Natural disaster

First New Zealand, second Japan, third ?. One time after the other our lovely planet Earth demonstrates is violent forces and causes a natural disaster, as we like to call it. And every time it will not be the last time. If one thing is for sure then it is the fact that we can not tame Earth's forces. We will always be exposed and vulnerable to earth quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and the like. Yes, they are sad events but reading the news about Japan I also had two thoughts that might be a bit weird. 

The articles I read reported on three different nuclear power plants that were affected by the earth quake. Nuclear power plants! For what sane reason does a country like Japan have nuclear power plants? If the statistics are right, Japan receives 20% of the strongest earthquakes, that is a magnitude of 6.0 and up, on Earth. They experienced the devastating forces of nuclear power in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they have nuclear power plants. Yes of course, one would think, how could they live without. Japan is a densely populated country that wants and needs energy independence, especially considering who their neighbouring countries are. Lots of people use lots of electricity and sun, wind and other renewable sources of energy have not made it big style yet in most countries. Hydro - I don't know much about Japan's rivers but a breaking dam seems less disastrous than a nuclear power plant breaking apart during an earthquake. When the infrastructure gets wrecked within minutes how would they want to deal with this kind of event? Currently, it sounds like the nuclear power plants are doing alright but how well can they be assessed under the circumstances? I was not too impressed either with the oil refineries. At least one of them has gone up in flames that reach 30 metres (90 feet) into the sky. Exactly what's needed now. They are not going to stop that from burning until the oil is gone. Lot's of oil wasted for nothing, lots of emissions for nothing but never mind most conventional oil comes from the unstable middle east where oil tends to burn for no good reason. At least nobody, like BP or Exxon, can be blamed because it's a catastrophe due to natural forces. Did somebody there think they were invincible?     
 
We are a damn selfish species. If a natural disaster occurs we always think about the people who got hurt, not about the nature, the flora and fauna. I suppose half of all human beings think that plants and animals don't have feelings to start with. But let's face there's no food without plants and animals. So why is there never a mentioning of roughly how many animals died, if a national park or other area of outstanding ecological importance was affected for example, or if just another species got wiped out. New Zealand has lots of endangered species that only live there and nowhere else. What if the last kiwi bird got killed in an earth quake, would anybody care when that same earth quake killed people? Unlikely. Might be because we harm our nature all the time already any way, so why would we care if nature "hurts" itself. No, I don't think our planet actually thinks about that and considers the consequences, it simply does not care, just like us.          

I say

that if you have some spare time you should join Ipsos's survey community http://www.i-say.com/ and participate in product polls. For every survey you take you get points. If you are a good consumer - don't run to the shop now! - you are likely to earn more points. I am not a good consumer, especially not of brand name products - yuck - so I forward half the surveys to my hubby who is just as bad of a consumer as I am but he at least has fun answering surveys. Oh, he got me signed up for this, thinking I'd be bored at home with my baby. Anyway, once you collected enough points you can turn them into gift cards or cash but that would be too easy. No, the reason I want you to collect those points is to turn them into donations to either the David Suzuki Foundation, the WWF, or the Nature Conservancy Canada. These are the three organisations I care about in the long lists of options. Hope nobody in the survey community is so cheap as to take the cash or gift cards. If you can't bring yourself to donate your hard-earned dollars then do it with Ipsos points, seems a good idea, doesn't it.               

Bound to extinction: Alberta's caribou

Watching the documentation “Being Caribou” last autumn, sequences of both Bush presidents were shown with a 10 year lapse in between where both of them said that they did not care about protecting the caribou and their habitat, they only cared about the American people and jobs for these people. The issue was that the USA wanted to drill for oil in the calving grounds of the caribou in North-East Alaska. Why I am mentioning this? I think that attitude also applies to the Alberta government – it neither protects the caribou nor the caribou's habitat despite the fact that scientists have long realised and asked for a protection of both. You have to read the following article There's something fishy about Alberta's caribou because paragraph for paragraph it's a great article. It does mention an earlier article from February that did not go down well with politicians and the Edmonton Journal was apparently forced to apologize and  rephrase it. Here's the link:  Conservatives not conserving our caribou.

