Sunday, March 7, 2pm
The Unitarian Church of Vancouver
949 West 49th Ave, at Oak St., near 49th Ave Station on Canada Line

Suggested donation: $5-10 (no one will be turned away for lack of funds)

Featuring two speakers on the fight for climate justice after Copenhagen:
-Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s representative at the United Nations, lead spokesperson on climate change at the Copenhagen Summit
-Federico Fuentes, a participant in the revolutionary process in Venezuela and writer for Venezuelanalysis.com, Green Left Weekly and BoliviaRising.Blogspot.com.

The recent international summit on climate change hosted by the United Nations on Copenhagen ended in disappointment and recrimination. Greenpeace called it a “crime scene, with the guilty parties fleeing to the airport.” While Obama, Harper and other leaders of the rich countries stood accused, two heads of state in particular made connections with the tens of thousands of climate justice activists in the streets. Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, spoke for the world’s majority when they condemned global inequality and capitalism as the root causes of the climate crisis. Read the complete Post.

As some of you may know, the City of Vancouver has now given complete permission to create a community garden on the east wing of the land we call Crows’ Point (Near the Nanaimo Sky Train station). The community garden will be developed under the guidance of the Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA).

The City will now install water access at the furthest east point of the land; they will also provide a large pile of soil and all the wood chips we can handle. The city has already cleared the east wing for garden plots.

In preparation for longer warmer days, we are encouraging anyone that wants to join us to meet at Crows’ Point at 10:30AM this coming Sunday, Feb. 7^th, 2010 to embark on two separate plant salvaging missions.

Read the complete Post.

Rex Weyler
http://rexweyler.com/2009/12/02/propaganda-scuttles-hope-in-copenhagen/

“There are many true things that are not useful for the vulgar crowd to know; and certain things, which although they are false it is expedient for the people to believe otherwise.”
- Augustine of Hippo, City of God, 426 A.D.

Car salesmen and burger tycoons have sabotaged the most important decision of our generation.

As the highly-anticipated Copenhagen climate summit limps toward indecision, the largest money-making corporations on the planet privately celebrate their ability to undermine science and hijack the international political process.

The US – the greatest historic source of greenhouse gases – set the tone of duplicity in Copenhagen by offering “provisional targets” (translation: fantasy targets) and “politically binding” agreements (translation: non-binding) and by replacing the 1990 greenhouse gas baseline with a 2005 baseline (to make the non-binding, fantasy “targets” sound more impressive.) China played along with this deception by offering to “cut emissions … relative to economic growth,” known as “carbon intensity reductions.” (Translation: no reduction at all). China’s actual emissions, and the world’s emissions, will continue to increase through the next decade. Read the complete Post.

By Viggo Mortensen
Dec. 11, 2009
The Huffington Post

Excerpt: “As Howard Zinn has often pointed out, history told from above — from the standpoint of generals and kings and presidents — encourages passivity, a sense of helplessness. In this version of history, “great men” make history, not ordinary people. But looked at from below, history has another lesson. Whenever change as happened, it has been through protest, dissent, struggle, social movements, ordinary people picketing, striking, boycotting, sitting down, sitting in.” Read the complete Post.

When the Vancouver City Planning Commission started more in-depth
study of global impacts of peak oil and climate change, James Howard
Kuntsler was invited to speak to the Commission in an open public
meeting. The Strategic Sustainable Planning Committee of the VCPC
organized two war-game interactive seminars in 2005 and 2006 which
followed up on the first public discussions. Since then, the chair
and vice chair of that committee have published a planning manual for
other cities Strategic Sustainable Planning Manual; A Civil Defense
Guide to Cultural Survival. Other SSP sessions have been taken to
other cities and papers sent to global sessions on climate change and
peak oil. Since the original sessions, most of the data shows we are
heading in the wrong directions and faster than first predictions.
The Kuntsler session was an eye opener for many at the time and is
still worth watching just to get a feel of what impacts are now
affecting all we take for granted in our current lifestyle and
economic predicament. We cannot continue in our current mode of
linear planning. For more presentations outside the VPOE site, to to
www.plancanada.com

This is an invitation to help build a movement–to take one day day and use it to stop the climate crisis.

On October 24, we will stand together as one planet and call for a fair global climate treaty. United by a common call to action, we’ll make it clear: the world needs an international plan that meets the latest science and gets us back to safety.

This movement has just begun, and it needs your help.

Here’s the plan: we’re asking you, and people in every country on earth, to organize an action in your community on October 24.

http://www.350.org/oct24

There are no limits here–imagine bike rides, rallies, concerts, hikes, festivals, tree-plantings, protests, and more. Imagine your action linking up with thousands of others around the globe. Imagine the world waking up.

If we can pull it off, we’ll send a powerful message on October 24: the world needs the climate solutions that science and justice demand.

It’s often said that the only thing preventing us from tackling the climate crisis quickly and equitably is a lack of political will. Well, the only thing that can create that political will is a unified global movement–and no one is going to build that movement for us. It’s up to regular people all over the world.  That’s you.

