King Arthur Movie Tristan

It's hard to figure how a story takes life. Some self described eco-terrorists burn down some houses, it seems like a story. But two years ago At Home in Hespeler was reporting a similar story by the same group:

Local radio station News 570 is reporting that "Several Arsons in Guelph in the past months may be the work of an eco-terrorist organization." This fire is one of the arsons started suspected of being started by a cell of eco-terrorists ELF (Earth Liberation Front)...

By all accounts ELF is a loose knit grouping who, according to their own literature have no leaders, members or official spokesman. They are none the less, highly interesting to the FBI.

What's more it is being reported that 3 other fires may be related to ELF... These arsons are a pattern that has Guelph police very concerned, and citizens of Guelph should also be concerned. To date ELF does not seem to be responsible for any deaths, but when you go around lighting buildings on fire, sooner or later it's going to happen. Citizens of Guelph should also be concerned, both that it is happening in their community, and that it is receiving virtually no coverage or getting the attention of the community.

Later the story was reported by the Western Standard, once again to great yawning indifference. It appears that Guelph Ontario is not as important as Seattle Washington in the Canadian blogosphere.

Now that the evidence is coming in that the earth is cooling thanks to reduced solar activity, and cooling is substantially worse than heating, shouldn't we abolish taxes on all carbon, build and drive bigger cars, fire up the coal, close the hydro-electric plants, and consume, consume, consume?

Or do you think heating was never the issue in the first place?

Yesterday I stopped at the Petro Canada on the 401 between Cambridge and Guelph, and filled up at $101.9/litre. Over night last night, the price responded to petroleum finishing the day at over $100 /barrel, and by this morning the same gas was running at $109.6. That's a 7.7¢ litre. If you were looking for a car yesterday, are you looking for a smaller one today? Did you chose not to go somewhere today because of that 7.7¢?

On the same day that gas prices rose 7.7¢, British Columbia has introduced a new carbon tax of 2.4¢/litre of gasoline. It will increase over four years to about 7.2¢/litre. In four years a carbon tax will increase the price of gas by ½¢ less than it rose on it's own over night last night.

The details of this tax are somewhat complex, with money going back to taxpayers in various plans. It is also according to the BC government, revenue neutral. Revenue neutral is one of those buzz words, and while politicians want you to hear, "your overall taxes will not rise," they are also, and more importantly saying, "your taxes are not going down." Even if you decided to save taxes by cutting your carbon use, the carbon tax would necessarily rise to protect the revenue neutral aspect of the tax.

In B.C. however, revenue neutrality is irrelevant. A 7.2¢/litre carbon tax will have no practical effect. I have said it every time I write on this issue, 60¢/litre is the size required of any carbon tax if it is to be effective. Even Elizabeth May, whom I have already stated I think she's got it wrong, thinks 12¢/litre is what's required. As I point out in the article the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a leftist think(?) tank thinks the oil companies are taking 15c a litre excess profit. If the gas companies are taking excess profit more than your carbon tax, how effective will your 7.2¢ carbon tax be?

Look out B.C taxpayers, this is just the beginning.

To: Mortal inhabitants of Earth
From: the offices of Beezulbub, Belial, Lucifer and Apollyon
Hell inc.

The rulers of Hell are pleased to announce, in conjunction with the David Suzuki Foundation, the first expansion of the borough of Hell, and it’s surrounding environs.

Pending environmental study, hell will be increasing it’s boundary’s to include a full new, tenth level. Tentatively called Deritus, the new level will be eternal home to global warming deniers and other environmental abasers.

Deritus will be guarded by a three headed bureaucrat, Suzukibus. The three heads of Suzukibus shall be named Amplify, Apply and Abuse. Inhabitants will spend eternity in the over-heated environs of hell, where they will be continually told, "it's not hot," "nothing wrong with a little heat," and "don't worry, an ice age is just around the corner." They will further be made to sort unrecycled garbage into recyclables (paper & plastic), compostables and landfill.

