Around the world nations are being seriously destabilized by the combined impacts of climate change and food insecurity. One factor in this is population density, the number of people a nation must somehow provide for within a fixed area.Ca…
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The Disaffected Lib: Make Them Stay
The Doha climate change summit now underway appears likely to end inconclusively as have all the international climate change summits that preceded it over the past 18-years. About the only agreement may be where to hold the next climate ch…
Continue reading350 or bust: Canada’s Ethical Oil – Why Stop There?
As the COP 18 climate talks continue in Doha this week, this video is a good reminder of why Canada has been the winner of Consecutive Fossil of the Year Awards from 2006 – present. Fossil Of The Year awards go to “the country who has done …
Continue readingArt Threat: Carbon Visuals illustrates the serious state of climate change
Since 1991, nearly 14,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles have been published on the topic of climate change. Of those, a mere 24 reject human-caused global warming. Despite the overwhelming evidence that climate change is, in fact, real, there is still a need for highly effective communications tools to educate the public on the dire importance of […]
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Thawing the Far North
1,700 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s twice the current record amount of atmospheric CO2. 1,700 billion metric tonnes is the estimated amount of CO2 held in the northern hemisphere’s permafrost that is now at ris…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What We’re Really Fighting Over at Doha
Yes, you’re right, it’s carbon emissions we’re fighting over at Doha but perhaps not in the way you imagine.We, in the developed world, are fighting for our our continued domination of the atmosphere and the preservation of our monopoly on its remainin…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: There’s Your Problem – Too Damned Much Wiggle Room
The wrench in the gears that prevents meaningful international action on global change is the enormous wiggle room in the debate. This arises, in large part, because of the opportunity for the players to argue overall emissions versus per c…
Continue reading350 or bust: How Changing Perspective Could Save Our Environment
It’s TED Talk Tuesday on 350orbust. Here is advertising expert and funny guy Rory Sutherland talking about how it’s possible to change the way people value things can have surprising results: Advertising adds value to a product by changing …
Continue readingHere’s a headline I’d rather not see
Checking The Guardian on my morning round of news websites, I encountered the following headline: “Canada, the surprise “pariah” of the Kyoto protocol.” The subhead went on to add, “Some Canadians doubt whether their country should have any say in negotiating the second Kyoto protocol after it became the only
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Suicide on a Grand Scale
Prince Charles states the obvious. “Mankind is on the brink of ‘committing suicide on a grand scale’ unless rapid progress is made on green issues, the Prince of Wales warned today.”In very strong language, Prince Charles claimed the planet was do…
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Conservatives Abandon Community Pasture Protection
If the Conservatives removed protection on all fish in the ocean, do you think there’d be an outcry of concern? What if they allowed every old tree to be cut down, because we could just plant new ones by hand? Arrogance is the assumption that humans have figured out how to do everything by hand […]
Continue reading350 or bust: Black Friday: Rise Above It
“Today, humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.” – Fawzi Ibrahim Tomorrow is Black Friday in the U.S. (and apparently we Canucks are now following our neighbour’s bad exa…
Continue readingdrive-by planet: Greenhouse gases up 20% since 2000: climate change likely ‘more severe than models predict’
A report by the UN Environment Programme warns that world governments are doing too little to meet the stated goal of limiting global warming to 2 C. In failing to meet their commitments governments are increasing the likelihood of catastrophic glob…
Continue readingFederal environment minister joins the real world
When I worked in the oil industry many years ago, we used to refer to those politicians, academics, media people, etc. who didn’t fully appreciate our interests as not living in the real world. The real world was of course our world, the world of industry. Ironically, now many people
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: There’s Still a Chance
Here’s what you need to know. Today there is 25 per cent more atmospheric CO2 than there was in 2000.On the books right now are plans for the construction of 1,200 more coal-fired power plants that will create emissions equal to anoth…
Continue reading350 or bust: Our Carbon Pollution: Is It Different From Raw Sewage?
In a very short time – years or at most decades – humans will look back at our spewing of carbon pollution into the atmosphere with the same disgust and disbelief that we now look back on people in the middle ages in Europe who dumped their…
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Is Peter Kent Trying to Move Harper on Climate Change?
This starts with a tangent: I’ve been trying to understand why the World Bank’s climate report is big news. It’s just a rehash of long available science. The World Bank is not my idea of some kind of recalcitrant climate denial shop, but obviously they have some reason to be
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Progressive Voice In The Mainstream Media
Although her views are not radically different from those found at alternative news sites such as The Raw Story, Truthdig or Alternet, jounalist Linda McQuaig is always a treat to read, if for no other reason than the fact that her views make it into…
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