1
 Canadians for Action on Climate Change Change
the system not the climate
2

• Canadians for Action on Climate Change
• Governments key role is to serve as the trustee
  of the commonwealth and the common health for
  this and future generations.  Yet
• Canada now stands out as one of the last major
  industrialized countries opposed to targets for
  deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and
  one of the biggest blockers of climate change
  negotiations.
• Canadians for Action on Climate Change is a
  developing non-profit NGO of activists, academia,
  physicians and citizens focusing on climate
  change, true cost economy and relocalization. Our
  organization seeks to provide news, reports and
  analysis to inform, educate and develop
  environmental policies for all levels of
  government in Canada.  We are committed to being
  part of an international movement against
  destruction of our shared environment.  Our
  current economy is unsustainable and an unethical
  catalyst to ever increasing global warming. This
  model assumes endless growth and limitless
  potential wealth that completely disregards the
  fact that the earths life support capacity is
  finite.  We respect the integrity, resilience,
  and beauty of the common wealth of all life as
  the foundation for a new sustainable economic
  model for our finite planet that will benefit
  generations to come.
• You can contact us at canadianclimateaction_at_gmail
  .com
• http//canadianclimateaction.wordpress.com/

3
As the Coral Triangle Group calls for 50
emissions reductions by 2015, Bolivia calls for
49 and the Small Island States for a minimum of
45 - both by 2020 all based on 1990
baselines. The following are the commitments
that are now being broadly announced.  All
designed around different baselines in order to
confuse the public.  Lets look at 5 countries
to start - India, China, US, Canada the EU.
4

• World on course for catastrophic 6 rise, reveal
  scientists November 18th, 2009
• The world is now firmly on course for the
  worst-case scenario in terms of climate change,
  with average global temperatures rising by up to
  6C by the end of the century, leading scientists
  said yesterday. Such a rise which would be much
  higher nearer the poles would have cataclysmic
  and irreversible consequences for the Earth,
  making large parts of the planet uninhabitable
  and threatening the basis of human civilisation.
• We are headed for it, the scientists said,
  because the carbon dioxide emissions from
  industry, transport and deforestation which are
  responsible for warming the atmosphere have
  increased dramatically since 2002, in a way which
  no one anticipated, and are now running at treble
  the annual rate of the 1990s.
• This means that the most extreme scenario
  envisaged in the last report from the UN
  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
  published in 2007, is now the one for which
  society is set, according to the 31 researchers
  from seven countries involved in the Global
  Carbon Project.
• Although the 6C rise and its potential
  disastrous effects have been speculated upon
  before, this is the first time that scientists
  have said that society is now on a path to meet
  it. http//www.independent.co.uk/environment/clima
  te-change/world-on-course-for-catastrophic-6deg-ri
  se-reveal-scientists-1822396.html

5

• Copenhagen will formalize a great global suicide
  pact.  We are cutting our own throats so that the
  banks and fossil fuel corporations can drain the
  last drop of blood out of humanity and our living
  Earth.  We are witnessing the ultimate
  unimaginable evil - the predatory free (of
  ethics) market economy that is starving more than
  half the world alive today and future generations
  to death.
• Targets are useless if we don't have a real way
  to meet them.  One of the only measures that can
  save humanity now (in our current monetary
  system) is a global pollution tax / a straight up
  carbon tax which a critical tax which is being
  kept off of the agenda.  No trading no selling
  no profiting just taxing carbon to death
  (literally).

6

• India announces 24 emission intensity
  reductions from 2005 baseline by 2020
• IN REALITY THIS MEANS
• Percentage relative to 1990 34.2
• Percentage relative to 1994 35.5
• Percentage relative to 2000  -8.6
• Percentage relative to 1005 -24.0
• Percentage relative to 2020 -61.2

7

• China announces 40 emission intensity
  reductions from 2005 baseline
• IN REALITY THIS MEANS
• Percentage relative to 1990 38.0
• Percentage relative to 1994 19.6
• Percentage relative to 2000  -8.5
• Percentage relative to 2005 -40.0
• Percentage relative to 2020 -58.2

8

• Even if China succeeds in improving carbon
  intensity, Chinese greenhouse gas emissions will
  continue to grow for some time, as the Chinese
  economy itself will be growing. It's not clear
  from the pledge how large China's emissions will
  be by 2020, but if the country's economy
  continues to grow at its typical 8 to 12 annual
  rate, its carbon emissions could nearly double
  between now and then.

9

• Carbon intensity targets are like CCS Carbon
  Capture Storage a greenwash for the public that
  looks like action but really is to continue
  business as usual. Increased economic growth and
  corporate output ensure that any reductions will
  be subsumed by expanding operations. We all know
  that nature doesnt care about emissions
  intensities. The absolute concentration of
  greenhouse gases is what will determine the
  severity of the climate crisis.  Once we pass
  irreversible tipping points there is no going
  back.

10

• US announces 17 emission reductions from 2005
  baseline by 2020
• IN REALITY THIS MEANS
• Percentage relative to 1990 -3.4
• Percentage relative to 1994 -7.8
• Percentage relative to 2000  -15.7
• Percentage relative to 2005  -17.
• Percentage relative to 2007 -17.3
• Percentage relative to 2020 -15.7
• John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam
  Institute for Climate Impact Research Most
  recently, Schellnhuber told the 4 degrees and
  beyond conference in Oxford Political reality
  must be grounded in physical reality or its
  completely useless. Schellnhuber recently
  briefed U.S. officials from the Barack Obama
  administration he states that they chided him
  that his findings were not grounded in political
  reality and that the U.S. Senate will never
  agree to this.  Schellnhuber told them that the
  U.S. must reduce its emissions from its current
  20 tonnes of carbon per person average to zero
  tonnes per person by 2020 to have an even chance
  of stabilising the climate around two degrees C.

