Linus

Linus left us three years ago today.
His person still misses him very much.

Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages
Copenhagen climate change summit - opening day liveblog

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• Editorial
• The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009
• Article history

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

This editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation' by The Guardian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at guardian.co.uk.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/guardian-environment-team
(please note this Creative Commons license is valid until 18 December 2009)

The Biggest Threat to the World: Canada

George Monbiot's latest column from the Guardian, which focuses on Canada and the tar sands, deserves to be reprinted in full. We must do better than this, and that starts with politicians with vision and purpose, unlike what we have now on either side of The House.



When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.

It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation. Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it. But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.

Why? There's a simple answer: Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It's actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.

Canada hasn't acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.

The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.

Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?

Gay Scientists Isolate the Christian Gene

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

We All Live on the Greenland Ice Sheet Now

By way of serendipitous happenstance, a couple of separate but related news nuggets jumped out at me as I surfed the net today. First, Bernie posted some links over at one of our other blogs (The Central Ganglion) on some climate change matters, particularly on the 10:10 Climate Change campaign, an effort to get everyone to reduce their carbons emissions by 10% in 2010. (More info here, and George Monbiot writes about it here.)
But Bernie also noted that the Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than most predictions. 10% of the world's fresh water is tied up in the Greenland ice sheets and that fresh water is moving into the Atlantic Ocean a lot faster than anyone has imagined. And that's bad news for the future.
According to an article in the Guardian, "Helheim, an enormous tower of ice that calves into Sermilik Fjord, used to move at 7km (4.4 miles) a year. In 2005, in less than a year, it speeded up to nearly 12km a year." Another glacier, Kangerdlugssuaq, is now moving 24mm (about an inch) every minute, making its movement visible to the naked eye. Where the glaciers meet the sea, the glacial calving events are now big enough to generate seismic events transmitted through the earth, and these events actually help speed up the glaciers. That's a feedback loop few people had ever thought of.
And while comptemplating that worrisome news, I found this story at The Adventure Corner by Olaf Malver reporting on his just completed kayaking trip to eastern Greenland. He describes passing 12 mile-long tabular icebergs the likes of which his 55 year-old Inuit guide has never seen before. These icebergs can only make their way south because so much of the Arctic Ocean has opened up during the summer. Olaf, who has camped along eastern Greenland for fifteen years, also noted that many of the fresh water pools at his favourite campsites have dried up, and he also comments on receding glaciers.
As the author of the Guardian article noted, "We all live on the Greenland ice sheet now. Its fate is our fate."

The Odd Box

Something Smells

I'm glad to see that its recent near-demise has taught those oh-so wise powers-that-be at GM the error of their ways, that they must make products that people want, and that make sense in the new economic and environmental paradigm. Their first new offering since billions of taxpayers dollars bailed them out? The Cadillac men's fragrance line.
"Cadillac, the new fragrance for men is part of the recent Cadillac renaissance: Hot new products and redesigns that capture the mantra of life, liberty and the pursuit," said Alwyn Stephen, a director of Beauty Contact, the company that holds the fragrance licence. "Our fragrance is a relevant extension of the Cadillac lifestyle. The design pays tribute to the opulence and extravagance of past eras, as well as the luxury and ease of today."
According to the Toronto Star, the line includes a spray, aftershave lotion, deodorant stick, hair and body wash. Some products will come in translucent glass bottles with sleek metal caps. The retail price for a 100 millilitre bottle of the eau de toilette fragrance will be $73.
Ferrari tried this a few years ago -- they couldn't give their cologne away. Porsche and BMW tried and failed at this idea as well. No doubt the deodorant will be popular because this stinks. Did anyone run this by GM's new owners which are, um, me?

Apollo @ 40

Where does the time go....

You Gotta Love Buzz Aldrin

Inside the Asylum

Days after announcing her intention to step down as the Governor of Alaska, two new ethics complaints were filed against Sarah Palin. She and her staff were quick to respond.
“Although the governor would not have thought it possible, the latest complaint rises to a new level of absurdity in alleging that she has been paid for interviews that she has given to the news media. It is amazing to me that anyone could think that, let alone put their name behind it and once again seek to distract state officials and needlessly increase their work load. The state is losing the value of some of its expenditures when public servants are pulled away from important assignments to deal with far-fetched and mean-spirited allegations,” Palin’s chief of staff Mike Nizich said in a release announcing the filing of the recent complaints.
Palin herself said this: “The only saving grace in this recent episode is that it proves beyond any doubt the significance of the problem Alaska faces in the ‘new normal’ of political discourse. I hope this will be a wake-up call – to legislators, to commentators and to citizens generally – that we need a much more civil and respectful dialogue that focuses on the best interests of the state, rather than the petty resentments of a few.”
Strangely enough, at no point did Palin or her chief of staff ever deny the charges.
Smoke, meet mirrors.

80% of What...?

One fact is being left out of today's announcement that the G8 nations will lower their greenhouse gas emissons by 80% by the year 2050.
One thing, though: 80% of what? I can't find the baseline that they're using in any new report. Is it 80% of 2009 emissions? Or 2006 emissions as outlined in the Canadian government's 2007 legislation (whose mandatory emissions targets don't actually begin until 2012)? Or are they using 1990 emission levels as perscribed under the Kyoto Protocol? (Canada is obligated under Kyoto to cut it's emissions 6% from its 1990 levels; by 2006, our emissions had increased 21.7%.)
Saying its an 80% cut is meaningless without knowing where you starting from, but no media outlet has figured that out.
More egregious are the words of our so-called Environment Minister, according to the CBC (emphasis added):

Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice said achieving the lower emissions by 2050 is only an aspirational goal of the developed countries. But it meshes well with Canada's plan to reduce its emissions by up to 70 per cent by 2050, he said.
Canada will not need to change its policies to achieve that goal, he added.

Fire this man immediately. He clearly has no business being our environmental steward.

Canada: Last Place

According to this story by the CBC, Canada ranks dead last among the G8 nations in the WWF's annual Climate Change report. The article states:

"Nowhere else on Earth do fewer people steward more resources, yet Canada now stands dead last amongst the G8 nations in protecting our shared home from the threat of dangerous climate change," said Keith Steward, director of WWF-Canada's climate change campaign, in a statement Wednesday.
Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are steadily increasing, and its per capita emissions are already among the highest in the world, says the study, conducted by Ecofys, a renewable-energy consulting firm.
"A plan to curb emissions was developed last year but has not been implemented," the report says.

Germany, the UK and France top the list as they have already achieved their Kyoto targets, whereas our Prime Minister seems to think that they are unattainable.

2009 rankings in the G8 Climate Scorecard (WWF/Allianz)
1. Germany
2. UK
3. France
4. Italy
5. Japan
6. Russia
7. U.S.
8. Canada