Tag Archives: Shades of Green

Shades of Green: Gross National Happiness

October 15, 2011EconomicsRay Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

The industrialized world is in a funk these days. If it is the worrisome realization that this economic system is beginning to show some serious flaws, then maybe the time has come to give some serious consideration to the Bhutanese notion of Gross National Happiness. Even the Bhutanese must have some bad days, but nothing compared to the protracted period of down experience by the industrialized world.

America, the world’s cultural and economic pacesetter is sinking under the weight of debt and the illusion of entitlement. US pessimism is soaring and most think their country is “on the wrong track”, a sign that they are ready for insight and change. Indeed, their attitude is also shared by the Europeans and Japanese. Even the ascendent Chinese, despite their booming economy, are getting nervous about the threatening chaos around them. The world’s predominant financial structures are in a dangerous and precarious condition. The quest for endless wealth has combined with rampant greed to produce an unprecedented monetary mess – all corrective strategies have been unsuccessful and the overwhelming weight of accumulated national debt seems to be promising a future of economic gloom.

Global weather is getting more extreme, destructive and disruptive. A plethora of environmental problems continue to proliferate in both number and complexity. A soaring global population is creating resource stresses while falling populations in developed countries are causing another set of challenging demographic problems. Refugees are on the move, terrorism has created an atmosphere of tense alertness, and a spreading philosophy of materialism seems to be creating a pervasive mood of insatiable hunger. A transition from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to Gross National Happiness (GNH) may not solve all these problems but it offers a helpful beginning.

The Bhutanese realized the shortcomings of GDP when they transitioned from a kingdom to a democracy some 40 years ago. In a recent gathering in Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, dozens of their experts met to review their country’s progress toward GNH. Their conclusions should be instructive to the rest of the planet wrestling with escalating unhappiness.

First, they recognized that economic progress is not inherently bad. If it elevates the poor by providing clean water, food, health care, education and employment, then it serves to advance happiness (Jeffrey Sachs, Globe & Mail, Aug. 30/11).

Second, raising GDP is not synonymous with raising happiness, particularly if escalating the amount of money increases the distance between the rich and poor, creates social classes, robs people of equal power and influence, and causes environmental degradation.

Third, “happiness is achieved through a balanced approach to life by both individuals and societies,” writes Jeffrey Sachs about the Bhutanese. “As individuals, we are unhappy if we are denied our basic material needs, but we are also unhappy if the pursuit of higher income replaces our focus on family, friends, community, compassion and maintaining inner balance. As a society, it is one thing to organize economic policies to keep living standards on the rise, but quite another to subordinate all of society’s values to the pursuit of profit.”

Fourth, “global capitalism presents many direct threats to happiness.” Not only does it destroy the natural environment, causing widespread pollution and disrupting climate, but it directly and indirectly suppresses the evidence of this destruction to advance its own profitable purposes. Its monolithic presence in industry, its impersonal factory farming, its expansion into media, and its powerful advertising all contribute to a consumer society on the treadmill of materialism and dissatisfaction. The machinery of its marketing creates addicts who are compelled to purchase the products that capitalism sells: fast food, commercial entertainment, professional sports, novelty fashions, alcohol, tobacco and gambling. The result is a society stuffed and starved to death, simultaneously unhealthy, obese, socially dysfunctional and unhappy. “The mad pursuit of corporate profits,” Sachs suggests, “is threatening us all.”

And fifth, the Bhutanese advise vigilance, the importance of identifying the ideologies and practices that threaten happiness, that reduce the well-being of both individuals and society. Humans and the incredible natural world in which we live are more important than any system, particularly if that diminishes the quality of life, together with our appreciation and respect of the living communities that contains and sustain us. Economies should serve happiness, not vice versa.

The Bhutanese have discerned that we must not get lost on our journey through life. They acknowledge that we need a basic affluence to survive and thrive. But, if an unfeeling and unnatural ideology compels, oppresses and stresses us while starving us of intimacy and meaning, then we cannot be human and happy. As we lose our sense of proportion and sanity, then we begin to lose our capacity to be caring and sociable, to be judicious and wise. Compassion, honesty, trust and peace are the hallmarks of a healthy society, and an inner sense of balance is prerequisite for the outer balance we call a harmonious society and a sustainable environment. Anything that leads us away from these essential qualities is an empty and dangerous ideology.

Riches take many forms. But the most valuable – and the best measure of a life well lived – is the profound contentment that comes from engaging respectfully and happily with our natural world and with each other.

Shades of Green: Muzzling Science and Scientists

October 9, 2011Canada, Politics, Western CanadaPolitics, Ray Grigg, Salmon, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

Muzzling science and scientists is ultimately an exercise in futility, an effort that inevitably causes more trouble than the initial discomfort of confronting the reality of evidence. History has shown this repeatedly. The Church didn’t like the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and the reasoned celestial observations of Galileo so it silenced both scientists. But 400 years later the same Church was forced to make a belated and humiliating apology. Indeed, the sun is the centre of our solar system and the planets do rotate around it as Galileo determined.

History hasn’t dulled the impulse of established interests to suppress scientific inquiry and muzzle scientists. Scientific analysis of Newfoundland’s North Atlantic cod stocks warned that the resource was being overfished. But governments found the political and economic inconvenience was too costly to confront. The result was a collapse of the fishery and the ruin one of the greatest food resources on the planet.

The George W. Bush administration in the US tried the same tactic with global climate change. The weight of scientific evidence indicated that greenhouse gas emissions were warming the planet. But the remedy didn’t match the political ideology of the time so the warnings were suppressed, diluted and contested. Valuable time was lost. Opportunities were wasted. Now, as the mechanics of global warming are more clearly understood and the dire consequences are more accurately measured, the folly of denying the initial scientific evidence verges on the criminal.

The same process of muzzling science and scientists is now occurring on BC’s West Coast as the impact of salmon farms on wild salmon is being examined. The issue of disappearing wild salmon is complex. But the complexity is abetted – as evidence from the Cohen Commission on the disappearance of Fraser River sockeye salmon is revealing – by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ conflicting mandate to both advocate for salmon farming and to regulate it. A political ideology has decided that a farmed and wild fishery are compatible so evidence indicating otherwise is misconstrued, neglected or suppressed. These contradictory objectives have created a condition in which some of the evidence given by DFO scientists at the Cohen Commission seems confused, even contradicting the findings of their own previous research. Meanwhile, the migration of employees between the supervised and the supervisor creates a porous relationship that compromises DFO’s objectivity and credibility.

