Letter to the editor of the Sun Times, a daily newspaper in Owen Sound, Ontario in reference to a column by Dennis Thomsett.

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand”~Bodie Thoene

After a full day promoting projects that strengthen communities and address the reality of our changing world, I finally had time to read the Sun Times. For the second time in a few weeks, I was surprised by the ignorance and depressing message that some of your writers are sending to our children.

Since I was young, while organizing environmental programs that caused me to win OSCVI’s Citizenship award, I knew that global warming, the greenhouse effect, and climate change, are real and accelerated by humans; we need to be responsible and turn this around. Since the 70s, climate change science has been strong, and now even our esteemed CBC no longer has discussions about the reality of the science because the only debate is how bad it will get and how fast.

I’ve always believed that by educating people, we can make our communities a better place for ourselves, other living creatures, and leave a legacy of a beautiful world for future generations.

Instead of sending powerful, positive community-building messages like this to your readership, your paper has been publishing some sad, uneducated, unscientific and destructive articles spreading misinformation about what the educated world knows is the reality of climate change. The March 10 column from Dennis Thompsett is just one sad and awful example, and if I were the publisher, I would never print another word from him. I could easily win any argument about the reality and seriousness of climate change with your misguided authors, but it’s a waste of time. No wonder people are comparing this type of ridiculous spin to the 70s argument that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.

“We can’t change anything important and we certainly can’t make much of a lasting difference on God’s green earth, for good or ill.” If this is the kind of message you want to send, then put your head in the sand, stay home and do nothing more destructive than you’ve already done. Maybe then those of us who care enough about the world can be allowed to create a brighter future for our grandchildren without that kind of interference and negativity. Making more money selling controversial content should not be more important than ethics, truth and good journalism.

My 13-year-old daughter Corrina has spoken about addressing climate change to over 25,000 people around the province, will be receiving one of the Ontario Junior Citizens of the Year Awards from the Lieutenant Governor, and will be speaking on Earth Week to over 5500 students. Most people would want her to feel empowered, to know she is making a difference, but not Dennis. She read the article, and her response was: “He probably still smokes too.”

I find it extremely sad that your publishers, editors and writers are promoting disempowerment and taking so lightly the future of our planet. What is the world coming to?

Bill McKibben, the organizer of the fabulous international movement 350.org of International Day of Action on Climate Change fame, has written a great article called: Climate change skeptics present their case too well. In it, he talks about how the science showing the human causes of climate change are varied and solid, but the deniers have been able to create more doubt in people's minds. James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore wrote a great book called Climate Cover Up: the Crusade to Deny Global Warming and have shown how the spin doctors have shifted the debate from how bad global warming is to whether it is real.

It's really too bad that all our citizens don't  read enough to really understand these important issues: we could save our world if we all took the time to educate ourselves enough to make informed decisions and act accordingly.

WWF has a great blog Miracle in your pocket by Zoë Caron (co-author of Global Warming for Dummies with Elizabeth May): It seems that iPhone has come out with another application that makes me drool, this one from Skeptical Science (getting skeptical about global warming skepticism).  It allows you to look at the main arguments from the denier camp and shares the real science in an easy, accessible way. They're asking people to download it and give them feedback, so the next version will be even better!

Maybe now my husband will give in and let me buy an iPhone! Maybe if I beg? Say it's for ClimateSphere (of course I might enjoy it a little)? Please, if I can help to save the world?

I read a lot of books about a lot of stuff, especially environment and climate change issues. From time to time, I share quotes from those books, but not usually as long as the extract you are about to read. Joe Laur (an author himself – check out this must read book for business, only one of his pieces of work) suggested I read Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand. At the time of this writing I am only a few pages into it, but the following excerpt struck me as a bit of a revelation with respect to the need for change, and quite frankly, the economic opportunity that lies ahead in being part of the change. The following is copied from Chapter 1 entitled Scale, Scope, Stakes and Speed:

“It is not accurate to say, “We can stop climate change.’ We are now working to stop worse climate change or much-worse-than-worse climate change.”

The most common statement of an achievable goal for dealing with climate change these days is levelling off at 450 ppm (ppm) of CO₂ in the atmosphere, so Griffith build his analysis around that outcome. We are currently at about 387 ppm and rising fast – each year it goes up more than 2 ppm. Griffith reminds everyone that the hope with the 450 ppm goal is that it will involve a global temperature rise of only 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and that is expected to mean “large loss of species, more severe storms, floods and droughts, refugees from sea level rise, and other unpalatable, expensive and inhumane consequences.”

