Climate Change

Understanding climate change means reading beyond headlines

David Suzuki — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 23:27:40 +0000

Seeing terms like "post-truth" and "alternative facts" gain traction in the news convinces me that politicians, media workers and readers could benefit from a refresher course in how science helps us understand the world. Reporting on science is difficult at the best of times. Trying to communicate complex ideas and distill entire studies into eye-catching headlines and brief stories can open the door to misinformation and limited understanding.

11 wishes for 2017 that will make Canada greener, more just and more equal

KAIROS Canada — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 16:27:33 +0000

Last January, KAIROS released its wish list for the year -- 10-plus-one hopes for the federal government and the provinces to fulfill. Two of these were realized: the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was launched and a national, rising price on carbon that integrates with provincial carbon pricing mechanisms was announced.

Build the opposition to Trumpism in Canada

The Activist Toolkit — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 20:51:55 +0000

Currently, the United States is headed in directions I couldn't have foretold in my worst nightmares. Perhaps I lacked imagination. Perhaps I should have read George Orwell's 1984 more closely. I have been working to organize within the political system in the U.S. and Canada for decades and, now, all I can do is resist. As I am drawn into new networks of organizers who are building locally and globally to oppose the attacks on everything we believe in, I am inspired by the tools I am finding.

Indigenous people are fighting for us all

David Suzuki — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 23:28:09 +0000

In the 1990s, the David Suzuki Foundation embarked on a program to develop community economic projects with coastal First Nations. Between 1998 and 2003, my wife and foundation co-founder, Tara Cullis, established relationships with 11 coastal communities from the tip of Vancouver Island to Haida Gwaii and Alaska, visiting each several times.

She encountered unemployment and a desperate need for jobs and economic development in every community. Then came pressure for pipeline projects and court-mandated consultation with First Nations. Federal and provincial governments began offering huge financial incentives for pipeline approvals. But opposition remained strong because some things are more important than money.

Pipeline resistance grows as Trump revives Keystone XL and Dakota Access megaprojects

rabble staff — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 15:35:24 +0000

Thursday, January 26, 2017

No longer just tweeting, President Donald J. Trump has been issuing a stream of executive orders and memoranda since his inauguration. On Tuesday, his pronouncements involved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Both projects were denied or delayed by the Obama administration, each after massive public protests. Now, with the Trump administration's actions, buttressed by a servile Congress under Republican control, fossil-fuel megaprojects are getting the green light.

But it will take more than the stroke of Trump's pen to quash the vigorous resistance to these two pipelines, or the growing global demand for urgent action to combat climate change.

It will take more than the stroke of Trump's pen to quash the vigorous resistance to the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, or the growing global demand for urgent action to combat climate change.

We need to work less to live better

David Suzuki — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 23:25:09 +0000

Since the 1950s, almost everything about work in the developed world has changed dramatically. Rapid technological advances continue to render many jobs obsolete. Globalization has shifted employment to parts of the world with the lowest costs and standards. Most households have gone from one income-earner to at least two. Women have fully integrated into the workforce, albeit often with less-than-equal opportunities, conditions and pay. A lot of our work is unnecessary and often destructive -- depleting resources, destroying ecosystems, polluting air, water and soil, and fuelling climate change.

Agriculture is part of the climate change solution

rabble staff — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 15:23:27 +0000

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Small farmers face pretty much the same issues no matter what part of the world they happen to till -- access to land, seed, financing and more.

I learned that lesson while rolling through the hills of northern Nicaragua, acting as an interpreter for a brigade of Canadian farmers hoping to transfer their skills to support local farmers. At that time mechanization for many small farmers in Nicaragua seemed to be the main impediment. But thinking back to the exchanges I translated, the lack of tractors, chemicals and artificial fertilizers presented challenges but also possibilities to explore.

Agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it is going to mean putting stewardship and food production ahead of profit and expansion. It is possible.

