Some good news today. Naomi Klein of Shock Doctrine and No Logo fame ("infamy" in some quarters) says that her next book will focus on the climate change upheavals.

Naomi Klein speaking at The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts - August 2009

Quoting from the Canadian Press article of today by Cassandra Szklarski:

"It is absolutely going to be a war in Copenhagen," Klein says in a recent interview.
"I'm hearing more and more young environmentalists saying, 'We think the way to solve this crisis is to leave fossil fuels in the ground,' and this is particularly important in the Canadian context where we are extracting some of the absolutely most lethal, dirtiest forms of fossil fuels in the oil sands and the tarsands."
Klein says the issue has galvanized young people the same way the anti-corporate movement did 10 years ago.

Excellent! To the top of the billblog reading queue with it!

The following is from Alexandra Morton:

Hello All

We are one step closer to applying the laws of Canada to salmon farming! It was a pivotal day in court. Although it is only one more step towards enforcing the laws of Canada on fish farmers,  it was essential if we are to bring reason to this situation.

In September I laid charges against Marine Harvest for illegal possession of juvenile wild salmon. This came after months of correspondence with Fisheries and Oceans, asking them to uphold the Fisheries Act and lay a charge themselves.

Today was our third court appearance. The first two were simply to set dates, and then extend those dates so that the Department of Justice could review the details of the case. Today's appearance was a "process hearing" with a judge to lay out the charge and our evidence. The judge could either have refused to issue a summons, or approve the charge.

Today in Port Hardy, the judge approved the charge and a summons will be issued to Marine Harvest to appear in court and the trial could proceed.

There are several directions this could take from this point:

1. The Department of Justice could take the case over and run the case. My lawyer, Jeff Jones and I are hoping this will occur as this is truly David against Goliath, a tiny North Island law firm working Pro Bono to date, against a multi billion dollar international corporation. A round of applause for Jeffery and Marianne Jones they have done so much already!

2. If the Department of Justice takes the case, they could proceed to trial where all evidence can be heard, and a Judge will rule on the merit of the case. Or, the Department of Justice can stay the charges and the case is closed without a trial.

3. Jeff Jones and I might have to run the trial ourselves. While this seems a good idea, the reality is a tidal wave of paperwork that could overwhelm his firm, even though this appears to be an extremely straightforward charge which many fishermen have faced. However, well funded corporate defendants can stretch a trial out for days if not weeks, making it extremely costly for a private citizen to enforce the Fisheries Act.
 
In any case we are setting precedence. Canada cannot manage its fisheries in a sustainable way unless the laws about how many fish are caught are enforced. Over-fishing is a global problem, it is not sound management to allow salmon farmers unlimited access to BC wild fish.

Thanks to all of you for all your support. If you know anyone who would like to join us in signing the letter to the Minister of Fisheries to PLEASE ENFORCE THE FISHERIES ACT, the letter is still on our website www.adopt-a-fry.org.  Until the Federal government is
willing to uphold the laws of Canada we will continue to do what we can to fill the void.

My deepest thanks to all of you, we face tough stretch ahead, but once again the courts have agreed with our position.

A remarkable film will be released next week on the Global impact of salmon farming, here is the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eggrGn0V0fg

No individual can right the wrongs we have wreaked on our planet.  Thank you all for being with me on this.

alexandra

Extra, Extra! Just announced: Obama is going to the Copenhagan Summit. He's not only going himself, but he's taking a pack of high rankers from the US Government. Is there a clearer message to the US populace and to the world that he can give? Not a this point. This breathes life into the sometimes flagging spirits of the eco-community. Thanks, Buddy.

And then there's the biggest detractor/obstructionist on the planet, our PM Stephen Harper. Will he change his mind and go now? Is he worried that if he does that he will look like a US Puppet? Oh no. Or will he go to shift attention from that pesky Afghan prisoner torture annoyance? What will the man do?

So far the Canadian Government is the biggest defaulter of the Kyoto Accord and has torpedoed efforts to reach the next-stage agreement to be ratified in Copenhagen. The sticky point is this: TAR SANDS.