This politicization of science is stunningly exemplified in the government’s treatment of Dr. Kristi Miller, a molecular geneticist with DFO investigating the gradual decline in Fraser River sockeye. She has been in charge of a $5.3 million research program in Nanaimo’s Pacific Biological Station, and her work was significant enough to be published as an acclaimed article in the prestigious magazine, Science . The January 2011 article, Genomic Signatures Predict Migration and Spawning Failure in Wild Canadian Salmon, hypothesizes that “the genomic signal associated with elevated mortality is a response to a virus infecting fish before river entry and that persists to the spawning areas.”

Although Dr. Miller’s article did not specifically implicate salmon farms, the decline in Fraser River sockeye happened to occur in the generation following a 1992 outbreak of viral disease in farmed chinook, an event that was serious enough to bankrupt some private operations and eventually end the further farming of chinook.

Did a viral infection in salmon farms cause the decline in Fraser River sockeye? Answering this question would seem to be both urgent and critical. Discussing and exploring Dr. Miller’s study with the scientific community would seem to be crucial in understanding the relationship between farmed and wild salmon. DFO initially thought so, promoting this dialogue by contacting over 7,400 journalists about her study.

Then politics intervened. The Privy Council Office, a supporter of the Prime Minister’s Office, suddenly prohibited Dr. Miller from talking to her colleagues and the press about her study. She was refused permission to attend a university closed session on salmon health. This muzzling occurred on the pretext that such publicity would compromise the evidence she would be giving before the Cohen Commission, an explanation commonly dismissed by academics and scientists as absurd. Even following her presentation of evidence, a spokesman for DFO would not guarantee that the order of silence would be rescinded.

Meanwhile, salmon farms that originally refused to give samples of their fish for genomic testing have finally agreed to comply so Dr. Miller can determine if the viral signature in the farmed fish is the same as in the infected sockeye. But this delaying tactic now means that the test results will not be available until after the Cohen Commission has finished receiving evidence. T complicate matters, funding for Dr. Miller’s continued research is not forthcoming from the government’s Treasury Board, a curious response to an investigation purported to be one of the most important coming from DFO in years. And her unfunded research cannot find the $18,000 required for the genomic testing. Neither will DFO allow her to receive outside funding, a course of events that should lead any objective observer to be suspicious of political interference.

Political interference, even at its forceful, can only delay scientific inevitabilities. Ideologies, even at their most fervent, eventually look foolish in the light of evidence. If West Coast fisheries – both farmed and wild – are to be properly managed, DFO must retreat from its presently conflicted position to a solely scientific one. Only then can it maintain its credibility and authority. For anyone considering the folly of its current strategy, simply review the lessons of history. Importing Some Gross National Happiness from the Bhutanese
by Ray Grigg

The industrialized world is a funk these days. If it is the worrisome realization that this economic system is beginning to show some serious flaws, then maybe the time has come to give some serious consideration to the Bhutanese notion of Gross National Happiness. Even the Bhutanese must have some bad days, but nothing compared to the protracted period of down experience by the industrialized world.

America, the world’s cultural and economic pacesetter is sinking under the weight of debt and the illusion of entitlement. US pessimism is soaring and most think their country is “on the wrong track”, a sign that they are ready for insight and change. Indeed, their attitude is also shared by the Europeans and Japanese. Even the ascendent Chinese, despite their booming economy, are getting nervous about the threatening chaos around them. The world’s predominant financial structures are in a dangerous and precarious condition. The quest for endless wealth has combined with rampant greed to produce an unprecedented monetary mess ‹ all corrective strategies have been unsuccessful and the overwhelming weight of accumulated national debt seems to be promising a future of economic gloom.

Shades of Green: A Weather Report – the Local and the Global

September 25, 2011Climate Changeclimate change, Ray Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

The story of three blind men describing an elephant illustrates the shortcomings of trying to understand global climate change by regarding only local weather. One man wraps his arms around a leg and decides that an elephant is like a tree. Another is feeling the contours of its trunk and deduces that an elephant is like a snake. The third is touching an ear and concludes that an elephant is like heavy canvas. A little more perspective would lead them to a more accurate description.

Just as we are inclined to construe the personal as universal, individual experience inclines us to believe that the local is global. So for people who lived in the southwest corner of British Columbia during spring and early summer of 2011, the protracted bout of unseasonably cool and wet weather might be erroneously construed as the weather occurring elsewhere.

The six-state region of the US southwest – Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee – had months of “exceptional” drought. By September, Texas was enduring its worst dry spell since measurements began in 1895. A “disaster declaration” has been announced for every month of 2011. To date, wildfires have burned 40,000 hectares and engulfed more than 1,000 homes. Meanwhile, the nearby Missouri and Mississippi Rivers have offered some of “the greatest floods in US history” (Guardian Weekly, June 24/11).

For America’s Atlantic coast, 2011 was the stormiest year on record – these intense weather systems brought heavy rains but winds must exceed 119 km/hr for hurricane classification. Even though September’s “Irene” was downgraded to a storm, it still ravaged much the East Coast, deluging 11 states in torrential rains, killing 38 people and causing an estimated $20 billion in flood damage.

Elsewhere in the US, a record number of tornadoes twisted through the southern states – 600 alone in the month of April. Wind, heat and drought in Arizona created some of the largest wildfires that state has ever known (Ibid.). Oklahoma set yearly records for cold (-35C) and 24-hour snowfall (68.5 cm). Record weather damage is now noted as a factor in America’s economic woes.

Mexico suffered the hottest temperatures (48.8C) on the planet in April. “Nearly half the country is now affected by drought. There have already been 9,000 wildfires, and the biggest farm union says that more than 3.5 million farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy because they cannot feed cattle or grow crops” (Ibid..).

