Daily Archives: December 1, 2015

Preventing Ecocide, Ecocide ALert, Ecocide, Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism, climate science, Naomi Klein

WATCH: Naomi Klein Extended Interview on Role of Obama, Trudeau & Austerity at U.N. Climate Summit

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Ahead of the 21st UN climate change conference in Paris, more than 170 nations submitted plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But experts say the proposed targets end up falling far short of what is needed to mitigate against drastic heating of the planet, and that the agreements during the negotiations are not likely to be binding.

Reposted from DemocracyNow, Dec 1, 2015

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman with Part 2 of our conversation with Naomi Klein, the journalist, the best selling author, film-maker. Her most recent book is, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.” She also has made a film with Avi Lewis by the same title, “This Changes Everything.” I guess the question, Naomi, that I want to begin the second part of the conversation with is, does this climate summit, COP21, here in Paris, France, does this change actually everything?

NAOMI KLEIN: Does the summit change everything? No, I mean climate change changes everything. And you know, if we stay on the road we’re on and the summit isn’t headed towards doing nearly enough to get us off that road, then everything changes about our physical world. I mean, these are the stakes. It means entire island nations disappear, hugely populated coastal cities are threatened by sea level rise. That’s the road we’re on. Big agricultural failure on the scale of, you know, 60 percent. We’re already seeing crop failure in California in the midst of drought. So we’re not talking about some theoretical crisis off in the future. But what we know about climate change is there’s something about this crisis that makes it very hard to keep on the political front burner. Right?

In Copenhagen there was a lot of momentum — Copenhagen in 2009 — the last time there was one of these huge summits that was supposed to save the world there was a lot of momentum on climate action, but then the financial collapse happened in 2008, the year before, and by the time that governments gathered in 2009 conversation was already shifting away from climate towards everything having to be about the economy, and all of these resources that would have been spent on climate action being diverted to bail out the banks and then cutbacks. This has been felt very strongly in Europe where, all over southern Europe supports for renewable energy have been slashed under the banner of economic austerity, and under the banner of fighting debt. Countries like Italy and Greece are drilling for oil off shore. Italy’s planning to double the amount of oil they drill for offshore. Public transit fees go up. Rail systems are privatized. So there’s a real connection between the economic crisis, austerity and the ability to act on climate. And yet we usually talk about these as totally separate issues.

And here we are in Paris, a city in mourning after the horrific attacks of November 13, and we’re also seeing how the conversation is shifting to war, security all the time, and we’re failing, so often, to make the connection between the drivers of war and the drivers of climate change. Amy, they’re the same thing. I mean, if we look at the region, um, that is so destabilized, why? Because of foreign wars fought over oil and gas, the very resources that are causing climate change. And then you have the impacts of climate change being felt so acutely in the Middle East, a historic drought in Syria before the outbreak of civil war that led to big crop failure and an internal migration of 1.5 million people which accelerated the conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: A new report has just come out that said that Gulf states, it will be soon be too hot to stay outside more than a couple of hours at a time.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, I mean, and this is — that, that study, which was published in Nature Climate Change, I believe. Yeah, it talked about how, by the end of the century, huge parts of the Middle East would become uninhabitable. But even this past summer in India, more than 2,000 people died in a heat wave. It’s already unlivable. And it’s also highly unequal. If you have access to air conditioning, you know, if you have access to bottled water and all of these things that make it easier to live through a heat wave, then it’s not going to impact you in the same way as if you are vulnerable to the elements. And this is, why outside of the summit, there is such a strong focus on the need for climate justice, to understand that it is the people who have done the least, the poorest people on the planet, who have emitted the least carbon, um, who are feeling the impacts first and worst.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could ask President Obama a question here, what would that question be? And then I want to ask about the new leader —

NAOMI KLEIN: What took you so long?

AMY GOODMAN: — of Canada. What?

NAOMI KLEIN: What took you so long?

AMY GOODMAN: Were you satisfied with his speech here?