11

• Canada announces 20 emission reductions from
  2006 baseline by 2020 (I had to use 2005 as a
  baseline as 2006 stats were not available)
• IN REALITY THIS MEANS
• Percentage relative to 1990 -1.2
• Percentage relative to 1994 -6.2
• Percentage relative to 2000  -18.5
• Percentage relative to 2005  -17.
• Percentage relative to 2007 -21.7
• Percentage relative to 2020 -23.6

12

• EU announces 20 emission reductions from 2006
  baseline by 2020 (I had to use 2005 as a
  baseline as 2006 stats were not available)
• IN REALITY THIS MEANS
• Percentage relative to 1990 -20.0
• Percentage relative to 1994 -13.7
• Percentage relative to 2000  -11.8
• Percentage relative to 2005  -12.8
• Percentage relative to 2007 -11.7
• Percentage relative to 2020 -4.6

13

• Cutting carbon intensity was George Bushs
  proposal for tackling climate change. The
  minority Harper government followed.  In Canada,
  industry and government alike have championed
  carbon intensity targets instead of placing
  absolute caps on emissions to mitigate the
  climate change impact of extracting oil from tar
  sands. This is simply a greenwash.
• Carbon intensity targets merely distract from
  the reality that tar sands should be shut down.
  Because they are the dirtiest and most
  destructive energy source on the planet, carbon
  intensity targets are meaningless in the face of
  plans to triple production between now and 2020.
  If Canada was serious about climate change, it
  would leave the tar sands in the ground and
  invest in true renewables.

14

• Agriculture Collapsing
• 6382 cut in US crop yields for temperature
  alone !
• Wolfram Schlenker and Michael J. Roberts
  Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe
  damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change
  PNAS 2009 10615594-15598 published online
  before print August 28, 2009, doi10.1073/pnas.090
  6865106
• Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe
  damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change

15

• The United States produces 41 of the world's
  corn and 38 of the world's soybeans. These crops
  comprise two of the four largest sources of
  caloric energy produced and are thus critical for
  world food supply.
• We pair a panel of county-level yields for these
  two crops, plus cotton (a warmer-weather crop),
  with a new fine-scale weather dataset that
  incorporates the whole distribution of
  temperatures within each day and across all days
  in the growing season. We find that yields
  increase with temperature up to 29 C for corn,
  30 C for soybeans, and 32 C for cotton but that
  temperatures above these thresholds are very
  harmful.
• The slope of the decline above the optimum is
  significantly steeper than the incline below it.
  The same nonlinear and asymmetric relationship is
  found when we isolate either time-series or
  cross-sectional variations in temperatures and
  yields. This suggests limited historical
  adaptation of seed varieties or management
  practices to warmer temperatures because the
  cross-section includes farmers' adaptations to
  warmer climates and the time-series does not.
  Holding current growing regions fixed,
  area-weighted average yields are predicted to
  decrease by 3046 before the end of the century
  under the slowest (B1) warming scenario and
  decrease by 6382 under the most rapid warming
  scenario (A1FI) under the Hadley III model.

16

• The only science that is recognized for
  Copenhagen 2009 is IPCC 07 AR4 on science up to
  the year 2006. While this is insane - there has
  been no objection made to this.  The most
  compelling science on ever accelerating climate
  change is all most recent. However - the torrent
  of scientific data to emerge since IPPC 07 has
  led many scientists to sound the alarms.

17

• http//www.planetdiet.org/pdf/Slideshow_Climate2
  0Change20and20Livestock20Farming-opt.pdf
• The greatest single opportunity for reducing
  emissions and retaining carbon is the reform of
  global food production. Food production is the
  largest source of GHG emissions and so must be
  addresses as a priority.
• We need a conversion of all fossil fuel
  subsidies to organic agro forestry that does not
  raise livestock for slaughter.

18

• METHANE
• Livestock causes over 50 of global warming GHG
  emissions according to a the just published
  Worldwatch paper. This huge increase in past
  estimates is because the IPCC underestimates the
  warming effect of methane by stretching it out
  over 100 years. This is future discounting of
  methane's warming and is not scientific.
• World watch used a 20 year IPCC number of 72 X
  CO2.
• http//www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock20an
  d20Climate20Change.pdf
• While the IPC uses a global warming potential for
  methane of 25 X CO2
• (CO2 being 1) the actual global warming effect of
  methane emissions that last 12 years in the
  atmosphere is close to 100.
• http//fixtheclimate.com/component-1/the-solutions
  -new-research/methane/
• Research (not related to above) published this
  month by Drew Shindell increases methane warming
  by another 40.
• http//www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eart
  h-environment/article6895907.ece

19

• Main methane sources include livestock
  landfills.  We can stop both of these.
• A global transition from the livestock industry
  to plant agriculture will stop the main cause of
  deforestation (80) therefore will drastically
  reduce CO2 emissions.
• A plant based diet would be a catalyst to
  immense benefits in human health.  We would see a
  immediate, steep decline in a health care crisis
  we currently face in developed / developing
  countries. (obesity, heart disease, diabetes,
  etc.)

