Category Archives: WATER

How Alberta’s $16-billion Electricity Scandal Plugs into Oil Sands

Energy and Resources, Tar Sands, WATER,
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From TheTyee.ca – Feb 8, 2011

by Andrew Nikiforuk

Two years ago, Alberta’s Transportation Minister Luke
Ouellette described Joe Anglin, a former U.S. Marine and telephone
transmission engineer, as “dangerous individual and a trouble maker.”

At a conference of the Alberta Urban
Municipalities Association, Ouellette also wondered aloud “why someone
hadn’t dealt with [Anglin].”

It was a remarkable declaration and one for which neither Ouellette nor the Progressive Conservative Party has ever apologized.

But it’s not hard to understand why a
government ruled by one party for 40 years and now beset by political
scandal deeply fears the political crusader.

Over the last six years the 55-year-old
father of two has arguably become the most persistent and informed
critic of the government’s controversial plans to build $16.5 billion
worth of transmission lines and all largely for U.S. export.

“It’s all driven by the oil sands and the
failure of electricity deregulation,” adds Anglin. “I don’t think
Alberta’s politicians are bad or evil but they are incompetent and
dumber than you’re average monkey. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve
caught them lying.”

Three bills got blood boiling

Anglin first made a name for himself by
exposing systematic regulatory corruption on transmission approvals with
a series of legal challenges that dramatically forced the break-up of
the province’s energy regulator in 2007.

Then the businessman and his 1,000 member
Lavesta Area Group focused their attention on the political fallout:
three unprecedented pieces of legislation (Bill 19, 36 and 50) that
squarely limited public dissent on transmission issues and concentrated
all decision making power in the provincial cabinet.

In some government circles one of the bills (Bill 50), designed to end any landowner legal challenges to transmission lines, is even known as “the Anglin Bill.”

Both detractors and admirers alike call
Anglin a determined pit bull if not a scrapper who also enjoys nothing
more than a good fight.

“The only reason that Anglin is dangerous,” explains prominent St. Albert lawyer Keith Wilson, “is because he has so much information. He’s exposed how corrupt the government’s transmission line really is.”

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Inaction over Chevron oil leak sparks walkouts in Burnaby

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From The Province – Jan 6, 2011

by Kent Spencer

Four members of an advisory committee for Chevron’s Burnaby refinery
have resigned over the company’s lengthy failure to stop oil trickling
into Burrard Inlet.

“We’re not happy. The only way we can show
that we’re not happy is to quit,” former committee member Judi Marshall
said Wednesday.

“It makes me sick to think I was a part of the committee.”

Dianne
Alsop, who also resigned, said the breaking point was when pictures
turned up last month showing considerably more spillage than the 100
millilitres daily that the company said is reaching the inlet.

“There
was a layer of gunk on the water. I was shocked. It’s coming out at the
beach,” said Alsop, who like Marshall is a neighbour of Chevron’s North
Willingdon operations.

“What they’ve told us and what are in the pictures are two different things. I totally lost my trust,” she said.

Chevron,
which has operated in Burnaby for 75 years, said it hasn’t discovered
the source of a leak that first came to light on April 21.

The
company has dug 20 monitoring wells, 10 pumping wells and is using
vacuums to scoop up oozing oil before it reaches the water.

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Environmental groups raise alarm over scheme to bottle water from more than 40 B.C. streams!

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From the Times-Colonist – Feb 7, 2011

by Judith Lavoie

A deluge of connected applications to extract water for bottling —
from more than 40 streams around four remote inlets on the B.C. Central
Coast — has prompted a flurry of requests for a full provincial
environmental assessment.

The applications, now individually under
consideration by the Natural Resource Operations Ministry, envisage
taking about 112,000 litres a day from each of the streams. The water
would then be barged to Vancouver and bottled.

“With 40 or more
streams involved that’s an industrial operation by anyone’s definition,”
said Lannie Keller of the Friends of Bute Inlet.

“But that ministry is looking only at each individual application and not the entire project.”

