Listen to this feature chat on Nanaimo-based CHLY’s Sense of Justice show with host Rae Kornberger. The Common Sense Canadian’s Damien Gillis discusses private river power, oil tankers, and making the environment a key issue in this pivotal year for BC politics.
Click here to listen – choose the “2011/01/12 a discussion of IPP’s” in the top left corner of the audio player. It my take a few seconds to load.
“The economy is a subsidiary of the ecosystem…The only place where the environment and economy are separated is in the human mind.”
– Dr. William Rees, UBC Professor, Founder of the ‘Eco-footprint’ concept
Perhaps the most foolish and dangerous misconception of our time is that we must somehow choose between the economy and the environment. We hear it all the time. “We can’t establish green house gas emissions caps until we get our economy out of recession.”…”The environment’s important, but so are jobs.”…”We need to balance the economy with the environment.”
It’s a false dichotomy which has become the go-to defense of big polluters and the governments that enable them. We heard it with Fish Lake in BC, where Taseko Mines said they needed to destroy a fish-bearing lake to build a giant gold and copper mine. But, of course, they told us it would bring nine gazillion person-years worth of employment.
We hear it from Enbridge, the company that wants to build a pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to supertankers on BC’s North Coast. They too are fond of tallying up their person-years. (However, they leave out the fact that the majority of these jobs will go to people from out of province – and that they’ll last only a few years, while we’re left with the enormous environmental and economic risks from their project long after the jobs disappear).
These companies and our governments consistently create the impression that we must decide between the economy and the environment – which is short-sighted, self-interested nonsense.
The first step to dealing with both our mounting economic and environmental challenges is recognizing that the economy, as Dr. William Rees says, is a subsidiary of the environment. No fish ecology, no fishery. No forest, no forestry. No energy, no economy. No farmland, no food, no us.
We also must come to see that due to impending Peak Oil and the age of increasingly costly, scarce, dangerous, and unreliable fossil fuels, the kind of globalized economic model we have today is unsustainable. Not just environmentally unsustainable. Unsustainable, period – because it depends on a finite and dwindling resource. So regardless of whether it contributes greatly to climate change, we simply don’t have the resources to maintain this system, as former CIBC World Markets Chief Economist Jeff Rubin explained in his essential 2009 book, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller.
In it Rubin relates the skepticism he’s received from the energy and banking intelligentsia over the past decade – even after correctly predicting the rise of oil to an all-time high of close to $150/barrel in 2008. He emphasizes that the key to adapting to this new world lies in the re-localization of just about every function of our economy – and the scaling down of everything we do in terms of our energy and resource-indulgent lifestyles. In other words, smaller and more local is better. This from one of Canada’s top economists and energy experts, no less.
Ponder for a moment the madness of our economic system today – and BC’s role within it. We put our ecosystems at risk by chopping down trees and mining coal – which we then ship, in raw, unmanufactured form, across the Pacific to China in tankers burning the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world (bunker diesel) – where the coal is consumed in electric plants to power the factories in which people labour under awful conditions for paltry wages, building the logs we sent them into tables that are then shipped all the way back to us…all so we can save a few bucks at Canadian Tire (which is a misnomer today, incidentally).
Of course, we get precious few jobs in this bargain. What we do get is coal smoke and diesel fumes in our air shed, climate change, and a crappy table that lasts a fraction of what it used to when we made them ourselves.
And this insanity has made abundant sense to flat-earthers like the New York Times’ vaunted Thomas Friedman (Rubin’s alter-ego). But it doesn’t make sense at $150/barrel oil, nor at $200 or $300. And that, according to Rubin and many other experts (including the late, great oil banker Matthew Simmons), is where we’re headed – very shortly. Consider that in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, some 12% of the world’s shipping fleet ground to a halt, with 500 behemoths hidden off the coast of Singapore for the better part of a year – a small harbinger of what is to come.
Yet Rubin somehow sees an upside to these unavoidable challenges we face – namely, in dealing with them we could create local jobs, clean up our environment, and rediscover how to live modest but fulfilling lives. Rubin writes, “Distance costs money. That will be the mantra of the new local economy.” The closer goods and food are produced to the markets in which they are consumed, the lower the transportation costs and reliance on fossil fuels. But with that we also get the twin benefit of fewer green house gas emissions (transportation accounts for upwards of 30% of North American GHG’s). Hence, once again, what’s good economically is also good for the environment.