20

• The IPCC makes no recommendations - as Rajendra
  Pachauri, (Chairman of IPCC) confirmed in a
  recent public statement on 350 ppm1.
• This means that Copenhagen has no formal
  recommendations from the IPCC. The IPCC states
  that the only policy recommendations can come
  from policy makers.
• 1 As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel
  on Climate Change, I cannot take a position
  because we do not make recommendations, said
  Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported
  calls to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide
  concentrations below 350 ppm.  But as a human
  being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is
  happening, and what is likely to happen,
  convinces me that the world must be really
  ambitious and very determined at moving toward a
  350 target, http//www.grist.org/article/2009-08-
  25-pachauri-call-for-350-breakthrough-moment-for-c
  limate-movement/

21

• The IPCC states it cannot define or declare what
  dangerous interference is1. 
• 1 Indeed, the 2007 IPCC report never mentions
  the word "dangerous," apparently substituting the
  term "reasons for concern." The IPCC itself does
  not define a level at which climate change
  becomes "dangerous."http//www.climate-change-emer
  gency-medical-response.org/defining-dangerous-clim
  ate-change.html

22

• The Copenhagen Science Congress which is fully
  aware of the post IPCC science still states it
  cannot declare what dangerous interference is. 
  They state that only 'society' can decide1.
• 1 It is crucial that in Copenhagen in December
  2009 governments from across the world reach
  agreement on tackling the challenge of climate
  change on a collective basis. The United Nations
  Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
  has as its central objective actions to avoid a
  level of human interference with the earth's
  climate system that could be termed as dangerous.
  Yet, after 17 years of agreement on this
  Convention the world has still not agreed on what
  would constitute a dangerous level of
  anthropogenic interference. http//blog.rkpachaur
  i.org/blog/13/Why-Copenhagen-is-important-for-the-
  future-of-human-civilization.htm

23

• The IPCC mitigation calculations that are being
  referred to by all countries, have omitted the
  additional warming from all carbon feedbacks
  which is beyond dangerous.1
• 1 Cf. Annex 1 p. 31

24

• It is no measure of health to be well
• adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
• Jiddu Krishnamurti

25

• APATHY THE CANCER OF OUIR SOCIETY
• We are now at a crossroads.  Some citizens have
  such a deep sense of entitlement that they
  actually fight for their right to harm our
  shared environment.  Such individuals are so
  disconnected from nature that they do not
  understand that their perceived right to
  pollute and degrade our shared environment is at
  the expense of not only their own health, but the
  health and welfare of their own children and the
  people they love.  Such perceived rights and
  senses of entitlement are the root cause of
  climate change which now kills 300,000 people per
  year. 

26

• Late 2008 Hadley Centre (UK) researchers
  announced new calculations that suggest a rise of
  up to 7 ºC by 2100. And in early in 2009, so did
  MIT.
• If these projected potential increases occur,
  climate extremes will render the planet UNLIVABLE
  for most life by around 6 ºC (or less) which,
  incredibly, could become a reality BEFORE THE END
  OF THIS CENTURY.

27

• In short, the fate of perhaps the next
  100 billion people to walk the Earth rests with
  scientists (and those who understand the science)
  trying to communicate the dire nature of the
  climate problem (and the myriad solutions
  available now) as well as the ability of the
  media, the public, opinion-makers and political
  leaders to understand and deal with that science.
• Two additional papers were published by Nature
  in April 2009. While governments and the United
  Nations set targets for cuts by a certain date,
  this science measured something quite different.
  It measured the total volume of carbon dioxide we
  can produce while still standing a good chance of
  avoiding more than two degrees of warming.

28

• The obvious conclusions from these three papers
  are glaring. Firstly - The trajectory of cuts is
  more important than the final destination. An 80
  cut by 2050, for example, could produce very
  different outcomes. If much of the cut were made
  towards the beginning of the period, the total
  emissions entering the atmosphere would be much
  smaller than if most of the cut were made at the
  end of the period. Secondly - The measure that
  counts is the peak atmospheric concentration.
  This means that emissions must down to zero, as
  soon as possible. Why would any rational person
  wait until 2015 to hit peak emissions?

29

• This means that what the governments hoped about
  the trajectory of temperature change are
  ill-founded. Most, including Canadas, are
  working on the assumption that we can overshoot
  the desired targets for temperature and
  atmospheric concentrations of CO2, then watch
  them settle back later.
• What this science shows - is that wherever
  temperatures peak, that is more or less where
  they will stay. There is no going back.

30

• Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the
  December climate conference in Copenhagen is
  being set up to fail.  There is thus far no
  mention of the need to achieve virtual zero CO2
  emissions as quickly as possible and there is an
  ongoing denial that the world has reached a state
  of emergency beyond the point of dangerous
  interference with the climate system that
  threatens the ability of vulnerable populations
  (e.g. children, not even mentioned), future
  generations and most other life to survive.

31

• None of this is currently on the table. The
  targets and methodology being used by governments
  and the United Nations - which will form the
  basis for their negotiations at Copenhagen - are
  not even wrong they are irrelevant.
• If we do not set the record right on dangerous
  interference now it never will be corrected and
  there will be no hope for the future.  Time is
  not on our side. We are rapidly shifting the
  composition of the atmosphere, raising levels of
  carbon dioxide higher than theyve been in at
  least the past 800,000 years.

32

• Climate scientists have discovered a
  particularly inconvenient truth by the time
  definitive predictions of climate change are
  adopted by scientific consensus, the climate
  system may have reached a tipping point at which
  climate change begins to feed on itselfand
  becomes essentially irreversible for centuries
  into the future. The trajectory of current
  melting plummets through the IPCC graphs like
  giant meteorites falling to earth. As the ice
  disappears, the region becomes darker, which
  means that it absorbs more heat. White ice and
  snow reflect 80 percent of sunlight back to
  space, while dark water reflects only 20 percent,
  absorbing a much larger heat load. A recent paper
  published in Geophysical Research Letters1
  shows that the extra warming caused by
  disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland,
  covering almost the entire region of continuous
  permafrost.

