Climate policy remains deplorable
Submitted by Andy Bichlbaum on December 29, 2009 to The Yes Men.
The government of Canada has used strong-arm tactics to shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada’s poor environmental policy, taking down 4500 other websites in the process.
The two websites, “enviro-canada.ca” and “ec-gc.ca”, are “directly connected to a hoax which misleads people into believing that the Government of Canada will take certain actions in relation to environmental matters,” wrote Mike Landreville from Environment Canada in an email to the German Internet Service Provider (ISP) Serverloft. “We trust you appreciate the importance of avoiding confusion among the public concerning Canadian governmental affairs and that you will assist us in preventing this hoax from spreading further.”
“We are sorry to see that the Canadian government will not ‘take certain actions’ that could help stave off catastrophic climate change,” said Mike Bonanno of The Yes Men, one of the groups that performed the “sophisticated hoax” two weeks ago that involved the fake sites. “And we are also sorry to see that they don’t care so much for free speech.”beg the US for photo opps, and berate NGOs for things they haven’t done,” said Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men. “They could instead figure out reasonable ways of responding to their growing legion of critics.”
The websites that Canada shut down were part of an elaborate “identity correction” carried out by anonymous Canadian activists, the Climate Debt Agents of Action Aid, and The Yes Men. They used press releases and fake websites to announce that Canada would adopt science-based emission targets – reducing emissions by 40% over 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050 – and would pay the countries most impacted by climate change a proportional amount of the $600 billion total recommended by the United Nations to mitigate and adapt to climate change. They even used a replica of the UN conference center podium to show “Uganda” reacting with glee to the plan, before seeing their “tragic hopes” dashed.
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