Entries Tagged 'Climate Change' ↓

There’s a lot being said about climate change, peak oil, and other looming catastrophes. Let’s be honest, none of these is helpful and all are potentially dangerous to life as we know it. Some years ago I moved from climate sceptic/denier to climate change warrior, after I investigated and discovered the reality of the threat. Corruption in the financial markets and in our democracies is also quite dangerous, as we have experienced in the current recession caused by crooked bankers and their bought politicians. But where climate change is a long-term threat, and we can stagger along for some time bearing the weight of the banksters, only peak oil looks very likely to deal a mortal blow soon.

Let’s go through these threats one-at-a-time.

Climate change

In brief, we are adapted to this climate, meaning everything from our agriculture to the countless cities at sea level, and any significant change is potentially catastrophic. Many vital crops stop growing above certain temperatures, and even the small amount of climate change we have seen so far is causing droughts and crop failures. A sea level rise of 1m (~3 feet) will displace 100 million people – and the latest projections are for a sea level increase of that magnitude this century. If temperatures rise sufficiently, and we are not doing anything to stop it, most of humanity and most species will be wiped from the face of the earth.

But devastating as climate change will ultimately be, it is not an immediate threat to us personally or to civilisation. (If you live in one of the developing countries, this is not true; bad things are happening now. The slaughter in Darfur was caused in part by the drying up of Lake Chad, which in turn was partly caused by global warming.) The major damage is expected to begin in 40-50 years, as displaced people move into crowded areas and turf wars begin, as water becomes in short supply and water wars begin, as many people realise their lives are going to be destroyed and they get angry about it. Continue reading →

A word of warning: To many, the Mobilisation Plan given here will seem extreme, even ridiculous. It calls for a radical restructuring of our economy, how we use energy and where we get it, how we transport things, including ourselves, how we grow our food, build our buildings, and even govern and educate ourselves. Radical it may sound, but necessary it most certainly is, and the sooner we implement something like it the more of civilisation we get to keep.

To those people who think this plan too ‘radical,’ I would suggest two things: First, what you or I think is entirely irrelevant in the face of reality. If the reality is that declining oil supplies will wreak havoc on our civilisation, then no amount of scoffing will prevent it. I would suggest you acquaint yourself with reality before deciding upon a sensible course of action. I will admit that it was only a few years ago that I would have considered this plan extreme, but I have been busy educating myself about the truth of our situation. This article assumes that you have done some research already and are aware we face multiple crises; you know I am not scaremongering, but simply confronting reality.

Second, if you are willing to think sensibly about our current economic model, that is what you will find to be ultimately insane. And you will realise that one reason such ‘radical’ changes are needed now is because we did not make smaller changes earlier. We are like the smoker who has ignored doctor’s warnings for a long time, and now faces radical surgery and possibly even death as a result.

Here are the things that must be done in developed countries, particularly Canada and the United States; you can see why we’re unlikely to do them – there will be great resistance from vested interests and the majority of unaware people. As a result, we will likely suffer greatly. Continue reading →

I recently stirred some people up with a post suggesting that there should be limits to immigration, and that doing so would help with the current recession. Most of the responses focused on economic arguments why immigration was beneficial, or how it was racist to limit immigration. Nobody addressed the central point, which is this: Continuous population growth is not possible. Given that developed countries like Canada and the United States have had increasing populations since their inception, and that the world is running into hard ecological limits to carrying capacity, it seems a sensible question to ask: How much is enough?

This is not an argument for or against immigration, but rather an attempt to get you to think about how much is enough. I am Canadian, and the current population of Canada is approximately 34 million. Canada has more land area than any other country except Russia, population 142 million. “Should” Canada aim for the same population?

Or how about the United States, population 310 million. Canada is larger than the U.S., so perhaps we should be aiming for a proportionally larger population? Of course the U.S. population is growing, too, so perhaps the upper limit is yet unknown. Canada is also larger than China, population 1.3 billion. China is taking drastic measures to reduce its population, so maybe that’s too many; how about a flat 1 billion? Is that “enough?”

If you’re Canadian, the idea of 966,000,000 more people living here is probably not appealing. Our cities would be enormous – tens of millions of people in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, plus tens and tens of millions more in many other cities. Can you imagine Halifax with 19 million people? That’s the population of Shanghai. Or Victoria with 39 million souls, the same as the Greater Tokyo Area? Continue reading →

H2Oil opens with a dramatic aerial shot of the tar sands – which are awe-inspiring, but in a bad way, like watching a plague of locusts advance toward your crops. You just know it’s not going to end well. The tar mines are a massive sprawl of destroyed landscape populated by machines and the people who work them; otherwise not a sign of life. No trees, not even bushes or grasses. Certainly no animals; birds unfortunate enough to land in the tailing ponds are doomed.

H2Oil is really the ongoing story of men seeking money versus Canada’s First Nations, versus ‘the environment,’ versus anything that gets in the way of that money, including integrity. Guess who’s winning and who’s dying? It is one of 2009′s top documentaries and is a must-see for Canadians.  Continue reading →