Climate EMERGENCY Countdown Public Forum, Toronto

Climate EMERGENCY Countdown was a public forum organized by climateye that took place at Metro Hall on June 22nd, 2014, in Toronto, Canada.

From the dire warnings of the IPCC and other reports, to the imperative for an EMERGENCY ACTION agreement at the 2015 Paris Climate Summit (via New York City and Lima 2014)…

CEC was an informative afternoon of frank, heartfelt presentations on the climate change EMERGENCY that conveyed vital facts and insights about the latest dire reports and the life-or-extinction urgency to mobilize ahead of critical international climate negotiation summits in September (New York City) and December (Lima, Peru) of 2014, and December 2015 (Paris).

Watch the videos of the presentations in the playlist above (or via the links below).

 

Special thanks to

All who attended / embraced this difficult material with such openness and patience; Peter Biesterfeld (Videoworks), who shot the event, additional material, and edited all the videos but mine (Glenn’s); Stephen Leahy for his knowledge, devotion, generous participation; Angela Bischoff for speaking, venue arrangement, and a great many other things over time; Brett Rhyno, who also spoke, for his friendship and the courage / commitment to get / keep his hands dirty with frontline action; Rita Bijons and Patricia Warwick for always ‘being there’; Liz Couture for supplies / offers to help; Web phenom Amelia Rose Khan for years of assistance behind the online face of eco S; PT for contributions that have been so helpful to make this work a little easier / less stressful than it would otherwise be; and finally…

Dr. Peter Carter and Julie Johnston, who conceived and initiated the event, made it, and these videos, possible, and who have been so unwavered in their support for so long.

 

Speakers | presenters | videos

There’s a lot of information in these videos that is not common knowledge, or often communicated by many we rely on for the whole, hard, unvarnished truth. Realities are exposed about the problematic United Nations climate negotiation process, and the flawed, conservative scientific conclusions they are informed by, in contrast to the EMERGENCY, transformative action that must be taken FAST, if we are to prevent soon to be catastrophic, irreversible, runaway impacts that threaten civilization and most life over the next few decades.

 

Glenn MacIntosh, Founder of climateye, collector of “Climate Crisis Compilations”, and writer of the “CON JOB” blog series, Glenn is a film / TV industry escapee turned organizer, activist, advocate for emergency action at emergency speed to confront the climate, energy, population, democracy, justice crises. A proponent of peaceful civil disobedience / direct action, he has been an arrested participant in Greenpeace protests outside Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s residence, and the federal Parliament buildings. He also reads. A lot.

Considerable effort was made to edit, revise and enhance this presentation in an attempt to compile and synthesize many years of exhaustive research into one tight, information-packed video.

Click here to watch Glenn’s presentation: “CON JOB” (31:15).

 

Stephen Leahy (stephenleahy.net): Environmental journalist, co-winner of the 2012 Prince Albert/United Nations Global Prize for Climate Change Reporting, and a senior science and environment correspondent at Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), his work has appeared in National Geographic, Vice Magazine, The Guardian, New Scientist, Al Jazeera, Wired, Mo Magazine (Europe), TerraGreen (India), Earth Island Journal, Maclean’s, The Toronto Star, AlterNet, and Common Dreams. The only Canadian journalist who’s covered the last 5 years of UN climate negotiations, Stephen shed some light on what are the world’s most important and complex international treaty talks.

Click here to watch Stephen’s presentation: “Inside the U.N. Climate Talks” (20:45)

 

Dr. Peter Carter: Climate Emergency Institute. For over 20 years, Dr. Carter has been synthesizing the climate change research for lay audiences. He is a retired family physician and was a founding director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). With experience in environmental health policy, Dr. Carter recently founded the Climate Emergency Institute and served as an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report. He educates on the connection between food security and climate change, and his research on the climate emergency and total committed global warming has been accepted for presentation at international science and climate change conferences around the world.

Click here to watch “Total Committed Global Climate Change” (8:13).

 

Julie Johnston: GreenHeart Education, former Coordinator of Environment and Sustainability Programs, Upper Canada College. After serving as the first Coordinator of Environment and Sustainability Programs at UCC, Julie began working with teachers around the world, encouraging a transition to transformative education for sustainability (with GreenHeart Education). She is also a teacher, an environmental educator, and a climate change blogger at Compassionate Climate Action.

Click here to watch part 1 of Julie’s presentation: “Countdown to ZERO (carbon)” (10:26).

Click here to watch part 2 of Julie’s presentation: “Memes to save the world” (14:11).

 

Background

Numerous major climate reports – especially the epic 2013 / 2014 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fifth Assessment (AR5) – have warned that:

  • Human-caused global warming and climate change from heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions pose a clear, present, accelerating danger that has ALREADY resulted in unprecedented global-scale impacts everywhere, with financial costs estimated to be at least $1.2 trillion dollars a year and rising.
  • EMERGENCY international action must be taken FAST because, on our current, ‘business as usual’ trajectory, catastrophic, irreversible, ‘runaway’ threats to civilization, humanity and most life are projected to ensue over the next few decades, and there is a high risk that we could become committed / locked in to some over the next few years.

The most important international Climate Change Conference ever (COP21) will be held in Paris late 2015, with the goal of finally reaching agreement on a global pact to see heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions decline FAST from 2020.

To help catalyze momentum and pressure action, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called a momentous climate summit in New York City in September, 2014, at which civil society groups organized the largest — 400,000-strong — climate-themed march in history.

This will be followed by the crucial annual international Climate Change Conference (COP20) in Lima, Peru, from December 1-12, 2014, at which all the key parameters must be determined for there to be any hope of a signed 2015 agreement in Paris.

 

The purpose of our afternoon mini-conference was:

1) To launch an action alert communication initiative to pressure all participants in the UN COP (Conference of the Parties) negotiation process to sign an EMERGENCY agreement at Paris 2015 that is consistent with both the stated agenda of the UNFCCC secretariat AND the most aggressive IPCC scenario (RCP2.6), which require global heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions to peak AND fall fast from 2020.

2) To outline the true extent and negligence of continued direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuel corporations ($1.9 trillion per year), to explain the necessity for the rapid phase out of subsidies, and to call / build support for their reallocation in order to speed up our transition to perpetual (non-burning renewable) ‘zero carbon’ energy sources (such as wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, wave, micro-hydro).

3) To summarize the vital information in the IPCC 5th assessment and other recent climate reports, and expose their little-known or publicized shortcomings / dramatic underestimates. How bad do they indicate the situation to be, and what do they miss?

4) To communicate the importance of the next 18 months – with particular emphasis on the next 6 months, when so much of the eventual outcome of international negotiations will be determined.

5) To propose the best, most rapid and achievable action responses we can demand and expect from the UN climate convention process through to a signed EMERGENCY agreement at Paris 2015.

 

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