The wrench in the gears that prevents meaningful international action on global change is the enormous wiggle room in the debate. This arises, in large part, because of the opportunity for the players to argue overall emissions versus per c…
Continue readingAuthor: The Mound of Sound
The Disaffected Lib: Ford Out
T.O. mayor Rob Ford has been given da boot.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: US Disappoints World on Emissions Cuts, So Does Everyone Else
Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to act on climate change is beginning to look like electoral hot air. Despite the urging of poor countries at Doha, the U.S. is holding to Obama’s old commitment of 17% emission cuts below 2005 levels by 2020 …
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Are Things Heating Up in the Himalayas?
For a while, India and China even claimed to have finally settled their dangerous border dispute. If they ever had a deal, it seems that deal is in doubt.The land in question is the northernmost Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Him…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Suicide on a Grand Scale
Prince Charles states the obvious. “Mankind is on the brink of ‘committing suicide on a grand scale’ unless rapid progress is made on green issues, the Prince of Wales warned today.”In very strong language, Prince Charles claimed the planet was do…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Two Near Misses in Two Days
Two shipping near misses off Kitimat in two days. Thursday the deep sea freighter, Tern Arrow, lost engine power and wound up drifting for three hours in Laredo Sound south of Kitimat. You won’t see this in any Enbridge ads but …
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Missing First Step
Rona Ambrose has a typically Ambrosian approach to hunting down Canada’s next combat jet to replace the stellar but aging CF-18s.Rona’s gonna chat. She’s going to talk to our allies – the U.S., Australia and Britain. Maybe she wants t…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Fewer Lawyers = More Doctors
We’re wasting precious tax dollars training too damned many lawyers, money we could be putting to good use training more doctors.The Law Society of Upper Canada is tossing about the problem right now.“The law schools are now sending us flood upon flo…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: UN Demands Israel Stop Ripping Off Palestinian Resources
The U.N. General Assembly, by a vote of 156-5, called on Israel to immediately stop its decades-old practices of exploiting, damaging, depleting and endangering the natural resources of the Occupied Territories. Canada joined the U.S., Micr…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Will BC’ers Back Pot Next Year?
The organization, Sensible BC, plans to place a marijuana policing referendum before British Columbians in 2014.SBC has already had a test run, placing its Sensible Policing Act proposal before Elections BC to verify that the legislation was within pro…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Is America Now Okay With the Post-Mubarak Egypt?
Did Benjamen Netanyahu just rebuild America’s relationship with Egypt?After the fall of the brutal, murderous Mubarak regime, many American pols seemed genuinely distraught when a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Morsi, was elected the f…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Netanyahu Steps In His Own Mess
Benjamin Netanyahu, with a looming date with Israeli voters, is doing his best to portray himself as the victor in Israel’s 8-day, Operation Pillar of Defence but, in the minds of many Israelis, he’s actually the loser. Der Spiegel reports that a…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What? Another Dire Report on Global Warming?
We used to get climate change reports once, perhaps twice a week. Now they’re flooding in daily. That’s not surprising given that scientific research papers on various aspects of anthropogenic global warming are now coming in at…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Oil Producing Countries Asked to Levy Carbon Tax on Exports
Oh this will go over well with Ol’ Shifty Steve Harper.A gaggle of poor nations are asking major oil producers to levy a 3-5% carbon tax on oil exported to affluent countries. The receipts would then be deposited in a “green climate fund” t…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Well There Goes the Nativity Set
Apparently “we” (that’d be the Vatican) really doesn’t know when Jesus was born but they’re guessing it was somewhere between 7 and 2 B.C. Then again, how could he have been born before B.C.? Wouldn’t that be C.B.C. and, correct me if…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Can’t They See How This Ends?
The U.S. military has really fallen for this remote-controlled mayhem business. The latest and greatest thing is the miniature, one-way drone. It has a range of between 6 to 10-miles, it can loiter over the target from 10 to 30-minute…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Let’s Make a Deal
What worries me whenever I see a poll suggesting that the Harper Cons might be toppled in 2015 is how far off that day is and what impetus that gives Harper to finish his dirty deeds.Long have I suspected that Harper has calculated that, like a sneak t…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: If Canadians Want a Liberal, It Won’t be Mulcair
Sorry Dippers, your guy is a liberal and Canadians’ Liberal of choice is the guy whose hair is on his head, not his face.NatPo’s latest poll finds if Canadians had a chance to vote today, they would elect a strong Liberal minority government led by Tru…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Going to Pot
There was a discernible jolt in the wake of election night when the good people of Colorado and Washington voted to decriminalize possession and use of marijuana.Some folks here on the Left Coast were wondering how that would impact on our number one a…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Drifting Ever Faster Away from 350
The figures are out for 2011 and they’re record-breaking. Last year we managed to drive atmospheric CO2 levels to 390 ppm.The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a record 390.9 parts per million (ppm) in 2011, …
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