Erik BJORGAN for Parliament

“Redirecting Progress”

The rapid pace of climate change is forcing governments around the world to take action. Professor Kenneth Carlaw of UBC Okanagan is helping them formulate plans to mitigate the worst calamities of food shortage, drought, inundation, migration, pandemics.

“Those of us working on the ‘Climate Justice Project’ believe the preponderance of climate science, which demonstrates that today’s rapid change in climate is fueled by our unprecedented emission of post industrial greenhouse gases. The majority of GHG results from burning fossil fuels. That means we must de-carbonize future industrial production & consumer consumption”, professor Carlaw told an audience in Armstrong attending a Public Forum, Sunday, on ‘The Economy & Towns in Transition’. Read the rest of this entry »

Retired Green Party Candidate, Huguette Allen, excited a crowd of 40 people on the weekend when she declared that “Green Party policies are relevant to the coming decade”.

Speaking to the Annual General Meeting of the party at the Odd Fellows’ Hall in Armstrong, Ms. Allen noted that Green policies flow from a family first perspective. “If governments were to consider as a priority what will be good for our children’s children and their children, problems with pollution, climate change, raw material export, etc would not arise. Policies would shift to methods of food & goods production that are meaningful to individuals, kind to the environment & sustainable for generations. That is why we are Green”, she said. “Green solutions are relevant to the long term health of the planet, of people & families. Greens care about our children’s future. Greens get it”.

Following a mostly 100 mile, organic pot luck supper, the meeting adjourned to a Public Forum on the “The Economy and Towns in Transition”. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Green-energy’ project to burn railway ties stymied by Kamloops protesters

With financial backing of Canadian government and U.S. Department of Energy, businessman was feeling pretty optimistic.

Robert Matas
Globe and Mail

Manitoba businessman Kim Sigurdson was thrilled when Canadian Pacific Railway signed a contract to provide millions of old railway ties to his company for an innovative green project that would convert biomass into energy, heat and employment.

With the financial backing of the Canadian government and the U.S. Department of Energy, he was feeling pretty optimistic about the future of his company, Aboriginal Cogeneration Corporation. He obtained a permit from the B.C. Environment Ministry to move ahead with the project in Kamloops. It was exactly the kind of green business that the British Columbia government is trying to encourage.

But then the critics began to speak out, turning his first attempt to
develop a site for the project into an abysmal failure.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/green-energy-project-to-burn-railway-ties-stymied-by-kamloops-protesters/article1511364

If anyone needed more proof that both Harper and Campbell have similar agenda, they got it this week with the provincial budget and the speech from the throne. What we see in both are accelerated attacks on the environment couched in terms such as “modernizing the regulatory system”.

Both governments fail to address the triple deficit we have: fiscal, ecological and democratic. One wonders what kind of world such men think they are creating for the children. What do they know that we don’t know? Could it be they don’t understand that technology will NOT save us? that humans cannot live on this earth once we will have destroyed all we evolved from?

We’re already seeing many places in the world where you can’t breathe the air and can’t drink the water, yet it seems both these “leaders” are intent on copying the practices that lead to that destruction. Here are budgetary concerns expressed by the Green Party:

• By 2015, CIDA funding will see significant cuts in expected funding of nearly $2 billion.
• No revival of the ecoEnergy Technology Initiative.  Renewables will receive Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance benefits. The 2010 budget augments this only very slightly.
• AECL still gets $300 million in new funding despite its failure to operate Chalk River for secure supply of radio-isotopes.
• No news on pension reform.
• No commitment to Own the Podium.  $22 million/year confirmed for high performance athletics, but it will be left to a later day to announce the program.
• The optimistic assumptions of revenue growth from corporate taxes of nearly 40% over 5 years, with corporate tax rates going down, underpin the climb out of deficit.  These assumptions are questionable.

for more details on the speech from the throne see : http://greenparty.ca/media-release/2010-03-04/harper-budget-delivers-job-killing-tax-fails-confront-canada-s-triple-defic

Ottawa – The Harper government is escalating its attack on democracy with the deals announced today on Buy American and Canada signing up the provinces to the WTO procurement agreement. More than 25 organizations are meeting today in Ottawa to launch efforts to counter this and other trade deals whose aim is to destroy local democratic control over public spending. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientist didn’t fake data, report says

Mike De Souza
Canwest News Service

An academic inquiry into the so-called “climategate” e-mail scandal has concluded that a well-known U.S. scientist did not directly or indirectly falsify data in his research.

Report:
http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/Findings_Mann_Inquiry.pdf

The review, by a panel of senior administrators at Pennsylvania State University, found no evidence that climatologist Michael Mann had manipulated research that indicates humans are causing global warming.

However, the panel has recommended further review on questions about whether his conduct had undermined public confidence in his findings as a scientist.

http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=b940becf-3434-4391-9f80-ec3a19485b4f