From the common sense department:
2006–10-20 (CBC News) ‘No debate’ that fish farms kill wild salmon, says B.C. scientist
The independent scientific community speaks with a single voice with regards to sea lice and their impact on wild salmon. Salmon farms kill wild salmon. There’s no debate around that. It’s been known and acknowledged in Europe for more than a decade.Dr. John Volpe, University of Victoria
The committee is wrapping up its hearings after seven months and thousands of witnesses, and is expected to make its report to the legislature next spring. (Why so long? Because Gordon Campbell says there’s nothing to talk about, so he’s locked the legislature for the fall.)
It should be noted that Patrick Moore, former Greenpeace warrior, is on the side of the fish-farming industry. Contradiction? Or sell out, as many environmentalists claim, citing Moore’s support for the nuclear industry, logging, the plastics industry and genetically modified foods to name a few of his controversial about-faces. Wired magazine in 2004 published an interesting article about Moore entitled Eco-Traitor.
Its only a matter of time before we see Rona Ambrose or Stephen Harper share the same stage as Moore. Watch for it.
For the record, I have never knowingly purchased or eaten farmed salmon. When we eat out, if the restaurant can’t assert that its wild, we don’t order salmon.
Organizing boycotts of products and industries is going to become a “growth industry” in itself, and soon, I believe.
Peter MacKay, supposedly a grown up who is charged with deriving and implementing Canada’s foreign policy, is a petulant little boy who fell into a Liberal baited trap yesterday in the House of Commons:
The barely audible exchange was caught on an audio tape, with one MP asking âwhat about your dog?â and someone responding: âYou have her.â (Canadian Press, The Star Stronach demands apology
Some might feel sorry for MacKay, but I am not one of them. This is not the first example of poor behaviour displayed by MacKay in parliament, nor is he the only guilty one, nor is the other side of the house innocent in this regard. But this story is about MacKay.
MacKay ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party claiming that “I am not the merger candidate”, asserting that he was there to build UP the PC Party, not tear it apart.
I for one did not believe him nor did I vote for him, quite the contrary. I saw MacKay’s ties to the old establishment within the PC Party – Mulroney and others – as being dangerous to the life of the party.
Say one thing, do exactly the opposite.
Within weeks of MacKay’s election as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, he was in secret merger discussions with Stephen Harper and the Canadian Alliance party which quickly led to the destruction of the PC Party. Historical note: Stronach played a role in the initial move to merge, too. As I recall, she even funded some of MacKay’s leadership campaign expenses. Curious, n’est-ce pas?
MacKay and David Emerson have a lot in common. Both sold themselves to their electorate on false promises and then immediately after the votes were counted, went on to break those promises, showing utter contempt for Canadians in the process.
From the study in contrasts department, over the years the Reform Party under Preston Manning, then the Canadian Alliance under Stockwell Day and then Stephen Harper, continually attacked the government of the day for its support of the Kyoto treaty.
There is hard data written on pieces of paper collected by scientists that without any doubt prove that the global climate has not warmed since 1940. The data is there and is indisputable.David Chatters, MP Athabasca – Reform Party, echoing the typical “dispute the science” attack used by the Reform and then Canadian Alliance parties [2]
Maybe one of those “scientists” is former Reform MP Jim Pankiw?
Last winter in my constituency of SaskatoonâHumboldt we had record cold temperatures. For as long as they have kept records, it was never colder. That in itself is no evidence that the world temperature is not increasing but on the other hand it would tend to suggest that maybe it is not.Jim Pankiw, MP Humbolt – Reform [2]
Or perhaps it was Canadian Alliance MP Roy Bailey:
Mr. Speaker, coming from Saskatchewan, where we have scored the coldest place on earth, not just in Canada, I must admit that I have not heard very much about global warming, even when I phoned my wife this morning for the wind chill factor.Roy Bailey, MP Souris-Moose Mountain, Conservative Party of Canada [3]
In contrast, in the 90’s the “other” conservative party, the Progressive Conservative Party, wanted government to make meaningful progress on climate change, and did not dispute the science:
“Global warming is a genuine threat”John Herron, Environment critic, Progressive Conservative Party of Canada [1]
I actually understand why the Reform Party does not understand the science beyond this and it does not believe in global warming. I think it is because it still lives in the ice age… As a northern and a marine nation we must be resolute in addressing this very serious problem. Global warming from a Canadian perspective is indeed a national problem.John Herron, Environment critic, Progressive Conservative Party of Canada [2], commenting on the Reform Party, the party of Stephen Harper and folks like Rona Ambrose
In that same debate you’ll find lengthy arguments by Reform Party leader Preston Manning, which amount to a dismissal of climate change science. You’ll find also a passionate plea for meaningful action from then PC party leader Jean Charest, who is now Premier of Quebec.