A convenient measure of energy generation is the gigawatt: a billion watts. A large cola fired plant generates a gigawatt of electricity in a year; so does the Hoover Dam, so does a nuclear reactor. Multiply that times a thousand, and you have a terawatt – a trillion watts. Humanity currently runs on about 16 terawatts of power, most of it from the burning of fossil fuels. It’s like leaving 160 billion 100-watt light bulbs on all of the time. That’s what is loading the atmosphere with lethal quantities of carbon dioxide.

Griffith calculates that, in order to keep the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ at no more than 450 ppm, humanity has to do something that is almost unimaginably difficult. We have to cut our fossil fuel use to around 3 terawatts a year, which means we have to produce all the rest of our power from non-fossil-fuel sources, and we have to do it in about twenty-five years or it will be too late to level off at 450 ppm.

So, Griffith says, “Imagine someone said you need 2 terawatts of wind, 2 terawatts of photovoltaic solar, 2 terawatts of solar thermal, 2 terawatts of geothermal, 2 terawatts of biofuel and 3 terawatts of nuclear to give you 13 new clean terawatts. You add the existing 1.5 terawatts of biofuel and nuclear that we already use. You can also get 3 terawatts from coal and oil. That would give humanity about 17.5 terawatts – that allows for a little growth over the 16 terawatts we currently use. What would it take to do all of that in 25 years?”

Here’s the answer: “Two terawatts of photovoltaic would require installing 100 square metres of 15% efficient solar cells every second, second after second, for the next 35 years. (That’s about 1,200 square miles of solar cells a year, times 25 equals 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic cells – about the size of South Carolina). Two terawatts of solar thermal? If it’s 30% efficient all told, we’ll need 50 square metres of highly reflective mirrors every second (some 600 square miles per year). Two terawatts of biofuels? Something like 4 Olympic swimming pools of genetically engineered algae, installed every second. (about 61,000 square miles per year, times 25 = over 5 times the size of Texas). Two terawatts of wind? That’s a 300 foot diameter wind turbine every 5 minutes (Install 105,000 turbines a year in good wind locations, times 25). Two terawatts of geothermal? Build three 100-megawatt steam turbines every day – 1,095 a year, times 25. Three terawatts of new nuclear? That’s a 3-reactor, 3-gigawatt plant every week – 52 a year, times 25.”

Add it up, and when you’re done, you’ve got an area about the size of America – “Call it Renewistan,” says Griffith – covered with stuff dedicated to generating humanity’s energy. That’s not counting transmission lines, energy storage, materials, and support infrastructure, plus the costs of shutting down all of the coal plants, oil refineries, etc. I asked Saul Griffith if he thinks we can really do it. “Technically,” he said, “it is possible. Industrially, humanity has the collective capacity. But politically, I don’t see how.” Then he added, “But we have to try. Why else bother to be a human and be in this game?”

End of excerpt.

That is a lot of change that is needed. We can all play a role by being more energy efficient. We can all play a role by exploring renewable energy for our homes. We can all play a role by encouraging our politicians to develop policies that make renewable energy a reality for homeowners, small business, large business, renewable energy research and development and renewable energy investment at the utility level.

What can you do today?

Automatic door openers are in buildings everywhere these days, helping provide access to people with mobility challenges.  But their popularity has led to an unintended side effect: many people with no mobility issues have gotten into the comfortable habit of pressing the button too.

Automatic openers use electricity, and they often hold exterior doors open long enough for a lot of heat to escape.

So to save a bit of electricity and heat, why not leave automatic door openers for those who really need them, and , if you can, open doors the old-fashioned way.

In the News

What are the TOP 10 environmental moments of the past decade?  Here they are, according to CNN.  The last two sentences of number 8 will likely surprise you.

Who - or what - came out on top in Copenhagen last month, and who - or what - lost out?

Many articles have been, and will be written about the results, or lack thereof, from the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change. My comments are from the perspective of a Canadian concerned about the future of the planet and the future of our domestic economy.

First of all, I am concerned about the outcome of the conference, but not surprised. There are numerous competing positions on how to deal with the climate crisis and to think it could all be solved in a couple of weeks may be naïve. That said, after years of analysis and pre-negotiations, you would think they would have accomplished more. Let’s hope something concrete happens in the next few months towards agreements on numbers by the end of 2010.

Now back to Canada.

Have you noticed Barack Obama’s messaging around the climate crisis – “this is an opportunity to transform the American economy to that of a world leader in clean and renewable energy technology.”  Leadership.

The renewable energy sector in Germany is projected to pass their automotive sector in total employment by 2011. People are still buying BMW’s, Porsche’s, Audi’s and VW’s around the world – good on ‘em. Leadership.

