Tzeporah Berman is in town promoting a book and an upcoming speech but also rehabilitating her faded reputation as a guardian of the natural ecology. She is involved today in a conversation of comments at The Vancouver Observer with Damien Gillis, a true environmentalist.

Gillis wrote this for Berman’s enlightenment:

“…But I look beyond (easily manipulated) carbon calculations to ECOLOGY. I encourage you to learn this word and apply it in your work. These private river diversion projects wreak havoc on our ecosystems and are not a worthy trade-off for the alleged carbon benefits you and the Donald MacInneses of the world cite in defence of IPPs.

The reality is, even on a carbon level, it’s a losing proposition, as you fail to take into account the carbon and ecological consequences of clear-cutting thousands of hectares of forests for transmission lines, industrial roads, and the river diversion projects themselves; meanwhile, there is no tying of new IPPs to the ramping down of coal-fired plants.

We are simply being asked to lump more ecologically damaging power projects on top of our existing hydrocarbon-based energy system, and that’s not helping the climate one iota – quite the opposite. I encourage you and the readers of this site to check out my TEDx talk on the subject: