Your EcoSource Blog

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

“More needs to be done” said President Bush about the current world food crisis. And one would think he has the right to make that statement after requesting $620 million from congress for food aid (another $150 million for some sort of development project).

The problem is that America hasn’t actually been that generous. To start, their aid continues to be “tied”, meaning that all of the supplies purchased with that money must be purchased from American suppliers. Buying goods from specified suppliers, at specified prices, means the money doesn’t go as far as it could if the World Food Programme were able to look for the most cost-effective source. In fact, it loses 30 per cent of its value. So Mr. Bush only really pledged $434 million.

Well, that’s still a lot, right? Not quite. Because the goods are purchased in America, from American farmers and manufacturers, the money stays put. It doesn’t go to farmers in the affected areas who would benefit from increased revenue to expand their capabilities, breaking the cycle of subsistence and reducing the need for hand outs in the future. It doesn’t enter the poor economies in the form of extra jobs or higher wages, which would give those workers the means to purchase their food rather than wait for the handout. Instead, the money, up to 80% of it, just gets redistributed through the US to citizens with enormous wealth, compared to those needing the aid. The result is that George will only have to give away $124 million, the rest is farm aid for his own people.

Again, $124 million isn’t chump change, but I would like to take this opportunity to point out what my own (Canadian) government has done, because miraculously, they’ve done something worth bragging about. We’ve pledged $50 million of one hundred percent un-tied aid!

That’s right; the World Food Programme can spend the money in the most efficient way they find. They can spend it in the economies that need the boost most. And spending it that way will turn a hand out into a hand up.

Here in Canada, we have just over 33 million people. Down in dem der states, they’ve got just over 300 million. Now, I’ll make allowances for their current “economic downturn” (we still don’t want to use the term recession, of course). Nevertheless they’re sending just two and a half times more money out of the country than we are, yet they have 10 times the population. Something doesn’t add up here. Especially when you consider Bush’s statement that America “believe[s] in the timeless truth, to whom much is given, much is expected.”

I say it’s time for the “Leader of the Free World” to step up and lead, to provide some real aid, to do the ‘more’ that by his own admission is needed, and to live up to the expectation that comes with being the country to whom the most is given.

~~In the mean time, we can all give too, by visiting the WFP websiteand contributing a few days worth of latte money. Or by going to www.freerice.com and testing your vocabulary!

• Leave a comment...

The military regime in control of Myanmar (Burma) opened fire today on peaceful protesters led by Buddhist monks, killing 9 innocent civilians.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The military junta has been responsible for massacring thousands since it seized control of the country over forty years ago. They have also denied Aung San Suu Kyi her right to govern the country, since her election in 1990.

Equally guilty in the conflict is China, the biggest supplier of weapons to the Myanmar military. China refuses to intervene and has thwarted efforts by the UN security council to impose sanctions on the country. In fact, China’s Foreign Ministry said only that they hope “the situation there [in Myanmar] does not… get complicated.”

Are nine dead people not enough to qualify as ‘complicated’? Were the thousands killed in 1988 not enough? How many bodies need to be stacked up before we put a stop to it?

In recent weeks images and videos smuggled out of the country by email have been one of the main sources of news of the protests, as Western journalists are not permitted into the country. So it’s reasonable to assume that the only news getting back into Myanmar is from the internet as well.

I know this is usually a climate change blog, but what good is it to save the future of the planet if I’m not also concerned with its people in the present. So here’s the challenge:

Write about it. Post the news on your own blog and on every forum you know of.

Comment about it. Leave a response here. Leave a response anywhere it’s talked about.

Digg it. Make the issue jump to the front page of Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsvine, wherever. Just make sure it gets seen.

Make today Blog Action Day for Burma.

• Leave a comment...

The UN dedicated an entire day yesterday to Climate Change talks prior to its General Assembly’s Annual Debate in New York. The world’s leaders took the opportunity to say absolutely nothing new.

My own Prime Minister for instance, Mr Harper, continued his record of telling us only that Kyoto won’t work, rather than telling us what will. He claimed that Canada is taking a balanced approach to acting about climate change. We Canadians would call it a non-approach, as it seems to be based on stalling any real action by blaming the previous government for their lack of action.

Mr Harper said that our priority must be to “find cleaner and more efficient ways to convert hydrocarbons into energy.” But he continues to back away from actually implementing these technologies which are readily available. At a talk I attended recently by Dr. David Keith, a world expert on the topic of Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Dr. Keith expressed his frustration with the Harper administration for repeatedly making promises of action that he never keeps.

Furthermore, shortly after the UN meeting, the Prime Minister announced that Canada will be joining the Asia Pacific Partnership, comprised of the six nations responsible for half of the world’s GHG emissions, and more than half of its coal production. I wonder which end of the equation will weigh more heavily in their plans? Aside from the fact that the partnership has no actual targets, their goal, as stated on their website, is to address the partnering nations’ increasing energy needs, air pollution, energy security, and GHG emissions intensities. In that order.

So it seems that Mr. Harper is taking his domestic strategy systematically disassembled any of the real (but admittedly few) climate change policies left to him by his predecessors in favour of legislation with no real targets or consequences, and repeating on the global scale. Well done.

• Continue reading or Leave a comment...

For the first time in tens of thousands of years, Siberia’s frozen land is undergoing a thaw.

• Leave a comment...

Biofuel has often been touted as the cure-all to our transportation-generated emissions. Indeed, for politicians it’s a perfect solution to the problem. By promising to fund farmers who choose to grow ethanol crops, they can simultaneously provide a farm subsidy and pretend to do something about the environment, all without upsetting car manufacturers.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the, typically unpublicized, pitfalls of many biofuels. Namely, biofuels made from purpose-raised crops such as corn.

This morning I was interested to find David Suzuki posted an article expressing the very same concerns.

Dr Suzuki had come under scrutiny when he chose to use a diesel bus for his recent cross-Canada tour. In fact, he had considered a biofuel bus but, aside from the obvious problems of procuring such a vehicle, he had his doubts about the biodiesel options currently available. Doubts, it seems, that continue to gain clout, thanks to studies published in journals like Science.

So the question remains, will Mr Harper acknowledge the evidence, call his biofuel program what it is - a farm subsidy - and initiate a policy that will ACTUALLY do something to help the environment? Or not?

• Leave a comment...