HUMOUR:

A CHILLING PROSPECT:

As I promised, another interesting and amusing cartoon from Stephanie McMillan.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:

TAKE ACCOUNT OF PEOPLE WHEN FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE:

Everybody wants to save the Earth these days, and surely the sentiments are laudible. Despite the gloating of the climate change deniers the scientific evidence is virtually incontrovertible that a)the Earth is warming and b)human activities are very much responsible for this. The minor actions of a couple of researchers don't take away at all from the tens of thousands of others across the world who have come to the obvious conclusion. Whatever those who search the internet for evidence of their pre-formed beliefs may think.

Yet, there is something that should be taken into account when measures are proposed to mitigate climate change...the rights of indigenous people. While very few outside of Nazi and primitivist ideological cesspools would advocate outright genocide of such "marginal" people to "save the Earth" the general 'liberal consensus' gives such people minimal importance. Here's an item from the Care2 site about how such things should deserve attention.

IPIPIPIPIPIPIPIP
Bring Indigenous Voices into the Conversation About Climate Change

The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries or UN-REDD was created to offer developing countries financial incentives for cutting down carbon emissions by preserving forests and biodiversity.

Addressing global climate change is vital, but unfortunately policies developed by the global North are not always harmonious with the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples that live on the lands. The watchgroup REDD-Monitor points out specific language in REDD's call to action that can be problematic:

1. "conservation" sounds good, but the history of the establishment of national parks includes large scale evictions and loss of rights for indigenous peoples and local communities.

2."sustainable management of forests" could include subsidies to commercial logging operations in old-growth forests, indigenous peoples’ territory or in villagers’ community forests.

3."enhancement of forest carbon stocks" could result in conversion of land (including forests) to industrial tree plantations, with serious implications for biodiversity, forests and local communities.

When groups of marginalized people barely have a voice at the state or national level, it is easy and convenient for world leaders to overlook them. But besides bringing unique perspectives and knowledge of the issue, indigenous peoples need to have a say in the fate of the land they live on.

TAKE ACTION:

Tell the Head UN-REDD Programme Secretariat Yemi Katerere that indigenous peoples must participate in deciding climate change policies by signing the petition.

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The Letter:

Please go to the link above to send the following letter to the United Nations Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD).

IPIPIPIPIPIPIPIP
Dear Dr. Katerere,

As the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) develops its policies for COP-16 in Mexico, I am writing to encourage you to promote the participation of local and indigenous peoples. They are the key to conserving standing forests and restoring degraded forests to combat global climate change.

[Your comment will be inserted here]

In particular, EcoLogic encourages integration of UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in REDD projects and policies, including: a) free, prior, and informed consent of local and indigenous people in REDD project development; b) land rights based on traditional ownership, occupation, and use; and c) a transparent and fair process to recognize and adjudicate these rights.

I strongly support the EcoLogic position that indigenous people must be an active part of the solution to protect the world's forests.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
[Your name here]

CANADIAN POLITICS:

EMISSIONS FOR THE POOR, SUBSIDIES FOR THE RICH:

The following article is reprinted from Straight Goods, an independent Canadian leftist online magazine. This magazine provides regular updated commentary and news with a Canadian and progressive slant. To subscribe see the website above. The following article describes, as if it needed any more description, one more example of "corporate welfare". It stands to reason. No matter what anti-government noises conservatives make they, as Molly has remarked before on this blog, seem to inevitably increase government expenditure. What "tax breaks" they provide are only for their corporate friends. Anyways, here's the article....

Emissions for the poor, subsidies for the rich
Latest budget continues the Harperite pattern of tax breaks for large-scale Green House Gas emitters.
Dateline: Monday, March 03, 2008
by Albert Koehl

The Harper government is sometimes accused of favouring the rich while ignoring the poor — even cozying up to wealthy oil barons at the expense of regular Canadians. Consider the climate change file alone. The government's recent budget effectively assured wealthy oil and gas corporations that all of the federal tax breaks they currently enjoy, amounting to about $1.4 billion each year, would remain in place until at least 2010.

In stark contrast, one of the Harper government's first acts in office was to abruptly eliminate a $500 million program, the Energuide for Low Income Households, designed to help poor families do home retrofits to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The federal government continues to match, virtually dollar for dollar, subsidies to oil and gas corporations that produce GHG emissions, with spending on programs to reduce GHG emissions.

