Coalition of the Willing

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a ‘post Copenhagen’ world.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ has been Directed and produced by Knife Party, written by Tim Rayner and crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world’s top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island.

The film offers a response to the major problem of our time: how to galvanize and enlist the global public in the fight against global warming. This optimistic and principled film explores how we could use new Internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analysis of swarm activity and social revolution, ‘Coalition of the Willing’ makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to hand the fight against global warming to the people.

Come one, come all and learn about the legacy of plastic bags: waste, climate change and food chain toxicity. October 22nd at District319 in downtown Vancouver. Doors at 7pm, screening starts at 7:45pm. Followed by a discussion among local concerned citizens, all moderated by Vancouver’s own Bag Monster. Just in time for Hallowe’en! Email event@vanbagban.ca to register - tickets are limited!
If you can’t make it, please visit Vanbagban.ca to sign the petition and send a letter to the Mayor and his Council, calling on them to eliminate disposable plastic bags once and for all.
Facebook: FREE Screening of Addicted to Plastic

by Toby Reid, VPOE

Dear President Obama,

I am writing to you today as a concerned global citizen who wishes for his future and the future of the generations to come to be taken into account when the world gets together to plan the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, in December of this year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

For many years now, we have known the cause of climate change. It is human caused, and is due to our exponentially rising carbon emissions which have resulted from an exponentially increasing consumptive society. We have been keenly aware of the dangerous path that we’ve been collectively blazing since the second Great War, a time that caused my grandparents to say ‘enough is enough, we just want peace and stability’. It was the noted economist, Kenneth Boulding, former president of the American Economic Association, who declared in his book “Economic Analysis” in 1941: “anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.

While the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 is a good first step in tackling our exponentially growing carbon emissions, containing provisions that improve building codes and that support a cap and trade system for carbon management, it is not even close to being enough for what the world needs from its largest emitter. Under the terms of this Act, a satisfactory outcome could be obtained if just 12 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by renewable means by 2020. This outcome would simply be delaying the inevitable and making the problem worse. Renewable electrical generation IS the future, and something the current administration should be holding as one of its top priorities for the current term.

Read the complete Post.

BLUE NORTH FESTIVAL OF ART AND SUSTAINABLE CULTURE presents - How to save Civilization with a Movie - an eco-workshop with:

Teri Woods McArter - Co-Producer, How To Boil A Frog (documentary film by Jon Cooksey)
Rick Balfour- Architect, Urban Planner; Balfour and Assoc., Metro Vancouver Planning Coalition
Vandy Savage - Animation Supervisor, How to Boil a Frog; Communications Vancouver Peak Oil Executive

Join us for a FREE Illustrated lecture and discussion.

Get a sneak preview of the new film, How to Boil a Frog, created and produced on the North Shore. Get informed about strategies to transition into New Normal by building resilient communities from author, architect, urban planner, Rick Balfour. And find out how we won the People’s Choice Award for our 1 minute animated film teaser.

Date: Saturday, April 4th, 2009
Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am (registration onsite at 9:30am)
Location: John Braithwaite Community Centre - Anchor Room ground level
145 West 1st Street, North Vancouver

Cost: FREE

www.howtoboilafrog.com
www.plancanada.com

For more information visit: www.bluenorthfestival.ca

I can’t help but feel frustrated when I read Newsweek articles like that one below that only go as far as advocating a Business As Usual (BAU) or a Technofix just-in-time-to-save-our-asses solution (In religious jargon – False Messianic promise) to Climate Change and Peak Oil.

By Philip Be’er VPOE

In his Hierarchy of Needs, Abraham Maslow laid out in a graphic format, what human beings need to thrive http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm

Try to find the need for nuclear, fossil or even “low carbon” energy sources, for cars or of any other kind of mechanised transportation in the pyramid and you’ll see that they simply play no role in what human beings require to be healthy, wealthy and happy.

According to Professor Abraham Maslow, we do need Clean Air, Food, Water, Sleep and Shelter to survive. When we also get our safety and security needs met this creates a stable environment conducive to developing socially and emotionally. When we set up our societies in ways that allow us to have our Esteem Needs met, then we also have a shot at realising our personal potential.

Read the complete Post.

by Mike Thomas on March 9, 2009

This week I received a response to my Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Transportation in British Columbia. My request read:

Under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, I am requesting information including Ministry staff and/or consultant reports, Ministerial briefings, memorandums, emails, or other records on the topic of peak oil (declining fossil fuel availability, the price of oil, gas and diesel, and other related topics) and the impact on highway traffic volumes, traffic design standards, alternative transportation options and road maintenance and construction funding.

My intention in asking for this stemmed from a search on the Ministry of Transportation website for the phrase “Peak Oil” to which there are no results. I thought that surely it is in the public’s best interests to know what the Ministry intends to do with its assets worth billions of dollars (that are still being expanded), and can be maintained only with cheap, plentiful oil - not the likely situation in years to come, so I went through the Freedom of Information channel…

Apparently I bit off more than I can chew, and received an estimate that the cost of retrieving and photocopying this information was going to be $805.00. Click on the image to the right for an excerpt of the response. Read the complete Post.

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on February 19, 2009, Printed on February 19, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/

It turns out that you don’t want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.

As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been burning up. It’s already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. “The great drying,” Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside. After more than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere.

In fact, everything’s been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly aided and abetted by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180 people are dead and thousands homeless. Flannery, who has written eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported:

“It was as if a great cremation had taken place… I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I’ve watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself… I had not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire. This fire was different from anything seen before.”

Australia, by the way, is a wheat-growing breadbasket for the world and its wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought. Read the complete Post.

Crossposted from EcoGeek.org

It seems like every month or so, I get a press release in my inbox saying something like “Scientists Say that The World Will Explode if We Don’t Do X by Y.” I have some news for you.

1. No one has any idea what will happen if we don’t do X by Y
2. That headline was written by a journalist, not by a scientist

Sure, in their models, scientists can see a precise date of when the gulf-stream will shut down or when the albedo effect will take over and global warming will be irreversible. But scientists recognize that models, however sophisticated, are not as sophisticated as the real world. Only a fool would take the date the model spit out and assume that that’s the day of reckoning.

Unfortunately, journalists (myself included) are often foolish. Our business is to get people to read things, preferably things that are true. But by the time it goes through three editors, each with a mind on the business, the chances of a headline with more units of sensation per unit of truth get pretty high.

Plus, I think that we, as journalists, have an artificial fascination with deadlines. We think they make the world work because they make us work. Read the complete Post.

New York Times
By ANDREW MARTIN
Original article

BRADENTON, Fla. — How much does your morning glass of orange juice contribute to global warming?

PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana brand, decided to try to answer that question. It figured that as public concern grows about the fate of the planet, companies will find themselves under pressure to perform such calculations. Orange juice seemed like a good case study.

PepsiCo hired experts to do the math, measuring the emissions from such energy-intensive tasks as running a factory and transporting heavy juice cartons. But it turned out that the biggest single source of emissions was simply growing oranges. Citrus groves use a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, which requires natural gas to make and can turn into a potent greenhouse gas when it is spread on fields. Read the complete Post.

You’re invited to a lively debate and discussion open to the public on
the theme of climate change and sustainability with Prof. John
Robinson - UBC, Alexis Morgan - World Wife Fund for Nature (WWF) -
Canada, and Fiona Koza - Amnesty International. Wednesday, February 4
at 7pm (UBC Robson Square). Read the complete Post.