I’m pleased to welcome Nick Fillmore as a contributor to BoomerWarrior.Org. Nick is an activist and a freelance journalist writing about climate change and socio-political issues. (Rolly Montpellier ~Managing Editor for BoomerWarrior).
In addition to the staging of the PanAm Games, Toronto was recently the location of some unusually high profile activities that were supposed to increase the efforts to tackle climate change.
The events raised some important questions: How effective are efforts to slow the increase of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, do Canadians agree on the extent of damage to our environment, and what do scientists say in their most recent reports about the degree of the threat?
Not Serious About Climate Change
Celebrities lead ‘the big protest: First, Toronto had the spectacle of actor/activist Jane Fonda, environmentalist David Suzuki and author-activist Naomi Klein leading a march of some 12,000 protesters belonging to a new coalition through downtown streets.
“I think that the coalition that is represented in today’s march and rally … will make a difference.” said Jane Fonda. But isn’t the year 2015 a little late to form a new coalition? Climate change has been a growing problem over 30 years, and Canada still does not have an effective, coordinated environmental effort to fight the biggest crisis in history.
Radicals have their say: Later in the week, a much angrier group of some 200 protesters succeeded for a short time in blocking a lot of high profile delegates to the Climate Summit of the Americas from entering the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. The aggressive small group chanted “Shut down the summit.” After their initial success, they were blocked by dozens of police.
Delegates from 20 countries make an appearance: Inside the Fairmont Royal York, more than 300 delegates from 20 countries were claiming to be urging jurisdictions around the world to come forward with meaningful commitments for carbon reductions to present at the long-anticipated UN Climate Summit in Paris in December.
A news op for politicians: Politicians at the Toronto Summit turned into a news op for political opportunism, with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Environment Minister Glen Murray, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, and even California Governor Jerry Brown taking turns tearing strips off Stephen Harper.
Big corporations help set agenda: Interestingly, powerful corporations lurked in the background. While politicians take the heat for failing to act effectively on climate change, giant corporations, including Shell’s CEO and the head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, had already steered the pre-Summit discussions enough to protect their interests.
Delegates sign meaningless statement: At the close of the Toronto Climate Summit, hundreds of delegates signed a non-binding, motherhood statement urging jurisdictions around the world to make carbon-reduction commitments and present them in Paris.
In short, while athletes from the Pan American region were delighting crowds with some wonderful performances, the Climate Summit was, well, a fraud. It was a massive, hugely expensive and cynical public relations stunt – a nice travel perk – for participating politicians.
Mainstream media ‘misinforms’: Unfortunately, mainstream media coverage of the Summit failed to go beyond the speeches. The papers, TV and radio news dutifully reported the politicians’ rants. But a Google search failed to find any mainstream news report that provided any analysis of the event.
Mainstream media must be held largely responsible for the fact that only 50 per cent of Canadians are “extremely” or “definitely” concerned about the climate threat. If bad reporting on climate change issues confuses the public, so do incorrect statements by poorly informed politicians.
Premier Couillard was an offender at the Toronto Climate Summit. He said Quebec is committing itself “to a very ambitious set of targets with only one objective: to keep warming below or at the maximum 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.” But sorry Philippe, according to a lot of scientists, keeping the average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius is pretty much impossible.
Here’s what scientists who I trust have to say:
Because of the melting of the icecaps, we’re already on our way to surpassing 2 degrees, says the highly regarded and independent Union of Concerned Scientists. The melting of the icecaps cannot be reversed.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in June that, if governments do not strengthen policies dramatically, the world would be on a path to an average temperature increase of 2.6C by 2100 and 3.5C after 2200. Yes, this would be catastrophic.
And here we are, poorly informed Canadians, going on with our lives pretty much as usual because — as I have shown here — our environmental groups, politicians, media, and our corporations, will not tell us a) how serious a problem we face, and b) what can an ordinary person do to make a meaningful difference?
It’s impossible to say how massive an effort would be required to keep temperature increases to levels that will allow us to continue living pretty much as we do now. We can only guess.
Dr. Matania Ginosar, a prominent California environmental scientist, says that “only a global effort larger than WWII may be able to save the Earth’s environment from destruction. . . .”
In Paris in December, enormous pressure will be put on many of the 196 countries taking part in the much-anticipated United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21). They will try to come up with some sort of agreement that will allow an orchestrated attack on greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2020.
One serious problem with the UN meetings has been that powerful corporations have used their influence and money to move into a powerful position in the process. So far they have helped prevent the kind of progress required.
In one major way, the Paris Summit is already a failure even before it begins. UN officials involved with the talks are already saying that whatever is accomplished in Paris alone, it will not hold global warming to less than 2 Celsius.
