IPCC: 'Canada the Lucky One'

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has good news and bad for Canada within its second of four reports regarding global climate change, released Friday in Brussels. The good news is: Canada is better able to weather global climate change than poorer nations. Other than that, the report is a stern warning to all nations, citizens, and businesses to get serious about changing the way we do things.

Despite what some of the participating scientists who prepared the report say was a "softening" of the message for political purposes, there is little good news contained within "Climate Change 2007" Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for anyone, anywhere on the planet.

And, despite Canada's relatively "lucky" positioning in the northern hemisphere, surrounded by three oceans, with still favorable weather patterns providing plenty of rainfall on the coastal regions, and enough for prairie farmers, the country faces some of the greatest challenges a warming planet will present; challenges that will take more than thrown money to address. But even so, money is needed for research and development of the alternative products and processes a new world will require, and at a time when green rhetoric is all pervading, Ottawa is in fact de-funding the very departments of government designed for the purpose.

According to Mike De Souza at CanWest News, the greenhorn Federal Environment Minister John Baird defensively suggested, his government's cutting off funding devoted to climate change was done to better serve the issue, saying;

"One of the biggest findings (of the UN report) is that these (impacts) can be mitigated, can be reduced, can be delayed by action to reduce greenhouse gases, and that's got to be the first, the second, and the third priority. At some point, it's sort of like the planet's on fire, we've got to throw water on it. We don't need to research it, we need to act."

In the face of the Conservative retreat from climate change leadership, the minister advises Canadians act without thinking about, or researching, where and how to act. Baird would have Canada throw its metaphorical water on a burning planet, by first firing the ones hired to look for the smoke.

Among those losing funding: Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network; the Adaptation program funding frozen, research program faces March '08 shutdown.

Health Policy Research Program; a program to explore possible health sector scenarios due to climate change; de-funded.

Reducing Canada's Vulnerability to Climate Change; program to study landscape, coastal areas, and infrastructure and community planning; scheduled to be phased out March '08.

Canada Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences; a major foundation, doing research and training the next generation of climate scientists; funding frozen since July 2006.

Again, Baird doesn't seem capable of grasping the ramifications of his party's policies. De Souza quotes the minister saying;

"It depends on what the research is about. We don't need more research to convince us this is a major problem. We accept the science. We accept the global research and it seems that (for) Stephane Dion and the Liberals, all they want to do is more research. We don't need more reports, We need to focus on the big challenge at hand."

If anything, the U.N. report stresses the need to remove politics, both domestic and international, from the climate change challenge; time, they say, is not a luxury we can afford to squander with petty finger-pointing and internecine squabbling. If this is a preview of the Conservative environmental platform for the expected late Spring federal election, the Environment minister's ham-handed explanation of his party's environmental black thumb, retrograde policies will prove a godsend to the Liberals.

Ian Burton, one of the Canadian delegation and co-author of the second report to the IPCC, says despite Canada's geographic and financially advantageous position, it lacks a clear vision, and more importantly, any practical plan in place to deal with some of the urgent issues at hand. Margaret Munro of CanWest quotes Ian Burton;

"What is missing, he said, is a comprehensive strategy to cut the country's greenhouse-gas emissions and deal with the "destabilizing" changes underway."

Duane Smith of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference emphasizing the necessity to move, saying;
"Let's not just talk about it, let's put a game plan in place. We are bearing the brunt of the changing environment as we speak."

And Smith ain't whistling Dixie; the poles, north and south, are the most effected areas of the planet. The polar ice cap is melting at a rate even faster than the most skeptical scientists believed possible a few short years ago, and the Antarctic has seen major calving of the ice shelves there. Canada's northern boreal forests are endangered by industrial logging, and resource exploration and extraction. The permafrost, literally the foundation of the north, is melting, undermining the towns and cities built upon it. Not to mention the almost unthinkable: An end to Canada's vast and diverse wildlife.