Hell inc. and The David Suzuki Foundation are excited by this opportunity to join together in meting eternal punishment to any and all who dare oppose the opinion as given to them by David Suzuki Ph.D.

Signed
Satan, Lord of the Underworld
Suzuki, lord it over you.

Remember the caterwauling when John Baird released his Kyoto report, and Elizabeth May said a carbon tax would not need to be anywhere near the $195 a tonne the report said, and Stephan Dion said no carbon tax was necessary, a $20 tonne deposit system was all that was needed?

Liberal Leader Stephan Dion also rejected the $195 figure as excessive, saying that his party proposes a $20-per-tonne "deposit" instead of a tax.

"It's a deposit that the companies will have to give to the environmental bank -- and they will have this money back if they decrease their emissions," Dion told Question Period co-host Jane Taber.

"It's like when you have your bottle of Coca-Cola and you bring it back to the grocery store. You get your money back. It's not a tax."

Not a tax. That has been Stephan Dion's line from the start. No Carbon tax.

If that is true, why did Dion's Industry Critic and co-chair of the Liberal Party of Canada's election platform committee, Scott Brison, pen an article today in which he says: "It is clear that... governments eventually will put a price on carbon."

What is a price on carbon, put their by governments, but a carbon tax? Dress it up however you want, but Scott Brison called a carbon tax a sure thing. And since he's helping write their platform, we must assume it's now Liberal policy.

When it comes to global warming, there are three questions you need to ask yourself:

1. Is the global climate warming?
2. Will it be catastrophic?
3. Is it anthropomorphic (man made).

If you answered no to any or all of the above questions, then continue on with life. If, however, you answered yes, yes and well... yes, STOP! what you are doing and fix it now.

You see, those who believe, they are coming, and they will try to change everything. And equivocators, who want to straddle the fence, are emboldening them.

How else to explain such a piece as Pat Watson's in todays Toronto Sun: Will It Be Your Money Or Your Life?

And sure we can assuage our guilt by throwing our empty plastic water bottles into the recycling bins and switching to compact fluorescent bulbs. But what we need to get into our "new" way of thinking is that trying to do the old actions with some slight new twist is not really going to turn this behemoth around. It's not recycling bottles and plastics that will really help, but not using them at all.

Plastic -- and there are myriad products made from it -- is a petroleum by-product. And while it has revolutionized the consumer industry, it has put us in all kinds of peril. Take a look at the rising incidence of cancer worldwide and the relationship between that and the chemicals found in plastic products.

What is so frustrating is there is a critical mass emerging that wants change and wants to change, but the system of our lives is so tied to subsequent environmental damage that it will take more than separating our garbage into different bins to make it happen.

Critical Mass emerging? That's you equivocators. Eliminate plastic, even though it has revolutionized, not just the consumer industry, but the world. (What is the consumer industry anyway?) But the worst is yet to come:

In this 21st century we face a real fork in the road that in truth really means we would have to completely change the way we exist on Earth.

It means not wanting or giving value to the things we used to. It means pantyhose can no longer be an option for looking well dressed. It means the use of nail polish has to end. It means no longer packaging water in plastic bottles. It means air travel as we now know it can no longer be seen as the way to go. It means when we talk about the advantages of hosting something like a grand prix race for two days we should have better reasons for allowing it and the kind of pollution that comes with it then it will bring an estimated $50 million to the city.

The main reason given for so much of why we cannot accelerate the changes to save the planet, and by extension our sorry selves, is it will be a shock to the (economic) system: Job losses, tax losses and the like.

Here's the thing, as if it's not too obvious: It's the way we are making money that is killing this planet and causing an increase in preventable diseases. So what's it going to be: Your money or your life?

See, no pantyhose, nail polish, air travel, car races (not to mention cars, which she somehow neglected, but it's the obvious end result).

