Credible: Sources to inform

S o you are convinced. Our actions and behaviours, or rather our addictions and habits, are threatening our world. We have about 20 years to change.

Essentials for knowledge and action

(Note: Some of these resources will be found also in the Vancouver and Canada page.)

From the horse's mouth

Real climate - climate science from climate scientists. The name says it all. Their Friday round-up is an essential digest of news and current developments. Bookmark and visit often.

Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-E) is recognized as Europe's leading network working on climate and energy issues.

Canadian Sources and excuses.....

The two most common reasons / excuses for Canada's CO₂ being so high are the size of the country (more distance to travel) and the cold winters (heating etc).

This is true but Canada has become neither bigger or colder over the last 50 years yet emissions have increased (18% just since 1990). So something else - greed, overconsumption, over heating, over powered cars etc.

Environment Canada - Overall Greenhouse gas emissions up 18% since 1990

Environment Canada Transportion CO2 history and forecasts

Energy Information Administration - good science from the USA government

Personal Emission Calculators

A set of emissions calculators. They include a couple of the most unnecessary sources gas powered lawnmowers and snow/leaf blowers.

Political Context

Source Watch - a collaborative project of the Center for Media Democracy digs deep to find the funding sources for many powerful and threatened industries and their apologists, from tobacco, to, in this case, oil. Sometimes the link between, say, oil money and

Government and Individuals in Partnership

An excellent presentation from the UK. The tone of goverment and personal cooperation is one to follow.

Aviation - 'The Sin of Air Travel'

George Monbiot

George Monbiot's site - more than CO₂ - did I say socialism?

The Passive House

Passive House or 'Passivhaus' in German is a way of constructing houses which require almost no energy for heating and cooling.

Organizations to join and support

I have to say I am very disapointed by the stance the David Suzuki Foundation take on offsets - they think they are a good thing. (That's why you'll find them in both the 'Credible' and 'Incredible' section...) David Suzuki for many years was a leader in presenting new and clear and workable ways of change to protect our environment, but on offsets at least he seems to being going backwards.

"..effectively subtract..'? Wrong, wrong and wrong, but The Suzuki Foundation still produces some good work.Call them and question their stance on offsets.

Greenpeace. One of the first, and still ahead of most others. Direct action (remember?) accompanied by good science.

Greenpeace Canada Guide - 'How to save the Planet'in PDF format

Old school chum Stephen Joseph's wonderful labour of love.

Smart Growth BC, despite the slightly incongruent name, does good work at pressing for incorporating sustainable practices in the creation of new neighbourhoods, and improving existing ones. This can range for easier walking routes to cooperative heating systems.

The wonderful Climate Change Camp organizers from the UK. I love the head in sand pictures atop the pages.

Rising Tide UK (great name) - an example of direct action meets deep green

Plane Stupid - campaigns for an end to airport expansion, a ban on shorthaul flights and the introduction of tax on aviation fuel

Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-E) is recognized as Europe's leading network working on climate and energy issues.

Books (remember them...) you have to read

Energy and Equity by Ivan Illich 1974

Well the title says it all. Though focussed on transport, the wonderful Ivan Illich addresses all the factors wich make the use of energy an integral part of the class struggle.

You have to love the quote from the front of the book from Allende's finance minister.José Viera-Gallo: Socialism can only arrive by bicycleissue of class

Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher

I saw Schmacher speak in the early 70s and always enjoyed the simple message of scale, size, people and capitalism. Appropriate technology, decentralized production, putting the true costs into calculating 'worth'. Our greed for cheap goods made by invisible slaves in the 'third world' in the last 20 years seemed to have been a complete rejection of Schmacher's thesis; the movement to return to buying local products, and (gasp) making things again, just show we should have listened more closely the first time round to the simple and powerful ideas in 'Small is Beautiful'.

Wilderness and Plenty by Frank Fraser Darling 1969

'I am alluding to the the rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a rise coincident with that of the consumption of fossil fuels - coal and oil.'

Delivered as the Reith lecture in 1969, this of Fraser Darling's life and work presents so many of the discussions which are taking place today. His scope and knowledge is worldwide; he includes over-population as one of the main threats to the earth. As well as his beautiful English what one notices is how he avoids the 'holier-than-thou' pontificating. In one humble passage, just after discussing the pollution and other environmental damage being imposed on the earth, he writes 'Did I not admit to using petrol (gas) containing lead, and that I fly fifty thousand miles a year? Yet I supposed to be at the spearhead of thought and action attempting to contain the pollution. I repeat that I live in my era; I could do no good by walking out naked to live by my beliefs, for I should be naked also of many of the skills of the savage in clooecting his food and trying to live from a depleted wilderness. Nevertheless, it still does behove me to continue in the field of discovery and proble intellectually into an emergent ethic.' (page 77, 1969 BBC edition)

Heat by George Monbiot 2007

Read this book. Looking at all the human activities which create global warming by emitting CO₂, sphere by sphere, George Monbiot looks at the 'solutions' being promoted, dismisses them when the science just doesn't stand up, and then in some cases proposes workable changes to in behaviour, fuels or technologies. In some cases he sees no alternative to simply stopping a current activity; his chapter on flying, entitled 'Love Miles' is one of these. None of the alternatives - more efficient aircraft, new fules - will make the difference, so we simply have to stop flying. If we don't, as he says, we are claiming that our (affluent, educated, western) 'right' to fly is more important than the right to live of those being killed by the consequences of global warming. In the same way in the section on biofuels, ethanol et al, Monbiot does the sums and shows that more land than is available would be needed to switch from gasoline/ petrol. Growing the fuel crops in developing countries takes land away from growing food for, well, food. Some proposals literally mean feeding cars instead of people.

How to Live a Low Carbon Life by......

Not a perfect book but a damn good try.

In this UK focussed book Chris Goodall takes you through every area of a typical western life, and picks apart the CO₂ contribution in activities from boiling a kettle (is a stove top gas model better or worse than an electric one?) to toasting bread to whether a fridge/ freezer is less harmful than a seperate one of each.

Mr Goodall places our response to the need for change in it's rightful political and economic context. He mentions the part Th*tch*r played in the 'selfishing' (my quotes) of Britain.

A surfeit of weak modifiers do dilute the message; '...becoming a vegan would definitely help.....try..minimize..consider...could....preferable..' become a little annoying after a while.

But this is the nearest to an action by action guide that I've found. It does enforce the idea that every time we use power both directly (turn on a TV) or indirectly (buy a pre-cooked meal) we are using up part of our ration.

An excellent calculation on the craziness of air frieghted spinach, shows that just one dozen packs of spinach flown in from across the world create more CO₂ than a person in Afghanistan uses in a whole year. Now that puts buying local produce in perspective.

Stephen Hill, currently in Vancouver, BC, Canada, can be reached at: info (at) mobilizingmouse.com