2012-01-24T21:23:38.857-08:00

src="http://www.archive.org/embed/ES120125" width="320" height="120" frameborder="0"> http://bit.ly/waNOYN "Oil Free Coast" 3 speakers against Tar Sands pipelines and tankers in Canada, including First Nations. Then on-scene audio from Occupy Wall St West in San Francisco Jan 20th. Awaiting arrest, and crowd microphones against corporate takeover.Two weeks ago on Radio Ecoshock we heard from Australia and the distant past. Last week a top British scientist warned us of super-dangerous climate change. Now we head for the restless West Coast of North America. In Canada, trillion-dollar corporations and countries are desperately searching for a way to ship dirty Tar Sands crude, after the Obama administration said "No" to the Keystone XL pipeline. They want to build a new pipeline across the Rocky Mountains, across countless rivers and wilderness, across native lands.And two Texas billionaires are plotting to turn the once green city of Vancouver into a major oil shipping port.They want to make more billions polluting the atmosphere and changing the climate forever.You will hear three speakers in a packed public meeting promise neither plot will succeed.Then we'll take to the streets of San Francisco, with as-it-happens audio during the Occupy Wall Street West protests. Our Bay Area correspondent Karen Nyhus interviews environmentalist Ananda Tan as he waits with locked arms to be arrested. Then the risky radio the mainstream won't dare: you are there as the crowd microphone chants the words of Ted Nace, on the Court House steps, demanding justice. That's in our second half hour.From tanker mania to Wall Street greed, I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock.OIL FREE COAST On Sunday January 22nd I recorded "Oil Free Coast, Tankers and Pipelines" at the Roundhouse Community Centre in downtown Vancouver, Canada. The event began with the voice of an amazing ten-year-old singer and song-writer, little Ta' Kaiya Blaney, the First Nations wonder. I'll play you a minute of her anti-tanker song "Shallow Water" - then we'll go to our speakers Art Sterritt, Rex Weyler and Nathan Cullen. Listen to the whole song. Here are links to the You tube video of "Shallow Waters" and the Ta' Kaiya Blaney web site. More details on the song and recording from You tube:"10 year old Ta'Kaiya Blaney is Sliammon First Nation from B.C., Canada. Along with singing, songwriting, and acting, she is concerned about the environment, especially the preservation of marine and coastal wildlife. Shallow Waters was a semi-finalist in the 2010 David Suzuki Songwriting Contest, Playlist for the Planet. The song was recorded in studio by Audio Producer Joe Cruz. Footage from Vancouver, BC was filmed by Colter Ripley. Footage of the traditional ocean-going canoe from the Squamish Nation (Burrard Inlet, North Vancouver, BC) ; Ta'Kaiya in traditional cedar bark regalia (Tofino, BC); the Oil Refinery in Burrard Inlet; and the Vancouver Aquarium was filmed by Tina House. Additional footage contributed from Canada Greenpeace and Living Oceans Society. Lyrics on Drychum channel."Ta' Kaiya belted it out live at the Roundhouse, surprising us with such a strong adult voice from a small young singer. She will wow delegates at the Rio 2012 Conference. Also look for her song "Earth Revolution". THE NORTH TAR SANDS PIPELINELet's start with the northern pipeline, proposed by the Enbridge Corporation, crossing thousands of miles of mountains and wilderness, reaching from the climate-killing Tar Sands to the delicate fjords of Canada's West Coast. Our host is Linda Kemp, a sustainable living expert from Langara College.[Art Sterritt presentation]That was Coastal First Nations leader Art Sterritt, recorded January 22nd, in Vancouver, Canada by Alex Smith. The event "Oil Free Coast, Tankers and Pipelines" was at the Roundhouse Community Centre in downtown Vancouver. It was presented by Coastal First Nations, and by Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen.Sterritt gave a very moving speech, saying British Columbia was an organism where all it[...]