The tar sands project is a gigantic mistake. It's a greenhouse gas factory on a monumental scale and is therefore a crime. To cancel the tars sands project would be a mighty blow to the national wallet and to the wallets of certain provinces and many citizens. Cleaning up Northern Alberta and the Athabaska watershed would be financially worse than a failed Olympics. That's an almighty drag to be sure. On the other hand, the consequences of escalating atmospheric CO2 levels will render life as we know it obsolete in short order.

The world's climate scientists are in consensus on this, Stephen Harper. Actual scientists who study the actual climate are actually in unison. Rex Murphy is actually not a climate scientist. We have an actual planetary emergency on our hands. Read this, Sir. It came out yesterday. I point this out in case no one told you told you about it — The Copenhagen Diagnosis. Think post-carbon. Think hard.

You have to close down the tar sands. You have to go to Copenhagen. Obama is going. What about you?

Stephen Harper, you are in a pickle. What will you do now?

Tell it like it is, Al. The billblog is so full of empathy it could melt a CPU.




A nod goes to Leah for finding this vid.

Andrew Weaver, Nobel-winning climate scientist of my preceding post figures in this one as well. He and a group of internationally renowned climate scientists have today released an new report, The Copenhagen Diagnosis.

This update on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit says this: "Sorry naysayers, the earth really is warming. It's worse than we thought." [billblog paraphrase of the report]

Help yourself to copy of this report. Read it. Pass it on. Push it at the media, politicians and friends.

Media Release and Press Conferences

Download

Copenhagen negotiators cannot be allowed to deal in politics when the issue is security.

Last week I attended a "Countdown To Copenhagen" rally at the Convention Centre in Jolly Old Victoria BC. The Convention Centre itself was booked by the Western Canada Wilderness Committee , I believe, with funds provided by the Green Party of Canada.

Word of the rally was passed by email, last minute web notices, phone calls and so on — a hastily thrown together affair. Organizers admitted to being apprehensive about having a good sized turnout for the 1000 seat auditorium, but as it turned out attendance was not an issue. Every seat was taken and some people stood around the edges.

We sat about a third of the way back from the front. Here is a photo of the crowd about fifteen minutes before the event started, taken from my seat. I'd just hollered out, "Hey everybody, give me a wave!", and waved one hand. Got a few back.



And here, a while later:


We came because we care, we are worried sick, we hope for better, and because we want to know that we are not alone.

We came to hear Guy Dauncey, Andrew Weaver and Elizabeth May speak. We also, by good fortune, heard brief remarks from three remarkable people from the generation to whom my generation is passing the heaviest lifting, members of the youth climate movement, Jamie Biggar, Tria Donaldson and Maia Green.

Guy Dauncey was upbeat, saying the the technology to save the planet is here, that the goal is completely achievable. Andrew Weaver. It was even quieter than dead silent as he spoke. Elizabeth May took us by storm — impassioned and intelligent, she rallied the forces and nourished hope.

Dr. Andrew Weaver. Nobel Laureate. Climate scientist. He came out with the tough facts right off the mark, beginning with, "The earth is definitely getting warmer." He used charts, graphs to illustrate how this conclusion is irrefutable and that the planetary warming is indeed, without question, the result of greenhouse gases. He spoke of the naysayers and what he called, the "manufactured grassroots organizations" which offer lies as facts, deliberately, to cloud the scene and help big industry and government to have reason to maintain the immoral status quo. He did not speak highly of Stephen Harper's government. I wished that everyone in the country could have been sitting with us. If so, there'd be no question of putting up with the disgraceful behaviour of Harper, Prentice and the rest. Commonly understood scientific knowledge would light the way.

Dr. Andrew Weaver, Nobel Laureate
Stephen Harper ignores this man.

Today the World Meteorological Association released a report noting the highest level of greenhouse gases in human history and that the rise continues exponentially, that the consequences of this are in our present, that we hurtle toward a tipping point with greater speed than ever before.

I asked myself why this information will likely be lost in a mass of disinformation, obfuscation and disinterest. With all of this in mind, I say this to all scientists:

Scientists, we need all of you to come out of your ivory towers, labs, colliders and research groups and to make a Mighty Noise, and not just to research journals and conferences. We need you en masse, in public, standing up to our politicians and our asleep-at-the-wheel media. One would think that the most important meeting in the history of the human race, the Copenhagen Summit, would receive headline attention every single day. Speak to them loudly, often and in huge gangs of brilliant thinkers.

Our politicians ignore eco-freaks, environmental lobbyists, regular folk and irregular folk who see the perilous situation that our planet is in. No matter what we do, they ignore us. We write, we phone, we demonstrate and we are ignored. We cannot wait for an election to throw them out of office. I hope we do that, but in the meantime, the Copenhagen Summit starts December 7!

Scientists, since politicians pay us no heed, we need YOU in the public eye. We need hundreds of you, mad as hell, brainy and articulate, demanding good decisions for our planet. It's not just research and publication in scholarly journals anymore. It's survival.

We need all of you, as a group, walking into our mainstream media offices and demanding that attention be given to the horrendous facts that Dr. Weaver and colleagues have illuminated. We cannot do it without you. You have a responsibility far beyond the lab and the classroom. I beg you to join us.

I fear that Copenhagen will fail while you sit in the rarified air of Higher Thoughts. The consequences of Copenhagen failing are too monstrous to even contemplate. How long will it take before there's another climate summit? How long will it take before policies are developed again, climate laws actually passed and targets met? Dr. Andrew Weaver says that the only reasonable target to shoot for is this: Zero Percent Emissions.

Calling all scientists!! Calling all scientists!! Make a noise!

Wow! Check this out. It's called ResoNations and it's billed as an international telematic music concert for peace featuring “new contemporary music works for peace performed by renowned musicians in five international locations”. It sounds cutting-edge cool to me.

I had to look up the word “telematic”:

telematics |ˌteləˈmatiks|
plural noun [treated as sing. ]
the branch of information technology that deals with the long-distance transmission of computerized information.
DERIVATIVES
telematic adjective
ORIGIN 1970s: blend of telecommunication and informatics .

Real world compostions will be performed simultaneously over the internet in the following cities:

• United Nations Headquarters, New York City
• Banff, Alberta, Canada
• Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
• Seoul, South Korea
• San Diego, California, United States of America

Musicians in these locations will perform as a single ensemble — that's a marvel. A live as-it-happens webcast will occur with limited seating. I know one of the musicians who will be playing from Banff and therefore hope to have one of the seats for the webcast.

Here is the program:

Hope’s Dream by Mark Dresser and Sarah Weaver, Disparate Bodies by Pedro Rebelo, Rock, Paper, Scissors by Chris Chafe, and Green-colored Harmony by Jun Kim
From musical, technical and international peace perspectives this is a big deal. We will see if mainstream media will cover the event. CBC are you there?

The Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change is three weeks away. In preparation for Copenhagen, leaders of the developed nations are torpedoing the hopes of a planet. Most notably Canada and the USA are dragging their feet, hanging back, blathering profoundly to each other in the shadows. Harper and Obama appear now and then to get us ready for the big news which is this: "We are going to do SFA for now, but we will do more down the road a bit, we promise, sort of. Maybe."

Of course there are technicalities and practical considerations that are confounding and difficult. Even so, the consequences of delaying action trump the reasons for delay. There's no competition really. The cold war had the constant risk of obliteration. CO2 buildup guarantees it -- and not for some far off century in the future.

I suppose I could accept Copenhagen falling short of its goals if Harper and Obama were also making a big show of stating the scientific rationale for curtailing CO2 emissions, if they were publicly demanding of industry to do more, much more, and if they were vowing on the lives of the next generation to unceasingly devote themselves to the saving of the human race.

Ah but ...

