Declaration for Climate Crisis Cooperation
Editor’s note: this Declaration of Climate Crisis Cooperation was prepared by Jan Slakov for Candidates running for Member of Parliament in the Canadain federal election of 14 October 2008.
Introduction page for Declaration for Climate Crisis Cooperation:
An Invitation to Candidates to “Sign On.”
An important national election will take place in Canada on October 14. Please copy and email this declaration to candidates for Member of Parliament, or print it out and take it with you to candidates’ meetings. Remember to ask them for a response. In view of the impending world climate crisis, we should expect them to agree wholeheartedly to “sign on” and take action.
There can be no doubt that we face a crisis of unparalleled proportions due to the inter-related threats of climate change, peak oil, war, water shortages and ecosystem destruction. Credible scientists and researchers such as George Monbiot, James Hansen and Andrew Weaver are calling on humanity to cut GHG emissions by at least 60% over the next 20 years, which means the rich world will need to cut its emissions by about 90%.
Unless we cut emissions, and soon, we risk, within 100 months, crossing the tipping point for runaway global warming and climate change, after which our efforts to prevent climate change would be futile. Our goal must be to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) levels in the atmosphere, which are already dangerously high, to 350 ppm CO2 or a total GHG level of 400 CO2 equivalents.
However, instead of falling, atmospheric GHG levels are rising at increasing rates. And how could it be otherwise, as we destroy ecosystems that naturally sequester carbon, dig up more fossil fuels, build more petroleum-dependent transportation infrastructure, coal-fired power plants and other unsafe, unsustainable “development” and squander precious resources on war & militarism?
Meanwhile, we know, thanks to the work of Monbiot, Hansen, Guy Dauncey and others, it is entirely feasible to achieve the drastic cuts they recommend.
For more information, you can access our “Background Information” sheet at
http://WestCoastClimateEquity.org
Email: info@westcoastclimateequity.org
DECLARATION FOR CLIMATE CRISIS COOPERATION
As a candidate and potentially an elected representative, I am committed to work with others, within my own party and across party lines, to steer Canada away from economic growth which requires non-renewable resources and towards an innovative green economy that values, protects, and restores ecological health.
1) I support the establishment of a permanent multi-party standing committee on climate change, which would produce policy blueprints for government, based on input from the scientific community and civil society.
2) I support the recommendations of the 2005 Stern Commission on The Economics of Climate Change. Once the costs of fossil fuel pollution are internalized, following the “polluter pays” principle, and fossil fuel subsidies are prohibited, the power of the market will drive the conversion from the suicidal fossil fueled economy towards a safe, renewable energy economy.
3) Canada must respect its international obligations. This includes its commitment to the UN Framework Climate Change Convention (FCCC) as one of the Annex 1, or industrially developed nations.
4) I want to build on previous examples of cross-party cooperation towards sustainability. For example, in 2003 members from all federal parties supported and passed the Well-Being Measurement Resolution. I will work to follow through on this initiative to establish a Canadian Genuine Progress Index.
In June of this year, Canada’s Parliament passed the Sustainable Development Act which will help ensure governments live up to their environmental commitments. This law was inspired by the David Suzuki Foundation’s blueprint for Sustainability Within a Generation and was supported by ALL federal parties. I will work to see that the goals outlined in the act are pursued vigorously and that the Federal government itself studies the blueprint and adopts measures suggested to attain the goals.
Canadians must do their part to prevent the collapse of the ecological systems on which life, and human civilization, depend. Because Canadian levels of GHG emissions are among the highest per capita in the world, and because we enjoy democratic rights and access to resources unavailable to people in most other parts of the world, we have a special responsibility to act.
Background Information for Declaration of Climate Crisis Responsibility:
This “backgrounder” is designed to provide links and quotes from some of the abundant information available relating to the Declaration for Climate Crisis Cooperation.
For information on how serious the crisis is, check out:
http://climatecodered.net
http://www.onehundredmonths.org
http://www.350.org/en/about/science
http://www.earthfuture.com/
http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/sbfxot55p5k3kd454n14zvyy01082008141045.pdf
Note: The 4th Global Environmental Outlook (GEO4) by the United Nations Environmental Program published October 2007 issued their last wakeup call that global climate change and the ongoing destruction of global ecosystems now threaten the very survival of humanity.
For more information about the GHG concentration levels required to prevent runaway climate change, check out:
http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/320
One quote from the 350.org website:
As James Hansen of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the first scientist to warn about global warming more than two decades ago, wrote recently, “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”
That will be a hard task, but not impossible. We need to stop taking that carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air. Above all, that means we need to stop burning so much coal‹and start using solar and wind energy and other such sources of renewable energy ¬while ensuring the Global South a fair chance to develop. If we do, then the earth will slowly cycle some of that extra carbon out of the atmosphere, and eventually we’ll return to a safe level. By decreasing use of other fossil fuels, and improving agricultural and forestry practices around the world, we could get back to 350 by mid-century. But the longer we remain in the danger zone (above 350) the more likely that we will see disastrous climate impacts.
Some people will argue that the danger from our production of greenhouse gases (GHG) is over-stated or even non-existent. The Suzuki Foundation website at: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Science/Skeptics.asp
has convincing responses to the claims of the climate change denial industry.
The Sierra Club of Canada has prepared a comparison of Canada’s federal parties on their climate change platforms, available at: http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/vote-canada/2008/voters-guide-climate-crisis-election.pdf
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With regard to the costs of militarism, it’s worth noting that according to http://www.energybulletin.net/node/29925, the US military is the single largest consumer of energy in the world. In her article, Every War is a War Against the Earth, in the Jan/Feb. 2002 issue of Audubon Magazine, Kathleen Dean Moore describes some of the horrendous consequences of militarism on the natural world. In terms of statistics, she says:
The U.S. Department of Defense “creates more than five times as much toxic waste as the five major U.S. chemical companies,” according to Susan Lanier-Graham, author of The Ecology of War. An F-16 burns in a single hour more fuel than an average American will burn in two years.
The World Game Institute (http://iggi.unesco.or.kr/web/iggi_docs/01/952580686.pdf, p. 6) has tallied up how much it would cost to fund 17 programs for “what the world wants”, including landmine removal, eliminating starvation, providing clean, safe energy through efficiency and renewables, providing health care and AIDS control, stopping deforestation and soil erosion and more. That comes to less than one third of what is squandered on militarism.
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Could we cut our GHG emissions drastically and still have access to the necessities of life? One thing is certain; we have not seriously tried the many options for transforming our economy that researchers suggest. Some useful suggestions can be found in the first 5 websites listed above. Books, such as The Bridge at the Edge of the World by James Gustave Speth, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change by Guy Dauncey and Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning by George Monbiot also provide useful suggestions for necessary changes if we want the earth to be livable into the next century.
One solution that has been largely over-looked until recently is protecting natural ecosystems, especially forests, wetlands and other areas rich in biological activity, because of their ability to sequester carbon naturally. Soil is an integral part of the natural carbon cycle so farms need to use techniques which protect the soil’s ability to sequester carbon. More information can be found on websites such as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_sink#Soils_2
http://soilcarboncoalition.org/
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/700.html
