Climate change is the greatest threat humans have ever faced. In the 2014 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations scientific body warns humanity of the imminent impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. “Human security will be progressively threatened as the climate changes (robust evidence, high agreement)” (IPCC 2014 Report, p.758). In discussing the finding of the report, Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman, declared that everybody on the planet will be impacted by climate change (Tompson, 2014). Climate scientists agree now that keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6°F) above pre-industrial temperatures, which is what was agreed upon by world governments at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate change Conference (COP 15), GHG emissions will have to be radically reduced on a global scale. “We have already emitted two thirds of the total carbon allocation to the atmosphere that would ensure at least a 66% chance of limiting global temperature increases to below 2 °C” (Jackson, el at, 2016, p.7). While GHG emissions will have to be reduced globally between 40 to 70 percent by 2050, coal-burning activities will have to be eradicated by 2050, and GHG emissions, by the end of the century (Thompson, 2014). In the spring of 2013, during Canadian environmental activist Tzeporah Berman’s honorary degree acceptance speech at the University of British Columbia, in her address to her cohort and the general assembly, she recalled a moment of disbelief: “Five years ago, I sat in the audience at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, and the secretary general said: “We either reach an agreement to quickly reduce our dependence on fossil fuel or we doom humanity to oblivion” (Berman, 2013). “Climate change is undeniably an immediate, global threat and unless some radical moves are taken, the earth will be largely uninhabitable within 50 to 100 years” (Kin Chi, 2011, p.241).
In the article published in Foreign Affairs, “Choking on China, The Superpower That is Choking the World” written by Thomas N. Thompson, the journalist details: “The dangers of China’s environmental degradation go well beyond the country’s borders, as pollution threatens global health more than ever” (Thompson, 2013). “Made in China: Our Toxic, Imported Air Pollution” written by David Kirby for Discover Magazine issue April 2011, reveals that poisonous air particulates circumnavigate the planet. Director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Jennifer Turner was quoted in this article. She said: “What’s different about China is the scale and speed of pollution and environmental degradation,” Turner says. “It’s like nothing the world has ever seen” (Kirby, 2011). China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and Europe combined.” “About 42 per cent of Canada’s mercury pollution now comes from China” (Sandborn, kyle, Jacobs, 2014). “China is dumping more plastics into the ocean than any other country” (Nordrum, 2015), a destructive trend that has been predicted to increase.
According to World Wildlife Fund, China is the most important polluter of the Pacific Ocean (Economy, 2007). “A group of researchers found that trans-Pacific air pollution is a hidden price of the goods sent abroad from China” (Wong, 2014), toxic airborne particulates cross the Pacific Ocean transported by powerful winds called “Westerlies,” reaching the West coast of America in a few days (Richard, 2014). On April 15th 2014, in a special report for the Vancouver Sun written by Calvin Sandborn, Kyle Mcneill, and Rosie Jacobs, the authors disclose that “disturbing new studies have found that on some days, up to 25 per cent of Vancouver’s air pollution already comes from China, largely from coal-burning plants.” China is heavily polluting the west coast of North America.
The burning of coal releases toxic airborne particulates into the air, including both sulphur and nitrogen dioxide, which cause acid rain, and are poisonous to the human body. Acid rain falls on the ground as sulphuric and nitric acid. “Acid rain now affects about one-third of China’s territory, including approximatively one-third of its farmland” (Sanders, Chen, 2007, p.21). Atmospheric particulates travel within the ASEAN countries from eastern China to Japan and South Korea, from Shenzhen to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Acid rain deposit from sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, of which China is the world’s leading contributor, causes destruction in both Japan and Korea (Reklev, Macfie, 2014). Today, 10 percent of China’s agricultural land is contaminated by heavy metals. China is now turning to other countries to grow food (Shiva, 2015). South Korea is also affected by sandstorms originating from China’s worsening desertification and soil erosion (Van Rooij, 2011, p.583).
According to World Wildlife Fund, China is the most important polluter of the Pacific Ocean (Economy, 2007). “A group of researchers found that trans-Pacific air pollution is a hidden price of the goods sent abroad from China” (Wong, 2014), toxic airborne particulates cross the Pacific Ocean transported by powerful winds called “Westerlies,” reaching the West coast of America in a few days (Richard, 2014). On April 15th 2014, in a special report for the Vancouver Sun written by Calvin Sandborn, Kyle Mcneill, and Rosie Jacobs, the authors disclose that “disturbing new studies have found that on some days, up to 25 per cent of Vancouver’s air pollution already comes from China, largely from coal-burning plants.” China is heavily polluting the west coast of North America.
