I took photos at today’s Moving Planet event in Toronto. The keynote speaker was former Toronto mayor David Miller, who can be seen here high-fiving a child.
Moving Planet day
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climate change activist and science communicator; event photographer; amateur mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
Today’s event had a strong anti-nuclear focus, which I don’t entirely agree with. There are many reasons to worry about nuclear power, but the danger associated with climate change does seem like one major argument for tolerating it as a transitional source of energy.
Here is the first video I ever uploaded to YouTube that was made on my 5D Mk II.
It has a bit of a Saving Private Ryan shakycam look, but works decently overall.
The feature of the Moving Day Planet that attracted me was looking at the positive and the grass roots nature.
I thought it was refreshing that the Green Party critic on your video acknowledged the Green Platform of the Ontario government in the event at the lawn of the Ontario legislature.
Our event in North Vancouver was at the Grouse Mountain was a very grass roots affair. We met at the wind turbine on Grouse Mountain, which is also a symbol of progress.
For milenium mankind was oblivious to the effects of our activity on the environment. Since 1960’s awareness of environment has been developing. It is helpful for the environmental movement to acknowledge progress when it occurs.
People have long suspected that human activity could change the local climate. For example, ancient Greeks and 19th-century Americans debated how cutting down forests might bring more rainfall to a region, or perhaps less. But there were larger shifts of climate that happened all by themselves. The discovery of ice ages in the distant past proved that climate could change radically over the entire globe, which seemed vastly beyond anything mere humans could provoke. Then what did cause global climate change — was it variations in the heat of the Sun? Volcanoes erupting clouds of smoke? The raising and lowering of mountain ranges, which diverted wind patterns and ocean currents? Or could it be changes in the composition of the air itself?
In 1896 a Swedish scientist published a new idea. As humanity burned fossil fuels such as coal, which added carbon dioxide gas to the Earth’s atmosphere, we would raise the planet’s average temperature. This “greenhouse effect” was only one of many speculations about climate change, however, and not the most plausible. Scientists found technical reasons to argue that our emissions could not change the climate. Indeed most thought it was obvious that puny humanity could never affect the vast climate cycles, which were governed by a benign “balance of nature.” In any case major change seemed impossible except over tens of thousands of years.
‘Grass roots’ is a concept I am nervous about. It seems to confer authenticity to an action, put it is usually at least somewhat misleading. Events – especially big events – happen because people dedicate a lot of effort to putting them together, whether those people are working at NGOs and funded by donations or working at big corporations funded by profits.