Plenty Epicurean Pantry

On December 7th world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  They’ll be negotiating future agreements for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as our current commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

—- UPDATE —-

We’re still making and collecting cranes for the 1000 Cranes for Action on Climate Change.  We’ll continue to add to the collection in our front window until December 18th when the Copenhagen climate summit concludes.   If you contribute cranes that you’d like to collect back please pick them up on December 18th.  After that date we will be selling the cranes (many are very remarkable - made from a collection of maps and posters that artist Gillian Gravenor has contributed).  The cranes will be sold for $2 each with all proceeds going to the Mustard Seed Food Bank.

—-

Join us at Plenty on Friday, November 27th (Buy Nothing Day) to make 1000 paper cranes symbolizing our desire help heal the planet and begin to reverse the effects of climate change.  From 11:30 - 1:30 artist Gillian Gravenor will be helping us to get started on the goal of 1000 paper cranes.

Legend says that anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will have their heart’s desire come true.  Cranes have also become a symbol of healing and peace.  Unfortunately, like many species (including our own) cranes are threatened by the effects of climate change.

Copenhagen must be a turning point where we stop fighting the planet that supports us and instead commit to heal the damage we’ve done.  We need a climate change treaty that is fair, ambitious, and binding.

If you can’t join us on November 27th (11:30 - 1:30) please make a paper crane and add it to our collection in the front window.  We’ll be collecting them until the end of the Copenhagen Conference on December 18th, 2009.

Leading scientific institutions such as the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, the U.K. Royal Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists (including 98 Nobel winners in science), and the Royal Society of Canada have declared that current scientific information points to a need for immediate action.  Yet, rather than lead the call to action, Canadian politicians appear willing to shrug off our Kyoto commitments and forestall any binding ones in Copenhagen.  Are we willing to continue our country’s legacy as one of the top 10 greenhouse gas polluters in the world?

This is a shameful legacy for our country and one we should not be prepared to leave for our children.

The Sierra Club points out that BC is already experiencing the effects of climate change:

BC’s special places are already experiencing the devastating impacts of global warming. Our beautiful interior forests have been decimated by the mountain pine beetle, a consequence of warmer winters having allowed a vast extension of the insect’s range. Large tracts of Vancouver’s treasured Stanley Park were destroyed in a 2006 winter storm that uprooted more than 1,000 trees, and scientists are warning that storms will increase in frequency and intensity as the world warms. Rising sea levels threaten many of our coastal communities, fertile floodplains and shorelines. A fast-changing climate poses grave challenges to the survival of many BC species, including our salmon stocks.

It’s a devastating legacy for humanity.  Oxfam International anticipates that by 2015 the average number of people affected each year by climate-related disasters could reach 375 million.  They report that the the impacts of climate change are driving many of the world’s poorest people dangerously close to the edge of survival:

• It is causing the Himalayan glaciers to melt and if these disappear, it will threaten the viability of farming across huge swathes of South and East Asia.
• In the Pacific, whole islands are having to evacuate, as sea levels rise contaminating the soil with salt.
• People who have farmed cattle in Africa for generations are abandoning their traditional ways of life, as changing weather patterns make cattle rearing impossible.

The David Suzuki Foundation offers an informative Climate Change 101 primer and resources on how we can help address the problem.  They have an article that discusses how our food choices effect climate change: Food & Climate Change. They also have an e-mail and phone campaign that encourages us to voice the call for a climate treaty that is fair, ambitious, and binding directly to the Prime Minister and Environment Minister:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
pm@pm.gc.ca (phone) 613.992.4211

Environment Minister John Baird
John.Baird@ec.gc.ca (phone) 819.997.1441

tck tck tck is also a good site to inspire action (click on the orange triangle below, and then click on the tabs above the video screen to learn more):