33

• Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon
  as the entire global atmosphere. It remains safe
  for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the
  melting has begun. Methane gushers are now
  gassing out of some places with such force that
  they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through
  the winter.2 The rapidly melting permafrost is
  unleashing methane chimneys from the ocean floor
  along the Russian coastline. Methane is a
  greenhouse gas 25 times more toxic than carbon
  dioxide.
• 1 Lawrence David M., Slater Andrew G. Tomas
  Robert A., Holland Marika M., Deser Clara,
  Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost
  degradation during rapid sea ice loss,
  Geophysical Research Letters, June 2008.
  http//www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL033985
  .shtml
• 2 Methane Gas and Arctic permafrost
  http//www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment
  /arctic-gas-leak-time-bomb-discovered-13980581.htm
  lixzz0TdluA5SX

34

• The effects of melting permafrost are not
  incorporated into any global climate models.
  Runaway warming in the Arctic alone could flip
  the entire planet into a new climatic state. The
  Middle Climate could collapse faster and sooner
  than the grimmest forecasts proposed.
• September 2008 - The first evidence that
  millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times
  more potent than carbon dioxide is being released
  into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic
  seabed has been discovered by scientists.1
• The Arctic permafrost holds more carbon in its
  frozen soil than is currently in the entire
  atmosphere today that being 1672 BILLION TONNES.
• 1 Methane Gas and Arctic permafrost
  http//www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-c
  hange/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html
  / http//www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hundre
  ds-of-methane-plumes-discovered-941456.html

35

• August 2009 - Arctic sea ice thickness down 53
  percent1 - Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere
  program manager, added "A fantastic change is
  happening on Earth -- it's truly one of the
  biggest changes in environmental conditions on
  Earth since the end of the ice age. It's not an
  easy thing to observe, let alone predict what
  might happen next."2
• 1 Arctic sea Ice thickness United
  International press, September 2009
  http//www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/09/02/Arctic-
  sea-ice-thickness-down-53-percent/UPI-801812518991
  05/
• 2 Arctic Sea Ice thickness http//canadianclima
  teaction.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/arctic-sea-ice-t
  hickness-down-53-percent/

36

• The Arctic summer sea ice is now expected to
  melt entirely within the next five years 80
  years earlier than predicted in the 2007 IPCC
  report.1
• 1 IPCC, Observations change in snow, ice and
  frozen ground, Fourth Assessment Report, 2007
• http//ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_C
  h04.pdf

37

• Fact - as you read this, global average
  temperature is already higher than at any time
  over the last 2 MILLION YEARS.

38

• We must HALT man made greenhouse gas emissions
  to as near to ZERO (virtual 100, also stated in
  the 2007 IPCC report) as fast as possible through
  conservation and carbon rationing.

39

• Scientist Bill Hare has had the scientific and
  human integrity to say this many more
  scientists are now starting to speak out. (Mr.
  Hare is with Germanys Potsdam Institute and a
  Lead Author for the IPCCs Climate Change 2007).
• It has been determined that only zero carbon
  emissions can bring about a reduction in
  atmospheric carbon concentrations. However, we
  know at present time it is technically impossible
  to achieve this therefore we need to set
  ourselves on the pathway that will get us there
  as fast and effectively as possible.

40

• Only two scientists have stated publicly we are
  now beyond dangerous interference - John Holdren
  and James Hansen. The Climate Action Network FCCC
  (Framework Convention on Climate Change)
  submission does not state we are beyond
  dangerous. We need more scientists to state this
  position if we are to influence the political
  realm.
• Copenhagen assumes dangerous climate
  interference is some time in the future.

41

• Speaking at the Kennedy School of Government on
  November 6, 2007, Dr. Holdren stated the
  disruption and its impacts have grown more widely
  than anyone ever expected a few years ago.
• The world is already experiencing dangerous
  anthropogenic interference in the climate
  system. The question now is whether we can avoid
  catastrophic interference.

42

• James Hansen Invited to testify before the
  United States Congress, in June of 2007, the
  chief climatologist of NASA declared Special
  interests have blocked transition to our
  renewable energy future. Instead of moving
  heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies
  choose to spread doubt about global warming, as
  tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer
  link. CEOs of fossil energy companies know what
  they are doing and are aware of long-term
  consequences of continued business as usual. In
  my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high
  crimes against humanity and nature. Putting
  profits and super-profits before the climate the
  scandal is enormous.

43

• Speaking in Washington on the twentieth
  anniversary of his historic testimony, James
  Hansen had a sharp warning for policymakers If
  we dont begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
  in the next several years, and get on a very
  different course, then we are in trouble....This
  is the last chance.

44

• If we are to RACE BACK TO a 'safe' climate
  balance of not more than 1 ºC -- FAST (Bill
  Hare, Worldwatch Institute, State of World 2009,
  Chapter 2), the world community must peak
  emissions as soon as possible, rapidly reduce to
  virtual ZERO emissions, AND REMOVE much of the
  carbon from the atmosphere that has already been
  released.

