Climate Change

The evidence is clear: the rich are destroying the planet.

WWF-Canada

Transmitted by CNW Group on : December 2, 2015 10:32

Sitting in his office on the outskirts of Montreal, Serge Otis Simon, council chief of the Kanastake — a band of Mohawks — is clear about what might happen if the proposed Energy East Pipeline is routed through the band's land, in spite of their opposition. "The Warrior Society are men whose duty is given by creation to protect the land, people, and community," he told me, describing a group of Mohawks who go by that name.

Inuit and environmental groups are at the climate change summit in Paris to warn against the the environmental, human and security threats of climate change and lobby for action.

The United Nations 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) started this week in Paris, bringing together indigenous and environmental groups from across the globe lobbying for decisive action on climate change that address both the environmental as well as the human cost of global warming.  

The climate negotiations entered their final day, and we geared up for our most audacious action. Several buses brought four hundred activists to different locations near the conference hall. Adrenaline running, we walked fast toward the gates and the guards. After a week of discussing sea level rise, eating vegan food, blocking car traffic, and marching in the streets dressed as polar bears and turtles, we were out to make a real difference.

Where you would expect to see caution and circumspection, instead there is a rush to action. Where you would expect to see determination and resolve, there is only vacillation and delay.

The contrast between the government’s handling of the Syrian crisis and its handling of the climate change crisis could not be greater. It responds to these issues with an equal and opposite recklessness.

Even best-case scenarios seem to point to an agreement that falls short of an action plan to keep the world under 2 C of warming, the threshold scientists overwhelmingly agree can’t be breached in order to avert catastrophic climate change. What’s more, individual countries’ emissions targets won’t be legally binding, a position pushed by the U.S., China and other big polluters, and conceded in advance of the talks by Canada’s new Liberal government.

It’s only day two of the Paris climate talks and already there’s a world of difference between the lofty and inspiring words by state leaders made Monday, and what country negotiators are actually saying to vulnerable nations behind the scenes about what will done to protect them from future climate chaos.

“The leaders made very, very good laudable statements," said Bangladeshi climate negotiations expert Saleemul Huq. "I don't see their negotiators following very good instructions from their leaders."

Cuban farmers planting sweet potato crop.

“If you want to see what tomorrow's fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech farming looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of Cuba,” Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, wrote in a November 19 Slate feature on Cuba's system of agro-ecology.