We Canadians are fortunate, we're often reminded by the scolding patriarchs of government. Indeed, we are lucky to be living here, surrounded by peace and abundance, but luck isn't enough anymore. As the environmentalists' report warns, we do not have the luxury of wasting time, either arguing, and warring amongst ourselves, or suffering the fools and ass-backwardly obsessed, who have hijacked the instruments of state to serve the ends of a increasingly outrageous global elite, desperate to maintain their extravagance regardless of the costs borne by the rest of us.

It is too late to suffer the Stephen Harper's, and George W. Bush's, and John Baird's of the world, who would fiddle while the planet burns.



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to www.pacificfreepress.com and host of Gorilla Radio

De-Taxing War

Hang Up on War

By Amy Goodman

04/05/07 "ICH' -- -- If you are upset that Congress won’t defund the war in Iraq, there’s something you can do: Stop paying a tax. Legally.

The Internal Revenue Service is giving a rebate this year on a telephone war tax. This is one of those line items at the bottom of your phone bill. The tax was instituted in 1898 to help the United States pay for the Spanish-American War. Individuals and businesses have one chance to obtain a refund on this telephone war tax, by asking for it in their 2006 income tax returns.

Remarkably, the Internal Revenue Service has made it easy to request the refund, yet IRS Commissioner Mark Everson says that many taxpayers are overlooking it. Obtaining the refund is easy. But first, a little history.

The Spanish-American War lasted from April to August of 1898 and was predicated on a U.S. government demand that Spain abandon its colony in Cuba, which the U.S. subsequently occupied. By the end of 1898, the United States had also taken over the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.

The war was also used as an official pretext to take over Hawaii. The Senate debated over the annexation in secret, some arguing for total annexation, others for just Pearl Harbor. Sen. Richard Pettigrew of South Dakota derided the annexation plan as money “thrown away in the interest of a few sugar planters and adventurers in Hawaii.” Military bases and raw materials—sound familiar?

The telephone tax was instituted as part of the War Revenue Bill, which expanded the government’s ability to collect taxes, ostensibly to pay for the war. As with the myriad controversial “pork” items added to the recent Iraq war funding authorization, the 1898 bill was the subject of scores of amendments that benefited big business. These included tax breaks for powerful industries like the insurance companies and tobacco dealers.

The telephone tax of 1 cent per call targeted the wealthy, who were generally the only ones who had telephone access in 1898. After the war, the tax was eventually raised to 3 percent. Since the Vietnam War, it has been the target of war tax resisters, people who refuse to pay taxes because they do not want to fund war.

Tax resistance has a long history. Henry David Thoreau promoted it in his essay “Civil Disobedience” to fight slavery: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” The IRS has vigorously targeted full-fledged tax resisters—ranging from those refusing to pay the Pentagon’s percentage of their taxes, to those who outright refuse to pay anything to the government—making an example of them by garnishing wages, sending them to prison for tax evasion and confiscating their homes.

Tax resisters figured out that they could protest the telephone tax simply by writing their checks to the phone company, withholding the amount of the tax. The IRS deemed the collection of the tax too expensive, relative to the small amount of the tax itself. According to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, early collection efforts by the IRS included the auctioning of Jim Glock’s bicycle for $22 in 1973 and of George and Lillian Willoughby’s VW Bug in 1971 for $123 (in 2004, Lillian, at 89, with the support of her husband, George, 94, was jailed for protesting the Iraq war).

Court losses convinced the IRS to dump the telephone war tax in 2006 and to offer the retroactive rebate for phone taxes paid between March 1, 2003, and July 31, 2006. Typical refunds will be between $30 and $60. Ironically, while the IRS has dropped the tax on long-distance and “bundled” services, like high-speed Internet, the tax remains for older, standard local phone services and rental of equipment that enables the disabled to use phones. Thus, this tax on the rich is now a tax on the poor. Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga., has submitted a bill to permanently wipe this remnant clean. Two-thirds of the bill’s co-sponsors are anti-tax Republicans, so Democrats might be leery about passing it.

The website, www.refundsforgood.org, lists step-by-step instructions on how to recoup the telephone tax rebate, and recommends donating it to charity.

While Congress and President Bush trade barbs over war funding, with a simple check mark on your tax return you can help to defund the war. Claim your telephone tax rebate. Let the Pentagon hold a bake sale.







Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

© 2007 Amy Goodman

Driving

Driving the Riff-Raff

Click Name for Bio of ')">Chris Cook

Tuesday, 03 April 2007

Driving the Riff-Raff by C. L. Cook The peril of our current reality occurred suddenly to me the other night, revealed, as Shakespeare said many truths often are, in jest; the terminal fate of the human race could not have been made more clear. * Witness: the University bus exchange - Victoria - night. Waiting to board the perennially overcrowded University bus, (the under-serviced situation there too a symptom of our collective undoing), I saw three bus drivers shooting the breeze, while laying over. Our driver "Dan," as he later identified himself, turned to his fellows and said; "Well, time to go drive the riff-raff." That would be me, and my fellow sardine-packed transit passengers. Whether Dan considers himself to be another of the "riff-raff" I don't know, but I expect, while he's wearing the uniform of his occupation, he considers himself one of US rather than THEM, the passengers whom's safety and service he is charged to maintain. Of course, Dan is, in the eyes of others wearing other uniforms, one of THEM; riff raff, hoi polloi, a lowly "civvie" to be denigrated, disregarded; someone whose societal relevance is to be dismissed out of hand: a nobody. * Witness: a city bus - Victoria - day. On a blustery, late winter's morning, a near empty bus approaches a bus shelter, near empty too, but for a ragged old man, his chin on his chest, snoozing. The driver pulls up to the shelter, opens the door, and shouts at the elder; "Clear off!" My friend tells me; "No-one rang for the bus to stop, and nobody was getting on. He [the bus driver] just took it on himself to hassle this poor old guy, one of the real survivors." And off the man shuffled, his bundled rags pulled in tow. * Witness: a city sidestreet, piled high with snow - Victoria - night. The sidewalks impassable, an elderly woman picks her way carefully along the street, gingerly following the automobile ruts. A Victoria City police van comes up behind. The window rolls down, and the head of a young constable emerges. He bawls at the woman; "Get outta the road!" and splashes on past. There are doubtless many more examples, many I'm certain you've witnessed yourself: Bicycle police downtown pushing around the homeless for the crime of their poverty; shopkeepers abusing youngsters for the fault of their youth; automobile drivers abusing everyone for the sin of slowing their progress. It's all indicative of a growing incivility, directed downwards towards those deemed socially inferior, and therefore fair game for petty tyranny. I believe, this deterioration in the fabric of public life isn't merely a local phenomenon, but a trend dropped from the heights of what's left of western civilization upon the heads of its neo-peons. Witness: a television - anywhere - anytime. The walls of the room are blue hued behind the viewer. On the screen, chaos; a city is drowning, desperate people wave make-shift flags, surrendered to the situation, begging for help. But help isn't quick to arrive. The people are left to their own devices - sink or swim. I watched as the hurricane approached. I saw what Katrina did to Florida, and I heard what the veterans of storms past said about "Little Andrew." I watched as the storm slowly turned into the Gulf, the Gulf grown unnaturally warm. I watched that Gulf feed that storm, and I followed it's inexorable progress toward the doomed city. And I watched the people of that city abandoned to the waters. Witness: a television - anywhere - all the time. The walls of the room are blue hued behind the viewer. On the screen, chaos; a city is burning, desperate people wail and wave make-shift flags, surrendered to the situation, begging for help. But no help will arrive; those sent know only how to start fires, not stop them. I watched as the wars approached. I saw what George Bush did to Iraq, and I heard what the veterans of Desert Storm said about their "splendid little war." I watched as that storm turned slowly into Gulf War Syndrome, an unnatural pollution of the gene pool. And I followed the inexorable succession of a second George, and watched as he approached the doomed city, and I saw the people of that city abandoned to the flames. Writing of "the day that changed everything," Victoria novelist, Hal Sisson, in the "dedication" section of his 'Modus Operandi 9/11' says; "[U]ntutored emotions of ignorant people are the material that enables evil deeds; and when I have shuffled off this mortal coil I want to leave concrete proof that I was not one of the willfully blind or deliberately ignorant persons unwilling to question the ridiculous government story of what happened on 9/11; unable to entertain the irrefutable evidence of the administration's complicity and participation in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." Is it too much to believe a government would sacrifice a few thousands of "its own people" to profit its benefactors? How could it seem incredible, when thousands die daily due to the cancerous by-products of an industrial society gone off the tracks? How could it seem absurd that a system routinely disposing of hundreds of millions to a life of want, and suffering, and penal servitude would flinch at a few thousands of souls thrown into the crucible of their infernal greed? The abrogation of civic responsibility, as we see today in both global polity and local policy, are the twin disasters spelling the end of us all. And if that sounds too incredible, consider what we collectively countenance with our silence as humanity's epitaph; again, taken from Hal Sisson's dedication. "The major incredible international crime perpetrated by the world's bully was the use of radioactively contaminated depleted uranium 238, that is spreading through Iraq, Afghanistan, other neighboring countries and the world, via dust storms and global air currents, and becomes deposited in human bones, causing cancer and congenital anomalies. If the U.S. administration is allowed to use nuclear weapons on Iran, then mutually assured destruction and annihilation becomes only a matter of time." I'm watching as that storm approaches. ["*" denotes incidents occurring right here in genteel Victoria that I'm personally acquainted with. Quotes are from the dedication in 'Modus Operandi 9/11' by Hal Sisson.]