Although
three numbered companies and two First Nations — the Kwiakah First
Nation of Campbell River and Da’naxda’xw Awaetlala of Alert Bay — are
named on the applications, the common thread is William Chornobay of
Langley, who could not be contacted Monday.

“They are all part of a
single scheme,” said Arthur Caldicott, an energy analyst and writer who
has researched the applications for the publication Watershed Sentinel.

“It’s
a unique phenomenon. We’ve never seen anything like it before, even
during the boom in bottled water in 2007. . . . We have no idea how
these are being assessed by government,” he said.

Between 60 and
70 water-use licences have been issued by the province in the past, but
many have either been abandoned or are not fully used, Caldicott said.

All recent applications are around Jervis, Toba, Bute and Knight inlets.

As the applications are connected, the cumulative environmental effects —
rather than the effects of individual withdrawals — need to be studied,
say the Campbell River Council of Canadians, Friends of Bute Inlet,
Sierra Club Malaspina, Sierra Club Quadra Island and Sunshine Coast
Conservation Association. All have asked Environment Minister Murray
Coell for an environmental assessment.

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“Red Rafe” Mair: Madder Than Hell At The B.C. Liberals

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, ,
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From Westcoaster.ca – Feb 3, 2011

by Jessica Kirby

Former lawyer and cabinet minister turned political junkie
Rafe Mair will be visiting Port Alberni and Tofino in February to
discuss the Raven Coal project and environmental issues in B.C.

He and filmmaker Damien Gillis are promoting their recently launched “Common Sense Canadian,” a blog aimed at creating a platform for environmental discussion and action across the province.
According to the blog, “the Common Sense Canadian
tackles the issues that really matter to Canadians and the world, such
as water, energy, food, democracy – not to mention government corruption
and corporate greed.”
Mair says run-of-river power projects, those
that use the natural flow and elevation drop of a river to fuel power
generation, threaten every stream and river in B.C. and the ecology that
depends on them.
Most are products of contracts forced on BC Hydro
by the Liberal government, stipulating that the corporation has to
purchase power it doesn’t need from independent companies at twice the
export price, says Mair.
Mair and Gillis are on a cross-province
tour to reach every British Columbian with the message that it is  time
to say, “enough is enough” to the B.C. government, and demand protection
for the province’s natural resources.
Westcoaster.ca
caught up with Mair before the event to get his take on the key issues
affecting environmental health on Vancouver Island and in the rest of
the province.

How do you feel about the Raven Coal project?
Any
time a mining development is anywhere near the public, it is not quite
on. It’s not like we are short on coal, and if we need to use it for
energy, then there are all sorts of coal mines and coal deposits around
the world that don’t impede on land that is tender from an environmental
point of view and that are not close to people.

What I see with the Raven Mine is that it is too close to the
population and has to serve a market that does not serve B.C. I have a
problem with the mine situation because I understand that people have to
mine things, but what is lacking is public consultation before it
becomes a done deal.

One thing we’ve got to come to grips with in society is that we can’t
have a one-law-fits-all situation. Each place has different and
equities, and when it comes to mining the days of wading into someone’s
back yard with a pick axe are over. Society has developed and so options
are available – not mining near Fish Lake or not putting slag into it,
for example. It is new work for miners, but one has to take things like
Raven Mine and assess the situation and anyone with half a brain can see
that it is not on.

What is the most important environmental issue B.C. is facing right now?
It
is the run-of-rivers [power generation projects], no question about it.
The issue is agreements the Liberals made with independent power
generation companies. These are not mom and pop operations; they are
huge international companies like GE, Ledcor, and DuPont. They do not
let the water bubble along freely. In some cases they take away up to 90
per cent of the water. The ecology that depends on that river is
damaged; add that to the trees that are taken down for roads …

Point two is that BC Hydro is forced to pay double the export price
to IPPs, and they have to take it or pay it. Because of energy created
privately during spring run-off when BC Hydro doesn’t need it, it must
be used or exported instead of using what they can generate themselves
for a twelfth of the price.