After one of the coldest winters in 300 years, drought zones were declared in much of England and Wales in June when rain failed to arrive, making it the hottest and driest spring in 100 years. Kent was receiving as much rain in May as Timbuktu, Manchester was getting more sunshine than Spain’s Costa del Sol, and soils in southern England were drier than those in Egypt (Ibid.). Meanwhile, “Scotland registered its wettest-ever May” (Ibid.). British meteorologists were describing their weather as “remarkable”, “unprecedented” and “shocking” (Ibid.).

Although hot conditions still prevail in the agricultural regions of eastern Europe and Russia in 2011, last year was extraordinary. The hottest summer in at least 500 years scorched 2 million square kilometres of crops, contributed to the death of 50,000 people, caused hundreds of giant wildfires, and created crop failures that initiated worldwide grain shortages when Russia curtailed all exports. Summer drought and heat are causing even more fires in Northern Russia for 2011 than 2010.

As the Guardian Weekly pointed out, western Europe had its turn of extreme weather this year. Record hot weather stressed 16 countries in March, April and May. Rainfall was half of normal. Then the heat and dryness ended with “massive storms and flash floods [that] left the streets of Germany and France running like rivers” (Ibid.).

Australia ended a 10 year drought of unprecedented magnitude last year with record Queensland floods in January of 2011. Australians deemed this event their “worst natural disaster”, with economic costs expected to be about $32 billion.

2011 brought another once-in-a-century drought to China, scorching the southern and central regions, drying up rivers and reservoirs, shrivelling crops and fomenting political unrest. In an effort to quell the turmoil, the Chinese seeded the sky with various rain-inducing chemicals. By design or coincidence, the drought ended with torrential rains – in some places, as much as 30 cm in 24 hours – that caused floods, mudslides, thousands of wrecked homes and 94 deaths.

A worldwide tracking of local weather in 2010 identified 17 countries that measured record high temperatures, including Colombia, Peru, Cuba, Kenya, Somalia and the Amazon Basin. While Rajasthan in India registered 49.6C, Kuwait reached temperatures above 50C.

Climate statistics confirming more freak and extreme weather are corroborated by insurance companies. Worldwide claims from natural disasters have risen from $25 billion per year in the 1980s to $130 billion in 2010. Canada’s freaky weather has been confirmed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada which notes that the severity and frequency of tropical storms has caused “water damage” to replace “fire and theft” as half of all its claims.

Although climate scientists cannot attribute any specific weather event to global climate change, a trend is clearly discernable. Extreme weather has now become the “new normal”, according to officials at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Vancouver Sun, Aug. 26/11). Whether this trend is meaningful, of course, is quite another matter. But it should remind coastal British Columbians that a little cooler and wetter than normal may be better than the alternatives.

Shades of Green: The Sockeye Salmon Murder Mystery

September 17, 2011Oceans, Salmon Farming and AquacultureAquaculture, cohen commission, Ray Grigg, Salmon, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

The puzzle of British Columbia’s disappearing Fraser River sockeye is unfolding like a classical murder mystery. Suspects abound. Suspicion has fallen on such culprits as atypical ocean predators, unusual algae blooms, overfishing, inadequate food supplies, and threatening high temperatures in both marine and river ecologies. Each suspect has been carefully investigated and each may have inflicted some injury on the hapless sockeye. But the prime suspect is the salmon farming industry, the Norwegian corporations that have located multitudes of open net-pens in BC’s West Coast waters – many crucially situated along the migration routes of the victimized sockeye.

The salmon farming industry possesses the three primary characteristics that make it the prime suspect in this murder investigation: motive, opportunity and means.

The motive is profit. Corporations have discovered that open net-pens are the most lucrative way of rearing farmed salmon. When Norway tightened restrictions on its salmon farming industry because of the proliferation of diseases and parasites in North Atlantic wild salmonids, Norwegian corporations saw their profits being constrained by controls and costs. Their quest for continuing expansion and profit was curtailed.

The perfect opportunity for expansion and profits appeared in coastal BC. The province was eager to boost coastal economies with a new industry, the waters were pristine and cold, regulations were minimal, and supervision was casual, trusting and accommodating. The corporations, of course, promised investment and jobs. This new environment was open, innocent and unburdened by the experience and disasters that had occurred in the North Atlantic. BC was the perfect opportunity to expand the industry and satisfy ever-hungry shareholders.

Corporate character and history are also relevant in this murder mystery. When salmon farming was known to cause environmental problems in North Atlantic waters, when countries such as Norway, Scotland, Ireland and England all had negative experiences with salmon farming, the Norwegian corporations knew that suspicion would likely fall on similar operations in BC. Indeed, parasites and diseases have plagued operations wherever open net-pen salmon farming has been practiced. If corporate practice transferred disastrous viral infections to Chilean waters, then precedent and logic must conclude that these same corporations and operations could bring similar problems to the West Coast. So the corporate defensive strategy has been to separate the events that have occurred elsewhere from those unfolding here.

In a global village interconnected by information sources, however, this strategy is transparently facile and obvious. Numerous independent Norwegian scientists, with long North Atlantic salmon farming experience, have repeatedly warned that the same problems occurring in open net-pen operations there are inevitable in BC. A conspicuous corporate strategy of separating the two situations only arouses suspicion – although evasion suggests guilt, suspicion itself is not incriminating.

Neither is it incriminating that the salmon farming industry always professes its absolute innocence, invariably denying any connection between its practices and any harm to BC’s wild salmon. Its defensive strategy is to argue that no condemning studies are ever conclusive – even though many sea lice studies have repeatedly confirmed harm. Despite the overwhelming weight of incriminating circumstantial evidence, its corporate response is to encourage further investigation – ad nauseam. Repeat definitive studies. Get more data. Quibble about details. Solicit contradictory opinions. “Me thinks,” as Hamlet said of his mother’s guilt, “she doth protest too much.”

No corporation engaged in a harmless practice needs a public relations company to polish an image, especially if that company is Hill and Knowlton, described as one of the world’s slickest “spin machines” ‹ the same one employed by tobacco companies to deny the cancerous effects of smoking, by Exxon to clean its reputation after its disastrous oil spill in Alaska, and by dictatorships to cover the blood and torture of abominable politics. Since the character of a reputable corporation speaks for itself, suspicion is automatically aroused when extreme measures are needed to improve a public image.

