Fast for Climate Action on the First of the Month -- Join Us

For two years now, ClimateFast has conducted a fast on parliament hill – Hungry for Climate Leadership – from September 21^st to October 2^nd.  (The UN Day of Peace and the UN Day of Non-violence.)  It was to be a peaceful protest of the inaction of our own government and of governments around the world and their refusal to take on the challenge of climate change.

This year we realized – it is not enough to carry this concern for 12 days and then put it down and do nothing for the rest of the year.  But how can we raise enough political will to make change happen?  We are only a dozen people with jobs and many volunteer commitments.  The answer to that question is two-fold.  First, we must make adjustments for our size and our energy.  Then we need faith that if we communicate the urgency, speak truth and put our concerns out there, the resources will come. 

There is a world-wide movement out there of hundreds, even thousands of groups who all want to see the problem of climate change tackled, with commitment and innovation, using the knowledge, experience, and technologies of every human discipline.  We must learn to work together, each contributing something special to the movement as a whole. 

ClimateFast promotes the value of the spiritual fast as a way of giving our actions more thought.  If we ground our work in deep values, and if we can find the spiritual resources to stay the course when the way is hard, we believe we can make a difference in people’s hearts.

There is no one answer to the problem of climate change.  Yes, humans caused this problem and must change their behaviour, but nature’s ways are contributing too.  We have a huge job to learn to live in harmony with nature.

My recent journey with First Nations people from the Algonquin nation is teaching me how big our challenge is.  I have come to understand that our whole society is based on false philosophical principles and that we will likely never learn to live in harmony with nature as long as we keep this broken foundation.  We believe we can own land and do what ever we want with it.  From this belief we determined we could own life itself, and control it.  This is a philsophy of death, not life.  These beliefs have made it possible for us to destroy whole tracks of land so that they can no longer support life – and think nothing of it.

The way of indigenous peoples is to live on the land and to share, --always respecting the capacity of the land to regenerate itself.  When more than one group wants to use the same resources – the same water, the same air, the same forests – then they must talk to one another and consider the well-being of the land and make a plan to share with respect.

Climate change is a global problem and all over the world we must get together and talk with one another about how to preserve the land so it will continue to be fruitful for our children and our grandchildren.  Together we must make a plan for how to reduce our damaging behaviour and how to share the benefits and the consequences of the changes we must make. 

Transition is difficult and sometimes painful.  We can easily see the losses in front of us and it is sometimes more difficult to see the potential benefits and possible increases in well-being.  Proverbs 28:18 – “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  We all need a vision of what such harmony with nature would look like.  And we all need to act in faith that others will cooperate and that we can find the ideas and the means to make this transition and build a new world for generations to come.

With this vision in mind, I commit myself to join ClimateFast in its Climate First on the First of the Month campaign.  We are inviting the people of Canada, and the people of the world, to fast or take action or both on the first of every month until our collective leaders come to the table with respect and create a plan that:

·      Sets aggressive targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

·      Ends all subsidies to carbon fuels

·      Puts a price on carbon designed to decrease consumption

·      Focusses planning and resources on a transition to largely renewable energy

By participating in this fast, I stand in solidarity with Yeb Saño, from the Philippines, and with vulnerable people around the world who are most affected by dangerous climate events.  I will be doing a dawn to dusk fast, and will focus my social action efforts around the first of every month.  I join with a growing movement of fasters including youth groups, environmentalists, and faith communities who are calling world leaders to responsible climate action now.  We want Action for Climate—Fast! 

The wonderful group that is coordinating the International Fast is the Climate Action Network.  You can keep up with their news at: http://www.climatenetwork.org.  Join the fast at : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1n85ZMaTJC4vF9jvOmsSmVJ2ZelGP87pkN_huW9S8X_4/viewform.  And Climate Action Network Canada

ClimateFast will be conducting the Canadian Climate First on the First of the Month campaign.  Sign up with us to fast too.  Help us keep track of all the Canadian inititatives.  Take the pledge as a person or as an  organization. 

And Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice will be working with both ClimateFast and the Climate Action Network – Canada to spread the word, communicate to the politicians and the media, and to talk with our neighbours and our families about the importance of making this an election issue that all parties must respond to in 2014 or 2015.  

You Can't Sink a Rainbow, You Can't Seize a Sunrise

Reflections of a Greenpeace Climate Activist -- Alex

I trembled as I walked through the grounds of Murmansk prison on 26 September.

Inmates watched me and the arrival of the other 29 notorious new prisoners through their cell windows. It was pitch black outside, but the prison was alive. Alive with the sound of barking dogs, prison alarms and prisoners shouting through their barred windows.

A guard handed me a plastic mug, a tin steel bowl, a spoon, a folded up mattress and a sheet. That’s all I had, that and a toothbrush and a book in my pocket, when the guards closed the steel green door on me. The sound of the slamming door echoed throughout the corridor. I was alone and afraid.

As days in prison passed I became stronger.  As weeks passed I became hopeful. In prison they take away your freedom, your dignity and your family but they can’t take away hope. That’s the one thing they couldn’t touch and I wouldn’t let them.

I saw my lawyer twice a week. During those visits he would pass on news, news that helped me understand how big our case was. He may have been pretty bleak about the Russian legal system but he was always positive about the international attention and support we were receiving. After our visits I would have a skip to my step and I looked forward to passing these bits of gold dust onto my friends. It felt good to pass on hope. It also felt good that we were not alone.

I couldn’t sleep the night before my bail hearing. I was too excited. I had spent the previous night feeling incredibly sad after hearing Colin had been sentenced to an extra three months in prison. Now I was in awe and dumbstruck as I watched the recent turn of events, my friends, one by one, receiving bail on the news.

I went to court feeling pretty hopeful that morning and I waited impatiently as the verdict was finally translated: I had received bail. I laughed in delight and the court room full of reporters and Greenpeace volunteers erupted in applause. Moments later I was jumping up and down hugging my friends Faiza and Anne inside a dark, smokey holding cell.

Since leaving Russia I have been reunited with my family. Seeing them for the first time since prison at St Pancras was very emotional. We hugged, laughed, cried and hugged some more. I have enjoyed the simple but incredibly precious pleasures in life such as taking a walk in the countryside, having a drink with friends and seeing the stars twinkle at night. Now life feels quite strange. It’s definitely quieter as we’re not the focus of so much media attention and the stress of facing seven years in prison has been alleviated.

Thirty of us were locked up following a peaceful protest against the world’s first oil platform to drill in the icy waters of the Arctic. Those 64 days in a prison cell were undoubtedly the hardest days of my life but I have never felt as proud as I did then.

I took action on the Arctic Sunrise because I don’t want a melting Arctic, oil spills in ice and an unlivable planet to be my legacy for my children. I felt the luckiest person on Earth when I stepped on board the Arctic Sunrise back in September because I had been given an opportunity to do something that mattered.

Now, I feel even luckier. Your support means my 29 friends and I are free, your support also means my time in prison wasn’t spent in vain.

Thank you for standing up for me and for the Arctic.

Alex – one of the Arctic 30

CUSJ Appeals to Canadian Climate Delegation at COP 19 in Warsaw

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

Prime Minister Stephen Harper,

House of Commons,

Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6

November 14, 2013

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

On behalf of members of Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice across the country, I would like to express our gratitude that the Canadian Government will be matching donations for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan and has sent the DART emergency response unit. We have been deeply moved by the images of horrible devastation and are proud of this national expression of Canadians' compassion.

However, a critical piece is missing in our response. It is time to acknowledge that such storms are linked to the changing climate and to increase our efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This connection was movingly expressed Monday at the UN COP 19 Warsaw Climate Change Conference by the chief negotiator for the Philippines, Yeb Saño.  He linked the devastation of Haiyan to climate change and announced that he will fast "until a meaningful outcome is in sight."