NAOMI KLEIN: It’s not about speeches at this point, Amy. And, look, Obama — and I’ve said this to you before on the show — Obama sounds like a climate leader, there’s not doubt about that, but he doesn’t — and he’s even starting to do some of the things that — some of the actions that are aligned with a climate leader, like canceling the Keystone XL pipeline. It shouldn’t have taken three years or more to make that decision, but it’s good to see, in the final days — in the final years of his presidency. He shouldn’t have needed Shell to pull out of the Arctic before putting more restrictions on those leases that will make it very hard for them to go back in. But, finally he’s starting to do it. But there’s still this illusion of an all of the above energy, uh, uh, energy pathway where you can say yes to fracking for gas and say yes to handing out more and more oil leases on public land and at the same time have support for renewables. So, I think he is still trying to have it all ways, but we are seeing some positive signs.

AMY GOODMAN: So let’s go north to your country, to Canada. A very unusual victory just took place, Justin Trudeau. Explain who he is, um, and where he stands on the environment and climate change.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, so we’ve had a few unusual — well, not really unusual, frankly. The Liberal party, which Justin Trudeau is the leader of is sometimes referred to as the natural governing party of Canada. It actually was more unusual that we were governed for the past eight years by hard right government in the form of Stephen Harper.

Justin Trudeau is the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada. You know, he comes from this political dynasty. And we know the liberals. They’ve been in power for most of my life. So this isn’t so extraordinary, it’s a relief, I think, not just for Canadians, but for pretty much everybody here. A lot of people at the climate summit here at Paris are very happy that they’re not dealing with Stephen Harper and Tony Abbot in Australia who are two of the most obstructionist leaders. But we still have a huge amount of work to do in Canada. Justin Trudeau was very vague on climate during the election campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: And where is he now, when it — at this climate summit?

NAOMI KLEIN: Um, It’s still vague. I mean, he’s kind of using the fact that, the summit is so soon after taking office to say we can’t come with anything significantly more ambitious than the previous government. Give us time. Which makes a certain amount of sense. The problem is just that we don’t have time. And this is the problem all of our leaders have to contend with, is that, you know, their predecessors have wasted so much time and made the problem so much worse that they now need to act with tremendous amount of ambition and speed. And that politically difficult, but that’s what we need them to do.

AMY GOODMAN: And didn’t you have indigenous leaders immediately occupying, was it the front yard of Justin Trudeau’s home?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, different groups, including 350 Canada, and different indigenous groups, organized what they called the climate welcome for Justin Trudeau, precisely because climate change was not on the front burner during the election campaign, was very much, sort of a foot note, and also, just listening to what Justin Trudeau was saying during the election campaign. He was criticizing Harper for doing a — not a good enough job selling the Keystone XL pipeline. Justin Trudeau has said some supportive things about another huge tar sands pipeline that would run through eastern Canada, called Energy East. You know, just as bad as Keystone, if not worse. So we need to continue to put pressure on him.

And we, you know — my hope is just that Canadians have learned from what happened with Obama in 2008 where there was so much relief after getting George W. Bush that people thought, oh we can just relax, right? We have this likable president. In Canada we saw how that, how that worked out, in that a lot of time was lost. And we see that Obama is a much better president when he’s under pressure from below. So what we need to do, in Canada is learn, from that experience and put pressure on Justin Trudeau from day one.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, one of the last times we spoke, you had just come back from the Vatican. You were invited there, I think it was Independence Day weekend in the United States, to be part of — to address many people around the issue of the Pope’s encyclical on the environment and climate change. I wanted to turn to the Pope, who’s in the midst of this Africa trip, speaking in Nairobi, Kenya. Pope Francis said it be catastrophic if particular interests prevailed over the common good of people and the planet at the U.N. climate talks here in Paris.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] In a few days an important meeting on climate change will be held in Paris, where the international community will once again confront these issues. It would be sad, and I dare say even catastrophic were particular interests to prevail over the common good and lead to manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and projects. COP21 represents an important stage in the process of developing a new energy system which depends on a minimal use of fossil fuels, aims at energy efficiency and makes use of energy sources with little or no carbon content. We are faced with a great political and economic obligation to rethink and correct the disfunctions and distortions of the current model of development.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pope Francis speaking in Nairobi, Kenya, saying it would be catastrophic if particular interests prevailed over the common good of people and planet at the U.N. talks. Naomi Klein, you’re well versed in the Pope these days.

