by David Suzuki, with Faisal Moola

Scientists warn that the twin threats of climate change and wildlife extinction threaten our planet’s life-support systems, including clean air, clean water, and productive soil. Awareness about the causes and consequences of climate change is growing, leading some governments to look for solutions in areas such as clean energy. Species extinction, however, has gone largely unnoticed by government leaders.

In an article in the Guardian newspaper, France’s ecology secretary and the World Resources Institute’s vice-president of science and research argue that “Unlike the impacts of climate change, biodiversity – and the ecosystem services it harbours – disappears in a mostly silent, local and anonymous fashion. This may explain in part why the devastation of nature has triggered fewer alarm bells than a hotting-up planet.”

Sadly, this is true. Unlike the devastating forest fires, deadly heat waves, and violent storms that have ravaged the planet as a result of climate change, the disappearance of plants and animals seems only to get the attention of politicians when it results in serious economic and social upheaval – such as when overfishing led to the collapse of cod stocks in Atlantic Canada, throwing thousands of fishermen out of work.

The unravelling of food webs that have taken millennia to evolve is happening all around us. With every patch of forest cut, wetland drained, or grassland paved over, our actions are destroying wildlife habitat at an unprecedented rate.

Scientists warn that we are in the midst of a human-caused catastrophic wildlife crisis. Of the species we know about, some 17,000 plants and animals are facing extinction, including 12 per cent of birds, nearly a quarter of mammals, and a third of amphibians. Some of the species most vulnerable to human impacts are iconic, well-loved creatures. For example, of the eight distinct bear species that grace our planet, six are now in serious trouble, including sun bears, pandas, and polar bears.

The response of our leaders has for the most part been abysmal. The United Nations has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. Countries are now reporting on their progress in reducing biodiversity loss as required under an international treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity that most nations, including Canada, have signed. However, the UN has admitted that governments have failed to meet the treaty’s objectives “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth.”

Despite our collective failure to meet the 2010 biodiversity target, countries are preparing to negotiate new global targets to slow the rate of biodiversity loss. A flurry of international activity is now underway that will include a special session of the UN General Assembly on the biodiversity crisis in September.

It’s easy to be skeptical about the effect these negotiations and meetings in plush hotel ballrooms will have on protecting life on our planet, given the lack of meaningful progress so far. But one recent outcome of the global biodiversity talks gives us hope.

Government negotiators from around the world just met in Busan, South Korea, where they approved the creation of a new global science body that will act as an “early warning system” to inform government leaders on major biodiversity declines and to identify what governments must do to reverse these damaging trends.

This global Biodiversity Scientific Body will be modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which, through science, has catalyzed world-wide understanding and action on global warming.

Despite the efforts of huge multinational oil companies to discredit its work, the IPCC has compiled the best available science on the causes and impacts of global warming, as well as charting the most effective ways for us to solve the problem. In doing so, it has ensured that climate change has remained a priority for governments, and has proven to be an invaluable tool to help the media understand and report on the issue – independent of politics or PR spin. We hope the newly created “IPCC for Nature” will play a similar role in educating, inspiring, and mobilizing policy-makers and the public to take decisive action to stem the biodiversity crisis.

By Nicholas Parat

Since BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster begun on April 20, we have all been witnessing how dirty and costly oil can be. Today, however, we will take a look at the leaders ushering in a new worldwide industry—clean energy. According to the Pew Charitable Center, the clean energy sector in some of the world’s largest economies has seen explosive investment growth, since 2005. In fact, it is up 230 percent and is projected to grow by another $200 Billion by the end of 2010. Below is the list of the world’s top ten leaders in renewable energy investment.

China
For the first time, China, the country with one of the world's most dismal environmental records, leads the G20 in clean energy investments. In 2009, China invested $34.6 billion (USD) in clean alternatives. That makes up 30.5% of the G-20 nations’ total investment in renewable energy. From 2005 to 2009, the vast majority of that investment, 71.1%, was allocated to wind power. Solar energy received only 8% of the investment, but China is still one of the world’s largest solar-panel producer.

The United States
The U.S. came in second, with 16.4% of the G-20 nation’s total investment. Although there is not much manufacturing of alternative energy sources done on U.S. soil, the country dominates venture finance and technology innovation. The United States invested $18.6 billion for clean energy, in 2009. The total U.S clean energy investments included wind power (43.1%) and bio-fuel, with 47m liters of ethanol produced, over the past four years.

The United Kingdom
The U.K., coming in third, has also investing primarily on wind energy and allocated 57.1% of its $11.2 billion 2009 clean energy budget to wind towers. The U.K. intends to procure 20% of its electricity and 10% of its fuel needs from renewable energy by the end of 2010.

The European Union
The EU-27 countries, profiled together, invested $10.8 billion in renewable energy in 2009.That makes up 9.5% of G-20 clean energy investments. Again, the vast majority, 62.9%, of clean energy investment went to wind power.

