Alternative energy solutions
Hydropower is dispatchable. It is generally reliable, can increase or decrease generation quickly, and can be shut down and restarted with relative ease. Provided the facilities are properly maintained, the…
Norman Farrell
Privatizing public services
A. Reader is back again with another informative post. This particular contributor sends me much useful information. I always appreciate the person's work. The latest piece follows the separator.
Crude sacrifices
Prime Minister Mark Carney has caused his government to serve oil barons rather than the people who elected it. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made that choice long ago. Now British…
Carney, Smith and Eby’s climate betrayal
Governments acknowledge climate science, then pursue policies that directly contradict it. They transfer public wealth to immensely profitable corporations, encourage greater fossil-fuel dependence, and leave ordinary people to bear the…
What we pretend not to see
I recently stumbled across an American website: A Moveable Feed from buttondown.com. It promises to deliver "Blunt, funny takes on today’s biggest stories from a recovering DC insider." This week,…
RCMP’s decades-old Tommy Douglas files remain secret
The RCMP was particularly suspicious of people associated with peace movements—and of political leaders willing to speak openly with people across the political spectrum. In the eyes of Canada’s security…
Megasize credit unions have policies, not memories
From 1956 through 1958, I attended Stillwater Elementary, a small schoolhouse twenty-two kilometres south of Powell River. Its three rooms accommodated six grades, and children were summoned to class by…
Remembering the Freedom Riders
I do not know Mel Lehan personally, but I have been aware of his altruistic activism for many years. His Facebook posts are usually both entertaining and informative. Recently, he…
Vacation home in south of France
Many years ago, our valued friends Jacquie and Lorne began searching for a vacation home. They explored possibilities in several parts of North America and Europe before deciding that the…
Buying unsellable luxury condos better than building affordable housing for just-plain-folks
A comment on my last article is too good to not feature as a separate post. It was submitted by Loopholes Uber Alles, which I suspect just might be a…
Government housing policy wrong again
Erick Villagomez teaches architecture and urban design at UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning. His work examines how cities are shaped by often-invisible systems that influence power, equity, and…
LNG: unclean energy
The following was published as a letter in Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper Re: “B.C. premier visiting China to pitch LNG project as province’s ‘really big fish,’ ” June 27. While…
An intractable problem
I recently read several Facebook comments that trivialized the indiscriminate violence inflicted on innocent people in Gaza and Lebanon. Some commenters suggested that the deaths and disruption experienced by Israeli…
Will Electronic Monsters Rule Mankind?
During the past half-century, I have watched computing power increase beyond anything most of us could have imagined. My old Digital Equipment DS310 attracted attention from other business people, but…
Discouraging solar to subsidize LNG
By Jeremy Valeriote, BC Green Party MLA: On July 1 BC Hydro is changing the way it pays for power generated from household solar, and we’re not happy about it.…
Damn the climate science, full speed ahead! – UPDATED
During the 1864 American Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay, Rear Admiral Farragut ordered his fleet forward after the vessel Tecumseh struck a torpedo—and sank. The admiral said something like,…
Decarbonizing energy
By making ordinary hills suitable for energy storage, the technology could dramatically expand the number of viable pumped-hydro sites. RheEnergise promises that its system is cost-effective and able to integrate…
Can politicians sympathetic to unions be climate-conscious?
A strong labour movement can make climate policy more durable and socially just—but only when it represents workers rather than becoming the political defender of multinational, carbon-intensive industries.
Goodbye Premier Eby
As dissatisfaction spreads within the NDP, doubts about Eby’s political judgment and electoral appeal will deepen. Unless he reverses the government’s decline, pressure for a leadership change will not merely…
LNG carbon footprint is “worse than coal”
To promote natural gas, British Columbia has foregone billions of dollars that once flowed into the public treasury. In 2005-2008, monthly auctions of natural gas rights brought in the 2026…