VANCOUVER (January 29th, 2009) - A one-minute animated film made by a group of Vancouver filmmakers won the year-end “2008 People’s Choice Award” in the Friends of the Earth One-Minute Film Competition. Winners were announced in London, England by Friends of the Earth, an international organization seeking to inspire solutions to environmental problems.

Viewers from around the world voted for How to Boil a Frog as their favorite 60-second film among the top 10 entries shown online.  This “cheeky animation of a frog incensed by the world hotting up due to climate change” was written and produced by North Vancouver filmmaker, Jon Cooksey.  Cooksey has won a lunch in London with one of the judges, Trainspotting Producer Andrew MacDonald.  In describing the film, MacDonald said, “The animation How to Boil a Frog is professionally made and fun - it pulls viewers in and gets them thinking about climate change through its original entertaining style.”

How To Boil a Frog tells the story of Lou, a South American tree frog, who appears to be enjoying a Jacuzzi, until we see that he is the proverbial boiling frog, and the heat source is a burning Earth. Lou tastes the planet, and discovers the source of this global warming:  oil, factories, and cars. He yanks out the offending fossil-fuelled culprits, and bounces away on a happier planet.

Read the complete Post.

From Monday’s Globe and Mail

December 15, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST

By George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
Posted on December 3, 2008, Printed on December 4, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/109546/

George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening America’s wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3,000.

His backers — among them the nastiest polluto-crats in America — are calling in their favors. But this last binge of vandalism is also the Bush presidency reduced to its essentials. Destruction is not an accidental product of its ideology. Destruction is the ideology. Neoconservatism is power expressed by showing that you can reduce any part of the world to rubble.

If it is now too late to prevent runaway climate change, the Bush team must carry much of the blame. His willful trashing of the Middle Climate — the interlude of benign temperatures which allowed human civilization to flourish — makes the mass murder he engineered in Iraq only the second of his crimes against humanity. Bush has waged his war on science with the same obtuse determination with which he has waged his war on terror.

Is it too late? To say so is to make it true. To suggest that there is nothing that can now be done is to ensure that nothing is done. But even a resolute optimist like me finds hope ever harder to summon. A new summary of the science published since last year’s Intergovernmental Panel report suggests that — almost a century ahead of schedule — the critical climate processes might have begun. Read the complete Post.

A Japanese animation about food security - what it is and how to get it. Very well done.

Planning for climate change and rising ocean levels.

The Maldives, a tenuous chain of 1,200 islets southwest of Sri Lanka best known for its spectacular reef-rimmed lagoons, is considered one of the world’s most vulnerable countries in the face of rising sea levels in a warming world. I have a short article in today’s paper on how the Maldives, under its first democratically elected president, will establish what amounts to a global warming relocation fund using revenue from tourism. The idea would be to buy land elsewhere as a new home for the country’s 400,000 citizens should the worst-case scenarios play out.

Some of the atolls in the Maldives. (Credit: NASA/ GSFC
/METI /ERSDAC /JAROS)

For the moment, it relies on sea walls, built with money from Japan, to protect its one-square-mile capital, Malé, which constitutes the world’s most densely populated island. Population growth — taking the Maldives from 200,000 to nearly 400,000 people in just 20 years — is make the real estate problem worse.

The Maldive islanders’ long-term investment in a relocation fund seems smart given the nature of the climate problem. While the near-term rate of sea-level rise remains uncertain, the long-term picture of rising seas in a warming world is crystal clear. The plan reminds me of Abu Dhabi’s investment in a center for energy research — the cornerstone of a nonpolluting car-free “city” in the desert — as a means of building its post-oil economy, even as oil still flows from the ground.

It still seems rare for human societies to invest for the long term, plan for the worst case while hoping for the best, and favor resiliency over last-minute response (any relationship to the financial collapse here?).

NY Times Nov. 11, 2008

Will PEAK OIL devour Vancouver’s Politicians?
Or, will our politicians battle INERTIA and defeat the monstrous status quo?

Wed. Oct. 15, 2008, 7 - 9:30 PM
BCIT Downtown Campus
555 Seymour St., Vancouver

WATCH WITH FASCINATION as our panelists reveal their plans for addressing these critical issues!

• Is the Lower Mainland ready for a LOW-ENERGY FUTURE?

• Is GATEWAY a solution to our future transportation needs, and – if not – what is?

• Is there a plan to make sure we’ll all have enough FOOD to eat next year and 20 years from now?

• How do we reshape our pattern of community for a world with less and LESS OIL?

• How do we ensure an adequate ENERGY SUPPLY for the Lower Mainland?

Before you cast a vote in the next city election…
FIND OUT what these candidates plan to do.

Introducing Mayoral Candidates:
Gregor ROBERTSON - candidate Mayor Vision Party
Councillor Peter LADNER - candidate Mayor NPA
Betty KRAWCZYK - candidate Mayor Work Less Party

With:
Councillor Suzanne ANTON - candidate Vancouver City Council
Mayor Derek CORRIGAN - candidate Mayor Burnaby
Council Candidate Andrea REIMER – candidate Vancouver City Council

JOIN US for a rousing panel discussion and SEE FOR YOURSELF how some of the Lower Mainland’s top politicians PERSONALLY plan to address the many problems posed by PEAK OIL.

YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS.

Wednesday October 15, 2008
7 - 9:30 PM
BCIT Downtown Campus
555 Seymour St., Vancouver
(a few blocks up from Waterfront station)
Tickets $7 in advance, $10 at the door.

Advanced Tickets:

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Brought to you by Vancouver Peak Oil and The Great Bear Pub, and sponsored by:
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