Yesterday afternoon, I attended what I thought would be the first protest of my life, outside of a few brutally quick, fruitless and humbling ones against food that was put in front of me some time ago by a tired parent. Yesterday’s was my first organized one. I suspect it was for many others, as the growing crowd began to mill about with the same mild awkwardness one does when standing in front of a crowd and not knowing what to do with their hands. What a bunch of freaking amateurs. And [Read more]
Decision time for BC: Should Horgan’s heroes torpedo the Trans Mountain expansion, all bets are off as to where this Canadian crisis will go
The Trans Mountain expansion is turning out to be quite the poker game. Unfortunately, the chips are wild cards and we don’t know quite what the costs will be. I’m referring of course to Kinder Morgan’s Masters-interlude announcement to suspend all non-essential spending on the Trans Mountain expansion. Canada has seen some interprovincial spats before, but should the pipeline indeed be killed off, we’re going to see a new high-water mark. The project has turned into a remarkable lightning [Read more]
New, green-leaning governments: Aww, they grow up so fast… …when they actually need to govern in the real world
There exists a strange medical condition called “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” (AIWS), described by the ever-wise Wikipedia as a “disorienting neuropsychological condition that impacts perception.” It's unusual effects include a sensation that body parts or external objects are shifting shape and size, and victims may endure a loss of sense of time or velocity. The sum impact can be an alienating period where the common touch points of reality can no longer be counted on. I don’t have the [Read more]
Avoiding the crazy uncle syndrome – intractability is malignant for both proponents and opponents of fossil fuels
A thoughtful reader recently compared me to a crazy uncle; someone worth poking at the dinner table because a deranged and/or laughable opinion is sure to burst forth. Since I uncompromisingly strive for accurate self-knowledge, a quick review of recent output indicated that he was not off the mark. On the other hand, beyond the sheer entertainment value of provoking curmudgeons, analyzing bombastic examples of these singular opinions can be valuable in pointing out the dangers of becoming too [Read more]
Two adversarial countries, a lawless bombed-out third, and a terrorist organization come together to build a pipeline, and Canada can’t
An Afghan, a Pakistani, an Indian, and a Turk..menistanian walk into a bar. No wait, into a pipeline meeting. No wait, this isn’t a joke, it’s…I don’t even know what it is. Perhaps just best to describe it as a profound illustration of how coagulated and paralyzed Canada has become. The group above - these four enemies/anarchies/survivors - found enough common ground to build a massive international natural gas pipeline at a cost of over $10 billion. It gets weirder; an elder statesman in [Read more]
Halo goodbye: Elon Musk’s planet-fouling rockets cover his golden aura with soot
Elon Musk has earned his stellar reputation from both an environmental and entrepreneurial perspective. He has done a spectacular job of creating original new businesses, particularly against the wave of supposedly educated opinions that continually label his schemes as hopeless. We forget how impossible it seemed to get the first Tesla car launched; most of the auto industry scoffed at his plan to use lithium ion batteries. His success made a lot of learned industry veterans look like [Read more]
The wine stopped flowing and the light went on – so that’s what economic consequences look like
For a brief moment in its history, Alberta’s list of unacceptable interprovincial baggage included two things: rats and BC wine. The rat trade has never amounted to much, what with Alberta’s natural borders and elite (but not over-romanticized) rat fighting forces, and BC’s admirable restraint in not exporting them. Fortunately, the wine blockade ended before similar liquor-sniffing border patrols were activated, but the halt in wine imports was around long enough to prove a point very [Read more]
Fellow citizens on the coasts: 50 million petroleum barrels move safely through global marine terminals every day; Canada is as capable as anyone
When I was a kid, my dad came home from his forestry job one day with an eye injury. A tree branch had attacked him and he showed us stitches on his eyeball. I was very young, but I still remember instantly feeling clammy and faint. For the rest of his life every time I looked him in the eye the scar was all I could see and I could feel myself turning pale, which, now that I think about it, may have been fairly annoying for him. For the rest of my life I’ve had random episodes of nauseousness [Read more]
Column: TransCanada’s baffling clumsiness is crushing some excellent natural gas producers
“Kindly let me help you or you’ll drown,” said the monkey, putting the fish safely up in a tree. Maybe TransCanada has been worn down by the demented pipeline approvals process. Maybe they’re an $80 billion dollar company that sees things differently than when Western Canada was of significance. Maybe they’re down in Phoenix, so calloused by the Energy East and Keystone fights they can’t hear anymore. They sure aren’t in Calgary in any conscious way, because if they were they’d be a [Read more]
From BC wineries to Canadian business to natives, Trans Mountain protesters are hurting us all with zero environmental benefits to show for it
There is a palpable sense of frustration building across the land at Canada’s inability to build anything. A snapshot of news headlines this cold wintry day lists this and this and this, from a variety of mainstream news organizations. The current BC standoff is, fundamentally, not up for debate. Federal jurisdiction over waterways is the law of the land. It is in Alberta, when a pipeline must cross a river, or any activity comes near a natural waterway. It is on the coasts, all of them, and [Read more]
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