So what is it going to be people, your way of life, your ability to feed your family, or save the planet from yourself and your family?

There is no fence here. People like Pat Watson want to take away everything you have, and will succeed if we just sit around waiting for it to blow over.

From the Black Eyed Peas Will I Am, looking like he ran his hummer into a retard tree, at Goreapalooza (sorry, but I'm paraphrasing).

We have to force our corporations to make better products for us to consume.

OK, I'll start.

Dear corporate entity known as the Black Eyed Peas: please stop making shite music!

But really, I think Mr. Gore would say it's your responsibility to consume less.

From the Desk of Farley Mowat
Dear Green Party Friend:

Eighty-six years as participant and observer have convinced me we are facing an ecological and environmental crisis that could precipitate the greatest die-off in the history of our planet.

The current situation is so ominous and the potential for disaster so diverse and imminent as to threaten not just human life but all of animate creation. If this sounds like Chicken Little, it is because this time the sky truly may be falling.

The unwillingness of the powers-that-be to accept the scope and urgency of the threat convinces me that the cement-heads who currently control our destiny are incapable of responding to the approaching tornado. They will remain engrossed in their own self-interests, trusting that a consortium of super-science, technology, and the Entrepreneurial Gods will see them safely into Heaven on Earth.

I don’t believe it will. Which is why I am now giving my support to the Green Party, the only political entity demonstrating a real and potential effective concern for the planet and its myriad inhabitants.

All of its inhabitants!

For it is not just we human beings who are at risk. We are all in the same crucible together – and the temperature is rising rapidly, both figuratively and actually.

The Green Party, led by Elizabeth May, is the one political party clearly committed to averting the catastrophic consequences of our continuing to treat the Earth as mere dirt beneath our feet, so it is imperative that we elect Green Party members to our next parliament. This cannot happen without a lot of help from a lot of us.

The Harper Conservatives boast of their war chest of $15 million, and their War Room from which they will send out their Attack Ads and fire their Media Barrages. The Green Party and its leader, Elizabeth May, have only the Green Hope Chest, which at the moment is virtually empty. Nevertheless, they are promising a peaceable campaign focused on the survival of a peaceable kingdom.

I very much want them to succeed and I hope you do too, so I invite you to join me in making it financially possible for the Greens to vanquish the vandals and thereby help re-establish a viable future for life on Earth.

Farley Mowat

To all those people who think Green is a good alternative place to put your vote: do you really still think so?

Crossposted from Let Freedom Reign

Hmm, who's thought was this one? Quebec is introducing a whopping 0.8c/litre carbon tax effective October 1. According to Claude Bechard, Quebec's Natural resources Minister, the oil companies should pick up the tax:

We hope at 0.8 cents, the oil companies will be able to absorb it without passing on this royalty to consumers. Especially when you realize that refinery profit margins have gone in the last three, four months from 8 cents a litre to about 19, 20, 22 cents a litre.

Hey, where have I heard that before? Oh, I know, I said it Wednesday. Who would have thought a Quebec cabinet minster is trolling At Home in Hespeler for ideas. Of course, like a politician will, he got what I said all half-assed backwards; at 0.8c, there is no reason for oil companies to absorb the tax, and no way of knowing if they did. Gas in my part of the world jumps around more than 0.8c litre depending on the time of day. It is too small to affect demand, therefore, the gas companies can charge the tax, without affecting their profit. Once a tax is high enough to affect demand, then the oil guys have incentive to absorb the tax, but only then.

If that's true, why does Mme. Bechard think the oil companies will eat the tax on your behalf?

Well, we count on the goodwill of the gas companies.

Oh, and if the gas companies do absorb the tax, what is the point of the tax. As Bechard himself notes, a carbon tax should be "user pay." How is getting someone else to pick up your tax user pay? And is not a carbon tax designed to lower usage of carbon releasing goods? How does getting someone else to pick up the carbon tax reduce usage? It doesn't, and this whole thing is a scam. Bechard could care less about reducing usage, and cares a whole pile about collecting extra revenue, designed as environmentalism.