So to both the BC NDP and Liberal leadership candidates – and to Michael Ignatieff, for that matter – I humbly submit: Build your platform on addressing both the economy and the environment together. Tell people it won’t be easy, but we can and must develop a greener, healthier, more economically and energy efficient British Columbia and planet.
Here are some planks to consider in that platform:
-Get back to growing our own food. In BC, we currently rely on imports for over half our food. We need more of our own farmers and food-producing lands – which means an investment in agricultural education and the protection and development of land that families and small-scale local farmers can afford to till to feed their own communities.
-Stop raw log exports. Truly sustainable forestry practices with local mills and enhanced manufacturing would ensure we get maximum economic benefit from one of our most important resources, while minimizing the environmental costs.
-Re-localize manufacturing in general. Our dependance on China and other low-cost labour markets has hollowed out a manufacturing base that we will surely need to develop our own goods in the near future.
-Get serious about protecting and rebuilding sustainable local fisheries. That means moving aquaculture to closed-containment, protecting and restoring fish habitat, and better managing our fisheries. That means saying “no” to things like the Raven coal mine proposal on Vancouver Island, which could destroy one of the finest oyster fisheries in the world (employer of 600 people). The seafood we’re blessed with on BC’s coast is an ecological and economic gift, which if we take care of will take care of us – as this past year’s surprise sockeye return reminded us.
-Preserve our wild places for sustainable wilderness tourism. And focus more on Canadians, many of whom have yet to experience some of the treasures in their own back yard. This would lower the industry’s dependence on emissions-heavy international travel.
-Build a proper network of public transit and pedestrian infrastructure for people movement – and electrified rail and short-sea shipping for goods movement. The construction of public transit creates far more jobs per dollar than highway paving. And by getting some of the 70% of single occupant commuter vehicles off our highways, we can free up space for goods movement, reducing lost economic productivity from gridlock – all without having to destroy our farmland or add to suburban sprawl.
-Make conservation the key focus of our energy policy. The private power industry is the antithesis of conservation, as it makes money through increased consumption – which is why it has forced grossly expensive purchase contracts on us for power we can’t use and must therefore sell at a considerable loss. Conservation is the only truly zero-impact form of energy and it frees up clean public hydro electricity to sell to our neighbours at a profit, which goes toward our schools, hospitals, and keeping our taxes low. We also need to make homes and businesses more energy efficient and, importantly, more self-sufficient – through things like small-scale wind, solar, heat pumps, and geothermal power.
If it seems that looking out for the environment and/or public interest are unpopular with the electorate, look no further than Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s intervention in the sale of Potash Corp. to foreign mining titan BHP Billiton, or recently retired Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams’ reclaiming of a public hydro resource from Abitibi Bowater when they shut their pulp mill down (breaking their resource-for-jobs deal with the Province). Both were extraordinarily popular decisions with the public – in Williams’ case, he described it as the best decision of a brilliant political career. Meanwhile, a full 80% of British Columbians favour a ban on coastal oil tanker traffic – and politicians with the guts to fight for one will be duly rewarded. These platforms aren’t a tough sell with the public at all – only with a select few individuals and corporations with far too much influence over our political system.
One of the features of the Peak Oil era is that we will have less and less capital to implement the above changes. Which is why we must cease immediately building out-moded, unsustainable infrastructure and energy projects. Every dollar that we spend on paving highways over farmland is a double-whammy. Not only is it depriving us of a far more important use for that land, but it’s taking already scarce money away from public transit alternatives. Consider that for roughly a seventh the cost of the upgrades underway to Highway 1 and the Port Mann Bridge in BC’s Lower Mainland, we could get the old Interurban commuter rail line back up and running, servicing the same corridor far more efficiently and getting commuters to work faster, cheaper, more comfortably and safely.
Instead of fighting with all our might against these irrepressible forces, why not turn around and go with the flow? We must ask ourselves, is it worth all that effort and long term pain, just to forestall the end of this status quo by maybe a few more years – after which we will be far worse off for not having been proactive in changing our ways?
We might do to ask ourselves a few more questions. Like, is bigger really better? Has global “free” trade worked for most average citizens around the world – or has it simply afforded wealthy individuals and corporations better access to cheap labour and foreign resources? Are we happier as a society today than we were fifty years ago? (Skyrocketing obesity, diabetes, cancer, and depression rates might suggest that we are not). Finally, is the planet better off?
Building a future based on the inextricable relationship between the economy and environment would present the ultimate in public policy achievements – a win-win for everyone (or almost everyone).
It also just might get someone elected as the next premier of BC or prime minister of Canada…and help save the planet, which never hurts.
From The Northshore News – Jan 5, 2011
By Elizabeth James
“The important thing is to never stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Albert
Einstein, of course, is most famously known as the proponent of his
theory of relativity, a subject about which I am woefully ignorant. So
when I was asked for a name for this space, I had no idea he and I
would have seen eye-to-eye on the need for endless questions and
curiosity.
So, on the understanding that I may never receive an
answer, or that the answers I do receive may not always be the truth,
this column is written according to the Chinese proverb: She who asks
may be a fool for an hour, but she who does not ask will remain a fool
forever.
The first and overriding question is this:
Other
than the B.C. Liberal government, what connection could there be
between: fish-farms; independent power producers (IPPs); BC Hydro; the
construction of the Site C dam in Northern B.C., Alberta tar sands and
the Enbridge pipeline; and, the sale of B.C. Rail to CN?
From PolicyNote.ca – Jan. 4, 2011
by Dr. Marvin Shaffer
The Vancouver Sun’s Gordon Hamilton reports that the IPP lobby, BC Citizens for Green Energy, has
released a Letterman-like top ten reasons for the development of more
of their run-of-river and other ‘green’ power projects. Though not as
funny as Letterman, the BCCGE’s top ten could bring out a laugh, except
for the serious environmental and economic issues involved.
The BCCGE states that more development of their projects would:
1. Eliminate the need for BC to import electricity from coal-fired generators in Alberta and the United States. (What
they don’t say is that it would also restrict BC Hydro’s ability to
import surplus hydro power during the spring run-off on the Columbia
River system in the US, or the ever-increasing amounts of surplus wind
power, produced at times when not needed in Alberta or the U.S. — very
cost-effective clean energy imports that could greatly benefit BC
Hydro’s customers).
2. Create jobs for people in BC. (True, it would create some
jobs during construction, but very few during operations. On the other
hand, and not mentioned by BCCGE, it would do so by driving up BC Hydro
rates more than necessary, to the detriment of BC households and
industry).
Read full article here
In looking ahead to 2011, I see a very troubled environmental scene. This is because of one thing mainly: with our governments money talks and big time money talks big time. This will reflect itself in several ways and places.
In order to understand this, I think, it must be remembered that corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment. They would pollute all water, destroy wildlife, and desecrate the environment generally. Every tiny bit of environmental restraint has been and always will be imposed by government and it will be resisted and ignored by the corporate world. Many of my generation and others have been brought up to respect government authority and to assume that the world was full of “good corporate citizens.” We, in fact, marveled at the great construction taking place such as Alcan even reversing rivers and creating huge artificial lakes. We developed a public mindset that marveled, uncritically, at development.
There is no question that much of the world will need power; more and more every year. What’s interesting is the lack of an intelligent debate on the subject both at a local and global level.
We have industry and environmentalists fighting but it’s scarcely a fair fight. On the Enbridge proposal to build two pipelines from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and back, industry is out-spending the environmental community 100-1. All the magazines I read carry huge touchy feely ads from huge corporations who tell us in full page ads that they are working just as fast and as hard as environmentalists to make all their creations green.
Much of the problem has been created by an uninformed and ill-informed public which refuses to critically consider anything they’ve been brainwashed into believing or disbelieving. We in the environmental field, me very much included, have decided that certain issues cannot be discussed. These beliefs have become a hardened catechism that brooks no debate.
I have written in the past about nuclear power, for example. This is wrong, we all agree. They explode like atom bombs or melt down. If you live near them or work in them, you’ll be nuked. And there are the calamities at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
In the first case there was a disaster, and at Three Mile Island there was a dangerous near-miss. And these and other scares tell us that if you do nuclear power and don’t keep up safety programs it’s only a matter of time before you have very bad news. Nuclear plants are hugely expensive to maintain and no one has found a safe way of dealing with the waste.