The last criteria for identifying a prime suspect is means – did the suspect have the capability of committing the crime? Open net-pens containing millions of salmon in feed-lot conditions undeniably pollute the immediate benthic environment with feces, waste food, antibiotics and the toxins to control sea lice. And the natural sea lice cycle, sustained every year by the migration of wild mature salmon to spawning and death in their nascent rivers, is broken by the continual presence of salmon in farms. The consequent damage to out-migrating wild smolts has been repeatedly demonstrated.

The latest and most serious evidence in the sockeye salmon murder mystery is the possibility that corporations have brought lethal or debilitating viral infections to the West Coast. Symptoms of infectious salmon anemia have been found. And Dr. Kristi Miller, a molecular geneticist who has been studying the decline of Fraser River sockeye – their diminishing returns happen to correspond to the placement of open net-pen salmon farms on their migration routes – has identified genetic markers that strongly suggest another unusual viral infection in wild fish. “It could be the smoking gun,” she testified to the Cohen Commission established to investigate the mystery of the missing sockeye.

Judge Cohen has been receiving mounds of information, including reams of data about parasitic sea lice transferring from farmed to wild fish, and now new evidence suggesting fish farms have imported debilitating viruses to the BC’s West Coast ecology. When his investigation is completed, he will deliberate and report on his findings. The prime suspect has not yet been convicted. But the mounting evidence is incriminating, and various accomplices are now implicated. The plot thickens.

Shades of Green: The World’s Changing Energy Equation

September 11, 2011UncategorizedRay Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

The world’s energy equation is rapidly changing. Three recent developments have altered energy options, re-calibrated the calculation of supply and transformed the implications for the planet’s environment. Unfortunately, renewable, pollution-free energies – although they continue to make advances – are not in this equation.

The most recent development has been the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan on March 11, 2011, an event that shocked the energy sector and sent many countries scurrying to reconsider their energy sources. Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Malaysia have all decided to either abandon or phase out their nuclear power plants. Japan is reviewing and reducing its nuclear strategy. The escalating cost of building such plants, the multiplication of safety systems and the dramatized risk of meltdown are now measured as being too high for practical purposes – the immediate economic damage of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is estimated at $235 billion and the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown is presently at $200 billion and counting.

The second development in the energy equation is the discovery of shale gas and the technology to access it. Horizontal drilling and “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing) has opened huge supplies throughout North America and elsewhere. Natural gas can serve as a partial substitute for the diminishing supplies of conventional oil. In an energy-hungry world, it will be exploited to the fullest to produce heat, electricity, fertilizer and even diesel. Natural gas can also be used to power vehicles directly – 11 million gasoline engines have been converted to this use but, as an indication of future trends, General Motors is now designing production engines that will burn only the anticipated supply of cheap and plentiful natural gas.

The third development is the discovery of more oil – a lot more oil. As conventional wells decrease in number and production, shale oil is replacing them, multiplying known and recoverable reserves while changing the world’s economic, political and energy calculus. The technology that has made shale gas economically feasible has also exposed huge supplies of shale oil. Faster drilling has reduced access from 65 to 25 days (Globe & Mail, June 29/11) and has decreased production time from two years to eight months (National Post, July 2/11).

One surprising source of this new oil is Israel’s Shfela Basin, located just a short drive south of Jerusalem. With a supply of 250 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil, it may be the third largest reserve in the world, and it may have twice as much as Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion barrels of crude (Globe & Mail, June 29/11). The Shfela Basin has enough high quality oil to supply both Israel and the US, at a combined annual consumption of 8 billion barrels, for the next 200 years.

The other source of shale oil is the US. At least 20 new oil-rich shale basins have been identified, including Eagle Ford in Texas, Bakken in North Dakota, and Green River which straddles Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The Green River basin alone contains a recoverable 1.38 trillion barrels or five times the Saudi Arabia equivalent. Meanwhile, Alberta’s huge oil sands reserve continues to ramp up production to meet the world’s energy hunger.

All this doesn’t mean that oil will become a plentiful commodity. Consumption is rising rapidly in China, India and Brazil just as old oil sources are steadily declining. But new supplies of shale oil portend radical changes at every possible level of the energy equation. More oil delays the “peak oil” crisis, undermines the prospects for electric and hydrogen vehicles, impairs the future of non-polluting solar and wind renewables, and alters the entire geo-political structure that has been infecting world politics for decades. But the biggest change – and the most dangerous – may be the difficult matter of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Three decades of effort by a global civilization powered with fossil fuels has not been able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, our best efforts to date have only been able to slow the annual rate of increase. Meanwhile, pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of 280 parts per million have risen to about 393 ppm today, a trajectory with extremely serious implications for climate, ecologies and human health, security and agriculture – climatologists estimate that we need to return to about 350 ppm to maintain the traditional climates that have accommodated our historical settlement of the planet. Given rising world populations, spreading industrialization, expanding materialism and an increasing demand for energy, the prospect of decreasing CO2 emissions – even with the aid of greater efficiencies – seems ever more challenging.

Given the failure of past political effort to reduce emissions, those concerned about climate issues had hoped shortages of oil would eventually force up fuel prices, encourage innovation, create clean energy alternatives and reshape our economic world to a more benign influence. However, given the recent discovery of massive amount of new oil and gas, this imposed option now seems unlikely, at least for the immediate future.

So, where does this leave us? We now have sobering scientific knowledge about climate change and the dire prospects that lie before us if we don’t dramatically cut carbon dioxide emissions. We also have promising technologies for supplies of clean, renewable energy. But we also have the temptation to burn massive new supplies of oil and gas. Ironically, as our ingenuity saves us from one inevitability, it threatens us with another. The power of our inventiveness has once again provided us with solutions that come with even more challenging problems. How we judge our situation, weigh our options and summon our resolve is more important than ever before.

