World Leaders Fail to Use BP Oil Spill for a Greener Good

Funny thing, with all the media coverage of British Petroleum’s (BP) failure to cap its massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico – it has been over a month since the problem smeared across the waters – and around the world – no one is thinking green.

Yes, it is of utmost importance to put an end to the gushing gallons of crude oil – about 5,000 barrels or 210,000 gallons of the icky slimy stuff billow out per day.

But even the once so-called “most green American president ever,” President Barock Obama hasn’t used this ecological disaster to forward his county’s green agenda.

Yet wasn’t it President Obama who boldly declared from his lofty pedestal in the White House’s Rose Garden: “We have to reduce America’s dependency on oil?”

Ironic, as America – and most of the western world – still depends on the highly toxic fossil fuel for everything from heating our homes, powering our cars, to creating plastics and rubbers used in everything from medical hoses to carry drugs and oxygen to patients, to the tires on our cars.

If the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth can’t truly go green, all hope may be lost.

One person may make a difference, but what really matters are the differences made by those in positions of real power.

So, don’t stop your recycling, and don’t switch back to energy wasting incandescent light bulbs just yet. By reducing your impact on the environment, you are making a difference.

However, oil slicks polluting our wetlands and killing off millions of fish, endangering the lives of birds, trashing our drinking water, and even harming human beings involved in the cleanup efforts will continue until world leaders – like President Obama – stop talking about making a difference and actually do.

Sure, President Obama has extended an American-led ban on deep-water oil drilling, but that was his response to a crisis which could have been prevented, had he acted on his previous promise to move his country further away from a dependency on oil. All he did today when he extended this moratorium to six-months was media damage control for his public image.

Sure, President Obama’s administration is holding congressional hearings specifically on BP’s oil spill – but even if BP is fined, and forced to pay the enormous costs to clean up their mess, that won’t prevent future oil disasters.

President Obama, and other worldly leaders need to get together on greening the planet – and I’m not talking about token carbon emissions. Whenever world leaders meet, they talk about reducing Greenhouse Gases by setting specific emission reduction goals –which often aren’t met.

What our world leaders need to do is to create a functional, working plan for implementing green energy alternatives in their respective countries.

Solar, wind and geothermal won’t work in every part of the globe. Not every spot on Earth receives enough sunlight for solar power, nor enough wind for wind power, nor has the underwater hotspots needed for geothermal.

However, every part of the globe can make use of at least one or more of these green alternatives – to realistically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

We may not completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels such as oil – yet. But if we had world leaders that made it law to use environmentally-friendly alternatives wherever possible, it would be just the incentive we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, while invigorating the drive to research new ways to power our high-energy consumption lives.

Big business wouldn’t see green energy alternatives as a costly hassle, but rather a cheaper alternative to over-using fossil fuels and having to pay fines or added taxes for their wasteful ways. Having fines and heavy taxes on those relying on oil and other fossil fuels would also encourage companies to fund research into green energy alternatives, as it would now be in their interests to use the greener energy sources.

Having court hearings as to what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico, and why after a month, the toxic crude oil is still leaking is important – we need to find out what went wrong to prevent oil spills from happening due to the same cause.

But the real way – the only way – we will ever truly avoid destroying the only planet we know of capable of sustaining our lives in our universe – is for world leaders to mandate environmentally-friendly alternatives to the point when they aren’t alternatives – they are the norm.

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Earth Hour Lights Up Need to Be Green

Tonight, cities and towns around the world will go dim for an hour, in show of support for our planet. I remember last year, I was chilling in front of the television, flipping channels, when I came across The Weathernetwork, which was covering the event live.

Immediately I ran to my balcony – I live on the upper floors of a high rise in Toronto, Canada – and I witnessed an amazing thing.

The usual Toronto skyline, with the CN Tower, bank towers, and other tall structures which light the night’s sky were dark – all except their airplane warning lights. It was an eerie darkness, as all I could see was the occasional flash of red warning lights, where there usually are well lit buildings. If you stared long enough, you could make out the silhouettes of the buildings. In the dim moonlight, my eyes started to get sore from the strain.

I looked down closer to home, and the neighborhoods around me were also quite dim. You could see the bluish flicker of lights emanating from windows, as people were watching television, but all the other lights in their homes were off.

Earth Hour – an event organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – takes place across the globe, from Canada and the United States, to across the pond in Europe and elsewhere.

Although chances are you won’t notice much of a drop in your electricity bill from shutting off your lights for the one hour event, as people across your area shut off their lights, you do see a difference.

Last year it was reminiscent of when I was a kid up at the cottage in Georgian Bay. Sure we had electrical lights, we weren’t that far removed from the benefits of modern life. But when I was a kid, spending much of my summers up north, I could see something you don’t often get to see in the big cities – stars.

I am lucky living in an area where I can still see the stars every so often. But up north, the whole night’s sky is ablaze with stars. Here in the city, generally I see just the brightest stars, such as the Big Dipper cluster, the North Star, and occasionally a handful of others. But up north, you’d swear you were seeing the entire galaxy.

During the Earth Hour event last year, I could see far more stars than I had ever seen in the city before. It was spectacular. Maybe it was our reward for turning off our lights.
Reducing energy by cutting our lights for Earth Hour won’t prevent global warming – but it isn’t a bad way to start.

The whole genesis of Earth Hour, according to the WWF is to show our support for energy reduction in the fight against global warming.

Global warming is just a natural part of our planet’s life. Throughout all of time on this blue-green dot in the Milky Way, the Earth has gone through regular climatic changes. Due to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, our planet is constantly either warming or cooling.

Our planet’s orbit around the Sun is elliptical, meaning some orbits bring us closer to our gas giant Sun, which causes the Earth to heat and warm, while other orbits take us further away, creating colder periods, often resulting in ice ages.

For the past decade, our orbit has been one of closer proximity to the Sun, which is why we’re experiencing a global warming.

However, we are not completely innocent either – thanks to our love affair with the car, with heated homes in winter and cooled ones in summer, thanks to well lit homes at night, and even thanks to beer fridges for keeping the suds chilled, our use of fossil fuels to heat, cool and power our lives has put more Carbon-based elements into the atmosphere.

Carbon-based elements, such as Carbon Dioxide, acts like a blanket, keeping the heat our planet receives from the Sun around us, which creates a greenhouse effect. A greenhouse traps hot air inside it, keeping the area warm.

This trapped heat is in addition to the increases of heat we receive from our closer orbit to the Sun. The effects are devastating – our polar ice caps at both ends of our globe are melting at an alarming rate. As these ice masses melt, sea levels around the world rise, causing flooding in low lying areas.

Water pressures on the Earth’s crust increase as ocean and sea levels rise. This added pressure builds, until it is too much, and it is released with such force, earthquakes and tsunamis are the result.

Earthquakes and tsunamis change the global landscape literally – look at the devastation from the recent earthquakes in Hati. Plants and animals are displaced when their natural habitats are uprooted. People die in buildings that collapse, and lives are disrupted when homes, workplaces, schools and other buildings are destroyed.

Turning off the lights for one hour won’t make much of a difference – but if we take the time to practice energy efficient practices year-round, we can all make a big difference.

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Canadian Politico Denies Global Warming, Says it is Nothing More than Alarmism

A former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister in one brief open letter to a Quebec-based newspaper has publicly discounted the entire environmental movement, saying it is nothing more than being politically correct, leading to alarmism.

Conservative federal Member of Parliament Maxime Bernier made the comments in a letter published in La Presse newspaper last Wednesday, arguing that there is no scientific consensus on global warming, and thanking his former boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not rushing into policies to cut greenhouse gases.

"The debate over climate change, stifled for years by political correctness, has finally broken out in the media," he wrote in his letter. "The numerous recent revelations on errors by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have supplemented the alternative theories put forward for many years.

"We can now see that it's possible to be a 'skeptic,' or in any case to keep an open mind, on just about all the main aspects of warming theory."

Bernier was dropped from the Prime Minister’s cabinet in 2008 after he admitted he had forgotten secret documents at a girlfriend’s house with links to criminal bikers. Since his dismissal from cabinet, he’s been considered a radical, outspoken backbencher.

Dismissing the entire green movement is certainly being outspoken. And linking that anti-green sediment to the Prime Minister’s lack of action on climate change is just sour grapes stemming from Bernier’s own ineptitude with classified materials – which ultimately cost him his job as a federal minister.

Sour grapes or not, Bernier is right in his observations about a lack of action on the part Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government when climate change, and other environmental initiatives are concerned.

In 2002, Prime Minister Harper referred to the Kyoto Climate Change Accord as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” He continued his anti-environmental leanings by calling the scientific research supporting climate change as “tentative and contradictory.”

Canada – a country known for its vast hardwood forests, rugged snow-capped Rocky Mountains, and home to the world’s largest sources of fresh water – is being led by a man who in 2006 again expressed his denial of global warming: “We have difficulties in predicting the weather in one week, or even tomorrow. Imagine in a few decades,” said Prime Minister Harper.