Canada does not currently have a good record in this regard. Recent reports suggest that Canada will not even meet its current weak commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020.

The recent IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report notes that to limit the rise in global temperature to 2°C , considered the threshold limit to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system , global emissions of greenhouse gases ( GHG) emissions must be reduced to less than half of what they were in 2010 by 2050 . Emissions must then be phased out by 2070. To achieve this, 66% to 80% of fossil energy reserves currently known will have to remain underground^.  We need a change in direction in Canada.

Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice joins Mr. Saño in calling for aggressive emission reduction targets.  I appeal to you today. Please work to make the post 2020 climate treaty a serious document that will get the world, and most especially Canada well on the way to a low emissions future.  Canada must participate constructively to make this a productive, forward-moving conference that will help address the greatest challenge of our generation.

In the wake of this terrible tragedy and as a further expression of Canada's compassion for the victims, it is time to join with others at the Warsaw Climate Conference to create the solutions.  Let us begin today by redoubling our own national efforts to meet, and even exceed, our own 2020 targets.  Let us do this for the well-being of coastal cities around the world.  Let us do this for the well-being of our children and grandchildren.

In faith that a better future is possible if we have the will to make it so;

Rev. Frances Deverell

President,

Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice

Cc:  The Hon. John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs; The Hon. Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources; The Hon, Leona Agglukkaq, Minister of the Environment; The Hon. James Moore, Minister of Industry; MP Thomas Mulcaire, Leader of the Opposition; MP Justin Trudeau, Leader of the Liberal Party, and MP Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada.

We Cannot Afford To Procrastinate On Climate Action

We Cannot Afford to Procrastinate On Climate action by guest blogger Lyn Adamson, ClimateFast

November 11th. A day to remember the horrors of war and remember all those who have died in the past, and commit to building a world where there is peace. But how can we have peace in the future if we do not reverse climate change? Massive storms, fires and drought threaten to make huge areas of the planet uninhabitable. This day is also the first day of the Conference of the Parties (COP19) talks in Warsaw, Poland. A place where something could be done about this threat to our future. It is also the day after a devastating super typhoon hit the Philippines, killing thousands of people. In Poland, the Philippines lead negotiator, Naderev 'Yeb' Saño, addressed COP 19 yesterday: “Typhoons such as Haiyan and its impacts represent a sobering reminder to the international community that we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action. Warsaw must deliver on enhancing ambition and should muster the political will to address climate change. "The Philippines has now begun the painful assessment and recovery process following this following this weekend’s storm, which has now hit landfall in Vietnam. "It has been recognized as the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in modern history, spanning over 600km and with winds of 315km/h and gusts of up to 380km/h. Officials estimate up to 10,000 people have died in Tacloban and elsewhere, within hundreds of thousands more displaced....” http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/11-1 - for full transcript go to http://tcktcktck.org/2013/11/cop19-philippines-speech-moves-plenary-tears/58705 Saño spoke of his brother, who has spent the last three days gathering dead bodies from the rubble and is going hungry because supplies have been cut off from his island. Yeb Saño is fasting in solidarity with his countrymen: "In solidarity with my countrymen who are now struggling for food back home, and with my brother who has not had food for the last three days … I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this COP, until a meaningful outcome is in sight. Until concrete pledges have been made to ensure mobilization of resources for the Green Climate Fund as this process cannot afford a fourth COP in a row with the GCF empty. Until the promise of the operationalization of a loss and damage mechanism has been fulfilled; until there is assurance on finance for adaptation; until we see real ambition on climate action in accordance with the principles of the Convention." "The UNFCCC has been called the 'Project to save the planet.' It has also been called 'saving tomorrow today'. We can fix this. We can stop this madness. Right now. Right here. … let Poland be forever known as the place where we truly cared to stop this madness….Can humanity rise to the occasion? I still believe we can." A number of us from the ClimateFast team are fasting in solidarity. Ideas for safe fasting and different kinds of fasts can be found at http://climatefast.ca/about-fasting  Will you join in for a day? Please send a message of concern to your Member of Parliament, and to the Prime Minister. You can send a letter to your MP modifying the sample letter on our website at  http://www.climatefast.ca/sample-letter. Members of Parliament should be swamped with letters and phone calls by concerned Canadians. Please tell your MPs that you support sending funds to help those suffering from the devastation there. Humanitarian aid such as money and the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) are very important in the short term but we need longer term action too. We need a price on carbon, no more subsidies to fossil fuel companies, and a renewable energy plan for Canada. To underline the words of Yeb Saño, we must ensure mobilization of resources for the Green Climate Fund. The warming oceans will be causing more and more high magnitude storms – until we turn things around and get CO2 levels to drop, not keep rising. The fossil fuel companies are a huge lobby for business as usual – which is very destructive to our planet and to human communities. We have to make ourselves a match for them – and we can. Please invite your friends too! Send a message during COP 19! The ClimateFast Team, Hungry for Climate Leadership