Shades of Green: A $50 Million Message to Coal

September 3, 2011Miningcoal, Mining, Ray Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

As heat records broke by the hundreds across the United States this summer, Michael Bloomberg braved the sweltering temperatures on a hot July morning, mounted a platform in front of the coal-fired GenOn power station in Alexandria, Virginia, and announced to those gathered that his charity, Bloomberg Philanthropies, was giving $50 million to the US Sierra Club to aid its Beyond Coal Campaign.

Bloomberg, mayor of New York, multi-billionaire and founder of his namesake philanthropy organization, was recognizing the “truly impressive” work of the Sierra Club in stopping the construction of at least 153 new coal-fired power stations in the US. The 91 plants that it was able to shut down since 2010 has prevented 114 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from entering the atmosphere. The $50 million donation will be used to expand the Sierra Club’s efforts to phase out one-third of the existing coal-fired US power plants, to cut coal consumption for electricity by 30 percent by 2020, and to significantly reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and the plethora of toxic pollutants that cause widespread environmental and health damage – in the US alone, the annual human effect of burning coal is estimated at 13,000 premature deaths and health costs of $100 billion. None of these liabilities are weighed when computing the economic value of mining and burning coal.

But Bloomberg’s $50 million gift is more than a gesture of support for the Sierra Club and its ambitious objective of revoking “the social licence for burning coal”. It is a powerful indictment against coal itself, the censuring of a fossil fuel from the Industrial Revolution era that has become the single largest scourge of our planet’s environmental health. Its emissions comprise mercury, cadmium, lead and other neurotoxic heavy metals, together with acid-producing sulphur, radioactive elements, unhealthy particulates, dioxins, arsenic and over three times the weight of coal in carbon dioxide. (Assuming coal is about 90% carbon then, when burned, the 12 atomic mass units of each carbon atom combine with two oxygen atoms of 16 atomic mass units each to become the 44 atomic mass units of carbon dioxide. In a process that probably seems counter-intuitive to non-scientists, the dense 0.9 tonnes of carbon contained in each tonne of solid coal becomes 3.3 tonnes of gaseous carbon dioxide that is dispersed into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.)

Bloomberg’s gift of $50 million attaches weighty ethical considerations to both the burning of coal and the mining of coal. Indeed, coal mining is, itself, a massively polluting operation that taints air, water and land – just the initial effects of a process that is culminating in disturbing structural impacts to global climate and ocean acidity. So Bloomberg’s generosity has implications in the distant communities of Campbell River and the Comox Valley where coal mining has become topical and controversial.

How serious is this issue? At the level of principle, the issue is whether these two communities become part of the problem or the solution. Bloomberg’s $50 million gives moral weight to the solution side by helping to reduce the ills caused by coal in the US. Locally, conservation and environmental organizations, together with many other concerned citizens, are expending countless hours examining technical studies, evaluating the risks and warning about present and future damage. They are also challenging a political momentum that would rather acquiesce to a momentary temptation than consider the long-term perspective. Any concern about whether or not a mining corporation could provide enough “financial security to ensure waste water treatment from the [Quinsam] mine site will be treated in perpetuity…” (Courier Islander, Aug. 19/11) is completely unaware of the duration of “perpetuity” – the comment does, however, acknowledge the risk. Reasonable prudence would never consider subjecting future generations to such a persistent and onerous burden.

At the practical level, when Quinsam Coal cannot even manage its existing wastes, then the prospect of allowing further mining of an even more polluting grade of coal simply boggles any sense of social and environmental logic. And for what? On the positive side is a mere four additional years of local jobs. On the negative side is 1.7 million tonnes of dirty coal, 5.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, and the likelihood of perpetual acid seepage into a healthy, fish-bearing watershed that is a signature attraction of the Campbell River region. The balance is an unqualified “no” for more coal mining. And if any doubt remains, consider provincial authorities that have been both incapable and unwilling to enforce whatever meagre environmental regulations they might impose.The proposed Raven mine in the Comox Valley invites the same risks and hazards.

Coal mines have another shortcoming. They expose and release methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The Raven mine is projected to exhaust 127,500 cubic meters of methane per day into the atmosphere. The Quinsam mine, depending on its relative size, would exhaust an equivalent amount. These emissions produce consequences that our planet can no longer absorb or ameliorate.

Michael Bloomberg is just one of many people who now grasp the disastrous implications of mining and burning coal. In his speech to the people who had gathered on that hot July morning in Alexandria, Virginia, he said we must “fight climate change and bring about our clean energy future.” By offering $50 million to this cause, he said, “I am doing my part to move our country Beyond Coal. Are you with me?”

“Are you with me?” is a clarion call that is now echoing around the planet, a moral imperative to anyone who cares about the health of our bodies and the well being of our oceans, rivers, lakes and air. Listen and it can be heard in even the communities of Campbell River and the Comox Valley. The future is now. And the time has come for us to become the change that we want to happen.

Shades of Green: Pipelines and Tankers – the Building Pressure

August 22, 2011Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Tar SandsAlberta Tar Sands, BC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, fracking, Oil and gas, Ray Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

Anyone who is concerned about the arrival of pipelines and tankers to BC’s West Coast should be worried. The forces are mounting to make this province a bridge to an energy-hungry Asia. And the inevitable result will be – sooner or later – a ruptured pipeline despoiling pristine rivers and a broken tanker spilling millions of barrels of oil into one of the few undefiled ecologies remaining on our planet.

This scenario is being set by a dramatic change of circumstances in the last few years. Massive investments in the Alberta oil sands have created supplies of crude that must reach markets. To maximize profits, producers want more export options than the United States, the sole foreign recipient of this crude. As America’s economy slows and Asia’s booms, ocean access to the entire Pacific Rim becomes irresistible.

Meanwhile, the entire energy calculus has changed with the discovery of extraordinary quantities of shale gas in Canada and the US. America estimates it has enough gas to meet its domestic energy needs for 200 years. Canada’s supply, centred mostly in northern BC and Alberta, is similarly generous. Since the US will need less Canadian gas, the obvious place to sell it is to Asian markets. And that means pipelines and liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals for coastal BC.

