Dave Borlace opened a YouTube channel in 2018 to review the science behind climate debates and discover what is being done to avoid catastrophe. In the first minute of his first video, Borlace declared he was not a scientist and not a client expert, just a person wanting to learn and share information. Perhaps Borlace’s strength in sharing knowledge about climate and energy is that he is not a scientist. Nor is he a spin doctor paid to advance financial interests of paying clients…
Climate change and climate change denial
Climate change is no longer deniable: it’s happening, is human caused, and is potentially catastrophic. But denial is still a huge factor that keeps us from doing what we must, for future generations, for the natural world and all the species with which we share creation…
Zoning and Official Community Plans, worthwhile until they’re not
Home buyers make property choices based on municipal zoning and Official Community Plans. Provincially mandated OCPs are “a statement of objectives and policies that guide decisions on municipal and regional district planning and land use management.” However, large-scale land developers see OCPs as minor impediments easily overcome by effective lobbying…
Obeisance to privilege
Instead of $60 million, Teck Resources should be paying a fine closer to $1 billion. What Teck has been penalized won’t make a dent in their cash resources. Nor does it resolve the fresh water issues.
Now for something completely different
Of course, these photographs represent something more to me than a 13 year-old’s regard for the beauty of our world. It represents the hope that the next generation will protect it…
More destruction of prime farmland
Today, a message from Cedar Isle Farm near Agassis BC landed by email, telling about another effort by real estate developers and their allies in municipal government. The aim is destroy yet more prime farmland. This one is a monster that seems immortal. Locals have thought it dead numerous times in the past 20 years, but it has risen repeatedly…
Denying the existential threat
Much of climate change denial is driven by money. The world’s ten largest fossil fuel companies are collectively worth trillions and their managers are not going away quietly. For years, they have invested heavily in assets that influence public opinion. These involve squads of online trolls and influencers paid to spread gospels of climate change denial. Acquiring control of corporate media output was another strategy. So-called think tanks conducted widespread skirmishes, including use of Fraser-Institute-style “learning resources” foisted on naive members of media and places of education, including students and faculty. Academics and scientists who don’t care about science have opportunities to pocket more than spare change…
Canada – TrumpLand north?
July 30, Stephen Colbert interviewed Jacob Soboroff and Katy Tur, presenters of American Swamp, a four-part docuseries on MSNBC about government corruption. They talk about politics in the USA but Canadians ought not to feel superior or complacent because our governments are constructed of the same timber.
“Because, if they do do something, they run the risk of angering a special interest or a big donor and those special interests or donors will spend money on getting them out of office. So, they sit there and twiddle their thumbs.”
Dangerous acts of self deception
Optimists assert that the benefits from technological innovation will be able to outpace the negative effects of climate change. This view of climate change may be a dangerous act of self deception…
Paying $185,000 for each job
BC’s fossil fuel industry benefited from credits worth $902 million in fiscal year 2018 and $4.2 billion in the past five years. Each of the jobs in oil and gas extraction cost BC taxpayers $185,000. A similar amount spent on reducing dependence on fossil fuels would have been more effective in creating jobs and protecting the environment.
Climate change: money today vs survival tomorrow
Even if evidence of global warming was not overwhelming, the precautionary principle dictates a radical change in the way we conduct ourselves. Yet, our governments, banks that fear stranded assets, the fossil fuel industry and their many agents, deny the science.
No free lunch
The proliferation of plug-in stations breeds a mindset that electric vehicles are completely “green” …and they aren’t using “horsepower”. Though the overall impact of all electric vehicles is calculated to be less… it is only slightly less.
Premier Horgan, where were you on Mount Polley?
Compare the passage of 4 years without a charge against Mount Polley operators to the quick response when a rude 19-year-old released an adult-sized blow-up doll over West Vancouver’s Ambleside beach. He was arrested within two weeks and faces a charge of mischief under Canada’s Criminal Code.
Canada’s plan: do the opposite of what is promised
Delegates from 195 countries met in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a plan to address climate change and “take on a new leadership role internationally.”
BC’s failing grade in climate change
In a report issued today, Auditor General Carol Bellringer says the BC government is not adequately managing risks posed by climate change.
When regulators don’t believe in regulation
When a new government takes office, there is often a significant change at senior levels of the civil service and among OIC political appointments. One person still employed by the Horgan government may surprise more than a few people.
On the monorail to oblivion
Were David Black and Christy Clark serious about the Kitimat refinery? During the mid-1960s, American entrepreneur John Shaheen, owner of Shaheen Natural Resources Company and various other petrochemical businesses, arranged to construct an oil refinery at Come By Chance, then an east coast hamlet. The plan was ill-fated and resulted in one of the single largest bankruptcies in Canadian history to that date. It also greatly added to NL’s mounting public debt.
No effective way of managing private power thieves
The decision to proceed on any run-of-river project should be made after the most stringent environmental assessments and cumulative impact studies that are possible, as well as an assessment of where there may be lower environmental footprint alternatives for producing power. All of the most stringent environmental assessment and forest practice standards that exist should be applied to any clearing of forested land connected with any activity, including run-of-river power projects.
AG: “Business as usual cannot continue”
Regarding: Ministry of Environment (MoE), Mary Polak, Minister Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), Bill Bennett, Minister Excerpts from AN AUDIT OF COMPLIANCE AND ENFORCEMENT OF THE MINING SECTOR, May 2016, by […]
Who does the Government of BC serve? UPDATED
The material below was published June 21, 2014. Since this was written the proponents sold to an Alberta company that is financed by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, not exactly the mom […]
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