NAOMI KLEIN: I don’t know about that, but I do think that the Pope’s voice and the Pope’s encyclical — it’s certainly very present here, is being invoked in a lot of the speeches and, you know, the thing about these conferences, Amy, is they’re so intensely bureaucratic. The first time I went to one of these conferences I carried around a glossary in my back pocket of all of the acronyms so that I could just understand what was going on. And I think what the Pope’s voice does, in this moment, is it inject that moral — that moral voice that says this is about people, this is a moral crisis, so there’s a moral imperative to act.

And it’s also another reminder, you know, one of the things we heard in the opening was we heard from Christiana Figueres who is, sort of, in charge of all of this for the United Nations, and she said never has — I think what she said was, never has so much been in the hands of so few. You know, she’s talking to the leaders, you hold the world in your hands. And I understand what she was trying to say, the spirit of that, to try to, you know, convince these leader to try to live up to their historical moment. But what I thought, hearing that was actually — that’s not true. During Copenhagen, we acted as if our leaders —- we could put our trust in our leaders and we, sort of, begged them to act. We are in a different moment where there are many other voices who are acting and changing the game, including the Pope, including the divestment movement, include—-

AMY GOODMAN: And you mean by the divestment movement?

NAOMI KLEIN: The fossil fuel divestment movement led by students, you know, and faith groups, and cities. There are so many other actors beyond just these leaders who, frankly, have been dragged, kicking and screaming to this moment, and you know, if they don’t act they may be replaced with other leaders and we’ll push those leaders too. I have to just add one thing that I — to correct something that I said earlier: I said that the climate welcome in Canada was 350 and different indigenous groups, which it was, but there were other groups involved too, including Greenpeace Canada who’s played a really key role.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to end with a question about your own work. Your book came out a few years ago, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.” Now your film done with Avi Lewis has come out, “This Changes Everything.” And you’re taking a very different approach to most people who make a film in terms of distribution. What are you doing with it, and how is it being received around the world?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, so, the thing that I think is most different is that we’ve done film festival releases, and it’s been in theaters, and in Europe and in North America, you know, more conventional distribution, but we also made sure, and Avi was very clear on this, that the movements had to have access to the film right away, particularly in the run up to the Paris Summit. And so, usually, you’re not able to organize a community screening until a year after it’s been released at film festivals, and after the theatrical run is already over, but, we’ve managed to have this all simultaneous. So what’s been wonderful for us to watch is how different social movements have used the film just as a meeting space, and it’s been shown in — and to get the conversation started, because, for whatever reason, it’s easier to get people into a room when there’s a screen involved than if you just say lets get together and talk about climate change. So Avi and I like to say we’re just the excuse to get people into the room and then the real work begins.

But, you know, in Amsterdam, Greenpeace organized a screening where they projected the film on the side of a coal fired power plant, and they were tweeting, well if you’re looking for “This Changes Everything,” follow the smoke. And they showed it to, I think, 1200 people. In Manilla they showed it in a shopping mall filled with celebrities. So it’s just been a tool, and that’s all we can hope for.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, as we wrap up, speaking of tweeting, you just tweeted this morning, um, the Chinese leader talking — giving his speech here at the U.N. Summit.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, so he said that, um, that we shouldn’t see the Paris agreement as the finish line, but the starting point. I just tweeted, only at the United Nations does it take 21 years to get to the starting point. Because, you know, the hashtag is COP21, and that is because we’ve had 21 of these meeting, Amy. And, in fact, our governments have been meeting about lowering emissions since 1988, and in that time emissions have gone up by more than 60 percent. So we can’t afford for this just to be the beginning, and that’s why, in Canada, we called our manifesto the Leap Manifesto, because we often hear, oh this is a step in the right direction. It’s a small step. It’s the beginning. And we’re past the point of small steps. We need to leap.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, thanks so much for being with us Naomi Klein, journalist, author. Her most recent book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.” Together with Avi Lewis, they have also done a film that is called this changes everything. This is Democracy Now! We’re broadcasting live from the summit here in Paris, it’s the U.N. Climate Summit, COP21. Thanks so much for joining us. SOURCE