All the pieces to support the arrival of such gas and oil terminals are falling into place. China has invested $10 billion in Alberta oil sands with the expectation rewards – oil in preference to profits. Royal Dutch Shell, Korean Gas, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation and Malaysia’s Petronas are all urgently planning for shipments of LNG from BC’s West Coast to their markets. The Montney and Horn River natural gas fields in BC, responsible for making this province the third largest gas producer in the world, could be supplying 5.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2020 – gas that needs to reach buyers. Shell and Mitsubishi are considering that floating off-shore LNG plants would be ideal for BC’s rugged coast. They and other investors are speculating about at least four coastal pipelines and terminals to tranship LNG and oil to Asian markets (Globe & Mail, June 14/11).

If any British Columbians are nervous that foreign energy corporations are planning our future and threatening our treasured West Coast ecology, they will receive no solace from Canada’s Harper government. Foreign Minister John Baird has recently been to China, calling it our “friend” (Ibid. July 19/11) and emphasizing the critical importance of China’s energy and resource appetite in Canada’s economic plans. In Shanghai he declared that Canada’s “relationship [with China] has entered a new era over the past few years” and that it is “the centrepiece of a larger picture of the priority that we want to raise with Asia-Pacific (Ibid. July 21/11). To reinforce this support, Harper’s Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, has endorsed Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline – a $5.5 billion project that would bring oil and gas through 1,172 km of BC’s wilderness to Kitimat – before the public environmental assessment has even started (ForestEthics, July 10/11).

Meanwhile, in a disquieting move that is clearly designed to erase some of the inconvenient environmental obstacles that lie between Asian energy hunger and Canada’s export ambitions, the Harper government is eliminating 776 positions from Environment Canada, with a further downsizing of 5 to 10 percent next year. These are the professional biologists, chemists and climatologists who determine the difference between careful and reckless plans, the science-based experts who advise that policy occurs within responsible environmental constraints – if no one knows about any unfolding ecological wreckage, then it obviously doesn’t exist.

Despite huge opposition to the Northern Gateway Pipeline project in British Columbia, Enbridge is sensing success and is massaging the public with a national advertising campaign designed to humanize its image from one of the least responsible of all pipeline corporations to one that cares for the public over profits. Its corporate slogan, “Where energy meets people” has been neatly spliced into nearly full-page colour newspaper ads depicting Canadians energetically engaged in activities that are supposed to connect human challenges to the importance of pipelines, to show that personal fulfilment cannot be separated from Enbridge’s crucial role in our lives. “Where Energy Meets Culture” shows ballet dancers in a dramatic pose on an open stage, “Where Energy Meets Pride” shows four aboriginal runners wending their way along a lonely bucolic road, and “Where Energy Meets Victory” shows a team of five bicyclists racing serenely along a long stretch of prairie highway.

The psychology of these ads is both oblique and devious, effectively designed so people will forget that Enbridge wants to pipe oil to a West Coast port, that oil sands crude is particularly corrosive to pipelines, that this pipeline must traverse hundreds of pristine rivers and streams on its winding wilderness course to Kitimat, and that such a pipeline will invite almost one massive supertanker per day – about 225 per year – to some of the most treacherous, beautiful and vulnerable coastlines in the world.

So this is the scenario being designed for British Columbia. It is to become North America’s western departure point for energy exports to China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and any Pacific Rim country that belongs to the distribution circuit. Huge profits are to be made by huge corporations. The Harper government’s plan for prosperity is founded on a view that disregards ecological concerns and forgets that all this gas and oil represents greenhouse emissions that are cooking our planet.

British Columbians who love our coastline, revere the Great Bear Rainforest and honour the wild majesty of our province had better gird their loins for a fight. It’s coming, it’s coming soon, and the enemy is amassing its forces. The outcome will determine BC’s future character, alter the world’s energy calculus and decide who is joining or resisting our drift toward environmental Armageddon.

Shades of Green: Local Communities and Carbon Dioxide Emissions

August 18, 2011Climate Change, Urban & Transportclimate change, Ray Grigg, Shades of Green, Transportation and Urban PlanningRay Grigg

Responsibility for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is falling to cities, municipalities and regional districts because wider efforts during the last 30 years to ameliorate the threat of global climate change are not working. Multiple negotiations sponsored by the United Nation’s have been unsuccessful. Developing nations such as China, India and Brazil are determined to follow the destructive example of industrialized countries which, in turn, are reluctant to risk economic advantage by reducing their emissions.

Canada, under the Harper government, is so disconnected from climate science that it seems to live in parallel and separate universe, one that systematically obstructs reduction efforts, assiduously suppresses climate change discussions, silences climatologists, shrinks relevant federal research programs, pushes for greater oil and gas production, and abets coal exports. BC’s government is only marginally better.

The situation is moving from serious to critical, according to the International Energy Agency that monitors global CO2 emissions. Emissions in 2010 broke a dubious record – 30.6 billion tonnes (Gt or gigatonnes) or 1.6 Gt over 2009’s 29.0 Gt. The 5.52 percent increase was also unprecedented, representing a nearly unbroken succession of yearly rises – the so-called “Great Recession” cut 2008’s 29.3 Gt to 29.0 Gt in 2009 (Guardian Weekly, June 3/11).

Climatologists warn that we cannot exceed 2.0 C without invoking “dangerous climate change”. To maintain any reasonable measure of safety, they estimate that 32.0 Gt of carbon dioxide is the maximum we can emit by 2020. However, if present trends continue, we will reach this threshold 9 years early, “making it all but impossible to hold warming to a manageable degree” (Ibid.). The end of this century, therefore, could see average temperature increases of 4.0 C or more, about 6 times the temperature increase from the Industrial Revolution to the present. (Climatologists calculate that 32.0 Gt per year is not a safe level of emissions but the maximum before they must gradually be reduced to zero. Even during this transition we risk inducing serious climate change and destroying the marine ecology with fatal acidification.)

CO2 emissions are the key environmental force affecting almost every other corrective environmental action we undertake. We cannot restore wild salmon runs if rivers are too hot for fish and oceans are too acetic for marine life. We cannot protect endangered ecologies if temperatures rise above levels species can tolerate. We cannot sustain agriculture if the weather is too extreme for crops. We cannot cope with displaced people if hundreds of millions are fleeing rising oceans, drought, floods and unprecedented storms.

