bikes, tar sands, filibuster, food, GMO, coal, drugs

Fri Apr 4 09:47:19 EDT 2008

Commuters still love cars but bikes, buses gaining favour: StatsCan
April 2, 2008

<http://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html>CBC News

More and more Canadians climbed aboard their bikes and boarded buses and
subways to make their way to work, according to 2006 census data released
by Statistics Canada Wednesday.The federal agency also suggested there has
been a modest uptick in the number of Canadians who walk to work, that
younger workers are more likely to choose greener modes of transport than
their older counterparts.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2008/04/02/commute-statscan.html

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Commuters shift to car-free mode
Census figures show walking, cycling, taking public transit to work are
all on the increase

-- Bicycling among commuters aged 45-54 in Canada has DOUBLED in five
years. --

http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Census/article/409412

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Al Gore in an interview with Rolling Stone about the AB tar sands:

"For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough
natural gas to heat a family's home for four days. And they have to tear
up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts.
But you know, junkies find veins in their toes. It seems reasonable, to
them, because they've lost sight of the rest of their lives."

http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2006/07/oil_sands_produ.htm

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Crops, Cars & Climate Crisis
The Global Impacts of Growing Biofuels on Food, Farmers, and Human Rights

The corporate "agrofuels" gold-rush has ignited a major global conflict.
Governments across the world are committing to agrofuels as a part of
their energy strategies. But producing crops for fuel is already changing
world agriculture, with major consequences for people, ecosystems, and the
planet.

Whatever you call it - biofuel, biodiesel, agrofuel - fuel derived from
plants is touted as an important answer to the oil crisis and climate
change. Is it?
A six-city tour with speakers from Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Mali,
Mexico, Paraguay, the UK, the US, and the Philippines.

April 28 ˆ Charlottetown
April 28 ˆ Saskatoon
April 29 ˆ Halifax
April 29 ˆ Winnipeg
April 30 ˆ Ottawa
May 1 ˆ Montreal

For more Information visit
<http://www.cban.ca/agrofuels>www.cban.ca/agrofuels or 613.241.2267
Free admission. Everyone welcome.

Presented by: <http://www.cban.ca/>Canadian Biotechnology Action Network,
<http://www.etcgroup.org/en/>ETC Group, <http://www.interpares.ca/>Inter
Pares, <http://www.nfu.ca/>National Farmers Union,
<http://www.pacweb.org/>Partnership Africa Canada,
<http://www.ramshorn.ca/>The Ram's Horn, <http://www.usc-canada.org>USC
Canada, <http://www.beyondfactoryfarming.org/>Beyond Factory Farming,
<http://www.unionpaysanne.com/>Union Paysanne,
<http://www.ecologyaction.ca/food_action/food_action.shtm>Food Action
Committee - Ecology Action Centre Halifax, and P.E.I. Coalition for a
GMO-Free Province.

This event is made possible with the aid of a grant from the Canadian
International Development Agency.

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Groups charge Government with deceiving Canadians, World, about Plans for
Capturing Oil Sands Emissions

Environmental groups were stepping up their criticism of the federal
government’s communications strategy on climate change last week, saying a
new Pembina Institute analysis provides the details to prove just how far
from “tough” the government’s proposed regulations for large industry are.
  For example, in the last couple of weeks the government has claimed in
the House of Commons and in a formal submission to the United Nations that
it is “requiring” the oil sands to capture and store its carbon pollution.
 Pembina says the government’s approach is full of loopholes and
weaknesses, such as the fact that there is no actual “requirement” for
the oil sands at all, only a target that comes into effect in 2018 based
on an assumption of carbon storage.  How companies actually meet the
target is unspecified, leaving open current and future options that might
not produce real GHG reductions (e.g. paying into a technology fund).

News coverage:
<http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=f6d9ed61-44ba-411d-bac8-f64655283d61&k=84923>http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=f6d9ed61-44ba-411d-bac8-f64655283d61&k=84923

CAN press release:
<http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/news/2008/oil-loopholes-2008-03-27.html>http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/news/2008/oil-loopholes-2008-03-27.html

Pembina analysis:
<http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/resources/publications/member/reg-framework-update-03-2008.pdf>http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/resources/publications/member/reg-framework-update-03-2008.pdf

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Conservative MPs Continue Filibuster of the Climate Change Accountability
Act (Bill 377)

After a two week break, Conservative MPs resumed their filibuster of Bill
C377 on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.  Only a few hours are
needed to complete a clause-by-clause review before it can be handed back
to Parliament for further debate and passage.  Committee rules allow the
filibuster to continue indefinitely.

News story:
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080401.FILLIBUSTER01/TPStory/National>http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080401.FILLIBUSTER01/TPStory/National

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Canada Upholding Reputation as Climate Laggard at Bangkok Climate
Negotiations

UN negotiators are back at the table in Bangkok this week for the first
session under the “Bali Action Plan” agreed to last December in Bali,
Indonesia.  Unfortunately, Canada has already been singled out as the
world laggard: “There is at least one country where emissions are way off
track and the Canadian government has concluded that it is not going to
meet is Kyoto commitments," acknowledged UNFCCC Exec Secretary Yvo de
Boer.

