More Obfuscation
Yesterday a very interesting and frightening report came through the news wires about the climate change conference in Bali.
Our northern ice cap in the Arctic Ocean is now on its last legs. It has a matter of years, not decades before all the permanent summer ice disappears from the Arctic. Once that happens, be afraid, very afraid. For the first time in 130 thousand years we will have no summer ice in the Arctic. Its happening faster than even the worst case scenarios outlined by the IPCC. Why did the IPCC not foresee this and report it?
As is becoming more and more the case, the stalling and the obfuscation by a number of countries, including the US, China, India, japan and now Canada, had watered down the fourth report on climate change issued just a couple of months ago. The European Union countries and the third world had been pushing for stronger language and the inclusion of the more extreme scenarios. But pressure, enormous pressure, from the pro US lobby group, including our two fundamentalist sycophants, Harper and Baird, continue to obstruct any meaningful action, an act of stalling and sabotage worthy of the tobacco lobby.
Group after group has come away appalled at Canada’s inexplicable stance and rhetoric. It used to be that Canada was at the forefront of reasoned, intelligent science. Now we have compromised that reputation probably beyond repair.
By stating that Canada will not be part of any agreement unless everyone is part of it, we put yet another nail in the climate coffin. The weight of this powerful western block of have countries allied with the United States has the potential to make Bali an exercise in futility. We have sold ourselves for our own short term interests and fail to realize that we have achieved what we have in our technology because we have been able to grab the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel resources and in the processes poisoned the atmosphere with CO2. We live at the pinnacle of the world because our transportation grid, our electricity grid and our military might rests on the foundation of fossil fuels. We elect official who will do nothing in order to maintain this oh-so temporary balance, where we have everything and deny the rest of the world anything.
It is a great and national embarrassment that we send representatives like Baird who neither care nor understand the implications of the coming changes in climate on the world. We are as surely responsible for the coming deaths and misery we are wreaking on the world because of our lifestyles as if we were to declare war with guns and weapons of mass destruction.
As the oceans rise, the storms increase, the tolls mount, we should not delude ourselves that we are not responsible for the suffering and the destruction and the misery that could have been avoided.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
“As is becoming more and more the case, the stalling and the obfuscation by a number of countries, including the US, China, India, japan and now Canada”
Richard, maybe you would rather the liberals were still in power and the gave the enviroment lip service. At least the liberals would give you want you wanted to hear. The conservatives have done more for the environment over the last 2 years than the liberals did in 10 years.