Climate Changes

Question: How do you make a fairly eco-conscious Canadian girl feel REALLY uncomfortable/ mad/ frustrated/ ashamed (etc....)????

Answer: ask her to present and moderate a session on 'How climate change affects development, and how development affects climate change'.

Wow. The answer to the question "how does climate change affect development?" is basically "the changes to the environment due to climate change flies in the face and thwarts all efforts to make postive change in the lives of the world's most marginalised peoples". The question that was not asked, but who's answer was brought up again and again was "who contributes the most to the production of greenhouse gases which cause climate change?". The answer to that, of course, was in a large part Canada and the US (if taken on a per-capita basis). I felt about as big as the period you can see on this screen. Way to go Canada. I knew we were in a bad shape compared to the rest of the world, but preparing for this talk really made me see just HOW badly off we were. Since 1990 we have increased per capita GHG production to the point where we are on par with the US. The difference is, we signed the Kyoto accord saying we would DECREASE our 1990 levels. At least the US did not make any such promises.

The answer to the question "How does development affect climate change?" is, simply put, "the more developed a country gets, the more it contributes to climate change, because consumption increases". No one can deny a country like Kenya the opportunity to 'develop' even while they are desperately trying to come to terms with the changing climate due to the rest of us 'developing' a hundred years earlier, but boy, did I feel awkward for being the sole representative of a society that modelled 'development' in such an unhelpful way, environmentally speaking.

While Canadians may be trying to deal with climate change by reducing the amount they drive, turning off lights, or adjusting their diet so that less 'food miles' are required to make their salad, these people are talking about other mitigation measures. Plant more trees. Use more mulch. Plant more drought-resistant crops. Diversify.

They can't make their carbon footprint much smaller if they want to survive, which for most people around here is a daily struggle anyways.

On behalf of people feeling the pinch of what our consumerist thirst for oil is doing to prices of maize, wheat, rice, and kerosene (for cooking and lamps to do homework by), which by the way is more than doubling some of them, please consider how your next purchase or trip has affects on those people in the world that are least able to deal with climatic and market changes.