Copenhagen and Climate

Climate zombies
and the Copenhagen blues




RALPH SUREnE




Claudia Roth, leader of the German Green Party, and Jakob Norhoj of the
Danish Socialist People's Party, put a lifebuoy around planet Eartt. outside
the parliament buildings Friday in Copenhagen, where the largest UN
climate change conference is underway. (PETER DEJONG / AP)
T
HE Bush/Cheney un-
dead are still stalking
the land, and on the
global warming issue
they've sunk their fangs into
fresh blood.
Continuing from the Bush
government's suppression of
the work of its own climate
scientists, propaganda and
befuddlement go from strength
to strength.
Driven by U.S. right-wing
politics and polluting-industry
money, they've unnerved scien-
tists with their tactics to the
point that some of them have
apparently suppressed data -
or thought of doing so - rather
than feed it into this engine of
political disinformation, in the
now famous University of East
Anglia emails episode.
Three points to bring the
picture into focus.
First, global warming'is just
one of several brick walls to-
wards which we're hurtling at
breakneck speed, thanks to our
ferocious destruction of the
living Earth.
Second, if you have your eyes
open, you don't need scientists
to tell you things are warming
uI>. perilously, nor to finger the
culpri erprints are
all over the crime: us.
And third, this clatter is ob-
scuring the legitimate skeptics
who are questioning the useful-
ness of the Kyoto/Copenhagen
process, in which political pro-
jections of greenhouse gas re-
ductions, with only vague ideas
on how to attain them, are
counted as progress. (Mean-
while, the gases continue to
rise.)
As for what's ahead along
with climate change, there's the
alarming acidification of the
oceans and the galloping extinc-
tion of species.
Beyond that, there's this. For
some time, I've been noting the


projections made by various UN
agencies, think tanks, U.S. gov-
ernment departments and oth-
ers, who paint the following
picture.
In a few decades, we'll have
two billion more people, plus
the emerging nations will be
demanding our lifestyle. We'll
need 50 per cent more food
(even as ar land declines
already in Africa because of
changing climate, and famine
hovers); we'll need 50 per cent
more energy (with oil consump-
tion up to 126 million barrels a
day by 2030 from some 84 mil-
lion now); there'll be half again
as many planes flying, ocean
freighters sailing, and automo-
biles rolling, and more.
If you can rub two sticks to-
gether, you can probably figure
out what's wrong with this
picture. In order to get to that
point, we'll have to cripple the
world as a functioning ecology
even more.
Whether we can brake in time


is the issue, but with the denial
industry trying to cut the brake
lines and a gaggle of conflicting
nations (including some active
troublemakers, like Canada) at
the steering wheel, can we?
As for denial, just think of
what's going on here in the
southern Maritimes. The first
frost is a month later than it
used to be (a crisp frost when
the leaves are turning is now a
thing of the past - this year, my
delicate plants only froze on
Oct. 21), and the last one in
spring is often two months
earlier than the traditional
"first full moon in June."
Where I live in Yarmouth
County, the lakes and tidal in-
lets - which up to the early
1970s, still froze two weeks be-
fore Christmas - glaze over
only fitfully now, even in Febru-
ary, if at all.
The problem is that, in the
main, it's only a handful of
older and mostly country people
who see the obvious, or care to


see it. For anyone under 30, this
is normal. For most city people,
and in fact many country peo-
ple, summer in November or
February is merely wonderful
- something to be desired, and
we can put the implications out
of mind.
The public's ignorance, which
the denial business feeds on, is
considerable. Or as one hectic
person asked me recently: "I
don't follow the news - is glob-
al warming still on?"
As for questions around the
process as it unfolds, there's
this. Premier Darrell Dexter
and a Nova Scotian delegation
are off to Copenhagen, appar-
ently to get recognition for
being first to cap emissions on
electricity providers. Let's keep
in mind that the cap has merely
been announced, not achieved,
with Nova Scotia hustling to get
wind and biomass power in
place to conform.
We may end up getting an
award for wishful thinking.
The capacity of big wind
farms to replace coal-fired gen-
eration is very much in doubt,
just as a misguided ethanol
program worldwide does little
to replace gasoline and creates
even more ecological harm, and
as cap-and-trade systems are
ready to come on that look like
an open door to financial scam
artists.
Nova Scotia could well be a
poster boy for the inadequacies
of the Copenhagen process, as
we, like the rest ofte world,
continue to fail to measure up
to the true need: conservation,
carbon taxes, and wind, solar,
fuel cell and other technologies
used to decentralize power
grids, not to feed their endless
growth.
Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance
journalist living in Yarmouth County.
(rsuretfe@herald.ca)