The best four minutes you can spend today.
Norm Farrell
Gwen and I raised three adult children in North Vancouver. Each lives in our community with seven grandchildren, 12 years and younger. I have worked in accounting and financial management and publish IN-SIGHTS.CA with news and commentary about public issuesv.
Too soon M. Legault
Premier François Legault has started to prepare Quebecers mentally for the gradual lifting of the province’s lockdown…
More methane? Meh!
In British Columbia and other western provinces, we will soon be working to reshape the economy. Now is a perfect time to commit to reduced production of fossil fuels and move vigorously toward a clean energy economy. Instead of public relations campaigns, we need action. Real action.
Apparently Sweden’s answer is no
Sweden has refused to join the rest of us in a lockdown. How’s that working?
Hidden cost of fighting Covid-19
Numbers are imprecise but in normal times, 10 to 12 thousand patients are in BC Hospitals. Around 1,500 of those are discharged each day and replaced by new people needing treatment. If 75% of now vacant hospital beds were occupied and a pandemic surge occurred, the current number of empty beds would be restored within three days. Trends experienced elsewhere show there will not be a massive single day spike…
The Fierce Urgency of Now
The financial crisis is about more than money. It is also about morality, casting an uncomfortable light on the links between the activities of bankers and the wellbeing of society as a whole. The idea that economics is morally neutral or that finance should be above ethical scrutiny deserves to be challenged.
One Of These Things (Is Not Like The Others)
BC is doing quite well but that is at risk if people don’t follow directions of Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, or if an outbreak occurs at one of the large industrial camps kept open by irresponsible companies like BC Hydro and Teck Resources.
Resilience
BC Hydro, provider of social and corporate welfare
The $12 billion utility delivered more power to its BC residential and business consumers in calendar year 2005 than the now $38 billion utility delivered in 2019…
Our BC Hydro bills subsidize fossil fuel industries
You will find evidence at In-Sights proving government policies and subsidies have cut public revenue from petroleum and natural gas producers to a tiny fraction of what it once was. This despite substantial increases in natural gas production. But, gas producers have hands in our pockets in less obvious ways…
Clark formed the policy; Horgan accelerated it
Petroleum and natural gas rights sale results reflect policies of a government dedicated to increasing fossil fuel production. To do that, they are giving away the public share of these natural resources. Christy Clark formed the policy; John Horgan accelerated it.
Vulnerable societies
Compounding the economic risk factors that are manifesting is a widespread domestic discontent with current economic systems, perceived to be rigged and unfair. Concern about inequality underlies recent social unrest on almost every continent…
Fighting climate change with slash and burn
Right now they’re destroying two amazing landmarks on the river, tall rock pillars called “The Gates” in an attempt to cut a channel of the river off and use the rock for their mad earthworks. We hear that even locals who support the dam are becoming restive when they see the profligate throwing around of money and environmental destruction…
Death spiral
Unless major changes occur at BC’s public utility—something the Horgan Government seems determined to avoid—the 60-year-old company’s death spiral will advance.
BC Hydro's long-standing culture of deception
Serious storm clouds lie ahead. The only customers that create positive cash flow for BC Hydro are the residential, light industrial and commercial consumers. Political commitments have been made to sell power to heavy industry, including oil and gas operators, at a fraction of the average price BC Hydro is paying to buy electricity. That means individuals and small business operators will be paying ever increasing electricity prices because someone has to pay for corporate incompetence and it won’t be managers or customers with political influence…
Radioactive
We already knew the oil and gas business was poisoning land and water and polluting the atmosphere. Most people, including workers in the northeast gas fields, are probably unaware that people are being exposed to radioactivity as well.
Unmeasured GHG emissions ignored
One of the pre-election promises made quietly by the BC NDP to me and other concerned citizens was to apply best scientific practices in regulating British Columbia’s northeast gas fields. In another post-election policy reversal, John Horgan’s NDP government decided the only action needed was a little green washing…
Perverse leadership in ‘immunity via collective failure’ globally.
Effective mitigation now must mean a regulated managed decline of fossil fuel production in Canada and globally. No new infrastructure; no new production facilities – oilsands or LNG; a Green New Deal style plan to build renewables and help fossil fuel producing regions transition. Nothing less…
Next generation wind energy
Those of us who opposed construction of the Site C dam—including the BC NDP until May 2017—argued that rapid advances in alternative energy systems meant flooding the Peace River valley was inappropriate and unnecessary. That was true in 2017 and remains true today…
Canada's shame
Lost in the fuss as governments of British Columbia and Canada act to expropriate rights and lands of the Wet’suwet’en people is a sad situation that already gave proof to what should be Canada’s greatest shame…
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