ClimateFast and Peace

2013 09 24

Tuesday was a quiet day on the hill.  The tone is set for us by the pro-life activists who sit daily at the bottom of the hill.  They are anti abortion, anti-pill, and anti assisted dying and they are there almost every time I visit the hill.  People turn their heads from them and then from us.  What we have in common is that we are both standing vigil on ethical issues around the meaning and value of life. 

We had lots of wonderful visits from friends and supporters and a very special visit from Citizens for  Public Justice who are just releasing a new book:  Living Ecological Justice:  A Biblical Response to the Environmental Crisis.  They presented us with a copy.  I’ve just dipped into it but it looks excellent.

One of the questions I got was – Why is ClimateFast on the same dates as the Ottawa Peace Festival – from September 21 (The UN Day of Peace) to October 2^nd (The UN Day of Non-Violence and Gandhi’s birthday.)  And why does the Peace Festival support our events and put us in their calendar?  (Our big thanks to them for that.)

This is very complicated or very simple.  Everything is interconnected.  Who are the people who are most affected by climate change?  --The people in the world who have little energy to build an economy and are therefore very poor – yet suffer the worst consequences from drought and flooding.  Where are the majority of conflicts in the world?  In poor countries where people don’t have enough work or enough to eat, and must fight over water and other resources. 

As the climate gets warmer, and the arctic ice melts, we expect the tundra to be exposed and thawed, releasing much methane gas.  We expect an increasing number of extreme weather events.  We are seeing these already.  It is estimated it will cost Calgary $5 billion to recover from its floods this year.  We heard stories of people in France who have been told they cannot return to the land they have lived on for over 100 years because of recurring flooding.  Where will they go?  Where will the people of Bangladesh go when the seas rise and their land goes under water?  Who will take them in?

Surely these effects will be a recipe for chaos and conflict for limited resources.  Meanwhile, the world, including Canada, becomes increasingly militarized.  1.7 trillion dollars was spent on the military around the world last year while food aid budgets are cut.  And many of our military services are contracted out to private corporations.  It is easy to imagine how governments and corporations are planning to manage the conflicts when they come – and it won’t be good news for democracy.

But another world is possible.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  We do have the resources to do something different.  We don’t need to let big oil companies and big money control our public agenda.  Our vision is one of diversified, localized, renewable energy projects that give people a quality of life while using the energy nature freely provides.  The movie, Energy Autonomy: The Fourth Revolution shows us how it can be done and is in fact, being done around the world.  The poor countries don’t need to build an industrial revolution economy based on coal and oil.  They can build the renewable energy infrastructure right away.  And we can make the transition.  In world war II we converted our industrial production to making airplanes and tanks for war in a matter of three months.  Why can’t we convert our energy infrastructure to renewable energy in the next few years?

It will be hard, but if we work together, if we take on this task as a whole community, as a country. If we are of one mind and focused on the goal, we can do it.  And we will receive the benefits of getting to know our neighbours, putting our creativity to work towards a sustainable economy in harmony with the land that nurtures and supports us.  We can make the transition peacefully and I believe people will be happier, more satisfied, and less anxious than the world we have today.

Gratitude

Blog 2013 09 23 - Gratitude

We have been so fortunate this ClimateFast to have support from many groups and individuals.  Many people have responded from their hearts to what we are doing and I occasionally see tears in their eyes. 

Today USC Canada stepped up with a contribution of colour posters so we could get the word out about our movie nights.  Two weeks ago it was Council of Canadians who did the same, and today they gave Rita office access all day to work on her strategy to contact MP’s.  Ecology Ottawa put out the movie nights on their list and three people came to see Energy Autonomy, Revolution 4 as a result.  Unitarians have shown up to the hill and helped in many small ways.  Bob Stevenson provided a table and chairs for our booth at the car free day.  Alastair Henderson and the Global Justice group helped organize the pot luck for Do the Math and our partner, 350.org provided the film.  North Shore Unitarian and Kelowna Unitarian are both doing Sunday services on theme and Thunder Bay as well.  Kelowna held a movie night and showed Revolution.  My friend Michael, from Transforming Communities, is helping us get all our poster boards and banners to the hill every day.  I think maybe there are tears in my eyes at the loving support and kindness of so many friends, old and new.

We learned today that both the Liberals and the NDP showed up on the hill for one day when parliament was scheduled to open, got their picture taken in an empty house, and then went back to their ridings to meet with their constituents.  This is an excellent time to find your MP at home.  I hope everyone will consider trying to make an appointment with their MP to talk about a focus on renewable energy and away from fossil fuels.  The National Post ran an article saying Justin Trudeau is really criticizing Harper for not getting the XL Pipeline done.  What a disappointment.  His dad would be rolling over in his grave.  I hope people in his riding will make a special point of writing him about his bankrupt energy policy.