The so-called run-of-rivers are hugely destructive of fish. They say
they don’t put weirs in pace where there are significant values of fish
to be hurt. This is just nonsense. There isn’t a single river in B.C.
without significant fish values.

The biggest problem is getting people to believe that any government
could be so fucking stupid. Their eyes glaze over as they think, “No one
would ever do that,” but that is exactly what they are doing.

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Time Enviros Tune into in BC Politics

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, ,
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The time has come, the walrus said…no Rafe, the Liberal leadership only looks like Alice in Wonderland.

It is, though, time for all environmentalists to start looking very seriously at BC politics because after the NDP convention, we’ll be in the countdown to the next election. Even though the election will still be two years away, that will be the time we who care about environmental values must start turning it up, notch by notch.

In doing this I ask to you bear in mind my biases. I don’t give a damn who gets in as long as he/she opens up the private power file, produces all the secret energy purchase contracts so we can see which, if any, are in the public interest and axe the ones that aren’t, then cancels the Campbell Energy Plan, and, after consultation with the people, presents a new one.

When I say I don’t care who gets in this is not a light statement to be ignored.

Let us assume that, in our zeal to save our province, we elect a government that hashes things up but does save the environment, our farm land, our wildlife habitat, our fish, our rivers and their dependent ecologies, and BC Hydro in the bargain, we can then elect another government to clean up the mess.

It gets down to choices (the name of the game in BC politics as elsewhere)  – will you trade away Beautiful British Columbia for a short term bottom line? And while we’re on the subject, I would argue that on virtually every point the Campbell government is worse than the NDP of the 90s. I admit that’s damning with very faint praise but make your own comparison even of fiscal policy, bearing in mind Campbell’s gifts to the rich, his inability to see the obvious coming recession, his lying about the 2009 budget and the state of the deficit and provincial debt.

Those who support Gordon “Pinocchio” Campbell’s fiscal record by claiming that he was hit by hard times should go back to the time “Asian Flu” hit the NDP government and see how the Liberals in opposition gave them no peace regarding something over which they had no control and came as a surprise to everyone.

I cannot see any Liberal candidate who will change a thing.

As you follow the debates, see how often the environment/energy issue or BC Rail comes up!

Kevin Falcon is Gordon Campbell, plus, plus, plus. Christy Clark has good looks and glibness but nothing else. George Abbott hasn’t the jam to deal with environment/energy issues by letting the public have a say and Mike de Jong has been an integral part of the Campbell government throughout and is the man who paid the money to end the Basi/Virk case and continue the government cover-up of the BC Rail mess.

A pox on all their houses!

What about the NDP?

They have a big problem with their optics. The real problem with the NDP of the 90s wasn’t fiscal but an inability to look like a government what with its scandals and revolving door leadership. What this demonstrated more than anything else was a lack of discipline.

For one, I have a problem with party discipline where it chokes off independent opinions which is what happens in all Canadian parliaments. That said, there must be sufficient discipline to keep the ship from hitting the Lorelei.

Unfortunately, the public seems to like tough, uncompromising discipline and somehow the NDP must square this circle.

As I’ve often pointed out, the NDP is, by nature, a disputatious lot.

The only candidate to have spoken out, forcibly, on the environment/energy issue is John Horgan. I’ve met and spent some time with Horgan and I believe he means what he says about opening up the IPP contracts and ending the rape of our rivers.

According to a recent Ipsos-Reid poll, the leaders are, in descending order, Farnworth, John Horgan, Nicholas Simons and Adrian Dix.

I’ve spoken about Horgan, who is clearly the soundest on our issues – now let me deal with the others.

Farnworth is a fine man and would, in my estimation, be a good choice depending on his stand on the environment/energy issue. Accordingly, I suspend judgment until we know what his position is.

Adrian Dix carries an open political wound over his fake e-mail in an attempt to cover-up the problem Premier Clark got in over his neighbour who helped fix Clark’s house at the same time he was making an application for a gambling license. Dix, to his credit – and unlike so many politicians – ‘fessed up promptly.

