The dedicated guys at Eco Storm teamed up with Friends of the Earth to film a documentary on the problem of tin mining for your smartphone. Great watch!
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Christy Clark has been in the local Vancouver news a lot lately. She recently laid out the BC Government’s ‘Five Requirements’ for consideration of an oil pipeline that will pump Alberta oilsands bitumen through Northern BC. From there it will be shipped to various markets around Asia, predominantly China. In this article I analyze the confluence of economic and environmental issues her decision raises.
An interesting article from the Daily Telegraph on the important research recently conducted by the prominent climate skeptic Prof. Richard Muller. For those who haven’t heard of Prof. Muller he set out to prove his climate skeptic position by reseaching climate data for the past 250 years and proved himself wrong: he now believes that the science and data he has collected does prove a correlation between human activity and climate changes.
![Pressing ahead with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline has the potential to devastate BC’s wetland areas. Why’s that? [[MORE]]
In 2010 Enbridge were responsible for the release of 19,500 barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo river.
We’ve summarised some of the key numbers for you:
$800million - the expected clean up costs of the operation
17.5 hours - the amount of time it took Enbridge to respond to reports of an oil spill
800,000 - gallons of crude oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River
2005 - the year more than 200 failings in the pipeline were first bought to the attention of Enbridge*
2010 - the year that 320 people and over 4,00 animals were affected by exposure to crude bitumen as a result of a fracture in the Enbridge Pipeline
Still believe Enbridge when they say that safety is at the “core of their business”**?
(Image Source: skydancingblog.com)
*http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/10/oil-kalamazoo-spill-keystone-cops
**http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Enbridge+blasted+mishandling+2010+spill/6915604/story.html](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m711at9nAo1r23p6qo1_250.jpg)
Pressing ahead with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline has the potential to devastate BC’s wetland areas. Why’s that?
I have recently been thinking: what does it take to make a true environmentalist? We are all aware of the stereotypical image: the hippy, the lefty, the student, the middle-class families shopping in Whole Foods. And the great thing about stereotypes is they are often hilariously accurate, just see Portlandia for a bit of where that comes from.
The Canadian Government is trying to persuade Canadians that the decision to build a pipeline pumping Albertan Oil from Tar Sands is one Canadians don’t need to make, he believes he can make that decision for them. The problem is that oil from Tar Sands are one of the most polluting forms of oil extraction, and they are likely to become more so as pressures on production force oil companies to explore harsher and more difficult terrain to extract from. However, people opposed to this can have their say by signing the Dogwood Initiative’s petition stating their opposition to something that risks so much land and so many people’s livelihoods*.
Help protect BC’s pristine coastline, local communities, city residents and First Nations groups. Sign the Dogwood Initiative’s petition today.
Thanks,
Eco Cities
This is a response to the following article and should be read as such:
http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/4247
Taken point by point as they arise, the number of fundamental errors in reasoning and rationale in the recent Burney and Hampson article for the Frontier Center for Public Policy are astonishing. As a center for public policy research it is surprising the basic errors in economic reasoning that have been made; it also shows a staggering political naivety.
We spoke in the first article about our awe and fear at what we described as a “compassionless” image of nature. We gave an image at the heart of this view: of an avalanche. It was not an all encompassing view of what we fear in nature. But it is an image that is powerful, that I believe sits at the heart of almost all, but definitely not all, of the structures we have built around ourselves for comfort. Homes, technology, politics, clothing, television - they each are related to this vision of nature.
This video recently inspired my girlfriend to go vegetarian, perhaps you’ll be similarly inspired.
We are beings in relation with nature. No matter how much we believe we are not, we are. In recent days I have been considering the nature of this relationship. It has appeared to me that there is something about this relationship that needs to be described in order for us to think beyond the current tendency of nature versus humans.