Monday was a very slow day on the hill, but that left more time and availability for deeper conversations and people did respond to our invitation to come over and talk.  We were glad to have a visit with Leilani Schaefer-Loo, Lead Now volunteer coordinator.  A big thank you to Lead Now for their endorsement and support. 

We had a nice visit with a couple from Iran visiting the hill for the first time.  We chatted about the problems in that country and the challenges of building a democracy in a culture that hasn’t had that system.  He promised to put the word out on facebook to his Iranian friends.  Margaret had a good visit with people from France who told her all about the flooding and torrential rain they’ve been dealing with there.  People have been told they will never be able to return to land their families have lived on for a hundred years.

Keep writing your letters.  Our politicians at all levels need to hear that we are hungry for climate leadership.

Ontario Consults Now About Energy Policy

This is an excellent time to write provincial politicians on energy policy.  Ontario is making its own long-term plan.  Tell them to focus on renewable energy.  Send your letters now.  Here is one I wrote from CUSJ to give you talking points.

Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice

A national faith-based organization founded in support of Unitarian values

P.O. Box 40011, Ottawa, ON, K1V 0W8

President, Rev. Frances Deverell                                                                          president@cusj.org

August 9, 2013

To Premier Kathleen Wynne, Bob Chiarelli, Ontario Minister of Energy, and the Ontario Energy Board

Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice (CUSJ) (http://www.cusj.org) is a national, liberal religious organization founded to actively promote Unitarian values through social action.  CUSJ is a membership organization and when it speaks, it speaks only for its members and not for either the Canadian Unitarian Council or for any particular Unitarian Congregation.

Unitarians affirm the fundamental unity and interdependence of all existence.  We see this reality in the interconnections between people of all continents in our globalized world.  We see the peoples of the world as one community in which the security of each nation is entwined with the security of all others.  We believe the greatest threat to human security is global warming and climate change.  We believe the overwhelming preponderance of scientists who tell us humans are responsible for the speed with which it is occurring.  

The CUSJ Board believes we must all make it a priority to transform our ways of living toward sustainable economies that drastically reduce our energy consumption and the pollution of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  As a people, we must take responsibility for ourselves.  The well-being of our children and their children and their ability to enjoy life on this earth is at stake.

The principles of justice and the inherent worth and dignity and equality of all people requires that everyone should have equal access to the basic necessities of life.  If all areas of the world continue to focus on growth as the route to well-being, humanity will be on a collision course with the natural world.  We in the developed world have long used more than our share of energy and resources.  If we are to enjoy the fruits of growth, it must be through innovation and transformation to a new economy.  We must take immediate and dramatic steps to change our ways of living, to reduce greenhouse gases put into the environment, and to reduce our consumption.  Ontario can aggressively work towards this goal in a number of ways:

• Focus on conservation.  We are pleased to see Ontario put emphasis on conservation.  It is important and we must do even more in this area.  Review all policies with an eye to reducing consumption.  Building codes must require high efficiency standards.  New appliances must be state of the art low energy users.  Businesses and manufacturers must be strongly encouraged through a combination of carbon taxes and conservation incentives.  Home retrofit programs should be renewed and expanded.  City design needs to encourage low-energy public transportation and communities where people work where they live.  We need to move away from consumerism and militarism toward a different economic base.

• A strong public education program should back up these types of initiatives.  If this kind of aggressive program has to be sold, show leadership.  Sell it.  Help Ontarians to understand why we have to go this route.  

• Produce solid information.  Ontario should ensure that the best information on all sources of power is gathered and published in useable formats so that people at all levels – individuals, businesses, and governments can make the best decisions.  This information must not be biased toward one industry or another.  The gathering of this data should be publicly funded. 

• Congratulations to Ontario for eliminating coal as a source of power generation.  Finish the job.  This is a great success story to celebrate.

• Ontario should halt its plans for nuclear power development.  There are many reasons for this.  (see CUSJ brief to the Darlington commission:  Nuclear Power Brief 2011 03 31 CUSJ.)  Nuclear power uses far more greenhouse gases to produce than is claimed if you consider cradle to grave processes.  It is expensive to produce and costs are escalating.  It is uninsurable against disaster.  The Fukushima plant in Japan continues to pose great risks to human health around the world despite great efforts to contain the radiation.  We do not want to put our Great Lakes area at risk.  There is still no solution in sight for nuclear waste.  Burying it in the Great Lakes Basin is completely unacceptable.  Ontario should set as a goal to reduce the percentage of Nuclear Power in the mix down to zero as the plants we have age and must be decommissioned.

• Replace the baseload power generated by nuclear power with hydropowerpurchased from the James Bay area of Quebec as much as possible.