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‘This Changes Everything’ Director Avi Lewis On Why He’s Disappointed With President Obama On Climate Change

Politics, Fascism/Corporatism

France, Germany, Canada call on world to put price on carbon

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While creating a degree of certainty, price floors can also add risks. For example, will they be changed in the future? (Source: Flickr/TheWritingZone)

By AP, reposted from The Hindu, Dec 1, 2015

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said. “Carbon pricing is critical for reducing emissions, preserving our environment and protecting the most vulnerable.”

One of the smartest ways to fight global warming is putting a price on carbon dioxide pollution, some key world leaders said at Monday’s international climate summit.

Either a tax on carbon dioxide emissions or trading carbon pollution like pork bellies, which puts a price on carbon, will help use capitalism to get closer to a day when the world isn’t adding heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, according to leaders of France, Germany, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Ethiopia, as well as heads of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

The number of countries, provinces, states or cities putting a price on carbon has tripled in the past year and is now at 40, including some U.S. states, said World Bank Group President Jim Young Kim. Mr. Kim and others pointed to straight carbon taxes in British Columbia, Sweden and France as examples of what works.

Economists have known since 1923 that “smart economics puts a tax on bad things and not on good things,” said World Resources Institute President Andrew Steer, a former Wharton economist who wasn’t part of the multi-nation initiative on carbon pricing. He compared it to taxing cigarettes to reducing consumption, although other methods of trading carbon pollution credits aren’t quite the same, he added.

“We simply cannot afford to continue polluting the planet at the current pace,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said. “Carbon pricing is critical for reducing emissions, preserving our environment and protecting the most vulnerable.”

New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said British Columbia’s “world class” carbon tax proves such a device doesn’t harm the economy.

There are already costs called externalities to burning fossil fuels in terms of public health and deaths, costs that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, said Wesleyan University economist Gary Yohe, who was not part of the Paris event.

“Cheap and dirty energy is not cheap for the planet or the health of our people,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said at the Paris climate summit. “When green taxes are incorporated into our climate policies, we can harness market forces that can lead to profound changes in our emissions patterns.”

Europe has carbon pricing and the key in the future is that that every nation has to have some kind of uniform carbon pricing, so that energy interests don’t go to another nation for dirty power, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Mr. Kim said carbon trading can work as well as a carbon tax, but OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said that a tax, even if it doesn’t raise new funds and replaces other taxes, clearly works best- “We should put a big fat price on [carbon] in order to penalize it.”

SOURCE

Preventing Ecocide, Ecocide, Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism, democracy

Letter: Long-term solution needed over quick fix for Mount Polley

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A tailings pond for the Mount Polley mine burst in August 2014 and spilled millions of cubic metres of waste water into Polley Lake. The latest concerns relate to a different pond.

by Cherrie Carr, reposted from WLTribune.com, Nov 24, 2015

Editor:

I was sorely disappointed after reading comments made by Imperial Metals Vice-President Steve Robertson and Mayor Walt Cobb in The Weekend Advisor, Friday, Nov. 20, regarding the delayed application to dispose of “treated mine effluent” from Mount Polley Mine.

Cobb stated ominously that “there will be another breach” and if such a disaster occurs he let it be known that it will be “solely” on the Ministry of Environment for taking too long to approve a request to “temporarily” dispose of tailings by pouring it into Quesnel Lake.

The title “City council demands immediate issuance of permit” alone is infuriating, less than a year and a half after one of the worst environmental disasters this province has ever seen and city council has the gall to make demands of the Ministry of Environment. I am astounded.

