Category: RT Newswire

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“We haven’t come up with words big enough to
communicate the magnitude of what we’re doing.”
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Orion Magazine
June 29, 2008

When Words Fail
by Bill McKibben

I almost never write about writing-in my
aesthetic, the writing should disappear, the
thought linger. But the longer I’ve spent working
on global warming-the greatest challenge humans
have ever faced-the more I’ve come to see it as
essentially a literary problem. A technological
and scientific challenge, yes; an economic
quandary, yes; a political dilemma, surely. But
centrally? A crisis in metaphor, in analogy, in
understanding. We haven’t come up with words big
enough to communicate the magnitude of what we’re
doing. How do you say: the world you know today,
the world you were born into, the world that has
remained essentially the same for all of human
civilization, that has birthed every play and
poem and novel and essay, every painting and
photograph, every invention and economy, every
spiritual system (and every turn of phrase) is
about to be . . . something so different? Somehow
“global warming” barely hints at it. The same
goes for any of the other locutions, including
“climate chaos.” And if we do come up with
adequate words in one culture, they won’t
necessarily translate into all the other
languages whose speakers must collaborate to
somehow solve this problem.

Continue reading

No Ice At The North Pole: Polar Scientists Reveal Dramatic New
Evidence of Climate Change:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/27/9920/

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Here’s a very cool project from friends up in Alberta… Check it out, and help
spread the word!

-Matt

www.travelingalberta.com

Dear friends,

What comes to mind when you think about Alberta,Canada? Vast forests and
wilderness, toweringmountains and ski hills, rodeos and cowboys? That might have
been true once, but not any more. Albertais now home to the largest and most
environmentally destructive project on theplanet, as revealed in a new site
dedicated to dispelling Alberta’s clean image.

Traveling Alberta (www.travelingalberta.com)is a mock travel site that pulls back
the curtain on tar sands development andshows the world what the province is
desperately trying to hide: pools oftoxic, deadly water It tells the realstory of
what travelers will find in Alberta: massive CO2 emissions,toxic water and the
planet’s dirtiest oil.

But waging a battle against Big Oil and exposing the world’slargest and most toxic
industrial project is no small task, and we need yourhelp. We need you to visit this
site (the more hits the better!!!!), to tell your friends and to spread the word. We
need to get our message to theCanadian and Albertan governments that the world will
not accept dirty oilextracted at the risk of environmental, social and economic
health. And we needto do it now.

The tar sands are the dirtiest source of oil known to man.Unlike conventional oil
operations, the tar sands are extracted by buildinghuge strip mines or deep
in-situwells. While the rest of the planet is finding solutions to decrease
theircarbon footprint, Albertais making ours bigger. Already, greenhouse gases from
the tar sands are roughlyequal to the emissions of all the cars on the road today in
Canada. Andthey’re growing.

Water used from the tar sands is so contaminated with toxicchemicals it must be
stored in huge “tailings ponds” that are visible fromouter space. A city of two
million people uses an amount of water equivalent tothe tar sands annually. And just
this past week, about 500 birds perished afterthey came in contact with the toxic
water. They are typically scared away byair cannons!

More than 147,000 square kilometers – an area the size of Florida – is at risk totar
sands development. Yet instead of slowing down development, this governmenthas
approved every single tar sandsproposal that has come across its desk.

This is the dirty image Alberta’sPremier will try to address as he travels
throughout the United States and Europe, spending $25 million dollars to beautify
Alberta’simage. We need your help to send a clear message to Premier Ed Stelmach:
Stopthe Tar Sands and clean up your own backyard.

If you want to tell the Premier and Prime Minister StephenHarper that it doesn’t
have to be this way. If you want to tell them to clean up their act and make Alberta
a great place tovisit again. If you want to have yourvoice heard as loud as big oil
companies who are destroying the environment,visit www.travelingalberta.comand tell
a friend.

Do your part to Stop the Tar Sands today.

www.travelingalberta.com