Saturday, April 9, 2011

Elizabeth May's Answer on Climate Change Excluded from Mansbridge Interview

My comment on the CBC's exclusion of Elizabeth May's answer on climate change in the interview with Peter Mansbridge on last night's National.

I suppose you'll call it editorial discretion or privilege, but what happened to Elizabeth May's answer to the Climate Change Crisis?  When did the CBC become a Climate Change Denier?  Bad enough that the Consortium has excluded her from the debates; appalling that the people's network has also chosen to practice the politics of exclusion.

“2010 was the warmest year on record around the world, with 19 countries setting all-time temperature highs.” (Jeffrey Simpson, GlobeandMail 08.04.11)

We are currently spewing 388ppm (parts per million)  of CO2 in the biosphere, a disturbing notch on an escalating  trending pattern of 2ppm a year, way past the tipping point of 350ppm that scientists maintain is the real tipping point. This is what James Hansen of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the first scientist to warn about global warming over two decades ago, wrote recently:  ”If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”   In other words, this is our last chance: if we don’t reverse that trend in the next ten years, we’re done.   Job growth, economic development, health care, pensions, education, tax credits, the ethical behaviour of politicians — these mean nothing as issues of concern  if we are on the way to self-extinction.

http://bit.ly/dEoHMP

1 comment:

  1. http://bit.ly/dEoHMP

    My response to Fearandloaathing's insulting remarks
    Fearandloathing, I guess we sort of know from where you're coming. I hope you don't consider your remarks thoughtful, as all the others comments here would seem to be. In fact, your reaction look somewhat insulting -- the very sort of uncivil political discourse about which Elizabeth May, rightly, complains.

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