45

• John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam
  Institute for Climate Impact Research
• Policymakers who agreed to a two-degree C goal
  at the G20 summit easily fool themselves about
  what emission cuts are needed, Schellnhuber
  said. Even with a two-degree rise, most of the
  worlds coral reefs will be lost, large portions
  of the ocean will become dead zones, mountain
  glaciers will largely vanish and many other
  ecosystems will be at risk, Schellnhuber warned.
  And there is the risk of reaching a tipping point
  where the warming rapidly accelerates.
• 1 Climate Code Red  http//climatecodered.blog
  spot.com/2009/10/4-degree-world.html
• Margot Oneill, Countdown to Copenhagen, ABC
  news, 2009 http//blogs.abc.net.au/events/2009/10/
  taking-the-temperature-of-our-climate-scientists-p
  art-1.html

46

• Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at
  University of Oxfords Atmospheric, Oceanic and
  Planetary Physics Department The climate
  negotiators heading to Copenhagen in December
  must accept the fact that the worlds carbon
  emissions must eventually stop and stop
  completely. There is no sustainable per capita
  carbon emission level because it is the total
  amount of carbon emitted that counts. Carbon
  dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many
  centuries, which makes it the most important
  greenhouse gas to reduce and eliminate. The
  current focus on CO2 concentrations like 450 ppm
  or 350 ppm is the not the right approach since it
  is the total cumulative emissions that determine
  how warm the planet will get. If climate
  negotiators only look at slowing rates of carbon
  emissions, then natural gas will be substituted
  for coal because it has half of the carbon but
  the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere will
  continue to increase.

47

• Researchers say that global temperature is
  likely to rise more than 3.5C even if every
  country enacts all climate legislation promised
  to date.

48

• The EU has long stated that 2C is 'not safe',
  and that 2C 'does not exclude runaway climate
  change, it minimizes it'.
• - 2ºC is now insane because we have Arctic
  carbon feedback from both permafrost and methane
  hydrates at today's 0.78ºC. Permafrost is now
  estimated to contain 2 times atmospheric carbon.

49

• At todays 0.78ºC we also have Arctic summer ice
  meltdown, which will add up to another 2C to
  heating by 2100.
• At todays 0.78ºC we have most all planetary
  ice masses melting at an accelerating rate.
• At todays 0.78ºC we have all of Antarctica
  warming.
• The term Dangerous climate interference is
  agreed to mean a safe concentration of
  atmospheric GHGases (UN FCCC secretariat).

50

• Today's atmospheric GHG concentrations determine
  that today's global temperatures will practically
  double (a commitment of an additional 75) and
  the increase will last over 1000 years along with
  global climate disruption. Sea level rise and
  ocean acidification will last thousands.
• Therefore - the one thing we must have out of
  Copenhagen is an agreement that we now need an
  emergency response because we are in a state of
  emergency beyond dangerous interference risking
  catastrophe1
• 1 John Holdre, Harvard University JKK
  Multimedia Forum http//www.iop.harvard.edu/Multi
  media-Center/By-Program/JFK-Jr.-Forum/Global-Clima
  te-Disruption-What-Do-We-Know,-What-Should-We-Do

51

• The only emergency response is an immediate
  reduction of emissions with our target being
  zero.
• Some would call this impossible. However the
  resources, technologies, and human capacity for
  change are all in place

52

• We need a greater Than World War 2-Equivalent,
  Emergency Global Mass-Mobilization
• Humanity must launch a multi-pronged 'Marshall
  Plan/ Manhattan Project/ Apollo
  Program'-equivalent venture on the greatest scale
  ever to confront the climate crisis -- research
  and rapid development/ transference/
  implementation of clean, renewable technologies,
  emergency assistance for/ cooperation with
  fast-developing countries and those onthe front
  lines of devastating impacts, and much, much more
  -- and we must initiate it NOW in order to
  survive.

53

• The missing ingredient is political will, and
  that is a renewable resource.
• This is a breathtaking opportunity disguised as
  an insoluble problem. Solving the climate problem
  will create the largest wave of new industries
  and jobs the world has seen in decades.

54

• Quotes from scientists who are speaking out

55

• "We are unleashing hell on Australia," said
  Neville Nicholls, Monash University's Professor
  Neville Nicholls, a world expert and lead author
  for the IPCC.

56

• "... many, many scientists now ... are
  frantically, hysterically worried," said
  Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers, the former head
  of the UNs World Climate Research Program, now
  at Macquarie University.

57

• Neville Nicholls "We feel like Cassandra (able
  to see catastrophe but doomed to be disbelieved).
  I think this is especially the case with
  Australian scientists, where certain sections of
  the media would prefer to have an article about
  climate change written by the drover's dog rather
  than by a real climate scientist. Earlier this
  week I was contacted by a climate scientist
  friend at Columbia University in New York. He was
  being asked to participate in a briefing on
  climate change science for Australian Parliament
  members and senators, in New York on 6 October
  and wanted me to brief him on the scientific
  knowledge and political leanings of the
  politicians in the delegation. I am happy that
  Australian politicians are seeking briefings from
  real scientists. But I am bemused that they
  thought they needed to travel to New York to get
  a briefing from a climate scientist."

58

• Two degrees C is already gone as a target,
  said Chris West of the University of Oxfords UK
  Climate Impacts Programme. Four degrees C is
  definitely possibleThis is the biggest challenge
  in our history, West told participants at the 4
  Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science
  Conference at the University of Oxford last week.

59

• Richard Betts of the Climate Impacts Research
  Team The models are based on human emissions
  alone, and do not include heat-amplifying
  feedbacks from melting ice or changes in carbon
  sinks. When those are factored in, it moves the
  timetable forward so that reaching four degrees
  by 2060 is a plausible, worst-case scenario with
  the median being 2070. By 2100, 5.5 degrees is
  possible, he said. Few places would experience
  the global average temperature, Betts cautioned,
  noting that the computer models show the Arctic
  warming 15 degrees while many other regions of
  the world would experience 10 degrees of
  additional warming. These scenarios do not
  include potential tipping points like the release
  of the 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon in northern
  permafrost or the melting of undersea methane
  hydrates.