Elizabeth May thinks you would. I wonder. Hasn't the price of gas gone up more than 12c a litre this year? What has it stopped you from doing?

And since there's all the caterwauling about gas-gouging, ask yourself this. In the current pricing scheme, does demand and supply meet? That is, is there excess of either? And if Elizabeth May's scheme works, and it's true that the oil companies are gouging, or taking excess profits, then what's to stop them absorbing the tax increase? According to lefty think tax Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the oil companies are taking 15c a litre excess profit. If a 12c tax hurts demand, then they could afford to drop prices back until demand returns. Not only could they, it would be good business to do so.

Then what? 25c a litre? 50c? 60c? Gee, I wonder who said that?

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Sixty cents a litre is the starting point for serious reduction. This is just a smooth trick to get carbon taxes in play, they'll adjust accordingly later. And we all know how hard it is to get governments to adjust down.

Update: As Gerry Nicholls wonders, is this part of the Liberals plan as well. May is, after all, a defacto Liberal candidate.

Updateier: Steve Janke has a post on this. As you can see in the comments, Richard passes on his gas expenses to customers. I pass it on to retailers in the form of non-buying. Janke makes much the same point.

Now that Governor Schwarzenegger has left the country, spreading easy-going, shucks it's going to be easy environmentalism, it's a good time to see what is meant by environmentalism in California. Seeing as BC just signed the Pacific Coast Collaborative to Protect Our Shared Climate and Oceans, it's worth pondering what that means, and Ontario just signed an emissions deal, and everybody is following the California light bulb ban idea, what else does California have planned for us?

Throwing a few logs on the fire on a nippy evening, or boosting a home's market appeal by advertising its wood-burning fireplace, could go the way of the coal chute and the ice box for many Southern Californians if newly proposed air quality regulations are adopted.

As part of air pollution plans designed to meet federal deadlines, South Coast Air Quality Management District officials have proposed a ban on wood-burning fireplaces in all new homes in Los Angeles, Orange and portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

In addition, on winter days when pollution spikes, wood-fueled blazes in all fireplaces would be banned in highly affected areas. That could amount to about 20 days a year, district officials said.

Of course, a California winter and a Canadian winter are two different things, but can this idea be far behind? Yes folks, politicians and activists have your fire-places in their sights. Yet reducing our home energy usage is also in the plan, with natural gas prices expected to double, and dirtier energy more so.

Are you really prepared to turn down the thermostat, without the aid of a fireplace or stove, in the middle of February? Will Canadian politicians really try this one? Why not, they have told us we need to buy light bulbs that cost about 4 times more, that require recycling, and that , frankly, work lousy, yet no one raised a peep. Most people shrugged and said "makes sense to me." Why wouldn't they try fireplaces? And if you think because you already have a fireplace, your safe, think again:

Another measure that would require closing off wood fireplaces or installing $3,600 pollution control devices before a home could be sold had been dropped as of late Thursday, an AQMD spokesman said.

Yea - for now.

Today's Sun has an article by Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball called Prove it! that challenges an assumption that's become near and dear to my heart: compact fluorescent light bulbs are better for the environment than incandescent:

Prove it! That's how we must respond whenever governments ban established products to "save the planet." If politicians can't validate their schemes with comprehensive and unbiased scientific studies then they should stop telling us how to live our lives.

Take the recently announced ban on incandescent light bulbs. The federal government's "Action on Climate Change and Air Pollution" boasts the ban "will give Canadian consumers real opportunity both to save money on energy and to help clean up our environment." Prove it!

