Tar Sands tailings poisons muskeg and nearby First Nations community | rabble.ca by Ben Powless with pictures.
The trip out to the tar sands tailings pond reminded me of other recent trips to places where indigenous people were trying to survive.
It recalled for me a trip out to the Russian Arctic earlier this year to visit a group of Saami (Indigenous) reindeer herders struggling to maintain their way of life, and also the work I did last year with a group of Amazonian peoples who were trying to stop oil companies and oil spills in the Peruvian jungles.
But in the end this was far worse, even compared with those two dire situations, and it was being promoted by the Canadian and Alberta governments.
We left on a pair of four wheelers in the afternoon, embracing the freezing temperatures and snow for about six hours to gather footage of what I was promised would be a shocking find. And it was -- when we finally arrived on the site of the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. -- CNRL -- tailings pond (which, at about five-km long and one-km wide, was more of a lake), we saw tailings being released on the opposite shore, flowing out and covering the muskeg and bush underneath. I was accompanied by Mike Orr, a councillor in the community of Fort McKay and avid hunter and trapper, and his daughter.
Here we were, standing on traplines and hunting trails that remain in use by members of the Fort McKay First Nation, as the toxic waste covered many hectares with an oily ooze...
Monday, November 29, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Planet Earth We Have A Problem
Planet Earth We Have A Problem
Video 2008 in Sweden.
Planet Earth We Have A Problem
Beyond the Tipping Point: Feedback Dynamics
and the onset of Runaway Climate Change
David Wasdell delivered this copiously illustrated presentation on the 29th June 2008 to the Strategy-Planning workshop of the Tällberg Forum in the heart of Sweden. It was subsequently recorded in studio conditions and beautifully produced by the staff team of the Tällberg Foundation who also added an introduction by their Chairman, Bo Ekman.
After a basic introduction to climate dynamics, the powerful feedback system, already accelerating climate change, is analysed. It is argued that we have already passed the tipping point that marks the onset of runaway climate change, and are fast approaching the critical threshold beyond which the behaviour becomes unstoppable. The presentation concludes with an outline of the global strategy now urgently required to re-stabilise the life-support system of Planet Earth.
Video 2008 in Sweden.
Planet Earth We Have A Problem
Beyond the Tipping Point: Feedback Dynamics
and the onset of Runaway Climate Change
David Wasdell delivered this copiously illustrated presentation on the 29th June 2008 to the Strategy-Planning workshop of the Tällberg Forum in the heart of Sweden. It was subsequently recorded in studio conditions and beautifully produced by the staff team of the Tällberg Foundation who also added an introduction by their Chairman, Bo Ekman.
After a basic introduction to climate dynamics, the powerful feedback system, already accelerating climate change, is analysed. It is argued that we have already passed the tipping point that marks the onset of runaway climate change, and are fast approaching the critical threshold beyond which the behaviour becomes unstoppable. The presentation concludes with an outline of the global strategy now urgently required to re-stabilise the life-support system of Planet Earth.
Bali and Beyond:HOC 2007 Briefing-Scary
Bali and Beyond
This leading edge scientific update was delivered to a packed audience in the House of Commons in June 2007. It was released in the approach to the Bali Meeting of the UNFCCC because it presents material not yet addressed by the IPCC, but which is absolutely critical to the decision-making process at and beyond that event.
Over the last two years there has been a profound shift in the scientific understanding of the behaviour of the earth's climate system. Although some specific feedback mechanisms were included in the more advanced climate models, the analysis of climate dynamics as a whole has proceeded far beyond that portrayed in the latest IPCC Assessment Report. It was not taken into consideration in the Stern Report, in the formulation of the Climate Bill currently before the UK Parliament, or in the process of target-setting of the present round of International negotiations.
Almost all of the systems known to affect climate change are now in a state of net positive (amplifying) feedback. Each feedback mechanism accelerates its own specific process. The output of each feedback is an input to all other feedbacks, so the system as a whole constitutes an interactive set of mutually reinforcing sub-systems.
This "second order" feedback system accelerates the rate of climate change and faces us with the possibility of a "tipping point" in the whole earth system. If we go beyond the point where human intervention can no longer stabilise the system, then we precipitate unstoppable runaway climate change.
The implication is that climate change is non-linear. Once set in motion it is acceleratingly self-perpetuating. There is then only a small time-window within which human intervention has any (rapidly diminishing) chance of halting the process and returning the system to a stable state. Failure to act effectively within that window of opportunity would inevitably precipitate cataclysmic change on a par with the five mass extinction events known to have obliterated almost all life on earth.
