Rew: America Unprepared for Climate Change, Say Policy Advi

[Oscar]

Rew: America Unprepared for Climate Change, Say Policy Advisers

Date: March 17, 2009

From: Dorene Rew <darew@telusplanet.net>

To: Prime Minister/Premier ministre <pm@pm.gc.ca>, Layton, Jack - M.P. <Layton.J@parl.gc.ca>, <ignatieff.m@parl.gc.ca>, <duceppe.g@parl.gc.ca>, <premeir@gov.ab.ca>, David Swann
<David.Swann@assembly.ab.ca>, Brian Mason <Brian.Mason@assembly.ab.ca>

Dear Politicians,

This statement is even more true in Canada as a whole and Alberta in particular.

Here we only learn what our governments are really up to when somebody with a conscience leaks a document.

Recently we have received leaked documents on changes (for the worse) to environmental protection, cuts to scientific research on climate change action, changes making meat and other food inspection even more unsafe, changes to the Wheat Board and other policy affecting grain farmers rights to make a living and on and on.

The Tory governments in AB and in Ottawa are now totally dedicated to enriching the bottom line for big business (TILMA legislative changes in Bill -18 most likely will pass and more provinces signing on to similar agreements) and new policies that will send farmers, ranchers and all the rest of us into deeper poverty - setting us up as serfs to the government and big business.

Unfortunately, our governments seem unable to realize that their policies are unsustainable and will - in a very short time - turn Canada into a third world country.

Driving for more greedy dollars in hand and saying to Hell with dying tomorrow, is a really stupid, indeed suicidal, policy, especially on a small and finite planet.

Many of us can see the handwriting on the wall and have been trying to get the word out that the real way out of this recession is not through feeding all the same old, same old, industries, but to encourage a rapid change to green transportation, clean energy, organic agriculture and massive energy efficiency measures.

Just when I thought the oil funded skeptics were finished I read another article this week saying that the climate is really cooling.

Since both governments make an effort to fund or encourage skeptics and to keep the masses barefoot, pregnant and illiterate, my job and that of all scientists and environmentalists is made even more difficult.

The whole bunch of you ought to read an article written by Frances Moore Lappe titled "The City that Ended Hunger," See http://www.commondreams.org/print/39472 . Lappe concludes that democracy - real democracy - can end hunger.

That probably explains why the middle class in the US and Canada is almost non-existent now while the poor grow in number and in degree of poverty.

Great country you are leaving us with!

But despite our 'secret' governments, we WILL get the truth out.

Despite your suppression of our democratic rights to speak out and to be informed about the real state of the Earth and what our governments are not doing we will find out and we will disperse this knowledge.

You can bet your Gucci shoes.

Dorene A. Rew
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America Unprepared for Climate Change, Say Policy Advisers

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/13-6
Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
National Research Council claims US agencies and political leaders not getting the right information or guidance - by Suzanne Goldenberg
America is woefully unprepared for climate change, and the government agencies charged with delivering the latest science to decision makers are not up to the task, a new report said today.
The National Research Council, a policy advice centre that is part of the US National Academy of Sciences, said that government agencies and political leaders, concerned more than ever about climate change, were not getting the information or the guidance they needed.
"Many decision makers are experiencing or anticipating a new climate regime and are asking questions about climate change and potential responses to it that federal agencies are unprepared to answer," the council said in its report, Restructuring Federal Climate Research to Meet the Challenges of Climate Change.
"Robust and effective responses to climate change demand a vastly improved body of scientific knowledge."
The report called for an expansion of federal government research into global warming, as well as a "transformational change" in how scientific research is conducted and incorporated into public policy.
It said government scientists, such as those at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, needed to pay greater attention to the human dimension of climate change - its effects on food supply, public health and the environment.
More: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/13-6
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The City that Ended Hunger

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3330
Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by YES! Magazine
A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.
by Frances Moore Lappé
"To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer." CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL
In writing Diet for a Small Planet [1], I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life's essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States-one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps-these questions take on new urgency.
To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help-not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil's fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market-you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.
More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3330