Climate Refuge in Polar Cities?

03/01/200823/11/2008 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News, Science/Tech

By Stephen Leahy

Jan 2 (IPS) – Dan Bloom thinks it’s time to figure out how to build self-sustaining cities in the polar regions because climate change will eventually make most of Earth uninhabitable.

These polar cities may be “humankind’s only chance for survival if global warming really turns into a worldwide catastrophe in the far distant future,” Bloom told IPS.

Bloom isn’t a scientist or any other kind of expert. A U.S. citizen in his late fifties living in Taiwan teaching English, he’s lived all over the world as a reporter-editor, teacher-translator and author. And now Bloom wants to shake people out their everyday indifference to the great emergency of our age: climate change.

“Life goes on as usual here in Taiwan. No one is doing anything and they don’t want to talk about it,” he says. Continue reading →

Welcome to Global Warming Year 2008

03/01/2008 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, News

I’m guessing 2008 will be the year of learning two new things about climate change:

1. How difficult it is to reduce carbon emissions.

This not a technical issue nor even an economic one. It is institutional. Those who long denied climate change still have enormous influence.

2. Adapting to climate change means difficult moral choices.

Are we going to focus our efforts in the developed world to buffer ourselves from the impacts and build walls to keep climate refugees out?

Or are we going to focus on helping those who will be most affected by a world-changing problem that the developed world caused?

—

Wisdom before action. Compassion before fear.

— Stephen

Oil Sands Toxins Poison Food

27/12/200705/01/2009 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING

Living downstream from Canada’s oil sands mega-project, the people in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta believe they are getting cancer at an alarming rate, and hired their own expert to find out if their food is toxic. Turns out they were right — the fish and water is loaded with “high levels of carcinogens and toxins” (New York Times).

Watch the CBC documentary: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2007/12/120907_4.html

For the complete story on the Oil Sands Project that supplies much of America’s oil see: Destroying Canada’s Boreal Forest for America’s Oil

Solutions for Climate Change

19/12/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING

“The enormity of global warming can be daunting and dispiriting. What can one person, or even one nation, do on their own to slow and reverse climate change.”–— 10 Solutions for Climate Change is a good overview article on the way forward — from Scientific American magazine

Measuring Bali With A Scientific Yardstick

18/12/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News, Science

By Stephen Leahy

Dec 17 (IPS) – A tiny step was taken Saturday in meeting the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.

But it was nearly a step backward as the crucial climate talks in Bali almost collapsed when the United States refused to join the global consensus. However, after Kevin Conrad representing Papua New Guinea told the U.S. delegation if they weren’t going to be leaders, to please get out of the way, the U.S. reversed its position and accepted what is called the “Bali roadmap“.

But before considering this new political roadmap on climate change, what route did the scientific roadmap tell us to take? Continue reading →

Petition to Stop Canada from Sabotaging Climate Talks

11/12/200711/12/2007 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, News

From Avaaz.org:

Canada is actually sabotaging the UN talks!

There’s still a few days left to save Canada’s reputation — and the climate — but we need a massive democratic roar to remind our Prime Minister what Canada is all about, and stop him from blocking the world at Bali. Click below to sign the petition and we’ll advertize the number of signatures we get in an ad campaign across Canada this week. Our goal is to get 25,000 people to sign in just 3 days before the ads run. Click below, then forward this email to all your friends and family right away:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/another_canadian_climate_crime/4.php

The vast majority of Canadians are hopping mad on this issue — we can win this. We just need to show Harper how serious we are that he change course. Sign up now and forward this email to everyone you know – we’ve got just 3 days to hit 25,000 signatures!

[“Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making]

Greedy Canada Tries to Poison UN Climate Talks

10/12/200710/12/2007 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News bali, co2, emission targets, kyoto

By Stephen Leahy

Dec 10 (IPS) – The family has just finished up an expensive seven-course restaurant meal, and the late-arriving cousins can only snack on bread sticks. When the bill arrives, the truculent, rich uncles — Canada, Japan and the United States — insist that the cousins, although poor and still very hungry, ought to pay a full share.

And then Uncle Canada suggests that he pay less because he has a big appetite and can’t help himself.

With the fate of the planet in the balance, many critics say that is the current state of the negotiations ongoing in Bali at the international climate change talks. And that is despite an urgent appeal by more than 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists late last week.

“Drastic reductions are needed…we have no time to lose,” said Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California at a press conference in Nusa Dua, on the island of Bali. Political leaders from virtually every nation will finalise the next steps to a new climate change treaty under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the end of this week. Continue reading →

Canada Tries to Wreck Crucial Climate Talks

07/12/200708/12/2007 Stephen CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, News , bali

Canada publicly declared a 2 degree C rise in the planet’s temperature “unacceptable” but it is putting all of its resources at the Bali climate change conference into wrecking the process said Hans Verolme, director of WWF’s Global Climate Change Programme.

“What they are doing here will will get us 4 degrees C” of global warming, said Verlome at a press conference today from Nusa Dua on the island of Bali, the site of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference running until Dec. 14

Anything above two degrees scientists term “dangerous”. Indeed, even at 2 degrees the IPCC says we have just a 50-50 chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

Canada and Japan seem to be playing the US card of doing nothing he said.

And yet on Monday Dec 3, Environment Minister John Baird made a speech in Canada’s House of Commons: “a rise of 2° in the Earth’s temperature as a result of human activity contributing to global warming, simply put, is unacceptable.”

“I don’t understand Canadian politics,” said Verolme.

Amazon Forest Could Cook the Planet

07/12/200708/12/2007 Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, Forests, News, sustainability , bali

By Stephen Leahy

Dec 7 (IPS) – A two-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures could flip the Amazon forest from being the Earth’s vital air conditioner to a flamethrower that cooks the planet, warns a new report released at the climate talks in Bali, Indonesia Friday.

And we’re already past 0.6 degrees C., climate experts say.

Paradoxically, a two-degree C. rise in global temperatures cannot be prevented without a largely intact Amazon rainforest, says Dan Nepstad, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and author of the report “The Amazon’s Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire in the Greenhouse”, issued by WWF, the global conservation organisation.

“The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe’s climate cannot be underplayed,” said Nepstad at a press conference from Nusa Dua on the island of Bali, the site of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference running until Dec. 14. Continue reading →

Forests, the Great Green Hope?

03/12/200704/12/2007 Stephen Alaska, CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, Forests, News, Science

By Stephen Leahy

Credit:Tomasz Kuran

Mixed forest near Radziejowice, Poland.

Dec 3 (IPS) – Expanding European forests absorbed 126 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from 1990 to 2005 — equivalent to 11 percent of European Union emissions from human activities — while a U.N. target to plant one billion trees mainly in Africa has been surpassed.

“Forests reduced carbon dioxide more than twice the amount of Europe’s renewable energy programmes,” said Pekka Kauppi, who led the University of Helsinki study, published in the British journal Energy Policy on Nov. 29.

Better conservation, migration to cities, and conversion of surplus farmland are the reasons behind the growing and expanding forests, which are mainly in Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Finland Kauppi, told IPS. The study is based on forestry statistics provided by governments and that were not independently verified.

The resulting “surprisingly high carbon dioxide removal” may be the major factor in Europe achieving its ambitious target of 20 percent reductions in greenhouse targets by 2020, Kauppi said.

“On a global scale, there is hope for the future if we stop deforestation and expand forests,” he added. Continue reading →