Climate change, unfettered capitalism and Canada's election

Climate change, unfettered capitalism and Canada's election

Postby Oscar » Mon Aug 31, 2015 3:25 pm

It’s way more than the economy: climate change, unfettered capitalism and Canada’s election

[ http://joanbaxter.ca/its-way-more-than- ... -election/ ]

It’s way more than the economy: climate change, unfettered capitalism and Canada’s election

Posted by Joan on Aug 30, 2015 in Canada, Climate Change, Environment, Media, Neo-Liberalism

BY Joan Baxter

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” This hard truth comes from a 183-page document that makes a plea for our species to come to our senses and hear “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”. [ http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/ ... to-si.html ]

It’s a powerful cri de coeur for humankind to stop the plunder of the planet, confront climate change and end unfettered capitalism that is driving the destruction and disparity between rich and poor. It continues: “Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change.”

Strong words, revolutionary even. The kind of language one might expect from the environmental or social justice groups often labelled “radical” or “extremist” by the powerful elites these statements condemn.

But they’re not. They come from the Encyclical written by Pope Francis, arguably the single most influential man on the planet as spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics around the world. [ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-21443313 ]

Islamic leaders have also added their voices to the environmental cause, issuing an Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change calling on the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to help combat climate change and find a “new way of relating to God’s Earth”. [ http://islamicclimatedeclaration.org/is ... te-change/ ]

And for many years, scientists around the world have been saying more or less the same thing, [ http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ ] issuing increasingly dire warnings that time is running out, that we have to stop pillaging the natural world and wean ourselves off fossil fuels to save ourselves from climate change. Some are so disheartened by the enormity of it all, so overwhelmed by the way we are trashing the planet that it makes them weep. [ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... ate-change ] Not something that normally dispassionate scientists like to do.

Joining the global call to arms to combat climate change are others not typically found on the frontlines of environmentalism. Among them, the US Department of Defense [ http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-Vie ... ate-change ] and also the US National Security Strategy, which recognizes that the “accelerating impacts of climate change” give rise to anxieties about “global security”. [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defaul ... rategy.pdf ]

Some very, very large multinationals and investors are also committing to reducing their carbon pollution that they recognize “is destroying our climate”. [ http://www.theguardian.com/the-b-team-p ... t-unilever ] Sometimes the neoliberal market “solutions” these economic powerbrokers propose sound an awful lot like the things that got us into this climate crisis (not to mention financial ones and the gross economic disparities that the Pope decries in his Encyclical). But at least they are speaking out in favour of climate change action. The head of the International Monetary Fund says climate change is putting the planet’s future “in peril”. Another unlikely friend of the environment, Citibank, says it will invest many billions of dollars to reduce the impacts of climate change.

Some see the upcoming 2015 Paris climate meeting as our “last chance” to save ourselves and just about other living creatures from climate calamity.

Meanwhile, in Canada

So what’s with Canada? Why is this not headline news every day in our country? Canada is home to the tar sands, where greenhouse gas emissions are the “fastest growing source of climate change pollution in Canada”? [ https://www.pembina.org/reports/oilsands-metrics.pdf ] We have a prime minister who claims to be so worried about our security that he’s threatened to restrict Canadians’ rights to travel [ http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/12/fear-jus ... r-anymore/ ] and brought in police-state legislation with Bill C-51 [ https://cdnantiterrorismlawaudit.wordpr ... d-charter/ ] to combat terrorism. He fails to acknowledge climate change is a huge threat to our security, scorning action to tackle it with a carbon tax as “job-killing”. [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tony-ab ... -1.2669287 ]

Really, what is more terrifying than out-of-control climate change?

MORE:

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Oscar
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