It’s Getting Hot In Here

Last week, respected political tech blogger Micah Sifry pointed out on techPresident that the Oil Spill is a metaphor for our times, in which actionable information gushes around the internet with no meaningful filter that will encourage people to actually do something with the bad news they receive. Describing the disturbing streaming video in the Gulf Coast, he wrote:

But it is also a quintessentially 21st century spectacle, and the way we are experiencing it is yet another warning of something that is deeply broken about how we use information today: we consume shocking images almost entirely without taking meaningful action in response.

He’s right, a lot of people consuming shocking images without doing anything, but perhaps a better question is why doesn’t the media acknowledge all the people who ARE doing something?

There is inspiring action being taken, we just aren’t hearing about it. Why is the media devoting so much time to the oil video when, through the Energy Action Coalition alone, there were 45 actions across the country two weeks ago calling for this to be our Crude Awakening? Continue reading ‘Responding to Disaster’

I woke up this morning wondering what I was doing in DC. Since the summer of 2008 when it turned out I wasn’t going to be able to go to COP14 in Poznan as planned, I had been saying I was going to Copenhagen. Three years on the Home Team was enough! I was ready to hit the road.

So – waking up today in DC to Democracy Now talking about how this was the biggest climate mobilization in history didn’t feel amazing. I couldn’t help but wonder why so many of the friends with whom I’ve been building the youth climate movement in Canada and the US for the past few years were there, and I wasn’t. As someone who feels like the climate movement defines who I am, and is something that I am completely committed to for the long haul, shouldn’t I be in Copenhagen?

And if I should be in Copenhagen, why wasn’t I there?

Continue reading ‘Rock on, Home Team’

By: Jamie Biggar on Go-Beyond.ca

On the eve of the most important climate summit ever hacked emails from a research center in England are being promoted as a “game changer” by people who don’t want to see climate action. These people say that the emails prove that global warming is a hoax – a conspiracy that is either socialist or corporatist or, most terrifying of all, Al Gorist.

Why?

Out of the thousands of emails there is no evidence of a massive worldwide conspiracy of thousands of scientists to impose socialism or corporatism or Al Gorism.

Instead, there is evidence of scientists reacting badly to the enormous pressure they are under from a small, motivated and well funded group of people and institutions who have made it their mission to confuse the public about climate science, and have the backing of big dollars from big oil. This is the Manufactured Doubt Industry. It started decades ago to protect tobacco company profits by confusing the public about cancer research, it consists of a network of researchers with dubious credentials and right-wing think tanks designed to grab media attention, and its very happy with itself right now. Continue reading ‘Fight back against the hacked email hatchet job’