Most recently, the Prime Minister has set his government’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, but the Canadian government has not taken any measures to begin that reduction.

Congratulating Prime Minister Harper on his slow environmental approach, Bernier wrote in his letter to La Presse: “It would certainly be irresponsible to spend billions of dollars and impose exaggeratedly severe regulations to solve a problem whose gravity we're still far from discerning."

There are two issues here – one a former employee saying nasty things about his former boss, the other far more serious – the denial by Canadian leaders of the existence of global warming.

Bernier is just a pompous fool using the environment to forward his own personal attacks on the Prime Minister and anyone that supports the Prime Minister.
People that publicly dump their current or past employer will soon find it hard to find work – would you want to hire someone who said something bad about their boss? Just imagine what that person might one day say about you?

Denying global warming on the other hand is a far more serious problem which both Bernier and our Prime Minister unfortunately appear to share.

Yes, there is much debate in the scientific community about global warming – but that’s what scientists do to scientifically prove the existence of anything. The debate is just part of the scientific method – it isn’t a debate as to whether or not global warming is or isn’t occurring.

Anyone denying the increase in our planet’s temperatures must be smoking something pretty strong, because those hard and fast facts have been well documented. Scientists have found that our planet has a history of periods of global warming and global cooling, due in large part to our rotation around the Sun.

The Earth’s orbit around the sun isn’t a perfect circle, it is elliptical. So, there are periods when our orbit brings us closer to the sun, meaning more of the Sun’s light and heat reaches us so our global temperatures increase. Then, the orbit is slightly further away from the Sun, so our planet cools off.

This natural lifecycle of planet Earth continued for millions of years unchanged until the industrial revolution of the 1900’s, when we human beings started burning more and more fossil fuels to power our climate controlled lifestyles and create the creature comforts we enjoy today.

The burning of fossil fuels changed the carbon footprint of our planet, eventually leading to holes in the Ozone Layer which protect us from the Sun’s ultraviolet spectrum, creating thick layers of carbon-based smog, which allow the Sun’s heat to reach us, but like the clouds, trap that heat, warming our planet.

Naturally occurring cloud tops blow away in the winds, or dissipate as precipitation is released. But human-made smog’s chemical composition makes the “clouds” of smog too heavy to just blow away, often lasting days or weeks in a stinky and stagnant layer high above our heads. The rain which falls from these clouds of smog is so acidic, it kills off trees, creates acidic water bodies, and over time combines with the added heat and light from our Sun to artificially warm our planet.

Climate change is not a myth being debated in scientific circles. Climate change is the natural lifecycle of our home, planet Earth. The real debate is just how much of an impact we human beings have had on that natural lifecycle, and how to use human ingenuity to fix the natural lifecycle which we broke – if it isn’t too late.

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EU Signs Off Valueless Blank Cheque for Climate Change

While European politicians pat themselves on the back, claiming to have successfully agreed to a climate change initiative ahead of the Copenhagen Summit, by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, others aren’t so sure.

United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the European Union (EU) is leading the way, with bold proposals, after he, and leaders from 27 other European countries signed the treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty, outlines, among other things, a fiscal plan for allocating funds for climate change initiatives, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The treaty budgets 100bn euros a year by 2020. That would an immediate pay out by member countries of about 5bn to 7bn euros, to achieve that 2020 spending goal.

Initially, this alienated many small EU member countries, as they said they could not afford such a high cost. Nine of these poorer countries threatened to block the deal, unless the richer countries paid more.

This is where the waters begin to get murky – no cost targets for individual EU nations were announced. In fact, the initial funding will be completely voluntary, with the details hammered out by working groups later.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the agreement

Image via Wikipedia

was "an important breakthrough that brings new momentum".


What new momentum?

The EU politicians have signed a piece of paper, and that is about all they really have accomplished.

Whenever governments make deals with no definitive plan of action, it is almost a certainty that these deals are just for public relations and have no real merit.

It is like winning the lottery, and being handed one of those enormous cardboard cheques that requires several people to hold. Just as you can’t take one of those giant cardboard cheques to the bank – they use them just for photo ops by the media – when politicians sign something into effect, but leave all the details to “working groups”, it’s all for the media’s benefit.

We live in tough economic times. Millions of people around the world are still feeling the brutal grips of the global credit crisis. Many of these people aren’t working – they don’t have jobs, or income. This has lowered the tax-base and in turn, the tax revenues for most of the industrialized nations on Earth.