I don't think as long as this Conservative government exists anything in favour of the caribou is going to happen. It took 8 years to start protecting the grizzly bear in Alberta. The caribou might need to have more patience, or survival skill as for that. 

The first article clearly states that the reason why the government avoids protection of endangered species and their habitat is due to certain industries, obviously forestry and oil & gas, ever the same culprits. I watched The Story of Citizens United versus F.E.C. http://www.truth-out.org/story-citizens-united-v-fec68121 last night, a project from The Story of Stuff producer Annie Leonard. It's about the USA and how corporations and big industries happily pay money to political parties in order to get their way, no matter what the people want ("the people" must be those citizens that do not work for the corporations). I don't think it's quite that bad in Alberta (and Canada) but sure enough politicians listen too closely to industry ignoring what the people want and what independent scientists say. But then again, most people just can't be bothered to do anything about it  - so who do we want to blame if everything goes downhill from now on? Ourselves.

I also wonder: Who do politicians want to create jobs for when people suffer from floods and droughts & when people come down with cancers, pulmonary and heart diseases because all warnings about climate change, air and water pollution, toxins released by industry etc. have been ignored and denied; when people are so obese or ill that they can’t move? I don’t think they think that far! 

The oil is slippery out there

Reading the news these days is like wow! ten times over. WikiLeaks WikiLeaks reveals imminent Saudi oil peak tells us that peak oil is happening right now in Saudi Arabia and that the country can't help much longer meet the international demand of oil so oil prices will go up more rather than down. Forever? 
Alberta is still going strong on expanding oil sands production but because it's supposed to be "greener" and "ethical" Alberta committed to "greener" oil the Alberta government had a committee set up to look into recent studies of oil sands related environmental and health issues Alberta oilsands committee calls for more rigorous monitoring . The committee found it's time to monitor these impacts more vigorously. But it's not clear to me how they want to go about it and what the actions will be if their findings are not as positive as expected, especially since the government has not put aside money for this purpose in their brand new budget. I call it a bluff, lots of talking, for sure no actions soon. In the meantime the Alberta government fast-tracks the development of a new neighbourhood  in Fort McMurray since with the increase of the oil production more workers are needed and they need to live somewhere Crown Land for sale in Fort McMurray. Proving the short-sightedness of our provincial government is the fact that it can't be bothered to get money off the oil companies now in order to ensure the reclamation of the destroyed land in the future Alberta NDP raises concern about proposed land reclamation program. It seems that this government is incapable of dealing with pressing issues, or simply does not care. Let somebody else deal with it when it's even more urgent. To wait and ask for money when the operation of an oilsands mine comes to an end is plain stupid to me, because it only suits the oil company, definitely not Albertans who will have to shell out the money if the oil company fails to do so. Instead the government should get the money now and invests it in a smart way, but hang on, they are probably not even capable of doing that. After all they are spending money from the Heritage fund now to get through the recession while maintaining the lowest taxes in Canada. The Heritage Fund has been accumulated during the boom to help out with bottle necks in the budget during bad years. Do they really think it's that bad already? Oh suck it up, get the taxes up and keep that fund for the really bad times to come, climate change is not going to stop. Sure, it is meant to hit the countries that contribute little to the cause the hardest and those who contribute lots (hi, North America) not so much. Climate change to have greatest impact on those least responsible   But Canada will look like a moon like landscape even without climate change if oilsands, gas and other mining operations continue big time.

Just another "superfood"

I really dislike these articles about all those foods that shrink your waist line, weight etc. (simply eat less if you are too fat) but I read the beginning of this one Lentils can help lose your belly fat because I love lentils and of course I have them in my cupboard, the organic option from a farm in Saskatchewan. Recently I chatted with a friend about dinners. She has 3 male at home (2 sons & 1 hubby) who love meat of course and aren't much into "experiments" when it comes to what they eat. In comparison I have a male at home who eats almost anything that I serve even if it is not a dish from a recipe but a mere creation out of the fridge's contents. So she was wondering if I often cook lentil dishes and I opened my cupboard and said "well, there's rice, pasta, barley, quinoa, green lentils, red lentils, couscous, buckwheat, .." I suppose we eat lentils frequently but surely not more than once a week because we have other options. She went home and decided to try a lentil dish for her lot - it went down okay. 


The above article states that Canada is the world's largest exporter of lentils - so we even eat local food! It also states that lentils are not very appreciated in Canada - no, because fries & burger have taken over everywhere and with regards to Alberta there's a strong cattle industry that  produces yummy, affordable (the non- organic version) beef. Lentils with beef in a stew should work though. I don't even understand when people eat a lot of processed and fast food. In Jasper we ate out for dinner, once pizza, once at Smitty's and three times at the Japanese place. After the pizza and Smitty's I thought I can't survive on this food all week - too fatty and too salty. So we went for Sushi, Udon noodles and other yummy and healthy options instead.

Unwanted solar power?

Another issue that does not seem to come as a surprise. This article is about the USA. I don't know how it is in Canada but I can't imagine it being one smooth process that is applied country-wide. So often every province does its own thing (think alone of taxes!) they probably will not join forces to help renewable energies get an easier foothold in the market. 

The article points out that the cost of installing a solar power system for a residential home could be considerably lowered if a state-wide (not even country-wide!) permit process was applied. But because every locality has its own rules & fees the environmentally-concerned user-to-be of solar power has to spend a lot more money than elsewhere, such as in Germany where there's only one process for the whole country, to get the same job done.     Too bad really!

Here's the link: http://behindcurrentevents.com/?p=1275

Canada has an environment week!

I just found this out thanks to a brochure about Jasper National park. Obviously, a community like Jasper town in the middle of a very beautiful and impressive national park participates with some kind of event. This Environment week was started by the government of Canada early in the 1970 - that's quite a while ago and from what I know at a time when Canada was considered an environmental leader. That's definitely not the case anymore but the environment week has not been scraped yet by the "Harper Government". 

Currently, at the website for Alberta's environment week there's only information available from last year's events http://www.environment.gov.ab.ca/edu/eweek/ Since the registration for this year's events does not start until April 1 I will have to wait a lot longer to find out what is going to happen. The Environment week is held at the end of May/ beginning of June and coincides with the UN World Environment Day whose global host will be India this year. http://www.unep.org/wed/index.asp As it is also the International Year of the Forests the official website offers some forest facts. 


Having been on a guided tour through Maligne canyon near Jasper town a few days ago I remember well what our knowledgeable guide told us about forests. Forests are too dense due to the management of forest fires, basically putting the fires out. I believe he said that it would be healthy to have 150-200 trees per acre but there are 20,000-40,000 per acre in most places now. Consequently, trees do not reach their full potential (no space to grow) and all the life underneath the tree canopy is negatively effected as well. Forests need fires to exist and maintain biodiversity but human beings that like to use forests in their own way (sports & leisure activities, tourist destination, logging, living near forests) don't want the regular fires to happen. A healthy forest would burn in patches and stop burning all by itself. But a dense forest, once it starts to burn, will be a huge fire that can't stop because there's so much to "eat". It all made sense and he gave us the reasons why logging can't ever do for a forest what fires do. Mind you, fires are beneficial while logging is not, to start with. 

If only 50 years ago we had known what we know now. It could have prevented a lot of mismanagement in our forests. Now the problem is not easy to fix and will come with dear consequences not only to the forests but to us as well. I think the huge fires in California and the inferno that happened in Australia are a good proof already. Anyway, I said could because there's lots of things we know now and still actions are not taken accordingly. How often do we hear after an environmental disaster, like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, that it could have been prevented, that safety issues were known but ignored, usually due to corporate and human greed. They hoped for luck instead of taking precautions but sometimes it did not work out. I wonder how many more bad accidents it needs until we give up on the devastating way of learning the hard way and, having learnt from earlier catastrophes, take care first instead.