elissasmith.ca

This is the funniest article I have ever read. I love the onion.

By Peter Keim May 10, 2006

“…Scientists inform us that the combined effects of fossil-fuel consumption, land clearance, and overfishing the planet’s seas have already ushered in a period of “mass global extinction,” the sixth so far recorded in Earth’s history, and the only one to be entirely man-made. In the next century, between two-thirds and three-fourths of all plant and animal species now in existence could become permanently extinct. But by carefully conserving water with the specially designed low-impact toilet I had installed, I can take comfort in the knowledge that I did what I could do to delay this inevitable global death-age by as many as several nanoseconds. Won’t you join me in this ongoing effort to foster an imperceptible improvement to this doomed and dying planet? You’ll be rewarded with the knowledge that, despite the irreversible effects of centuries of sustained environmental abuse by the human race, individuals, working together, can fight this inevitability in a real, concrete, tiny, and totally ineffective show of unity. Together, we can make an unbelievably negligible difference…”

This week my friend, Juan Pablo Hoffmaister (no, not John Hofmeister the President of Shell Oil), is participating in the 3rd MOP of the Cartagena Protocol in Brazil. The Cartagena protocol is an international agreement on the handling, transfer, and use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). It was negotiated as a supplement to the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity.

Not sure who took this photo.

Juan Pa and a few of his friends from the College of the Atlantic are running a blog entitled “Where Did My Genes Go?“.

My partner, Matthew Carroll, is doing the digital organizing for the Ban Terminator Campaign. “The Ban Terminator Campaign seeks to promote government bans on Terminator technology at the national and international levels, and supports the efforts of civil society, farmers, Indigenous peoples and social movements to campaign against it.” I’m really proud that Matthew is doing all the digital organizing for them! It’s a big job but someone has to do it.

Tim Anderson, a young Canadian, writes about his experience and perceptions at the World Social Forum:

“Here are some more observations from Venezuela and the 2006 World Social Forum (WSF), held in Caracas. I went to Caracas in December, during the National Assembly elections (en route to Cuba, where I was studying the health system and the HIV program) and again in late January, for the WSF. I went to a lot of WSF sessions, but really I was just as interested in what was going on in Venezuela, and in the growing links between it and the other left governments of Latin America.

There was indeed a lot of blurring of lines between the ‘project’ of the WSF (’another world is possible’) and the project of the Chavez-led, socialist MVR (Movement of the Fifth Republic). This was the criticism of both the bourgeois opposition and the anarchists. For myself, I found the blurring rather natural, for a WSF held in Venezuela. If we are looking at ‘other’ worlds, ie. other than imperialism and neoliberalism, Venezuela represents the most interesting alternative in recent decades. Here is a popular socialist party which has come to government and has maintained power through elections, has wrested control of the country’s natural resources from the oligarchy and the MNCs, confronted the empire, given a major priority to education, health and housing programs for poor people, increased levels of participation, resisted a US backed coup and is still faced by an aggressive Bush regime. It also faces an hostile domestic and international corporate media, which accuses it of every crime under the sun.

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My brother Alan Smith and his friend, Pat, made a brilliant online project entitled “The Undecided”. The project is designed to help young Canadians choose a political party to vote for this election season. I went through the website and figured out that I’m 85% NDP. Surprise Surprise.

Canada cannot live in isolation: our trade and security depend on our ability to cooperate, negotiate and interact globally. The economic interdependence of countries worldwide is growing and economic agreements increasingly reach into every part of our lives, yet most Canadians know little about the implications and consequences. There is a common perception that the current norms and laws of the international economic system bring disproportionate benefit to developed countries. Several United Nations and World Bank reports demonstrate that the gap between rich and poor is growing between countries and within countries. Studies done for the 10th anniversary of NAFTA show that Canadians’ standard of living is falling, that investment in our social programs is being reduced, and that more and more people are working part-time, insecure jobs with few benefits.

Photo: Elissa Smith on top of a fence in Hong Kong

Taking aggressive action on progressive policies that increase global economic equity will improve global living standards ensuring a secure and prosperous global community. Making progressive economic policies will protect the international reputation Canadians have earned for being generous, peace-promoting, fair players on the international stage. One way to make progressive economic policies is to raise culturally and internationally aware citizens.

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Hundreds of young people from all around the world attended the UN Conference on Climate Change in Montreal. ENvironment JEUneusse, the Sierra Youth Coalition and the Youth Environmental Network organized the“Beyond Kyoto – International Youth Summit” on climate change, bringing 100 youth together, 75 of which were not Canadian. The young people shared their experiences relating to climate change with one another and collaboratively created the “International Youth Declaration” on climate change it is available on Beyond Kyoto website in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese and German. This declaration included what we as young people are committed to do, what we are demanding that governments do and our vision for the future.

Photo: Matthew Carroll

During the UN climate negotiations the declaration provided a vehicle around which young people could rally. It was endorsed by dozens of international organizations, and at the conference at itself, was adopted by the International Municipal Leaders Summit and was mentioned in the opening and closing addresses by the head of the conference. Yough groups organized daily newsletters, demonstrations inside and outside of the UN complex, and youth meetings open to all the youth at the conference.

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The good news is that we can only get better!

CBC News
Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:19:06 EDT

Canada is one of the worst environmental performers in the industrialized world and has shown no improvement over the past decade, a new study says.

The report, researched at Simon Fraser University and released by the David Suzuki Foundation, ranked Canada 28th out of 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The ranking was based on what the study described as 29 key environmental indicators.

For example, Canada placed 28th in energy consumption, 26th in greenhouse gas emissions, 29th in water consumption, 27th in sulphur oxides pollution, and 30th in nuclear waste and carbon monoxide.

“Our research found Canada’s environmental performance to be surprisingly low,” said Thomas Gunton, who headed the research team. “Canada lags behind in almost every performance indicator.”

European countries such as Switzerland, Denmark and Germany ranked at the top of the environmental list, while Belgium and the United States joined Canada at the bottom.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are two times higher than the average for other industrialized countries. Major smog-causing air pollutants are two-to-three times higher.

The study found Canada has shown no improvement over the past decade. Canada’s rank today is the same as it was in 1992.

There were a couple of brighter notes. Canada ranked ninth in recycling and eighth in pesticide use.

“The Canada we see in this report does not reflect the one we hold in our hearts,” Suzuki said. “Canadians expect more and they expect better. We should be outraged that we are among the worst in the industrialized world.”

Suzuki wants the federal government to pass a National Sustainability Act, which would require Canada to set out targets and timelines to improve the country’s environmental performance.

I try not to talk like a depressing environmentalist but this Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is just to big for the majority of the planets population to ignore.

According to the report:
- organisms are disappearing at 100 to 1,000 times the “background levels” seen in the fossil record
- a third of all amphibians, a fifth of mammals and an eighth of all birds are threatened with extinction
- some 35% of mangroves and about 20% of corals have gone.

This is a insightful piece on The Hurricane in Lousiana by Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat is On and Boiling Point.

By Ross Gelbspan | August 30, 2005, Boston Globe

The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the driver was global warming.

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global warming.

In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the explanation was global warming.

When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.

And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in one day — killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others — the villain was global warming.

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.

Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.

In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was elected president — and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.

As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.

Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.

When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United
Nations.

Today, with the science having become even more robust — and the impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico — the press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction with the oil and coal industries.

As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will — like last winter — be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning of 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in New England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston.

The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global warming.

(c) Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

This is the most sobering/depressing article I have ever read.
Please read and send along.