The burning of coal releases toxic airborne particulates into the air, including both sulphur and nitrogen dioxide, which cause acid rain, and are poisonous to the human body. Acid rain falls on the ground as sulphuric and nitric acid. “Acid rain now affects about one-third of China’s territory, including approximatively one-third of its farmland” (Sanders, Chen, 2007, p.21). Atmospheric particulates travel within the ASEAN countries from eastern China to Japan and South Korea, from Shenzhen to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Acid rain deposit from sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, of which China is the world’s leading contributor, causes destruction in both Japan and Korea (Reklev, Macfie, 2014). Today, 10 percent of China’s agricultural land is contaminated by heavy metals. China is now turning to other countries to grow food (Shiva, 2015). South Korea is also affected by sandstorms originating from China’s worsening desertification and soil erosion (Van Rooij, 2011, p.583).
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SPM.08-01-1.png
Figure SPM.8 from Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Meyer, L. (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland.
“The earth and its inhabitants are facing a crisis of an unprecedented scale. Survival no longer depends only upon political stability and the control of means of mass destruction; it is now also dependent upon our ability to restore a balanced biosphere and ecosystems. The list of environmental perils is familiar: ozone depletion, climate change, desertification, deforestation, air pollution and acidification, toxic waste, water pollution, exhaustion of non-renewable resources, loss of biodiversity, species extinction” (Taylor, 2008, p.1).
In Talk to Al Jazeera, January 12, 2013, in the episode The Responsibility of Privilege, Rosiland Jordan interviews world renown political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky. In this interview Noam Chomsky warns humanity about the possible collapse of the financial system and human extinction: “Actually I should say there are much worse cases than systemic risks and bringing down the financial system. That’s bad enough. But there is another externality that’s much more severe. The destruction of the species. And that’s not a joke! It’s imminent that global warming will cause major catastrophe. You can argue about the details, but there is not much doubt that it’s coming.”
In Spring of 2013, I interviewed world renown scholar and political dissident Noam Chomsky at MIT in Cambridge on the topics of the human ecological crisis and possibility of human extinction. In this interview, Chomsky describes the world’s current geopolitical trends, and acknowledges the severity of the human environmental crisis, the possibility of human extinction or rather of decent existence on Earth. Following is a brief overview of some parts of our conversation.
During our conversation Noam Chomsky explained the disturbing truth, and striking dichotomy, in the overall reactions in response to the urgency of the planetary environmental crisis. Chomsky explained that the most powerful countries in the world, Canada and the US, are accelerating the crisis. “Indigenous societies, first nations, aboriginal, tribal people, whatever you want to call them, in the countries where they are a large part of the population, and where they are actives, they are doing something about it, they are working hard to protect Mother Earth from destruction” (Chomsky, 2015). Professor Chomsky gave the example of Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, which has a large indigenous population, and has instituted rights of nature at the constitutional level. More recently, on March 20th 2017, a high court in the Uttarakhand, India, gave the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers, the same constitutional rights as a human being (Quartz India, 2017). This is a remarkable achievement, even if only in the ways in which it elevates the ecological consciousness globally. IN our conversation, Chomsky explained that Ecuador was trying to get help from the European Union to keep the country’s oil in the ground. He explained that the same patterns of indigenous people leading the struggle to save the planet was happening everywhere. In Australia indigenous people are trying to protect the land from uranium and other mining activities. Professor Chomsky was involved in Southern Columbia, were gold mining is the worst that there is. “Gold mining is the most destructive of extractive industries, corporations are attacking poor communities with impunity, destroying their water sources, and ultimately there lives.” Chomsky specifically referred to Canadian mining companies as a lethal growth around the world. He also discussed Magna Carta with me, the foundation of anglo american law. Half of Magna Carta is suppose to grant rights, and the other half is the charter of the forest, the common, nurtured and cultivated in commons, the source of foods, and fuel. He continued to say that woman’s rights, and old images of the women collecting food in the forest go back to the bible, and that the charter of the forest was an effort to protect the commons from predatory actions by the King. He referred to the Robin hood legends evoking the mythology of this struggle. Chomsky said that the political move towards privatization whipped out the commons, and turned people in wage labourers. Now we have a concept of the tragedy of the common. He defined tragedy of the commons in western doctrine as the idea that things need to be privatized to be protected, which is absolutely false he said. Chomsky explained that traditional societies exemplify the exact opposite of that, they live in balance with nature, and are stewardship of the natural world.
On December 5th 2016, for the 20th anniversary of Democracy Now!, in his address to the crowed, Noam Chomsky warned the public: “We should never overlook the fact that the threats that we now face are the most severe that have ever arisen in human history. They are literal threats to survival, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe. These are very urgent concerns, they cannot be delayed. They have to be face directly and soon if the human experiment is not to prove to be a disastrous failure” (democracynow.org, 2016). Human extinction by the end of this century is possible if war-mongering imperialism, nuclear armament, fossil fuel corporatocracy, agrochemical farming, zombie pharmacopeia-complex (modern pharmacology), the war on drugs and consciousness expending substances, mind-control, media manipulation, scientific suppression (Duck, 2015), attack on activists, indoctrinating narcissistic hyper-consumption patterns, and megalomaniac oligarchs carry on unabated.