He is a pit bull much like Kevin Falcon and if that match-up came to pass what excitement that would bring to our politics.

Adrian Dix has been outstanding in the Legislature and I look forward to learning his position on the environment/energy.

Unfortunately I don’t know Nicholas Simons except to say hello, so judgment must be suspended. He, like all the candidates, has been offered a blog on our website (www.thecanadian.org) on environment/energy matters..

I’ve already wasted time typing this but the Conservatives may and only may take a few votes from the Liberals.

It’s interesting to consider a third party and the only one with a chance is the BC First Party under the pro tem leadership of Chris Delaney. I’ve been following this with considerable interest since, it seems to me, there is a great gap in the middle and that Delaney has moved from the right (Conservative) seamlessly. I’m not surprised because I believe this has been happening for a long time.

My read of it is that Delaney couldn’t stomach the Liberals so tried other avenues which, to date, have failed.

I believe that Chris has blotted his copybook staying with the Recall movement more out of loyalty than conviction. But time will tell.

There are two times in my memory when a “third party” has been successful – 1952 and 1991. 2013 looks like the situations back then.

In 1952 the Liberal Coalition crumbled and this left a huge gap in the middle which W.A.C Bennett charged into with his HMS Pinafore-like Social Credit Party.

In 1991, again the middle opened up as the Social Credit Party collapsed and the Gordon Wilson led Liberals went into the fray with no seats and ended up with 17 and Official Opposition status.

Speaking of 1991, what will Gordon Wilson do? He’s a political animal as is his wife Judi Tyabi-Wilson. I would be very surprised to learn that they haven’t been talking to Delaney. It would be a very powerful combination especially since the Wilsons would offset any concerns that Delaney was too far right.

The Green Party is the hardest one for me to handle. I’ve voted Green three times but strictly as a protest. On environment/energy issues they are clearly on our side.

Problem. Big time problem. Under our “first past the post” system they can’t win in spite of a good leader in Jane Sterk.

Try as they might, they can’t convince voters that they’re more than a one issue party. And that’s a damned shame.

One thing’s for sure – for political junkies it’s going to be a helluva ride!

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Kinder-Morgan vs Enbridge: Pipeline Race Heats Up

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From the Globe & Mail – Feb 3, 2011

by Nathan Vanderklippe

CALGARY — Kinder Morgan Canada is
accelerating plans to boost deliveries of Alberta crude to the West
Coast, pressing ahead with new pipeline capacity that raises the stakes
in a high-profile race to export Canadian energy to Asia.

The company is preparing to accept bids for a substantial expansion
of its 1,150-kilometre Trans Mountain pipe, which connects Edmonton with
British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. There, oil can be loaded on ships
and sent to destinations in China, South Korea and California.

If built, that new capacity will provide an important new outlet for
Canadian energy companies. The industry has increasingly called for an
alternative to its dependence on central U.S. markets, and filled
growing numbers of tankers bound for Asian markets in recent years. With
North American demand stagnating, Canada’s oil patch has directed
greater attention toward Asia’s rising energy thirst, amid hopes that
greater access to a vibrant new market will spur more attractive crude
prices.

For Kinder Morgan, a system expansion would kick-start an effort to
beat out growing competition for an Asian connection. Both of Canada’s
railway companies have proposed “pipelines on rail” to take oil to the
West Coast, and Enbridge Inc. is seeking approval for its $5.5-billion
plan to build a new pipeline called Northern Gateway across northern
B.C.

But expansion plans will expose Kinder Morgan to the fierce
opposition that has greeted Northern Gateway – especially since Trans
Mountain feeds tankers that sail past Vancouver, the birthplace of
Canada’s environmental movement. Kinder Morgan has yet to seek
regulatory blessing for its expansion.

The company has been spurred to action, however, by mounting demand
for a system that forms the only existing connection between Canadian
crude and offshore markets.

