“Lead, follow, or get out of the way!”, was what Power Shift Canada told the Canadian Government loud and clear on October 24th. Since then, youth across the country have been rallying, calling and dancing to demand that the Canadian government adopt Bill C-311 (the Climate Change Accountability act) which would mandate targets to cut global warming pollution in line with science. “It’s time to listen,” we told them, and all these efforts have finally started to pay off. The minority Harper government used stalling tactics to delay a vote on that bill in committee most likely until 2010, but the Canadian parliament just passed a motion that Canada should put forward the first target from the delayed bill as the Canadian position in Copenhagen. It passed 137-124 with the united support of all three opposition parties:
That, in the opinion of the House, Canada should commit to propose at the Copenhagen conference on climate change
- reducing, through absolute reduction targets, greenhouse gas emissions in industrialized countries to 25% lower than 1990 levels, by 2020;
- the necessity of limiting the rise in global temperatures to less than 2oC higher than in the preindustrial era; and
- supporting the developing countries in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change.
The motion isn’t legally binding, unfortunately, like bill C-311 would be, but it does send an important and powerful message to the world: the current Canadian government’s position on climate change does not represent the will of the majority of Canadians, and the opposition parties are willing to unite against the government over this issue. This gives a huge boost to those countries who are willing to push forward towards an ambitious, binding treaty in Copenhagen, and they should take note: the Harper government is now totally wrongfooted on their climate policy, and barely hanging on to power by a thread. Lead, and Canada will follow.
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The most important event for civilized humans at any point in history besides witch burning and sacrificing virgins has got to be the lazy media being complicit in hiding the truth about a CO2 theory that has convinced 2 generations that the planet is going to die.
The global village gave us too many truths and the media took advantage of this open sewer of facts and helped fabricate a fraudulent crisis.
This irresponsible journalism led us to war against a false enemy making the WMD scam look mild and was bigger than the Maddoff, Enron and Watergate scandals COMBINED on an order of magnitude larger than the outright theft of billions of dollars worldwide in the financial crash. The UN has allowed Carbon Trading to trump 3rd World Education, clean water and starvation rescue.
The CBC and Suzuki have turned Nature lovers into crying apocalyptic doomers. Nice job.
I fear that this fear of the unknown will drag us down to a new Dark Age of suffering, panic and ignorance.
Meme mime, you’ve got nothing to fear.
If the climate movement succeeds, you have a positive, clean-energy future to look forward to, a lower-consumption, higher life-value one. A future where people enjoy *life* and *living* and *arts* and *community* more, instead of enjoying simple, superficial *having stuff* as their primary life goal.
You can also look forward to a future where poverty in the world is not made worse by drought, flood, rising sea-level or desertification, but instead where poverty is addressed by turning people’s local agricultural resources back to their local communities, rather than to multinational traders and profiteers.
For example: Why is the population of Kenya starving when their scarce water is being used to feed their cut-flower export industry (so we can buy pretty flowers in our flower stores in Europe), with profits accruing to a small number of wealthy owners?!
The current world is crazy, and ignorant. We can change it for the better.
This move from Canada gives great hope. I look forward to Harper getting kicked out in the next Canadian election. Keep at it, Canadian youth climate movement!
This is a great sign ahead of Copenhagen. The leaders of the opposition parties that voted in support, one of which will likely be in power after the next election, should travel to Copenhagen with assurances that they will take bolder action than the current leadership.
If only it was legally binding!!
Meme Mine — here’s a video you might like: