The Ephemeral Tourist

Certain Administrative Changes

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:50:30 GMT

Hi All:

Certain administrative changes on my LJ accounts enable me to migrate back to my more comfortable LiveJournal, mylesk.

I don't think anyone will notice the change, except for bullfrog_hawker.

Succession at the micro-muncipal wilderness area

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:59:44 GMT

Bossy and Wrath’s two baby magpie chicks have matured and moved on so none of them are anywhere to be seen around the Vacant Lot of Eden. In their absence, we now have two dutiful crow parents watching over their single adolscent as he walks around the yard, stretching his wings and taking short, furtive flights from the boardwalk to the compost heap.

Like their magpie cousins, the two parent crows watchfully sit on the telephone wires across the alley and swoop in and cry like mad every time Hannah or I dare enter our own backyard. The impertinence of nature.

Hannah wondered aloud earlier, why these animals seem to pick our yard to rear their offspring.

“Abundant cover, and clear flight paths,” are the reasons, I imagine.

Here is the reader’s guide to our backyard. Note the absence of a backfence enables crows and magpies to swoop in from the phone wires, relatively unobstructed.

The Crow Baby

Wildlife’s Favourite Spot (for some reason)

First Picture with the Shed Angel (Hannah is watching the Crow Baby from the window)

Some drama!

But gets away!

Are world water supplies being spontaneously contaminated?

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:37:53 GMT

How did it go?

I’m happy to post today in reply to a comment from geri_island who was asking about the June 9th “debate” on Edmonton’s Breakfast Television show on the matter of fluoridating our municipal drinking water.

It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, or told to expect. Not so much a debate but an 8 minute session of The View with four people who’ve never met before. And although I had 5 minutes of material to present, I think between the four of us in the segment (three speakers and the host) we each got to say about three sentences each. I don’t think it was a slam-dunk for any of us, although I now know how the meme that will end fluoridation will go.

The central question about adding fluoride to Edmonton’s water did take the stage. Not “is it harmful?” which the majority of the anti-fluoride activists argue, but rather, “Is it redundant?” which came up when a simplified version of this line graph comparing the trends in dental health between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries was posted.

The 18 Countries Slide

This was a slide I’d asked for, but the producer had told me, seconds before it appeared, to prepare to speak to an image about brittle bones instead and I was off-guard. Anyways, the slide had the desired effect and I got to use my last sentence to say fluoridating our drinking water is redundant.

Dr. Soin argued that fluoridating our water has a significant impact on dental health, and we can’t say that it is redundant based on the 18 Countries slide because we don’t know what the natural levels of fluoride in their water was over this period.

I didn’t have the chance to rebut the glaring error in her reply.

Dentists argue that .7 ppm (parts per million) is the optimal concentration of fluoride in drinking water. Dr. Soin said that without artificial fluoridation, Alberta’s water would be at .1 ppm, implying that we would be stuck at the 1965 end of this graph with a population average of 4 decayed, missing, or filled teeth in all of our mouths. So, it could be the case that these non-fluoridated countries have naturally occurring fluoride concentrations of .7ppm. We just don't know.

But if natural background levels of fluoride in the 18 unfluoridated countries accounts for the commensurate improvement in dental health there, that means that over the past 30 years, there has been an uncontrolled, unreported, unaccounted for 700% increase of background fluoride in their water. This is a grave ecological issue. Somehow, most of the world’s water is being mysteriously contaminated by fluoride! So the new question is, will it stop? Or will nature keep increasing the natural levels of fluoride to .8ppm, or worse, the 1.5ppm level when it will no longer comply with drinking water guidelines? And why haven’t we heard about this global, spontaneously available fluoride? (I'll ask Dr. David Schindler, world water expert, if there has been a 30-year trend of increasing fluoride concentrations in the world's water, and if he says 'yes', then we have another ecological problem. But if there is one, he would have reported it by now.)

It was good, though. I can see exactly how this argument will end now. And no one will be able to deny that adding fluoride to our water is a waste of taxpayer’s money.

Notes for tomorrow's F-debate

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:07:44 GMT

I guess it’s not going to be my first debate on CityTV’s breakfast television tomorrow morning ~ but it’s been a while. The all-candidate’s forums of the 2001 municipal elections had a definite debate-like quality to them. And one year Edmonton’s academic highschool debate champions challenged my MLA (member of the legislative assembly) and myself to a debate on climate change.

So, tomorrow at 9am, CityTV is going to air a feature story on water fluoridation in Edmonton and producers decided to accompany it with a live debate on the issue featuring a local dentist and me.

I actually think it’s going to be kind of fun.

I’m not an anti-F activist. All of the AlexJonesian idiocy about fluoride being a tool of the NewWorldOrder and it’s global depopulation project really annoys me. In fact, I believe that water fluoridation probably doesn’t hurt most people.

But just because something doesn’t hurt people isn’t an argument for public dollars being spent on it.

Topical application of fluoride is good for your dental health. I think that is a fact and it is undisputed. Applying fluoride to the surface of your dental enamel prevents tooth decay.

The issue is this: in a developed country like Canada, in a fluoridated community like Edmonton, we are paying three times for essentially the same treatment. I pay my dentist for fluoride treatments once per year. I pay for my toothpaste that I apply to my teeth twice per day. And I pay as a citizen for the extremely weak fluoride solution of that passes over my teeth whenever I drink tap water. The question is, is there any value to this extra water fluoridation expense that we’re all forced to pay collectively, when we already pay for more effective treatments individually.