2012-01-18T15:08:22.714-08:00

src="http://www.archive.org/embed/ES120118" width="380" height="60" frameborder="0"> http://bit.ly/wulkTw "The future is impossible" says Dr. Kevin Anderson, former Director of UK's top climate research institute, the Tyndall Centre. Speech in London lays out our awful tilt toward an unlivable climate. Followed by discussion with Washington's Dr. William Calvin. Welcome. I'm Alex. Are you ready for the bad news about climate change? Really?I'm going to play you a speech too awful to run during the holidays. People with clinical depression and very young children may want to avoid this program.It's also going to be a challenge for our many North American listeners, because our speaker is Kevin Anderson. From his recent post as Director of the Tyndall Centre, the UK's top academic institute researching climate change, Anderson speaks quickly, says a lot, and holds nothing back.This lecture is part of the London School of Economics Department of International Development Friday Lecture Series. The title is "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world" Anderson calls it "the brutal logic of climate change." This talk set up a blaze of urgency, and a stiff warning to people and governments: we are failing to address the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity. Something unimaginable is happening.Following this edited-for-radio speech, I'll chat again with Professor William Calvin from the University of Washington. He sees the bleakness, but offers a grain of hope.I'm going to throw you into the deep end with this one. I suggest you download the program from our web site at ecoshock.org, or find links in the blog at ecoshock.info. Things are not what they seem.This speech courtesy of the London School of Economics Lecture Series was recorded October 21st, 2011. The subtitle for this talk is "Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope". Dave Roberts of Grist wrote two articles about the implications of this talk, which he called "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change". Try this one, and this one.Find a .pdf of Kevin Anderson's pivotal paper on our near hopeless situation of unfolding climate change here.A recording of the original speech, running 1 hour 28 minutes with a Q and A is here.And you can find the slides for that here.To get a written summary, I can't do better than the Dave Roberts Grist articles linked above. Dave even throws in some helpful graphs.My own conclusions from this speech could be:1. The 2 degree target (keeping below 2 degrees of global mean temperature rise to prevent dangerous climate change) is quite arbitrary, and likely too high. As Dr. James Hansen of NASA points out, we should be at 350 parts per million CO2 to keep the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets which moderate our climate. In previous history, levels higher than that triggered melting of the ice sheets, and eventually a much hotter greenhouse world. We are currently at 390 ppm and rising fast.2. That 2 degree target is no guarantee of a "safe" climate, but just a 50% chance of staying within merely "dangerous" climate change, and "extremely dangerous climate change".3. As we are almost 1 degree above pre-industrial times already, with at least 1 degree hidden by aerosol pollution (including sulfates from world coal plants) - it may already be too late to stay at 2 degrees.4. The RATE of increase of our emissions is steadily going up, meaning the dangerous impacts of climate change keep getting closer and closer to us in time. Not 2050, but sooner. Yet government reports keep assuming 1 or 2% increase in emissions, when we are generally increasing at 3% over the past few years, and hit almost 6% in 2010. That is a 6 % increase over the increasingly high emissions during all the past years.5. Kevin Anderson is particularly critical of all the government assessments which low-ball the emissions and the impacts. He says some climate scientists try to tell politicians, but those warnings are polished up as they rise through the ranks. Top ministers don't[...]

2012-01-09T23:58:28.679-08:00

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2011-10-18T22:17:23.391-07:00

Happy Birthday humans! At the end of October 2011, the 7th billion person will be born on Earth. With over a billion humans already going to bed hungry every night, this may not be a blessed event.Just twelve years after we hit the 6 billion mark in 1999, it's going to a be a lot harder to look after the new arrivals. The extra billion people will find an unstable climate, declining energy and resources, and a host of other challenges.To help us sort out what it means, and what can be done, we are joined by Robert Walker, Executive Vice President of the Population Institute in Washington. He's the author of a new report "From 6 Billion to 7 Billion: How Population Growth is Changing and Challenging Our World."Robert Walker has been on every major television network - yet I get the feeling the average Western citizen thinks population growth is just a problem on the other side of the world.Are we bored with the population challenge? Why should we care?Aside from report chapters on solutions, some of the most interesting pages in this report compare the global prospects in 1999 - the six billion person world - with the outlook in 2011.We start with something at the top of most people's minds these days - the economy. The American economy looked great in 1999. Real estate expanded as banks were able to unload mortgages, resold as securities to other banks and investors all over the world. It was the beginning of the great Ponzi scheme which collapsed in 2008.The Glass-Steagall Act, which limited such transactions between a bank holding company and security dealing was repealed in November 1999. From the Radio Ecoshock interview, Robert Walker:"Oil prices shot from $10 a barrel in 1999 to an average of over $100 a barrel today. The prices of grains, and other essential food stuffs, have more than doubled. Hunger and severe poverty have a substantial come-back. The fight against climate change has been nearly abandoned.The global economy has been battered by two Recessions since 1999. ... Water scarcity and resource limitations have grown more acute. And the transition to a Green economy has not been swift as many people hoped.So we are facing a much different world today, including the economy, but not limited to the economy."Alex Smith: "In 1999, Peak Oil was something for a few pundits relegated to the fringe. Now the International Energy Agency and the military say we've passed the Peak. Our civilization is based on cheap fossil fuels, so how are we going to support an extra billion people?"Robert Walker: "That's the critical question. If we are having trouble today feeding 7 billion people - and as you indicated earlier, there are about 1 billion people on the planet today who go to bed hungry at night. And there is plenty of reason to believe it's going to get more difficult, not easier."Walker goes on to discuss the threat of climate change, loss of topsoil, water tables being pumped out, and more.For example, food production in developing countries will have to double, to meet the expected population of 8 billion as early as 2023.Meanwhile, the cost of basics, like bread, have doubled for the world's poorest people. Fifty to nintey percent of their income is spent on food for the day.Walker also points out that just like Climate deniers, there are population deniers. Perhaps those who saw world population go from 1 and a half billion in 1900 to 6 billion by 1999 think this expansion can just go on forever.Some believe a technical fix will save the planet from population overload. Walker says we have now reached the limits of growth.The report[...]

2011-10-18T08:06:44.604-07:00

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