• Bring up the investment in both wind, solar, and small local water projects as well as biogas, heat pumps, and other sources of renewable energy as quickly as possible.  Learn as much as we can from countries in the lead.  Encourage innovation and new technology      for power generation, storage, and for a smart grid to distribute the power.  Encourage new organization structures such as local energy cooperatives to help generate this power.  Make Canadians competitive in a new world.

• Encourage localized power generation wherever possible according to the particular situation and conditions in each place and each home and business.  Massive wind farms may be suitable in some locations but more of our power should be developed house-by-house and business-by-business.  The long-term strategy should be for a decentralized system—a flexible system that can increase or decrease power as demand changes.

• While, in the short term, an emphasis on natural-gas generated power may be necessary as the “cleanest” of the carbon-based fuels, it would be better if we can develop the new, emerging hydrogen potentialities.  In the long term, we must eliminate all carbon-based fuels.  They should be reserved for those uses for which there are absolutely no other alternatives.  A long-range plan should include phasing out carbon-based fuels.

The climate crisis can be seen as a terrible threat or a great opportunity.  We believe it is the responsibility of liberal religious organizations such as our own to remind our leaders that a better world is possible – a world where we stop damaging the capacity of the earth to sustain life and where we recognize our interconnection and our interdependence with all life as we know it.  It is not too late to take action.  We have a choice.

Our current economic and political priorities are generating massive disparities of wealth and poverty, in Canada and around the world. We allow a few people with concentrated wealth and power to control the public agenda in their own interests, without any accountability.  We destroy our own nest.  We foster human greed and ignore the consequences.  We will not be able to ignore those consequences forever.  Increasing numbers of extreme weather events are telling us that we are reaching a tipping point.  Hurricane Sandy in 2012 in New York, and terrible floods in India, and in Calgary in 2013 are but two examples.  Who knows who will be hit next or how much it will cost?  The time for serious action in the public interest is now.

Will you, the leaders we have elected to represent us in a democratic country, take the necessary action to ensure that Ontario has a healthy future for many years?  Our long-term energy policy is a critical element in ensuring such a future for our children and grandchildren.  We are asking you commit yourself to doing everything you can to promote a renewable energy economy for Ontario and to the phasing out of both Nuclear power and carbon fuels.  We join with ClimateFast (http://www.climatefast.ca) and many other grass roots organizations in asking for your pledge to a healthy energy future.

In faith,

Rev. Frances Deverell,

President, Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice

ClimateFast Day 2

Today we split into two groups and went to places where we could reach people with our message.  After talking with groups at Centertown United Church and First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa we carried forward to our respective posts in the afternoon.

Betty and Frances attended Car free day in Westborough and handed out information.  We met an interesting variety of people.  I was delighted how many people were aware including all ages from 8 years old to elders.  We visited Ecology Ottawa and other eco-friendly groups.  I had a lovely conversation with four preteens who told me they’d write a letter.  Lisa Pepper, co-founder of 350.org Ottawa, told us how she had been transformed into an activist in spite of all her better instincts.  She had been already guiding the ecoclub of the Elmdale elementary school.  Her 10-year old son was a fount of information about Bidder 70 and all the pipeline issues.  They talked about getting a letter campaign going amongst the school kids and an article on their website. 

Vela Comber told us about her new music video, Tar Free 613.  You can google it on U-Tube.  We invited her to sing her song in our closing ritual.  We picked up lots of information on bike paths in Ottawa and how to drive occasionally without owning a car.  Lots of people took our handouts.  It was pretty windy but 5 layers of clothing kept us warm and we luckily escaped any serious rain.

Meanwhile, on Parliament Hill, Rita, Margaret and Amelia-Rose battled the rain most of the afternoon.  In spite of this they had many good conversations.  One woman returned to visit after attending our wet and soggy opening ritual the night before, and brought a friend.  As soon as we brought out the banner, a man and his young son became engaged.  Our presence is generating real conversation between one generation and the next.

Our Movie night at First Unitarian drew about 22 people most of whom were already deeply engaged with the issues.  In the movie, Do the Math, Bill McKibben shows how the behaviour of oil companies to continue exploration in risky areas like the arctic, and to exploit known reserves that are 5 times larger than any acceptable level of emissions into our limited atmosphere, is totally unethical.  He calls them rogue companies that must be curtailed and proposed divestment of oil stocks as a serious first step.  Several people had already divested their Investment portfolios of energy stocks.  We had an excellent discussion on what kind of quality of life we can build without carbon energy and how we can develop the political will to do it.  Muthanna Subbaiah, the other co-founder of 350.org, has done an excellent job getting this movie out there in Ottawa, and in building this new chapter of 350.org from scratch.  In Ottawa we see an excellent level of cooperation from different groups all working on climate change issues and this coalition can only get stronger.

All in all a long day, but the energy is out there and growing.