60

• the entire world is beyond dangerous climate
  change

61

• we all are facing a real and rapidly rising risk
  of total catastrophe

62

• we are in a state of dire emergency

63

• the only target that can possibly prevent total
  catastrophe is zero carbon emissions

64

• no measures can work without measures to tax
  carbon

65

• It is now more than thirty years after the first
  cries of alarm of climatologists, seventeen years
  after the Summit of Rio, twelve years after Kyoto
  and we are still talking.  Little to nothing
  has been accomplished and now we are now out of
  time.  We are on the Titanic.

66

• The largest, most widely known and discussed
  report of its kind, the Stern Review warns that
  climate change threatens to be the greatest, most
  far-reaching market failure ever because the
  costs of fossil fuel emissions are not
  incorporated into free market accounting and
  polluters are not forced to pay for the
  social/environmental impacts of their pollution.

67

• Since this report, several other sources
  (including the International Energy Agency, IEA)
  have quoted figures from 250 to over 300 a
  tonne of carbon as the penalties that would be
  necessary in order to drive the conversion of our
  fossil fuel-based energy economy to one of
  conservation and renewables.  In contrast, the
  best policy proposal from the environmental
  movement is one tenth this amount.

68

• Stern is now the first public leader to state
  that agriculture worldwide will collapse this
  century unless drastic action is taken to slash
  greenhouse gas emissions.  While damages to
  agriculture are not even recognized as a danger
  of global climate change in the Intergovernmental
  Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC, 2007), reasons
  for concern, it is clearly the top threat to
  humanitys survival.

69

• Our political leaders are pretending that we can
  find a balance between the short-term economic
  interests of the big polluters and maintaining a
  safe climate that is capable of sustaining life.
  As former Government adviser on climate change
  Ross Garnaut said, the failure of this
  generation to act will haunt humanity until the
  end of time1. Just as business as usual will
  destroy our future, so will politics as usual.
  In the present system global economic growth is
  directly linked to emissions and yet this
  suicidal model continues to be promoted growth at
  all costs. 
• 1Cosmos magazine, Failures on Climate Change
  will haunt the humanity, Agence France Press.
  2009 http//www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2227/garna
  ut-failure-climate-change-will-haunt-humanity

70

• Our governments are lying through their teeth.

71

• Could it be that citizens could sooner see the
  end of the world than the end of a capitalist
  system that is literally killing us?  Positive
  changes are being witnessed as societies around
  the world are now embracing memes such as
  degrowth, steady state economies, the new
  economics foundations, genuine progress
  indicators, the happy planet index and others. 
  We can build a world that places the health,
  happiness and welfare of people ahead of
  profits. 

72

• A sustainable economy is possible. The barrier
  to accomplishing a better world is not the
  economical or technological constraints, but by
  political power and the will of the people. 
• Resistance is not futile it is essential.

73

• Do we want to be remembered as the generation
  that had money for subsidies of big oil and
  fighting wars yet we let the biosphere collapse?

74

• In the last few weeks, President Nicolas Sarkozy
  has asked world leaders to join a revolution in
  the measurement of economic progress1, Sir
  Nicholas Stern has warned at some point we would
  have to think about whether we want future
  growth2, and John Prescott has called the
  current economic growth model 'immoral'. The
  debate about economic growth has really
  begun.31 Worldpress http//article.wn.com/
  view/2009/09/15/Sarkozy_wants_happiness_used_as_ec
  onomic_indicator/
• 2Watts Jonathan, Stern Rich nations will have
  to forget about growth to stop climate change,
  The Guardian, September 2009 http//www.businessgr
  een.com/business-green/news/2249397/stern-rich-nat
  ions-forget
• 3 Watts Jonathan, Current economic growth model
  is 'immoral', says Prescott, The guardian,
  September 4, 2009

75

• In Prosperity without Growth Economics for a
  Finite Planet Tim Jackson offers a new vision of
  a shared prosperity the capability to flourish
  as human beings - within the ecological limits of
  a finite planet. Fulfilling that vision is simply
  the most urgent task of our times.

76

• The New Economics describes the problems and
  bizarre contradictions in conventional economics
  as well as the principles of the emerging new
  economics, and it tells the real-world stories of
  how new economics is being successfully put into
  practice around the world.

77

• Canada and the US together represent less than 5
  percent of humanity yet consume over one-quarter
  of the worlds oil, and contribute to more than
  one-quarter of the worlds greenhouse gas
  emissions. Carbon is the most significant
  greenhouse gas, and Canadas per capita carbon
  footprint is more than twice that of the average
  European, roughly five times the world average,
  and more than 20 times that of many developing
  countries.

78

• Climate policy and environmental policy is
  characterized by the habituation of low
  expectations and a culture of failure. There is
  an urgent need to understand global warming and
  the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we
  have already crossed as a sustainability
  emergency that takes us beyond the politics of
  failure-inducing compromise.  

79

• Finally, while we grasp with how we can cut back
  our emissions lets look at annual tons of CO2
  per person and reflect Annual tons of CO2 per
  person

80

• Ethiopia .01
• India 1.1
• China 3.2
• Sweden 5.6

81

• France 6.2
• UK 9.4
• Japan 9.7
• Germany 9.8

82

• CANADA 17.9
• USA 19.8
• Its us, the one billion affluent people of the
  world whose footprints are crushing the planet. 
  Surely we can all agree this is grossly
  unethical.  Climate change today accounts for
  over 300,000 deaths throughout the world each
  year.

