

”The new report is four years wiser and not filtered by political considerations. It tells the uncomfortable truth that climate change is real,” John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the report, told the Danish engineering journal Ingeniøren.

The synthesis report is intended as an inspiration for decision makers ahead of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) in December this year.

”Once again we have been presented with clear and unequivocal evidence that temperatures are rising – and faster than we even dared think,” Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said, after having had the report handed over in Brussels, where EU leaders were trying to agree on how to finance poor countries’ adaptation to climate change.

”A precondition for a greenhouse gas emissions cap is that world leaders cooperate on and provide money for projects that are comparable to the lunar landing,” Loekke Rasmussen said, making it clear that each country must commit to binding CO2 targets, if global carbon emissions are to stabilize by 2020.

Read more:

AFP at Yahoo News: Climate Catastrophe Getting Closer, Warn Scientists
Climate Change - Global Risks, Challenges and Opportunities - Press Release (1MB)
Synthesis Report: Climate Change - Global Risks, Challenges and Opportunities (5MB)
Cop15.dk: How to heal the world in six steps

Thanks to Carbon Equity for sending this information out.

U.S. Government Report Says Climate Change a Clear and Present Danger

Crossposted from GlobalWarmingIsReal.com
June 18, 2009
By Thomas Schueneman, filed under Global Warming News

“Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with additional contributions from the clearing of forests and agricultural activities.”
-From the Executive Summary

 

 
The United States Global Change Research Program released a major report called Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States this week summarizing the science and consequences, both current and projected, of climate change in the U.S.

The study is the compilation of work done by 12 federal agencies, among them the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, NASA, and Department of Commerce. Focusing on specific geographic regions, economics sectors, and facets of society, the study is aimed at providing the best and latest information for society, government, and individuals.

Key Findings

1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
   Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. (p. 13)
2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.
   Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow. (p. 27)
3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase.
   Climate changes are already affecting water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and health. These impacts are different from region to region and will grow under projected climate change. (p. 41-106, 107-152)
4. Climate change will stress water resources.
   Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the potential impacts varies. Drought, related to reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and increased water loss from plants, is an important issue in many regions, especially in the West. Floods and water quality problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions. Declines in mountain snowpack are important in the West and Alaska where snowpack provides vital natural water storage. (p. 41, 129, 135, 139)
5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged.
   Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate. However, increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production. (p. 71)
6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.
   Sea-level rise and storm surge place many U.S. coastal areas at increasing risk of erosion and flooding, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Pacific Islands, and parts of Alaska. Energy and transportation infrastructure and other property in coastal areas are very likely to be adversely affected. (p. 111, 139, 145, 149)
7. Threats to human health will increase.
   Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts. (p. 89)
8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses.
   Climate change will combine with pollution, population growth, overuse of resources, urbanization, and other social, economic, and environmental stresses to create larger impacts than from any of these factors alone. (p. 99)
9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems.
   There are a variety of thresholds in the climate system and ecosystems. These thresholds determine, for example, the presence of sea ice and permafrost, and the survival of species, from fish to insect pests, with implications for society. With further climate change, the crossing of additional thresholds is expected. (p. 76, 82, 115, 137, 142)
10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today.
    The amount and rate of future climate change depend primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles. Responses involve reducing emissions to limit future warming, and adapting to the changes that are unavoidable. (p. 25, 29)

Access the full report online or download the pdf.
Editor’s note: The full report contains 196 pages.

There’s much more published about this report. Please click here to read one important post on ClimateProgress.org on June 15, “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!”

With great thanks to Joe Romm at ClimateProgress for posting this powerful message.

Solutions to Climate Change

Dr. William H. Calvin, widely known for his books on human evolution and climate change, will give a presentation hosted by Sierra Club of British Columbia and the University of Victoria on Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 7PM, at the UVic, in the Bob Wright Earth, Ocean, and Atmosphere Sciences Building.

Here’s the Press Release from the Sierra Club:
VICTORIA, B.C. – We all know about the problem of global warming, but what can we do about it? On Thursday, June 18th Sierra Club BC brings Dr William Calvin to the University of Victoria to deliver a lecture about solutions to climate change over the next 20 years.

Dr Calvin is a respected neuro-physiologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine affiliated with the Program on Climate Change. He is widely known for his work linking abrupt climate change with human evolution. In his 2008 book, Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change Dr Calvin delivers both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a strongly worded prescription.

Tickets are $15 or $5 for students from Sierra Club BC by calling           250-386-5255           Ex 237. Dr. Calvin’s Lecture begins at 7 pm at the Bob Wright Centre, Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Building, University of Victoria.

Since 1969 Sierra Club BC has played a leading role in environmental stewardship in British Columbia. BC’s spectacular wilderness and wildlife make our province a global ecological treasure. Sierra Club BC is passionately committed to safeguarding BC’s wild places.

Please check out Dr. Calvin’s website and visit his DailyKos blog for op-ed drafts.

Editor’s note: Professor Calvin will also be
speaking on Salt Spring Island BC, home of 
West Coast Climate Equity, at 7:00 PM on
Friday, June 19 at the Lions Hall.

