Tag: Common Sense Journalism

BC Hydro gave the public all of one week, stretching through Labour Day Weekend, to respond to its 5,000-page draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) – and that doesn’t sit well with a Vancouver-based water advocacy group. The BC Tapwater Alliance is calling for extended public consultations on the crown corporation’s

Somewhere in the United States on August 20, 2013, a technician flicked a switch and Al Jazeera America joined the other networks that bring television news to Americans. At that moment, Al Jazeera became the first new source of American TV news in two decades and the first not owned

What is a man to do with a “main palace” of 420 rooms, a customized Boeing 747 jumbo jet for his exclusive use, a private zoo and amusement park, and a stash of $700 million in jewels? This is the dilemma facing Prince Alwaleed, whose $20 billion in assets gets

In the year 2000, the price for electricity in California rose almost overnight by nearly 1300%. For its role in this fraud, BC Hydro’s energy trading subsidiary, Powerex, recently agreed to pay back $750 million to the state. Yet Energy Minister Bill Bennett maintains the government and Powerex’s innocence. Independent

Throughout the past several decades, Hydro has consistently been off by 10-20% in its forecasting and that proud tradition continues today, with the release of its draft Integrated Resource Plan. This chronic overestimation of our power demand helped justify a massive investment in sweetheart private power contracts (IPPs) over the

A fundamental flaw in the environmental assessment process is that it focuses on each proposed development as something that stands alone. But an individual well or dam is not separate or isolated from its surroundings – air, water, plants and animals pay no attention to our imposed, artificial boundaries…A lawsuit

For half a century, the electrical power industry has been trying to make success of failure, safety of danger, and efficiency of wastefulness because it chose the wrong nuclear fuel to produce electricity from reactors. Instead of using thorium, it used uranium, and the economic, political and environmental costs of

The carbon dilemma first received public attention in 2012 when Bill McKibben, an American environmentalist and founder of 350.org, publicized the growing conflict between the known carbon that is stored in fossil fuel reserves — the equivalent of 2,795 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide — and the amount we can afford

Geoengineering to combat climate change is largely untested. Because we’ve stalled so long on reducing carbon emissions and still aren’t doing enough, we may have to consider it. What will that mean? As it relates to climate change, geoengineering falls into two categories: solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal…But

One man, Allan Paul Marking, an Alberta Oil dude, gave $150,000 to the Liberals. Alberta oil and gas companies Encana and Cenovus gave them $68,000 and Texas based Spectra Energy gave $33,000. Many made donations to the NDP too, just in case. No one can be surprised at these gifts

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) announced today that it’s extending the public comment period for a controversial, proposed Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) plant near Prince Rupert. Concerns were raised last week by West Coast Environmental Law over an incorrect map in the project description documents, which made Canada’s second

I remember when one of the Leaders I worked for asked some guys many of us know to purge our Party of the troublemakers (that was not the word he used.) They did a good job. The “troublemakers” were sidelined and we became an effective, and boring, machine. Leaders and

An emergency Aug. 17 meeting between Fortune Minerals CEO Robin Goad and the Tahltan Nation elders who recently issued his company an eviction notice from the Sacred Headwaters failed to ease tensions over a proposed mine, according to a local environmental group. “Goad continually asserted his company’s legal right to

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The event in Paris on May 29, 1913, was a watershed moment for classical music, an evening of seemingly cacophonous noise that redefined our human character, presaged the barbarous decades to come, and

Fortune Minerals CEO Robin Goad is reportedly flying into the Sacred Headwaters, in northwest BC, for an emergency discussion this evening with elders of the Tahltan Nation. The 5 pm meeting will address the eviction notice issued by a group of 30 or more Tahltan elders, referring to themselves as

In our concern with protecting grizzlies and polar bears, whooping cranes and redwood trees, wolves and caribou, we give short shrift to the small creatures that keep the planet livable. Tiny organisms and plant roots filter water as it percolates through soil; insects, bacteria and fungi help plants, animals and

You would think Malaysian energy giant Petronas would have learned a lesson from fellow fossil fuel pipeline and coastal export terminal proponent Enbridge’s “disappearing islands” debacle last year. Enbridge was caught downplaying the risks of its proposal by making 1,000 square km of islands vanish from the Douglas Channel in

While public banks in countries like China, the US, the UK, Germany, Denmark and Brazil are investing billions in renewable energy development, as clean tech expert Will Dubitsky explains, Canada lacks such critical tools for addressing climate change and building a green economy. “Why can’t Canada do similar things via

In 1965, half of Canadians smoked. By 2011, that had dropped to about 17.3 per cent, or 4.9-million people, with only about 13.8 per cent daily smokers. Unfortunately the downward trend has levelled off in recent years, and tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in Canada, according to

Read Kevin Logan’s analysis of the Lac-Mégantic train disaster. Logan provides a comprehensive breakdown of the facts, and where the mainstream media lost sight of the truth. Using a series of Google Earth maps, Logan points out the mistakes made by the National Post’s own illustration detailing how the tragedy