Listen. There is no safe place to escape to when things get ugly. You cannot escape to some mythical Fraggle Rock in the middle of some equally mythical ocean, with your family in tow, and live out your days in balm and plenty while the world goes to hell in a shopping cart. It doesn't really matter if you "believe in climate change" or not. Ocean acidification caused by increasing CO2 absorbtion by ocean water is eating away at that dream as you read these words. The level of atmospheric CO2 has risen 2 parts per million in the last 12 months. That's the new normal. All that new CO2 enters into a closed system. You tell me what science is missing. You tell me where the tipping point is. Tipping point: The point at which we will be unable to stop, ameliorate or slow down the rambuncious, devastating, life-destroying effects of a planet shifting into extreme imbalance. On the other side of the tipping point, humanity kisses earth bye-bye. The last one out of their body has to say, "Sorry about the mess."

This planet does not belong to human industry or human politicians, elected or otherwise. I cannot believe that Harper and Obama truly realize that they are playing risky games with their own children and grandchildren. It must be that they are so full of the minutae of day to day governmental and industrial intrigue, so focussed on the goal of re-election, so side-tracked by war & justification, and so utterly transfixed by the dance of world markets that they cannot grasp the fact that the luminaries of science are spelling out the worst kind of news for those young ones they tuck into bed at night.

We must therefore make Ye Mighty Noise Unto Them. By phone? Why not?

Among the stupidest things PM Harper says is this, "I cannot act until they act," they being most other countries, especially the USA and any so-called developing nation. The notion of leadership seems to have melted away.

Call the Prime Minister of Canada. Call him again. Tell him what you see happening and what you want him to do about it. David Suzuki wants you to call the PM too. Call more than once. You won't get in trouble for calling twice. The Man won't show up at your door because you phoned the PM twice. Well, probably not.

Here is his number: 613-992-4211 (Canada).

If you are in Victoria BC on Tuesday (November 17) drop into the Victoria Convention Centre at 7:30 PM for a rally: Countdown To Copenhagen. Andrew Weaver, renowned Canadian climate scientist and Elizabeth May, equally renowned environmental activist and leader of the Green Party of Canada, will be on hand to speak. We'll all look at each other and say, wow, not alone after all.

Here's a recent article by Naomi Klein, Climate Rage.

I thank you for reading.

Peace out,
bill

Adbusters has announced that this year Buy Nothing Day will be on November 27th for North America and November 28th in other parts of the world. Think about it. Think ...... hmmmmmm, why not?

Adbusters has also called for the morphing of Buy Nothing Day into an international wildcat strike against consumerism.

This is from the Adbusters website:

There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.

So this November 27 (November 28 in Europe and overseas), we’re calling for a Wildcat General Strike. We’re asking tens of millions of people around the world to bring the capitalist consumption machine to a grinding – if only momentary – halt.

We want you to not only stop buying for 24 hours, but to shut off your lights, televisions and other nonessential appliances. We want you to park your car, turn off your phones and log off of your computer for the day.

We’re calling for a Ramadan-like fast. From sunrise to sunset we’ll abstain en masse, not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.

And this is a tv ad from a previous year, an ad that networks refused to air.

A while back, the billblog asked you to phone Prime Minister Harper to ask him to do the right thing at the Copenhagen Summit. Now David Suzuki wants you to phone the PM. Everyone's getting on board. David Suzuki has a special deal going on. Check it out HERE.

Good news in an email from Alexandra Morton regarding our collective efforts to get a Judicial Inquiry into the disappearance of the Fraser River Sockeye Salmon:

"The Terms of the Judicial Inquiry called by Prime Minister Stephen Harper into the demise of the Fraser sockeye are both sweeping and specific enough to get to the bottom of what happened to the Fraser sockeye and recommend the changes to how Fisheries and Oceans Canada is run to benefit all wild fish in Canada. We have made HUGE progress!"

Before you grab that cocktail, organic olives and all, read Alexandra's blog to get the fine print and some additional details. Do take a moment to relish the satisfaction of progress made, then roll up those sleeves. The heavy lifting is just beginning.