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent

Thursday, November 7th, the Tsilhqot'in people had their day in court – the Supreme Court of Canada.  The question to be decided was – who really has title to Canada’s vast wilderness areas – the crown?  Or the indigenous people who live there?  Twenty years ago the Tsilhquot’in Nation blockaded and then went to court to save some of its intact, traditional lands from industrial logging.  The claim area comprises some 438,000 hectares of remote and beautiful territory in the Chilkotin region of British Columbia, home of the Xeni Gwet’in, one of six Tsilhqot’in communities. 

The BC Supreme Court decided, in 2007, that they hold the Aboriginal rights to hunt, trap, and trade, including the right to catch and use wild horses throughout the entire territory.  The court went further.  It found the Tsilhqot’in Nation had proven Aboriginal title to approximately 40% of the Claim Area because they controlled that territory and used it year after year to sustain their communities and their culture since the Crown had asserted sovereignty in 1846.  The Supreme Court of Canada has also recognized the idea of Aboriginal title in Delgamuukw v. BC (1997).  The 2007 decision was overturned in a higher court that decided that the small spots (i.e.  reserves) where aboriginals had title met the requirements of law and was enough.  The Supreme Court will either confirm the original decision or the higher court decision.

A busload of Tsilhqot’in people including eleven elders who had participated in the first court case twenty years ago travelled across the country to attend. On the way they shared their stories and songs with First Nations across the country who will all be affected by the outcome of this case.  I give my gratitude to the lawyers and the people who attended a closing workshop to explain the case before they all went home.  They told us their feeling that the singing and the prayers all across the country had strengthened them for the court experience and they were proud to have done well.  Although we won’t hear the results for likely six months, the people were pleased that the judges had gone after the government lawyers with a series of straightforward, simple questions, and that the government case had apparently, in their words, “unraveled”.  The Tsilqot’in are very optimistic they will win.  But even if they don’t, they have stood up and told their stories of who they are and of their relationship to the land.  Even if they lose, they know who they are.  They are there, occupying and using the land in the traditional ways, and cannot be easily dismissed.

I learned a few interesting things at the workshop:

·      There are three layers of law that intersect with each other for the court to consider.  1) Tsilhqot’in law coming out of their traditional culture 2) Canada’s law and 3) International law.  When indigenous peoples negotiated with colonial governments they did it from the perspective of their own laws and ways of looking at the world.  Canada negotiated from a Western European cultural and legal perspective.  Finally, there is a growing body of international law including Human Rights law and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples through which we are developing an international understanding of how countries should relate to their First peoples.

·      International law in the 1700’s was the Doctrine of Discovery.  In this Papal document it was declared that aboriginal people were not humans with souls. They were savages, suitable to be slaves, and the land could just be expropriated from them without payment.  This doctrine was the foundational document for the colonial era and basically gave Kings permission to take what they wanted – in Africa, and in South, Central and North America.  And they did.  This is the foundation on which the relationship between our First Nations and other Canadians has been built.  One has to ask, is an apology enough?  If you don’t do something about such a disrespectful, hurtful, and totally false set of premises, how can an apology mean anything?  Canadians are obliged now, to acknowledge this false basis for a relationship of respect, and to put in place a legal framework that will support a new and healthier relationship with our indigenous brothers and sisters.

