Climate Change: A blog to inspire action on Climate Change

We’ll bring you quick snaps and video and other tips as the next few weeks of Climate negotiations at COP15 with more than 90 countries from around the world begin to grapple with setting emissions targets, setting up a global fund for mitigating climate change impacts, and many other global actions.

Here is a good video that brings the vision of corporate executives and game-changers to the fore. Businesses that change their operating policies to mitigate climate change and reduce their carbon footprints will also be the beneficiaries of a major economic fortunes.

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There are so many things happening in the world, but only one seems to matter. The meetings in Copenhagen from December 8-18 are the last great hope for a binding Climate agreement and although many have lowered expectations recently, the importance of these negotiations cannot be overstated.

I hope to bring live reports of happenings in Copenhagen describing Canada’s political impact on the treaty and the ramifications for the Canadian economy with live blogging here and on-air reports with CBC Radio in northern Ontario.

Since Prime Minister Harper has agreed to attend along with other world leaders hopes have been raised significantly that the climate summit in Copenhagen will result in a meaningful political agreement.

I hope to have confirmation of my media credentials in the next few days. Ten days and counting.

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A handful of world leaders have scaled back expectations of a successful Copenhagen Conference this December, but citizens of the world are stepping up and helping others show how much real people care about the fate of humanity that hangs in the balance.

The walkers mission: to deliver a message to the Copenhagen conference urging action on climate change.

This summer British ocean rower Roz Savage rowed solo 3,000 miles across the Pacific from Hawaii to Kiribati. There she witnessed the human face of climate change – Kiribati, a scattering of small coral atolls, is expected to become uninhabitable within the next 50 years due to the effects of climate change.

She is now taking her message to the climate change conference in Copenhagen, in her role as United Nations “Climate Hero”. With a small
group of friends she will set out on 20th November to walk 250 miles from Big Ben to Brussels, where they will join the United Nations Climate Express train for the remainder of the journey to Copenhagen.

The walk will be the subject of a documentary film, “The Long Walk to Copenhagen”, focusing on the walkers and the people they meet en route
to show how humankind is reacting to the biggest challenge of our time.

The worldwide community will be invited to show solidarity with the walkers by joining an online environmental challenge called Pull Together. This initiative aims to inspire people to take action on CO2 levels by walking more and driving less. Calling upon supporters around the world to Pull Together, Roz will challenge them to match the 10,000 oar strokes she does each day on the ocean by walking 10,000 steps a day. Good for the body, and good for the planet.

Stay tuned for video, audio and photos from the long march to Copenhagen.

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Pictures do say a thousand words – The Himalayan Glaciers are melting – this spells trouble for millions of people. See this image, which compares a 1921 image of the Himalayan Mountains showing Mount Everest to a 2009 image.  The changes are startling.  Feeder glaciers have disappeared.  Loss of 340 0 400 vertical feet of ice mass is shown.   The increased heat absorbing surfaces of exposed rock is easy to see.

Images cut through rhetoric.  We need the leadership of world leaders at Copenhagen to make the commitments to:

1. Reduce CO2 emissions  (Which means Canada has to agree to cut its carbon emissions, and right now, Canada is trying to make this contingent on other developing countries setting ambitious targets.  This is nonsense.  Playing political games with our planet is not what we have elected our politicians to do.  They are accountable to our future generations.)
2. Limit global temperature increase to 2ºCelsius in developed and developing countries.
3. Assist financially those countries that need assistance to deal with climate change mitigation and adaptation issues.
4. Put into place an international global governance approach to manage financial resources that reflect the political realities of today.

The impacts of climate change will be widespread across the globe. In order to understand more about what the human impact of high-end climate change might be, and therefore what would happen if a successful agreement cannot be reached at Copenhagen, the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre produced an interactive map outlining some of the impacts, based on the latest peer-reviewed science.  Click on the map below to learn more.

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Today, I viewed a straight-forward message from the children to President Obama telling him to lead the US at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December. I would like to send a similar message to our Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The most important reasons for Canada to participate in the UN Climate Talks is to demonstrate our capacity for leadership, action, contribution financially, and commitment as a developed country (that has one of the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases in the world) and share a commitment to reducing CO2 emissions to 350ppm and dropping global temperatures by 2º Celsius.

Will our grand-children say…”Sorry, our prime minister was too busy making a political announcement at another Tim Horton’s donut shop to give a damn about climate change?” Come on Mr. Prime Minister, listen to what the American kids are saying to their President.

What will you say to your children and grand-children about how instrumental you were in “making a difference” as a Canadian leader to reducing our emissions and global temperature in December of 2009 when over 190 countries in the world will make agreements about how we act together to solve this problem? This is not about individual beliefs; it’s about global partnership and unity in the face of the most important economic and environmental issue our planet has ever faced.

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World Leaders cut up cheques in Barcelona (Oxfam Int’l)

Barcelona is the last official round of negotiations before a UN deal is signed in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

A widely accepted target for financial aid calls on the countries which created the climate crisis, to provide at least $150 billion per year to help poor countries reduce their emissions and adapt to a changing climate.  Poor countries fear that carbon-emitting countries will try to substitute funds required for Climate Change adaptation as part of the 0.7 per cent of national income already requested/committed to overseas aid.

The European Union announced an agreement to provide up to €100 billion a year to fund climate efforts in developing countries, but failed to commit the EU to any specific sums, delaying their decision until after December’s UN conference in Copenhagen.  In short, the EU is waiting to hear commitments from North America and other countries that will influence their final contribution to poor countries.

Millions of poor people around the world are already struggling to cope with the effects of climate change and delay in negotiating the financing of Climate Change is catching up to carbon emitting nations whose responsibility it will ultimately be to pay the financial cost of mitigation and adaptation to climate change conditions.

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Canada was shamed once again with the #1 Fossil of the Day Award at the UN Climate talks in Barcelona for their efforts ‘to drag down the climate talks’ and for being un-constructive in the climate negotiations.

What Canadian delegation said:

At an informal briefing on mitigation of climate impacts Canada suggested that losses or damages due to climate change should not be addressed as part of the objectives on adaptation.

“would not envisage loss and damage [due to climate change impacts] being addressed as part of the objectives on adaptation”

Perhaps it would be better if Canada and other major emitters waited for a world court to find us at fault for knowingly contributing to damage and destruction around the world for doing so little to combat climate change.

With the African nations walking out of negotiations and G77 supporting them there has been an effort to ratchet up negotiations and move the Cop15 process forward.

Will Canada shine its shoes and start offering real solutions or continue to stall the process?

“A Copenhagen Agreement that does not recognize that such impacts exist and that does not include resolute provisions to address these impacts would mean that the world’s most vulnerable people, namely those for which adaptation funding is not available, would be left out of the agreement,” said Antonio Hill from Oxfam International.

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