Most of the salmon farms on the coast of British Columbia are Norwegian-owned. Their presence is indicated by altered sea water resulting in nasty abnormalities like algae blooms, clouds of sea lice, beds of shellfish covered in salmon feces and mixing of Altlantic and BC salmon stocks, potentially eliminating the BC salmon as a unique species. The list goes on.

Farmed fish require other ocean life as part of their diet. Take krill for instance. Some whales live on krill and yet it is being harvested as feed for fish farms which places the farms and ultimately, farmed-fish eaters, in direct competition with the largest mamals on the planet, mamals with brains larger than a carload of humans. Some farmed salmon are allegedly being fed Pacific salmon fry. Now that's dirty, dirty business if true.

Alexandra's blog and Adopt-A-Fry are full of information and have links to info sources elsewhere. The first battle is the battle for our minds. The pat denials by fish farming interests, the incomplete science and the oh so reasonably sounding spin doctors are no more than slick attempts to delude us.

Thinking independently ain't a bad idea.

Land-lubbers note this: Land life will perish when the ocean ecology collapses. Just mentioning it. Just saying ...

A bit of context: The same Norwegian companies that run the eco-ruinous fishfarm operations in BC are doing the same to pristine coastal marine ecosystems around the world, Europe, South America. They aren't picking on BC alone. I was in Ireland a couple of years ago. The only fish we could buy was farmed fish, and as it turns out, the farmed fishing ops over there helped to wipe out the coastal ecologies of that area too.

It is not just individuals who are shareholders in these fishfarms. The Norwegian Government itself is a major shareholder!! And here I thought they were so enlightened, what with their aggressive work on CO2 reduction and all. I thought they were out to save the atmosphere and the oceans, and now I find out that they're tearing away at the thoroughly pummelled oceanic ecosystem, and not just by killing whales.

Memo to Norway: We see you.

****

There's a new documentary vid by Canadian filmmaker, Damien Gillis. It's called Farmed Salmon Exposed. Check out the site. Here's the trailer:

[This blog was written 3 days ago. The billblog apologizes for the interruption in service due to change of server and chants a dozen Hari Kruschevs in penance.]

The Copenhagen Summit begins December 7. The time is right to voice our thoughts and to pressure our leaders to do the ethical thing. A planetary emergency is happening. We ask those elected to serve us to put the interests of the greater good of the planet before all else.

I have been in touch with the Office of the Premier of British Columbia requesting an opportunity to, in person, give him a package of photos and information demonstrating the scale of the world-wide 350 campaign, information on climate issues and to encourage him to take a leadership role within this country and to encourage the Prime Minister to do what must be done.

If you want to keep in the know about the pre-Copenhagen climate negotiations taking place in Barcelona, here is the site for you. It's the incredible "adopt a negotiator" site. You can keep abreast of events as they unfold in the bargaining. Inform yourself and act.

For Canadians, the two trackers for adopt a negotiator are Zoe Caron (co-author with Elizabeth May of Global Warming For Dummies) and Adam MacIsaac.

Dominican Republic


Mexico City


Vilandai, India

Here is letter composed and sent to Prime Minister Harper of Canada by a billblog reader, used with permission.

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

I was just watching the ceremony in Victoria celebrating the
arrival of the Olympic torch in Canada. And while events
like this usually cause a stirring in my patriotic soul, I
am finding it more and more difficult to hold my head high
as a Canadian.

I have always been so proud of the way Canada fulfilled its
international obligations but I am dumbfounded, dismayed and
ashamed by our lack of leadership and action when it comes
to dealing with global warming. I am baffled. The science is
irrefutable. The danger is real. Surely, this is the most
critical issue facing the world. This is bigger than
politics. This is about the world my children, your children
and their children will inherit.

Please go to Copenhagen in December. Take a stand. Take
action. Show leadership. Make us proud.

Sincerely,
Mary Jane Davidson
Roberts Creek, BC