A Boston Globe report ought to interest Canadians because the Massachusetts experience improves understanding of how regulators who do not believe in regulation work hand-in-hand with industry…
Resolving EV inhibitions
For personal use in urban areas, electric vehicles are clearly in our immediate future. But not everyone lives in a place where battery charging is a simple affair. Fast charging stations are costly to build, damaging to batteries, and may be expensive to use, drawing power at times of peak demand.
Explanations for BC Gov’t wasting billions of dollars
Kurzweil and others have argued that people find this pace of change almost impossible to grasp, because it is human nature to perceive rates of progress as linear, not exponential… People tend to focus on the past few years, but pulling back reveals a much more dramatic change. Many things that society now takes for granted would have seemed like futuristic nonsense just a few decades ago…
An old problem, not a new problem
This week, the Globe and Mail published a short article and podcast about a hospital staffing problem they believe has grown more acute during the pandemic. In fact, key staff shortages have plagued the healthcare system for years…
Survival of the unfittest… megaprojects
UC Berkeley scholar Karen Trapenberg Frick wrote of the 25 years it took for Californians to build a Bay bridge replacement. Dr. Frick said the project was “a cautionary tale to which any governing authority embarking on a megaproject should pay heed.” British Columbia’s highly paid bureaucrats and political leaders were not paying attention.
Priorities
A tweet written by Jeffrey Levin made sense to me. So, I produced a Canadian version.
Bring out the dead…
Ignoring climate change in the short term has benefits both to individuals and to organizations. Individuals do not have to make changes in the cars they drive, the products they buy, or the homes they live in if they ignore the influence their carbon footprint has on the world…
Hypocrisy
It says a great deal when a person at the centre of national policy making chooses to leave government to work on the climate crisis. She is silent about the dedication of Canada and its three western provinces to expanded fossil fuel production, including Alberta tar sands bitumen, the the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet…
COVID-19 mortality burden may be 2x times higher than reported
Analysis suggests that COVID-19 was associated with many deaths in Canada that were not classified as such…
Maintaining infinite growth on a finite planet
Choose your activities carefully and do your part to maintain infinite growth on a finite planet. Put away your bicycle.
P.S. Walking is even worse. Pedestrians don’t even buy bicycles.
Taxpayers pay for Earth’s destruction
When an industry is on a path to extinction, private investors exit and governments often step in, spending huge dollars that merely delay the inevitable. We should not allow that to continue happening in Canada.
321 years into a 246 year cycle
Canada’s federal government gave $4.5 billion to Kinder Morgan for Trans Mountain after the owners had difficulty financing expansion of the pipeline. By 2020, the new construction budget had soared to $12.6 billion. But according to a 2021 management report, “As of March 31, 2021, construction is approximately 25% complete, with $7.1 billion in capital spending incurred since the inception of the project.” So 56% of the budget had been spent but the project was only 25% complete. That signals a total cost to taxpayers in excess of $20 billion. Compounding that massive loss will be the ongoing ecological disaster of increased tar sands production and the elevated risk to Vancouver and North Shore communities, the inner harbour and coastal waters.
BC NDP, guardians of the environment… the corporate environment
The origin story of Stand.earth—previously ForestEthics, successor to Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition—illustrates how little has changed in recent decades. NGOs and concerned citizens are ever the underdogs when competing with governments and wealthy corporations in the fight to protect ancient forests.
Why care?
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell reported experiencing an “Overview Effect”… He became profoundly aware that each and every atom in the Universe was connected in some way, and on seeing Earth from space he had an understanding that all the humans, animals and systems were a part of the same thing, a synergistic whole.
Privatizing public wealth
Years ago, corporations decided they should pay less for BC’s natural resources. The companies funded pressure groups, slick online websites, and social media shills. All amplified public messaging in support of private resource extraction. Lobbyists wined and dined politicians and senior bureaucrats. Dollars moved into the bank accounts of political parties. The efforts were successful. For the expenditure of a few million, industrialists gained billions.
Climate action pretence
Governments impose carbon taxes ostensibly to deal with climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But effectiveness is limited since the taxes are not applied broadly or at levels sufficient to reduce or compel reduction in fossil fuel production and consumption…
Science deniers at the helm
British Columbia produces “the world’s cleanest natural gas.” In the same 2019 press release, Justin Trudeau echoed that statement. The fiction of BC producing clean fossil fuel originated with Premier Christy Clark’s Liberals. The claim was as honest as the one about LNG rewarding the province with one trillion dollars in economic activity and depositing one hundred billion dollars into a “BC Prosperity fund.”
Unchecked commercial fraud
Corporate media can’t be bothered to report what is happening at BC Hydro. Facts are readily available; they’re just not examined. The reason why was explained by the organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR): “Independent, aggressive and critical media are essential to an informed democracy. But mainstream media are increasingly cozy with the economic and political powers they should be watchdogging.”
Oversell, under-deliver
On climate change, Canadian politicians always oversell promises and underdeliver results. Canadians should tell them that is not good enough.
A valley will be destroyed
Valley of the Southern North is a love letter to The Peace Valley and the people and creatures that make it their home. The Site C dam, now under construction, will destroy ancestral territory of the Dane Zaa and Cree, violate treaties and displace residents, farmers and wildlife living along its shores.
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