Archive for Scaremongering

The NDP have now grown up into a mainstream, increasingly centrist party nickel-and-diming the poor for their vote and misleading on the environment.  I’m deeply disturbed by their success in Toronto-Danforth.

Over a week has passed since the night while I watched in horror as the Harper government got its majority coupled with the relatively minor shock of seeing the Green vote collapse in Toronto-Danforth despite the widely acknowledged strongest campaign we have ever had.

Nationally I am most concerned about a majority government which clearly caters to oil industry priorities.  In Toronto-Danforth specifically, I’m concerned about the success the NDP has had with convincing voters with timid and contradictory policies that will do little for climate change and will hurt the constituents the party has professed to care about in the past.  I ran a campaign promoting the positive aspects of the Green plan without challenging the obvious defects of NDP policies.  But it’s clear to me now that these need to be made explicit.

I had never expected to win in the NDP leader’s riding this time around, but I did hope for a strong Green vote to pressure Jack Layton and the NDP to improve their climate change policies and address some of the priorities of Green voters.  That didn’t happen, so I need people who care about the Green Party, the thousands who told me that they were considering voting Green, to help put the pressure on the NDP to get it right.

It’s time to stop mincing words.  The stakes are simply far too high.     Read more »

Further to a discussion with someone who was convinced that hydraulic fracturing for shale gas was perfectly safe (see comments here), there is now a peer-reviewed study linking the practice with methane in the drinking water supply nearby.

International Energy Agency Chief Fatih Birol has stated that the IEA now believes that global crude oil production peaked in 2006.  It’s all downhill from now.  We can expect the kinds of supply discontinuities and price rises that led up to the 2008 economic downturn with regularity from now on.

So what is the US response?  Shoot the messenger.  They have cut funding to their own national energy agency and specifically ordered that agency not to prepare data on oil and gas reserves.  Keep us in the dark, that’s the ticket.  I expect the Harper government to follow suit shortly.     Read more »

I’m a worrier. For most of my life, I’ve fretted over my children like many mothers do. Their health, their grades, their social development. The last few years I’ve been worried at a whole new level. When I was a young woman, analysts predicted a clean future powered by the sun and wind. They pointed out the urgency of starting this great transformation because a few decades later it would be too late. For multiple reasons including climate change, the imminent decline of oil and the stress on vulnerable but critical water and other resources, delay would bring on miserable results. That was a now a few decades ago. We are more dependent than ever on oil, our emissions keep rising, water tables are declining all over the world and food stresses are leading to riots in countries all over the world. Governments in North Africa are tumbling to populations that demand to be fed.

I remain hopeful that by investing in a green economy, we may still turn things around in time and deliver a future not too unlike the present for our children. That is what I’m working for, that is what I want to see – a Canada much like the Canada we all know, but moving boldly into a transitional economy from which we will emerge into a more permanent economy that’s more efficient and respectful of our limits.     Read more »

I’ve just been alerted to an article by Gwynne Dyer, who anticipates increasing food riots globally.  We may be sheltered from actual rioting in Canada for a while, though we won’t be spared the rising prices.  And of course, the global destabilization involved will have inevitable impacts on Canada long before we face actual shortages here.