Spain
Spain is ranked fifth with $10.4 billion in the clean energy investment in 2009. Spain went against the wind energy trend and invested 60.6% of its budget on solar energy. Wind energy received (34.2%) of the country’s total renewable energy investment from 2005 to 2009.

Brazil
Coming in sixth among G-20 members, Brazil invested $7.4 billion in clean energy in 2009. Brazil is still the worlds leading ethanol producer, relative to the size of its economy. Over the past four years, Brazil is reported to have the second-highest investment growth rate. Brazil has the world’s largest ethanol infrastructure, relative to the size of its economy and produced over 30 billion liters of sugar based ethanol in 2009.

Germany
Germany came in seventh place with $4.3 billion worth of clean energy investments in 2009. That is up more than 18% from previous years. Germany’s clean energy investments from 2005 to 2009 were divided between solar energy (44.3%) and wind power (31.2%).

Canada
In eighth place, Canada invested $3.3 billion in its clean energy sectors. Most of the investment, 60%, went to wind power. Mini-hydro electric power is another leading sector that Canada has been investing in over the past four years.

Italy
Coming in ninth place is Italy. The country invested $2.6 billion in clean energy in 2009 and its investments have increased by 110%, in the past five years. Wind power was the key clean energy sector for Italy during the past four years getting 61.6% of all clean energy investments.

India
India is ranked tenth on the list with $2.3 billion invested in the country’s renewable energy industry, in 2009. Wind power received 59.5% of India’s clean energy investments, from 2005 to 2009.

by David Suzuki, with Faisal Moola

It could never happen here. That was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s assurance in the wake of the massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which he referred to as “an environmental catastrophe unlike anything we've seen in quite a long time”.

The company behind the spill off the U.S. Gulf coast, British Petroleum, has three licences to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea in Canada’s Arctic. BP and other companies have asked our federal government to relax environmental regulations around Arctic drilling. And B.C. is still pushing to get the federal government to lift a moratorium on drilling off the West Coast. There’s also a plan in the works by Enbridge to build a pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands to the B.C. coast, where it will be put on oil tankers for ocean shipping. Questions have also been raised about the safety of an offshore well that Chevron has started drilling off the coast of Newfoundland. It will be deeper than the one in the Gulf of Mexico.

We’ve been assured many times that the technology is safe, but the Gulf disaster shows that no technology is foolproof. Can we really afford the risk?

President Barack Obama has halted plans for further oil drilling in the Gulf until an investigation is completed (although, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. has approved 27 other offshore drilling projects since the spill), and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has implemented a similar moratorium on drilling off that state’s coast. Canada, however, has no plans to halt East Coast or Arctic drilling, and the B.C. government continues to push for drilling off the West Coast. When a disaster of this magnitude occurs, we should stop to re-examine the state of our own programs that might have similar risks so that we can find ways to avoid harming our oceans and coastal communities.

B.C.’s coast, which is known worldwide for its rich biodiversity and vibrant tourism industry, is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of an oil spill. A spill would be carried quickly by the nutrient-rich currents, possibly washing up on the mainland, Vancouver Island, and Haida Gwaii coasts. A spill or leak could threaten orcas, salmon, birds, and many other plant and animal species as well as devastating our fishing and tourism industries.

Is this the price we’re willing to pay for a polluting and diminishing source of energy? Oil may seem inexpensive compared to some forms of energy, but if you factor in the costs of these real and potential disasters, not to mention the everyday pollution, it’s not such a bargain.

One surprising response to the spill comes from proponents of the Alberta tar sands who see the Gulf disaster as boon. A cartoon in the Edmonton Journal pictured U.S. President Obama standing in the Gulf with oil on his hands, saying, “On second thought, the Alberta oilsands ain’t so bad…” The tar sands have been linked to ecological, social, and medical problems, including toxic water pollution and excessive greenhouse gas emissions – and none of that is altered by the Gulf spill. The disastrous consequences of ocean oil spills may be more immediately apparent, but land-based drilling can also cause environmental damage. Leaks, spills, blow-outs, fires, and explosions are more common than many people realize.

A more thoughtful response to the spill would be to recognize the huge risks associated with the kind of energy we use and the way we get it. Clearly, the negative costs of tar sands and deep ocean resources should point to the need to work toward a carbon-free energy future.

The problems are only going to get worse as we reach peak oil, when the most accessible sources of oil are all but gone and we must rely even more on the dirtier and harder-to-reach supplies in the deep ocean or tar sands.

We can’t stop using fossil fuels immediately, but we should see this latest disaster as an opportunity to look at the costs of our energy use and where we should go from here. Clearly we must wean ourselves from oil and gas as we make the transition to cleaner sources of energy. If we were wise, we would go more slowly with the resources we do have – in the tar sands, for example – and use the revenues to fund research and development of clean energy.