Dr. Calvin is a Member our Advisory Board,
and it will be a great honour to welcome him here.

Speaking at the Decoding Carbon Pricing Forum  June 8-10 at the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, George Heyman, Executive Director of the Sierra Club of BC, provides his view of the future of carbon pricing, the flaws with the carbon tax and what should be done about it. His perspective is humane as well as thoughtful. 
 

 
For further information on the forum, Decoding Carbon Pricing: Achieving a Low Carbon Society in British Columbia, please click here.

Thank you to Ben West for providing us with this video.

Editor’s note: The Sierra Club of British Columbia is one of the most active and effective organizations we know. Please check out their great website.

After Bonn, a Safe Future For Youth Still in Doubt

Posted on ClimateProgress.org June 12, 2009

http://climateprogress.org/2009/06/12/after-bonn-a-safe-future-for-youth-still-in-doubt/

Today’s guest blogger is Kyle Gracey, Chair for SustainUS and a graduate student in public policy and geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago.

In 2050, I’ll be 77, and given the pace of the climate talks in Bonn these two weeks, I’ll likely spend most of my retirement either under water or on fire.

If finalized in the next climate agreement, the weak targets offered so far by developed countries virtually ensures that greenhouse gas concentrations (and sea levels) will rise to levels well beyond what science says are safe limits to ensure the survival of peoples and nations. Over 100 youth from 6 continents (the Antarctic youth called in sick) participated in the Bonn negotiations, watching our leaders draft an increasingly costly and damaging climate for us to live through.

Daily at the negotiations, youth have shown our governments how vulnerable our generation will be to the warming and climate change they are creating with their short-sighted proposals. We literally brought two camels and tons of sand to the negotiation entrance to highlight the drought and desertification many of our countries increasingly experience. We rapped and rhymed about the threatened survival of nations and developed countries’ weak financing proposals. Youth tracked key negotiators to remind them the next generation is watching, and blogged to their peers in multiple languages.

We supported indigenous rights and opposed deforestation and forest degradation. Global North and Global South youth played an UNfair (sic) game of football (the Americans insisted on playing soccer) to highlight the unequal negotiating position of developing countries. They also worked to raise money for their developing country members to participate with them in the Copenhagen talks. Fifty Chinese, Indian, and United States youth wrote the 1st collaborative statement (in statement (in two languages so far) by youth from these three countries on a shared vision for our nations’ roles and opportunities in cooperating on an agreement.

In the end, it is clear that negotiators have largely ignored the perilous position they have put their children in, and ignored the science as well. Japan’s 8% reduction from 1990 levels in 2020, and Russia’s, Switzerland’s, and New Zealand’s lack of any specific targets raises the chance youth will grow up suffering through climate tipping points and accelerated warming. These “commitments” put an incredible burden on our countries’ future leaders to create post-2020 cuts necessary to reach 2050 reductions.

Despite continued leadership by President Obama, and skilled diplomacy by lead Bonn negotiator Dr. Jonathan Pershing, industry lobbyists have ensured that weak domestic legislation will prevent the U.S. from honestly offering strong international commitments in Copenhagen. At best, the American Clean Energy and Security Act as written would let the U.S. achieve a 3% reduction in 2020 [See notes below for correction] and create only a fraction of the clean energy jobs Americans desperately need. At worst, 1% is likely given offsets and other loopholes.

[Joe Romm:  The 3% reduction is compared to 1990 levels, as the link makes clear.  I assumed, given how this paragraph is written, that Kyle also meant 1% reductions compared to 1990 levels.  If not, I'll let him clarify.   I can't see a plausible scenario where ACES as currently written, coupled with Obama's other clean energy and GHG-reduction investments and mandates, doesn't take us to 1990 levels or below by 2020 (see here).]

Editor’s note: We just picked up a comment from Kyle on Joe Romm’s blog. Here it is: “Joe’s comment is correct - from 1990 levels for both 3% and 1%.”

While Bonn failed to deliver the protections to peoples, species, and generations youth know are needed, they renewed our commitment to redefining what is pragmatic and possible. Delegates should expect to hear from us again soon.

• The Alliance for Climate Education begins ambitious campaign to educate America’s youth about Climate Change
• Which Path Will the Youth Climate Movement Take?
• Power Shift: A Day of youth climate protest in DC
• Youth report from Poznan: Taking Back Our Future
  

Editor’s note: Please check this link as well:

Videos from PowerShift 2009

ClimateWizard

With ClimateWizard you can: 

• view historic temperature and rainfall maps for anywhere in the world
• view state-of-the-art future predictions of temperature and rainfall around the world
• view and download climate change maps in a few easy steps

ClimateWizard enables technical and non-technical audiences alike to access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth.  The first generation of this web-based program allows the user to choose a state or country and both assess how climate has changed over time and to project what future changes are predicted to occur in a given area. ClimateWizard represents the first time ever the full range of climate history and impacts for a landscape have been brought together in a user-friendly format.

ClimateWizard is sponsored by The Nature Conservancy,  in conjunction with the The University of Washington and The University Of Southern Mississippi

Editor’s note: Try this. You’ll find it fascinating.