Posted Jul 15, 2011 by Bill McKibben

he climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months. Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, we’ve got real-time video: first Russia burning, then Texas and Arizona on fire. First Pakistan suffered a deluge, then Queensland, Australia, went underwater, and this spring and summer, it’s the Midwest that’s flooding at historic levels.

The year 2010 saw the lowest volume of Arctic ice since scientists started to measure, more rainfall on land than any year in recorded history, and the lowest barometric pressure ever registered in the continental United States. Measured on a planetary scale, 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest year in history. Jeff Masters, probably the world’s most widely read meteorologist, calculated that the year featured the most extreme weather since at least 1816, when a giant volcano blew its top.

Since we’re the volcano now, and likely to keep blowing, here’s his prognosis: “The ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air put tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010-2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway.” Read the complete Post.

As many of you already know, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in jail yesterday for defending thousands of acres of pristine wilderness in Utah. The Bush administration was illegally selling off land to the oil and gas companies. DeChristopher stopped them. I am deeply moved by his courage.
Vandy July 27, 2011

Excerpt – “Mr Huber claims that the seriousness of my offense was that I “obstructed lawful government proceedings.” But the auction in question was not a lawful proceeding….

The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people. The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the more that power begins to shrivel. The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today. And neither will I. I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future. Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience. Nothing that happens here today will change that. I don’t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don’t have that authority.

You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine alone…I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false. I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government. I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience. If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.

You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path. You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing. You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM. You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.”
Tim DeChristopher – July 26, 2011 Utah courthouse

Follow the story at Peaceful Uprising

Some B.C. environmentalists are taking credit for stopping Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Kevin Falcon from becoming premier.

During the recent B.C. Liberal leadership campaign, conservationists infiltrated the party to defeat Falcon, a former transportation minister who spearheaded major road-building projects. On the final ballot on February 26, Falcon ended up with 48 percent of the points compared to 52 percent for the winner, Christy Clark. Read the complete Post.

Feb. 27, 2011
A note from VPOE Jon Cooksey....

Hi all,

Thanks to all who took part in the GreenLibs phenomenon, and voted
yesterday!  The very short version of what we accomplished is this:  we
stopped (or greatly helped stop) Kevin Falcon from becoming the Premier of
BC.  From talking to a lot of people, I'm guessing that was the goal that
got most people to sign up, so accomplishing it in a matter of 6 weeks was
no mean feat!  This was a real grassroots movement, that sprouted in a lot
of different places at once.  Many thanks to our friends at local
organizations like Conservation Voters of BC and Dogwood, who signed up
voters, interviewed the candidates, made recommendations and so on.

GreenLibs has been, from the start, a pragmatic idea based on the reality
that our next Premier would be one of the BC Liberal candidates, none of
whom were or are "green" by the standards we set.  But beyond our primary
Anyone-but-Falcon goal, we also accomplished our secondary goal, which was
to get the word "environment" back on the lips of the candidates.   Read the complete Post.

SATURDAY FEB. 19
1:30 PM – 4 PM
BCIT downtown 555 Seymour St., Vancouver

If you are an environmentally-focused BC resident who recently joined the BC Liberal party as part of our membership drive, then you are welcome to attend our town hall / membership convention. Be part of deciding who will become the next Premier of BC – because it’s likely we control enough votes to determine the outcome!

Our plan is to hold an intimate town/convention of the BC Green Liberal Caucus, carried by live web-streaming to our members in the rest of the province. If you cannot join us in person, then please RSVP above with the “Live-streaming” ticket, so we know how many members will participate. But if you can come in person, we want you there!

Here’s the schedule (note that this is a revised time to follow the candidates’ debate on Shaw TV):

1:30 p.m. - Meet and greet, light refreshments

2:00 – 3:30 - Roundtable Q&A with whichever candidates choose to come and try to win our votes!  CURRENTLY SCHEDULED:  Mike de Jong at 2 p.m., George Abbott at 3 p.m.  Waiting on word from the other candidates.  This may be your ONLY CHANCE to hear the candidates speak on environmental issues!  Don’t miss it!

We will supplement these appearances with whatever information we’ve been able to come up with about the candidates’ positions on environmental issues.  Non-partisan NGO’s like Organizing For Change and Conservation Voters of BC are working on getting information, which they’ll make public.  Candidates and non-caucus members will be asked to leave at the conclusion of the roundtable.

NOTE: Live-streaming will end at 3:30 so that caucus votes and decisions are not public information

3:30 – 4:00 p.m. - Members-only review of candidate statements and positions, and group discussion.
At the end of this review, we intend to decide on a recommendation to support a candidate (this may include a ranking of candidates to match the BC Liberal voting procedure).  We will hold that recommendation till the following day, to gather input from caucus members who watched the convention via live-streaming, then we will issue a press release and spread our recommendation to all BCGL members province-wide.

Please RSVP now, so we can ensure that we have enough space for everyone!

See you there for this historic greening of the BC Liberal Party!

By Tom Whipple

13 January, 2011
Falls Church News-Press

Buried in the millions of words that were written about the shootings in Arizona last week was a recent poll showing that only 13 percent of the American people think favorably of the U.S. Congress. The implication, of course, is that as 87 percent or roughly 270 million Americans harbor some level of animosity towards their elected federal representatives, the emergence of people who believe that exercising their 2nd Amendment rights is a solution to the nation’s woes is inevitable.