Are we seriously going down this road again?

Placing the blame for another breach on the Ministry of Environment for failing to put a stamp of approval on this ridiculous idea fast enough is preposterous — it’s akin to going down the same destructive path over and over again. Unbelievable.

When are we going to realize that quick fixes and short term solutions do not work? Why was this mine reopened without some kind of plan in place in the event that the new storage ponds fill up too soon?

Here’s an option: Shut or slow things down long enough to generate and implement long-term solutions for this great community and its people and proactively develop and follow through with a plan that is going to work over the long-term.

These quick-fix ideas are not about getting people back to work — and it’s not about people’s livelihoods. If that were the case a lot more thought would be going into protecting precious bodies of water like Quesnel Lake and spending some money on more innovative and progressive methods for storing mine waste and tailings.

This is about corporate greed on the part of Imperial Metals and our fearless leader Christy Clark, who appears to have the foresight and social and environmental conscience of a cockroach. Locally, it is also about ignorance and short-sightedness on the part of Mayor Cobb.

There is no economy without our natural resources; there is no human race without clean water, clean air and a liveable climate.

I care about the people working at Mount Polley Mine; I understand that this employer is a huge part of the community in which we live.

But there is a balance and we really need to find it. Further polluting Quesnel Lake is not the answer.

If the new pit is filling up, instead of crying about it and throwing a tantrum (as demonstrated by both Robertson and Mayor Cobb) about another impending disaster and assigning blame while watching it happen, how about slowing production down, going back to the drawing board, spending some of that profit and coming up with a decent plan that creates local employment and also fits the environmental reality of the world we are living in?

Quesnel Lake is not lost; Imperial Metals is acting as though the lake is now expendable but it is not. As it stands right now Quesnel Lake is not a dumping ground, but if we don’t pull our heads out of the sand pretty darn quick it’s going to be too late.

This situation is one small example of a worldwide crisis and how much of a role corporate greed and small-time ignorance has in it. Why are we not standing up and saying enough is enough? SOURCE

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Preventing Ecocide, Politics, Activism, democracy

Take Action! Keep your promises, Liberals: Stop pipeline reviews

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from The Council of Canadians, Nov 30, 2015

Stop regulatory reviews for pipeline projects

The Liberal government promised to reform the broken National Energy Board (NEB) process for reviewing pipelines, including those already under review.

Yet Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr recently commented in a Globe and Mail article that Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion and TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline projects will not stop while changes are made.

The existing reviews for both projects have shown a lack of adequate aboriginal consultation, a clear democratic deficit, and a failure to evaluate climate implications. The NEB itself is stacked with recent Harper appointees and industry insiders.

The Energy East and Trans Mountain reviews have been marred by controversy and, as they stand, are illegitimate.

Email Minister Carr to urge him to keep his government’s promise by stopping the flawed NEB review of these controversial pipelines and launch a public review of Canada’s environmental assessment processes.

Preventing Ecocide, Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism, democracy

Ecojustice: A look back at the Dutch climate court win

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Photo credit: Urgenda / Chantal Bekker

By Charles Hatt, reposted from Ecojustice, Nov 30, 2015

With the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) happening on Nov. 30, we decided to pull this piece, originally published in July, out of the Ecojustice archives as a good reminder that it is possible for citizens to hold their governments accountable for addressing climate change and reducing carbon pollution.

In the last few months since this post was first published, there has been a lot of positive action in the climate movement — this includes seeing the U.S. decision to finally reject the Keystone XL pipeline project. Not only have we watched kayakers dangle from a bridge in Oregon protesting fossil fuel infrastructure in the arctic, we have also seen the Catholic Church urge countries to strive for a goal of complete decarbonisation by 2050. As the number of people around the world calling for climate action continues to grow, those calling for a legally-binding global treaty to address the problem will only increase.