Yet, in these tough economic times, governments are often called on more to provide support and training for their citizens, struggling just to survive in this global economic disaster.

So, governments are bringing in fewer revenues, but spending more. Meaning most governments are in debt – big time.

The American national debt is estimated at being in the TRILLIONS of dollars – it is at its highest amount since World War II. Some say, the United States of America owes so much debt, they may never pay it all off.

Which brings this blog posting full circle – EU nations have agreed to support the fiscal plan of the Lisbon Treaty on climate change, without allocating who will be paying for what, and how much.

As many of these governments are in a cash crunch, they will be very unlikely to spend big bucks on treaties which have not specifically dictated how much money is required to support this treaty.

By not forcing specific amounts on each individual EU country participating, the deal was easy for those up in arms about the cost to sign. They might as well be crossing their fingers behind their backs and chiming “na-nah-nah-na,” because they can easily go back on their word for funding support, or just pay the bare minimum they can afford.

But one of the key elements of the Lisbon Treaty is financial forecasting exact monetary amounts required to achieve environmental good.

So the only good that really came out of the signing of the Lisbon Treaty is the free press for the politicians talking about the environment, and just as the plastic cheque – isn’t worth anything at all.

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Doctors Push Politicians to Go Green

We’re on the brink of a global health catastrophe, according to the British Medical Journal and The Lancet.

Editorial letters in both medical journals urge doctors in 18 worldwide medical associations – including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada – to pressure their politicians and governments to reduce carbon dioxide emissions for the good of the human race.

Carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by 50 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050 to at least give us at least a 50 per cent chance of preventing a global climatic event which could pose serious health issues for our species, according to the editorials.

"Failure to agree to radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen," says the editorial written by Lord Michael Jay, who chairs the health charity Merlin, and Prof. Michael Marmot of University College London.
This editorial comes in advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, being held in Copenhagen this December.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This past May, medical experts warned of the health implications of climate change, including increases in malaria spread by more mosquitoes, declining crop yields due to dramatic climate changes, and more extremes in weather such as flash flooding, more powerful and dangerous hurricanes, tornadoes, and other severe storms.

Those living in poor tropical countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, will suffer more from climate change due to the poverty and the lower standards of living.

"There is a real danger that politicians will be indecisive," the medical experts write. "We call on doctors to demand that their politicians listen to the clear facts that have been identified in relation to climate change and act now."

On the verge of political unrest in the States – as American President Barack Obama battles Congress to send more American soldiers to Afghanistan, and to pass his government-funded universal healthcare plan, the environment

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

may have taken a back seat south of the border.

Here in Canada, there has been more talk on Parliament Hill about the constant squabbling among the federal political parties – each one threatening to dissolve The House and call an election – rather than debate the issues.
But if the editorials in both highly regarded medical journals have even the slightest impact on doctors in Canada and the States, your doctor may be able to push the environmental issue back into the political spotlight – where it should be.

"[We] have a responsibility as health professionals to warn people how bad things are likely to get if we don't act now," said Dr. Fiona Godlee, Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal.

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G-20, G8, G-Whiz Does Anyone Get Anything Done?

This week, eight of the most powerful world leaders are trading barbs in Italy, as the G8 gathers in the European country, drinking fine wines, eating the best Italian cuisine, and having their photos snapped as they shake hands, smile, and make nice-nice.

As if putting eight high ranking politicians into one room isn’t enough, let us not forget about the G-20, which is a grouping of the world’s twenty economic powerhouses’ financial ministers and central bank governors.

Lots of “G’s” but do these organizations, representing the richest, most prosperous, and most powerful countries on the planet, actually make a difference?

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper has shown publicly just how important these summits are – he almost missed the group photo opportun

Image by Gobierno Federal via Flickr

ity earlier this week, having to rush in among jokes from the other leaders about his whereabouts.

Today, Prime Minister Harper indicated how old-school and irrelevant the G8 may have become.

“Some people say that the G8 is not a representative body in the modern world,” he said during the closing remarks of this year’s summit. “It is not representative of the power, it is not representative of the economic realities of the modern world, it’s not an appropriate forum for global governance. I agree with that, I don’t think those of us who continue to support the importance of the G8 suggest that it is a body of global governance.”

So why bother wasting jet fuel for these meetings?

Prime Minister Harper hinted that the G8 may soon be the G9, G10, or maybe even the G20 (minus the hyphen of the financial G-20), as other countries – including ones in the developing world -- have been invited to participate in the next G8 summit, which will be held next year in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

Inclusiveness is always better than exclusiveness, but the more people sitting around the conference table, the harder it will be to pass motions, make policies and effect change upon the world.