Unlike the federal and provincial governments that have been incapable of reducing CO2 emissions, cities, municipalities and regional districts are closer to the grassroots of communities. Their smaller size allows them to be more responsive and manoeuvrable, better able to initiate the many incremental reductions that can have a huge cumulative effect on total greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, this is what many of them have already done. And given the overall severity of the emissions challenge, this should be the primary guiding principle of all local planning and development.

Several helpful options exist. First is to increase population density downtown. This concentration of people has multiple advantages, all of which are efficiencies that directly or indirectly lower CO2 emissions. Walking, biking or using public transit reduces the need for cars, long commutes from the suburbs, and the costly matter of building roads and servicing dispersed properties. As collateral benefits, city centres become more vibrant, social, interesting, healthy and safe. Public services such as schools, hospitals, libraries, water, sewage and law enforcement are easier and cheaper to provide. Think medieval towns and cities. Their efficiency has been tested and proven during the centuries before we had the energizing power of fossil fuels.

Garbage is a topical problem these days as landfill sites fill and methane escapes from existing dumps – methane is a greenhouse gas about 20-times more powerful than CO2. Burning is probably the worst option for garbage disposal because it emits CO2 and innumerable toxins. Expensive incinerators also commit communities to long-term agreements and eliminate better options as they come available. The best option is careful household streaming of garbage that can then be composted, recycled or stored. Sophisticated technologies such as anaerobic digesters and thermal depolymerization can process waste into reusable materials, thus creating useful heat, oil, gases and solids that can substitute for non-renewable resources.

The two communities of Campbell River and the Comox Valley both have problems with coal, the former with Quinsam Coal that is almost certainly polluting an important watershed, and the latter with a proposed Raven coal mine that will inevitably cause similar environmental problems if it is allowed to proceed. But the fundamental problem with coal is that it is a dirty and polluting fuel. When burned, coal emits toxic materials that compromise human health – every year coal kills 13,000 American prematurely, incurring $100 billion in health costs – and it is the major global source of carbon dioxide emissions. Coal mines are also a source of methane – whether surface or underground, they are essentially open methane wells that release large quantities of this harmful greenhouse gas. If less coal were mined, this would force up its price, thus encouraging efficiencies and cleaner alternatives.

Climatologists warn that we are reaching a critical tipping point in our misadventure with fossil fuels. If senior governments are not capable of curbing greenhouse emissions, then the responsibility for corrective measures falls to local communities and individuals. Given the evidence of all other failures, this is the place where important change must begin.

Shades of Green – Don’t worry, Be Happy

August 8, 2011Canada, Politics, Western CanadaNuclear, Politics, Ray Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

“Don’t worry, be happy” is the refuge of the deceived and the oblivious, the
attitude that people assume when they fail to recognize the reality of their
situation.

“Trust us,” says our federal government. “We are planning the future of all Canadians so we care about the environment.” Meanwhile, it subverts international agreements on greenhouse gas emissions, assiduously avoids discussion of any environmental issues, silences scientists in its employ, eliminates hundreds of them in a budget cutting program, and inflicts a 43 percent funding cut to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, one of the rare federal bodies that stands between responsible development and ecological havoc.

“Trust us,” says our BC government. “We will protect the environment and subject all projects to rigorous environmental examination. Since we are the custodians of the land, water and air, we will ensure that no damage occurs to the ecologies that sustain us all.” Meanwhile, BC’s Auditor General, John Doyle, issues a scathing report about the abject failure of the BC Environmental Assessment Office to monitor and enforce the few regulations it is assertive enough to require.

“Trust us,” say the corporations, “we will look after you with jobs and prosperity. We will protect your environment and your future.” Indeed. The salmon farming industry respects BC’s pristine West Coast so much that they use our waters as a dump for the sewage from their open net-pens, and they honour the natural ecology so much that they scare away marine mammals and expose wild salmon to the plague of farm-source sea lice and diseases. Enbridge is so protective of BC’s wilderness that it is willing to build a 1,172 km oil pipeline that will inevitably release oil into our pure rivers and lure the offshore tankers that will inevitably spill oil into our coastal treasure.

“Don’t worry, be happy” is the implicit message from our governments and corporations, working together to bring us a prosperous future. “We are in control, we know what we are doing,” they contend. “Together we will lead you to a Promised Land of endless prospects and great profits. The tomorrows will always be better than the todays if you will follow our course of progress, believe in the rewards of perpetual growth and suppress the urge to be doubtful and critical. Remember that environmental concerns are impediments to the glorious destiny that awaits us all.”

Maybe modern Germans have an insight we should pause to reflect upon. In an time of unparalleled national prosperity, they are in a funk. Notes Stephan Grunewald, a Cologne-based psychologist, “The Germans have at the moment a mood, a feeling that things can go to pieces, a feeling of being in a situation in which one is completely incapable of action” (Globe & Mail, June 25/11). This feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, this angst in a time of plenty, is a curious paradox rooted deeply in an undifferentiated anxiety. “People no longer believe in this culture of accumulation, they no longer believe in growth…. Nuclear power, speculation, Greece, these all strengthen their feeling that things cannot go on like this. There is a kind of vacuum of meaning” (Ibid.).

Nuclear power is not a British Columbian or a Canadian issue – although the Canadian government has recently divested itself of the Atomic Energy Canada Limited. Neither is the financial situation in Greece. But European and American monetary issues do trouble Canadians because the entire world is financially interconnected. And we have our own disquieting issues – nationally, provincially and locally – that we are not confronting honestly, openly and sensibly. A summer of record heat and rain, of storms and flooding don’t seem to have budged the delusion that all is normal with our planet’s weather – in just one province, Manitoba, fires have caused $700 million in damages and floods have inflicted $2.5 billion in crop losses. “Don’t worry, be happy” is an obliviousness that must eventually awaken to reality, just as local communities must awaken to the reality of stuffed landfills, polluting mines, old-growth logging, threatened wild salmon and badly supervised fish farms.