For Canada, with a new government that has pledged to demonstrate climate leadership, this means being a constructive voice at the table during the COP21 discussions, and committing to meaningful carbon reduction targets. But the work cannot stop there, Canada also needs to come home with a commitment to work with the provinces to produce a credible climate plan — one that says no to pipelines and other major projects that come with unacceptable climate impacts, and makes sure that polluters pay when they dump carbon into the air we all breathe.

As world leaders meet and make agreements with each other, they should remember that they are also accountable to people at home. And as this commentary from our archives explains below, ordinary people are having increasing success going to court holding their governments to account for weak climate action at home.

 

On Jun. 24, a court in The Hague, Netherlands, delivered a watershed decision on climate change. The court held that the Dutch government owes a duty of care to its current and future citizens for harm caused by climate change. To meet this duty, the government must set and achieve a greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reduction target of at least 25% below 1990 levels by the year 2020.

There’s no doubt this is a landmark decision, fully deserving of the international media coverage it has received. But to understand its significance, and its potential impact on Canadian law, it’s necessary to take a step back.

Climate change has proven a tough problem to pin down in the courtroom. Nearly all economic and social activity contributes to greenhouse gas pollution. The harm caused by this pollution is felt globally (though most acutely by the poor) and the worst effects won’t be felt for decades. Those who stand to benefit the most from GHG emission reductions – future generations, the global poor, future clean tech workers, and climate-vulnerable species – are less visible than protectors of the status quo. Taking all of these factors together, it is clear the only real solutions are systemic changes at the societal level.

Since the early 1990s, governments have negotiated internationally about reducing GHG emissions (mitigation) and readying our societies for a warmer world (adaptation). These negotiations have born some fruit. They created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body that synthesizes and distills climate science for the world. They produced treaties on GHG emission reductions, first the Kyoto Accord and now, with any luck, a successor at the Paris conference in December. And they led world leaders to agree that 2° Celsius is the safe limit for global warming we can live with.

This slow march toward international consensus has filtered down into national GHG reduction targets. The Netherlands’ own target of a 17% target reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 is in large part a product of its commitments internationally and within Europe.

But once national governments commit themselves to GHG reduction targets, two huge questions remain. What happens if a government sets a target that is too low, or too slow, to keep us on track for 2°C warming (i.e. the safe limit we can live with)? And what happens if a government fails to meet its target?

If you follow climate policy around the world, you know the importance of these questions. Governments have an incentive to go along with international negotiations and laud the latest climate science, but then dodge the actions required when the rubber hits the road at home.

This takes us back to the Dutch case.

For the first time, a major court has answered the first question by telling a government it must set, and achieve a stricter target for GHG emission reductions. The court held the Dutch government’s GHG reduction target must at least match the minimum level prescribed by our best science. That science says developed countries must reduce GHGs by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Importantly, the court also held that it is better to reduce GHGs now with existing technologies, than to put it off and hope for bigger reductions in the future. Why? Because it is more cost-effective and results in lower absolute emissions over the long run.

The lawsuit was brought by Urgenda, a Dutch NGO, both in its own name and on behalf of 886 private citizens. They sued the Dutch government for having an insufficient GHG reduction target, relying on international law, European human rights law, and domestic Dutch law. The court held that the Dutch government owes a duty of care toward its current and future citizens to prevent dangerous climate change, and that it breached the standard of care required by having an insufficient GHG reduction target. The basis for this duty of care is the concept of tort found in the Dutch Civil Code. The existence of European human rights law on the environment, the Netherlands’ international climate change commitments, and the environmental protection clause in the Dutch constitution all helped the court decide that a duty existed.

What is the chance of a similar case succeeding in Canada? It is difficult to say. As Andrew Gage of West Coast Environmental Law has noted, each country’s own legal traditions will affect whether, and how their governments might be held liable for inaction on climate change. There are a number of key differences between Dutch and Canadian law that could affect a similar case in a Canadian court. To name just two, our law on who has “standing” to bring this kind of lawsuit is more restrictive, and we have no constitutional protection for a healthy environment, though we’re working on that.

