CBS News reports that the Canadian Coast Guard is confirming “that in a major first, a commercial ship travelled through the Northwest Passage this fall to deliver supplies to communities in western Nunavut”.

“We did have a commercial cargo vessel that did the first scheduled run from Montreal, up through the eastern Arctic, through the Northwest Passage to deliver cargo to communities in the west,” Brian LeBlanc of the Canadian Coast Guard told CBC News.

“That was the first — that I’m aware of anyway — commercial cargo delivery from the east through the Northwest Passage.”

[…]Rayes, who was on the vessel during its trip through the Northwest Passage, said the company informed the coast guard, which put an icebreaker on standby.

“They were ready to be there for us if we called them, but I didn’t see one cube of ice,” he said.

“They were informed about our presence [and] they were ready to give us the support needed. However, since there was no ice whatsoever, the service was not needed, we didn’t call for it.”

Via Climate Progress

Tomorrow a new and updated version of last year’s climate report, Climate Code Red, will be released. The Climate Safety report from the Public Interest Research Center (PIRC), an independent charity studying and communicating vital global issues in the UK, is expected to trash the out-dated climate predictions from the IPCC, and show that the climate doesn’t change little by little but instead in a landslide.

“The “Climate Safety” report gives a simple summary of the latest science, delivering a clear message that to have any chance of maintaining a safe climate, we must rapidly decarbonise our society, preserve global sinks, and address the problem with an unprecedented degree of seriousness.”

The new report is said to show that we can’t afford to follow Brown’s or Obama’s climate plans, which both calls for an 80% reduction in global emissions. Instead global emissions must decline by between 6-8% per year from 2020 to 2040, and lead up to a complete 100% decarbonisation by 2050, according to a paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

(more…)

The 2009 Australian Climate Action Summit of Climate Change Activists will be held in Canberra on the weekend before the first day of the 2009 Federal Parliament – Saturday 31st January – Monday 2nd February 2009.

According to the organizers: “Australia’s Climate Action Summit will be two days of facilitated meetings and workshops. There will be an open public program for anyone to join, and a restricted program for people from climate change groups, who will create a strategic national climate campaign and form a national grassroots network. The weekend will be followed on the Monday by one day of dynamic training in climate campaigning skills for taking action, facilitating climate action groups, effective lobbying and more.”

On Tuesday 3rd February, the first day of the 2009 Federal Parliament, there will be a demonstration at Parliament House and the grassroots climate network created at Australia’s Climate Action Summit will launch its national campaign at Parliament House.

(more…)

Yesterday, during the Governors Global Climate Summit in California, Obama promised that USA would “engage vigorously” in the climate negotiations and “help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change”.

Unfortunately Obama yesterday turned down invitations to go to the UN climate conference in Poland this December. And he has not yet promised that as President he will sign the Kyoto protocol.

Below you can watch Obama’s speech during the climate summit, and read the transcript of the video:

(more…)

During a climate summit in California today Barack Obama said, in a taped video, that his “presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change”.

Obama spoke about his support for a cap-and-trade system and that he would reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and with 80% by 2050. Obama also said he wanted to give the private sector $15 billion each year to support their investments efforts in clean energy.

“I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”

(more…)

Tens of thousands of decent Green Australians attended the 2008 Walk Against Warming that was held in Melbourne, Sydney and other Australian centres on November 15, 2008 to protest government INACTION over the mounting Climate Emergency

Shortly after the huge 2007 Walk Against Warming held around Australia, the newly-elected, extreme right-wing Rudd Labor Government actually signed the Kyoto Protocol but then proceeded to help the US sabotage the December 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference by refusing to agreed to defined targets (see “Bali Farce: Climate Criminal, Climate Racist US, Australia & Canada Threaten Bengal, India & the PLANET”).

Demonstrators at the 2008 Walk Against Warming hoped that they might – somehow – spur the lethargic, pro-Coal, climate criminal Australian Government into SOME action over the Climate Emergency.

(more…)

The global grassroots climate movement, 350, asks for your help to invite President-elect Barack Obama to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland this December.

So far over 48,000 “invitations” have been sent. Sign the invitation, click here!

(more…)

In light of the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Poznan, between 1st – 14th of December, Greenpeace have set up a “Climate Rescue Station” on the edge of a coal mine. The four storey tall station “will be used as a platform to tell the world that we can save the climate, but only if we quit coal, the most polluting of all fossil fuels”.

The Climate Rescue Station, which is powered by wind and solar energy, will have representatives from 15 different countries and is part of Greenpeace’s global Quit Coal campaign. The campaign is led by the flagship the Rainbow Warrior, who is currently urging governments and energy companies “to give coal the boot”.

(more…)

6 months ago on Green Blog I reviewed “Climate Code Red – the case for a sustainability emergency” by David Spratt and Phillip Sutton (Friends of the Earth, Melbourne). This important, well-referenced, spiral bound book had helped launch the Australian Climate Emergency Network (CEN) by using the latest scientific evidence to make out a case for a Climate Emergency and a Sustainability Emergency.

Now a second, extensively edited and revised version of this book has been published in Melbourne: “Climate Code Red- the case for emergency action” by David Spratt and Phillip Sutton (Scribe, Melbourne, 2008). This revised version is very readable and accordingly ideal for getting this extremely serious message across to the general public.

(more…)

Photo credit: azrainman

A new report from WWF says that climate change is happening much faster than the scientists have predicated earlier. The report says that we must take action on a global scale to avert devastating climate effects such as more and heavier storms, flooding, droughts, crops failures, collapse of eco systems on land and sea and rising sea levels just to name a few.

Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Professor of Climatology and Environmental Sciences at the Université catholique de Louvain and newly elected Vice Chair of the IPCC, said that “it is clear that climate change is already having a greater impact than most scientists had anticipated, so it’s vital that international mitigation and adaptation responses become swifter and more ambitious.”

(more…)