Lethal Solution

A Lethal Solution

We need a five-year freeze on biofuels, before they wreck the planet

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian 27th March 2007.

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless.

In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow – it is released again when the fuel is burnt. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be “decarbonising” our transport networks.

In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants – if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010(1). By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops(2). Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the US target for biofuels(3): by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation’s transport fuel(4).

So what’s wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 this column warned that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are, by definition, richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats(5). I received more abuse than I’ve had for any other column, except when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn’t materialise for many years. They are happening already.

Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled(6). The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows(7). Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that “if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year.”(8) According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from both maize and wheat(9).

Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.

Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022(10). Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn’t happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang utan in the wild. But it gets worse. As the forests are burnt, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or ten times as much as petroleum produces(11). I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes TEN TIMES as much climate change as ordinary diesel.

There are similar impacts all over the world. Sugarcane producers are moving into rare scrubland habitats (the cerrado) in Brazil and soya farmers are ripping up the Amazon rainforests. As President Bush has just signed a biofuel agreement with President Lula, it’s likely to become a lot worse. Indigenous people in South America, Asia and Africa are starting to complain about incursions onto their land by fuel planters. A petition launched by a group called biofuelwatch, begging western governments to stop, has been signed by campaigners from 250 groups(12).

The British government is well aware that there’s a problem. On his blog last year the environment secretary David Miliband noted that palm oil plantations “are destroying 0.7% of the Malaysian rain forest each year, reducing a vital natural resource (and in the process, destroying the natural habitat of the orang-utan). It is all connected.”(13) Unlike government policy.

The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don’t upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It’s an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn’t increase our official impact by a gram.

In February the European Commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It had intended to tell car companies that the average carbon emission from new cars in 2012 would be 120 grams per kilometre. After heavy lobbying by Angela Merkel on behalf of her car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel(14).

The British government says it “will require transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply.”(15) But it will not require them to do anything. It can’t: its consultants have already shown that if it tries to impose wider environmental standards on biofuels, it will fall foul of world trade rules(16). And even “sustainable” biofuels merely occupy the space that other crops now fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be a “second generation” of biofuels, made from straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles(17). By the time the new fuels are ready, the damage will have been done.

We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugarcane. Even then, the targets should be set low and increased only cautiously. I suggest a five-year freeze.

This would require a huge campaign, tougher than the one which helped to win a five-year freeze on growing genetically modified crops in the UK. That was important – GM crops give big companies unprecedented control over the foodchain. But most of their effects are indirect, while the devastation caused by biofuel is immediate and already visible.

This is why it will be harder to stop: encouraged by government policy, vast investments are now being made by farmers and chemical companies. Stopping them requires one heck of a battle. But it has to be fought.

