Ethical Oil: A truth that’s told with bad intent
Of the many contradictions and hypocrisies in the Ethical Oil Campaign, one of the most ironic is the fact that while the abuses of human rights and the environment cited by the EOC are permitted by the countries in question, many of the abuses are actually committed by the very oil companies EOC is working on behalf of.
Cohabit Eaarth: We are the 99.999%
Staggering as it may be to imagine that so much wealth is concentrated in the hands of a mere 1% of the population, remember that it refers to 1% of the human population in the United States and/or the Industrialized world. When we recognize that those deserving a fair share must include the entire human population, and that this “wealth” comes at the expense of the natural world on which we all depend, then the inequity and absurdity (insanity?) becomes all the more glaring.
Human Species at Risk Because of Climate Change Denial
Two new articles, “Inaction on Climate Change Putting Decades of Human Progress at Risk” and “Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?”
Long Term Effects of Global Warming Will Be Far Worse than Gulf of Mexico Catastrophe
Although the BP oil spill seriously threatens those who live along the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. intransigence on climate change threatens the entire world; a fact that is causing rising anger around the world. Yet the U.S. Congress continues to resist action on climate change on the basis that it will harm some U.S. economic interests, while ignoring our duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to the U.S. fair share of safe global releases. For this reason, while the BP oil spill can be rightfully be understood as a disaster, U.S. Congressional inaction on climate change must be understood as a huge moral failure leading to an even greater disaster.
How Do Empathy and Dangerous Climate Change Relate?
Ray Grigg writes about Jeremy Rifkin’s book, “The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a Time of Crisis.”
“Empathy makes everything personal. This explains why environmental interest continues to rise in profile. And an electronically interconnected world provides no hiding places. If Jeremy Rifkin is correct in The Empathic Civilization – and most likely he is – we are entering a tumultuous time of make-or-break decisions. Our old and narrow awareness is being replaced by an expansive and exacting regard for our planet’s biosphere, that thin and delicate film of life which is, for each one of us, the difference between everything and nothing.”
A CLIMATE LIFEBOAT AT SEA
While compromising your standards in dealing with misinformed, dishonest or incompetent politicians may make you look good to them, this won’t gain you much respect or credibility with your children and grandchildren, who will be forced to live with future climate change, exacerbated by the lack of meaningful action today. We should approach the great task before us with passion and concern – and not be afraid to show it.
Corporate Influence on Climate Change and Environmental NGO’s Exposed
By pretending the broken system can work–and will work, in just a moment, after just one more Democratic win, or another, or another–the big green groups are preventing the appropriate response from concerned citizens, which is fury at the system itself. They are offering placebos to calm us down when they should be conducting and amplifying our anger at this betrayal of our safety by our politicians. The US climate bills are long-term plans: they lock us into a woefully inadequate schedule of carbon cuts all the way to 2050. So when green groups cheer them on, they are giving their approval to a path to destruction–and calling it progress.
Climate Betrayal in Copenhagen – GPC-PVC
“The political statement agreed to with much fanfare in Copenhagen at the 15th Conference of the Parties is not what was needed,” says Elizabeth May, the Green Party of Canada Leader. “With clear warnings from science that greenhouse gas emissions must halt their global rise and begin a steep decline no later than 2015, the leaders gathered in Copenhagen have issued a compromise statement that should never have been written.”
Final Episode of BBC World’s “Hot Cities” Available
Los Angeles is one of the most polluting cities in the world thanks largely to its love affair with the car. It is a city built on consumption. Each person produces around 20 tonnes of emissions per year – twice as much as anyone else. Now they are about to reap what has been sown. In LA there has been a big increase in wildfires, water supplies are under threat, rising sea levels could have a massive impact on LA’s huge port and destroy thousands of homes. “Hot Cities” goes to LA just as the city launches its adaptation strategy.
The Physics of Copenhagen: Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization
In Copenhagen, if the U.S. is willing to treat climate change as politics-as-usual, most of the other major players will simply follow suit. They’ll sign some kind of paper in Denmark — that became all but certain on Friday night when Obama announced he’d jet in for the meeting’s close. European leaders and some environmental groups may then call it a “qualified success,” and on we will go through more years of negotiation. In the meantime, physics will continue to operate, permafrost will continue to thaw, sea ice to melt, drought to spread. It’s like nothing we’ve ever faced before — and we’re facing it as if it’s just like everything else. That’s the problem.
