There is a reason that we who want to save our environment are losing the war and may lose it outright unless we gird up our loins and fight to the death, politically speaking. The reason is simple: no government set in authority over us will appl…
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The Common Sense Canadian home page: Shades of Green: Mechanisms for Making Mistakes
The strange behaviour of the sub-atomic world caused a few physicists to worry that we might be able to invent a particle collider powerful enough to generate a black hole of sufficient mass that it would drag our entire Earth over its “event horizon”,…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Boo Hoo for Big Oil: Tar Sands Promoters Lament Tough Opposition
There’s nothing quite so pathetic as the richest industry in history feeling sorry for itself – and there’s been a lot of that going on lately. Under the strain of coordinated opposition to the expansion of Alberta’s Tar Sands on multiple fronts, Big O…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Simply No Need for Deltaport Terminal #2
Oh No! The port propaganda machine is back and here we go again with a barrage of falsehoods. Consultants are being paid megabucks to convince us that another expansion is needed at Deltaport, Roberts Bank, involving a new terminal with 3 n…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: No Need for Another Terminal at Deltaport
Oh No! The port propaganda machine is back and here we go again with a barrage of falsehoods. Consultants are being paid megabucks to convince us that another expansion is needed at Deltaport, Roberts Bank, involving a new terminal with 3 n…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Audio: Damien Talks Delta Foreign Trade Zone on SFU Radio
Get MP3 (24 MB)Damien Gillis and CJSF’s Latin Waves host Sylvia Richardson discuss the master plan to industrialize Delta – home to vital salmon, orca and bird habitat, and the best farmland in the country. Damien connects the dots between a proposed…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Shades of Green: The Meaning of That Laughter
Moral Ground is a book of environmental essays that contains a chillingly poignant one by Derrick Jensen, “You Choose”, in which he has asked people a simple and fundamental question. “Do you believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transform…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Video: Site C Would Destroy Prime Farmland, Fuel Fracking & Tar Sands
At a recent event in Vancouver, biologist and Peace Valley Environment
Association representative Diane Culling discussed the enormous
consequences of the proposed Site C Dam – including the flooding of
prime farmland at a time when the province …
The Common Sense Canadian home page: Why De-Growth? Rex Weyler Answers Key Questions
“GDP, the so-called measure of economic growth, does not separate costs from benefits.”-Herman Daly, World Bank Economist, author of “Steady State Economics.”In 2008, economists and scientists met in Paris to discuss “Economic Degrowth for Ec…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: NDP MP Fin Donnelly Reintroduces Bills on Salmon & Oil Tankers
This week in Ottawa, NDP MP for New Westminster-Coquitlam-Port Moody Fin Donnelly reintroduced two private members bills he authored last year. The first calls for a legislated ban on oil supertanker traffic on BC’s North and Central Coast. The second,…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Video: Joe Foy on Why We Don’t Need Site C Dam
At a recent event in Vancouver, the Wilderness Committee’s Joe Foy picked apart the BC Liberal Government’s faulty case for Site C Dam – discussing better alternatives to power our future needs and the enormous cost of a dam whose real purpose is to su…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Shades of Green: The Ecology of Wealth
If a healthy biological ecology provides for the well-being of its plants and animals, then a healthy human ecology should provide for the well-being of its constituent members. But human societies are not inclined to be healthy. And a major problem is…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Coleman, Palmer on Hydro: Ignoring the $50 Billion Elephant in Room
This will be harsh, I warn you. In preparation I urge you to read Dr. Marvin Shaffer’s (SFU) article in the Vancouver Sun last Monday. My position today is that the Vancouver Sun’s lead columnist, whom I once greatly admired, Vaughn Palmer, ha…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Hansen, Palmer on Hydro: Ignoring the $50 Billion Elephant in the Room
This will be harsh, I warn you. In preparation I urge you to read Dr. Marvin Shaffer’s (SFU) article in the Vancouver Sun last Monday. My position today is that the Vancouver Sun’s lead columnist, whom I once greatly admired, Vaughn Palmer, ha…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Audio: Clark vs. Campbell Liberals on Environment
Get MP3 (53 MB)Listen to Damien Gillis’ June 8 appearance on CHLY Nanaimo’s “Sense of Justice”. Damien and host Rae Kornberger discuss the Christy Clark Liberals and how the NDP needs to man up and earn the public’s confidence.”We’re the suckers that…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Mission and Abbotsford’s Public-Private Water War
The proposal to privatize the water services in my community seemed to hit us from behind – it was negotiated for over a year in secret and sprung on us without warning. This $300 million project, that would inevitably give control of our water to a fo…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Rafe on Being Old, Fixed Elections and Christy Clark’s Mandate
I received an email recently saying I was too old and should begone – not his precise words but that was the gist of what he said. And I suppose that requires an answer. I am old and will be 80 on New Years Eve; there it is – make of it what y…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Raven Coal Mine Hearings Draw Huge Public Opposition
The controversial proposal for an a coal mine in Vancouver Island’s Baynes Sound – home to a thriving shellfish industry – saw large crowds turn out to voice their opposition at three separate public meetings last week. The joint federal and provincial…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Shades of Green: Extreme Weather – Floods, Fires, Storms and Droughts
The realization that we might be partly responsible for the recent spate of destructive weather is difficult to accept because it requires us to change the image of ourselves from innocent victim to guilty perpetrator. And, given the psychology of deni…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Need for Civil Disobedience Throughout History…and in BC Today
I favour civil disobedience if it’s done responsibly and for good reasons. Civil disobedience was practiced by Jesus; more recently Henry David Thoreau, the 19th Century American philosopher, is seen as father of the modern art of flouting autho…
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