You can join the campaign at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. HM Treasury, March 2007. Budget 2007, Chapter 7.

2. Department for Transport, 21st December 2005. Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) feasibility report. Executive Summary.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/environment/rtfo/secrtfoprogdocs/renewabletransportfuelobliga3849?page=1

3. George W. Bush. 23rd January 2007. State of the Union Address. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070123-2.html

4. The US Energy Information Administration gives US gasoline consumption for October 2006 (the latest available date) at 287,857,000 barrels. If this month is typical, annual consumption amounts to 3.45 billion barrels, or 145 billion gallons. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_m.htm

In the state of the union address, Bush proposed a mandatory annual target of 35 billion gallons.

5. George Monbiot, 23rd November 2004. Feeding Cars, Not People. The Guardian. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

6. Nils Blythe, 23rd March 2007. Biofuel demand makes food expensive. BBC Online. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/business/6481029.stm

7. Eoin Callan and Kevin Morrison, 5th March 2007. Food prices to rise as biofuel demand keeps grains costly. Financial Times.

8. Keith Collins, chief economist, US Department of Agriculture. Quoted by Eoin Callan and Kevin Morrison, 5th March 2007, ibid.

9. Food and Agriculture Organisation, December 2006. Food Outlook 2. http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/j8126e/j8126e01a.htm

10. UNEP and UNESCO, February 2007. The Last Stand of the Orangutan. State of Emergency: Illegal Logging, Fire and Palm Oil in Indonesia’s National Parks. http://www.unep-wcmc.org/resources/PDFs/LastStand/full_orangutanreport.pdf

11. Wetlands International, 8th December 2006. Bio-fuel less sustainable than realised http://www.wetlands.org/news.aspx?ID=804eddfb-4492-4749-85a9-5db67c2f1bb8

12. http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/resources.php#2007Jan31



13. David Miliband, 14th July 2006. Malaysian Diary.

http://www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk/
blogs/ministerial_blog/archive/2006/07/14/1497.aspx

14. Commission Of The European Communities, 7th February 2007. Results of the review of the Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles. COM 19 final.

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/
co2/pdf/com_2007_19_en.pdf

15. HM Treasury, ibid.

16. E4Tech, ECCM and Imperial College, London, June 2005. Feasibility Study on Certification for a Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation. Final Report.

17. Robert F. Service, et al, 16th March 2007. Cellulosic Ethanol: Biofuel Researchers

Prepare to Reap a New Harvest. Science 315, 1488.
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5818.1488


source:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/
2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/#more-1051

Gorilla Radio for Monday, April 2, 2007

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca . He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, www.pacificfreepress.com . And, you can check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com


It's been almost fifty years since the popular revolution toppled the Batiste regime in Cuba; and, it's been almost as many years that the island nation has suffered an American led embargo, the longest siege in recorded history. Canada has so far refused to enjoin the starvation campaign against the revolution, but recent political developments here could well threaten the friendly relations enjoyed between Cuba and Canada. Fernando Gomez represents the Cuban Institute in Friendship with the People, and its outreach effort, the Che Guevera Work Brigade. He'll be speaking tonight at the BCGEU building tonight at 7pm. Fernando Gomez and the Canada's working relationship with Cuba in the first half.

And; Canada's foreign policy is altering its hue. Fighting its first "insurgency" war from the distant garrisons of Afghanistan is just one of the radical changes to what Canadian's would regard as the country's traditional role in world polity. Not the nation of Pierre Trudeau, hero to a generation of American asylum-seekers fleeing the war against Vietnam, today's conscientious objectors to the extra-legal occupation of Iraq fleeing to Canada face arrest, and expensive legal entaglements, likely ending in extradition rather than refuge; for others, the treatment is of a more sinister nature. Lee Zaslofsky is with the Toronto chapter of Canada's War Resisters Support Campaign, and he'll be here on a disturbing trend in Canadian policing that questions this nation's autonomy. Lee Zaslofsky and Resisting War: A Canadian tradition, in the second half.

And; Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of the good things to get up to in and around Victoria this week. But first, Fernando Gomez and the Che Guevera Work Brigade.



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