Ontario Green …

In search of climate solutions before the December 2009 summit

By Bill Kovarik

So this is the speed of light.

We laugh as the solar-powered boat glides silently down the Spree River through the heart of  Berlin, Germany. As monumental buildings drift past, our captain, Arno Paulus, points out a series of 64-year-old bullet holes in the stone walls alongside the river.

It’s a sobering moment in the new Berlin, a city where ghosts still flit through the Tiergarten and where hollowed-out churches still draw crowds on the Ku-Damm boulevard.

And it’s because of this past, Paulus says, that Germany has a moral obligation to help change the world.   “We can do it,” he says, “but we can’t do it alone.”

And so our journey starts with a photovoltaic boat tour as a kind of tribute to the new Germany, grimly aware of its history but determined to set the example for a remarkable future.

Its all part of the “road to Copenhagen” climate change tour that also includes  formal meetings with German officials …

In search of climate solutions before the December 2009 summit

By Bill Kovarik

A sobering dinner with one of the worlds leading climate scientists — Stefan Ramstorf of Pottsdam University in Berlin — sets a tone of urgency. As we watch the swans paddle out on a pristine German lake, I think about Ranstorf’s prediction that at least six feet of sea level rise by 2100 is close to inevitable.

He tells us that if the goal is to limit CO2 from fossil fuels to 750 billion tons over the next 40 years, then the “only fair and just principle here is to assign them on a per capita basis.”  He asks us to picture each person on earth with an allotment of only 110 tons of fossil CO2.

How quickly are we spending up our allotment?  Americans are spending at the rate of 20 tons per year, while Europeans are spending it at the rate of 10 tons per year. But in developing nations containing most of human population, people are spending their …