The only party, the only group of ideologues, that have ever and always opposed Kyoto, that have ever and always opposed the science behind climate change, and have ever and always opposed meaningful action on global warming, is the Reform Party, a party which Stephen Harper helped create, which morphed into the Canadian Alliance, a party which Stephen Harper led, which then managed what amounts to a take over of the Progressive Conservative Party leaving out the progressive in both name and spirit.
Current environment Minister Rona Ambrose, who hails from the Canadian Alliance / Reform side of the Conservative Party, has anti-environmentalism buried within her very genes. The institutional hatred towards Kyoto is absolutely systemic within that side of the “conservative family”, and Canadians have been witnessing which side of the family is really in control of policy within the new party and “Canada’s New Government”.
References:
[1] A Tory Kyoto Protocol Primer
[2] Hansard, Debate on Climate Change, held 10 days in advance of the signing of the Kyoto Protocol treaty
[3] Debate on Throne Speech, February 3, 2004 – Roy Bailey – SourisâMoose Mountain, Conservative Party of Canada
Ambrose delivers plan where inaction is the most prominent feature of mis-named “Clean Air Act”
They’re not going to do anything: This is a (law) for inaction. To suggest that you have to consult once more… is ludicrous.John Bennett, Sierra Club of Canada
Instead of using existing legislation and acting immediately, the Conservatives have delivered vague promises to regulate polluters sometime in the coming decades. [The Conservatives] are proposing that greenhouse gas emissions should be allowed to continue to rise for the next 20 years.Hugh Wilkins, Sierra Legal Defence Fund
This sounds to me like a dirty air act.Beatrice Olivastri of Friends of the Earth Canada
The federal government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases is a nice list of good intentions, but that’s all it is. It reads like a candidate’s lengthy election brochure â long on the candidate’s virtue, short on immediate action.
According to the Pembina Institute, “oil sands development (will account) for up to 47 per cent of the projected increase in national greenhouse gas pollution between 2003 and 2010.”
The government’s plan guarantees this jump in greenhouse gases will occur because it won’t even have its emission-intensity regulations in place until 2010. And the jump will occur not only at the oil sands, but elsewhere across Canada.
Then, even with emission-intensity regulations in place, the plan will allow emissions to keep rising until 2020 when the government says it will require “absolute reductions” in greenhouse gases.
How long it will take to achieve absolute reductions, the government doesn’t say.
And, of course, it gives no details about how this is to be achieved, so there is no way of judging whether it will be effective.
This leisurely, 14-year approach to regulation is alarming because global warming is on track to create the hottest climate the world has seen in 55 million years, when temperatures rose 5 to 8 degrees Celsius and most of the globe was turned into deserts and scrubland.Cameron Smith, environment columnist, The Toronto Star
2006–10-20 BBC Climate change threatens supplies of water for millions of people in poorer countries, warns a new report from the Christian development agency Tearfund. Recent research suggests that by 2050, five times as much land is likely to be under “extreme” drought as now.
Citing research by the Oxford academic Norman Myers, Tearfund suggests there will be as many as 200 million climate refugees by 2050.
One of Britain’s leading climate scientists, Sir John Houghton, said the severity of climate change was getting through to world leaders “at a level of rhetoric”, but not yet at a level of action.
“There were promises made at the G8 summit and at the last UN meeting in Montreal about money for adaptation,” he told the BBC News website, “but I understand that very little of that has come through.”
Sir John is a former head of the UK Meteorological Office, former chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and co-chaired one of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working groups.Richard Black, environment correspondent, BBC News
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