SOIL : The Secret Solution to Global Warming

The new online video SOIL: The Secret Solution to Global Warming (22 minutes) addresses the number one and number two concerns of citizens: It can be executed at no extra cost, could lead to significant health care savings and provides industry with time to reduce their greenhouse emissions.

In the video, Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser makes the case: shifting existing subsidies to sustainable organic farming practices could offset greenhouse emissions 10% to 20% by annually sequester millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by storing more carbon in the soil. (597 million for the USA, 152 million for Canada and 56 million for the UK)

Percy Schmeiser is a Saskatchewan canola farmer who was charged with patent infringement by Monsanto in 1997 and brought it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In October of 2000, Schmeiser received the Mahatma Gandhi Award for working for the good of mankind in a non-violent way.

A 23-year comparable study by the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania clearly demonstrates that land farmed organically through methods like no till and winter cover crops, absorb 30% more CO2 than conventionally farmed land. This translates to a decrease of 1.8 metric tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere per acre of land converted to organic farming methods. In turn the extra carbon in the soil increases food nutrients, which could reduce healthcare costs by billions.

According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, healthier diets could prevent at least $71 billion per year in medical costs, lost productivity and lost lives.

SOIL: The Secret Solution to Global Warming can be watched here at Quantum Shift TV, a Canadian web-based television network who has proposed a government policy that could reduce greenhouse emissions by 10% to 20%.

If you agree with the content of the video and want to do something about global warming and the quality of life of future generations, please take time to vote on policy proposal via online poll at Quantum Shift TV.

For those interested in learning more about the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade, I strongly recommend viewing the documentaries The Future of Food.

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Will Environmental Policy Shift with New Minister?

With the appointment of John Baird as environment minister on January 4th, the Conservative government has a new opportunity to deliver regulations and programs that protect Canada’s ecosystems and meet our international obligations says Sierra Club of Canada.

“John Baird is no environmentalist but he is an experienced cabinet minister. Still, he cannot succeed in the difficult environment portfolio unless he has a clear mandate to act from Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” said Stephen Hazell, executive director of Sierra Club of Canada.

The Prime Minister’s mandate to Minister Baird and other ministers regarding Climate Change must include:
• Recommitting to meeting Canada’s Kyoto targets and redeeming Canada’s international reputation;
• Accelerating issuance of regulations that reduce industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and drive innovations in energy efficiency;
• Eliminating the $1.5billion in annual subsidies to the oil and gas sector; and
• Regulating California vehicle emissions standards.

“This is an opportunity for the government to show real commitment to meeting its obligation to enforce the Species at Risk Act,” said Jean Langlois, national campaigns director of Sierra Club of Canada.

The Prime Minister’s mandate to Minister Baird and other ministers regarding Species at Risk must include:
• Keeping politics out of the listing of species at risk in Canada, which must be based on science;
• Ensuring that recovery strategies identify the habitat that species need; and
• Taking effective action to protect habitat.

Sierra Club of Canada hopes this Minister will bring a spirit of cooperation and consultation with all Canadians, and a commitment to halt human-caused climate change and loss of biodiversity.

Posting from The Sierra Club of Canada Press Released on January 4th, 2007.

Public Doesn't Understand Global Warming

Posting from David Suzuki Foundation

Have you ever been to a focus group? They're very odd. Often used in marketing research, these small selections of randomly chosen people are brought together as a sampling of public opinion to gauge how folks feel about a particular product or issue.

Recently, my foundation conducted a focus group about global warming to see where people are at in their understanding of this complex and challenging problem. The results? Let's just say they were disconcerting, to say the least.

Simply put, most people don't have a clue. The majority felt that global warming was a very important problem and they were quite concerned about it. But when pressed as to why it was a problem or what caused the problem, all heck broke loose.

Apparently, according to the average Joe, global warming is happening because we've created a hole in the ozone layer, allowing the sun's rays to enter the atmosphere and heat up the earth - or something like that. The cause of the problem is cars, or airplanes, or aerosol cans. No one really knows for sure.

This is really quite remarkable. I would have thought that such confused understandings of the issue would have been commonplace five or six years ago, but with global warming being in newspapers on practically a daily basis this spring, on the front cover of magazines, in theatres (An Inconvenient Truth), and a hot political issue as well, surely people would get it by now.
Apparently I was wrong. People don't get it. This is a big problem, because if people don't get it, then they don't really care, so politicians and CEOs don't really care, and status quo rules the day. And blindly we march into the sunset.

But while science magazines are all talking about carbon sequestration and climate-forcing mechanisms, the average person is still trying to decipher the nature of the problem itself. True, few citizens need to understand the complicated nuances of atmospheric science or the various mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, but people cannot care about things they do not understand. If our leaders are to take the issue seriously, the public must have at least a basic understanding of it.

So, to clarify - the ozone layer is a part of the atmosphere way up high that helps shield the earth from the sun's most harmful rays. A couple of decades ago, scientists realized that some of the chemicals we were using in our industries and homes were finding their way into the upper atmosphere, reacting with the ozone and destroying it. Scientists were concerned that if this continued, it would thin the vital protective layer, leading to increased skin cancers and crop damage. They sounded the alarm bell, the international community responded with the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-depleting substances, and today the ozone layer is gradually healing itself.

Global warming is a quite different phenomenon. Again, it's a human-made problem, but this time it's due to the heat-trapping gases we are putting into the atmosphere from our industries, cars and homes. These gases act like a blanket, keeping more heat near the earth's surface. More heat also means more energy in the atmosphere, which means more frequent or severe extreme weather events like droughts, storms and floods.

With each new piece of research, the expected effects of global warming become clearer, more urgent and more disturbing. Scientists say this will be one of the biggest challenges humanity will face this century. Right now we are not tackling the issue fast enough or direct enough to escape the most severe consequence.

So if you understand what global warming is, and what it isn't, please tell your friends. Please speak up and help ensure that we don't continue to grope blindly into the future, searching in the darkness for a light switch. Because at this rate, by the time we finally reach it, it may no longer work.

Review of An Inconvenient Truth

Climate change is an inconvenient truth and the name of a must see movie documenting the journey of Al Gore to fight global warming. By exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it, Al Gore points out that climate change is a moral issue, not a political one and it’s unethical to let it happen.

For those unfamiliar with the climate crisis, this documentary is a great overview of the subject and a great awakening. For those aware, it is a comprehensive reminder that we need to change our way of living if we want to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

An inconvenient truth is in front of humanity. We already know what we need to know.
Go see that movie and start being the change in what you want to see in the world now!

Read more about An Inconvenient Truth at http://climatecrisis.org/