This may shock you as much as it did me: Austin, Texas may just be the best place in the USA for clean-tech companies. Time Magazine has a good article on how the socially regressive state is forward-looking in the corporate sustainable energy sector. Ironically, or rather appropriately, the same
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Politics, Re-Spun: The Galling Hypocrisy of EthicalOil.org
Mordor It’s really very simple. A front group for tarsands polluters is accusing opponents of being puppets of foreign interests. EthicalOil.org thinks only Canadians should be permitted to take part in the tarsands climate debate, which would exclude anyone or any group involving foreign resources or money. An organization called
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Shoes, ships and sealing-wax, cabbages and kings
Global TV Noon News aired a report on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline Sunday. It lasted 40-seconds while they allocated 11 minutes to a segment on cooking fish and five for a pet dog. Strange ‘news’ priorities but I guess they could have run a repeat of ET Canada or
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: "Ethical Oil" – an argument that make no sense
The Devil in the Tar Sands, Jody Williams and Desmond Tutu, Project Syndicate, 2011 CAPE TOWN – …”Oil from the tar sands of Alberta is the dirtiest in the world, and its extraction is already causing problems… “Opposition to the [Keystone XL] pipeline throughout the US is growing in intensity…
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Conservatives ready to serve paymasters
Harper warns of ‘hijacked’ hearings on Northern Gateway pipeline, Bob Weber, The Canadian Press: EDMONTON – Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he’s listening to concerns that hearings for the Northern Gateway pipeline will be “hijacked” by foreign interests. “We have to have processes in Canada that come to a decision
Continue readingEnvironmental Law Alert Blog: Why West Coast is fighting Enbridge (it’s not the funding)
Thursday, January 5, 2012 A recent ad campaign linked to a top oil sands firm questions what drives the work of West Coast Environmental Law. Back in the ‘70s when a broad citizens’ coalition brought to a halt a proposed oil pipeline to an oil port at Kitimat, BC West
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Oil industry ramps up the pressure
As Ian Reid succinctly observes, the Vancouver Sun “has apparently merged with Encana’s communications department and is now almost desperately spinning the Northern Pipeline on their behalf.” Postmedia, the Sun’s owner, styles itself a conservative publisher but it is that only by redefining the label. In fact, a real conservative
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: "The drugs Canada is peddling"
Dr. David Schindler, University of Alberta “Every year that you can get away with lack of regulation, is a few billion more bucks in your pocket. After 40 years, I’m pretty sick of seeing this tactic fool people time after time. Maybe we all did just fall off a turnip
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Year In Dirty Energy: Fracking
Earthjustice-Fracking.jpg The practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has taken center stage this year as one of the most important environmental threats facing North America (and increasingly in other parts of the world). Thanks to inadequate state oversight and Dick Cheney's hamstringing of EPA oversight with the Halliburton Loophole, fracking has
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Export baby export !
In earlier articles, including Majority supports Keystone XL, or do they?, I wrote about oil companies aiming to move Canadian oil to tidewater so that exports can create shortages and drive domestic prices higher. A Calgary reader left a comment that included this: “Keystone XL is a great project it will help
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Canada trails USA in risk awareness
Canadian media doesn’t provide much detail but ProPublica, the American non-profit doing fine investigative reporting, is examining dangers of gas and oil production through hydraulic fracturing. In an earlier article here, we linked to ProPublica’s report on unregulated fracking in BC and Alberta. Today, Abrahm Lustgarten, the reporter with an
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Majority supports Keystone XL, or do they?
Wetland oil spill – Evi, Alberta Vancouver Sun headlines: U.S. majority supports controversial Keystone XL pipeline project: poll “A majority of U.S. voters still support TransCanada Corp’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline as the Obama administration again weighs whether to approve or scrap the project, according to a new poll. “Rasmussen
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: BC Government: Frack the barriers to pollution
British Columbia taxpayers reward energy companies that pollute. The province enacted a series of incentives, including self-regulation, right to pollute without punishment, access to fresh water, reduced royalties and credits for building roads and pipelines. Oh, Canada’s Become a Home for Record Fracking, Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica Early last year, deep
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: More Enbridge mischief exposed
From: guujaaw [mailto:guujaaw@haidanation.net] Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 2:46 PM Subject: Enbridge December 20, 2011 Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Joint Review Panel 444 7th Avenue S.W. Calgary, Alberta T2P 0X8 Attention: Secretary to the Joint Review Panel Re: statement contained in Volume 5A: Aboriginal Engagement, Appendix D: National and Regional
Continue readingEnvironmental Law Alert Blog: The ear of government and the mouths of the oil industry
Friday, December 16, 2011 With French-language CBC reporting that Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent is meeting far more often with the oil and gas industry than with environmental organizations, we have 2 questions. First, what does that mean for Canada's environmental laws and policies? Second, where is the English-language media
Continue readingThings Are Good: Solar Cell System Produces More Energy Than Light Absorbed
In something that sounds close to magic, some researchers the American National Renewable Energy Laboratory have found a way to get solar cells to produce more energy with over an 100% quantum efficiency. Basically more energy is created than light that hits the cell. This is done by exploiting quantum
Continue readingThings Are Good: Sustainable Power for Facebook
Greenpeace has worked with Facebook to convert Facebook’s coal-powered datacentres to environmentally friends power sources. In April 2011, a Greenpeace report, How Dirty is your Data?, calculated that 53.2% of Facebook’s electricity was generated by coal. Energy consumption by datacentres is growing rapidly and each of Facebook’s US datacentres is
Continue readingknitnut.net: Sustainability, Ikea style
Chandler's dog, Willy We went to Ikea on the way home from Chandler Swain’s house, where I had just purchased two lovely hand-crafted pottery bowls. Chandler Swain is my favourite potter. She lives and works out of a charming little house near Almonte. It is my dream to go stay
Continue readingEnvironmental Law Alert Blog: First Nations from North, South and Interior stand against oil tankers and pipelines
Wednesday, December 7, 2011 December 1st marked a turning point in the effort to protect the Pacific coast and the watersheds that we all depend on from the threat of oil spills. For the first time, First Nations from the north coast, the south coast, and the Interior gathered together
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Petro-Recovery
Statsitics Canada released the third quarter GDP numbers today, and on the surface they seem pretty upbeat, considering all the doom and gloom lately. Headline real GDP grew at an annualized 3.5% rate. I predicted a few weeks back that there was no chance that the 3Q number would be
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