The ocean needs a climate leader

By Karen Wristen

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s address to the Climate Summit in New York last week was poignant:

“Climate change is a defining issue of our age, of our present. Our response will define our future. To ride this storm we need all hands on deck. We need a clear vision. The human, environmental and financial cost of climate change is fast becoming unbearable. We have never faced such a challenge, nor such an opportunity...”

Laurent Fabius, Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Ban Ki Moon and Ségolène Royal join an initial count of 310,000 people marching in New York city to demand action on global warming ahead of the Ban ki Moon climate summit. Photo: Greg McNevin.

Ban brought world leaders together at this Summit to encourage a display of the kind of leadership he speaks of when he calls for “all hands on deck.” And displays there were: the summit is knee-deep in celebrities and former politicians urging a legally binding deal to be struck at the next major UN climate negotiations in Paris in 2015. Days before the Summit, more than 340 global institutional investors representing over $24 trillion in assets called on government leaders to provide stable, reliable and economically meaningful carbon pricing that helps redirect investment, and to end fossil fuel subsidies. Leaders in both developed and developing nations acknowledged the economic loss that inaction will bring and embracing the stimulus of greening the economy.

Missing from the action was Canada’s Prime Minister. Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq attended in his place, announcing (to a nearly empty room) new regulations to curb emissions from vehicles and the electricity sector. She made no mention of Canada's oil and gas sector, now responsible for one-quarter of the nation’s emissions and two years overdue for the promised announcement of regulations.

The current federal government pulled Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol in December 2011, shortly before embarking on the most comprehensive dismantling of environmental legislation in the history of the modern world. Meanwhile, the ocean continues to absorb much of the carbon in the atmosphere, but at tremendous cost. By 2100, it will be more acidic than it has been in 20 million years.

The next major UN climate negotiations are scheduled for December 2015. The next federal election is scheduled for October 2015. The ocean needs us to send a climate leader to Paris and it needs us to make a legally binding commitment to carbon reduction.

"What the hell were you thinking?" A 16-year-old's testimony at Enbridge Northern Gateway JRP

The following article originally appeared in the Vancouver Observer on February 5th, 2013, and can be viewed in it's original context here


What the hell were you thinking? from Catherine Wallace on Vimeo.

The following transcript is from the presentation of Sam Harrison, who presented at the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel in Vancouver on January 31.

Study finds people are confused about climate change, but want to learn

Yesterday`s post was a wallow in the dank recesses of tar sands politics. To make up for how depressing it was, I promised some cautiously optimistic news on the climate change front, in the form of hopeful news from the U.S. Since I am nothing if not a man of my word when it is convenient and when it suits my purposes, here`s that cautiously optimistic news:

The Confederacy of Dunces: the influence of Canadian oil interests on U.S. politics

The next few posts are going to focus on greenhouse gas emissions, because their effects - climate change and ocean acidification - are projected to have substantial consequences for marine ecosystems. And because the fixes required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are largely political, these next few posts are going to delve into politics. Today, we'll briefly touch on the relationship between the Alberta tar sands and U.S. politics.

There will be no cute images to distract us.

Carbon Dioxide – 3, Water – 0

It has been a pretty exciting couple of weeks for carbon dioxide. The infamous gas celebrated a stunning victory last week against its long time rival, water vapor, for control of the Earth's climate. According to a study published at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which examined the role that various gases play in the greenhouse effect, the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. Better luck next time, water! Water vapor and clouds still play a major role in global warming, but without non-condensing gases like CO₂ and methane, they cannot uphold the Earth's greenhouse effect. This leaves water in distant second place, a loss as crushing as that suffered by Carolina in Sunday's 5-1 Vancouver game.