Anyone who has been following the sorry saga of inexplicable diseases and unusual mortality in BC’s wild salmon will not be surprised that the information in Twyla Roscovich’s documentary, Salmon Confidential, links the source of this trouble to the salmon farming industry. The surprise, however, is the impact of such
Continue readingAuthor: Ray Grigg
The Common Sense Canadian home page: The Bitumen Cliff
The so-called “bitumen bubble”, the hollowing out of Alberta’s oil prices, has left the seemingly wealthy province with a staggering budget deficit of billions. With an economy now mostly dependent on the value of its bitumen, the province is vulnerable to price fluctuations determined by international market forces. Now, with
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: BC’s Fossil Fuel Folly
People who are concerned about global climate change are watching the steep rise of global carbon dioxide emissions. While a few nations have been heroic in their efforts to cut these emissions, international efforts have been eminently unsuccessful. So BC’s strategy to export energy — massive amounts of LNG, increasing
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Harper Government Takes Muzzling Scientists to New Extreme
The strictures on what scientists can publicly say or publish, put in place by the Prime Minister’s office, have been tightening in recent years. In 2011 scientists protested and collectively complained that they could not speak openly to Canadians about their research and findings without receiving prior approval from the
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Cautious Optimism: World Leaders Ready to Tackle Climate Change?
The world’s largest and most influential political and economic forces are showing signs that they might be ready to actively combat climate change. Presently the signs are only words. But the words are unequivocal and dramatic enough to be interpreted as a prelude to eventual concrete action at a global
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: History’s Repeating Patterns: Ronald Wright on ‘Progress’, Collapse
Why do civilizations tend to “collapse” soon after reaching their peak? Because they continue to expand until they overreach the maximum exploitation of resources that their environment can tolerate. Then nature forecloses in its own inimitable way. Ronald Wright, award-winning author of A Short History of Progress, thinks we are
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Wild Forests
Real forests are wild. The forests of human contrivance are tree farms, plantations, monocultures, timber supply areas. Such clusters of trees may superficially appear to be real forests, but they are less complex, less organic, less living and therefore less enduring. And they were handicapped by their beginning. Instead of
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Bearing Witness: From Vesuvius to Climate Change
Pliny the Elder and his nephew Pliny the Younger both bared witness to the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24th, 79 CE. Their writings on the subject are now a part of history, a personal and vivid account of a tragedy they both witnessed and recorded with the
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Of Frogs and Fishes: Farms Spawn Lethal Diseases
Ray Grigg discusses the parallels between a deadly fungus wiping our the world’s frogs and lethal salmon viruses – both incubated in industrial farming operations. “Somewhere in a frog farm, two related species of this Batrachochytrium dentrobatidis (Bd) fungus combined to form a new and lethal variant. It was then
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Idling Harper: Why First Nations Movement Poses Genuine Threat to PM
Ray Grigg discusses revealing insights from a former senior Harper advisor into the way the PM thinks – and how the Idle No More movement, which sprang up in reaction to Harper’s policies, will prove challenging for him to deal with. “The Idle No More movement is so diverse and
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Salmon Recipes
The Salmon Recipes: Stories of Our Endangered North Coast Cuisine is not only visually exciting but it exudes an intense and compelling power that is conveyed in an instant, before one word is read. A quick glance through the book reveals brilliant images of salmon steaks, boiled crabs and steamy
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: 10 Ways to See Earth’s Temperature Rising
Ray Grigg provides some key facts and figures which chart the planet’s growing fever in recent years. “The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in October, 2012, that the previous month had been the warmest September on record, tying the 2005 title. Using temperature records that stretch all the
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Business of a Cortes Forest
Ray Grigg on the logging of Cortes Island’s old growth forests. “These are the business forces allied against Cortes and the people of Wildstands Alliance who are trying to mitigate the impact of logging in one of their island’s rare and cherished forests — a forest now ‘owned’ and ‘managed’
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Climate Change a Failure of Political Will
Politicians who almost universally claim to be so well-informed that they can run countries, cannot also claim to be so ill-informed that they do not appreciate the gravity of the unfolding environmental crisis threatening the safety, security and economy of every nation on the planet. This is a contradiction that
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Sinking Cities: A Future with Rising Oceans
New York may be the environmental story of the year, not because of the 80 fatalities and the $50 billion in damages caused by so-called Superstorm Sandy, but because the city’s misfortune has triggered a dawning awareness. In Norfolk, Virginia, where areas of the city of 250,000 now regularly flood
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Spirit of Giving
The deeper meaning of giving is easily hidden in the hectic festive celebrations and frenzied gift buying that have become the habit of the Christmas season. Indeed, giving’s essential function usually gets lost in the glitz and glitter of lights and commercialization that tries to brighten the darkest and coldest
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Fracking Mess
The relatively new technique of “hydraulic fracturing”, a process of drilling horizontally in shale beds and then breaking the rock by injecting a concoction of water, sand and toxic chemicals under extreme pressure, is releasing huge quantities of oil and natural gas. In addition to polluting a subterranean frontier, the
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Surrender of an Ecowarrior
When does heroism become folly? When does struggle become futile? When does surrender become liberation? When is enough, enough? Then what? These are just some of the questions that come streaming into focus from a poignant personal essay by Lynn Lau, a 37 year-old environmentalist who, after 21 years of
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Ecology of Money
According to Professor Michael Hudson, an economist and finance expert profiled in the documentary “Surviving Progress”, “Every society for the last 4,000 years has found that its debt grows more rapidly than people can pay.” This burden of ever-in…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: ‘Apocaholics’: A New Word for New Times
For people who like words, “apocaholics” is a new and ingenious one. It instantly conveys the impression that those with a dystopian view of the future have a neurotic compulsion that is unhealthy and unfounded. The word is instantly dismissive and…
Continue reading