R/evolution

The evidence seems clear to me.

Even if the earth's oceans are acidifying at a slower pace than that suggested in Rob Stewart's documentary R/evolution, they're still acidifying at an alarming rate, the impacts of which, if ignored, could significantly threaten future generations, and are significantly threatening ours.

The impulse to receive immediate gratification theoretically drives a lot of decision making.

Some of these systemic problems require 400 as opposed to 5 year plans, however.

But if such plans are not universally agreed to, soon, as the vast majority of climate change scientists contend, polar bears aren't the only ones who'll be having trouble surviving the upcoming centuries.

Climate change scientists equal Copernicus.

Big business's voracious desire for continuously increasing profits, not just profits, they have to be continuously increasing, equals the religious pricks who killed Copernicus.

Thankfully there are currently millions of logical Copernicans who have evidence to clearly state their convincing case.

It's not a socialist plot, it's coherent global strategic planning.

Disastrously, influential global warming denying charlatans have deep pockets, well-financed lobbyists, and, perhaps, an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture.

Taking on the coal industry isn't easy (don't know if the coal industry [or if anyone] has an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture, but the coal industry and the tar sands are examined in R/evolution).

What happens to all the people it currently employs if coal is eliminated as a source of energy?

Well, if alternatives to coal can be integrated, why not set up industries to replace it in the effected towns and train the employees to work within them.

Everyone keeps their jobs and no one has to move.

R/evolution points out that if we change the way we do business by adopting environmentally friendly models, the resultant decrease in profits will be insignificant and the über-capitalists can continue to make massive profits, which makes this situation all the more exasperating since it's obvious that it's an ideological battle, one side willing to risk existence to prove that the untethered pursuit of wealth is the best possible socioeconomic matrix, the other, armed with close to unanimous erudite scientific evidence-based support, not fantastic castles in the sky, suggesting that a slight decrease in profits will save existence, labelled fools, extremists, and crackpots consequently, because they know God's not going to clean-up this mess.

Science has solutions to these problems.

If God exists, he or she could be counting on us to use science to take care of the planet.

If we can't take care of our planet, how can he or she expect us to manage our environments in the afterlife?

Canada's conservative government won't even let scientists discuss their research in public.

Thomas Mulcair risked everything when he quit Québec's Provincial Liberal Party because of a matter of environmental principle.

Frustrated with politics? Jaded? Unconcerned?

I bet he was too.

But he kept going, kept fighting, and found a New Democratic model.

Which works. Is working. And will continue to work.

For a more just society.

Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

Alberta's tar sands are definitely a controversial issue. It is claimed that they represent the world's second largest oil reserve and are essential for the maintenance of the United States's oil supply. The profit potential for the companies involved in extracting their bitumen is enormous and they also produce lucrative revenues for Alberta's economy. Tough to sincerely criticize an industry that supplies your citizens with job opportunities and disposable incomes but the pollution generated from the tar sands megaproject is a phenomenon worthy of such criticisms. In Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands, Peter Mettler films the tar sands's impact on the Albertan environment from a helicopter, providing shots of open pit mines, tailings ponds, and industrial complexes, while juxtaposing them with surrounding untouched forests. The images speak for themselves and the environment has been devastated on a massive scale, the landscape resembling a bleak, stark, uninhabitable lunar catastrophe. Information presented: the tar sands operation burns enough natural gas to heat 4 million homes daily; the project could industrialize an area the size of England; per day, routine business releases as much carbon dioxide as every car in Canada; to date, no comprehensive assessment of the project's social, economic, and environmental impact has been undertaken; the Athabasca River, part of the world's third largest watershed, flows through. Mettler's accompanying narration near the film's conclusion suggests that there are alternatives to developments such as these which should be considered considering their environmental impact (solar energy for instance). In order to stop these operations and adopt alternative sources as our principle cultural fuel, it will take a massive social movement with local and international groups uniformly focused on transforming global economies from those that are founded on non-renewable resources to those that are nurtured by sustainable growth.