Vancouver Island old-growth forest almost gone

redeye — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 02:46:57 +0000

rey-2017-01-18.mp3

Ninety per cent of the forests on Vancouver Island have been logged. Now the B.C. Chamber of Commerce and the Union of B.C. Municipalities have joined with environment organizations, First Nations and forestry unions to call for an end to the logging of old growth forests. Torrance Coste is with the Wilderness Committee. He speaks with Redeye host James Mainguy.

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Anthropocentric view ignores crucial connections

David Suzuki — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 23:13:09 +0000

For decades, scientists have warned that we're on a dangerous path. It stems from our delusion that endless growth in population, consumption and the economy is possible and is the very purpose of society. But endless growth is not feasible in a finite biosphere. Growth is not an end but a means.

We can learn so much from nature

David Suzuki — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 23:12:10 +0000

If you fly over a forest and look down, you'll see every green tree and plant reaching to the heavens to absorb the ultimate energy source: sunlight. What a contrast when you look down on a city or town with its naked roofs, asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks, all ignoring the sun's beneficence! Research shows we might benefit by thinking more like a forest.

Solar roads could be a step in that direction. Roads, sidewalks and parking lots cover massive areas. Using them to generate power means less environmental disturbance, as no new land is needed to house solar power operations.

It's time to heed warnings about humanity's collision course

David Suzuki — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 23:22:41 +0000

The longer we delay addressing environmental problems, the more difficult it will be to resolve them. Although we've known about climate change and its potential impacts for a long time, and we're seeing those impacts worsen daily, our political representatives are still approving and promoting fossil fuel infrastructure as if we had all the time in the world to slow global warming.

We can't say we weren't warned. In 1992, a majority of living Nobel prize-winners and more than 1,700 leading scientists worldwide signed a remarkable document called "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity."

Desmogging journalism

Green Majority Radio — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 00:56:51 +0000

Desmoging Journalism

The incoming Trump administration *shudder* has put a sooty fog over the climate movement, but we should also not let ourselves be distracted by him such that we stop paying attention to the areas where we can do some good. As we look back at the year, there's some bad news and some good news but most importantly we still have hope (with good reasons). In the first section we discuss some Canadian climate news and continue our ongoing analysis of Trudeau's alleged climate plan and the battle over pipelines as both a climate movement and a popular resistance to plutocracy and fear. Oh, and the arctic is melting.

Unpacking Kinder Morgan's employment promises

PolicyNote — Sat, 24 Dec 2016 04:32:40 +0000

After the federal approval of Kinder Morgan's controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX), Alberta Premier Rachel Notley came to B.C. to sell the pipeline's economic benefits. She claims B.C. will get a $1 billion per year boost in GDP as a result of the pipeline, as well as thousands of jobs in both construction and operations once the pipeline is built.

There is good reason to believe, however, that the incremental income and employment gains for ordinary working British Columbians are likely to be substantially less. The project would lead to a small increase in total GDP in the province, but the main benefits are in the construction phase, and even there the benefits have been grossly inflated. In the long run, we can only bank on about 50 new permanent jobs.

Globe columnist lauds Trump and says there is no climate consensus

karl nerenberg — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 03:06:00 +0000

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The Globe and Mail is a serious newspaper, which generally treats facts and evidence with respect.

But one has to ask who was checking the facts when, earlier this week, it printed a series of howlers about the current state of climate science by columnist Margaret Wente.

Trump's dangerous climate policy puts our whole world in peril

rabble staff — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 14:48:22 +0000

Thursday, December 1, 2016

At the precise moment that Donald Trump was giving his acceptance speech, I was in a room packed with a thousand people in Sydney, Australia, listening to Maria Tiimon Chi-Fang, a leading activist from the island state of Kiribati. All day I had been sending emails with the subject line "It's the end of the world." I suddenly felt embarrassed by the privilege of this hyperbole.

If Trump does what he says and rolls back the (insufficient) climate progress won under Obama, inspiring other nations to do the same, Chi-Fang's nation and culture will almost surely disappear beneath the waves. Literally, the end of their whole world.

If Trump does what he says and rolls back the (insufficient) climate progress won under Obama, it will mean the end of the world for island nations like Kiribati.