And Canada?

If Stephen Harper was Henry Ford, he would have quit at the Model A. If he was IBM, he would have quit at the 1 MB Ram, 10 MB hard-drive PC. If he was Bill Gates, he still wouldn’t believe the Internet was going to have the value and job creation impact that it had over the last decade.

As a Canadian, I am concerned for two reasons.

Number one. I am concerned that our Minister of Environment states that we represent just ‘2% of global emissions’. Yes, but our once proud international moral compass can leverage well beyond that 2% in influence. How many other countries may say now – ‘well Canada isn’t taking action, so why should we?’

Number two. Stephen Harper’s obvious greater concern for his political future (i.e. getting re-elected) greatly trumps his concern for the future economic strength of our country. Investing in renewable energy technology, such as wind, solar and biomass, or in green transportation, such as the electrification of vehicles, will result in growing economic prosperity for the next few decades.

And, just as importantly, this prosperity can be shared throughout the country, not just in Alberta. Hat’s off to Dalton McGuinty for showing some leadership in Ontario. Green technology means jobs. Period.

Any economist should be able to figure that out.

  Members of Avaaz and the Climate Action Network International gave Canada the Colossal Fossil award in Copenhagen today. Stephen Harper was snubbed by Obama, was one of the only leaders to not address the assembly (Jim Prentice spoke for him), and overall, Canada has had another international PR disaster. George Monbiot said "Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling." 

  Maybe we need a national movement like was so effective in BC with the Voters Taking Action on Climate Change campaign, where people, regardless of political stripe, posted signs on their lawn showing that climate change is a voting issue.

  I also can't figure out why environmental activists are generally shown negatively in the media, while some politicians like Bill Murdock and Randy Hillier are lauded for getting banned from parliament over the HST.

  Desmond Tutu was positive: "They marched in Berlin and the wall fell. They marched in Cape Town and apartheid fell. They march in Copenhagen, and we are going to get a real deal," speaking at a rally for climate change in Copenhagen.

  But just today, the 2010 deadline for reaching a legally binding climate treaty has been dropped. We need change at the grassroots level that is parallel to the government.

   With COP15  in Copenhagen  in its final stages, many important ideas are being discussed, and I want to touch on a few here.

    Al Gore and Gro Harlem Brundtland (who released the landmark 1987 Brundtland report) were in Copenhagen to lend their strong voices to the discussion and announce the release of the report: Greenland Ice Sheet – Melting Snow and Ice: Calls for Action. The world-renowned scientist Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Stoere, and Greenland Premier Kuupik Kleist were among the other prominent presenters. Mr. Gore was reported by the Guardian to have announced that Mexico was prepared to host a deal-making summit.

   The best synopsis of the presentations that I've found is on Michael Cote's blog, where he says: "Ms. Dahl-Jensen’s take home message is recognition that we have awoken the giants.  The Greenland and Artic ice sheets are literally melting in front of our eyes (she shows a dramatic 3 minute video documenting this); second, SLR is accelerating beyond anything imaginable.  The IPCC AP4 report was relatively modest in its predictions; and third, (voice cracking) the scientists who wrote the paper are calling for nations to act now."

   If you have time, please read Michael's blog so you can get up to date on the latest on Greenland's ice melting and what the heavyweights are up to in Copenhagen.

   You may also want to check out Newsweek's article about Mr. Gore: Evolution of an Eco-Prophet. One of the things he's suggesting would be really helpful for farmers: paying farmers to use soil as a carbon sink.

   He writes that soils could sequester an additional 15 percent of annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. That could cut 50 parts per million of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 50 years. (We are now at 387, up from 280 before the industrial era, with 450 ppm or even less a dangerous level.) To encourage changes in agriculture that would foster carbon sequestration, Gore advocates moving away from price supports and toward paying farmers for "how much carbon they can put into and keep in their soil," he says. Paying farmers to sequester carbon might jump-start the use of biochar, which Gore calls "one of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils, and sequestering significant amounts of CO2."

   Yesterday, Corrina and I also participated with youth around the world in Mass Dialogues, a discussion amongst youth from around the world organized by David Noble from 2degreesC and Moussa Sinon from Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Sadly, they've had to cancel today's discussion due to limited accessibility to and protests outside of the Bella Centre, the site of the climate negotiations and the mass dialogues. We enjoyed hearing live from Copenhagen what is happening, and it's a treat to be able to ask questions and get them answered.

   I can't wait for the internet ClimateTV channel that Peter, Nick & I have been working on to go live in a few weeks! (We'll fill you in soon!)

   The times they are-a-changin'...it's time for us to change!