delores's blog

http://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/Haida_Laas/PDF/Journals/Smallpox_Journal.72.pdf

The Haida are on their way to healing, but are we the “settlers” ready to grapple with the cruelty of our society? Tried to live on welfare lately? Need some nursing care? Homeless? Hungry? The cruelty, the stupidy, the short-sighted avarice, the bureaucratic bungling and the arrogance of those in petty power continues unabatted.

Watershed Sentinel, June July 2009

Whether it comes from disastrous climate change or from fossil fuel energy so expensive that it can no longer drive this profligate civilization, the end of the cheap energy party is indeed near, within a decade or at most two. For 900 million humans on our planet who are hungry now, for the species being snuffed out at lightning speed, the end is now.

Yet we continue to fiddle: with carbon taxes, with corrupt market mechanisms to control emissions, with bombast, delusion, ego, and more ego, and ponzi schemes. We will desperately try anything at all, from nuclear roulette to elaborate constructions to the latest high tech gimmick, to keep business as usual functioning for one more fling. We lie.

What we need is emergency measures from governments as in full wartime action. We need to re-design our supply systems – water, food, transportation, information – to function in a world without oil, a world with less coal, a world of hard physical work, a world like our grandparents knew. We need to start now.

For both climate and supply reasons, BC needs to leave its coal in the ground, and save its natural gas for urgent uses in the public interest. The sacrifice of the Commons to individual greed must end.

And still the party goes on, with extravagance and circuses, a medieval debauch, right up to closing time.

Comox BC, May 2009

Yes, it is. Here is where we win or lose the only source of genuine "free speech" remaining to us except the old-fashioned soapbox.

Do we want the internet segregated into first class speedy sites and those which cannot pay for fast downloads? Is this wonderful invention going to go the way to TV? Read about it here on one of our favourite sites, rabble.ca and find out what you can do about it.  

Fossil Fuels

BC Coal Exports: 59 MT CO2
BC Gas Exports: 61 MT CO2
Total = 120 MT CO2 a year. (Figures from Guy Dauncey)

In 2005, B.C. emitted 65.9 million tonnes (MT) of greenhouse gas emissions measured in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e)
http://www.livesmartbc.ca/learn/emissions.html

BC's fractious and unreliable environmental leaders have outdone themselves during this provinical election. High flying media darlings like David Suzuki and Tzeporah Berman politically chastised the NDP for its opposition to the BC Liberal "carbon tax," while ignoring other huge negatives in the government's greenhouse gas balance, such as subsidies for oil and gas, coal exports and highway expansions, to name a couple that any enviro worth their granola should be able to pick out in a dark room. Then strategic dark horse Will Horter of the Dogwood Initiative, in his role as Chair of the Conservation Voters of BC, released an Anybody But Carole volley that really set the cat among the pigeons, and speculation flying about Horter's real motivations, such as support for a certain handsome mayor of Vancouver.

But then, sanity returned, and the Dogwood folks hosted two articles on the much vaunted world-saving carbon tax. Cliff Stainsby posted a guest piece, an article calling for a ban on carbon emissions, "cap and dividend" and Horter himself, bold-facedly dissing the "partisan bickering" which he himself had fuelled, blogged that Stainsby had convinced him that neither cap and trade nor carbon tax could work.  

I see Los Angeles county has a launched a new "solar mapping" website, www.lacounty.solarmap.org, that lets residents and business owners determine whether their properties would benefit from solar power. Now that seems to me to be the kind of renewable energy California needs, not electricity generated from trashed wilderness watersheds a thousand miles to the north.

Surely the most appropriate renewable energy for a region is the renewable energy that can be generated IN the region, from that region's resources. In other words, a bio-regional energy strategy would use locally available resources for local energy needs. This is the same as what should be happening, but isn't, with fibre -- you can make paper products out of a wide range of fibres, and the paper industry should be decentralised so that each bio-region is making paper from the fibre available in that region, instead of shipping dead trees all over the world.

A delightful piece at culturechange.org by Bill Bunn raises the issue of humanity's pace in the world: "The entire scheme of nature, and the human’s place within it, is built around the understanding that humans use their legs to move. It’s a great unspoken assumption. The earth expects humans to walk."

He also gives some serious stats about the death toll on our highways - 50 million birds, serious impact on insects....something i have been wondering about for many years. It's the same old...all those little impacts add up, and the car just has to become a special event kind of tool. We'll all be so much better off for that. As for that "quality time" that so many people only get when they are alone in their cars, well, walking gives you lots of time to think and enjoy the scenery.

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=372&Itemid=1

Nowadays all the politicians, from Obama, to Harper, to Campbell, talk so easy about billions or trillions of dollars for this or that..

To understand the magnitude of a billion and a trillion, lets put them in time terms:

By the Numbers:

One billion figure is 1,000,000,000 ( nine zeroes)

One trillion figure is 1,000,000,000,000 ( twelve zeroes)

One billion minutes is about 1,902 years

One billion minutes ago Jesus was alive

One billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age

One trillion seconds equals to 32,000 years

One trillion minutes is about 1,901,369 years. It was the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch, Earth was covered with ice

One trillion hours ago our direct ancestors were rat-like nocturnal insectivores hiding in cozy daytime burrows from allosaurs and raptors. It was the Cretaceous period. Dinosaurs were at their most diverse. Africa and South America just separated, forming the Atlantic Ocean.

One trillion days ago there were no animals at all, but bacterial collectives had begun working together in communities that that would one day be called protozoa. It was the Archean geologic eon. There was virtually no oxygen in the atmosphere, the sun was 1/3 dimmer than it us now, and life consisted of non-nucleated single-celled organisms.

The recently published Post Carbon Institute Manifesto talks about both peak oil and climate change crises at the same time. They also talk about limits to growth. Then they present a Post-Carbon Transition, where they talk about green collar jobs, a New Economy, reducing consumerism, relocalization, food security, etc. They also talk about their role towards a transition to a post-growth, post-fossil fuel, climate-changed world will include research and communicating new development on energy, climate, food systems, land use, green building construction, biodiversity and ecological restoration, water, and more. They will also highlight green-leader cities, business, Transition Town initiatives and ecovillage developments, local energy coops, and more.

The key message they offer is:
"How is this different from what is already happening? Most if not all of the relevant information we are concerned with already exists, much of it on the Internet. There are magazines devoted to various aspects of the "alternatives" movement, and there are organizations doing good work in these areas. But what's lacking is a unified vision of both the challenges and solutions that sees all of these fields as interrelated."

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