Reflecting back, given the seriousness of the crisis as it is now being described internationally, it is difficult to understand how Toronto’s protests and climate talks were allowed to be so meaningless. These weaknesses, plus deplorable reporting by mainstream media, are responsible for millions of Canadians being poorly informed and not taking the threat of potentially disastrous climate change seriously.
Most canadians do care about climate change and other environmental issue, but that has nothing to do with the ‘Jobs Justice and Climate’ march because that event was an NGO and Union invented farce that used public interest in environmental issues to draw people out to and pressure them into supporting a whole bunch of other causes that don’t have the same level of support. It’s the word ‘justice’, which is a euphemism for the same racist, sexist divisive doctrines being pushed by middle class ‘progressive’ academics and paid activists to derail the anti-WTO movement in the 90’s and later to derail the Occupy movement, in order to prevent poor and working class people from unifying based on common ground.
Hello Daniel and thank you for your response to the post.
I was one of the 12,000 or so marchers at the Toronto march. I do agree that attendance may have been higher had the event clearly focused on the climate only. That said, over 25,000 marched in Quebec back in April on a similar theme of climate, energy, oil, clean jobs. Also, there were groups represented in Quebec that had a social justice focus. I walked in that event as well.
By the way, I disagree that “justice” is a euphemism for racist, sexixt, etc. I’m afraid you’re wrong on that point. And one can easily link climate change to ecological justice because it’s a fact that those most adversely affected by climate change are the poor and underprivileged of the planet.
I hope to see your comments again on future posts. Thanks
Join the Face book group THE GREEN MARSHALL PLAN. Use central bank money to bail out the planet not banksters and fat cat corporations.
We have heard in times of financial crisis that corporations are *too big to fail*, that those companies and their shareholders should be bailed out by tax payers and central banks. Hence the corporate bailouts. Hence the trillions of dollars created by central banks as financial *stimulus* that is under performing.
If corporations and LIBOR rigging mortgage bundling banksters are to big to fail, then certainly our planet is to big to fail, certainly our children are too big to fail and all living species on Earth are too big to fail.
So let’s bailout our planet. Canada should do it’s part. Where to start? Oil and money. We need a *Green Marshall plan*.
Green Party of Canada policy states that our central bank should return to a *prominent role* in creating money. I warrant that the best role for that newly created money is saving our ecosystem by creating green jobs.
We need to dispel the mass illusion that oil is mandatory for transportation.
The technologies exist to replace fossil fuels today. See prof Marc Jacobson’s TED talk on how it’s done:
https://www.ted.com/speakers/mark_z_jacobson
Let’s use new green dollars from the BoC to build nation wide renewable energy based networks of electric vehicle fast charging stations to incentivize the shft from the internal compustion engine to EV’s. They can be citizen owned with user fees going to the Receiver General.
The new green dollars: Yes they can!
*Fast track high speed Maglev trains to reduce emissions and save time.
*Build smarter electric grids and micro grids with low cost utility scale, next gen flywheel energy storage for baseload power that nuclear advocates propagandize as impossible for renewables.
*Expand hi speed wifi access.
*Say NO to corporate GMO gangsters Monsanto and their cancer causing, SLAPP suiting, politician bribing pesticide monoculture. It is the politics of entrenched interests which are willing to see people literally tortured to death rather than risk their profits that holds back progress. We need to start FIGHTING BACK.
How? Define clean food as a basic right.
Let’s use that new policy inspired BoC money to support bringing affordable organic food to cities with renewable energy powered, citizen owned vertical farm skyscrapers.
The farm in the city removes the costs of long distance transportation, it’s carbon emissions and offers produce to market faster and fresher. The technologies exist to change our world for the better.
Constantine Kritsonis
Hello Constantine,
Thank you for both your comments. You certainly have a good grasp of the issues facing voters in the upcoming election scheduled for October. As you say, “The technologies exist to change our world for the better.” What is lacking are politicians and leaders who are willing to do what is right for the common good and not for the lobbyists and the big oil lobby. Europe is miles ahead in the development of high-speed rail and renewable energy.
I hope you will help me and countless others in fighting against the re-election of the Stephen Harper Conservative government. If he’s re-elected, Canada will fall further behind the rest of the world which is set to transition to a lower carbon economy.
I’ve joined the FB group – Green Marshall Plan – which I presume is promoting an all-out WW II-like mobilization plan to fight climate change and return our planet to an ecologically sustainable economic model.
Thank you for your comments. And welcome to BoomerWarrior.Org
I have other links where you can follow me. There’s a Facebook Page which you can “LIKE”. Feel free to post content there anytime. I’m also on Twitter. Plus you can subscribe to my Newsletter. Thanks for your interest.