·      In the early historical documents we said that Aboriginal people don’t have a religion.  And yet, their spiritual traditions are so powerful that they can stand up, in their traditional garb and with their drums, songs, and ceremonies, showing Canadians what it is to have a relationship with the earth that sustains you.  They do not glorify God – rather they humble themselves before the creator, giver of all life.  They are reminded every day that they must see how to live in harmony with the earth, as brothers and sisters to the wildlife.  We live interdependently with all life on this planet as well as the water, the earth, the air, and the fire.  Life is sacred.  Every word you speak and every action you take matters.  So they find the will, the money, and the energy to come to court and tell Canadians the truth.  Aboriginal people must have a place and a role in Canadian Society.  Their contribution to our well-being will be to help us think about our relationship with the earth, and how we do development. 

·      In the colonial approach, economic matters always trump Indigenous rights.  Canadians are worried as to what will happen if aboriginal title is confirmed.  Who will win and who will lose?  Will aboriginal people allow any development?  Will aboriginal people just take the money and throw it away and we’ll still have to take care of them?  Will we just be transferring the wealth and power from one greedy batch of people to another greedy batch of people?  I don’t believe any of those tired stereotypes!  It is my hope that we will all learn what aboriginal people know about using the land without destroying its capacity to sustain us?  I dream of a true partnership.

·      I learned that there was a fear or maybe even an expectation that the workshop participants shouldn’t hold their hopes too high.  I began to realize that I was meeting in a room of Chiefs and lawyers who were discussing next steps and strategy.  The experience has been that even when a court case is won, nothing changes.  These laws are not enforced.  Industrialized companies continue to come on to new land and start exploring, with government permission, without having discussed anything with the First Nations who live there. The human rights of First Nations both as individuals and as peoples for justice are ignored.  The Doctrine of Discovery continues to reign supreme. 

·      What is the alternative?  Free, prior and informed consent.

The following is taken from a handout at the workshop:

The Supreme Court has called the protection of Aboriginal and Treaty rights an “underlying constitutional principle” and a “constitutional value.”  The rights in s.35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, are described as “a national commitment.”  Governments cannot simply impose their will on Indigenous peoples.  The Court has called for reconciliation of pre-existing Aboriginal sovereignty and assumed Crown sovereignty.  The perspectives of the common law and Aboriginal peoples must be reconciled, with equal weight placed on each.

The Supreme Court has defined a mandatory constitutional obligation that is described as “the duty to consult.”  But this duty requires more than just informing indigenous peoples about a project.  Canadian courts have consistently said that where there are impacts on Indigenous peoples’ rights, appropriate accommodation is also required.  In the Delgamuukw and Haida Nation decisions, the Court added that, on “very serious cases,” the full consent of the Aboriginal nation would be required. 

Free, prior, and informed consent.

As I read further in the handout, I learn that this is a commitment to a process between equals, not a mandate to give either the Crown or Indigenous peoples a legal power to veto or to unilaterally decide.  People must be fully and adequately informed.  They have a right to time to investigate the circumstances and determine what impact, if any, the project will have.  They have a right to accommodation when there are adverse impacts.  And if they deem that it is a very serious situation, and that the government or the industry has not fully understood the impact of their intentions, they have the right to refuse consent.  The rights and interests of each side must be weighed equally.  In this legal context, if both parties come to the table in good will, most situations should find resolution through negotiation, respect, and accommodation.  But if the project involves permanent destruction of the land, the First Nations can say no—accommodation has not been achieved.

I would like to see us try to live with First Nations in this kind of spirit of mutual respect.  Surely it is in the interest of all Canadians and for the planet as a whole, for us to do so.