Gandhi, plastic bags, Alberta, war resisters, meat, lunar eclipse

[angela bischoff]

January 30, 2008

Today marks 60 years since Gandhi's death.  Let us all remember our
calling to be peacemakers.

"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. 
Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviour. 
Keep your behaviour positive because your behaviour becomes your habit. 
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values and
keep your values positive because your values become your destiny."

Long live Gandhi - Long live Peace

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"... if we did stop flying and shipping, took bicycles to work, cut
electricity use ... would it make a difference? Would we sidestep the
coming environmental catastrophe? We don't know. What we do know, though,
is that not to try would be immoral."
Wayne Grady http://www.thestar.com/SpecialSections/EarthHour/article/294689

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BATTLE OF THE BAG

Thursday January 31 at 9pm on CBC-TV &
Saturday February 2 at 10pm ET/PT  on CBC Newsworld

Plastic bags. Billions of the handy throwaway items are used around the
world every year. They take hundreds of years to biodegrade and have
sparked heated debates in cities from San Francisco to Mumbai.

This documentary gets a handle on the bag battle. From the big oil
employees who brought the bag to America - to the Nobel laureate fighting
for a bag ban - to the retired German schoolteacher who holds the world's
record for the most plastic bags, the film takes stock of this icon of
convenience culture.

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/index.html

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A licence to pollute dressed up in rhetorical petticoats
by Jeffrey Siimpson
Globe and Mail
January 26, 2008

Canada's conventional oil supplies are running down. They are being
replaced with oil from Alberta's tar sands.

Each barrel of tar-sands oil produces two to three times more
greenhouse-gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil. The result is
obvious: Greenhouse-gas emissions from Alberta oil have been rising.

Alberta's attitude toward its "large final emitters," including the tar
sands, has been a licence to pollute dressed up in rhetorical petticoats.
It so remains following Premier Ed Stelmach's scandalously weak update
this week of the province's climate change "strategy."

Oil company spokesmen hailed the Premier's announcement, and why not? It's
the most weak-kneed climate-change effort anywhere in the advanced
industrialized world.

Full article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080126.wcosimpson0126/BNStory/oilsands/feature-topic

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The War Resisters Support Campaign...

is a broad-based coalition of community, faith, labour and other
organizations and individuals that have come together to support U.S.
soldiers seeking asylum in Canada because they refuse to fight in the
illegal war in Iraq.

They are asking:
1) that deportation proceedings against U.S. war resisters currently in
Canada cease immediately; and
2) that a provision be enacted by Parliament ensuring that U.S. war
resisters refusing to fight in Iraq have a means to gain status in Canada.

To find out more, see http://resisters.ca/index_en.html
To write a letter or call your MP see http://resisters.ca/actions.html

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February 2nd is Canada’s National Energy Day of Action.  So how can you
help?  Send PM Harper a mitten!  To learn more:

<http://www.canadians.org/energy/action/toolkit/mitten.html>http://www.canadians.org/energy/action/toolkit/mitten.html

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Stelmach’s “Shockingly Irresponsible” Plan Will Allow Alberta’ GHG
Emissions to Climb for the Next 12 Years

Alberta’s oil patch is celebrating this week following Premier Ed
Stelmach’s release of a climate change plan that replaces the province’s
2002 version with an even weaker one.  Rather than reducing pollution, the
plan relies almost exclusively on carbon capture and storage technology,
it contains no targets for absolute emission reductions and GHG
stabilization will not occur until 2020 at the earliest.

Response from Pembina Institute:
<http://www.pembina.org/media-release/1576>http://www.pembina.org/media-release/1576

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Ed Stelmach Ditches Premiers’ on Day Two of Climate Summit

Premier Ed Stelmach took a pass on day two of the Premiers’ summit,
leaving the remaining Premiers, academics and others to figure out how to
make progress in dealing with the effects of climate change across Canada.

<http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/298132>http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/298132

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Rethinking the Meat Guzzler
by Mark Bittman, New York Times

A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for
granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a
part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It's meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by
the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand
as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher.
Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume
less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and
becomes increasingly visible.

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by
growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined
animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume
enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant
greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and
other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths
of the world’s tropical rain forests. <snip>

But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is
directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the
United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates
that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s
greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?ex=1202360400&en=b4f83161708b3b4d&ei=5070&emc=eta1

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A LUNAR ECLIPSE will occur on the evening of February 20, 2008 - the next
full moon. The period of totality is supposed to last from approximately
10 PM to 10:50 PM Eastern time.  (Adjust accordingly for your own time
zone).

Unlike solar eclipses, this phenomena can be safely observed with the
naked eye.

Let's hope for clear skies!

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