by David Suzuki
Access to information is a basic foundation of democracy. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms also gives us “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” We must protect these rights.
by Geoffrey Stevens
A week from now Justin Trudeau will slip on his father’s old shoes (sandals perhaps) as the new national leader of the Liberal party. Everything will change. Or will it?
Will it be a watershed moment in Canadian politics — a fresh beginning for the proud Liberals? Or just a last kick at the can by a tired third-place party running on the fumes of nostalgia as it struggles to stave off irrelevancy?
by Jody Dallaire
Have you ever been told that you are “irrational,” “over-reacting,” “such a drama queen,” “have an overactive imagination,” or “can simply not take a joke” in response to your expressing your opinion or feelings to someone about a situation? If you have, then you are not alone. Chances are that you have experienced the phenomenon known as gaslighting.
by David Suzuki
The federal government recently pulled out of an important global treaty. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification is aimed at fighting drought, a problem that affects almost 30 percent of Earth’s land surface and threatens the well-being of more than a billion people worldwide, including in our Prairie provinces.
by Geoffrey Stevens
The mini-revolt that Stephen Harper suppressed in the Conservative caucus may not have amounted to much last week, but it did raise a couple of important principles — conflicting principles.
by Beth Lyons
Last week, many of us turned our attention to Steubenville, Ohio, as we awaited a verdict in a horrific rape case involving a 16-year-old female victim and two male perpetrators, ages 16 and 17.
The young woman was incapacitated by alcohol consumption after a night of parties. She was assaulted multiple times in multiple ways, and her perpetrators shared video and photo documentation of the assault via social media. The perpetrators remained unaccountable for a period of time, largely protected by their status as athletes in a small football town. Ultimately, two young men were found delinquent (American court’s version of "guilty" for juvenile offenders) and will face time in a detention facility.
by David Suzuki
Energy is on everyone’s minds these days. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is determined to make Canada an energy superpower, fuelled mostly by Alberta’s tar sands.
Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Alison Redford, elected to lead a province with a strong economy, now finds energy price fluctuations are reducing provincial revenues. Saskatchewan is booming from oil, gas and uranium revenues, and BC Premier Christy Clark plans to vastly expand exploitation of liquefied natural gas, which requires huge amounts of energy and involves the highly contentious practice of fracking.
While Quebec Premier Pauline Marois maintains a moratorium on fracking, New Brunswick Premier David Alward claims it’s an energy opportunity for his province. Former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s progressive Green Energy Act is under serious attack, and Prime Minister Harper eagerly embraces exploration for oil as Arctic sea ice and tundra melt from the warming climate.
Although the federal government demonizes environmentalists as “radicals” bent on derailing exploitation plans for the tar sands and other natural resources, opposition is rising against pipelines to transport Alberta’s diluted bitumen to the BC coast via Enbridge’s Northern Gateway or to Texas refineries via the Keystone XL. Much of the oil would be exported to countries like China, where the extreme negative effects of fossil fuel pollution are increasing daily.
Politicians who want to make significant change must focus primarily on re-election if they are to see their agendas come to fruition. That means they must respond to immediate economic demands while leaving longer-term problems like climate change and water issues on the back burner. Surely the enduring consequences of today’s actions or inactions must be a priority. We’ll be living with the ramifications of the current crop of politicians’ decisions and actions long after they’ve been relegated to history.
Crisis is a powerful motivator, as we saw during the economic crash of 2008. In a matter of weeks, President George W Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, committed hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out banks and automobile companies – without imposing any conditions that might get them to change their ways. I was astounded at the speed and scale of these actions, compared to the ineffectual snail’s pace on ecological issues that threaten the survival of our species and our way of life and society.
The science has been in for more than two decades: Human use of fossil fuels creating unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere, leading to climate and weather effects that will be chaotic and devastating. Continued increases in emissions will only exacerbate what is already an out-of-control atmospheric transformation of the biosphere – our only home.
We claim brainpower makes us superior to the rest of life on this planet. But what use is intelligence if we don’t use it to respond to threats and opportunities? After all, foresight was a great human attribute that brought us to a position of dominance on the planet. We used our knowledge and experiences to look ahead and recognize potential dangers and favourable circumstances so we could take some control over our destiny by acting to avoid hazards and exploit possibilities.
This is Canada’s moment. We are confronting a crisis with the economy and energy. No economy can grow forever; it is simply impossible on a finite planet. Shouldn’t we ask what an economy is for? How much is enough? What are the limits? How do we build a sustainable economy? We have learned from painful experience in single-resource communities that relying primarily on one major component of the economy — logging, fishing, mining — makes for dangerous boom-and-bust cycles.
Nations that export fossil fuel too often become overreliant on that sector. That destabilizes the economy (as we’re seeing in Alberta), distorts priorities (leading to the so-called “Dutch disease” where other parts of the economy are neglected or ignored) and undermines democracy by holding government hostage (as we saw in the enormous lobbying power of industry in the last US presidential election).
The future of energy in Canada will determine the fate of our society. It must be widely discussed, nationally as well as provincially, beyond the boundaries of politics and economics. This is about the type of country we will leave to our children and grandchildren.
Reference
Alberta’s Redford and oil prices
BC’s Christy Clark and LNG
Fracking
Ontario Green Energy Act
Oil and Arctic sea ice
Radical extremists
China pollution
No economy can grow forever
Dutch disease
Industry lobby and US election
by Geoffrey Stevens
The federal Liberals are prisoners of past glories. Only now, as their leadership “race” ambles into its final weeks, are they turning some of their thoughts to their central dilemma — an issue that should have been front and centre since the 2011 election, if not earlier.
Their dilemma: as long as the Harper Conservatives control the right and centre-right — which they will as long as the economy remains the dominant issue among Canadians — there will not be enough room for both the Liberals and New Democrats in the rest of the electoral spectrum, the left and centre-left. Not enough room for two competing alternatives to the Conservatives. Not enough room for the opposition parties to differentiate themselves. Not enough electoral support, when split between two progressive parties, to bring down the powerful Tories, who are richer and better organized — not to mention meaner and tougher.
by Jody Dallaire
As Premier David Alward’s government approaches Budget Day, New Brunswick women are watching to see whether Alward will redeem itself for its shocking decision two years ago to cut all of the public funding allocated to the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
As a New Brunswick woman, hearing that decision made me feel like I was in The Twilight Zone, like the American 1960s TV-series, where nothing is as it seems and where unusual and scary things happen to ordinary people.
by David Suzuki
Few places on Earth have been untouched by humans, according to a study in the journal Science. Satellite images taken from hundreds of kilometres above the planet reveal a world that we have irrevocably changed within a remarkably short time.
Although industrial projects like the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or the recently defeated mega-quarry in Ontario typically grab the headlines and bring out public opposition, it’s often the combined impacts of a range of human activities on the same land base that threaten to drive nature beyond critical tipping points. Once those are passed, rapid ecological changes such as species extinction can occur.
