Disobedience

Leap Manifesto a little vague for you? Here ya go...

"We have to roll back corporate capture of our governments if we want to try and fix problems that conflict directly with their industry bottom line."

"There's nothing radical about anything we're talking about. If you are willing to get up in the morning and make your fortune by altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere ... then you're a radical and our job is to try and check that radicalism ."

"Disobedience is a new film about a new phase of the climate movement: courageous action that is being taken on the front lines of the climate crisis on every continent, led by regular people fed up with the power and pollution of the fossil fuel industry.

Disobedience tells the story of 4 communities - in Canada, Philippines, Turkey, and Germany - preparing to participate in Break Free from Fossil Fuels actions in May 2016.

Screenings are being planned across the globe starting on April 30 to support ongoing organizing to defeat the fossil fuel industry."
So far in Canada one screening at York U has been planned and the first organized action is in BC :

"If Big Oil gets its way, the Kinder Morgan pipeline could be approved by the end of 2016 – but we can stop that. 

On May 14th, we’re going to encircle the Kinder Morgan facility on the ground and on the water...
On the ground, hundreds of us will march down to the facility together and stage a sit-in outside the gates.
On the water, we’ll create a mass flotilla of kayaks and canoes.We’ll cross the Burrard Inlet to swarm the tanker terminal for the Kinder Morgan facility, which could see over 400 tankers a year putting the coast at risk if the project is approved.."

BreakFree 2016.

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From 'Hotter Than Hell' to 'Army 2040'

Back in 2006, Environment Canada climatologist Mark Tushingham wrote a science fiction book in his spare time - Hotter Than Hell - about "a not-too-distant future world of global warming" where global war breaks out over crippling water and fuel shortages.

You may recall that Environment Minister of the day Rona Ambrose shut down his appearance to discuss the book at a National Press Club luncheon on the same day the Harper government announced it would "cut 80% of programs aimed at curbing global warming at Environment Canada while budgets in other government departments aimed at climate change will be slashed by 40%."

Perhaps Tushingham's mistake was working for Environment Canada instead of the Department of National Defence.

The previous year the DND hired science fiction writer Karl Schroeder to write "Crisis in Zefra", described as "a fictional narrative" set in Africa in 2025 about "Canadian peacekeepers trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency" amidst "ongoing water and oil wars".
The now eerily familiar Three Block War story. Written in 2005, you say? Why?

"In 1997 the Canadian Army formed the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts in Kingston, Ontario. Assigned the mission of conceiving Canada's Army of the future, the directorate's mandate was ideally suited for the creation of a new fictional story predicting how Canada's army might live and fight during the mid 21st century."

The aim of Crisis in Zefra, according to DND's Lt.-Col. Mike Rostek, who leads a team of military and civilian scientists from the Directorate of Land Concepts and Designs in "futures research", was to "illustrate emerging concepts and technologies that could become part of Canada's Army of the Future."

He said another sci-fi book about what Canadian soldiers may face in 2040 called Zefra II was expected in 2010 but I couldn't find it.

Although I did find it mentioned in this 2009 DND Powerpoint presentation on “Army of Tomorrow”; Future Army 2040”, which also included this weird graphic on efforts to create a Joint, Interagency, Multinational and Public (JIMP) capability, described here by Rostek as a sort of  outreach "whole-of-government" "comprehensive approach to operations" at DND:

Fast forward to yesterday's news that the indefatigable Mike DeSouza used an Access to Info request to uncover more recent research from Lt.-Col. Mike Rostek's future-predicting team : Army 2040: First Look.
DeSouza : Oil, water shortages, climate change could provoke wars: report

Critical energy and water shortages combined with climate change could provoke wars within the next 15 years, warns a newly-released analysis by the Department of National Defence.

Global reserves of crude oil could become problematic by 2025

...up to 60 countries could fall into a category of water scarcity or stress by 2050, making the natural resource "a key source of power" or a "basis for future conflict."

there "can be no further debate that global climate change is occurring."

 Crop failures resulting in mass migrations and starvation, along with rising sea levels from melting ice caps and other factors, would be among the impacts. 

Another section of the report said that melting ice in the North and the potential reserves equivalent to as much as 22 per cent of the world's fossil fuels, could also create new challenges for Canada in the Arctic.

“there can be little doubt that unrestricted access to reliable energy supplies is a global strategic issue, one for which, recently, numerous nations have been willing to fight, and have indeed done so"

It also said that human creativity could help avert potential disasters in the future.

Well, duh - as others have already responded.

But this is not really new news, as Rostek has been giving lectures on it for at least a couple of years.
Back in 2006, Vanguard wrote about the Army 2040: First Look project, noting it presents four of what the DND calls Alternative Futures. Two are extreme; the other two are combinations of the first two.

"On the one extreme is a global quagmire featuring a reactive approach to the environment and unsustainable energy supplies marked by increased global competition for scarce energy resources in which the Arctic is a critical region of contention; on the other is a high octane green world characterized by a proactive approach to the environment and sustainable energy where Canada is a world leader in developing alternative energy sources."

