Listen Harper!... zero fossil fuel by 2020 ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091026/hertsgaard

Sounds like a plan Bubbles. Why don't you lead the way by not using any products that emit carbon gasses. Give up your car, turn off your coal-powered electricity, drain your heating-oil tank, give up plastics, and whatever else you can think of. Let us know how it goes.....if you can.

How do you know he hasn't?

I love the conservative view of the world. So self-rigteous for reckless planet killers.

You did read my mind, Heywood. That is exactly where I intend to go. Still have to get rid of two tractors, two cars, hundred dollars worth of electricity a month. Still have some heating oil for standby purposes, in case my wood heating fails. In the planning stages are a smallish digester, that runs on manure, a hotwater storage tank and a small windmill. Hope to get them going in the next two to three years. About the cars and tractors I am still a bit at a loss. Need public stransit in this area.

Excellent. That's awesome bubbles. Right now I'm considering a greywater recycling system for the house.

Good plan! By then corporate America will have siphoned off most or all of Canada's crude oil and natural gas reserves, and Canadians will be stuck footing the bills to import more expensive fossil fuels from other countries. And at which point we will be paying North American market rates for our own hydroelectric power to stay warm during Canadian winters as we continue feeding the most wasteful economy in the world south of us with cheap power. They need cleaning out of Ottawa.

Funny you should mention greywater recycling. Just last week I noticed that our septic system was starting to get over loaded. I figured that ourlaundry machine did not need to drain in our septic, and I hooked up the laundry waste line to two 200 liter drums in the basement and am now recycling that greywater to one of our toilets via an old but still functioning pump and pressure tank. Will have to see how that holds up.

Fidel,

Do you realy think we will sell the Usians fossil fuel when we are working like the dickens to get away from it? Did you read the whole article? You think it is a fair aproach to solve the problem

Personally, I had the "oh, shit" moment quite some time ago. The article you linked puts into sharp relief, using new studies, what many in science have been saying over and over again: we don't have time. If we are to act it must be now and it must be with purpose.

In a sane culture, there would be no debate. We would recognize the reality of our path and we would pull together to make the necessary changes as quickly as possible and with a goal to easing as much as possible any suffering that results from the drastic changes required.

Unfortunately, we live in an insane culture where abstract wealth takes precendence over life itself. This insanity even has a political wing, in Canada currently represented by the Conservative Party, with an ideological basis for its madness which is, in the end, the liquidation of our living Earth.

Stephen Harper and the Conservative government have as their political mandate the liquidation of Canada's natural wealth, including the boreal forests, the Arctic, and pristine waters on behalf of investors--a class of people invisible, untouchable, and yet so powerful as to have established blind adherents to their cause among both Conservatives and Liberals, but especially Conservatives.

Read the dates again. Recognize that the insane Conservative planet killers are having their way by 1) diverting scarce dollars to oil companies through the lie of carbon capture; 2) working on the world stage to sabotage any agreement that could result in true mitigation efforts, and; 3) developing policy for the Arctic to liquidate resources made avaialable directly as a result of climate change.

Make no mistake: if you have small children the Conservatives are setting for them, right now, a future that is dark and dystopian. The Conservatives are enemies of the Earth and enemies of humanity. Their goal is total liquidation. And they are winning.

Unfortunately, FM, anyone investing in the market is onside with them (and as Pogo said....we have seen the enemy...and it is us. ) The hubris of we Homos,  :)

80% cuts by 2020 are being called for by Lester Brown, , the founder and president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute

That is what it will take to keep the concentration of CO2 (carbon dioxide) to 400 parts per million.

How to do it - 80 percent by 2020:

Renewables can Cut carbon emissions by one-third by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources for electricity and heat production. In a few years time, Texas will quadruple its wind energy output to 8,000 megawatts. And it plans to grow to 40,000 megawatts, the equivalent of 50 coal-fired power plants.

14 percent cut in emissions from restructuring our transportation systems and reducing coal and oil use in industry.

16 percent emissions reductions by ending deforestation worldwide

17 percent of our current emissions - Planting trees and managing soils to sequester carbon can absorb

* None of these initiatives depends on new technologies - all that is needed now is leadership.