Does this mean that nuclear can never be debated again? Do any of us know what research has been done in recent years? In a moment I’ll tell you why this is an important question.
On the other side we’re told that wind power is the way to go because it’s “green” and that’s good. (“Green” is now a weasel word used by polluters to gloss over their destructive policies). The fact that wind power is hugely expensive and invariably set up with taxpayers money, that it is unreliable and environmentally unsound is not dealt with, for this is the reverse of the uranium argument – nuclear is bad and wind power is good, now let’s have no more arguments. While we’re at it, the future is electric cars and that’s that! Never mind asking where the electricity is coming from and how green that source is – this matter has been decided, period!
Right behind nuclear power comes fossil fuel power. This source of power is evil, so no more discussion please.
I would advise one read the lead argument for the use of coal in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. Here is a pretty strong argument which, in a nutshell says “we’re not going to eliminate coal as a source of power for a very long time to come. Isn’t the object to lower carbon emissions, so if we have no alternative for coal we should work harder at reducing the carbon footprint of this and other fossil fuels? Are there not, coming out of China for God’s sake, new techniques which have dramatically reduced the unhappy consequence of burning coal for power?”
My point is that of a British Columbian who wants to save his province’s environment. If I fight on the mantra that fossil fuels and nuclear are bad for the environment so that their use must be eliminated, doesn’t that lead to the conclusion that hydroelectric power is the only way to go? Of course we have wind power, tidal, and solar power but until they can supply the world’s needs for power, what is left?
Do we not see that by saying that other countries must stop all nasty sources of energy we are inviting them to look to us to supply the power from our rivers?
The demand for energy must go somewhere and rudimentary economics tells us the demand will lead to and find a supply – and we’re it! That demand is going to increase so that every piece of water that moves in BC will become a potential source.
This is the great evil of the Campbell Energy Plan (based largely of private river diversion projects), which has been sold on the basis of our own needs – which is plain barnyard droppings. Not only is it going to outside consumers, it is saying “look, neighbour, don’t you worry your pretty little heads about designing your own sources of energy and don’t bother for a moment with conservation because there’s lots more where that came from!”
I will soon be accused of all the usual sins – Rafe Mair favours nuclear, fossil fuel power, etc. – but I am not. What I’m saying is that our energy policy has us financing, out of taxpayers’ pocket, large international corporations who build their plants to produce power for somewhere else.
How are we financing these corporations? This is not hyperbole at all. We buy their power at 2-3 times what we can sell it for and that is money in the bank that otherwise would have to be borrowed or used out of the company’s assets. British Columbians are, therefore, not giving away power to other jurisdictions so that they needn’t make any sacrifices themselves – we’re financing the operation!
We’re saying to American governors: don’t worry about your environment, don’t fret about how you deal with carbon emissions, don’t give more than a passing thought to conservation – BC rivers and streams are yours for the asking!
It’s one thing to be a good neighbour but don’t you think this is a bit too much!
I don’t like the way things are heading in this province for I foresee violence.
Damien Gillis and I, the “owners” if you will of the Common Sense Canadian (TheCanadian.org) wish to make it abundantly clear that the very last thing we want is violence. At the same time we feel an obligation to assess what is happening and report that assessment to you. To be silent, in the face of the evidence we feel would be irresponsible.
There are situations developing which past evidence clearly tells us that we must be deeply concerned. Violence happens when people, being so much less powerful than their oppressors – large companies and government – become frustrated with the inability to be heard and have their concerns listened to. Any who have attended one of the so-called environmental assessment meetings – as Damien and I have – will sense the deep anger and, that word again, frustration as they see the government and industry all but in each others’ arms as they deny the public the right to be heard. If, God forbid, violence does come, the large companies and the senior governments will be clearly to blame but will piously cite the “rule of law,” saying that they are merely taking what the law gives and that the public must accept that.
The underlying truth is that the public is sick and tired of government and industry lying. If you look back in history, most civil disorder has been because the situation is not as the authorities and those who hide behind their skirts say it is.