The German epiphany, an awakening we need here before we lead our communities, province and country into China’s ecological mess, is that the freeway of perpetual growth leads to a chasm without a bridge. Everything is getting bigger, faster, more complicated – and worse. “Don’t worry, be happy” is the illusion of well
being propagated by our governments and businesses, the engineered psychology of avoidance which doesn’t want anyone to notice that key elements of Earth’s ecology are rapidly degrading, unraveling or collapsing. The signs have already entered our consciousness if only we were attentive enough to heed them. A few glib lines in a Maclean’s article about colonizing space with bacteria to ensure the continued existence of life in the universe is a clue. “The world is doomed. Even if we avoid annihilation by climate change or nuclear holocaust, the inevitable expansion of the sun will surely do us in” (Maclean’s, July 25/11).

The sun’s threat is not likely to materialize for about 500 million years. But a nuclear holocaust could be as immediate as tomorrow. And a world doomed by climate change is within a few decades of near inevitability. Would massive species extinction or acetic and dead oceans garner any more attention? Shouldn’t the mere hint of any such threats elicit a panic alert and a reflexive cold sweat of fear in anyone conscious enough to register the meaning? Wouldn’t the normal and sane response be spontaneous riots in the streets and frantic marches to the seats of government to counter such a course of madness?

Unless, of course, “Don’t worry, be happy” has created its charm of indifference and cast the spell of numbness that treats impending environmental catastrophes as casually as any two-for-one sale or discontinued fashion line. The result is a tragic reversal that has inflated the trivial and trivialized the momentous.

Shades of Green: Parenting in an Uncertain Age

August 1, 2011Climate Changeclimate change, Ray Grigg, Shades of Green, species at riskRay Grigg

When Elijah was four years old, he wanted to dress as a polar bear for Halloween trick-or-treating so his mother, Sandra, sewed him a costume from an old white bed sheet. As she was making his costume, it occurred to her that global warming may mean the costume may outlast the polar bears. So she began to wonder how a loving and caring parent is supposed to explain the extinction of a species to a child. If parents are the heroes of children, why didn’t they do something to prevent it?

The continued existence of polar bears was not the only species that worried her. She knew that within Elijah’s lifetime, scientists are expecting one in four mammals to go extinct – for marine mammals the prognosis is one in three. And this doesn’t count species of fish, insects and plants. If iconic species such as tigers, whales, tuna, sharks, sea turtles and butterflies should disappear off the face of the Earth, what will this mean to children? How much will it shrink their experience, stunt their imagination and darken their expectation? If the world that adults bequeath to children is depleted and impoverished, will it diminish their respect for humanity and warp their values when they become adults?

These are just the first of the issues that prompted Sandra Steingraber to write Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. As a conscientious and protective mother living in the 21st century, these are the concerns flooding over her. If sex and the mystery of procreation are difficult to explain to a child, how does a parent explain climate change, species extinction, ocean acidification and global pollution, all of which are stories of de-generation and de-construction, of de-creation rather than re-generation? How does a mother dispel the anxiety that the life she is offering to her child may be less secure and promising than the life she was offered? How does she reconcile this prospect with the obligation of parents to protect their children from harm and to open their future to opportunity?

Raising Elijah is powerful because it asks the important questions that a responsible parent should ask. It steps outside the realm of thoughtless consumerism into the world of protective nurturing, giving focus and clarity to those hidden doubts lurking below surface worries. She cites disturbing US health trends for children – trends in Canada will be similar – that are the likely result of their exposure to toxic chemicals prevalent in air pollution, pesticides, heavy metals and miscellaneous plastics.

1 in 8 is born prematurely, the leading cause of death in the first months of life and the leading cause of disability.
1 in 11 has asthma, the most common chronic childhood disease and a leading cause of school absenteeism. Asthma’s incidence has doubled since 1980.
1 in 10 has a learning disability.
Nearly 1 in 10 has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
1 in 110 has autism or is on the autism spectrum. Causes are unknown, but exposure to chemical agents in early pregnancy is one of several suspected contributors.
1 in 10 girls begin breast development before the age of eight. On average, breast development now begins nearly two years earlier (age 9) than it did in the early 1960s (age 11). Early puberty is a known risk factor for adult breast cancer. One of the suspected causes is estrogen mimicking chemicals found in plastics.

Once considered unusual, these “new morbidities of childhood” now appear almost normal or inevitable, writes Steingraber. The authors of a US pediatric health investigation, whose work was recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives, came to a more damning conclusion: “In the absence of toxicity testing,” they concluded, “we are inadvertently employing pregnant women and children as uninformed subjects to warn us of new environmental toxicants. Paradoxically, because industry is not obligated to supply the data on developmental neurotoxicity, the costs of human disease, research, and prevention are socialized whereas the profits are privatized.”

For a mother who is passionately protective of the health and wellbeing of her child, Steingraber finds herself trying to raise Elijah in a toxic environment of unavoidable risk. So she must take protective measures that seem strange in a culture that purports to be civilized. How much mercury-tainted tuna can she safely feed to Elijah? Because she knows that children are smaller than adults, their metabolic rates are higher and they are in a vulnerable growing phase, can she trust the safety of approved exposure standards? Is exposure to any toxin safe for a child? What industries are nearby that might render the air unfit to breath or the water hazardous to drink? What kind of toxins are being emitted from the rug on which her child is playing? Will their dog track in herbicides from the neighbourhood lawns? Can she be sure no residue pesticides taint their fruits and vegetables? Are genetically modified foods safe? The ethical and regulatory lapses in our modern industrial state have forced her into a defensive position laden with fear.

“The great moral issue of our own day,” she contends, is “the environmental crisis, an unfolding calamity whose main victims are our own children and grandchildren.” She suggests that it can be viewed as a tree with two main branches. “One branch represents what is happening to our planet through the atmospheric accumulation of heat-trapping gases. The second branch represents what is happening to us through the accumulation of inherently toxic chemical pollutants in our bodies. Follow the first branch and you find droughts, floods, acidifying oceans, dissolving coral reefs and faltering plankton stocks. Follow the second branch and you find pesticides in children’s urine, lungs stunted by air pollutants, abbreviated pregnancies, altered hormone levels and lower scores on cognitive tests.”

To a thinking and protective mother, the original Tree of Life is undergoing a disturbing transformation.

The Common Sense Canadian

Critical discussion of key issues shaping our economy and environment.