Image by gabemac via Flickr

That’s always been the problem with the United Nations (UN). Although the UN means well, with 192 member countries, each with their own delegation of representatives, each with its own country’s best interests at the top of the agenda, UN meetings turn into endless debates, which often pass motions so watered down to please as many member states as possible, that it renders their policies ineffective.

Though one can even question the value of just having eight world leaders locked in room talking shop.

Thanks to technological improvements, and changes in the global economy, we have lived in a constantly shrinking global village. But even the most open-minded world leader will always put his or her own country’s interests ahead of the group – what matters to most politicians is pleasing those who have the power to vote them in – or out – of office.

During this past week’s G8 Summit, debate raged on over climate change, democracy in Iran, and the economy, but did anything really get done?
Will the world suddenly be a better place, thanks to this week’s series of meetings, debates, and discussions?

Originally created in 1974 to tackle the on-going oil crisis which begun a year earlier, the G8 even defines itself as an informal forum, so it doesn’t have the same structure as the UN. There isn’t a permanent secretariat, official offices, or even a president. The president of the group rotates through the member countries, starting with each New Year on January 1.

Perhaps the G8 is too informal – over the years, they have created policies to reduce global poverty, find a cure for AIDS, limit the amounts of carbon produced by member nations to eliminate acid rain, and most recently work towards better environmental practices to limit climate change.

However, criticism of the G8 has found that there action – or in some cases lack of action – have contributed to extreme poverty in Africa and many third-world countries, increases in global warming due to carbon dioxide emission rates, and limiting research and medicines for AIDS patients due to strict policies on medicine patents.

In the end, the G8 really is nothing more than a meeting of the minds. But those minds can impact our world in far reaching ways.

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Toronto Media Garbage Chasers

Image via Wikipedia

When I was a journalist many eons ago, there were ambulance chasers in every newsroom. These are people whose eyes light up when they hear of a horrible fatal car crash, their hearts quicken when they get word from the police about a big fire ablaze somewhere, and they are almost ecstatic with glee when they get a story involving multiple deaths.

Since civic employees walked off the job in Canada’s largest city four days ago, the local Toronto news media has invented a whole new type of media hound – the garbage chaser.

These are reporters that wander the city’s streets, looking for massive amounts of litter. With the labour dispute in Toronto – both the inside and outside workers unions are on strike – many city-run services have been gaboshed, including garbage collection.

Without trash collectors in place, even the city’s own public garbage bins on city streets are off limits. They have been wrapped in plastic wrap, to prevent people from using them. Despite warnings from the mayor, people are still tossing their litter on the streets, there just aren’t any other spots for it.

Unless you do what one report suggests, and keep your household waste in your fridge, to keep it – ahem – preserved.

Now many reporters are following the trails of the latest breaking story – no not the labour negotiations between the city and the workers – that’s too obvious! They are following the trail of trash.

Nope, not the people dumping their waste illegally – if caught they could face a fine of almost $400, and repeat offenders could end up in jail.

Just the trash – unsightly candy wrappers, bits and pieces of discarded food scraps, paper, bottles, tin cans – other people’s waste.

“Oh, look!” exclaimed one television reporter, as she zoomed her camera onto the latest media fascination. “A piece of lettuce, there’s some fruit, I think it’s an apple.”

Thanks for the always riveting, sitting on the edge of your couch coverage!

I actually like this reporter, I’ve seen her do some hard investigative stuff in the past, and think her employer is wasting her talent on soft puff pieces – such as chasing garbage. She’d be an excellent person to cover something really important – say the negotiations between the city and the staff.

The trash is building up, it hasn’t reached the disgusting mile-high pile stages which it did in the last city strike back in 2002, but it is getting there. And usually Toronto is one of the cleanest cities in the world, with litter properly in its place, so it is newsworthy to a degree.

That degree is worthy of mentioning on the news, maybe one or two lines – but to actually send reporters out to cover the small piles of garbage forming, is a waste worthy of the trash bin.

If this strike continues for long, and the piles become the six-to-ten foot high stink bombs that they were back in 2002, then I could see reporters going out to get images and video. But even then, they should do more than just go after a garbage pile.

“News is about people” – I remember telling a junior reporter I was mentoring many years ago. “So don’t come back to the newsroom until you’ve talked to at least three people involved in the story.”

That was good advice back then – and it still rings true today. Unless of course, the garbage is talking. Then I’d be interested in what it had to say.

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