Erik BJORGAN for Parliament

“Redirecting Progress”

The rapid pace of climate change is forcing governments around the world to take action. Professor Kenneth Carlaw of UBC Okanagan is helping them formulate plans to mitigate the worst calamities of food shortage, drought, inundation, migration, pandemics.

“Those of us working on the ‘Climate Justice Project’ believe the preponderance of climate science, which demonstrates that today’s rapid change in climate is fueled by our unprecedented emission of post industrial greenhouse gases. The majority of GHG results from burning fossil fuels. That means we must de-carbonize future industrial production & consumer consumption”, professor Carlaw told an audience in Armstrong attending a Public Forum, Sunday, on ‘The Economy & Towns in Transition’. Read the rest of this entry »

If anyone needed more proof that both Harper and Campbell have similar agenda, they got it this week with the provincial budget and the speech from the throne. What we see in both are accelerated attacks on the environment couched in terms such as “modernizing the regulatory system”.

Both governments fail to address the triple deficit we have: fiscal, ecological and democratic. One wonders what kind of world such men think they are creating for the children. What do they know that we don’t know? Could it be they don’t understand that technology will NOT save us? that humans cannot live on this earth once we will have destroyed all we evolved from?

We’re already seeing many places in the world where you can’t breathe the air and can’t drink the water, yet it seems both these “leaders” are intent on copying the practices that lead to that destruction. Here are budgetary concerns expressed by the Green Party:

• By 2015, CIDA funding will see significant cuts in expected funding of nearly $2 billion.
• No revival of the ecoEnergy Technology Initiative.  Renewables will receive Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance benefits. The 2010 budget augments this only very slightly.
• AECL still gets $300 million in new funding despite its failure to operate Chalk River for secure supply of radio-isotopes.
• No news on pension reform.
• No commitment to Own the Podium.  $22 million/year confirmed for high performance athletics, but it will be left to a later day to announce the program.
• The optimistic assumptions of revenue growth from corporate taxes of nearly 40% over 5 years, with corporate tax rates going down, underpin the climb out of deficit.  These assumptions are questionable.

for more details on the speech from the throne see : http://greenparty.ca/media-release/2010-03-04/harper-budget-delivers-job-killing-tax-fails-confront-canada-s-triple-defic

by Wayne Roberts

Suppose they had a depression and nobody came?

Instead of accepting today’s economic downturn as a pink slip that can’t be refused, what if our governments reacted as if they had received a Facebook invitation: by selecting “join cause”, “learn more” or “ignore”?

When faced with the possibility of a recession, panicked politicians from around the world didn’t consider a range of options; they didn’t click on “learn more.” Instead, they hit “join cause.’” With a similar lack of vision, governments the world over are trying to spend their way out of the crisis by dumping loads of money into infrastructure projects, claiming a need for “shovel-ready” projects to “kick start’” the recovery.

The terms “shovel-ready” and “kick start” tell us that politicians turned to pre-ecological and pre-knowledge-based-economy styles of thinking. The possibility of a citizen-led economic recovery that featured agriculture, food and their allied sectors received no serious attention. But it should have, since such an approach could go a long way toward alleviating the ill effects of a downturn today while nurturing more sustainable economic foundations for tomorrow.

Read the rest of this article … http://www.agridigest.com/featureEatthis.html

by John Bellamy Foster
Briar Patch Magazine
July/August 2009

Underlying the goal of ecological revolution is the premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the planet’s entire web of life is threatened and with it the future of civilization.

This is no longer a controversial proposition. To be sure, there are different perceptions about the extent of the challenge that it raises. At one extreme, there are those who believe that since these are human problems arising from human causes they are easily solvable. All we need is ingenuity and the will to act. At the other extreme are those who believe the world ecology is deteriorating on a scale and with a rapidity beyond our means to control it, giving rise to gloomy forebodings.

Although polar opposites, these views nonetheless share a common basis. As Marxist economist Paul Sweezy observed, they each reflect “the belief that /if present trends continue to operate,/ it is only a matter of time until the human species irredeemably fouls its own nest.”

Read the rest of this definitive article …
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/envisioning-ecological-revolution/

http://hilltimes.com/page/view/heard_hill-11-2-2009

Author William Deverell, who released his book last week, Snow Job, was in town for the Ottawa Writers’ Festival.

Mr. Deverell’s book chronicles the life of a fictional Green Party candidate elected to the House.

He attended the Question Period last Monday along with Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. Lucky for him, it was the same Question Period when more than 100 climate change activists loudly heckled and disrupted the business of the House and had to be physically removed from the Chamber.

Mr. Deverell is the creator of the CBC series Street Legal and a founder of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and will be a guest at Green Party fundraisers across Canada over the next few months.

Bruce Anderson
Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/bruce-anderson/will-greens-shift/article1347251/

Lots of people think politics is a blood sport, but it’s a rare week when that is more than a metaphor. The environment can stir emotions. As far as I am concerned, it was a bad week for environmentalists.

Yelling from the gallery of the House of Commons, being dragged out kicking and screaming, is pretty tired.

Worse still, all the speculation that this was an NDP tactic more than a group of non-partisans anxious about the planet. Read the rest of this entry »