83

• Children are the most vulnerable in our
  society. It is the responsibility of every adult
  citizen on our global planet to take every
  precaution to protect our children and mitigate
  against climate change. 

84

• Climate Change is systemic of a much bigger
  problem.
• We are part of a cultural phenomenon, a culture
  of self entitlement and our choice to destroy
  our shared environment. Our shared natural
  environment has become a toxic dumping ground.
• We are paying the highest price
• Today we are living in what scientists call the
  sixth extinction.  The fastest die off of
  species the Earth has ever seen. The biodiversity
  crisis is due to the destruction of ecosystems,
  the overexploitation of species and natural
  resources, overpopulation, the spread of
  agriculture and livestock, and pollution - all
  contributing to ever accelerating global warming
  caused by humans.
• We are conducting a vast toxicological
  experiment in which our children and our
  children's children are the experimental
  subjects

85
Ecology and economy are interdependent.  Both
words have a common root the Greek word "oikos"
which means home. A whole earth economy is an
economy based on the happiness, the health and
essential needs of the people and its inhabitants
an intensification and a flourishing of of all
the service and trading activites that create and
support the integrity, resiliance and beauty of
lifes commonwealth.  It recognizes the earth has
ecological limits and that if these limits are
not respected there will be a negative effect on
the social systems and ecosystems that make up
the commonwealth of life on which we depend.  We
have wildly surpassed these limits in an
unprecedented way.  We must stop counting the
consumption of natural capital as income. Bold
new visions of interrelated environmental,
economic and social challenges, including
economic reform and ethical governance is only
possible with bold, visionary leaders.  There is
no reason in the world we cannot build a green,
healthy economies where all life flourishes. 
   LISTEN Download "The New Ecology" podcast
and get the extended "What if ecology mattered?"
conversation with William Rees.
http//www.alternativesjournal.ca/podcasts/the-n
ew-ecology-issue-354 William Rees, co-author of
Our Ecological Footprint, is a human ecologist
and ecological economist at the University of
British Columbias School of Community and
Regional Planning. If you want to know who is
going to change this country, take a look in the
mirror. Maude Barlow

86

• A Transition to A Whole Earth, Steady State
  Economy is Essential
• Everything began with the industrial revolution
  in 1750, which gave birth to the capitalist
  system. In two and a half centuries, the so
  called developed countries have consumed a
  large part of the fossil fuels created over five
  million centuries.Competition and the thirst for
  profit without limits of the capitalist system
  are destroying the planet. Under Capitalism we
  are not human beings but consumers. Under
  Capitalism mother earth does not exist, instead
  there are raw materials. Capitalism is the source
  of the asymmetries and imbalances in the world.
  It generates luxury, ostentation and waste for a
  few, while millions in the world die from hunger
  in the world. In the hands of Capitalism
  everything becomes a commodity the water, the
  soil, the human genome, the ancestral cultures,
  justice, ethics, death and life itself.
  Everything, absolutely everything, can be bought
  and sold and under Capitalism. And even climate
  change itself has become a business. Climate
  change has placed all humankind before great
  choice to continue in the ways of capitalism and
  death, or to start down the path of harmony with
  nature and respect for life.
• Redesigning the Way We Think Live
• http//www.happyplanetindex.org/engage/charter.ht
  ml
• http//www.neweconomics.org/gen/

87
Evo Morales Save the Planet from Capitalism

• Today, our Mother Earth is ill. From the
  beginning of the 21st century we have lived the
  hottest years of the last thousand years. Global
  warming is generating abrupt changes in the
  weather the retreat of glaciers and the decrease
  of the polar ice caps the increase of the sea
  level and the flooding of coastal areas, where
  approximately 60 of the world population live
  the increase in the processes of desertification
  and the decrease of fresh water sources a higher
  frequency in natural disasters that the
  communities of the earth suffer1 the
  extinction of animal and vegetal species and the
  spread of diseases in areas that before were free
  from those diseases.One of the most tragic
  consequences of the climate change is that some
  nations and territories are the condemned to
  disappear by the increase of the sea level.
• Read Full Opinion Piece Here
  http//councilofcanadianslondon.wordpress.com/2008
  /12/19/climate-change-save-the-planet-from-capital
  ism-evo-morales/

88
Achievements You Will Not Read About in the MSM
(Main Stream Media)

• Ecuador first to legislate rights for nature 10
  December 2008
• Ecuador Approves New Constitution Voters
  Approve Rights of NatureEcuador First Country
  in the World to Shift to Rights-Based
  Environmental Protection, Working With Legal
  Defense Fund
• By an overwhelming margin, the people of Ecuador
  today voted for a new constitution that is the
  first in the world to recognize legally
  enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem
  rights. The Community Environmental Legal Defense
  Fund is pioneering this work in the U.S., where
  it has assisted more than a dozen local
  municipalities with drafting and adopting local
  laws recognizing Rights of Nature. Ecuador is now
  the first country in the world to codify a new
  system of environmental protection based on
  rights. With this vote, the people of Ecuador are
  leading the way for countries around the world to
  fundamentally change how we protect nature.
  Article 1 of the new "Rights for Nature" chapter
  of the Ecuador constitution reads "Nature or
  Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists,
  has the right to exist, persist, maintain and
  regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions
  and its processes in evolution. Every person,
  people, community or nationality, will be able to
  demand the recognitions of rights for nature
  before the public bodies."