Huh. So the DND was all over this - doing what was once called "thinking ahead" - back in 2006 at the very same time Harper was shushing up Tushingham and his sci-fi novel about war resulting from the effects of global warming.

While DeSouza does not mention either anthropocentric climate change or the phrase 'global warming' in his article, the DND report does both.
You can read the original draft of Army 2040 : First Look, Parts 1, 2, 3, & 4 for yourself . 
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Stop Harper action interrupted by long dull dreary throne speech

In subsequent interviews to her brilliant Stop Harper protest during the Speech from the Throne, the now-former Senate page Brigette DePape repeatedly mentioned climate change and inaction on the environment as a motivating factor for her own action. Notable because the Throne Speech mentions neither.

Yesterday SunMedia's David Akin joined the alarming number of politicians and their media fluffers - who are apparently aghast and appalled that a woman would stand silently holding up a piece of cardboard for twenty seconds - with this long dull dreary post :
Memo to Brigette : There are no shortcuts in politics. It takes long, dull, dreary work.

According to Akin, working the inside political corridors completely precludes ever protesting against that same self-serving self-perpetuating hegemony and Brigette DePape broke that most solemn of all Fight Club rules. Oh, boo.
He also apparently did not hear Brigette's interviews on CBC and CTV in which she said she didn't think just holding up a sign would affect anything all by itself but hoped to inspire others to action because politics and democracy is not just about elections.

Seriously, Akin, how the fuck long do you think it will take to get the environment mentioned in a Harper majority Thone Speech the "long dull dreary" way?

Antonia Zerbisias on climate change : Time for a Climate of Change (italics mine)

"Well-known American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben founded the grass-roots group 350.org, which attempts to get people all over the world agitating for laws, regulations and policy aimed at reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) reductions.

“We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale," McKibben, author of many books including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, tells me. “We need to do it in a way that makes one thing clear to all onlookers: in this fight, we are the conservatives. The radicals are the people who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.”

“Non-violent civil disobedience is justified when there is a history of long-standing harm or violation of people's fundamental rights; when legal and policy means have failed to reduce the harms and violations; and when there is little time remaining to address the problems,” University of New England professor John Lemons and Penn State’s Donald Brown wrote in last month’s Journal of Science and Environmental Politics."

“Simply put, people do not have the right to harm others who have not given their consent to be harmed "

All the important social movements of the last century - rights for minorities, women, LGBT, children, POWs, FN, workers, differently abled, the environment - all of them were or continue to be actively suppressed by our governments, who only jump into the front of the parade after a whole lot of outside protest.

From CathiefromCanada : About Protest - the proof that protest works

Post title shamelessly ripped from a great post by Your Heart's on the Left : Harper stunt interrupts Canadian statement delivered by DePape
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Harper hacks StatsCan budget

Who didn't see this coming? CP :

Statistics Canada is cutting five of its surveys after being told by the federal government to chop its budget by $7 million.
The surveys include environmental and business statistics, and are in addition to other belt-tightening at the troubled agency.

As Pogge blogged back in July :

"Harper does not like StatsCan, that's what we kept hearing," according to a longtime employee of the agency. "In particular, he does not like the analytical work we've done for years." The Prime Minister thinks of it as fodder for critics."

Harper especially did not like StatsCan after its head statistician, Munir Sheikh, quit rather than be shanghaied into pretending to approve the government's move to replace the long-form mandatory census with a voluntary survey.
Statscan has also been reporting a steady decrease in crime since 1991, which doesn't exactly jibe with Harper's "if you build them, they will come" bid to stock more prisons with more Canadians.

Luckily there's no need for those Statscan environmental and business statistics now anyway since Harper will be getting his advice from the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, a Suncor-sponsored Harper-appointed group of Export Development Canada guys, politicians and corporate CEOs. They have just released Climate Prosperity, your guide to, as De Smog Blog puts it : "reframing climate change as a good thing for Canada's economy."

Sure, they tell us, there will be less skiing but we'll have way more golfing and easier access to oil and gas in the far north.
See? Business and environment stats rolled into one.

Actual scientists weigh in on Climate Prosperity:

"I was surprised they'd spent one and a half years working on it. It was a complete mess," said John Stone of Ottawa's Carleton University and a prominent member of the IPCC.
Danny Harvey of U of T : "It is full of bad science and utterly downplays the serious impacts of climate change."

We will not be hearing criticism from any muzzled government-employed scientists of course as they must get cabinet minister approval before speaking in public about their own research.

There better damn well be some stink in the press today about this further gutting of Statscan.
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A picture is worth ... in this case only about five words

and those five words are "I gotta change the story", spoken by Environment Minister Jim Prentice's chief of staff Steve Kelly.

Seems Jim's press people "distributed a release for a photo-op of U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Prentice" but the US delegation wasn't having any of it.

Toby Heaps : U.S. snubs Canada

"Over the course of 10 minutes, Kelly repeatedly asked the U.S. delegation official to reconsider, to which the U.S. delegation official replied, negative.
When Kelly asked for this to be taken up the chain of command, the U.S. delegation official replied "it came from pretty high up. It's not going to happen."

