Denmark is thought of as the “wind technology capital of the world”. Indeed, it may be. But its thousands of huge turbines produce only 20 percent of its power. The rest comes from coal. Yes, coal, the fossil fuel that is 20 percent dirtier than oil and twice as polluting
Continue readingAuthor: Ray Grigg
The Common Sense Canadian home page: Reflections on the Maypole of Spring
something sacred pulses in the bodies of the dancing children as their ribbons wind and unwind around the Maypole, as their feet so playfully touch, leave and then return to the living soil. This is the contact that always was and always must be if we are to retain our
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Radicalizing Scientists
Dr. Mark Jaccard, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was arrested on railway tracks near Vancouver for blocking the arrival of a Burlington Northern train loaded with Wyoming coal
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Religion Factor in Canada’s Environmental Politics
Stephen Harper’s seemingly anti-environment and anti-science agenda has prompted Andrew Nikiforuk, a prominent Canadian journalist, to search for the root cause of this behaviour. In his quest for an explanation, Nikiforuk raised the sensitive religion issue in a recent opinion piece for TheTyee.ca – trying to explain why the leader
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Hunger Games and Other Dystopias
The Hunger Games have arrived, a storm of popularity that is selling millions of books and filling movie theatres. Suzanne Collins’ dystopian story is about North America in ruin after an unspecified cataclysm leaves the rich in absolute power and the poor as their slaves. The story has a credibility
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Change Blindness: Not Seeing the Obvious
The psychology underlying people’s behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious…For example, we seem to
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Ecocide: Crimes Against Nature and Humanity
On September 30, 2011, a mock trial by judge and jury at the University of Colchester in England found two oil executives of Canada’s tar sands guilty of ecocide. The jury deliberated a mere 50 minutes before reaching its unanimous verdict. During the trial, the evidence supported the contention that
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: For Whom the Bell Tolls: Disappearing Coral Reefs, Ocean Species
John Donne’s “for whom the bell tolls” has another relevance today that is more poignant, one encapsulated by a visitor to Hawaii who casually noted that the islands’ coral reefs are dying. Indeed, they are. And they are dying elsewhere, too: throughout the South Pacific, the Caribbean, the Gulf of
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Wealth and Ethics
For a glimpse into the strategy, psychology and ethics of the corporate world, read the Dilbert cartoons. A recent example from March 17, 2012 is particularly poignant. Dilbert and Alice are sitting at a board meeting while their boss is outlining the corporate response to proposed government legislation. “Our company
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Climate Change: Forcing and Feedback
Two principal dynamics are at work in the global warming process that is changing the planet’s climate. The first is “forcing”. This is the term climatologists use to describe the initial heating effect of the gases we emit into the atmosphere…As the temperature of the atmosphere rises from forcing, secondary
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Economics of Salmon Farms, Oil Pipelines and Natural Gas
Even without considering the environmental costs and risks of producing and transporting oil and gas, opening our markets to Asia and elsewhere is an unwise strategy for British Columbians and Canadians. The oil and gas industry should be jubilant at the prospects of pipelines and tankers. But everyone else in
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Decline of Climate Change Acceptance Scares Leading Scientists
Dr. Nina Federoff, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said at a recent gathering of the AAAS in Vancouver that she is “scared to death” about the public’s declining acceptance of global warming and the growing influence of well-funded skeptics who are spreading misinformation about climate
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Tipping Points: The Haunting Uncertainties
Tipping points are haunting uncertainties because they pertain to the unpredictable moment when the cumulative effects of environmental disturbance can trigger feedback loops of unstoppable change that can collapse entire ecosystems. They apply everywhere, from species loss and climate change to ocean acidification and food production. The best predictors are
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Northern Gateway: Pipeline to Problems
While Enbridge may assume responsibility for the safety of its pipeline – offered with the usual over-confidence of a developer promoting its project – it cannot claim responsibility for the fleet of international tankers that would arrive almost daily to transport the oil to foreign ports. Such tanker traffic is
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Globalization: The New Pangea
Globalization is, in effect, a return to Pangea. In the blink of a geological eye, all the barriers that once separated the continents into distinct ecologies are now being dismantled by the international movement of goods, species and people. Norway rats reached most of the world’s ports on sailing ships,
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Importance of Scientific Freedom
Science denied or science muzzled is a threat to entire political and economic systems, even to the viability of whole societies. Policies that don’t respect scientific processes and the weight of its information revert to a primitivism that is guided by the forces of impulse, power, personality and superstition. They
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Four Myths: Insights into Change
Everything that science can tell us about the environmental challenges unfolding around us must pass through layers of attitudes and values before we can identify or remedy them – “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it,” was Marshall McLuhan’s noted comment on this subject. Evidence alone will
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Willful Blindness and Sick Salmon – Lessons from Cohen Commission
The mystery of the disappearing wild salmon may be closer to being solved due to the reconvened Cohen Commission and the extraordinary three days of hearings held in December, 2011. As earlier testimony revealed, many environmental factors affect the survival of wild salmon but imported diseases from the aquaculture industry
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Salmon Politics and the Egg Trade
The source of the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv) now being found in BC’s wild salmon is almost certainly from imported Atlantic salmon eggs, the international trade that has provided coastal salmon farms with most of their stock. The salmon farming industry, of course, is still denying that ISAv is
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Salmon Virus Cover-up About Protecting Markets, Not Fish
The credibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has been compromised by its conflicting mandates of managing wild salmon and promoting salmon farming. Now we discover that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has its own conflicting mandates of suppressing pathogens while enhancing marketing opportunities for fish products. Consequently, when
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