It plans to hold an “open season” later this year that will allow it
to solicit oil companies for commitments to ship on new capacity it
hopes to add by 2014 or 2015.

“What we’ve got to assess with the market is how big is that
expansion,” Kinder Morgan Canada president Ian Anderson said in an
interview.

“We’ve talked about going from 300,000 to 380,000 as the next step,”
he said. “But if we get interest for anything over 80,000, we could work
the engineering to try and design the expansion to accommodate it.”

Kinder Morgan has long discussed plans to expand the Trans Mountain
system, which it ultimately hopes to bring to 700,000 barrels a day. In
2008, it completed a $750-million project that added 40,000 barrels of
pipe capacity by twinning the system through Jasper National Park.

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Issues NDP Can Win On…If They’re Smart Enough

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The New Liberal leader will, on several questions, be like the fighter sitting on his stool and refusing to answer the bell because he knows he’s going to get the crap knocked out of him.

One of those is BC Rail.

Another is private v public power which, in essence, is combined into Campbell’s so-called run-of-river policy.

We must all know that no matter who the leader is, he/she will duck these issues and they will be greatly aided by the mainstream media people who are not allowed, apparently, to bring them up.

For the NDP this is a glorious opportunity to win, outright, two huge issues – but before they can do that they must establish their understanding of these two issues and offer solutions.

The NDP didn’t have the opportunity to really deal with BC Rail for the serious stuff was before the courts and no one would have believed that the Liberals would shut the case down just as former Minister of Finance, Gary Collins, and the Premier himself were to give evidence.

On the Energy/Rivers issue the NDP was woefully weak in the election campaign. For much of the campaign the NDP candidate could only sloganize (a new word I just invented) with such puffery as “we’ve got to stop giving our rivers away”, which was true but scarcely did the issue justice. The NDP have a history of sloganizing – neat little ditties that mask ignorance or lack of courage or both. They bring an appropriate giggle and applause at NDP bun tosses but do nothing to enlighten the voter or present a solution.

First, then, the NDP must show that it understands the colossal and perfidious – in the sense of cheating citizens – policy the Gordon Campbell government have us involved in. The giveaway is immense – large corporations get subsidized by the public to get paid double or more what their power is worth by BC Hydro (at a huge loss), for power that’s not for British Columbians but for export.  

Read that again. It defies belief doesn’t it? And until this issue is understood by political parties it won’t be understood by the public.

The secret contracts BC Hydro is forced to make are unconscionable. The NDP must pledge to make them public and if they are indeed unconscionable, refuse to honour them. The analogy is rather like the mayor elected to clean up city hall, then, when elected, promising to honour all the sweetheart deals his predecessor made with his family and cronies.

Politics is a tough game and demands courageous answers to difficult questions. This means that the party itself must understand the issues and have the platform very firm on what’s wrong and what must happen.

This is not easy, for the business community will scream and the NDP has done a lot of work to make inroads there. Business people, in general, don’t like the NDP anyway but smaller business people are far easier to deal with. Once the policy is in place, NDP spokespeople around the province must speak, with knowledge, to the people all around BC, the business community being welcome. They won’t be the only ones out in the communities speaking on this subject.

I do know of one NDP candidate who thoroughly understands this issue – John Horgan. Others may also understand and we at The Common Sense Canadian would welcome a blog from any other leadership candidate interested in letting our readership hear their view.

I’m often accused of being a turncoat because I was once a Social Credit Minister.

Sticks and stones etc … I’ve been a strong environmentalist for a great many years. I don’t believe for one second that Premier Bill Bennett would have jeopardized – hell, killed – BC Hydro for any reason much less by forcing them to pay private companies double for energy it didn’t need meaning they had to export it at a huge loss.

If he had believed that, we’d never have met, let alone become colleagues.

I believe with every fiber that the saving of our environment – our salmon, our rivers and the ecologies they support – is far and away the biggest political issue of the day. As I often said during the last election – a government might be a very bad government on fiscal issues but if it is, that can be fixed by a new government.

Once you lose your farmland, your fish, your rivers and the ecologies they support, you can never get them back.

