Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away – especially now that he’s discovered bombs. But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything.

Don’t believe me? Look one country north, at Justin Trudeau.

Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over.

But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington.

Not rhetorically: Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialise in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5C (2.7F).

But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing. He’s hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tar sands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet.

Last month, speaking at a Houston petroleum industry gathering, he got a standing ovation from the oilmen for saying: “No country would find 173bn barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.”

Recoverable oil estimate
Yes, 173bn barrels is indeed the estimate for recoverable oil in the tar sands. So let’s do some math. If Canada digs up that oil and sells it to people to burn, it will produce, according to the math whizzes at Oil Change International, 30 percent of the carbon necessary to take us past the 1.5C target that Canada helped set in Paris.

That is to say, Canada, which represents one half of 1 percent of the planet’s population, is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth’s remaining carbon budget. Trump is a creep and a danger and unpleasant to look at, but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite.

This having-your-cake-and-burning-it-too is central to Canada’s self-image/energy policy. McKenna, confronted by Canada’s veteran environmentalist David Suzuki, said tartly: “We have an incredible climate change plan that includes putting a price on carbon pollution, also investing in clean innovation.

“But we also know we need to get our natural resources to market and we’re doing both.” Right.

But doing the second negates the first – in fact, it completely overwhelms it. If Canada is busy shipping carbon all over the world, it wouldn’t matter all that much if every Tim Horton’s stopped selling doughnuts and started peddling solar panels instead.

Canada’s got company in this scam. Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull is supposed to be more sensitive than his predecessor, a Trump-like blowhard.

When he signed on his nation to the Paris climate accords, he said: “It is clear the agreement was a watershed, a turning point and the adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanised the international community and spurred on global action.”

Which is a fine thing to say – or would be, if your government wasn’t backing plans for the largest coal mine on Earth.

Mathematically and morally absurd
That single mine, in a country of 24 million people, will produce 362 percent of the annual carbon emissions that everyone in the Philippines produces in the course of a year.

It is obviously, mathematically and morally absurd.

Trump, of course, is working just as eagerly to please the fossil fuel industry – he’s instructed the Bureau of Land Management to make permitting even easier for new oil and gas projects, for instance. And frackers won’t even have to keep track of how much methane they’re spewing under his new guidelines.

And why should they? If you believe, as Trump apparently does, that global warming is a delusion, a hoax, a mirage, you might as well get out of the way.

Trump’s insulting the planet, in other words. But at least he’s not pretending otherwise.

The people of the Pacific have been handed a big challenge over the weekend – mobilise for urgent climate change action and “save the world” through their example.

Bill McKibben, founder of the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org, challenged Pacific islanders to fight for the climate change movement at a conference at the University of the South Pacific.

It is ideal for Pacific people to use solar power, fuel efficient cars, ride bicycles, he argues.

But in the end it would not make any difference to the final outcome for the fight for climate change as there are small populations in the Pacific.

“The Pacific is probably going to play a crucial role in helping to build the movement that changes the politics around climate change,” he said.

“You can make big countries like China, United States and Australia to act fast on it. You have a particular job to build this movement.”

The seminar, organised by USP’s environmental studies programme PACE-SD, focused on climate change action.

“We started the 350.org operation almost 8 years ago to build the movement for climate change around the world,” said McKibben.

‘We need a fight’
McKibben has written several books on the environment, including The End of Nature; The Age of Missing Information; Hope, Human and Wild, Oil and Honey.

“I thought long ago that writing books, discussions, and talks could solve this issue, but I was wrong at that time. We need a fight. We have to fight against the fossil fuel industries and against their money and power.”

To fight against the power of these industries, he explained the necessity of a movement.

“It is a systemic structural problem and we have only a few years to solve it. We require a huge political change. We need to find some source of power other than money to fight against [the fossil fuel industry] and the only other source is to build the movement.”

McKibben said this could be an opportunity for the Pacific people to save the world.

“It is a great burden to be in the Pacific right now. You didn’t ask for climate change and you didn’t cause it – yet it’s happening to you.

“But you can turn this burden into a privilege. You can fight together to save the world from this crisis.”

‘Deep emergency’
He talked about how it was known 25 years ago that the world would face the effects of climate change because of the fossil fuel and other industries, but “we didn’t know how fast it would be”.

“We are in the deep climate change emergency. It is much deeper than we thought,” he said.

McKibben believes that it is not a matter of decades – it is only a matter of years now. The world needs to act fast with the fight over climate change.

“Since the Pacific faces the quickest danger than any part of the world, you have more right, more credibility to stand up and push this movement on the fast track.

“We have to make the world understand about the crisis, which is the most difficult job. We have got to figure out the way to make them understand.”

Professor McKibben has already covered many countries, including Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Arab Emirates (UAR) and the US, with the 350.org campaign.

New Zealand approach
This campaign comes up with creative ideas in different countries.

For New Zealand, they took help from the bike mechanics. They went to the people’s garages and helped them to repair their bikes – so they could not find an excuse not to ride their bicycles.

Koreti Tiumalu has worked for the New Zealand government for 10 years. But 4 years ago she quit her job and now is now working with 350.org as the Pacific region coordinator.

“I have heard stories that sometimes I wish I wouldn’t have. It’s not an easy fight. But I can’t just sit there and do nothing.”

Tiumalu believes that young people love their culture and with the help of concerts, music and smart phones, they can become a huge part of this movement.

“We need to get into their music, their sports.”

350.org plans to launch a “Break Free” campaign to target the world’s dangerous fossil fuel projects during May 4-15.

Ami Dhabuwala and Pacific Media Watch contributing editor TJ Aumua are in Fiji on a two-week “Bearing Witness” climate change journalism project with the University of the South Pacific.

• The 350.org website
• 350.org Pacific

Environmentalist Bill McKibben today appealed to New Zealanders to take part in peaceful civil disobedience to overthrow “radicalism”.

The American made the call in a video five days before citizens will participate in a Greenpeace-organised mass demonstration of peaceful civil disobedience at the annual petroleum conference at SkyCity in Auckland.

It will be the first time in New Zealand that Greenpeace has invited the general public to take part in a mass civil disobedience action.

McKibben, who founded global climate change organisation 350.org, recorded the video in support of the action on Monday.

In a personal message to the New Zealanders taking part, McKibben said:

“We thank you in advance for being willing to stand up peacefully and non-violently to the most violent forces on our planet.”

He said New Zealand was one of the most “beautiful places in the world” but now stood as a country that needed to get serious about the climate crisis.

‘Lots of sweet things’
“Everybody went off to Paris [COP21 climate conference]. Everybody said lots of sweet things. Everybody pounded each other on the back about what great people they were,” he said.

“[But] if you come home from Paris and say ‘nothing is changing – we’re still going to mine coal, we’re still going to go drill in the deep blue sea for oil, we’re still going to frack’, then you didn’t get the message.”

On the back of the Paris Climate Conference last December, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he had no intention of scaling back the search for fossil fuels.

McKibben is encouraging for New Zealanders considering using peaceful civil disobedience as a tactic for change.

“The point that you’re trying to get across I think, most importantly, is there’s nothing radical about what we’re talking about. All we’re talking about is trying to keep a world that works a little bit like the world worked for the last 10,000 years,” he said.

“The radicals [are the] oil companies and the government ministries that aid and abet that…[It’s] our job, with our bodies if need be, to slow down that radicalism…Civil disobedience is a powerful tactic – it needs to be done with a complete commitment to non-violence and peacefulness.”

350.org