One Blue Marble

Hello Everyone!

This is a note that I sent to people who joined my Project ABC group on Facebook during the last election, and I include it here in case any SLS readers are interested in joining the fight against climate change. You can help in many ways, including linking to One Blue Marble on your blogs, posting our logo somewhere on your sidebar; or joining our new group on Facebook. (Add me as a friend, while you’re at it!)

The OBM web site is still a work in progress, but we felt we needed to bring it online after Canada’s embarrasing behavior at the international climate change summit in Poznan, Poland. So the new site will grow and become deeper over time.

It’s important to note that One Blue Marble won’t just be about Canada. We plan to focus on social justice, and climate change and the international response to it. So please join even if you’re from Germany or the United States or Peru. We’re just need to focus on Canada right now because we’re so far behind (as you’ll see if you read further).

So please have a read, and then join the fight to save the planet!

We’ve taken our new web site — called One Blue Marble — live, although it’s still a work in progress. If you care about climate change, the economy, and Canada’s international reputation, then we hope that you’ll join our new Facebook group. (Especially since we’ll close this one down in the New Year).

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46457158240

This letter comes at a crucial time; the international climate talks that have taken place over the last 12 days in Poznan, Poland have ended in failure. The Canadian, US, and Japanese delegations are to blame. If you search Google news for climate change and Canada, you’ll see that we’re being vilified around the world in hundreds of stories and editorials. (The US will be left off this dubious list in just 37 days, as Obama will unveil an ambitious climate change roadmap just after taking office).

In fact, we’re 191! A group of NGOs at Poznan issued a report card grading the efforts that developed and developing nations are taking to slow climate change. Canada was ranked second from the bottom, just ahead of Saudi Arabia, our new ally.

We agree wholeheartedly with Elizabeth May’s take on the events in Poland. (But if you don’t believe her, then consider this story, or this one, or this one or this one).

Of course, We wish the story would be more broadly reported in Canada, but Environment Canada’s climate experts are not allowed to speak to the media without permission from the Prime Minister’s office. Which means they are not allowed to speak, period.

And that’s why we need groups like One Blue Marble. We’re going to launch a number of campaigns in effort to change our story:

1) We want parliament to bring down the Conservatives in a vote of non-confidence, and form a coalition government. The Liberals and NDP have strong plans to fight climate change, while our Prime Minister believes that it’s a socialist plot to fleece rich countries. And it doesn’t have to be the economy OR the environment. It’s the perfect time to save both.

2) We want to support Obama’s climate initiatives in the US.

3) We want to slow development at the Alberta oil sands, the world’s worst environmental disaster. The oil from Alberta have 3-5 times as much CO2 as the light sweet crude from Saudi Arabia, so Canada’s emissions will rise dramatically over the next dozen years if we don’t change our ways.

4) We want to create a coalition of environmental and social groups to speak with one voice. In our day job — editing environmental newsletters — we noted this week that Scotland has introduced the planet’s most comprehensive climate change bill, promising to cut emissions by 50% by 2030. And we also noted that, in Scotland, all groups concerned with the social justice and the environment — including a bevy of churches and charitable groups working in the developing world — speak with a single message: we must do everything we can to create a low-carbon economy. So we also want to bring conservatives and progressive together in common purpose.

And that’s just the beginning. We have a handful of other campaigns percolating right now, including some real, practical programs that will help Canadians and Americans. We don’t need to recreate the wheel. We just need to focus and work together.

So please join us at One Blue Marble. We’ve just flipped the switch on our online store — featuring designs by the lovely and talented Tara Keleher (my niece) — and the store will be growing with each and every campaign that we launch to help us get the message out.

Please invite your friends and colleagues to join us. Let us know what you think is important. If you have a blog, and feel like being an iconoclast, then perhaps you could link to One Blue Marble, or ask me for a jpg of our logo that you can display in a sidebar (if you don’t know how to download the one above).

We want to make a difference, and we’re excited by the prospects of becoming the change we need to see in the world.

Salut!

Richard Levangie
Founder, One Blue Marble