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BP Quarterly Profits top $5 Billion; Gulf clean-up estimates now $40 Billion

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From CBC.ca – Feb 1, 2011

BP reported Tuesday that fourth quarter profits grew 30 per cent to $5.6 billion US, up from $4.3 billion a year earlier.

The company also said it was resuming dividend payouts for the first
time since the Gulf of Mexico well disaster and announced plans to sell
off almost half of its U.S. refinery business.

The facilities for sale included the Texas City facility where 15
workers died in a massive explosion in 2005. BP was fined $87 million in
2009 for failing to correct safety hazards at the facility.

BP said high oil prices were still not enough to avoid a full-year
loss of $3.7 billion, its first since 1992. It earned $16.6 billion over
the full year in 2009.

The company also raised to $40.9 billion its estimate for the overall cost of the spill.

The charge covers the cost of the explosion aboard the Deepwater
Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers in April, as well as plugging the
well and cleaning up the southern U.S. coast.

BP said the final total “is subject to significant uncertainty.”

The company suspended dividends following the Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in April.

It will now pay out seven cents per share, or about $1.25 billion
over all. That will be half the amount paid in the fourth quarter of
2009.

“We believe now is the right time to resume payment of a dividend to our shareholders,” said Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

“We have chosen a prudent level that reflects the company’s strong
underlying financial and operating performance but also recognizes the
need to fully meet our obligations in the Gulf of Mexico and to maintain
financial flexibility.”

BP did not say how much it expected to gain from the sale of its U.S.
refineries, which it hopes to conclude by the end of 2012, but said it
would honor all its obligations stemming from the Texas City disaster.

Cleanup winding down

The
company said it also hopes to sell the Carson refinery near Los Angeles
along with its marketing business in southern California, Arizona and
Nevada.

“2011 will be a year of recovery and consolidation as we implement
the changes we have identified to reduce operational risk and meet our
commitments arising from the spill,” said BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley.

“But it will also be a year in which we have the opportunity to reset
the company, adjusting the shape of our business, and focus on growing
value for shareholders.”

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Systemic Thinking and Big Pictures

Farmland and Food Security, Food, WATER, , ,
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We are please to begin publishing at TheCanadian.org Ray Grigg’s weekly Shades of Green series. A warm welcome to Ray from The Common Sense Canadian.

Systemic thinking reveals the complexity of almost everything. A careful and methodical examination of most subjects exposes an intricacy far greater than mere details – how the details relate to each other and conjoin with seemingly diverse factors are as important as the details themselves. Delving into such interactions is necessary to understand the world around us and to manage the outcomes of the things we do.

Consider the ordinary biological act of a man and woman conceiving a child. Thomas Malthus, the 19th century clergyman and political economist (1766-1834), calculated the rate of human reproduction, measured it against the food production of his time, and anticipated an eventual catastrophe as the number of people eventually exceeded their ability to feed themselves. Fortunately, Malthus’ prediction did not occur as anticipated because of industrial agriculture, the so-called “green revolution” and the distribution of the food being produced. But our population has risen to meet this increased supply, and an anticipated 40 percent increase in our numbers to about 9.5 billion by 2050 may combine with other factors to confound our ingenuity.

Because systemic thinking explores beyond simplicities to complexities, a study of food production for such an enormous population must also consider the constraints imposed by limited supplies of water, an essential agricultural ingredient that is now becoming scarce as demand continues to rise beyond availability. Oil is another constraining factor. Huge quantities are required for fertilizing, planting, harvesting, transporting and processing. If oil supplies replicate the situation with water, the price of food will rise and the economic costs will unleash disruptive and unmanageable social and political complications.

Soil presents another challenge to global food production. Just as demand is rising, erosion and degradation are reducing the amount and fertility of soil, a handicap that has to be combatted with ever more oil-based fertilizer. Even the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is changing the way plants grow and produce crops – small increases in carbon dioxide seem to assist growth but do not necessarily yield more of the crops we want from plants. Political and economic stability are also factors that can enhance or curtail food production. Apply systemic thinking to any process and the simple rapidly becomes complicated.

