Category: Environment

A toxic cocktail of air pollutants

Having committed itself to promoting and subsidizing British Columbia’s fossil-fuel industry, David Eby’s government will not restrain a company planning to release substantially greater quantities of harmful air pollutants. Nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, fine particulate matter, and benzene will degrade local air quality, and these are associated with serious respiratory and cardiovascular risks.

The Age of Ensh*ttenment

Because satire ruffled a few powerful feathers, Australia passed legislation that could land people in jail if they falsely present themselves as representatives of government agencies. That did not stop Juice Media’s Giordano Nanni, Lucy Cahill, and colleagues from working to make influential figures uncomfortable. The Melbourne-based collective has amassed millions of views with videos that use satire to expose political hypocrisy, climate inaction, and corporate greenwashing…

Priorities

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…

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…

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…

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.