Gwen and I raised three adult children in North Vancouver. Each lives in this community, as do our seven grandchildren. Before retirement, I worked in accounting and small business management. Since 2009, I have published commentary about public issues at IN-SIGHTS.CA.
A problem faced by more than one British Columbia community is how to resurrect a local economy after global corporations decide easier profits can be made by exporting unprocessed resources. The subject had me remember a worthwhile PBS documentary by investigative journalist David Brancaccio…
Political observers who expected BC NDP to live up to electoral promises of 2017 are by now thoroughly disillusioned. Broken promises could pave the the grounds of the BC Legislature…
Faced with energy market disruption, the European Union is proceeding with REPowerEU, a plan for conservation and production of clean energy. The EU knows that conservation is the cheapest, safest and cleanest option. It can reduce individual energy costs and add resilience to the economy. The same is true in North America. The European Union is putting into action what John Horgan’s NDP promised until elected in 2017,
Governments have not done the things needed to address climate change. In Canada, particularly in the western provinces, politicians raised middle fingers to climate scientists. Tens of billions of taxpayers dollars have been committed to oil, gas and coal consumption, even though fossil fuels must stay underground.
The Supreme Court ruled that cumulative effects from decades of industrial development on lands of northeast BC infringed treaty rights of Blueberry River First Nations. I suggest that cumulative effects from decades of industrialization and commercialization on lands of southwest BC infringe on the implicit rights of future generations.
Ancient Chinese employed a method of prolonged torture and execution known as lingchi. We also know it as Death by a Thousand Cuts. Humans are torturing the Earth by lingchi today…
BC Hydro sought environmental approval for construction of Site C in 2011. In that year, global wind power capacity was 238 gigawatts. While construction of BC’s controversial hydropower project dragged on, worldwide capacity for wind power reached 837 GW in 2021. If Site C suffers no further delays in its scheduled 2025 startup, global wind capacity according to GWEC will then exceed 1.3 terawatts, more than five times the level in 2011…
John Horgan’s five years as Premier will cap a 30-year career in provincial politics. While current opinion polls show satisfaction with his leadership, history will discount the blarney and examine the achievements…
Rolf Harris was a popular entertainer in Vancouver during the 1960s and early 1970s. I enjoyed him numerous times performing at The Vancouver Cave Supper Club on Hornby Street. Later in the UK, he was disgraced.
In ten years, seven different cabinet ministers have led Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). The department has been a dumping ground or holding area for out-of-favour or inept politicians. Little wonder the […]
A book by Professor Robert Reich, one of the most prominent voices among progressives, examines the ongoing decline of the common good, which he defines as being about “what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society.” Reich believes those values include respect for the rule of law and democratic institutions, toleration of our differences and belief in equal political rights and equal opportunity. These have been undermined by unrestrained pursuit of money, power, and hyperpartisanship…
This Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act proves that what happens in the BC Legislature today is theatre. Expensive theatre. We are not governed by elected representatives; we are ruled by the individual chosen as Premier and the people surrounding the first minister.
Through quiet collaboration, wealthy predators in Canada have used economic and political power to sustain unconscionable wireless profits. This will not change because those same vultures control much of Canada’s mainstream media. That means high prices and defective competition are not considered newsworthy.
Down To Earth, a weekly newsletter from The Guardian, provided information that should distress every person hoping the climate crisis can be improved, or even moderated…
With it now costing more than $100 to fill the gas tank of a small car, it is worth remembering a report on fossil fuel subsidies issued in February 2022 by International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Greed of the fossil fuel industry in 2022 will drive conversion to alternatives faster than anyone imagined was possible…
Government by the people for the people is more myth than reality in Canada and in the politically troubled country south of here. We cannot talk about our governments being representative democracies when a majority of the proxies we elect rank interests of their parties and their sponsors above interests of their electors.
There was also something bigger, and even more disturbing: a domain of libertarian fantasy made real, in which professional intervention made it possible for the world’s wealthiest people to be free not only of tax obligations but of any laws they found inconvenient.
In 2016, an unnamed whistleblower provided Munich daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung with encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sold anonymous offshore companies. These entities enabled owners to hide wealth, engage in illegal financial transactions and evade income taxes…
Hydrogen made from electrolysis of water powered by solar or wind could help humans survive beyond the 21st century. The elemental gas could store surplus renewables power and help decarbonize sectors such as long-distance air and road transport and manufacturing processes for steel, concrete and other carbon-intensive products. Hydrogen should have an important role but a revised policy framework is needed to free decarbonization options from the imperatives of private profit…
At once. Let’s admit it. At first it might seem a crazy conjecture, but since his Iran War commenced no…
Mr. Farrell, A truly great post. What is the one perfect certainty, the one essential characteristic of any automated process,…
The biggest problem with Ai and for existing search engines is that they are USA centred. As we are now…
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Could this boast represent a serious problem? https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-theodore-roosevelt/ Trump baffles with bizarre claim he had a conversation with Teddy Roosevelt…