First let’s look at the fish farm issue. I know something about this subject because I involved myself in it from the beginning. For nearly 10 years now the Liberal government has known about the disastrous harm these fish farms do to migrating wild Pacific Salmon. Over and over the government has been shown by experts to be wrong in its policy and over and over the government has bobbed, weaved, and lied.
Aggravating the situation big time has been the media who, rather than examine the evidence, have ignored it and given column after column on the op-ed page to supporters of the industry, especially to the environmentalist turncoat and failed fish farmer, Patrick Moore, and Mary Ellen Walling, the Executive Director of the Fish Farmers Association. Incidentally, Moore is now advising a large lumber company in Indonesia on how to wipe out their ever-diminishing rain forest and look “green” as it does so.
There are signs of life coming from the Cohen Commission on disappearing Fraser River sockeye, where the Commissioner has ordered fish farms to release data on sea lice. There is not, sad to say, similar action being taken by governments on Independent Power Projects (IPPs), nor pipelines and tankers on our coast. And this is where the violence will come, from unless a sea change is seen in government policy.
The Axor Glacier-Howser undertaking in the Kootenays is the most serious IPP situation because the public has made it abundantly clear that they will do whatever is necessary to stop the project. I have no doubt that they mean it. I’ll do more on that in columns to come but for today let’s concentrate on the oil pipeline and tanker issues.
First, the pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Kitimat proposed by Enbridge, whose safety record is appalling, is approximately 1200kms long over all with about 2/3 running across BC. In fact it’s two pipelines – one to take the Tar Sands crud (aka bitumen) to Kitimat and the other to send back to Alberta in what they call “condensate,” a liquid natural gas product. (Bitumen sludge is so viscous that it can’t be pumped through a pipeline without first being diluted by condensate).
Isn’t this neat-o? We get twice as many chances for a spill!
Second, there is the issue of transporting the Tar Sands gunk down the BC Coast. (Don’t forget that this shipping catastrophe in the making is already in place in Vancouver through the Kinder-Morgan pipeline, but that for another day).
The governments involved (Federal, Alberta, and BC) and Enbridge don’t want you to notice that the pipeline and the tanker are the same issue – like Doris Day used to sing about love and marriage, “you can’t have one without the other.”
Let’s not overlook another important point: These aren’t risks involved here but certainties waiting to happen.
Imagine a revolver with 100 chambers and one bullet. If you put that to your head and say you’ll just pull the trigger once, the odds are there and obvious. If you say you’ll it for a year the odds are shorter but still you’re assessing a risk. If you say you will do it forever, it is no longer a risk but a certainty.
Then there are the consequences to deal with. If the bullet is made of marshmallow, who cares? If it’s a bullet, it’s death!
The Tar Sands gunk is not marshmallow.
If there aren’t risks involved, why would the company concern itself with what isn’t? But listen to what Enbridge spokesman Allan Roth had to say about tanker traffic:
“There’s been a tremendous amount of engineering studies and risk analysis studies. Extraordinary measures are planned with respect to marine safety and these are the highest modern standards for engineering…The risks have to tell us the probability (is) as close to zero or very close to that (my emphasis) before we would even propose the project.” (The words “very close to that” must send a shiver down the backs of all British Columbians).
This reminds me of a story. Many years ago I was in the Anchor Pub in Greenwich, England and went into the loo. On the condom machine was etched “These condoms manufactured up to the UK’s highest standards,” over which was scribbled, “So was the Titanic.” There you have it, Mr Roth, highest standards don’t count when tragedy strikes.
Let us not overlook the pipeline itself. The ca. 800 km in BC transverse superb wildlife habitat including some 1,000 rivers and streams. Once permission – God forbid! – is granted Enbridge will go into its environmental protection mode, which is to do no serious inspections and, if tragedy strikes, bring help to bear in leisurely fashion as they did with the Kalamazoo River a few months ago, Of course they will explain their slowness saying that it’s because the damage is in wild remote country – which is the reason they can’t be inspected regularly and a very strong reason it should not be done. One need only look at the Kalamazoo spill to see what Enbridge’s attitude is to spills – lethargic is too energetic a word to describe it.
In keeping with the morality of this industry, truth is no barrier to self-serving flackery. The usual corporate tactics have recently been exposed as Enbridge, with the airy wave of the hand, stated that First Nations are getting behind the projects .
Really?
Clearly Enbridge hasn’t seen Damien Gillis’ “Oil in Eden: The Battle to Protect Canada’s Pacific Coast” (on this website), where President of the Coastal First Nations, Gerald Amos, and the formidable Gitga’at elder, Helen Clifton, made it abundantly clear that, in Chief Amos’ words, these projects “are not going to happen.” They were also caught off guard by an unprecedented joint declaration against the project by over 60 First Nations last week, the day after they tried assuring the public and media everything was falling into place for the project with First Nations.
I sadly, but honestly believe that a showdown on the pipeline/tanker issue will raise tempers too short to handle. And there’s another factor involved – the governments will point out that China has “invested” nearly $2 BILLION in the Tar Sands and the bitumen is largely for them. Thus they will say we must give into China.
Thus we will have the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.
There is no compromise. You can’t have a little bit less of a pipeline. It’s all or nothing at all.
When the inevitable happens, the usual procedure will take place. Protesters will refuse to go away, the governments and companies will call the protesters nasty names and people will be jailed for contempt of court, a gross distortion of democracy that turns a civil dispute into a crime if that’s what big government and big business so desire – and they will.
The blame in fact will rest with the governments, joined as they are at the hip with environmental predators who keep their campaign coffers filled.
The plain fact of the matter is that all three governments involved don’t give a rat’s ass for the environment or those who live in it and feel a sacred obligation to nurture it and pass it on intact for those to come.
How’s this?
Times are changing and governments don’t understand that. Citizens have little respect for what in my early days were called “our betters.” I can’t get my MP, Conservative John Weston, to talk to me about environmental concerns, and coincidentally the other day I received a letter from another of his constituents with the same complaint. Why the hell should he care? He’ll win because the Liberals won’t and that’s all that matters.
I hate to talk about the “old days,” but in my lifetime I’ve seen an enormous disconnect arise between the governed and the governors. When I was in government, my colleagues and I constantly faced a hostile media who didn’t believe a thing we said. My home city of Kamloops had small town versions of the Jack Websters and Marjorie Nichols who would nail me as soon as I got off the plane. I had to answer for my actions or be found guilty in absentia.
Politicians now, hearing no tough questions from the media, and seeing and hearing nothing in the print or electronic media, assume that there are no tough questions to be asked.
In many ways, the overflowing discontent I foresee can be blamed on the free ride politicians get from the media.
Harry Belafonte once said in one of his great songs “don’t turn your back to the masses, mon” – good advice that those who sit in authority over us should, in my not so respectful opinion, pay heed to.
If they won’t, they must answer for the consequences, not the public that has been cheated of its democratic right to be heard prior to the decision having been taken.
But they won’t.
It must be a good
line because this is the third time in a week I’ve used H.L. Mencken’s great
line “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands,
hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” After reading the
news item that BC Hydro is asking to raise its rates by 27% for upgrading their
facilities, then reading the next day it was 55% for “badly needed projects” I
found myself once more reaching for my trusty cutlass.
Is there no end to
what we’re asked to believe? John Horgan, NDP Energy critic, was bang-on when
he linked this to the outrageous $50 BILLION that BC
Hydro owes Independent Power Producers (IPPs) for dams that destroy our rivers
and send power not to BC Hydro but to the United States. Would that the
NDP deals with private power in stark, unadorned English instead of the sloppy
diarrhea that oozes from its program as laid down a few days ago by their now
soon to be former leader.
How dumb do they
think we are? Are we to believe that there’s a magic energy fairy at the bottom
of the garden who will give Hydro that $50 Billion and rising? This is close
to, if not there, plain fraud.
The plain fact is
that every householder not courting bankruptcy knows that you cannot hide a
massive debt that is going to build IPPs on our dime, then soak Hydro (meaning
us, folks) to the heavens when it’s forced to buy private power that they don’t
need.
I want to say this
succinctly and in plain English. Our BC Hydro, one of the best
energy companies in the world, has no need of more energy yet is forced to buy
power from IPPs that they don’t need – meaning they either sell it on the
market for ½ or less of what they pay for it or use it instead of their own
power at 12 times their own cost of making it.