Strategically we have to generate a negative feedback intervention of sufficient power to overcome the now active positive feedback process. We then have to maintain its effectiveness during the remaining period of rising temperature, while temperature-driven positive feedbacks continue to operate. That is an extraordinarily difficult task, out of all comparison with
This leading edge scientific update was delivered to a packed audience in the House of Commons in June 2007. It was released in the approach to the Bali Meeting of the UNFCCC because it presents material not yet addressed by the IPCC, but which is absolutely critical to the decision-making process at and beyond that event.
Over the last two years there has been a profound shift in the scientific understanding of the behaviour of the earth's climate system. Although some specific feedback mechanisms were included in the more advanced climate models, the analysis of climate dynamics as a whole has proceeded far beyond that portrayed in the latest IPCC Assessment Report. It was not taken into consideration in the Stern Report, in the formulation of the Climate Bill currently before the UK Parliament, or in the process of target-setting of the present round of International negotiations.
Almost all of the systems known to affect climate change are now in a state of net positive (amplifying) feedback. Each feedback mechanism accelerates its own specific process. The output of each feedback is an input to all other feedbacks, so the system as a whole constitutes an interactive set of mutually reinforcing sub-systems.
This "second order" feedback system accelerates the rate of climate change and faces us with the possibility of a "tipping point" in the whole earth system. If we go beyond the point where human intervention can no longer stabilise the system, then we precipitate unstoppable runaway climate change.
The implication is that climate change is non-linear. Once set in motion it is acceleratingly self-perpetuating. There is then only a small time-window within which human intervention has any (rapidly diminishing) chance of halting the process and returning the system to a stable state. Failure to act effectively within that window of opportunity would inevitably precipitate cataclysmic change on a par with the five mass extinction events known to have obliterated almost all life on earth.
Strategically we have to generate a negative feedback intervention of sufficient power to overcome the now active positive feedback process. We then have to maintain its effectiveness during the remaining period of rising temperature, while temperature-driven positive feedbacks continue to operate. That is an extraordinarily difficult task, out of all comparison with
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Rumbo a Cancún-Indigeneous Representation
Rumbo a Cancún: - Decolonizing Environmentalism
This is the first of many blog posts that I will be posting from México introducing these unlikely negotiators and observers where, as Martin Khor said after Copenhagen last year, we are "not only negotiating the future of humanity and the earth but also the future distribution of the GDP of the world."
We are calling the delegation the "Grassroots Solutions to Climate Justice" Alliance for North America. We are Indigenous and Native peoples from North America, youth and young people from frontline and fenceline communities, economic and racial justice representatives from the same (where incinerators, pipelines, oil rigs, refineries, chemical plants, power plants, uranium mines, nuclear power plants, coal mines, in Indian Country and Appalachia, in urban America and the Gulf Coast, are located), and environmental justice organizations and leaders.
The blog posts will include updates from the inside of the negotiations, but also updates from members of our delegations who are on the road, meeting with indigenous and small farmer organizations and communities along the way, from caravans with La Via Campesina, that originated in Chiapas, Acapulco and other points.
It is fitting that we begin the coverage with a profile of the Indigenous Environmental Network, or IEN. At home in the United States, most people are preparing meals and gathering together families of all kinds for what is called Thankgiving, but is also called Thanks-taken, or Indigenous People's Genocide Day, or Indigenous People's Day of Mourning. Where I grew up, in the Northeast, the myth of
This is the first of many blog posts that I will be posting from México introducing these unlikely negotiators and observers where, as Martin Khor said after Copenhagen last year, we are "not only negotiating the future of humanity and the earth but also the future distribution of the GDP of the world."
We are calling the delegation the "Grassroots Solutions to Climate Justice" Alliance for North America. We are Indigenous and Native peoples from North America, youth and young people from frontline and fenceline communities, economic and racial justice representatives from the same (where incinerators, pipelines, oil rigs, refineries, chemical plants, power plants, uranium mines, nuclear power plants, coal mines, in Indian Country and Appalachia, in urban America and the Gulf Coast, are located), and environmental justice organizations and leaders.
The blog posts will include updates from the inside of the negotiations, but also updates from members of our delegations who are on the road, meeting with indigenous and small farmer organizations and communities along the way, from caravans with La Via Campesina, that originated in Chiapas, Acapulco and other points.
It is fitting that we begin the coverage with a profile of the Indigenous Environmental Network, or IEN. At home in the United States, most people are preparing meals and gathering together families of all kinds for what is called Thankgiving, but is also called Thanks-taken, or Indigenous People's Genocide Day, or Indigenous People's Day of Mourning. Where I grew up, in the Northeast, the myth of
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