Chasing Ice

Green 13 extends warm thanks to our MP Peggy Nash and our MPP Cheri DiNovo as well as their respective staffs for hosting a free public screening on October 20 at the Revue Cinema of Chasing Ice, a must see documentary of exquisite and terrible beauty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZTMVNBjc4 The filmmaker, James Balog, [ http://ed.ted.com/lessons/james-balog-time-lapse-proof-of-extreme-ice-loss#watch ] was formerly a climate change denier. He conceived the Extreme Ice Survey [ http://extremeicesurvey.org/ ] and is documenting the epochal change we are now living through. He is sounding the alarm. On our watch the Earth's glaciers are melting at a rate unprecedented in human history. Over the past 10 years, glaciers have retreated more than over the past 100 years. What does this mean for us now, and for our future?

James Balog writes, in ICE, Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers:   (2012)

    "Every human being has an inalienable right to a stable climate. The time to act is now, not tomorrow, when the storm of crisis will have broken upon us and whatever action we take will be too little, too late. Climate change is not a political issue. It is not a question of belief systems. It is a universal issue about real-world facts that should be addressed with rationality and intelligence.

    If inaction is the course we settle on, we will have kicked today's consequences onto uncountable human generations to come. Whether that choice turns out to be stupid, unethical, immoral or even criminal remains for our children to judge. I hope - for the sake of my sanity, and for my hope that my two daughters will live in a peaceful, healthy and prosperous world - that we have not debased our ethics that far.

    The better angels of our nature are still with us, waiting to break free of the carbon chains that bind. It is time, right now, to unchain those angels and do what we all know, in our heart of hearts, must be done."

In attendance to take the questions and comments from our full house of viewers was Nobel prize winner and Herzberg prize winner Dr. Richard Peltier. The following podcast highlights the innovative work he has undertaken to better understand the big picture of what is happening:  http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2011-2012/qq-2012-03-03_05.mp3  and what we must do. "We have to decarbonize the economy and our energy system."

Warm thanks to our MP and MPP for supporting the community's efforts to educate on the climate crisis, to open discourse, and to take action.  They have endorsed Project Neutral  http://projectneutral.org/, the electrification of trains in our rail corridors, and many other initiatives to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This is exactly what is required of us now.