There is no doubt that low income households (and many middle income ones for that matter) need help to reduce energy use. First of all, energy bills are on the rise. The poorest Canadian households already spend 13 percent of their income on energy bills, compared to about 4 percent of income for other households. The inability to pay energy bills is the second leading cause of tenant evictions.


Globally, the cancelled EnerGuide program would have helped 130,000 low income households achieve potential GHG reductions of 3.4 tonnes annually per home. Green Communities Canada, a group that delivers energy efficiency programs, estimated that the $500 million government investment would have produced $1 billion in energy savings, retrofit jobs, and other benefits — not to mention the obvious environmental payback.


Although the EnerGuide program was introduced by the previous Liberal government, partisan politics alone cannot explain its elimination. The Harper government also scrapped another energy conservation program directed at higher income households, but quickly re-introduced it under a different name.


Ironically, the low income fund was likely to pay the biggest GHG reduction dividends, since poorer families often live in leaky homes and can't afford energy efficiency improvements without outside help.


Oil and gas corporations don't need federal handouts. In 2006, the industry made $31 billion in profits. The price of a barrel of oil today hovers near $100. And while the industry gorges itself on record profits, its out-of-control tar sands projects disgorge massive amounts of GHGs and also poison the water, land and air.


At first glance, the 2007 federal budget seemed to finally acknowledge the absurdity of spending taxpayer money to promote oil and gas projects and associated GHG emissions. The budget actually included the phase-out of the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA), a generous subsidy for tar sands projects, noting that "this preferential treatment is no longer needed."


Although these words suggested a new direction, the fine print largely confirmed business as usual.


Tar sands projects that were started before March 2007 would continue to benefit from the ACCA while the slow phase-out for other projects would not even begin until 2011, and stretch to 2015. (By that time, government subsidies that the industry has begun demanding for carbon capture and storage projects might well dwarf current handouts.) The Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based think tank, calculates that 90 percent of tar sands projects currently on the books will therefore receive substantial federal subsidies.


Finance Minister James Flaherty devoted numerous pages of his budget to comforting oil and gas CEOs about the eventual phase-out of the ACCA. In fact, the budget — perhaps borrowing from Depression-era programs — called the phase-out conditions "transitional relief."


If the inequality in the government's treatment of rich polluters and poor households indicates government priorities, then the future is bleak for Canada's most vulnerable. Global warming will affect them first, and most dramatically. Hurricane Katrina made this clear.


As the chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently commented: "It is the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit."


The overall federal spending numbers are not promising either. We estimate that for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 fiscal years the Harper government will spend almost as much on oil and gas industry tax breaks ($1.4 billion annually) as it does on all climate programs combined ($1.6 billion annually). In other words, the federal government continues to match, virtually dollar for dollar, its subsidies promoting oil and gas corporations, and their GHG emissions, with spending on programs to reduce GHG emissions.


Unfortunately, the Harper government squandered an opportunity in its recent budget to change its spending priorities, even show up the Liberals who also greased oil and gas corporations with taxpayer subsidies when they were in power.


Instead it decided that providing "relief" to billionaires with generous tax breaks was more important than giving a helping hand to the poor, and to fighting global warming.



Albert Koehl is a lawyer with Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal), a Canadian environmental law organization.
In November 2007, Ecojustice and KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, a church-based social justice organization, demanded that Canada's Auditor General investigate the government's oil and gas subsidies and the cuts to programs for poor households.

Stop Building Igloos in France.
The latest edition of Science, the journal of the AAAS (Nov 17th, 2006) to arrive at my door has an interesting news-bite on the matter of one possible consequence of global warming. It's entitled 'False-Alarm:Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All'. The basic point of the news-bite on page 1064 is that more thorough research has shown that previously alarmist reports of the "demise of the Gulf Stream" are "greatly exaggerated" because natural variation from year to year is far greater than the decades long "snapshot" that an original article in Science (Dec. 2nd, 2005, p 1403) suggested. So take heart. You won't be skating on the Thames in September, and you won't have to import Musk-Ox from Canada for livestock in Provence.
This doesn't mean that climate change won't have serious consequences, merely that one doomsday scenario has been proven wrong. Alberta will still likely go to complete desert conditions, as will the Western USA, hurricanes will still likely increase in ferocity in the Atlantic, etc.etc.,etc.. Just that one item is in serious doubt.
Molly