89

• Could We Pass Such a Law in North American?
  Probably Not. Why?
• 1- Apathy caused by a complete disconnect from
  our shared natural environment
• 2- Entitlement which has been cultivated in the
  very essence of our being in North America
• 3- Corporations are now more powerful than our
  governments
• 4- The average citizen is being kept in the dark
  on the severity of climate change and the
  implications
• Solutions
• 1- Seek out Independent Media
• 2- Reconnect Children with Nature
• 3- Mandatory ecoliteracy courses including
  precautionary principle in work places and all
  levels of government
• 4- Utilize waiting times in the health sector
  with education. Replace television shows in
  waiting rooms with documentaries. Replace
  irrelevant reading material / magazines with
  those which focus on climate change and health.

90

• Teach Ecoliteracy in all Levels of Government
• For those in leadership roles and decision making
  capacity - knowledge of climate change,
  sustainability and environmental degradation
  should not be optional
• The City of Albuquerque began delivering
  Sustainability Awareness Training in fall of
  2007. Training sessions were available daily from
  October 8-12 and November 13-17, during which
  time 3,800 employees were trained.
• http//www.cabq.gov/albuquerquegreen/see-it-green-
  reporting

91

• Direct Action
• I believe weve reached the stage where it is
  time for civil disobedience. Al Gore, Clinton
  Global Initiative, Sept. 25, 2008

92

• The Reverse Graffiti Project Art less
  pollution
• This is what you may call reverse graffiti.
  Brazilian streetartist
• Alexandre Orion removes soot to draw skulls and
  create Art less pollution.
• At dawn on July 13, 2006, Brazilian streetartist
  Alexandre Orion started working on a intervention
  in the Max Feffer tunnel Sao Paulo and created
  Art less pollution. The intervention was
  through a process of subtraction, scraping off
  layers of soot from vehicle exhaust built up on
  tunnel walls to produce images of human skulls.
• Read more about the intervention and see
  pictures at Alexandre Orions website.
• VIDEO
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vJwsBBIIXT0Eeurlh
  ttp//www.facebook.com/home.php
• Capitalism strikes again Note that since this
  time GreenWorks Clorox Corporation has
  purchased this video for an advertising campaign.
  

93
Under the Radar Le Clan du Néon

• Lights Out Activists on Anti-Neon Crusade in
  France. By Adam Sage, Times (UK), November 8,
  2008. "Meet Le Clan du Néon, an increasingly
  popular environmental movement that wants to make
  the City of Lights a little darker. One tactic is
  to turn off neon shop signs at night by reaching
  the external fire switches that control them,
  usually found two or three metres up the
  façade... Le Clan was set up in Paris, but its
  light-hearted and low-tech activist approach to
  ecology has been a hit across the country with
  students, many of whom see the antineon activity
  as a nocturnal lark. Groups have sprung up in
  Normandy, Bordeaux, the Alps and Dordogne.
  Members from the latter have posted an internet
  video that says that in a region bereft of night
  life, turning out the high street lighting is as
  good a way of passing the time as any... The
  thousands of shop signs left on at night in
  Europe consume tens of gigawatt hours of
  electricity a year. In France, where the nuclear
  industry supplies 80 per cent of electricity, the
  result is more radioactive waste. Elsewhere, it
  is hundreds of tonnes of CO2 emissions. 'If all
  the neon signs in the world were turned off, the
  impact on global warming would be very
  significant,' said Nicolas, 28, another Le Clan
  member. 'There ought to be a law against it, but
  since there isn't, we have to go around doing it
  ourselves.
• Full Article http//www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne
  ws/world/europe/article5110640.ece
• Video http//www.youtube.com/watch?viq6j3O6wAdE
  

94

• Today's protesters, tomorrow's saviours.
• It is pertinent to ask what view our
  great-grandchildren will take when they look back
  in 100 years. The slow cooking of the planet is
  quite distinct from other disputes today. With
  climate change, the ultimate question is whether
  humans can continue to live on this planet at
  all.
• Plane Stupid Direct Action Group. They were
  disruptive and controversial to say the least.
  Spied upon, locked up and lambasted by the
  establishment of their time. The state considered
  them to be dangerous terrorists and, as Tony Benn
  put it, "Newsnight would have treated the
  suffragettes as trouble-makers." But those women
  who battled for gender equality were later
  vindicated by history. I suppose it's a testament
  to their success that the Climate Change
  Secretary, Ed Miliband, was citing them as an
  example of the sort of movement we need on global
  warming, adding, "Maybe it's an odd thing for
  someone in government to say." Certainly an odd
  thing for someone in government. Put against a
  context of the average Brit emitting 11 tonnes of
  CO2 a year, today's activity didn't just get the
  nation talking, it had a real impact. Like the
  Kingsnorth 6, who shut down one of the dirtiest
  coal plants in Britain and were later acquitted
  by a jury of 12 ordinary people, Plane Stupid
  just made history. Seriously what people will
  think about this protest in 100 years from now?
  Will that generations' politicians be lauding
  today's action as a model for defeating their
  eras' defining challenge?

95

• Direct Action Becomes Cool
• Interesting enough Lush produces a product
  called the charity pot where all the proceeds are
  donated to worthy causes. One of the groups to
  benefit is Plane Stupid. Others range from
  Butterfly Conservation to Reprieve, the human
  rights charity.
• Lush states they believe that there is a long
  tradition of using non-violent protest to create
  change where other means have failed.
  Highlighting the constant growth of habits we
  know we can't sustain, as Plane Stupid has, they
  see as laudatory.
• http//www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/
  12/theairlineindustry-climatechange