Comments on: Make a Year-End Gift to PowerUP Your Voice for a Clean Energy Decade http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/2009/12/29/make-a-year-end-gift-to-powerup-your-voice-for-a-clean-energy-decade/ Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:40:05 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: chuck http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/2009/12/29/make-a-year-end-gift-to-powerup-your-voice-for-a-clean-energy-decade/comment-page-1/#comment-610 chuck Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:24:28 +0000 http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/?p=1778#comment-610 Shame on the worlds leaders for returning from the failed climate change talks in Copenhagen, where no binding legal agreements were signed, and a "we will try to do better" approach is all that our dying planet can take away from 12 days of meetings, preceded by 2 years of bureaucratic and ministerial preparation. And doubly shame on Canada’s Prime Minister for being only a late entry participant, who communicated in advance that he will put the financial interests of our polluting entities ahead of our planets ailing health. Continued spin and deceit by the "drill baby drill" pro pollution lobby twirled violently through Copenhagen like a tornado, with even our prime minister getting in the act when he commented that "Canada was a cold country north of the United States". A calculated anti global warming statement similarly used previously by the fossil fuel industry campaigns which have capitalize on cold weather events as argument that the planet is not warming. While world leaders boarded their modified-yet Co 2 emitting-limousines and SUV’s to shuttled with security parades back and forth to their luxury hotels or private jets, mother nature was engaged in her own ominous display of fury, as if sounding one last warning of what’s to come. During Cop15, weather crippled many parts of the world with deadly storms that shattered temperature and snow fall records, stopped Eurostar’s Chunnel trains between France and England, dead in their tracks, crippled Washington DC with record snow fall, and forced the governor of Virginia to declare a state of emergency. Back home, in Edmonton Alberta (ironically, a key staging area for equipment destined to the Alberta tar sands) the temperature plummeted to become the coldest place on earth (-58c) while shattering the previous Edmonton record set just one year earlier by a whopping minus 10 degrees. What is so alarming by all this is the fact that it all happened in Autumn. As Prime Minister Harper dined with the Queen of Denmark, he had his environment minister speak from the leaders podium to address the world leaders on climate change. To make such a long journey to Denmark on a large Jet and then yield his obligation as a leader is further insult to our Nation. This was his obligation as Canada’s leader regardless of the message he wished to deliver. Our once proud nation was further humiliated on day one of the conference, when we were again awarded the fossil award, this time for our uncompromising position heading into the talks. A recently revealed email from the Conservative member of Parliament for Okanagan Shuswap, Colin Mayes, sums up the Conservative governments position on global warming quite well. It quotes him saying "Climate warming is happening. Just what the cause is, has yet to be substantiated". Quite an alarming statement coming from a member of our government, when the rest of the world is in disagreement with this "special interest serving" view. It is very clear that oil producing companies have a powerful influence on this planet, and the Conservative government of Canada is certainly no exception, given that our prime minister hails from the constituency of Calgary Southwest, and there are literally hundreds of oil and gas producers and developers addressed there. Cop15 may very well have been the last opportunity for legislative action to slow climate change and stem the acceleration of it’s cataclysmic effects. The fossil fuel lobby has been effective in derailing the talks and have put a strangle hold on our Planet.....a strangle hold so severe that it may soon extinguish us all. Chuck Puchmayr Shame on the worlds leaders for returning from the failed climate change talks in Copenhagen, where no binding legal agreements were signed, and a “we will try to do better” approach is all that our dying planet can take away from 12 days of meetings, preceded by 2 years of bureaucratic and ministerial preparation. And doubly shame on Canada’s Prime Minister for being only a late entry participant, who communicated in advance that he will put the financial interests of our polluting entities ahead of our planets ailing health.

Continued spin and deceit by the “drill baby drill” pro pollution lobby twirled violently through Copenhagen like a tornado, with even our prime minister getting in the act when he commented that “Canada was a cold country north of the United States”. A calculated anti global warming statement similarly used previously by the fossil fuel industry campaigns which have capitalize on cold weather events as argument that the planet is not warming.

While world leaders boarded their modified-yet Co 2 emitting-limousines and SUV’s to shuttled with security parades back and forth to their luxury hotels or private jets, mother nature was engaged in her own ominous display of fury, as if sounding one last warning of what’s to come. During Cop15, weather crippled many parts of the world with deadly storms that shattered temperature and snow fall records, stopped Eurostar’s Chunnel trains between France and England, dead in their tracks, crippled Washington DC with record snow fall, and forced the governor of Virginia to declare a state of emergency. Back home, in Edmonton Alberta (ironically, a key staging area for equipment destined to the Alberta tar sands) the temperature plummeted to become the coldest place on earth (-58c) while shattering the previous Edmonton record set just one year earlier by a whopping minus 10 degrees. What is so alarming by all this is the fact that it all happened in Autumn.

As Prime Minister Harper dined with the Queen of Denmark, he had his environment minister speak from the leaders podium to address the world leaders on climate change. To make such a long journey to Denmark on a large Jet and then yield his obligation as a leader is further insult to our Nation. This was his obligation as Canada’s leader regardless of the message he wished to deliver. Our once proud nation was further humiliated on day one of the conference, when we were again awarded the fossil award, this time for our uncompromising position heading into the talks.

A recently revealed email from the Conservative member of Parliament for Okanagan Shuswap, Colin Mayes, sums up the Conservative governments position on global warming quite well. It quotes him saying “Climate warming is happening. Just what the cause is, has yet to be substantiated”. Quite an alarming statement coming from a member of our government, when the rest of the world is in disagreement with this “special interest serving” view. It is very clear that oil producing companies have a powerful influence on this planet, and the Conservative government of Canada is certainly no exception, given that our prime minister hails from the constituency of Calgary Southwest, and there are literally hundreds of oil and gas producers and developers addressed there.

Cop15 may very well have been the last opportunity for legislative action to slow climate change and stem the acceleration of it’s cataclysmic effects. The fossil fuel lobby has been effective in derailing the talks and have put a strangle hold on our Planet…..a strangle hold so severe that it may soon extinguish us all.

Chuck Puchmayr

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