 |
The Confrérie: Our New Age President - True change begins with me. |
Category: Inspiration 3 comments
13 Mar 2007 @ 01:03 by jmarc : gasp 13 Mar 2007 @ 01:24 by jmarc : Didn't create this entry and I'm a bit shocked to find it here, but if I might ad a C&p from Scott Burgess that I found and posted in chats a while back, it does seem to mesh well with the above... The Inuit and The Beast Saturday's Independent devoted all of its first three pages to publicising the Nobel Peace Prize nomination (one of 181) given to Shelia Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian Inuit activist who devotes her life to the struggle against the environmental threat to her people - most significantly from climate change. For the Indy, the importance of Ms. Watt-Cloutier's work cannot be overstated. She is, quite literally, "perhaps the closest thing the planet has to a beacon of hope for the future". It is in the capacity of hope-beacon that Ms. Watt-Cloutier heads a delegation which will travel to Washington this week - "entering the very belly of the beast", as reporter Andrew Gumbel puts it. The reason for her journey (presumably to be made by kayak) is, according to an Indy article published earlier this month, to "provide first-hand testimony of how global warming is destroying their way of life and to accuse the Bush administration of undermining their human rights." The article continues: "The delegation, representing Inuit peoples from the US, Canada, Russia and Greenland, will argue that the US's energy policies and its position as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is having a devastating effect on their communities. [...] "The Inuit's efforts to force the US to act are part of an unprecedented attempt to link climate change to international human rights laws. They will argue before the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (ICHR) that the US's behaviour puts it in breach of its obligations. 'The impacts of climate change, caused by acts and omissions by the US, violate the Inuit's fundamental human rights protected by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other international instruments," the Inuit argued in a letter to the ICHR.'" If Ms. Watt-Cloutier's true motive is to punish those whose "acts and omissions" are violating her people's human rights, she would do well to begin at home. Comparison of total anthropogenic GHG emissions since the Kyoto baseline year of 1990 show the US to have easily outperformed its northern neighbour in controlling the increase, despite the green glow that surrounds Canada in the popular imagination. Indeed, if all factors (including "emissions/removals from land use, land-use change and forestry") are taken into account, Canada is by far the worst performer in the world - its total emissions for all greenhouse gases having increased by 62.2% in the relevant period, almost exactly 3 times the increase seen in the US, according to the latest available data (2004) from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (PDF - page 13). By this measure, the US also outperforms Spain, Portugal, Finland, Greece and Ireland, but don't expect Ms. Watt-Cloutier to be accusing the Finnish PM of crimes against humanity any time soon. In fairness, it should be noted that the inclusion of land-use figures (i.e., taking all relevant data into consideration) does, in fact, put the Canadians in a relatively worse light vis-à-vis the US. If they are ignored (page 12), Canadian emissions have only increased by 26.6% - not even twice the American level of 15.8%. Under this measure, the Canadians lose their world championship and are merely tied (with Greece) for 4th-worst world performance in emissions reduction. An obvious question is raised. Given the far superior performance of the US in controlling emissions, why is Ms. Watt-Cloutier targeting the "the beast", rather than her own country? It can't possibly be that to hit all the PC, anti-American buttons in this way maximises fawning press coverage and incidentally garners Nobel nominations, so it must be something else. Ah yes. It's the fact that the US is "the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases". Except that, by the only fair measurement, it's not. While it's true that the aggregate emissions from the US are greater than those of any other country, the only honest comparison is of per capita data. And which North American nation do you suppose has the highest level of emissions per person? Why yes - it's ... Canada! Using the same (latest) UN data referenced above, we find that (again, taking all factors into account) the typical Canadian emits 26.298 tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually - a figure that's 22% higher than that for the average American (21.482). [See page 13. Canada (2004 population 31,900,000) emitted 838,907 kilotonnes. The US (population 293,000,000) accounted for 6,294,315 kilotonnes)] If we eliminate the land-use factors, the figures for both countries are nearly identical - the US number is just 1.5% higher than that for the Canadians. Incidentally, if you're wondering why the Canadians are as eco-hostile as they are, a clue can be found at the website of Ms. Watt-Cloutier's home town of Iqaluit, which informs us (PDF) that "snowmobiles, ATVs and SUVs are pretty well the norm", and that: "Despite the fact that much of Iqaluit is easily negotiable on foot, there's been a boom in car sales and imports. Hundreds use the city's [20 km of] roadways; so do snowmobiles and ATVs (motorbikes with four fat tires), popular ways to get around town and tundra. The city has created snowmobile crossings around town and is rewriting its bylaws to manage the use of the popular vehicles." Wikipedia concurs, pointing out that "snowmobiles are the preferred form of personal transportation" in Ms. Watt-Cloutier's home town, and that "all-terrain vehicles are also an increasingly common form of transportation in most of the Canadian Arctic". Snowmobiles and ATVs are notoriously polluting - a 2-stroke sled (preferred due to its superior power) generates as much pollution as 100 cars. And so to summarise. By any measure, Canadian "acts and omissions" since the Kyoto base year have been utterly outperformed by the United States as far as managing emissions growth is concerned. In addition, when measured in terms of the most complete metric, Canadians are much worse emitters than Americans. When pro-US factors are eliminated from consideration, per capita emissions figures are virtually identical. And yet the US is "the beast" which, judging from the language of Ms. Watt-Cloutier's letter, is singlehandedly responsible for "the impacts of climate change" and loss of her people's "fundamental human rights". Put your money on her. The Nobel committee will lap it up. UPDATE: I don't know why I didn't think to do this before, but if we take just the years of the Bush presidency (2001-2004) - and, of the two sets of numbers, use those that are the most Canada-friendly, we find Canadian emissions growth to be more than twice that of the US (5.46% - 2.62%) [Canadian figures including land-use are very strange, and show a 40% increase over the period, and a 14.66% increase since 2002. US growth since 2001 is virtually identical under both scenarios.] Of the EU-15 nations, Italy, Austria, Finland, Greece and Spain (all of whom have signed and ratified Kyoto) have during the period in question underperformed the US under the arch eco-criminal Bush. 13 Mar 2007 @ 01:36 by jmarc : Releveant links which didn't come through in the cutting and pasting are in the original post HERE, as I'm sure some will want to delve into the source material of such "obvious propaganda". Other entries in Inspiration 7 May 2007 @ 17:55: Poetic License 16 Apr 2007 @ 18:19: Climate change is good 7 Apr 2007 @ 22:15: Threat Alert Jesus 7 Apr 2007 @ 21:25: Obama as Jesus 7 Apr 2007 @ 21:13: Pope Michael I 7 Apr 2007 @ 20:39: The Prayer Antenna 4 Apr 2007 @ 01:56: The Ballad of Ralph Nader 2 Apr 2007 @ 18:19: Lemming the Didactic 24 Mar 2007 @ 03:43: Self Empowerment: hand up, not handout! 23 Mar 2007 @ 23:28: Better Living Through Activism
|
13 Mar 2007 @ 00:23, by Unknown