Show us the results of comprehensive life cycle analyses that demonstrate the energy savings accrued when operating a compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) more than compensates for the increased manufacturing and mercury disposal impacts associated with CFLs. Prove to us that the loss of convenience and light quality of the incandescent is off-set by a significant net environmental benefit. Or many Canadians will conclude the move was purely political, designed to look good in the press and trump the NDP who had a private members' bill banning incandescents in the works.

And when studying this, don't forget to take into account the impact of driving your burnt out bulbs to the landfill. The more I read up on CFB's (compact fluorescent bulbs), the dumber the idea of banning them looks.

Instead of handing more regulatory power to the "pimply minions of bureaucracy," any attempt to regulate Canadians lives, whether large scale or in the minutiae like CFBs, ought to require absolute proof of it's necessity, and that the scheme will work as advertised.

More

It is nearly axiomatic that anything Cuban "President" Fidel Castro says will be false, incorrect, misleading, and downright pernicious... recently, el Presidente's grumblings have been worth hearing, not because they are precisely right, but because they are at least on the right track...

interference by politicians in the market for fuel (added to the massive existing interference) has real-world impact, and Fidel Castro, of all people, understands...

The article is called Ethanol Versus the Poor, and it's worth reading.

Food for thought, from the Green Party of Canada website (emphasis mine: put them together to form one sentence):

We believe that to achieve sustainability, and in order to provide for the needs of present and future generations within the finite resources of the earth, continuing growth in global consumption, population and material inequity must be halted and reversed.

- There's a new "Canadian Military Personnel" website that pays tribute to those "who gave their lives serving Canada," called Fallen Canadians.

- A great article here by David Warren on the just how out of touch those who buy into global warming are. Meanwhile, Greenpeace builds an ark. (h/t Joanne)

- This line, about Canada's aboriginals, caught my eye:

Canada's native Indians are so angry about the government's failure to improve their often-impoverished living conditions...

Governments fail to improve people living conditions, it's a little admitted, always reliable, fact. If you want your life improved, it requires doing it yourself.

- Now this is funny, thanks to Road Hammer for finding it.

Last week I reported that "I emailed the environment department in my region (Waterloo) last week, but they haven't got back to me." Nice representation, I concluded.

That was Monday, on Thursday I received a reply. First, here's the original e-mail:

I am wondering, now that both provincial and federal governments are
legislating compact fluorescent bulbs, if the region of Waterloo recycles
them? If so, how does one go about doing so? If not, are there plans to do
so, and who will pick up the cost (as this is a downloaded service)?

Thank you very much

Brian Gardiner
http://hespeler.blogspot.com

This apparantly got passed on within the department, "As per our conversation this morning, please find the e-mail below." I then received the following reply:

Hello Mr. Gardiner:

At this time, you are able to recycle your compact fluorescent bulbs at the
Waterloo landfill site, Monday to Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The Cambridge landfill accepts them on certain Household Hazardous Waste
days, and you can find all the information in the front green section of
your telephone book.

When the full transition takes place, there may be some changes as to where
residents drop off the bulbs (at particular retail outlets, perhaps) but
this has not been established as yet.

First off, thanks to Sue the Manager Waste Collection & Diversion for the Region of Waterloo, who replied. Also thanks to Pamela, Council/Committee Support Specialist, Council and Administrative Services who passed this message along to Sue.

Now about the reply. As I suspected, the Region will recycle your compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs), at a cost of 30c a piece: what will that cost when everybody is using exclusively CFBs in their homes and businesses? I conservatively estimate $150,000/year here in Waterloo Region. But note also, you now have to drive your light bulb to the landfill every time it burns out. How is that environmentally friendly? The other option, of course, is to throw it in the garbage, but that's a lot of mercury in the landfills. Sooner or later the regions will a) ban throwing them out and b) have to find a better way of disposing of them. But again, at what cost? Can our already crying poor municipalities really handle the extra expense?

The mandatory conversion to CFBs is going to be a travesty, and in ten years we will be calling them an environmental menace, just as once environmentally friendly plastic grocery bags are now seen as a menace.