The latest cartoon from Gerry Hummel – referencing the Joint Panel Review for the hugely controversial proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. Rules defining public participation were recently announced by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Age…
Continue readingTag: Common Sense Journalism
The Common Sense Canadian home page: Rafe on Shark Fins and the NDP
I urge everyone to get a copy of the Vancouver Province for July 10 and read, in the A section, pp 8 and 9, a story about shark fins. It’s a tragic story and proves once again that corporations – who have no environmental concerns whatever
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Shades of Green: Anthropogenesis – A Redefining of Ourselves
Our human history has been a long process of taking greater control of the circumstances that affect us. Our early shelters and fires eased the inclemency of weather to make our living conditions more comfortable. Our agriculture replaced a dependence …
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: A-G Report Confirms BC’s Sham Environmental Assessment, Enforcement
Vindication always feels good but as you read the Auditor-General’s report on the BC Environmental Assessment Office (BCEAO), which reports to the Ministry of Environment – it’s the governments licensing and enforcement arm – the warm feeling o…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Risky Business: 75 pipeline incidents in two years for Enbridge, TransCanada
It doesn’t seem that big a deal when you first read the story on B2 of July 5’s Vancouver Sun under the heading ENBRIDGE,TRANSCANADA LEAKS DOMINATE SAFETY BOARD CASES. It outlines 100 different oil and gas pipeline leaks over two years, three …
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Was the Gordon Campbell Government Truly Corrupt?
Was the Gordon Campbell government corrupt? Does it matter? The answer to both questions is a resounding YES! For the purposes of this article I define corruption as “acting against the public good for political or other gains for the gover…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Video: Citizens Rally in Vancouver to Stop Smart Meters
A number of citizens and organizations – including the BC Public
Interest Advocacy Centre and the Clean Energy Foundation – gathered
recently in Vancouver at the headquarters of BC Hydro to speak out
against BC Liberal government’s Billion-dollar…
The Common Sense Canadian home page: Shades of Green: The Other Side of Lord Stanley’s Cup
Now that the 2011 winner of Lord Stanley’s Cup has been decided, the mania is subsiding, and Vancouver is beginning the arduous task of repairing the physical and psychological wreckage caused by the uncivilized riots that ravaged the city’s core, the …
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Emergency Oil Reserves Tapped: Conservation Plan Gathers Dust
Last week a global oil emergency was declared and the response rolled out, but almost nobody noticed. The International Energy Agency (IEA) started tapping into member state’s emergency oil reserves, something that has only happened twice before. Whi…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: The Silence of the Mainstream Media on Private Power, Fish Farms
I sat in my hotel room in London on a recent vacation, reading the comments on my last article in thetyee.ca in which I had congratulated the Vancouver Sun for printing an op-ed piece by Dr. Marvin Shaffer of SFU which stated the elementary truth that …
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Raven Coal Mine Proposal: Damien Gillis’ Letter
As the window for public comments draws to a close in the first stage of the environmental review process for the proposed Raven Underground Coal Mine, nearly 2,000 comments have been submitted thus far from diverse individuals and organizations. Comme…
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Why the Precautionary Principle Should but Doesn’t Apply in BC
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…
Continue readingThe 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: 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: 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: 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…
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