Friday, April 19, 2019

David Attenborough Takes Off the Gloves - At Last


He's been criticized for ducking the hard issues of climate change in his breathtaking nature series. That's over. David Attenborough's hour-long BBC documentary, "Climate Change - the Facts," lays bare how we are eliminating life on our planet.



Watch it if you've got the strength and then reflect on Canada as a petro-state and the driving forces behind it, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party of Canada.  Time is running out. Carbon taxes won't get us where we need to be, not in time. We know that the global economy has to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. Canada is nowhere near that target. Our focus is on a rapid expansion of the production and export of high-carbon, high-cost, low-value garbage fuels like bitumen.

6 comments:

zoombats said...

It has amazed me that people just don't have an eye for their surroundings. I'm sixty five and have always paid attention to how I conduct myself in the world that surrounds me. I have noticed the lack of Monarch Butterflies, toads, frogs, whipper wills, evening gross beaks, honey bees, June bugs, fireflies, etc.. I'm no drama teacher or snow boarding instructor and I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth but I can recognize the destruction around me that is caused by greed riding on the back of capitalism. Everyone needs or wants a pile of their own to live on and emulate the lifestyle of the fucks that lead or entertain us. Have we become a society that has to rely on a striking schoolgirl or an aging naturalist to lead the way? It is a sick fucking situation we find ourselves in as we sleepwalk our way into oblivion. I just watched the entire video so I'm some what pissed.

Anonymous said...

You might as well lecture a deaf audience when it comes to climate change.

New Brunswick always had a potential flood problem each spring, Now it's three years in a row of records. Yet still they rebuild. What did Einstein say?

Halifax is getting a new $130 million art gallery/museum on the waterfront. It's one thing to live on the Bay of Fundy where the huge tides have always caused circumspection in building, but six feet above the Atlantic in this day and age? What are they thinking? Well, they simply are not, and the feds are helping out. Dumb.

The Alberta-based yelpers here on ProgBlog concerning Emperor Jason's ascent to the throne are all dismayed by his anti-LBGTQ stance and social regression. Not a one has talked about the climate consequences of bitumen digging except Climenhaga. I've visted Alberta many times because I have relatives there, and the navel-gazing attitude is extreme. Nowhere else matters to an Albertan. No doubt they'll be barbecuing this summer as they swallow BC wildfire smoke and still the penny won't drop.

Ontario voters elected Doug Fraud. That's all you need to know. Dumb. In BC, Horgan is fracking for methane. Dumb.

It hasn't sunk in yet. And probably won't until the bitter end.

BM

The Mound of Sound said...

Hi Zoombats, BM - What lies at the heart of a lot of this is institutional "creeping normalcy" also known as "landscape amnesia." It's a phenomenon by which change, sometimes drastic change, becomes a "new normal" and we forget what had been before.

I think we're all of that age where we can recall the climate that we enjoyed in the 60s and 70s. We can recollect but we seldom do and instead accept today as our baseline of normal.

This affects us in various ways. It makes us complacent, especially when we choose leaders, vote in general elections, that sort of thing.

I've been hounded by a particularly ardent Liberal supporter who defends this government on the assurance that they're doing the best that they can. That's bollocks.

This government is riddled with cognitive dissonance which, as we're nearing runaway global warming, perhaps even a 6th mass extinction, out to have us taking to the streets. Institutional neglect and our acquiescence to it ensures our response will never be remotely commensurate to the threat, the challenges.

Anonymous said...

How do we protect birds from being killed by wind energy....Anyong

Anonymous said...

Not only "This government is riddled with cognitive dissonance" but majority of populace as well. c.f.zoombats
Greed is the key, it was useful evolutionary, not unlike fornication to spread the genes, alas both evolutionary levers are now obsolete to a large degree.
Just tell it to the majority obsessed with greed&fornication.

Purple library guy said...

Just for the record, the bird kill thing is pretty minor. It's not entirely a myth, but how much bird kill you get varies hugely with placement, from quite a bit on some migration routes to basically zero. Most bird kill is caused by things like domestic cats, glass buildings and a few things like that; wind turbines are very minor by comparison and at this point they've kind of twigged to the migration route problem so they're avoiding those spots.