New Green Plan

The Harpokon government released its new green plan the other day. And it is a bag of worthless crap. The key things to know are these:

1. The target it aims for is a 18% reduction in GHGs by 2010. The key problem here is that this is an 18% reduction from 2006 levels, not from 1990. Given the extent to which GHG emissions have risen since 1990, this does not even get our emissions back to our 1990 levels, let alone below them, as envisioned by the Kyoto Accord.
2. Instead of a hard requirement for emissions reductions, companies will be allowed to make "intensity" reductions, meaning a reduction in the GHGs emitted per unit of production. This means that if a company reduces emissions intensity by 25% yet increases production by 50%, emissions will rise 12.5%, instead of falling at all.

These two things are what make the plan exactly what Al Gore described it as, "a complete and utter fraud." It is designed to allow industry proceed on as before, making a further mess of our world.

By making these pathetic half-steps towards reducing our GHG emissions, we are essentially letting the big emitters of the world (U.S., China and India) off the hook. After all, if a rich, first world, state like Canada is unwilling to bite the bullet and take the necessary measures, why should China or India feel obliged to do so with much more meagre resources?

If the Conservatives think that this will get the public on-side, I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that it won't happen. All of the respected voices of the environmental movement (from Al Gore and David Suzuki on down) are calling bullshit on this so-called plan. I am so tired of this and I am so angry.

There is a problem, and it needs fixing now. And the fixing won't come from tinkering around the edges. We need to make major adjustments to the way we live, and they need to be made soon. There is still a very limited amount of time to phase in these changes, but if we wait much longer we are going to hit a wall and be forced to change by the fact that we will be facing an existential crisis.

The first good step to fixing this would be for the three opposition parties (NDP, Liberals and Bloc) to put every ounce of pressure available to them on the government to bring bill C-30 (the amended Clean Air Act) back to Parliament. It has important measures in it that would be very helpful. NDP leader Jack Layton has sent an open letter to the leaders of the other two opposition parties asking them for help, and hopefully the three parties will work together to make something happen.

We are running out of time.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 637

Canadians Sending Afghans to Torture

Thanks to some excellent investigative reporting by the Globe and Mail, it has come to light that the Canadian government has been knowingly handing over Afghan prisoners of war to face torture in prisons run by the Afghan government. Not only did senior commanders on the ground clearly know about it, but the political leadership in Ottawa has been clearly demonstrated to be in the know as well.

Afghan prisoners report being beaten with bundles of wire, choked/asphyxiated, made to stand naked outside overnight in sub-zero temperatures and other inhuman and cruel treatment. I don't think any reasonable person could argue that this does not constitute torture. The fact that Canada knew about this and continued to hand prisoners over to Afghan torturers places Canada clearly in violation of our responsibilities under the Third Geneva Convention and under the Anti-Torture Convention. Canada has broken international law by handing these people over, knowing that they would be tortured for information. We have become a criminal state.

Under the Third Geneva Convention (available here) the detaining power (that is Canada) remains responsible for the well-being of prisoners of war transfered to another power (in this case Afghanistan). In the case of inhumane treatment by the power to which prisoners have been transfered, the detaining power has a responsibility to either take substantive action to fix the situation or to take the prisoners back. The Canadian government has done neither of those things. That means that Canada has violated the international laws of war, and thus has committed war crimes.

Additionally, the government is making a conscious effort to brush off the torture of these people. The government suggests that they are all Taliban fighters and thus their complaints cannot be believed. The government calls the reports "rumours." The government response to this is so wrong.

1. These people have not been tried or convicted of anything. Anything at all. So to call them Taliban is to violate the presumption of innocence that should be afforded to all people.
   
2. Even if they are Taliban fighters, it does not mean that their complaints of torture are necessarily false or that they deserve to be tortured.
   
3. The minimization of the reports of torture as "rumours" makes clear that the government does not plan to investigate them with any vigour.

No-one deserves to be tortured. It is ethically wrong to inflict pain and possibly death on someone else in search of information. Nothing gives us the right to say that we should be allowed to decide whether or not a particular faces torture. We have a responsibility to stop torture wherever or whenever we encounter it.

Torture is wrong, and we cannot countenance, condone or tolerate it by any state or actor, be they allied or opposed to the Canadian government. Now is manifestly the time to stand up for reason and justice in a world rapidly spiraling downwards.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 640

A Horror in Virginia

Yesterday, a man killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, apparently with two handguns, before killing himself. This is a horrible crime and my sympathies go out those who were injured, and to the families and friends of the injured and the dead. My sympathies also go out to the family of the shooter. It must be horrible to lose a son or brother in such a manner, knowing that they had done such a repugnant thing. I totally condemn this crime, and it makes me think of a few different things.

First, and as Juan Cole points out, Iraq suffers the equivalent of two Virginia Tech slaughters every day, be it deaths inflicted by occupation soldiers, insurgents or Sufist terrorists (and yes, there is a distinction between them). The people of Iraq must suffer through this kind of horror twice per day. And the violence there is just as random. Whether the people are killed by American use of weapons of mass destruction (e.g. white phosphorus in Falujah), or are near an American patrol attacked by the insurgency or are in a market that is blown up by a suicide car-bomber, they die randomly and meaninglessly. We in the west need to think about this. Western nations are inflicting dozens of deaths every day. No wonder populations around the world are saying "if this is 'freedom,' we don't want any thank you." Can we blame them for rejecting something that has become associated with chaos and meaningless, random, death? The situation in Afghanistan is only quantitatively better, in that less people are dying random, meaningless, deaths every day, but Canadian troops are inflicting random death on people who have done nothing to deserve the harsh occupation that has been imposed on them by an imperialistic NATO.

The second thing the Virginia Tech slaughter has made me think of is the importance of gun control. Throughout the day, I had to listen to idiotic pro-gun activists say that if only, if only, Virginia Tech had not prohibited students from carrying concealed handguns on campus, most of the deaths would have been prevented. This is idiotic on so many levels. Firstly, if the killer had not been able to obtain a gun at all, he would not have been able to kill nearly the number of people that he did. It is simply much, much harder to inflict lethal wounds on a large number people in a short period of time with a knife than it is with a gun. Second, picture this. A number of students were armed with concealed handguns on campus. They hear the shooting start in the lecture hall and draw their weapons to try to hunt down the killer. The police then enter the building, after the shooting is reported, and see one of these students walking around with a drawn handgun looking for the shooter. They are going to assume that the student with the gun is the shooter, in all likelihood, and that student may quite likely then be shot, before the mistake can be sorted out. Third, unless someone is well trained with a handgun, it is easy to miss one's target. In a crowed environment like the lecture hall, they could just as easily hit other students as the shooter.

Gun control is necessary. This is because homicidal maniac control is always going to be harder than gun control. On the street, one can see a handgun and realize, "gee, that's a handgun." What one cannot do is look at a homicidal maniac just walking down the street and realize, "gee, that's a homicidal maniac." It just doesn't work like that.

Furthermore, handguns should be entirely illegal. The only purpose they have is shooting people. Sure, you can do some kinds of recreational shooting with them, but the benefits of making them entirely illegal (i.e. less dead people) would be much greater than the negative impacts on sport shooting.

Horrors like what happened at Virginia Tech make me so sad, because of the number of lives lost that could so easily have been saved.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 648