News coverage:
<http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/195636,complex-climate-change-talks-convene-in-bangkok--summary.html>http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/195636,complex-climate-change-talks-convene-in-bangkok--summary.html

Follow Dale Marshall’s (David Suzuki Foundation) blog from negotiations:
<http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blog/>http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blog/

Get daily Climate Action Network coverage in ECO:
<http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco/bangkok-awgkp-awglca/200803%20eco%20awg-lca-1.pdf/view>http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco/bangkok-awgkp-awglca/200803%20eco%20awg-lca-1.pdf/view

Go straight to the source at UNFCCC:
<http://unfccc.int/meetings/intersessional/awg-lca_1_and_awg-kp_5/items/4288.php>http://unfccc.int/meetings/intersessional/awg-lca_1_and_awg-kp_5/items/4288.php

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Scarce food beginning to cost the Earth

FOOD prices are soaring as the world faces a food shortage.

Around the globe, people are protesting and governments are responding
with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports – a new
politics of scarcity as ensuring food supplies becomes a major challenge.

Plundered by severe weather in producing countries and by a boom in demand
from fast-developing nations, the world's wheat stocks are at 30-year
lows. Grain prices have been on the rise for five years, ending decades of
cheap food.

<http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/scarce-food-beginning-to-cost-the-earth/2008/04/01/1206850909562.html>http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/scarce-food-beginning-to-cost-the-earth/2008/04/01/1206850909562.html

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Worldwide food catastrophe not very far off; 'Solutions' are fueling shortage

It is the perfect storm: everything is going wrong at once. To begin with,
the world's population has continued to grow while its food production has
not. For the 50 years between 1945 and 1995, as the world's population
more than doubled, grain production kept pace - but then it stalled. In
six of the past seven years the human race has consumed more grain than it
grew. World grain reserves last year were only 57 days, down from 180 days
a decade ago.

To make matters worse, demand for food is growing faster than population.
As incomes rise in China, India and other countries with fast-growing
economies, consumers include more and more meat in their diet: the average
Chinese citizen now eats 50 kilos (110 pounds) of meat a year, up from 20
kilos (44 lbs) in the mid-1980s. Producing meat consumes enormous
quantities of grain.

Then there is global warming, which is probably already cutting into food
production. Many people in Australia, formerly the world's second-largest
wheat exporter, suspect that climate change is the real reason for the
prolonged drought that is destroying the country's ability to export food.

But the worst damage is being done by the rage for "bio-fuels" that
supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. (But
they don't, really - at least, not in their present form.) Thirty per cent
of this year's U.S. grain harvest will go straight to an ethanol
distillery and the European Union is aiming to provide 10 per cent of the
fuel used for transport from bio-fuels by 2010.

A huge amount of the world's farmland is being diverted to feed cars, not
people.

Worse yet, rainforest is being cleared, especially in Brazil and
Indonesia, to grow more bio-fuels. A recent study in the U.S. journal
Science calculated that destroying natural ecosystems to grow corn (maize,
mealies) or sugar cane for ethanol, or oil palms or soybeans for
bio-diesel, releases between 17 and 420 times more carbon dioxide than is
saved annually by burning the bio-fuel grown on that land instead of
fossil fuel. It's all justified in the name of fighting climate change,
but the numbers just don't add up. <snip>

http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=965741

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Small Farmer Wins Moral Victory over Monsanto

Percy Schmeiser has a check for $660 and a Right Livelihood Award to prove
that sometimes the little guy wins. In a modern version of the David vs.
Goliath story, a 77 year-old Saskatchewan farmer and his wife are now
considered folk heroes following settlement of their legal battle with
agribusiness giant Monsanto Canada Inc., after the company sued them for
patent violation of genetically engineered canola seeds in 1997.

http://www.naturalnews.com/022918.html

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April 2, 2008

THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR COAL
A Long Year in the Life of the U.S. Coal Industry

Lester R. Brown and Jonathan G. Dorn

With concerns about climate change mounting, the era of coal-fired
electricity generation in the United States may be coming to a close. In
early 2007, a U.S. Department of Energy report listed 151 coal-fired power
plants in the planning stages in the United States. But during 2007, 59
proposed plants were either refused licenses by state governments or
quietly abandoned. In addition, close to 50 coal plants are being
contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will likely be
challenged when they reach the permitting stage.

What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power plants
is quickly evolving into a national tidal wave of opposition from
environmental, health, farm, and community organizations as well as
leading climate scientists and state governments. Growing concern over
pending legislation to regulate carbon emissions is creating uncertainty
in
financial markets. Leading financial groups are now downgrading coal
stocks and requiring utilities seeking funding for coal plants to include
a cost
for carbon emissions when proving economic viability. <snip>

Full article:
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update70_timeline.htm

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by David Loy

Economics as Theology

It is intolerable that the most important issues about human livelihood
will be decided solely on the basis of profit for transnational
corporations.

In 1960 countries of the North were about twenty times richer than those
of the South. In 1990 -- after vast amounts of aid, trade, loans, and
catch-up industrialization by the South -- North countries had become
fifty times richer. The richest twenty percent of the world's population
now have an income about 150 times that of the poorest twenty percent, a
gap that continues to grow. According to the UN Development Report for
1996, the world's 358 billionaires are wealthier than the combined annual
income of countries with 45% of the world's people.

As a result, a quarter million children die of malnutrition or infection
every week, while hundreds of millions more survive in a limbo of hunger
and deteriorating health. . . . Why do we acquiesce in this social
injustice? What rationalization allows us to sleep peacefully at night?

The explanation lies largely in our embrace of a peculiarly European or
Western [but now global] religion, an individualistic religion of
economics and markets <snip>

Read full article here: http://www.religiousconsultation.org/loy.htm

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Here is a link to an on-line petition urging the Parliament of Canada
to develop a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to address
all drugs, including alcohol and the non-medical use of prescription
drugs, which includes prevention, harm reduction, treatment and
policing strategies.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/nonads/petition.html

The Canadian Harm Reduction Network

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