So register an event in your community for October 24, and then enlist the help of your friends. Get together with your co-workers or your local environmental group or human rights campaign, your church or synagogue or mosque or temple; enlist bike riders and local farmers and young people. All over the planet we’ll start to organize ourselves.

With your help, there will be an event at every iconic place on the planet on October 24-from America’s Great Lakes to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef–and also in all the places that matter to you in your daily lives: a beach or park or village green or town hall.

If there was ever a time for you to get involved, it’s right now.

There are two reasons this year is so crucial.

The first reason is that the science of climate change is getting darker by the day. The Arctic is melting away with astonishing speed, decades ahead of schedule. Everything on the planet seems to be melting or burning, rising or parched.

And we now now have a number to express our peril: 350. Read the complete Post.

There is no doubt that the wealthy have become wealthier and that the poor have remained poor.

By Toby Reid VPOE

In human history, the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. While this imbalance among our species is currently at its peak, it is happening precisely as our long-term viability and sustainability appears in its darkest hour.

Some have suggested that the wealthier part of the human spectrum are ‘hoarding for the apocalypse’, a grim future of depleted resources that will turn humans on themselves, ultimately collapsing our species, and likely precipitating the collapse of thousands of other species in the process.

The apocalyptic part may very well prove to be true, but to suggest that the wealthier people are somehow foreseeing this calamity and acting in a way to get ready for it is simply giving them too much credit (plus, you can’t eat gold).

We are in this evolutionary mess because we have been hell bent on amassing as much wealth as we can. We have falsely bought in to the ideology that more is better and that growth, no matter the cost, is good. It’s our state of being that has brought about a devastatingly harsh looking world, not the other way around. Read the complete Post.

A Talk By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University, Australia.

Friday, January 9, 2009
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Room 1400
SFU Vancouver - 515 West Hastings St.

Peter Newman and Tim Beatley have written two new books, one on Resilient Cities, the other on Green Urbanism Down Under. They are on a North American tour in January beginning in Vancouver as it was here that the gestation of the Resilient Cities book began. Peter will speak about how cities are under threat from the financial crash and especially need to avoid pushing solutions such as road building and urban sprawl that were only responsible for the sub-prime meltdown. A new approach to urban development needs to be forged out of the down-turn that can at the same time enable cities to respond to the deep challenge of peak oil and climate change. Some hopeful directions will be outlined based on cities from around the world, including cities down-under.

Dear Friends and Colleagues

As many of your know, I was among a group of young environmentalists who travelled Alberta by bike in 2007 attempting to wrap their head around one of biggest industrial mega-projects in the world: the Alberta tar sands. We went from one small town to the next, meeting with the locals and asking one question: how has the tar sands boom impacted your life? The 3-week long bike trip was a fact finding mission, a story telling adventure and a life-changing experience for all involved.

The culmination of that trip is the recent release of a book entitled Journey To The Tar Sands (www.tothetarsands.ca) co-authored by 12 of the cyclists, as well as a feature-length documentary (www.tothetarsandsfilm.ca) which was recently featured at the Calgary International Film Festival.

I have been keen to share the stories that we heard and experienced in Alberta with others here at home. So I am particularly excited to say that we have been able to bring a screening of the film and the official BC launch of the book to the North Shore as part of a national tour. Please consider yourself invited to the event, which will take place on Monday Jan 19th, from 7pm to approximately 9pm at the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver (http://www.kaymeekcentre.com/). I have attached a poster and I would appreciate your help in inviting others and spreading the word. A similar event is also being planned for Jan 20th at UBC if you know anyone who might be interested in that.

The film is rated PG and recommended for people of all ages who are interested in any of the following: youth activism, cycling, Alberta, the oil industry, journalism, storytelling, First Nation issues, labour issues, food, social justice, grassroots organizing, personal change, group living, climate change, the environment, the economy, and saving the world!

Hope to see you there.

Aftab

By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight 12/2/7/08
Original Article

VPO NOTE: VPO has been pushing for a peak oil task force for over a year, and now Councilor Andrea Reimer is answering the call. Time is short - please write in to city hall and voice support for this task force. Much of the work has already been done by the proposed members individually and is waiting to be taken off the shelf. We need to move into implementation immediately.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and Coun. Andrea Reimer are promising they will make Vancouver ready for peak oil.

“We have to address peak oil,” Robertson told the Georgia Straight at City Hall. “That’s a hard reality.…I think it could end up compounding the looming challenges we face with oil supply and an economy that’s totally dependent on cheap energy right now.”

Peak oil refers to the point at which the rate of global oil production maxes out, sending the supply of the resource into an inevitable decline.

In October, the U.K. Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security released a 43-page report entitled The Oil Crunch. The report anticipates peak-oil-related problems hitting the U.K. starting in 2011 and says the threat posed by peak oil is greater than that of terrorism.

Robertson and Reimer both say that lower oil prices don’t mean that action on peak oil should wait. Read the complete Post.