All together,
now, let’s read that paragraph again and march to our nearest antique shop for
cutlasses.
One would think – at
least an outsider not au fait with BC politics might – that some politician
would take up the cudgels on our behalf! (By the way, if you’re sensitive to
bloodshed, buy a cudgel rather than a cutlass). Here we have a Liberal
leadership with half a dozen or more candidates and not a word will be uttered
about the following: IPPs, farmed salmon, destruction of agricultural land, oil
pipelines and tankers filled with Tar Sands sludge. Not a peep will you hear!
Not a word even in defence because none of them has the guts to even defend
Liberal policies much less oppose them.
In the unlikely event
that the NDPs recover enough to be in the hunt in the next election, where the
hell is their courage?
I’ll tell you where.
The NDP’s now soon-to-depart leader, Carole James, has been reaching out to the
business community, as if that has a chance, and doesn’t want to unduly worry
the captains of industry who look upon the environmental disgraces given us by
Pinocchio Campbell & company as great steps forward.
Ms has James talked
about the IPP fixes in terms of “sanctity of contract.” These deals are
more like those of a hoodlum mayor of a city who hands out plush contracts to
his brother-in-law – they would make “Boss Tweed” of New York, “Boss
Prendergast” of Kansas City, or Chicago’s Richard Daleys, pere
et fils, blush with pride yet the NDP position is “sanctity of contract!”
What are the options we’re
left with?
One is to join one of
the major parties and try to make them change their policy. That should be a
remedy but, alas, it won’t work. Political parties are run by the few at the
top and all resolutions they don’t like are either not brought forward for
debate or are so watered down as to be pre-digested mush.
Another would be to
support the Greens, something I would do in a flash if I thought they could
even win a seat but they can’t and won’t. The Greens, decent honourable people
who want to save and protect the environment often get anger with me at public
meetings when I say this but have no answer when I point out that after 25
years they haven’t elected a soul, indeed haven’t even been close. (At a recent
speech I gave in Courtenay, a “Green” lady went to the floor mic, obviously
annoyed at what I had said, and said this:- the reason the Green Party hasn’t
elected anybody is that they don’t get enough votes!” God’s truth!
You could encourage
and join a third “middle-of-the-road”
Party if one comes
forward. The logical people to make this happen are Chris Delaney and/or Gordon
Wilson. Delaney already has a party, BC First, and if meat can be put on those
bones it becomes a rational option.
There is something,
however, we all can do and indeed must do – raise Hell; such Hell that whoever
runs for office will know that the electorate is white hot with anger. We must
show all politicians that we will take action no matter where the latest
environmental abuse occurs – action even including civil disobedience. We must
do this even if it isn’t the particular “outrage” that grabs us most.
Damien and I have
started to tour the province and starting next February we will bring our
presentation, including videos, a local voice, and my own.
Let me close with
this: you can always get rid of a bad government and restore the economy with
another.
What you can’t do is
get the environment back – once lost it stays lost.
If you haven’t
started to fight yet, now’s a very good time to start. If you have started, it’s
a great time to intensify the fight and encourage others to do the same.
We have a long way to go and the bad guys have
all the money. Yet, if we all do decide with sharpened cutlasses to get into
the fight and stay with it, we can and will beat the bastards and leave a
legacy for future generations.
An excellent summary by Lannie Keller from Friends of Bute Inlet of the campaign to stop the largest proposed private hydro power project in Canadian history – GE and Plutonic Power’s plan to dam and divert 17 rivers at the head of Bute Inlet on the Sunshine Coast. Lannie updated the crowd at the “Take Back Our BC” event on Quadra Island on November 7, about the latest details of the 1,027 megawatt proposal (worth at least $20 Billion to the corporations involved) and the citizen campaign to save the ecologically diverse and visually spectacular Bute.
Thanks to the work of economist Erik Andersen we have a much clearer view of what the Campbell government has done to British Columbia Hydro, what they are obviously going to do, and what the consequences will be.
BC Hydro is, so to speak, an integral part of the Province’s family jewels. It was created by Premier W.A.C. Bennett to be a tool of government policy. Bennett could see that if BC was to develop it had to have cheap, available electric power, so he implemented the “Two Rivers Policy,” whereby large electric dams were built on the Peace and Columbia Rivers. This was at a huge environmental cost but it produced just what Bennett wanted – cheap, available and uninterrupted electric power. His success was little short of miraculous.
