WWViewsCanada's blog

Today the WWViews Canada team joined tens of thousands of others from around the world in a protest. The streets of Copenhagen were flooded with people, all with one main common goal: to reach a fair climate deal and stop climate change. The protest first began at the parliament and continued for 6 kilometers to the Bella Centre where the UN meetings are being held. Dragons, clowns, polar bears, signs, chanting, and even a few fireworks were involved. All in all this protest says something. Literally thousands of people in cities from all around the world, not only in Copenhagen, are taking part in similar demonstrations. The message is clear of what people want. Now it is time for the politicans to listen.

-Marisa Cooper

December 11, 2009

The big question that is being asked by citizens of the developed countries of the world is "Why isn't my government listening to the people". Consistently citizens want more action, stronger targets, and committments to help developing countries, while their governments stall, delay, and equivocate on targets. In response to this question Bill McKibben from 350.org believes that the work for democracy has to happen outside of COP 15 - by the time we get here it's too late to influence the government.

 December 10, 2009

On Wednesday, December 9, the Danish Board of Technology hosted a panel discussion as well as a documentary screening on the global WWViews process. Shauna Sylvester, who is on our advisory committee, was part of this panel. Here is a link to her Copenhagen blog, with a transcript of her fantastic talk.

http://canadasworld.wordpress.com

More COP15 Links:

Canadian youth makes plea to Michael Martin about climate change (video)

December 10, 2009

Every morning at 8:00am, Michael Martin, Canada's Chief negotiator for the climate change meetings at COP15, meets with any interested Canadian delegates and observers. This morning, three members of the World Wide Views Canada project team (Gwendolyn Blue, Jennifer Medlock and Karen Barkley), along with one of the citizen participants (Caroline Lee) were present at Mr. Martin's daily conference.

December 9, 2009

I remember a time when I was proud of being a Canadian citizen. When we travelled, we were told to display the Canadian flag and we did so knowing that the international community regarded our country as progressive in its social and environmental policies.

How things have changed!

Canada just received the Fossil of the Day award for the third consecutive day. This 'award' is given to countries who are blocking environmental progress at Climate Change negotiations and is awarded daily by a coalition of over 400 leading NGOs. Hardly an honor.

December 7, 2009

Dr. Gwendolyn Blue attended the Klimaforum opening ceremony Monday night. Klimaforum, the People's Climate Summit, is the main side event to the COP15 negotations and will be running in Copenhagen for the next two weeks. We want to share the following keynote speech made by Henry Saragih at the opening ceremony:

December 8, 2009

I arrived late Sunday night. Karen and Jen will be arriving on Tuesday evening.

This is shaping up to be a very well attended series of events as thousands of people are coming from all over the world. The University of Calgary is fortunate to have observer status at the official COP 15 meetings, so we have a lot of meetings to choose from. Unfortunately, the large numbers of people also means large line-ups. Yesterday, the wait in the registration line for non-governmental organizations would have been approximately 3 hours in the freezing rain. Of course, government officials have priority so don’t have to wait that long!

October 15, 2009

As part of Blog Action Day 2009, a day bringing bloggers from all over the world together to post about a particular issue, WWViews Canada signed up to blog about this year’s topic: climate change.

At the end of September, the WWViews Canada public consultation brought 103 Canadians to Calgary to discuss climate change issues. Canadians were part of a larger international group of 4,400 participants from 38 countries participating in this first-ever global public consultation.

September 8, 2009

I have just seen my 100th Global Warming program - this one on PBS NOVA and read at least as many articles but we might be going down the wrong path! 

This is a very complex problem and in many ways we can not control it..

August 25, 2009

On a daily basis, we hear about the need to balance the economy with the environment. The term ‘balance’ suggests that economy and environment are two separate entities that compete with one another.

Is this the best way to think about this relationship? Not according to the UK-based Stern Report. The purpose of this report, which was published in October 2006, was to determine how to understand and address the economic challenges of climate change. The report was lead by Lord Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist for the World Bank.