David Suzuki: Inaction on climate change comes with a huge price tag
It’s interesting to see the reaction to a report just released by our foundation and the Pembina Institute. The Globe and Mail called our analysis of the costs of fighting climate change “unsaleable and dangerous”.
But the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson wrote that “The Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation have had the courage to uncover and to tell us the truth. Now Canadians must decide what to do.”
Yes, it is up to Canadians to decide what to do. Do we plug our ears and close our eyes and go about business as usual while the world strains under the damage we are inflicting? Do we leave our children and grandchildren a world of misery? Or do we pull together to confront this challenge, as we have with other major threats the world has faced?
Keep in mind that the report, Climate Leadership, Economic Prosperity, while pointing out that reducing the impact of climate change will come with some costs, also concludes that our economy will remain healthy. In fact, the analysis, conducted by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, says that Canada’s gross domestic product would continue to grow even if we adopted the stronger measures that environmental organizations are calling for rather than the weak measures the federal government has proposed.
Still, comments in the news, and from people who post their reaction to news sites, show that many people aren’t willing to make tough decisions for the sake of our collective future—for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Let’s be clear. Resolving a global problem like climate change will cost money. But doing nothing will cost much more. The very survival of people, not to mention many other plants and animals that we share this small planet with, may well be at stake.
Former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern has estimated that to keep heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions below levels that would cause catastrophic climate change would cost up to two per cent of global GDP, but failure to act could cost from five to 20 percent of global GDP.
And those are just numbers. In the real world, runaway climate change could have devastating impacts on our water and food supplies, could lead to waves of refugees escaping uninhabitable drought-stricken areas or vanishing islands, and could wreak havoc on the world’s oceans and cause major extinctions of plants and animals. Some of this is already happening.
And consider what will become of our economy if we continue to fuel it with nonrenewable resources like oil and coal while the rest of the world switches to renewable energy. The demand for fossil fuels will dry up as the reserves become depleted. Where will that lead us?
And yet, we still have people saying it would cause too much hardship to act, or that it would be dangerous or divisive. Are we really that selfish? Well, not everyone is. It’s been heartening to see so many people, especially young people, taking to the streets and Parliament Hill, writing to MPs and prime ministers, and joining campaigns to urge governments to be part of the solution to global warming.
Millions of people turned out recently for more than 5,000 International Day of Climate Action events in 180 countries. The message was loud and clear: We expect our political leaders to work for the benefit and security of all of the world’s people when they meet in Copenhagen in December to work on a climate change agreement to continue and strengthen the Kyoto Protocol.
What these people realize is that the price we will pay to fight climate change is a good investment in a healthy and prosperous future. Some of the costs include investments in public transit and renewable energy, in programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in other parts of the world, and in helping people cope with higher transportation and home-heating costs during the time of transition.
The Globe and Mail, and others, may think all of this is “unsaleable and dangerous”, but it’s only dangerous to those who insist on staking their future on polluting, unsustainable non-renewable resources, and it’s only unsaleable to those who don’t care about the future. We can’t afford not to take action. We can’t afford to let our leaders let us down. We must continue to tell them that we expect them to work for us in Copenhagen.
Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Google
Comments
EnvironMENTALism is heading for a cliff because we know you CAN’T come through with the goods like you said you would, a promise of climate crisis. And suggesting bad weather is climate change is foolishly transparent and worn out.
I would like very much to see a "plain language" synopsus of what a zero carbon Canada would look like. This could be the clincher for many folks, because it is hard to imagine what this would look like.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-07-05-ocean-acidity_x.htm
You are on GCAT; do something and convince the Mayor to ban the 99 B-Line diesel buses from the #17 zero emission hydro-electric trolley bus route and convince him to ban all the other diesel buses from the rest of the zero emission trolley bus routes in Vancouver. It may only be a symbolic gesture to ban these diesel buses but if we all do what we can, it will make a difference.
It can’t be that hard: you stand up in the next GCAT meeting and say, enough, you lousy two faced politicians! Get those stinking diesel buses off the trolley bus routes in Vancouver!!
Otherwise, you and the rest of the GCAT members are going to keep looking like a bunch of pansy assed hypocrites crying about reducing GHG emissions while sucking up to TransLink to keep the peace. You’ve been swimming with two faced politicians for so long that you’ve forgotten what it takes to be true to your convictions.
Good bye, Adiós, see ya later.
The hypocracy of David Suzuki and his cronies makes me want to puke.
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politics/2009/04/15/SuzukiChairLibera...
Good luck with getting that to happen Kevin, your just about as likely to see Suzy speaking out about Gordon Campbell's fish farms, run of river projects, or forestry practices.
Question 1: Given that the new Liberal Leader, Michael Ignatieff, has explicitly rejected the Green Shift or any other kind of carbon tax, why hasn't David Suzuki or his principal agent, Liberal Jim Hoggan, condemned Ignatieff in the same terms that Suzuki condemned Carole James and Jack Layton? Could it be pure, raw party politics? Perish the thought! David Suzuki and his Foundation are environmentalists, they would never be influenced by any gross partisan or electoral considerations!
Question 2: In the Spring the Suzuki Foundation was ecstatic that BIll C311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, had passed Second Reading. They publicly took credit for the bill's passage at that stage and promised to keep their followers informed about the progress of this "important" legistlation:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blog/DSF1_04020902.asp
Yet on Wed, October 21st when this bill came up for Third Reading the majority of Liberal MPs voted with the Conservatives to send this Act back to committee for more study. Jack Layton had asked that the bill be passed and proclaimed at once, in advance of the Copenhagen Conference that David Suzuki agrees is important. What is the Suzuki Foundation's reaction to that vote, and specifically to the Liberals' reversal of position from the vote in the Spring?
As you would expect, there is nothing on the Jim Hoggan/David Suzuki website on this matter. Nothing at all.
The Foundation whose celebrity leader had no hesitation saying in last Fall's federal election that he was "ashamed" of Carole James for not supporting the BC Carbon Tax has no harsh words whatsoever for Liberals who voted against an act his Foundation said was important and which they took credit for getting passed.
You would think that by now it must be crystal clear to any reasonable and honest person that the degree of political independence practiced by the Jim Hoggan/David Suzuki Foundation is not only a matter of public record, but is in fact blindingly obvious.
And yet there are those in the advertiser-dependent commercial media who feel they have to play the celebrity game, be it David Suzuki the broadcaster or Tzeporah Berman the ex-model. They will continue to portray the Hoggan/Suzuki Foundation as politically neutral, an environmental group rather than a Liberal and business lobbying network.
Rod Smelser
SAVE THE PLANET you say. The end of the world is kinda the last bullet in anyone’s bag of threats don’t ya think? What’s worse than death? You can’t raise the stakes after threatening us with death of the planet Earth. You are all in here Buddy. You have bet everything, the house and the farm. There is no going back now as you are: All in! You better show us a crisis soon because cooling trumps predicted warming every time and this public belief in this mistake can’t last much longer. History says fear is always a temporary motivator so this CO2 theory is not sustainable for another 23 years. You have milked this thing for what ever misguided reason long enough, so come clean and just say that “more research is needed into understanding climate” blablaba.
EnvironMENTALism is heading for a cliff because we know you doomers CAN’T come through with the goods like you global warmers said you would, a promise of climate crisis. And suggesting bad weather is climate change is foolishly transparent and worn out and its been 23 years for God’s sake. Stop this insanity now we deniers demand the IPCC renounce this theory and work on a new generation energy development.
The smoggy 70’s are gone, Rachel Carson rules and now is the time to put this CO2 mistake aside so we can all come together to protect, preserve and respect our planet and face the future of progress with some dignity, not this fearing the unknown, assuming the worst and fighting a non existent enemy of climate change.
It’s not so far fetched to say that the likes of Al Gore and David Suzuki could be charged with for intetionaly holding our contries needlessly on a collision course with death for almost a quarter century.
Let it go.
Ironically, it's DaGucci's priest James Hoggan's book exposing Big Oil's finance of the Denialist campaign, that shows the tactics they use on their anti nuke campaign. One of their favorites is the no nukes fake study released to compliant editors in the mainstream media. These studies all emanating from Big Oil funded astroturfers like DaGucci, quote each others bull as fact, use the same tired arguments, and come to the usual conclusion.
This critique of a Big Oil funded turfer article on the front page of a massively Big Oil funded magazine fits DaGucc's article almost perfectly.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/
Where DaGucci deviates from the normal is his wholehearted embrace of clean coal a deadly and toxic method of generating power with hundreds of millions of people worldwide now sickened and dead from its radioactive dust, mercury, and arsenic wastes. This discredited and foolish waste of money is just a politicians way of keeping donations rollin' in.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/09/23/carbon-capture-study.html
He also uses a 20 cent a kwh figure for nuclear when costs are veering to less than 1 cents for new mass produced nukes. Areva's recent Ontario bid was $24 billion for 60 years of 3.3 gigawatts in nukes all costs considered which works out to 1.5 cents a kwh.
http://www.thestar.com/article/668157
The Areva reactor cost of $4 billion each is double the predicted $1000 a kw for mass produced nukes and recent costs coming in from new Indian nuclear plants.
Germany has already wasted 10 years and $100 billion dollars on DaGucci's wind power and has not reduced its greenhouse emissions one iota. To help with its new found addiction to Russian gas, it is planning a massive build of dirty coal plants to meet its baseload power requirements.
The Canadian nuclear industry with a $150 billion investment in mass produced nuclear power brought in over a few years and paid for by quickly weaning us off the $100 billion the we spend annually on fossil fuels could with a World War Two scale effort here eliminate fossil fuel use - a two year payback period.
