This blog will look at environmental and political issues that will affect the quality of life for future generations of all species. Including; sustainability, media labels of "environmental issues," and different kinds of resistance to environmental oppression. I will also post on anything I think someone interested in the aforementioned would be interested in...

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Climate Action NOW!

So, I spoke at the stop climate chaos rally in Regina yesterday... It was very cold out, but we still had a pretty good turnout... I've decided to post my speech for those of you who were unable to make it out... and because it speaks to an issue close to my heart...

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Hello,
I come before you today, not just as a student, but in solidarity with you all, as active community citizens.

Thank you very much to everyone who came out. By showing up, you are not only braving the cold. You are rising above apathy and ignorance, and uniting your voices with other concerned citizens. You are exercising your rights and responsibilities as citizen's to get informed and you are showing solidarity in supporting immediate and direct ACTION!

We need a recognition of Ecological justice in our governments and policy-making institutions. Ecological rights are nature's rights, women's rights, indigenous rights, children's rights, student's rights... ecological rights are everyone's rights. As a society, we need to stop living apart from nature and recognize the delicate balance of ecosystems that allow us to coexist on our planet.

It is past time we act preventively to slow and reverse anthropocentric climate change. It is becoming a matter of all specie's survival. We have to switch to sustainable sources of energy and food. We have the technology to do this, we only need the collective consciousness to implement it.


As university students, we represent the transition of learning children into responsible citizens that benefit our local and global communities. And I would like to share with you some good news. There is a growing resurgence of student activism and involvement happening on our campus, and campuses across the country and entire planet. There is rising ecological awareness, and with that awareness, comes knowledge that can be used as agency for change.

Whether it be to protest the university administration running our school like a corporation (via their actions during the strike) or by creating a new student-run organization to bring research back from the corporate interest and to the public interest, their are many ways student's have been rising out of complacency and using their newfound knowledge as agency for change that benefits society.

Student's need the community we serve's help to implement these new ideas.

The newly created Environmental Action Network is working to organize a diverse and multidisciplinary range of voices into movements with the common goal of furthuring environment awareness and solidarity. It's our future, and we are developing the agency to change it.


There is a very powerful group of profit-motivated and unaccountable corporations who have a vested interest in preventing Sustainable Development in our province, and in our country. Under the current dominant economic model, the adverse effects of climate change are profitable, they are making countless billions of dollars at a huge cost to the ecological integrity of our entire planet, and all it's current and future inhabitants

They are (along with out current government) are working to delay action on climate change, and making lots of money doing it.

We need to see these corporate juggernauts for what they are, and advocate our elected officials to legislate solutions. We have the technology and knowledge to live sustainably. For most of human history, we have lived within natural sustainable boundaries, we need to look back at our ancestral indigenous respect for the natural ecosystems we inhabit.

Right now, the most important global enviornmental conference of our generation is happening in Bali. The outcomes of which quite literally can decide the fate of all life on our planet. I know this sounds grim, but world climate scientists are getting frantic, WE HAVE TO CURB OUR EMMISSIONS NOW! We need our governments to act in the public interest even when it's contrary to the corporate interest.

If we don't act now, we will face; 20-30% species extinction, increasingly intense and destrucive natural storms, rising ocean levels, global temperature increasing, and quite plausibly the seventh majour evolutionary "cleanse" our planet has ever had (that we know about)... the scary thing is that these are the least-frightening estimates... we really don't know what's gonna happen until it's too late.


Stephen Harper is not only refusing to move towards solutions for human-caused climate change, he is preventing desperately needed action on this issue. Stephen Harper is not speaking in the interests of the Canadian public, rather the interests of a few profit-motivated corporations. We, the public, need to tell our elected representatives to act now to prevent the further destruction of our natural world. We need to use our privilege to speak out for those who don't have a voice.

We are all citizen's of planet earth. Humans are eternally a part of the biophysical processes at work on this planet. We need to pressure our elected representatives

Again, more and more student's are rising out of complacency and looking for ways to use their newfound knowledge as agency for change. Including implementing a sustainable way of living. Community citizen's, you can help us. We all need to work together to collectively solve the myriad of problems our inaction has thusfar has caused.

The environmental revolution is underway. It is happening in our parks, schools, grocery stores, on facebook. It's time we collectively take a stand for the environment and say; "No more inaction. No more destruction of natural ecosystems. No MORE CLIMATE CHANGE! We must not only speak out for nature, but for the counltess unborn. Let us call on our elected leaders -- stop destroying the future ~ now!"

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