Archive for Ecology & sustainability

[This letter was written for the Green Party newsletter before Adriana left to attend the UN climate change negotiations.]

As this letter goes out to Green Party supporters, I will be part of a five-person delegation from the Green Party of Canada in Cancun, where the 192 countries who are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are working to negotiate a treaty to protect the Earth from catastrophe.

As I write this, I’m concerned not only about the international impasse, but about Canada’s role in encouraging inaction both within Canada and internationally.     Read more »

This morning, a group of 30 Greens from all over the world gathered for breakfast in Cancun.  Most were officeholders in Europe, either in the EU Parliament or in country governments.  But municipal councillor Cathy Oke arrived from Melbourne, Australia, former Santa Monica mayor Mike Feinstein came from the United States, and four Canadian Greens joined in with three Brazilians, including the leader of the Brazilian Greens, Senator Marina Silva, who gathered 20 million votes in the last presidential election, earning 20% of the popular vote, 30% of the urban vote and winning the popular vote outright in Brazil’s capital city of Brasilia.

I had wanted to meet Marina ever since she left Lula’s government over disagreements about dam-building and other environmentally damaging policies and began to consider running for the Greens.     Read more »

I’ve had a hard time connecting the last few days.  It’s been busy.  A whole lot of nothing is happening in Cancun.  There are moments of inspiration amid days of information overload, but the negotiations are slow and it’s very unclear what they will lead to.  Canada is being quiet but unhelpful, and all indications are that when push comes to shove, Canada will stand in the way of any real progress.     Read more »

Okay, so we’re number four.

I’ve never been to a COP before, but I’ve been involved in climate change issues long enough to recognize a very sad trend from fighting to prevent it to squabbling over the money to deal with it.  Far more energy is being spent today to discuss the costs of adaptation, primarily for countries that have had very little to do with causing it.  More and more effort is spent by scientists not in evaluating the broad implications of a warming planet, but in evaluating the much more narrow human-scale impacts it will cause.     Read more »