Hothouse Earth

Hot on the heels of the news that Justin's folly will now cost taxpayers at least another $1.9 billion comes widespread acknowledgement that we may indeed be reaching the climate-change point of no return. For specific details about this, check out The Guardian and The Mound's post yesterday. As well, Owen's post is well-worth the read.

Also, you can watch the following newscast to get a greater sense of our peril:



Still, our politicos fiddle while the world burns. This is the inevitable outcome of the plague known as captured governments, of course.

The Signs Are All Around Us

How's that climate-change denial thing working for you these days?

It’s so hot in Australia that drivers’ tires are covered in melted tar from the roads pic.twitter.com/eH6enH3jXr

— EveryBody vs Trump (@EVRYBODYvsTRUMP) July 10, 2018

Forecast: Expect more of the same and worse in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

Seeing Is Believing

While on the official level there is much todo about the best way to keep the world's temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius, those who follow such things closely make it clear that that is likely a forlorn hope, given the feedback loops that seem to now be in play. And we are reminded almost daily not only of the destructive weather that climate change is bringing about, but also our powerlessness in its face:




So the uproar about real measures to ameliorate the situation, as found, for example, in the Leap Manifesto, seems almost quaint and is clearly indicative of our collective failure to truly contemplate our extinction as a species. In today's Star, Thomas Walkom tries to put that uproar into perspective:

Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley has called its centrepiece recommendations naive and ill-informed.

Writing in the Star, former party official Robin Sears has dismissed it as the product of “loony leapers.”

In the media, it is usually described as radical. When delegates at the NDP’s Edmonton convention last weekend voted to debate the manifesto at the riding level, some fretted that the party was about to ride off into a Quixotic dead end.

In fact, the Leap Manifesto, which first surfaced last fall, is neither radical nor uniquely left-wing.

Authored by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, the central premise of the manifesto is that carbon emissions can be reduced to zero by 2050. One of the cornerstones of that goal is an end to new gas and oil pipelines, something that naturally is vehemently opposed in Alberta, but not so much in almost all of the rest of the country. Additionally,

[l]ike Ottawa and virtually every provincial government, the manifesto calls for investment in clean energy projects. As Ontario has found with its windmill policy, this isn’t always a politically painless process. But except for the manifesto’s suggestion that, (as in Germany and Denmark) such projects be community-controlled, it is hardly novel.

Like Ottawa and virtually every provincial government, the manifesto calls for investment in clean energy projects. As Ontario has found with its windmill policy, this isn’t always a politically painless process. But except for the manifesto’s suggestion that, (as in Germany and Denmark) such projects be community-controlled, it is hardly novel.

Like the federal NDP (sometimes) and both U.S. Democratic presidential candidates, the manifesto opposes trade deals that limit government’s ability to regulate in the public interest.

Like former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, the authors favour imposing a financial transaction tax to help pay for all of this.
They also call for a carbon tax (like that levied by British Columbia’s right-of-centre government), higher taxes on the wealthy (like those imposed by the Trudeau Liberals) and higher corporate taxes (as suggested by the federal NDP).

Workers displaced by the move away from the carbon economy would be retrained.

Walkom's point is clear: these are hardly radical or outrageous proposals, but rather ones that ultimately are necessary if we are to have any hope at all of saving ourselves.

Blue Ocean Event: Much Worse Than Predicted By The Models

Although I gladly yield expertise on the environmental and climate change files to my fellow blogger, The Disaffected Lib, who has been doing exemplary work these past several years, every so often I come across something that is a screaming indictment of world leaders who have been content to whistle past the graveyard while we plunge headlong toward irreversible climate change, change that will make life very difficult, if not impossible, for many of our children and grandchildren.

One of the blessings and, in some ways, curses, of using the Internet to seek out information that the mainstream media either declines to pursue or pays scant attention to is to feel a little like Cassandra, who was given the power of prophecy but destined to never be believed. I suspect the people who appear in the following presentation feel much like her as well.

What follows is the first press briefing of the Arctic Emergency Methane Group(AMEG) held on Dec. 4, 2014 at the 20th annual Conference of the Parties (COP 20) for the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Lima, Peru. You do not have to watch the entire video to appreciate the gravity of the situation as they discuss the accelerating pace of Arctic sea ice melting, and the consequences of that melt. In the words of presenter John Nissen, "All hell will break loose". His solution, however, may not sit well with everyone: