Category: politics

Letter to Ukee council

Here’s my (uncharacteristically restrained) letter to Ucluelet council, put in the mail yesterday. Thanks to the apparently defunct Ukee Tattler for the borrowed pic, and for reminding me what year the logging happened.

Dear Mayor Russcher and Ucluelet council,

I recently had the opportunity to drive to Toquart Bay, past the Maggie Lake timber block that was logged back in the summer of 2006. I see that it has still not been replanted, and is growing wild with brush and alder.

As I recall, this cutblock was an initial step, after much negotiation, in creating a permanent “community forest” for Ucluelet. I believe the UEDC was the driving body behind both securing this piece of land and (in conjunction with Interfor) in logging it.

“Community forest,” in most people’s minds, speaks to a notion of stewardship, of a piece of forest being under the care of a neighbouring community, as opposed to being a mere entry in an account book in some faraway city. Continue reading “Letter to Ukee council”

Why economists fail (per the Druids)

Worth a read, though i never thought i’d be following an “archdruid” with some avidity. And not just any archdruid: John Michael Greer is the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA).

Shows how desperate i have become, here in a once-proud country now ruled by an economist.

…[T]here’s a case to be made for discussing economics from a standpoint distinct from that of today’s economists – in fact, from nearly any imaginable standpoint other than that of today’s economists. That case could draw its initial arguments from many points, but the most obvious one just now has to be the near-total failure of contemporary economic thought to provide meaningful guidance to the macroeconomic challenges of our time.

Full post is here at The Archdruid Report. It’s getting so dang hard these days to tell straight from satire. Case in point, from later on in the archdruid’s post:

[It was announced] a few days back that the world derivative market has now reached a total paper value in excess of one quadrillion dollars….  (If you have the sort of fashionable lifestyle that costs you $2000 a day, for example, and you started spending it when multicellular life first evolved on Earth, you wouldn’t yet have spent one quadrillion dollars.) Still, it’s important to grapple with such figures if only to grasp the fantastic absurdities that have created them.

In thinking about this particular version of the unthinkable, two things should be obvious. The first is that there isn’t a quadrillion dollars worth of nonfinancial goods and services anywhere on our planet….

And the economists are the wizards in charge of this fantasy-land!

My letter to Rich

To:
Rich Coleman, Minister responsible for Gaming;
Kevin Krueger, Minister of Tourism, Arts & Culture
Premier Gordon Campbell

cc: Scott Fraser, MLA

Dear Honourable Members,

It’s finally sinking in, just what your BC Liberal government has done to arts and culture in B.C. Your most recent kick in the teeth will cripple the creative life of this province for decades.

Your unprecedented, sweeping and brutal cuts display an astonishing ignorance of what holds a society together. As government, are you merely the manager of our economy? Or are you the stewards of our society? Because a society requires much, much more than a balanced till at the end of the day. Exactly what else could be the topic of an interesting debate, but one ingredient every side would agree on is that a functioning society requires a strong culture as the glue that holds it together. This is harder to count than dollars, which is why it takes wisdom and vision to properly lead. The cuts you have just affected, I’m afraid, put you out of that club.

In an economic downturn, interest in culture expands. There’s a reason visionary leaders, like President Obama in the U.S., have increased cultural spending in these recessionary times. Continue reading “My letter to Rich”

Blind leading blind

The Canadian reluctance to face up to the ever-more-looming (and ever-more-catastrophic) consequences of climate change was pushed a little further last month. How reasonable men can deliberately ignore a broad scientific consensus because it does not align with their beliefs is … well, it’s no surprise at all. It has been the story of civilization since civilization began. But i’d prefer to think we have learned something along the way.

If even one-tenth of the current scientific predictions come true — and the indicators are mounting fast — then Mr. Harper in hindsight is going to look as visionary as a Nazi. Bu politically he’ll be long gone by then, and only his (and all our) children will be left to pick up the pieces.

From the Green Party newsletter:

Climate Change Deniers Appointed to Top Boards
In another behind the scenes attack on science, the Conservative government has appointed well-known climate change deniers to key funding agency positions, setting the stage for shutting down much needed research in Canada.

Tanker feedback by Apr. 14

From the annoyingly persistent but usually effective Dogwood Initiative:

The approval process for tar sands related tankers and pipelines in B.C. is inadequate and time is running out to get our voice heard. We only have until April 14th.

Write to Stephen Harper and let him know the Enbridge Northern Gateway project needs a comprehensive public inquiry, not a rubber stamp.

The current approval process run by National Energy Board NEB and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency CEAA is set up to assess how a project proceeds, not if a project proceeds. It won’t consider the consequences of eliminating the longstanding tanker ban, the impact of pipelines on the expansion of the tar sands, nor the projects relationship to Canada’s policy on global warming.

Write the Prime Minister and tell him that proposals to ship half the current production of the Alberta tar sands to Asia via pipeline to tankers in the waterways of the Great Bear Rainforest needs real scrutiny.

Click hear to send a letter to the Prime Minister and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

www.dogwoodinitiative.org/notankers/actions/letter-demanding-real-scrutiny

The comment period for the scope of the NEB/CEAA review ends April 14th so don’t delay.

I just sent my letter, for what it’s worth. It’s easy to roll your eyes and say What good will it do?, but c’mon, folks. This is still a democracy we live in, and the politicians still have to be elected by popular vote. Besides, look at the world we are handing off to our children. Do you want to look them in the eye in 20 years and say (or think, because you won’t have the heart to say it), “I didn’t even try”?

Try!