Why are so many, so mad at the Congress? The answer is simple – they have no idea what is happening to their lives. Since the beginning of the great recession way back in 2007 they have been told by two Presidents, their senior officials, 99 percent of the Congress, and most of the media that recovery was on the way and that prosperity would return shortly.

As unemployment in the U.S. grew and grew, every politician with a prayer of winning positioned him or herself as the “jobs” candidate who could and would get us all working at good high-paying jobs again. This of course has not returned and is unlikely to do so. We are not only contending with a growing debt bubble of gigantic proportions, we are also rapidly running out of the cheap, abundant energy that allowed us to be so prosperous for the last 200 years.

Read the complete Post.

When people tell me the dire messages about which I write don’t resonate with other people, I struggle with a coherent response. Would you prefer continued overshoot on an overshot planet? Would you prefer we keep heating our overheated home? Would you prefer we ignore the most important issues in the history of our species? Party on, brothers and sisters, when you bother to extract your head from your asses the sand. As long as we ignore reality, it’ll all be fine.

And then, there’s reality. I’ll go there. You’ve been warned.

We’re irrevocably broke. I’ve made that announcement before. Finally, though, mainstream financial analysts are joining the party of reality.

Perhaps our individual and collective bankruptcy (of every kind) explains why 79.6% of respondents to a Scientific American poll are unwilling to forgo even a single penny to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change. Scientific American readers undoubtedly are better informed than the general populace. And yet they won’t pay a thing to avoid extinction of our species. Kinda makes you warm and fuzzy all over, doesn’t it?

At the request of corporate CEOs and their minions, high-level politicians, we’ll spend, spend, spend to keep propping up the industrial economy that is making us crazy and killing us. Far be it for me to suggest those CEOs and politicians are killing us directly — I’ll leave that charge to others — but there is no doubt this system is destroying every aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our lives. In return, we’ll throw away fiat currency in the name of infrastructure so we can maintain our non-negotiable, completely disastrous way of life. But we won’t spend a buck a dime a single cent to preclude disaster for our children.

Excuse me, I need to retch into my composting toilet. I encourage you to do the same. I’ll wait. Read the complete Post.

Those who said nothing happened at the G20 missed the French leader’s press conference

Those who grumbled that nothing of significance happened at the Group of 20 summit missed Nicolas Sarkozy’s press conference. The French leader said he and Chinese President Hu Jintao have come up with a strategy that will ensure much of the next 12 months is spent questioning the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

Mr. Sarkozy, who took over the G20 presidency at the end of the Seoul meeting from Lee Myung-bak, didn’t put it quite this way, of course. He started by repeating what he has been saying for a while: That his No. 1 agenda item will be an examination of the international monetary system. Then the new twist: Mr. Hu, who visited Mr. Sarkozy before the summit, had agreed to host a “seminar” on the subject under the G20 banner in the spring.

The symbolism of China hosting a major gathering to discuss currency policy is impossible to miss. In March, 2009, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of China’s central bank, proposed replacing the dollar as the reserve currency with the Special Drawing Right, or SDR, a little-used unit of exchange run by the International Monetary Fund. (The IMF bases the SDR’s value on a basket of the dollar, euro, pound and yen.) Mr. Zhou’s suggestion created a stir as investors wondered if China was getting ready to abandon the dollar. Now, thanks to Mr. Sarkozy, Mr. Zhou will get to organize an entire conference on the subject with the world’s currency traders watching in rapt attention. There will be fireworks. Read the complete Post.

By Mathis Wackernagel

As world leaders prepare for the next round of climate talks in Cancun, it is time to put to right a misperception that for too long has shackled our approach to this vital issue. The error is simply this: Taking action is a burden some nations will need to shoulder for the good of the world – rather than the single best action each nation can take to further its own long-term interests.

The question by governments of “What’s in it for me?” has up to now been a major stumbling block to international agreement. But if leaders and their administrations truly understood the underlying resource dynamics, they would have the exact opposite approach. They would see it is in their self-interest to act quickly and aggressively, whatever the actions taken by their global neighbors.  In fact, each country’s own actions will become more urgent and valuable the less others do.

Why would it be in any individual country’s interest to address a problem whose costs are ultimately born by all of humanity? Consider the nature of the carbon problem. Read the complete Post.

Posted on 3rd September 2010 by JimQ

The Burning Platform Blog

It is par for the course that with oil hovering between $70 and $80 per barrel Americans have continued to buy SUVs and Trucks at a rapid pace. Politicians don’t have constituents screaming at them because gas is $4.00 per gallon, so it is no longer an issue for them. They need to focus on the November elections. It is no time to discuss a difficult issue that requires foresight and honesty. It is no time to tell the American public that oil will be over $200 a barrel within the next 5 years. Anyone who would go on CNBC today and declare that oil will be over $200 a barrel would be eviscerated by bubble head Bartiromo or clueless Kudlow. Bartiromo filled up her Escalade this morning for $2.60 a gallon, so there is no looming crisis on the horizon. The myopic view of the world by politicians, the mainstream media and the American public in general is breathtaking to behold. Despite the facts slapping them across the face, Americans believe cheap oil is here to stay. It is their right to have an endless supply of cheap oil. The American way of life has been granted by God. We are the chosen people.

Read the complete Post.