The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of 2,500 scientists, has just released a report outlining the extreme urgency and gravity of global warming. Next month, nations will gather in Bali to revisit the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Their actions will have consequences for all of us.
To mark this event, here’s a video of 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki’s earth-shaking speech at the Earth Summit in Rio, 1992. As evidenced by the IPCC’s report, her words are more relevant today.
Get ready to Buy Nothing this holiday season! That’s right, Buy Nothing Day (BND) is coming. The concept co-founded by Kalle Lasn from Adbusters (based on artist Ted Dave’s idea) is practiced by environmentalists, social activists and concerned citizens. Held on November 23rd in North America and November 24th internationally, BND raises social awareness about the ongoing process of over-consumption in today’s consumer society. It’s easy to get involved, just buy nothing on one or both of these days, depending on where you live and if you want to make a statement. For more information about the event and when it all started check out the Adbusters team on their website www.adbusters.org.
OPEN CINEMA & THE POWER OF HOPE
presents
Corporations in the Classroom
Director Jill Sharpe’s latest documentary reveals that our children are no longer safe from advertising even when at school. Because funding for education is falling short, teachers and administrators are struggling to keep the gates closed to marketing companies. It’s called Trojan horse marketing and it works like a charm in creating lifelong consumers instead of life-long learners.
If you are in Victoria, British Columbia you have
2 SCREENINGS (followed by discussions) TO CHOOSE FROM:
7pm Tuesday, November 20th 2007
Hermann’s Jazz Club, 753 View Street (all ages venue)
Doors open at 5.30pm, arrive early for dinner
and
7pm, Wednesday November 21st 2007
MacLaurin 288, University of Victoria
“Truth is a liquid”. So concluded Edward Bernays, who in the years between the two world wars invented the modern profession of public relations. Like an alchemist of mass consciousness, Bernays blended the crude ores of ordinary reality with lies and half-truths so seamlessly that even skeptics could not discern where the real ended and the deception began.”
- Democracy and the Age of Spin, Mark Sommer
I have been home now for some time, and have had some time to reflect on our trip and our new found knowledge on the activities of tarsands operations up north as well as its impact on the glaciers further south. I have come to the conclusion that what we face right now is not a technology problem, and nor is it a scientific riddle to puzzle over. Climate change is quite simply- a social problem.
It is a social problem because while we argue, while we debate, while we hesitate, our water resources are melting/evaporating away. 9/10’s of this problem is simply people choosing to do the right thing.
One of the barriers to doing the right thing is this idea that truth is liquid. We have become remarkably good at spin, remarkably good at twisting facts and figures around until they support our conclusions. We are too good at this- when truth becomes a liquid, this river turns to poison. Nobody wants that. I don’t believe anyone would wilfully wish this.
We were told by corporations that they only use 0.3% of the annual flow of the river. They neglected to tell us that, combined with all the other operations, it’s closer to 5% taken from the river, and this goes up to 15% in the winter, when the flow is low and the biota is fragile. We were told by the corporations that carbon neutrality is desirable, but that they weren’t ready to commit to a date when it would happen. We were told many things- and I know that they all represented a kind of truth- but not any kind of truth that might help us.
An influential work I’ve read is a book (also a film) called The Corporation, by Joel Bakan. He describes an interview conducted with Robert Monks, an advisor on corporate reform to Republican Administrations in the US. He tells the story of waking up at a motel in a small town with his eyes stinging and his throat hoarse. The local mill was dumping effluent into the river. “I knew a lot of people in the town and I knew that not one person- not the mayor, not the people who worked in the mills, not the mill owners- wanted this to happen. That’s when I knew this entity known as the corporation was a doom machine- in our search for wealth and prosperity, we had created a thing that’s going to destroy us.”
There is no better example of a doom machine than the tarsands. Environmental impacts are extreme, and at all ends of the spectrum. Whether it be sulfur dioxide causing acid rain in the Canadian Shield north of the plants, the nitrogen oxides causing asthma and immune system disorders among the people of Fort McMurray and Fort Mckay, the carcinogens finding their way into the river, the unprecented water withdrawal, the engineering projects that have managed to make oil as carbon intensive as coal (thus changing our climate rapidly), the massive amounts of earth being moved for one tiny barrel of oil.
So if no one wants this why is it happenning?
Don’t let truth become a liquid. Cup it firmly in your hands…don’t let it slide out.
Concordia University will be presenting its 15th anniversary of the Community HIV/AIDS Lecture Series with special guest John Dugdale. Dugdale, a once famed New York photographer working with the likes of Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart, will be discussing his body of work. The event will take place November 8th at 6:00PM in room H-110 (auditorium) of Concordia University’s Hall Building (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West Montreal Quebec). Dugdale’s presentation of ‘The Tears of Apollo: Transformations Through Loss, Making Photographs With My Other Sight’ will look at his work as an artist who has fought against the effects of CMV Retinitis (an AIDS related illness which causes sight loss) and continues to make art despite the obstacles before him. The evening will conclude with a Silent Auction at 8:00PM featuring some of Dugdale’s original work.
Montrealer in her mid-twenties.
Freelance journalist and photographer,
with an interest in human rights and sustainable living.
Has a cheerful disposition.
Tynesha is CITIZENShift's summer intern from Concordia University's Communication department (Mtl., QC). Brimming with interests, she states "I enjoy school, I sing in a choir and I am also involved in community radio and volunteer work with youth. In the future, I look forward to developing a company that merges my three great passions in sound, community engagement, and music."
David Widgington was the event coordinator for the Citizen Media Rendez-vous 2010 (http://citizen-media.ca). He is a mobile journalist (MoJo) who is well-versed in community radio, video and print and web-based media practices. He has a particular interest these days with diaspora communities returning to Southern Sudan since the end of the war. He is script-writing a documentary project on the subject. (http://southsudaninfo.net).