Excerpt from «Dragon Tears: A Critical Analysis On The Political Ecology Of Planetary Survival» a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Policy Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
"We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. The government has failed to protect us. To survive, it’s going to take everything we’ve got."
Rebel For Life
https://rebellion.earth/
For all references please visit the UBC Library to access my thesis online.
“The earth and its inhabitants are facing a crisis of an unprecedented scale. Survival no longer depends only upon political stability and the control of means of mass destruction; it is now also dependent upon our ability to restore a balanced biosphere and ecosystems. The list of environmental perils is familiar: ozone depletion, climate change, desertification, deforestation, air pollution and acidification, toxic waste, water pollution, exhaustion of non-renewable resources, loss of biodiversity, species extinction” (Taylor, 2008, p.1).
In Talk to Al Jazeera, January 12, 2013, in the episode The Responsibility of Privilege, Rosiland Jordan interviews world renown political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky. In this interview Noam Chomsky warns humanity about the possible collapse of the financial system and human extinction: “Actually I should say there are much worse cases than systemic risks and bringing down the financial system. That’s bad enough. But there is another externality that’s much more severe. The destruction of the species. And that’s not a joke! It’s imminent that global warming will cause major catastrophe. You can argue about the details, but there is not much doubt that it’s coming.”
In Spring of 2013, I interviewed world renown scholar and political dissident Noam Chomsky at MIT in Cambridge on the topics of the human ecological crisis and possibility of human extinction. In this interview, Chomsky describes the world’s current geopolitical trends, and acknowledges the severity of the human environmental crisis, the possibility of human extinction or rather of decent existence on Earth. Following is a brief overview of some parts of our conversation.
During our conversation Noam Chomsky explained the disturbing truth, and striking dichotomy, in the overall reactions in response to the urgency of the planetary environmental crisis. Chomsky explained that the most powerful countries in the world, Canada and the US, are accelerating the crisis. “Indigenous societies, first nations, aboriginal, tribal people, whatever you want to call them, in the countries where they are a large part of the population, and where they are actives, they are doing something about it, they are working hard to protect Mother Earth from destruction” (Chomsky, 2015). Professor Chomsky gave the example of Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, which has a large indigenous population, and has instituted rights of nature at the constitutional level. More recently, on March 20th 2017, a high court in the Uttarakhand, India, gave the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers, the same constitutional rights as a human being (Quartz India, 2017). This is a remarkable achievement, even if only in the ways in which it elevates the ecological consciousness globally. IN our conversation, Chomsky explained that Ecuador was trying to get help from the European Union to keep the country’s oil in the ground. He explained that the same patterns of indigenous people leading the struggle to save the planet was happening everywhere. In Australia indigenous people are trying to protect the land from uranium and other mining activities. Professor Chomsky was involved in Southern Columbia, were gold mining is the worst that there is. “Gold mining is the most destructive of extractive industries, corporations are attacking poor communities with impunity, destroying their water sources, and ultimately there lives.” Chomsky specifically referred to Canadian mining companies as a lethal growth around the world. He also discussed Magna Carta with me, the foundation of anglo american law. Half of Magna Carta is suppose to grant rights, and the other half is the charter of the forest, the common, nurtured and cultivated in commons, the source of foods, and fuel. He continued to say that woman’s rights, and old images of the women collecting food in the forest go back to the bible, and that the charter of the forest was an effort to protect the commons from predatory actions by the King. He referred to the Robin hood legends evoking the mythology of this struggle. Chomsky said that the political move towards privatization whipped out the commons, and turned people in wage labourers. Now we have a concept of the tragedy of the common. He defined tragedy of the commons in western doctrine as the idea that things need to be privatized to be protected, which is absolutely false he said. Chomsky explained that traditional societies exemplify the exact opposite of that, they live in balance with nature, and are stewardship of the natural world.
On December 5th 2016, for the 20th anniversary of Democracy Now!, in his address to the crowed, Noam Chomsky warned the public: “We should never overlook the fact that the threats that we now face are the most severe that have ever arisen in human history. They are literal threats to survival, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe. These are very urgent concerns, they cannot be delayed. They have to be face directly and soon if the human experiment is not to prove to be a disastrous failure” (democracynow.org, 2016). Human extinction by the end of this century is possible if war-mongering imperialism, nuclear armament, fossil fuel corporatocracy, agrochemical farming, zombie pharmacopeia-complex (modern pharmacology), the war on drugs and consciousness expending substances, mind-control, media manipulation, scientific suppression (Duck, 2015), attack on activists, indoctrinating narcissistic hyper-consumption patterns, and megalomaniac oligarchs carry on unabated.
Excerpt from «Dragon Tears: A Critical Analysis On The Political Ecology Of Planetary Survival» a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Policy Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
"We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. The government has failed to protect us. To survive, it’s going to take everything we’ve got."
Rebel For Life
https://rebellion.earth/
For all references please visit the UBC Library to access my thesis online.
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