The U.S. official said he didn't understand why the photograph was so important, to which Kelly replied "we were carpetbagged this morning by (environmental non-governmental organizations) with a false press release, I gotta change the story."

So much for Jim's airy dismissal of The Yes Men hoax.

But no big photo op transpired for Jim. Instead a staffer snapped the one above - a picture of a snub, distinctly lacking in the symbols of happy handshaking against a backdrop of COP15 logos.

And this even after Steve announced that given the integration of Canada's economy with that of the US, there was really not much point in Canada having an independent environmental position of our own.

Heaps : "It makes you wonder when the U.S. Secretary of Energy is embarrassed to have a public photograph taken with the Canadian Minister of the Environment."

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Canada is to climate what Japan is to whaling

Interview with George Monbiot.

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Bill C-311 : Inside the Environment Committee

Last week Iggy vowed to make the environment central to the Liberal platform again.
Today the Libs voted with the Cons to delay passage of the Climate Change Accountability Act by granting the Standing Committee on the Environment yet another extension to study it instead of pass it.
As noted by Pogge this morning :

The bill is identical to one that passed final reading last year but died in the Senate when the last election was called. This version has already passed second reading. Layton wants to push it through before the climate change talks in Copenhagen to send a message that Harper and company, who have been quite happy to sabotage international efforts whenever they can, don't represent the majority of Canadians on this issue. So why are the Liberals suddenly withdrawing support from legislation they've supported on five previous votes?

This is the party that signed us on to the Kyoto Protocol in the first place and then spent a decade or more studying implications without actually doing anything. So does this mean they didn't study the implications of this bill the last five times they voted for it?

Good question. Bill C-133 sets long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. It does not prescribe specific measures on how to achieve this ; it just says yes we really mean it this time, not like the other time, and authorizes the government to set penalties for failing to reduce emissions.

Back in April, Lib environment critic and environment committee member David McGuinty pushed to have discussion on the bill deferred until this fall. Then the meetings on Sept 29 and Oct 1 were cancelled because they didn't have a chair. Now they want an extension.

The Standing Committee on the Environment :
6 Cons - Bezan, Braid, Calkins, Jeff Watson, Warawa, Woodworth - all voted against Bill C-311 in April, Calkin absent. [Note : Iggy also absent for the vote]
3 Libs - McGuinty, Scarpeleggia, Trudeau
2 Bloc - Bigras, Ouellet
1 NDP - Linda Duncan

So what's going on in that committee?
Yesterday I listened to the audio of Tuesday's meeting as the committee heard four climate scientists , including Nobel Prize winner and former IPCC Working Group Chair John Stone, speak for two hours on the importance of passing the bill prior to the Copenhagen talks in December. Without it we are not even in the game, the scientists said. We will have no voice there, no credibility. Being scientists, they stuck to explaining sciencey things.

No good, said McGuinty and the Cons, we need solutions and concrete plans. What about waiting to see what happens to Obama's targets? What about the other countries? Where is your specific plan of action for Canada and how much it will cost?

We're scientists, not economists or policy makers, the scientists patiently explained about six freakin' times, noting again the importance of making a start.

"Bill C-311 is a first ingredient - we must begin by setting targets.
Kyoto did not work because we didn't have any legislation in place with which to begin to implement it."

Ok then, said the Cons, just give us your personal opinion on what a solution would look like.

One scientist tells about a Saskatchewan project on carbon capture that he says actually works. Another says that if Canada implements a target to keep temperature increase to 2°C, then we would only lose one year of GDP growth by 2050.

The Cons immediately pounce : "What is your expertise in making this claim? Where are your qualifications in economics?"

And after that the scientists politely declined any further ventures into the Con Catch-22 land of being berated both for not providing policy solutions outside their expertise and also for providing them when badgered into it.

Note to committee : Your credibility as members of an environment committee was not particularly enhanced by bringing up climate change 'skeptics' like Ross McKitrick and Rex Murphy and asking actual climate scientists to address the points you recently read about in the National Post.

And then the meeting ended after approving a budget of $39,650 for further study of Bill C-311.
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Update : Devin .
Upperdate : The vote : 169 to 93, with 8 paired. Bill C-311 now officially mired in committee and unlikely to pass before Copenhagen.
Although all three Lib environment committee members voted with the Cons for the extension as expected - including Stéphane Dion! - 14 Libs broke ranks to vote with the NDP and Bloc against it.

Canadians who give a shit about the environment thank the following Libs for their support:
Scott Andrews, Kirsty Duncan, Andrew Kania, Dominic LeBlanc, Keith Martin, Alexandra Mendez, Shawn Murphy, Anita Neville, Robert Oliphant, Glen Pearson, Mario Silva, Michelle Simson, Alan Tonks, and Francis Valeriote.
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Oct 26 Update : 200 protesters disrupted Question Period today as one by one they stood up and shouted : "I say 311, you say 'sign it' " - before being dragged away. 6 detained; at least one roughed up. Good for them. Probably raised the level of debate in the House several notches.
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