A couple of election promises caught my attention. Perhaps these define different priorities established by politicians who aim to lead Canada’s federal government. Maybe some of it is just useless theatre…
Priorities
Theatre of the absurd
Who runs the Capital Regional District? Only 24 Board members. All politicians! Perfect! What could possibly go wrong?
Forced to pay for our own destruction
Today, there is no uncertainty about the importance of preserving waters that have sustained inhabitants for millennia. However, profits are still prioritized above all else…
A Damien Gillis event worth our attention
In the early days of IN-SIGHTS, I was influenced by the late Rafe Mair and his Common Sense Canadian partner Damien Gillis. November 16, a film directed by Mr. Gillis is featured at the Rio Theatre as part of Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival (VIMFF).
Recent readings
About poetry and essays from the November 2024 issue of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. The publication is useful for people at all levels of learning. Occasionally, it can make us smile.
Capturing fog
Not everything is doom and gloom at IN-SIGHTS. A story from The New Yorker’s Brave New World Department is about Pavels Hedström, a Swedish architect based in Denmark. In architecture school, Hedström was drawn to Japanese principles of design and how they applied to a world—and a profession—increasingly troubled by the climate crisis. Hedström believes that design often separates people from nature. His Fog-X is a design that aims to strengthen the human connection to nature by offering help to communities affected by the scarcity of safe drinking water…
The question is…
More than a few people enter politics with a hope of exercising power or advancing their careers. For some, the choice is an economic one. They expect rewards by way of salaries, allowances, expense accounts and pensions. However, some politicians see wrongs and want to make them right. BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is one of those…
BC NDP sanctioned destruction
Vancouver author and environmental journalist Arno Kopecky talks about the threat to Howe Sound from LNG operations.
The amazing natural world
This video is from National Geographic’s new docuseries Queens. It shows an encounter between a 60-year-old female orca whale and a great white shark. The first three episodes of the seven-part docuseries are available to stream on Disney+.
Inadequate penalties are licenses to pollute
Glacier Media’s climate and environmental reporter Stefan Labbé has a disturbing report about heavy metals and other pollutants in waters moving from Canadian coal mines to the USA. The item is headlined B.C. coal mines linked to record-breaking toxin spike in U.S. waters…
323 years into a 246 year cycle
Earlier this year the TMX budget stood at $31 billion, but public officials recently admitted to further delays that will inevitably result in expenditure of additional billions. But wasting money may be the least of the problems affecting Trans Mountain pipeline. It has now been 323 years since the last really big earthquake hit the coast of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon,and northern California…
Thermal coal exports – BC’s dirty secret
Hollow promises by politicians are worthless. Thermal coal continues to be exported from British Columbia and capacity to handle this dirty fossil fuel has been significantly increased. The vast majority of coal reserves must stay in the ground.
Record setting wildfire burns – updated
As of July 30, BC Wildfire Service is calling 2023 the worst year for land damaged by fire. In fact, with months to go in fire season, 15 percent more land has burned than in 2018, the second worst year BC has recorded. Three hundred and fifty-seven wildfires are burning on July 30, 188 of them out-of-control.
Shareholder value built on destruction
A whistle blows and another train rumbles through White Rock, headed toward the Roberts Bank coal export dock. This one is carrying thermal coal from Montana, bound for a massive power plant, perhaps in Korea. As the train rolls through Delta, black clouds of coal dust billow from the open rail cars, irritating asthmatics and coating farmers’ crops. . .
Dangerous actors — corporate and political
Progressive punishment is not enough to regulate behaviour when an offender has extraordinary wealth. To a corporation like Teck Resources Ltd. — market capitalization $29 billion — inconsequential fines are minor costs of doing business. A $1 million penalty imposed on Teck corresponds to a fine of $11 levied on a household holding Canada’s median net worth, reported at $329,900 by Statistics Canada in 2019.
Protect nature, or face human extinction
It seems like a no-brainer that in protecting nature, we are protecting ourselves and working to ensure human survival. Yet the ruling classes believe they can insulate themselves from consequences of environmental destruction and ruling politicians are unwilling to slow or end the pursuit of wealth. So far, powerful forces refuse to acknowledge seriously the existential risks facing our physical world.
Things that make u go HMMM!
The BC Government promised transformative change to Indigenous people. What First Nations are getting is transformative change to traditional territories altered for hydropower, coal, oil and gas.
Corporate pollution and destruction licensed by government
In May 2016, British Columbia’s Auditor General Carol Bellringer released An Audit of Compliance and Enforcement of the Mining Sector. It was a scathing but underreported report quickly forgotten by mainstream media.
Fossil fuel dangers are even worse than we knew
Consumption of fossil fuels may be even more dangerous to humans than COVID-19. According to researchers from Harvard and three British universities, over eight million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution. They estimate exposures to particulate matter from fossil fuel emissions accounted for 18 percent of total global deaths, which is almost one out of five…
Good choices – bad choices
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,
in-sights.ca 
Blair Fix at _Economics from the Top Down_ also wrote two very good papers on the converion of housing into…