And yet, the need for judicial intervention is arguably much greater in Canada. The Dutch GHG emission levels are on track to be 17% below 1990 levels by 2020. Not good enough, but not bad compared to other developed countries. In Canada, our GHG reduction target is 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. This is far below what is needed to stay under 2°C warming. In fact, it amounts to an increase over 1990 levels. And it gets worse. Environment Canada says we won’t come close to meeting even this lousy target. In short, we have a crying need for government accountability on climate change.

The traditional response is that change will come at the ballot box, not in the courts. And the many climate change cases that have tried and failed to make change through the courts have reinforced this thinking (Friends of the Earth v Canada, Native Village of Kivalina v ExxonMobil Corp, American Electric Power Co v Connecticut).

But now we have a winner; a demonstration of the possible. The Dutch case will hopefully prove a psychological breakthrough for lawyers, legal scholars, climate activists and (hopefully) judges dealing with climate change in the courtroom. It shows that while legal doctrines from a pre-climate change era pose hurdles to success in the courts, they are not insurmountable. This may prove to be a more important legacy than any particulars of the legal theory or the court’s reasons.

Climate change is a wicked problem. But we know its causes and, increasingly, we know its harms. We know what minimum actions are required to keep warming below dangerous levels. It is now our law that needs to evolve to meet the challenge.

- See more at: https://www.ecojustice.ca/a-look-back-at-what-the-dutch-climate-court-win-could-mean-for-canada/#sthash.SJ2HrucE.dpuf

Politics, Activism, democracy

Protesters join global call for halt to climate change

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As delegates meet at the Paris climate talks, a Toronto march Sunday called for a binding deal to slow C02 emissions.

Climate change rally participants march at Queen's Park Sunday in Toronto.
Climate change rally participants march at Queen’s Park Sunday in Toronto. RENE JOHNSTON / TORONTO STAR

By , reposted from TheStar, Nov 29, 2015

Hundreds of boisterous protesters marched at Queen’s Park Sunday demanding that world leaders sign a binding deal in Paris to halt global warming.

As more than 40,000 delegates from all over the world gather for two weeks in Paris to try to craft a deal identifying steps nearly 200 countries must take to slow greenhouse gas emissions, the demonstrators in Toronto held a national day of action in a bid to make their voices heard on climate change.

Chanting slogans such as “we want 100 per cent clean energy” the demonstrators held flashlights, cellphones and other light-emitting devices as they circled the legislative buildings at Queen’s Park in a long line at sundown.

Led by drummers, First Nations singers, and high school students who carried a large colourful sign they designed that said ‘lighting the way to climate action,’ the line wound back to the front of Queen’s Park, at which point demonstrators joined hands and marched sideways, in single file, many still holding their flashlights and other devices.

One of the organizers of the Toronto rally, Emmay Mah, of the People’s Climate Movement, said a major goal of the event was to push for world leaders to sign a legally binding climate change agreement at the Paris climate conference.

People gathered in Ottawa Sunday to urge the government to take strong action against climate change and invest in renewable energy. Rallies were held in Canada and around the world on the eve of a climate conference in Paris.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that they will come to an agreement with measures that really protect communities that are on the frontlines of experiencing climate change,” Mah said.

Each country will be different in terms of doing their fair share to reduce C02 emissions, but Mah said the goal is to see emissions cut by 35 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025.

That’s a more aggressive pace than the target of already stated by the federal government — emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“We want to see them step it up. We want to see an improvement in their time lines,” Mah said.

Crystal Sinclair, a member of Idle No More Toronto, called for a stop to “anything that is destructive to our land” including the production of nuclear energy, and fracking, the controversial method of natural gas extraction in which pressurized, chemically treated water is pumped into formations such as shale.

“People in indigenous communities have taken a stand against fracking. These are things that are destroying the land and destroying the environment,” Sinclair, a Cree originally from Manitoba, who now lives in Toronto, told the crowd.

“It’s poisoning the land, water and animals that we need to survive,” she added.