Arctic Ocean melting fast, researchers say

World Bank Looks to Help Developing Nations With Carbon Capture and Storage [12]
"The trust fund plans come on the heels of an International Energy Agency report calling for 3,400 CCS plants by midcentury"

IEA wants $3.4 trillion spent on carbon capture [13]

All of the above represents wasted opportunity and wasted hope. It is the corporate nail in the human coffin.

It seems so ridiculous to establish a huge industry to capture CO2 by burning of fossil fuels. Like making a dependency into a chronic  desease. That we have to reduce the CO2 content in the air and Ocean is a given I believe, but it would make more sense to remove the oxygen first and then store the carbon, our biosystem does it all the time, but just not fast enough to keep up with our input. How to speed it up for a time and reduce our input till we are at 350ppm?

I can see your point that it's us in general who are the problem. If there weren't so darned many of us to socialize the blame for our unsustainable way of life and product of colossal cold war era lies for middle class capitalism based on consumption, then the rich and powerful could lead comfortable lives. Of course, then they'd have to delegate all those menial labour tasks to one another. There could be some tense moments when they ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to go plow the streets or fill tanks and check the oil on all their limos and Range Rovers.

But do we really have a choice for any other way of life? Does the hairdresser down the street have the choice to not drive his car into the city when there is no bus service in his rural area?  Does the guy flipping pizzas for a living in the new liberal capitalist economy constructed over the last 30 years really have the economic choice to retrofit his drafty and leaky apartment in a dilapidated building full of drafty and energy inefficient apartments? The NDP realizes that they don't. The NDP says the economy couild be bustling for years if the feds would invest in real stimulus, and pay workers to retrofit millions of drafty and leaky homes and other substandar buildings across the country with new materials according to modern building technology. Green collar jobs! The Swedes demonstrated how not to compete with countries by picking and choosing their battles. Green economy could be Canada's niche if our stooges would just pick up the ball and run with it. They won't though, because our second-hand stooges can't think for themselves. Their brains are disengaged for decades and on auto pilot with taking orders from Washington. And the NDP says that instead of writing cheques for US car companies operating in Canada, there should be conditions and strings attached to those Canadian taxpayer dollars. Giving free money away to foreigners has never been good for Canadian workers. Not really. And  if foreign car companies don't want to play ball with the taxpayers, then LAFTA should be renegotated and Canadians put to work designing and building our own fuel efficient autos, buses, trams and railway cars. We could more than make up for stoogery and acquescing to US market diktats and unfair trade rules bullying this country into social-cultural and economic submission to the USA for far too long.

"...do we really have a choice for any other way of life?"

We have choices, Fidel. Perhaps you mean, "will we discover what they are and take them, after first finding out where in hell we're at?"

No Fidel, if I get your drift right you are saying the consumerism is the problem, and I agree that consumerism is at the heart of global warming, but I cannot agree that the failure to reduce emissions is mostly our fault. There was a good opinion article on this at Alternet or Truthout of some such altnews, but I cannot find it right now. It showed that even if we made all the changes possible the emissions would still be 80% of what they are now due to large sources.

One eg. I can think of is the Tar Sands - getting oil from that source means the rest of us, and industry, will all have to cut that much more. The big emittors are the problem, and the big wigs are making these choices.

As for the public doing their share, I am sure that if there were energy options other than fossil fuels, many of us would be using them;

If there were electric cars [and there could have been, 15 years ago], we would use them;

When we were asked to change our lightbulbs, most of us did that very willingly; now it is THEIR turn!!

The corporate sector, esp. the energy sector, has made sure that fossil fuels have the monopoly where energy is used. They are rich, they are powerfull, and they run the show. They decide how it is.

The figures seem a bit optimistic, but organic agriculture has a huge potential to sequester carbon and reduce our need forfossil fuel. We have to get to 350 some how.

"Millions of organic farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and backyard gardeners (supported by millions of organic consumers) are demonstrating that we can build a healthy alternative to industrial agriculture and Food Inc. Our growing organic movement is [19]proving that we can not only feed the world with healthy food, but also reverse global warming, by capturing and sequestering [19]billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases in the soil, through plant photosynthesis, composting, cover crops, [19]rotational grazing, wetlands preservation, and reforestation." [19]

Dealing with local food producers that grow your food sustainably also could be an effective way to weaken the hold corporationshave on our lifes.

I wonder how they figured on sequestering 7000 lbs of carbon per acre every year. Does not seem like a sustainable process,but certainly could help us now.