After BC voters told Christy Clark to find a more suitable occupation, I planned to transition from blathering about politics to writing about travel and dining. I opened a site called Notable Discoveries and expected to let IN-SIGHTS go idle. That didn’t happen. COVID, inflation and health issues ensured that outside activities were limited. At the new website, I might have been writing about ways of poaching eggs on a hotplate…
In Canada, more than $100 billion is now being spent to expand fossil fuel production. Meanwhile, other nations are working to mitigate climate change and enable long-term human survival. For example, Airbus ordered new vessels to transport aircraft subassemblies across the Atlantic. The low-emission ships are powered by dual-fuel engines that can run on e-methanol produced from renewable sources. More importantly, propulsion is assisted by six Flettner rotors sails.
Today, charts about BC Hydro showing information that ought to alarm citizens of British Columbia. It will not of course, because corporate media does not bother to report meaningful data about the province’s largest crown corporation. Despite their continuous claims that demand was growing by 40 percent over 20 years, the company’s own sales records show that demand was slowly growing until 2005 and since then has been stable. But that fact did not prevent the utility from amping up their spending machine…
With disputes and condemnations over coverage of the mayhem in Gaza, it is worth considering the ethics of journalism. Whether or not generally accepted rules are followed by media is a subjective evaluation. But I believe there has been a general decline in ethical behaviour as ownership of mass communications has concentrated in the hands of financial elites…
Mark Jaccard, recently appointed Chair and CEO of the BC Utilities Commission, argued in 2017 for Site C, when BC could have stopped the project and saved about $15 billion. Jaccard said that supporters of other renewables did not account for dispatchability, which he claimed was a key obstacle to using alternatives. People expecting their pockets to bulge from the Site C megaproject told us that less destructive energy sources were unworkable in British Columbia. The world has proven them wrong…
People outside the United Kingdom should pay attention to opinion pieces by The Guardian’s Jane Martinson. The article that caught my attention today was ‘Why own a newspaper in 2023? Ask the very rich men trying to buy the Telegraph.’ This desire says a lot more about power than profit.
Canada a world leader? Sometimes that headline is good news. This time it is not…
The Economist, a 180-year-old newspaper published in Britain, has been tracking deaths from COVID-19. They examine fatalities reported by official sources, but also look for how many people have actually died because of the covid-19 pandemic. A lot depends on how “because” is defined…
Decarbonization is a catchword used by the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries. But those groups cannot eliminate inherent dangers. Unless we develop safe, carbon-free energy sources, we cannot sustain current standards of living. And, perhaps we cannot sustain human life in the long-term. But, as billions of public dollars pour into subsidies of dangerous energy sources, promising technologies seem to get minimal support from governments…
Since 1990, Canada’s emissions have decreased by a modest 3.1 tonnes per person. However, when we look at the distribution of emissions, we find that the bottom 90% reduced their emissions by almost 5 tonnes per person, while the top 1% increased their emissions by 34 tonnes per person.
I began following the Washington Post decades ago, when journalists often held the feet of powerful people to the fire. Today, that is unlikely since many media owners rank among the world’s wealthiest people. In general, they oppose changes to the status quo that do not provide personal benefits. That may partly explain why newspapers have about one-third the number of serious readers per capita than they had in the days of my parents…
In 2017, construction of Site C could have been halted without wasting more than $10 billion. But influential promoters of the megaproject — including Marc Jaccard, the newly appointed head of the “independent” regulator of BC Hydro — were misinforming citizens about the viability of alternatives…
A few in the BC Legislature, and the Official Opposition in Canada’s Parliament, want us to believe that carbon taxes must end to improve the country. They’re wrong, MP Alistair MacGregor has it right about carbon taxes making a major contribution to inflation, although the NDP MP misses an even more important point…
Economist Erik Andersen emails an informal newsletter offering opinions, sometimes about how organizations and individuals use political influence to extract wealth from the public. He gave an example that was bad by itself but set the stage for secret private power contracts worth more than $60 billion despite expansion of the BC Hydro’s own generating capacity and a decade and a half of flat demand by consumers…
In September, California issued a lawsuit charging numerous oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute for intentionally spreading misinformation and delaying action on climate. The lawsuit details behavior by companies to protect their business interests regardless of the damage caused. This is not the first such lawsuit, but may be the most important…
For years, BC Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon demanded “red tape” reductions. Under Premier Gordon Campbell, Falcon spent more than two and one-half years as Minister of State for Deregulation. His effort were joined by right-wing business interests such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business…
The following item was found on the internet. Unlikely any of it is true, but it is amusing…
More than $130 billion dollars has been or will be spent in British Columbia to increase consumption of oil and gas. NDP and BCUP politicians make empty promises about dealing with climate change, but at the same time welcome photo ops at large scale fossil fuel projects. Conservatives cling to unscientific ideas that climate change is either not real or not caused by human activities…
I began to distrust the province’s wildfire statistics after noticing the reported size of the Donnie Creek fire — the province’s largest ever — was not altered from mid-July to mid-September. Yet throughout this time, BC Wildfire Service stated that Donnie Creek was out of control. Now at the end of September, the fire is still uncontrolled and the government agency said it may burn until winter. Today, my distrust seems proven. On September 29, BC Wildfire Service added 533,409 hectares (5,334 square kilometres) to the total area burned in the province. That is 93 percent of the amount reported in the preceding four weeks and almost one-fifth of the total for 2023…
BC Hydro recently released its first quarter results for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The report covered three months in 2023: April, May and June. It is worth looking at the changes at British Columbia’s public utility since June 2007.
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If Mr Burns was born in America would he stay? US records new depopulation figures? https://www.wsj.com/us-news/americans-leaving-the-us-migration-a5795bfa In its 250th year,…