“Indigenous people are at the forefront of this struggle against climate change,” Sinclair said.

Sarah Sackville McLauchlan, who is doing a doctorate in environmental studies at York University, told the crowd called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other world leaders to sign a climate treaty that will keep global temperature increases below 2 C.

“If we let the (increase) go higher than that all hell breaks loose even more than it already has,” Sackville McLauchlan said.

“This is not charity. It’s a moral obligation,” she added. SOURCE

 

Preventing Ecocide, Ecocide, Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism, climate science, Naomi Klein

All over the world, demands to change the system, not the climate

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By Ronald Cameron, reposted from Le Journal Des Alternatives, Nov 30, 2015 using Google translate

600,000 people demonstrated around the world, this Sunday, November 29, on the occasion of the opening of the COP (Conference Of Parties - COP 21) in Paris: 300 000 New York 60000 in Melbourne, 40,000 in London, 25,000 in Ottawa. In Paris, as protests are banned, more than 10,000 persons have made a human chain between Oberkampf and Place de la Nation. Everywhere message is clear: Let’s change the system, not the climate!

The mobilizations are prohibited in Paris

At the initiative of ATTAC-France and Alternatiba network and with the support of member organizations of the Climate Coalition 21, a human chain was set up, given the ban on demonstrations with measures Emergency adopted by the French government following the events of 13 November. The invitation to the population of Paris was to hold a human chain between Oberkampf and Place de la Nation. The rally is deployed on the sidewalks of the Boulevard Voltaire and spent by the Bataclan and Rue de Charonne, site of the bloody events. 10,000 people responded to the call.

Naomi Klein will speak on several occasions in the various activities organized by the Climate Coalition 21 - PhotoAlternatives.
On the Boulevard Voltaire, 10,000 people showed up despite the ban on demonstrations. - Photo Alternatives

For its part, the Avaaz network invited to lead a symbolic action: covering the footwear Republic Square to symbolize the people who should not participate in the march for the climate in Paris: 22000 shoes were left there. Different organizations have set up service points to collect shoes. In addition, tens of demonstrations took place in France.

Some of the 22,000 shoes Place of the Republic. Photo RQIC

Major issues for the future of the planet and its people

All this mobilization is not only due to the holding of the COP 21. The current findings on the state of the planet are particularly worrying: 0,85C warming is already observed for a century, as well as heating and ocean acidification, changing marine ecosystems, extent of glaciers, rising sea level. Beyond 2 degrees C warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns of disruption that would involve brutal consequences for the population of the planet.

If nothing is done to reduce the greenhouse effect linked to human activities, the average warming may even exceed 4 degrees C by the end of the century according to the IPCC. To contain global warming to below this limit 2 degrees C, we must let the 4 / 5th of fossil fuels known in the soil and reduce emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40-70% by 2050 compared to 2010.

Ronald Cameron, the Board of Alternatives, and Pierre-Yves Serinet, the Quebec Network on Continental Integration (RQIC) in Paris, at the human chain: the free trade agreements are major obstacles in the implementation of regulations to reduce greenhouse gases. - Photo Alternatives

Can we hope for an agreement at COP 21?

Since 2009, since the failure of the COP 15 in Copenhagen, helplessness facing the climate seems to have installed. Also, civil society, unable to influence the course of events in 2009, is won by that feeling. As for governments, one apprehends the same way the content of the discussions. On one side, the French government wants a binding agreement, for its part the US administration warned that it was not his goal.

However, the mobilizations of 29 tend to show that this is no longer the same feeling that is prevalent within civil society. If governments are unable to reach a bold agreement, the networks mobilized on the planet do not intend to let go.Increasingly, we will not let governments decide the fate of the planet. We need to force them to act, as in Canada and Quebec, blocking the eastern Energy pipeline.

The summit, to be held at Le Bourget, outside Paris, received a very clear message: civil society and the population of the planet require a change of course be given to ensure a better future than could to put up with a dynamic consecutive warming to let social and economic. SOURCE