We cultural critics easily jump to conspiracy theory explanations (the media must be making up nonsense to support their corporate masters!) but the more likely answer, the more chilling one, is that those who are paid to express their opinions, or to make political decisions, for instance, are actually no
Continue readingTag: Environment and Energy
The Sixth Estate: Why Conservatives are Missing from the Climate Change Debate
As promised, I am steadfastly avoiding discussing the Globe & Mail, and its latest partisan salvo — a preposterous endorsement of the BC Social Credit-turned-Liberal Party that reads like it could have been written by said party’s PR hacks — doesn’t help matters. (The Globe describes the NDP leader as
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Canada’s New National Research Council: Same As the Old One, Digging a Deeper Hole
One of the most irritating features of government-by-press-release is the “re-announcement” — the enthusiastic proclamation, with full fanfare, of something that has already been proclaimed before, often many times. Today the Conservative government engaged in this practice, or, just as conveniently, had the media do it for them by playing
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: The Stupidity of Rex Murphy and the Impending Extinction of Humanity
Today’s column comes to you courtesy of Rex Murphy. When I was growing up, I remember listening to Rex on the radio and liking him. Later, he turned to newspaper columns, and I think it was only then that I realized what a dunce he was. And is. After poking
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Canada’s Oil Sands Run Red
You probably don’t need me to tell you that selling a controlling stake in this country’s largest energy resource to a foreign dictatorship is not really a good plan. We don’t even trust our own government with that kind of thing. I honestly thought we had a chance on this
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: CBC’s Science Illiteracy Fuels Downplaying of Climate Change
The Conservative Broadcasting Corporation has just published a howler of an article which appears to be basically an uncritical reprint of some pro-industry schmozzling intended to suggest that climate change is a relatively minor problem easily solved with some minor biotech tweaks. The author for this piece of trash is
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Conservative MPs: Climate Change Not Relevant to Environment Canada’s Mandate
An extraordinary exchange took place in the House of Commons environment committee a few days ago. It was so extraordinary that it made the news, but only just. A little more exposure, and the 26-year-old yahoos who run the Prime Minister’s Office would have been wishing they’d ordered the whole
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Queen Charlottes Earthquake Highlights Weaknesses of Neoliberal-Style Government
This weekend’s warm-up natural disaster, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake west of the Queen Charlotte Islands, should but won’t serve as a vital wake-up call to the federal and provincial governments: British Columbia is in an extremely hazardous position geologically, and it is only a matter of time — on geological timescales,
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Budget Fall 2012, Part 4: 28 Canada’s Largest 43 Lakes Removed from Navigable Waters Protection
Sixth Estate’s budget coverage continues; previous reports are on the MP pension reform scam and the removal of 30 of Canada’s 47 longest rivers from protected status as navigable waters. As I noted previously, the Navigable Waters Act is being renamed the Navigation Protection Act and the environmental protection which
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Budget Fall 2012, Part 3: 30 of Canada’s 47 Longest Rivers Removed from Navigable Waters Protection List
Continuing Sixth Estate’s fall 2012 budget coverage, which began with a look at what appears to me to be some appalling chicanery in the MP pension “reform” scheme, I thought it would be nice to look at the end of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Symbolic of the shift in
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Conservative Government Abandons Market Principles on Climate Change File
Years ago now, the big argument in the climate change community was about how to lower emissions. The left favoured regulation. But, in order to draw in right-wingers who insisted that regulation kills profits, the goalposts shifted. The right invented ideas like “carbon taxes” and “cap-and-trade systems” because it argued
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: National Post: Climate Change is Bogus. Warp Drive, on the Other Hand…
You may remember, as I do, how quickly even the most fervent anti-science hyper-skeptics went into fits of excitement over the announced discovery of the Higgs boson earlier this summer. I doubt any of them could tell you what a Higgs boson is, beyond the fact that some wag once
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: The Northern Gateway Pipeline and the New National Energy Program
Many years ago now, a young Stephen Harper angrily threw out his Liberal Party membership and, after a few years of wandering in the western wilderness, emerged as a leading light of the newly established Reform Party under Preston Manning. The singular reason for his crossing the floor, we are
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Petro-State Politics Threaten Democracy, Sovereignty, Common Sense
Another day, another Canadian oil company swallowed up by its foreign competitors. Oh well, right? Here’s a fun fact from history: Stephen Harper used to be a Liberal activist, even after he moved to Alberta. He abandoned Trudeau over the National Energy Policy, and the NEP still provokes howls of
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Religion is Incompatible With the Survival of Humanity
What else can one say? “I get on my knees every day and I’m saying an extra prayer now. If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it,” [U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom] Vilsack told reporters revealing that 78 per cent of US
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Canadian Climate Survey 4: Climate Change Denier’s University is an Oasis from Climate Change
As usual, the highlight of the National Post’s Junk Science Week, in which the paper features and defends the finest in bogus pseudoscience, was an attack on climate change. (This year, other fine entries included an endorsement of the theory of infinite resources and a suggestion that smoking, obesity, and
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: National Post’s Junk Science Week Endorses Theory of Infinite Resources
Every year, the National Post‘s columnists host “Junk Science Week,” a series of posts which is devoted to pawning off as wise commentary the finest in junk science, usually a series of ill-informed denials of climate change. (The Post says they’re debunking junk science, but somehow the positions they defend
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: One-Quarter of Americans Still Living in Geocentric Universe
512 years after Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for suggesting that Earth orbited the Sun and that the Sun was just one among innumerable stars (forget your schoolbooks: Galileo was a comparative conformist, and the Church went light on him), a disturbing percentage of Americans are still struggling
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Only 60% of Conservatives Think a 20-foot Sea Level Rise Would be a Problem
You may have read a little while ago about a study in Nature showing that as scientific literacy increased, “liberal” people became more concerned about climate change, but “conservatives,” oddly, became less concerned about it. In other words, the more conservatives know about science, the less likely they are to
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Basic Math on Our Energy Future
This year there have been great exultation from the pro-business sector about the fact that the shale gas revolution, new Arctic prospecting, and various other schemes mean the “peak oil” debate is over. And in a way I happen to agree. I think that the peak oil debate is less
Continue reading