With modern efficient generation 3.5 reactors able to use reprocessed and thorium fuels, a huge eighty year current supply of natural uranium and orders of magnitude more efficient fast breeder reactors like Sandia and Toshiba's new designs there is sufficient nuclear fission fuel to last hundreds of years. Thorium is five times as abundant as uranium. Old generation nuclear waste is used as fuel for gen Iv reactors eliminating the waste problem.
The conversion from fossil fuel to nuclear is cheap and with the current recession the industrial capacity is there. It eliminates our air pollution, creates a huge employment boosting domestic and export industry, and makes our economy far more competitive than the renewable crippled US and Europe. Even the deniers here would go for it. We can do this.
India has plans for 450 gigawatts of nukes and is dumping beaucoup bucks into nuclear research. It is a mostly English speaking nation with more university graduates than the US and the difference is growing exponentially. Do we really want to give them a ten to one minimum advantage in power cost by continuing on this renewable dead end..
Whether it was making sure George Bush got elected by supporting Green Leader Ralph Nader, reelecting Canwest/Gordo and Harpo, or driving us right over that as little as ten years civilization ending Climate/Peak oil crisis with their silly "renewable" religion, by supporting Big Coal/Oil's fight against nuclear power, the new age “renewable” priests like DaGucc here seem bound and determined to kill lots of folks in very big ways.
seth
When the IPCC no longer calls this a crisis, very soon, I will write the PM to have this fear monger charged with treason.
Remember David, fear is always a temporary motivator. Oh, and stop scaring my kids.
I wanted my kids to be nature lovers. You have made them hysterical global doomers calling our planet a toxic waste land. Nice.
And the UN has allowed Carbon Trading to trump 3rd World Education, clean water and starvation rescue. Nice!?
So if you globull warmers think that we should give tax money to fat politicians who are promising to lower the temperature of the planet with it, don’t for a micro second think Climate Change’s credibility is sustainable for another 23 years of global dooming threats of death. Call it Y2Kyoto for short.
Stop this insanity so we can concentrate on real problems like waste, energy and population control.
Activism is not science. You are not a climatologist.
Prison Planet.com
A startling revelation in a recent Newsweek article proves that Gore is only interested in solutions to environmental problems that line his pockets.
Al Gore himself admits CO2 is not the major driver of global warming.If there was a solution to neutralize CO2 emissions that didn’t involve devastating the economy, taxing the citizens into oblivion, de-industrializing the west and giving government huge regulatory powers over our private lives, would Al Gore, Maurice Strong and the rest of the kingpins of the globalist environmental movement be interested? You can bet your bottom dollar they’re not interested.
One of Gore’s global warming advisors, Timothy LaSalle, told Gore’s team that CO2 emissions could be neutralized completely by clever use of agriculture and technology, without the need for a global carbon tax or the use of cap and trade systems!
Gore, along with people like the Rothschilds, Maurice Strong and Barack Obama, have huge assets in promoting.
“This is an outrageous interference in science for a political purpose. But what is the political purpose? Al Gore has called for stopping the use of fossil fuels and the complete restructuring of the economy in the US within ten years but when offered a chance to remove “harmful” CO2 from the atmosphere his team tries to change the science.”Gore doesn’t give a damn about the science and he doesn’t give a damn about the environment. Like the rest of the vultures circling around the rich pickings of the global warming fraud, his only interest is in feasting on the corpse of the U.S. economy and the American taxpayer once he manages to ram though the cap and trade scam that will enrich the very carbon trading systems he owns.
video:
Site-C will be THREE times higher in cost than IPPs.
Learn the facts Rod, and stop the socialist propaganda in favor of uncompetitive state monopolies.
They prove Site C is half the cost of Pirate Power, and BC hydro could develop run of the river for half the cost of the Pirates are doing it for.
Nuclear power that Alberta and Washington state are planning is less than 20% of the BCHydro's Pirate contracts so I wonder what business 's are going to left in BC five ten years from now?
You astroturfers just can't stop fibbing.
seth
You claim that BC Hydro can develop small hydro. Obviously you are ignorant of the fact that it cost BC Hydro TWICE the cost of the IPPs to develop the Aberfeldie run of river hydro.
Site-C will be THREE times higher in cost than IPPs.
Learn the facts Rod, and stop the socialist propaganda in favor of uncompetitive state monopolies
========================================
Socialist propanda? Really?
I wonder if the name "To RodSmelser" stands for Tzeporah Berman? Or is it another post by the person unearthed in another Straight story:
http://www.straight.com/article-268649/bc-pushes-private-power
Hi. Im paid by the BC Citizens for Green Energy (a creation of the IPP industry) - I blanket post propaganda all over the web - see my profile here: http://disqus.com/rachel11/ - thats my other pseudonym, I blanket posted lots of nonsense 354 comments so far - in the hopes that the BC public will never find out about what we will be doing to them and the environment. I call people liars everywhere and my blood boils with rage against people who get in my and my backers way.
Maybe someone knows if there Is any association at all between PowerUp Canada, the BC Citizens for Green Energy and the BC Sustainable Energy Assn?
Rod Smelser