Traditional economic theory, for example, seems to be based on the principle of indefinite growth. Systems thinking exposes the inherent contraction of perpetually expanding consumption, profit and wealth on a planet of rising populations and finite resources. Logic would argue that some kind of homeostasis or equilibrium must eventually be reached between human enterprises and nature’s limits. Indeed, we may now be experiencing this anticipated limit with resource scarcity, habitat loss, species extinction, endemic pollution and global warming, all of which can be taken as indications that we are approaching unsustainable levels of growth. Simple biological and physical limits are defining what we must accept as “sustainable development”.

Apply systemic thinking to climate matters and the insights are even more complex and challenging. Our massive carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are not only increasing global temperatures but are also acidifying our oceans. The same process that is causing extreme weather, inflicting extensive property damage, altering plant growth, creating refugees, instigating social turmoil and inciting political unrest is also impairing oceanic food production precisely at a time when we need to be aiding rather than handicapping its productive capacity. Systemic thinking can help us understand complications, define sustainability and engineer outcomes beneficial for ourselves and the environment that supports us.

If we consider only disconnected details and don’t employ systemic thinking, we get misleading answers to simple questions. Why, for example, are parts of North America, Europe and China having such cold winter weather if global warming is occurring? The details seem to contradict the theory.

In keeping with systemic thinking, the answer is complex. Essentially, large areas of exposed ocean from melted Arctic ice seem to have created high pressure bulges of warm air that are deflecting the usual west-to-east “polar vortex”, the jet stream loop that keeps cold Arctic weather separated from balmier southern weather. The destabilized and fractured polar vortex is now moving in giant inverted U-shapes, sweeping warm air northward to the Arctic and returning chilling winds southward. These “meridional flows” are becoming more common as Arctic sea ice melts. The result is bitter cold and snow in southern areas. “The jet stream breakdown last winter,” writes James Overland of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “was the most extreme in 145 years of record. Loss of sea ice is certainly not the whole story behind cold mid-latitude winters, but it’s a constant push in that direction” (Globe & Mail, Dec. 31/10). As parts of North America, Europe and China shiver, parts of the Arctic, such as Iqaluit, bask in temperatures 15°C above normal. The average global temperature continues to rise but the heat gets distributed abnormally.

People who like tradition, predictability and simple answers don’t like systemic thinking. Neither do people who place their personal ambitions above ecosystem and societal interests – systemic thinking results in complex insights that invariably challenge narrow biases, discredit shallow perspectives and deflate the credibility of individual certainty.

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Ecojustie on Updating Water Act: B.C.’s water to be sold to the highest bidder?

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada,
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From Ecojustice.ca – Jan 26, 2011

by Randy Christensen

For the past several years, there has been a multitude of discussion papers, extensive public consultations and big speeches from the B.C. Government on the effort to “modernize” the B.C. Water Act. It’s the law that governs who gets to use water, for what, when, where, and who gets the priority when there’s not enough to go around.

Everyone agrees the systems is broken, it’s only a question of what to do about it.

All of the public statements from June 2008 until December 2010 were unambiguous in promising strong legal protections for environmental flows and revisiting the antiquated and highly problematic “first in time, first in right system.” More importantly, the B.C. Government de-emphasized the potential adoption of “market reforms” such as “water rights trading” that has devastated communities around the globe.

But what was a well-intentioned and well-managed process seems to have fallen victim to B.C.’s current political turmoil. In late December the B.C. Government posted the “proposed framework” for new water laws that in introduces water rights trading (section 5). Troublingly, the strong legal protections for environmental flows have been downgraded to guidelines that merely have to be “considered” when someone wants to take water from a stream (section 1).

In the current leadership vacuum, those managing the process have become politically risk adverse and are simply defaulting to the blueprints of conservative governments around the world. This approach downplays the need for good governance and views markets as a solution that solvers any and all problems.

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