CLIMATE WARS

Does a war comparison sound dramatic? In April 2007, Margaret Beckett, then foreign secretary, gave a largely overlooked lecture called Climate Change: The Gathering Storm. ""It was a time when Churchill, perceiving the dangers that lay ahead, struggled to mobilize the political will and industrial energy of the British Empire to meet those dangers. He did so often in the face of strong opposition,"" she said.

""Climate change is the gathering storm of our generation. And the implications - should we fail to act - could be no less dire: and perhaps even more so.""

In terms of what is possible in times of economic stress and isolation, Cuba provides an even more embarrassing example to show up our national tardiness.

In a single year in 2006 Cuba rolled-out a nationwide scheme replacing inefficient incandescent lightbulbs with low-energy alternatives. Prior to that, at the end of the cold war, after losing access to cheap Soviet oil, it switched over to growing most of its food for domestic consumption on small scale, often urban plots, using mostly low-fossil-fuel organic techniques.

Half the food consumed in the capital, Havana, was grown in the city's own gardens. Cuba echoed and surpassed what America achieved in its push for ""Victory Gardening"" during the second world war.

(Source: Guardian) NOTE:IS CANADA DOING ENOUGH ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE ? MAYBE WE SHOULD SERIOUSLY CONSIDER A CARBON TAX.

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