Dr. John Clague will be presenting a special lecture for the SFU Faculty of Environment Lecture Series, March 4, “Increasing Risk from Natural Hazards in the 21^st Century.”

Faculty of Environment Spring 2010 Lecture Series
presentation and discussion with Dr. John Clague
“Increasing Risk from Natural Hazards in the 21st Century.”

March 4, 11:00-12:00 p.m.
Halpern Centre Room 126
SFU Burnaby Campus

• 11:00 presentation
• 11:30 discussion
• Light refreshments will be served

Admission is free. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information visit the SFU Faculty of Environment website here.

Climate change: the unavoidable and immensely inconvenient truth.

“It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it,” writes Al Gore in an op-ed for the New York Times.

“Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.”

To read the full article, click here.

What is the real cost of water we use? That’s the question being asked by the Stanford Graduate School of Business California, USA. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, noted the world is depleting some important water resources necessary for growing food and sustaining fisheries, during his address to Stanford students during the 2010 Conradin von Gugelberg Memorial Lecture on the Environment.

“As our population grows, the competition for water for grows,” said Gleick, a MacArthur fellow and recognized expert on water resources, as he outlined the water supply challenges in the western United States. In some places in the West, such as the groundwater aquifers in California’s Central Valley, we have reached a peak in water production. Agriculture has so depleted those nonrenewable aquifers that half of the supply is used up.

“As we take more and more water we reach a point where if we use one more unit it causes more harm than provides benefits,” Gleick said. “In many places we are past peak ecological value.” To read the full release, click here.

ACT’s next session six-month session topic is Water Security, and will assess the impacts and explore policy responses at community, regional and national levels, including trans-boundary issues, and is designed to include a focus on Canada’s First Nations. ACT has engaged eminent Canadian expert Bob Sandford as the Water Security policy author.

The Institute for International Sustainable Development (IISD) has released a round-up of blog content, editorials, news stories and meetings that were informing the climate change policy debate post-Copenhagen.

The report states “the outcome of Copenhagen moved the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process into uncharted territory. It raises uncertainties and questions about the future role of the United Nations and about how the changing power dynamics among countries will affect the negotiations. At the same time, climate science is once again being publicly challenged over a series of apparent errors in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has the potential to affect public and political opinion.”

To download and read the IISD document, click here.

“British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California have signed two agreements aimed at boosting the West Coast economy and protecting the environment,” reports The Canadian Press.

The meeting between B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, has underscored the need for smart adaptation, as well as emissions reduction strategies.

Read the full article here.

A quick glance at the news will tell you how much the unusually mild weather is affecting the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Only 3 days into the competition, events have been postponed due to the dreaded rainfall organizers were hoping would be snow by the time February rolled around. Just recently, local venue Cypress Mountain received 13 mm of rain over the course of 48 hours. Not so great for athletes depending on snow for their sports.

“Climate-impact specialists have long warned that British Columbia is facing reduced snowpacks in southern mountains because of global warming,” report Mark Hume, for the Globe and Mail.

“A glance at Cypress Mountain, where the Vancouver Organizing Committee is now forced to truck in snow to keep Olympic venues viable, will tell you what the future looks like,” he says.

To read the full article that features the need for swift adaptation, click here.

How can collective deliberation by citizens lead to wise and timely action on climate change, including by municipal and provincial governments? Alberta will be a testing ground for this question over the next five years. An international team of scholars, NGOs, businesses, and governments will be addressing it, supported by $1 million in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and over $3 million in contributions from other sources. Dr. David Kahane, professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta, is the Principal Investigator.

The research team includes leading researchers and practitioners of deliberative democracy, environmental organizations, energy companies, municipal governments, and Provincial ministries. The project, called Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD), will help to convene groups of citizens within Albertan municipalities to shape policies on greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change, and also build province-wide deliberation and dialogue on climate issues.

Learning alongside citizens, the team will investigate how the design of citizen deliberations — how participants are selected, who participates, how the agenda is set, how often the citizens meet and for how long, whether policy makers are involved, and so on — shapes their social and political influence. The team will also explore the sorts of influence that citizen deliberations can have on climate issues, including informing and directing policy makers and processes, as well as shaping citizens’ knowledge, their sense of environmental citizenship, and their political capacities and networks. Through this work, we will seek to show how citizens can lead effective responses to climate change, and how political leaders and institutions can skillfully engage with citizens to develop policy.

The project website is at www.albertaclimatedialogue.ca and email can be sent to albertaclimatedialogue@gmail.com.

Co-hosted by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) and the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), the Pacific Climate Seminar Series was launched in September 2009. Seminars take place every third Wednesday of the month from 2 – 3 pm. The February 2010 seminar will be presented by members of the BC Climate Action Secretariat on Wednesday, February 17 from 2 – 3 pm in the Engineering & Computer Science Bldg. (ECS) Room 660. A live web stream of the seminar will be available at /broadcast.php.

For more information and future events in this series, please visit the PCIC website.

Reuters journalist Alister Doyle reports that world-wide water shortages caused by climate change could become a strong catalyst for conflict, especially in developing countries.

“The main manifestations of rising temperatures … are about water,” said Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water, which coordinates work on water among 26 UN agencies.

Read the full report on here.

The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) newsletter of 2010 has been released.

Download the pdf here.