Please LIKE the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BoomerWarrior.org?ref=hl
FOLLOW me on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1p4Negt
Newsletter: http://bit.ly/QZilr0
We have heard in times of financial crisis that corporations are *too big to fail*, that those companies and their shareholders should be bailed out by tax payers and central banks. Hence the corporate bailouts. Hence the trillions of dollars created by central banks as financial *stimulus* that is under performing.
If corporations and LIBOR rigging mortgage bundling banksters are to big to fail, then certainly our planet is to big to fail, certainly our children are too big to fail and all living species on Earth are too big to fail.
So let’s bailout our planet. Canada should do it’s part. Where to start? Oil and money. We need a *Green Marshall plan*.
Green Party of Canada policy states that our central bank should return to a *prominent role* in creating money. I warrant that the best role for that newly created money is saving our ecosystem by creating green jobs.
We need to dispel the mass illusion that oil is mandatory for transportation.
The technologies exist to replace fossil fuels today. See prof Marc Jacobson’s TED talk on how it’s done:
https://www.ted.com/speakers/mark_z_jacobson
Let’s use new green dollars from the BoC to build nation wide renewable energy based networks of electric vehicle fast charging stations to incentivize the shft from the internal compustion engine to EV’s. They can be citizen owned with user fees going to the Receiver General.
The new green dollars: Yes they can!
*Fast track high speed Maglev trains to reduce emissions and save time.
*Build smarter electric grids and micro grids with low cost utility scale, next gen flywheel energy storage for baseload power that nuclear advocates propagandize as impossible for renewables.
*Expand hi speed wifi access.
*Say NO to corporate GMO gangsters Monsanto and their cancer causing, SLAPP suiting, politician bribing pesticide monoculture. It is the politics of entrenched interests which are willing to see people literally tortured to death rather than risk their profits that holds back progress. We need to start FIGHTING BACK.
How? Define clean food as a basic right.
Let’s use that new policy inspired BoC money to support bringing affordable organic food to cities with renewable energy powered, citizen owned vertical farm skyscrapers.
The farm in the city removes the costs of long distance transportation, it’s carbon emissions and offers produce to market faster and fresher. The technologies exist to change our world for the better.
Constantine Kritsonis
See my response to Constantine Kritsonis in previous comment.
I am happy that Elizabeth May is looking forward to more seats in the House of Commons come October. Our Green presence will definitely improve to at a minimum, having party status. If she manages to get the 16 seats she envisions, she could quite possibly hold the balance of power, especially if Mulcair does really well. A Parliamentary outcome like this would certainly change Canada’s position on the oil sands and climate change. I am working very hard this year to help make this happen. I am also working on changing voting in Ontario at the municipal level to include ranked balloting. If we are successful with our cause, it will open the door to other voting improvements like proportional representation with future elections provincially and federally as early as 2020. Keeping Ontario democratic without bullying people into voting one way or another is my strategy.
Linda – thank you for your comment on BoomerWarrior.
You and I share many common interests including supporting the Greens in this coming election. I’m working with Anita Payne who is our candidate in my riding. Like you, I’m keeping my fingers crossed over the prospect of electing several Green MPs. Bruce Hyer will have a tough time in Thunder Bay which is a strong NDP riding and of course Bruce walked over to the Greens after being elected as an NDP in the last election.
I’d be ecstatic if we got 16 members. I’d be happy even if we got 5-10.
Keep up the good work.
For folks interested in the Green Party, you should know that Jim Harris, former Green leader, is planning to set up a vote exchange system that he hopes will help Greens in some of the ridings where they have the best chance of winning.
Just FYI, I am working with groups such as Leadnow, various unions, and native groups on strategic voting. We will identify perhaps 60 or 70 ridings where Conservative candidates are vulnerable. After the ridings have been identified, additional research will determine which opposition party — NDP, Green or Liberal — has the best chance of defeating the Conservative in each riding. The general feeling is that if the Conservatives can be defeated in perhaps 40 of these ridings, they will lost the election. I will be posting information on the Facebook page, the Campaign to Build One Big Campaign.
Nick – thank you for sharing this info on strategic voting. I like the initiative although many green candidates running across the country don’t really like the practice. That said, I support any initiative that will result in a Conservative loss.
As for Jim Harris’ plan, it sounds like strategic voting also. If I understand correctly, a Liberal voter, for example in Riding X, will vote Green to help the Green candidate in exchange for a Green voter who will vote Liberal in Riding Y. Is that about right?
I’ve just “liked” the Campaign to Build One Big Campaign FB page. I’ll watch for you there.
Thanks for your comment.