The psychology underlying people's behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious...For example, we seem to have an inherent inclination to overlook or rationalize as normal the weather abnormalities that arise from global warming. If this strategy doesn't serve to diminish the significance of an extreme weather event in our minds, we excuse it by extending the range of normality — a once-in-a-century event occurring once every ten years is deemed normal.

Okay, time to stop worrying about climate change. Turns out we can just change the climate. How? Well, maybe we should just nuke the moon. (Apparently if we can shift its orbit to block more sunlight, oil companies can keep drilling, the politicians in their pockets can keep doing nothing and gas-guzzling SUV drivers can laugh at the doomsday warnings of scientists.) Welcome to the wacky world of geo-engineering where geeks compete to find technical remedies for the fossil-fueled mess we’ve got ourselves into. As Joyce Nelson reveals in an article in the current issue of Watershed Sentinel, funding for geo-quick fixes is pouring in from governments (including Canada’s), from the oil industry, and from billionaires like Bill Gates, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Sir Richard Branson.

Read this story from the Hill Times on Canada's rapidly deteriorating global reputation on the environment following a federal budget that would gut many environmental laws and protections. One internationally renown sustainabile development expert, Maurice Strong, claims, “It has been the most anti-environmental government that we’ve ever had, and one of the most anti-environmental governments in the world.”   (May 9, 2012)

Experts on sustainable development say the majority governing Conservatives made significant strides on conservation and banning toxic substances during their five years of minority rule, but the Tories are now abandoning environmental efforts altogether, and some fear the most recent federal budget’s focus on development over the environment risks further damaging Canada’s international reputation.

“Canada has custody over one of the largest environments in the world. It’s resource rich, and that gives us a special responsibility—one which this government is not exercising,” Maurice Strong told The Hill Times last week. “It’s very discouraging, and we’re going to pay a very heavy price for the policies of this government.”

Mr. Strong has represented Canada internationally in a variety of capacities over the past 50 years, beginning with his tenure as deputy minister for External Aid—now CIDA—in the early 1960s and served as Petro-Canada’s first chair after it was established in 1975. He is credited with convening one of the largest summits of world leaders in history, as secretary general of the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Policy makers from throughout the international community will reconvene to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit and hold talks on developing the green economy next month in Rio. Mr. Strong, who is an honorary professor at Beijing’s Peking University and today advises the Chinese government on sustainable development, was in Ottawa last week to speak at a Rio +20 planning event organized by economic think-tank Sustainable Prosperity.

Mr. Strong, who turned 83 last week, did not mince words in criticizing what is increasingly seen as anti-environmental policies by the federal government.

“It has been the most anti-environmental government that we’ve ever had, and one of the most anti-environmental governments in the world,” Mr. Strong lamented.

The Conservatives have been criticized throughout their six years in government for offloading environmental responsibilities to the provinces and obstructing international efforts to address climate change, but with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.) 2012-2013 budget—the Tories’ first budget drafted as a majority government—experts on sustainable development say that the government has confirmed its intentions to fast-track industrial development at the expense of the environment.

Read more: http://www.hilltimes.com/news/news/2012/05/07/tories-accused-of-being-%E2%80%98one-of-most-anti-environmental-governments-in--the/30647?page_requested=1

On September 30, 2011, a mock trial by judge and jury at the University of Colchester in England found two oil executives of Canada's tar sands guilty of ecocide. The jury deliberated a mere 50 minutes before reaching its unanimous verdict. During the trial, the evidence supported the contention that development of the tar sands was the biggest crime against nature on the planet, exceeding even BP's 2010 huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The trial, conducted with real judges, lawyers and jury, respected all judicial procedures. It proceeded “as if ecocide were an international crime against peace, alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression, and placed under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court” (Toronto Star, March 31/12).

John Donne's "for whom the bell tolls” has another relevance today that is more poignant, one encapsulated by a visitor to Hawaii who casually noted that the islands' coral reefs are dying. Indeed, they are. And they are dying elsewhere, too: throughout the South Pacific, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, the Red, the Indian — everywhere there are coral reefs. Perhaps the most spectacular casualty is Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Scientists give it another 10 years before its corals will no longer be able to adapt to warming oceans.

Two principal dynamics are at work in the global warming process that is changing the planet's climate. The first is “forcing”. This is the term climatologists use to describe the initial heating effect of the gases we emit into the atmosphere...As the temperature of the atmosphere rises from forcing, secondary event begin to accelerate the warming. Carbon dioxide, for example, dissolves in the ocean to form carbonic acid, and the increasing acidity impairs the growth of the phytoplankton that transform CO2 into oxygen. Higher levels of CO2, therefore, handicap the process that is absorbing and reducing the problem gas.

Until this year, the purpose of the annual Canadian federal budget was to project government revenues, lay out spending priorities and forecast economic conditions for the upcoming year. Reading Budget 2012, announced last week by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, it soon becomes clear that this government has no intention of being encumbered by pedestrian fiscal objectives. The Harper government has instead opted to present what is first and foremost a policy document – one that brazenly asserts the government’s ideological agenda for the coming three years.

"The answer," wrote Bob Dylan in his iconic '60s anti-war song, "is blowin' in the wind." So the vicious winds that ravaged coastal BC on the morning of March 12th - sustained velocities of 100 km/hr with gusts measured at 137 km/hr - provided that answer. Outbursts of nasty winds have been harassing coastal British Columbia with increasing frequency in recent years. Ferry sailings, the litmus test of heavy weather for islanders, have been cancelled often, reminding the attentive public and anxious travellers that the winds are once again abnormally high.

Read this story from Agence France-Presse on a new report commissioned by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicting grave socioeconomic ramifications from increasing environmental problems. (March 16, 2012)

PARIS - Pressures on Earth’s ecosystem are now so great that future generations could be doomed to falling living standards, the OECD said on Thursday in a report looking to the mid-century.

"Providing for a further two billion people by 2050 and improving the living standards for all will challenge our ability to manage and restore those natural assets on which all life depends," it warned.

"Failure to do so will have serious consequences, especially for the poor, and ultimately undermine the growth and human development of future generations."

The report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) builds on previous peeks-into-the-future, ending in 2030, that focused on climate change, biodiversity and the impacts on health for pollution.

"The prospects are more alarming than the situation described in the previous edition," it said, speaking of "irreversible changes that could endanger two centuries of rising living standards."

Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/Environmental+crunch+worse+than+thought+OECD+2050+report/6313069/story.html

Dr. Nina Federoff, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said at a recent gathering of the AAAS in Vancouver that she is "scared to death" about the public's declining acceptance of global warming and the growing influence of well-funded skeptics who are spreading misinformation about climate change. "I'm very worried," she confided to reporters, noting leaked documents from the influential Heartland Institute of Chicago that reveal it is planning a program for US public schools intended to discredit the evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is creating world-wide environmental threats.