Let’s look at what’s happened in the past decade. Our great public power company has been forced to make unconscionable bargains with private companies (IPPs) which dam our rivers and sell the power to BC Hydro when they are able to do so, i.e. their rivers are high enough, which is mostly during the period BC Hydro has lots of electricity and full reservoirs.
Here’s the kicker (to our backside, big time): this means that BC Hydro faces two options – it can export this power at half or less than they paid for it, or they can use it at 12 times what they can make it for themselves. (this is your business oriented government at work, folks!)
Clearly, this state of affairs can only be dealt with in two ways – BC Hydro goes broke or we pay enormously increased electricity bills. In fact, if BC Hydro is sold or goes broke, the public loses all control and we get huge increases anyway.
What we have from Erik Andersen is confirmation of this catastrophe. Erik has also taken a look at some of the accounting “methods” of BC Hydro.
For example, the BC Auditor-General has had a similar look. The books disclose how Hydro in fiscal 2009 went from a real loss of about $700 million to a “profit” of about $550 Million. (When you’ve read this, try it on your own bank manager).
Here’s what they do. They have what they call a “Regulated Asset Account”. (I warn you that the old shell game is going to look honest in comparison). They then take their expenses for that year and bundle this into the RAA and, because we the taxpayers pay BC Hydro’s bills, make this RAA into an “Account Receivable” and, are you ready for this, it becomes an asset (based on their ability to jack up our power bills to cover the difference) and POOF! There go their losses. The Auditor General has told BC Hydro not to do that anymore!!
How much is involved in this (in Andersen’s words) “hanky panky?”
Hold onto your hats again. In 2005 the amount in the RAA was zero – now it’s about $4 BILLION. This scheme is, according to Andersen, a “reckless endangerment” to the province and BC Hydro.
Why is this happening?
Mr. Andersen states the obvious, which is important because the government won’t. Andersen points out that this simply cannot be accidental – therefore BC Hydro must be being deliberately set up to fail.
What we have from Erik Andersen’s work is confirmation that BC Hydro is going down the tube and will only last as long as it can continue to raise our rates in order to stay afloat!
One is reminded of an adage of Woody Allen’s which I’ve cited, only changing “world” to “BC Hydro”:
“More than any time in history BC Hydro faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
If, like the Campbell Liberals, you want BC Hydro privatized – because you believe in the Fraser Institute’s doctrine that publicly-owned assets must go to private companies – it doesn’t matter much whether you sell or abandon. The numbers with BC Hydro are huge on both sides of the ledger but its actual profit is only big time if a private owner can own it and run it free of government intervention. It is for that very reason W.A.C. Bennett bought ought the BC Electric Company and created BC Hydro.
From the Liberals’ point of view, selling off BC Hydro, after the fuss the public made when BC Rail was sold, makes no political sense, making bankruptcy a more attractive way to go.
Thus it’s clear that to save our rivers and their ecologies, we must save BC Hydro.
To save BC Hydro, we must all get angry as hell and, in every way we can, take that message not only to the Liberal government but the NDP as well. From every corner of the province must come the cry “Save Our BC Hydro!”
The government must know, with no room for doubt, that not one more IPP project will be permitted and that we will take every available measure to stop them – starting right now!
Selkirk Power Company, a private renewable energy company based in
Nelson, has postponed the second phase of its Westslope Cutthroat Trout
translocation project upon request of the Ktunaxa Nation Council (KNC).
The translocation is a multi year project to expand westslope
cutthroat trout habitat in the upper reaches of Ventego Creek and create
a second population in addition to the existing population in Cupola
Creek. Both creeks are located approximately 50 kilometers northwest of
Golden and are the sites of Selkirk Power’s planned development called
the Beaver River Hydro project. The second phase of the translocation
would have involved moving 100 trout from Cupola Creek to Ventego Creek
and was originally planned to happen in October.
The Ktunaxa Lands and Resources Council, citing concerns based
on cultural teachings and potential impacts to both Cupola and Ventego
Creek ecosystems, passed a resolution requesting termination of the
process.
Read full Golden Star article here