Tag: Common Sense Journalism

Check out this new song and music video from Vancouver artist CR Avery, produced by the Sierra Club of BC. According to the organization, which released the video on its youtube page this past weekend, “With riveting spoken word and striking images, CR Avery connects the dots between pipelines, oil

The news out of the Joint Review Panel looking into the Enbridge pipeline should have a profound effect on us all. One of the conditions is a requirement that Enbridge carry close to $1 billion in insurance, plus $100 million on hand to cover losses from spills. I find this

An open letter issued to Canadians by Royal Bank of Canada President and CEO Gord Nixon (read here) apologizing for his company’s decision to shift 45 Canadian jobs to imported temporary foreign workers from India reflects a growing concern over the issue. RBC’s predicament is just the latest incident calling

Last week I published a story titled “Five Oil Spills in One Week: ‘Accidents’ or Business as Usual”. Within an hour of publication came the news of a sixth spill from a CP derailment in nothern Ontario. As the story made the rounds on social media in the ensuing days,

Exasperation is the tone of the full page ad placed in a March edition of Victoria’s Times-Colonist newspaper by the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group, a coalition of businesses associated with an ecotourism industry employing over 1,200 people and generating $45 million for the local economy. Their problem is logging,

I was recently asked by a reader what it is I want, presumably in the way of government. I want a government committed to the preservation of farmland – not one that gives it away in Delta and destroys it the Peace River country. I want a government that is

Anyone who has been following the sorry saga of inexplicable diseases and unusual mortality in BC’s wild salmon will not be surprised that the information in Twyla Roscovich’s documentary, Salmon Confidential, links the source of this trouble to the salmon farming industry. The surprise, however, is the impact of such

Yesterday, I joined several thousand British Columbians in submitting my comments to the environmental assessment process for the proposed Site C Dam in northeast BC. While it will likely take a few days for the most recent submissions to be registered on the government website for the process, judging by

What do ExxonMobil, Enbridge, Suncor, CP Rail and a Michigan Utility have in common? They’ve all spilled oil within the past week. This latest round of disasters should give Canadian and US lawmakers pause as they contemplate new pipelines. It’s time to put to rest the notion that oil spills

An all candidates dialogue this Wednesday evening at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver – featuring representatives from four different political parties and one independent candidate vying for office in the May 14 provincial election – will focus on solutions to climate change. The evening is part of a series of

<p><iframe src=”http://globalnews.ca/video/embed/435254/” frameborder=”0″ width=”670″ height=”377″></iframe></p> http://globalnews.ca/video/435254/does-b-c-have-enough-power-to-fuel-the-future    

Premier Christy Clark wants BC citizens to subsidize the oil and gas industry with a $10 Billion taxpayer-funded dam. Though she won’t put it quite like that, that’s precisely the implication of her recent comments to Global TV: “You can’t power up these huge [LNG] facilities without more power, so

There is an elephant in the cabinet room and it can only be dealt with if the occupiers of that room don’t oppose any of the proposed pipelines to run through BC – this thanks to the Campbell/Clark HST mess. In simple terms, we owe Ottawa $1.6 BILLION by backing

The so-called “bitumen bubble”, the hollowing out of Alberta’s oil prices, has left the seemingly wealthy province with a staggering budget deficit of billions. With an economy now mostly dependent on the value of its bitumen, the province is vulnerable to price fluctuations determined by international market forces. Now, with

Shell Oil, the first energy company granted coveted Arctic drilling permits by the US Government, is shutting down operations for all of 2013, nearly as quickly as they began. Shell’s hand is being forced by the Interiror Department, following a scathing report which castigated the company for a series of

I’ve got to say it, Premier: you don’t know a damned thing about pipelines and tankers. Do you not understand that the rupture of a pipeline or “accident” with a tanker is mathematically inevitable? That we’re not talking risks but certainties? Your friends in the business community like to call

A new 2-min video produced by Coastal First Nations – a group representing nine different aboriginal communities on BC’s north and central coast – is underscored by the famous Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Sound of Silence.” The video, which harkens back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in nearby

People who are concerned about global climate change are watching the steep rise of global carbon dioxide emissions. While a few nations have been heroic in their efforts to cut these emissions, international efforts have been eminently unsuccessful. So BC’s strategy to export energy — massive amounts of LNG, increasing