I think a big part of the answer is found by looking at the last 30 years of dental health data for developed countries as gathered by the World Health Organization. This information looks at 18 countries, 12 that do not add fluoride to their water and 6 that do. What we see is a comparable improvement in dental health across all countries. So, I think this third payment is actually wasted money.

But then we should consider that there are some people who should not be drinking fluoridated water. American Dental Association and the Canadian Pediatric Society both advise that infant formula not be prepared with fluoridated water. So now we have people, the parents of newborns, who must in a sense pay a fourth time for fluoridation – this time to avoid it.

Then there are the people who wish to avoid fluoridated water because of the unanswered questions on how it might affect human health. There is really interesting research on the associations with silicofluorides in drinking water and human health effects. There are several – including cancer and bone health - but I’ll only mention the ones that I think are really interesting and that’s those are the associations between fluoridated water and IQ – where fluoridated water reduces children’s ability to evacuate lead from their bodies, and an association with hyperactivity and reduced impulse control – both of which would indirectly lead to learning problems.

Now Health Canada is correct – on a weight-of-evidence approach- there isn’t enough information in this research to make definitive conclusions. But we’re discussing a treatment which is probably inferior, definitely redundant, to things were are already doing so there is no reason to continue to run this risk while the research continues. And from an economic perspective, we’re spending $600,000 per year in direct costs on this probably inferior, definitely redundant activity. Which City Council could easily find other uses for that would be more appreciated by Edmontonians.

A fine July evening

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:04:21 GMT

Last night Gil and I spent a fine July evening as guests on the patio of bullfrog_hawker's home, sipping Jim Beam and snacking on Salt & Simulated Ant flavour kettle chips. Typical in such company, the conversation was robust and ranged from how geographic information technologies are transforming cartography to how the British SAS survival book teaches that all ants are edible - and that they taste strongly of vinegar.

bullfrog_hawker is working on a master's degree in geography. As I currently understand his thesis, he is looking at interactive, web-based systems for the compiling and sharing geo-spatial data about the recreational trails in Edmonton's river valley. More specifics on Hawker's work is on his blog at http://wiserpath.blogspot.com/. I'm interested in this kind of geographic knowledge management for the kind of support it can provide to developing more sustainable community behaviour.

Reflecting on the evening, I'm struck by the teaching that went on. My knowledge of Hawker's work marginally increased. All three of us sampled some young wild lettuce that was growing in Hawker's backyard. And the importance of caning your raspberries in the fall, not the spring, was galvanized in my mind. In the fall you can tell the live canes from the dead ones. By caning in the spring, Hawker now has a patch of only first year raspberries. I think I knew this, but now it's really clear in my mind.

It was like a conference session. A very relaxed, enjoyable conference, characterized by a sense of fellowship.

In the aftermath of the RCEN AGA, I've been thinking about conferences in the age of the internet and the new world of increasingly available electronic communication. It makes less sense now to convene in-person meetings, at great expense, for the sole purpose of conveying information; sitting in rooms listening to experts talk content. Conferences today, if we are to have them, should capitalize on those things that being together in-person enables - fellowship and shared experience.

Japan May 2010

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:16:04 GMT

The parents of two of Hannah's congregation members regularly conduct tours of Japan with an emphasis on art and architecture, and we plan to avail ourselves upon this service in spring of next year.

It's a challenging idea to me, in part because touring Japan is said to be quite expensive, but also because, being of oriental extraction myself, local people in Asian countries always speak to me in the local language and I'm continually interrupting people to explain that I can only speak English. It's like when we shop at T&T, the local Chinese Superstore; I make Hannah pay so that I can avoid having to tell the cashier that I don't speak Chinese. (You might recall that Hannah is of Scottish/Ukrainian ancestry.)

But despite these fairly specific misgivings, Tokyo Disneyland and the electronics district beckon to me. And I certainly should visit my ancestral homeland at some point in my lifetime.

I'm going to try to learn three Japanese phrases per day, from various sources.

1. Kite kuri kaishte kudasai. It means, "please listen and repeat".

2. Ohayou gozaimasu. Good morning.

3. Hajime mashite Myles to moushi masu. Introducing myself.

One of my sources:

Shell: Shifting Sands

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:16:36 GMT

How Shell lost the goodwill of stakeholders.
By Matthew McClearn in Canadian Business

It is surely one of the most worn truisms of business: You’ve gotta live up to your commitments. It’s a throwaway line in stock speech at conferences and luncheons, and Shell Canada executives have long known when to employ it. To wit: “We accepted some years ago the need to respond to growing concerns on climate change and set tough goals to reduce our own greenhouse-gas emissions,” said Tim Faithfull, the company’s then CEO, in a 2003 speech. “Of course, we have to deliver on our goals to earn the trust and respect of our stakeholders.”

It’s difficult to argue with such logic. Yet Shell’s former friends believe the company is testing it.

Several years ago, the company signed two written agreements with an umbrella group of environmentalists known as the Oil Sands Environmental Coalition (OSEC). Under these accords, Shell promised to set ambitious targets for reduced greenhouse-gas emissions at two separate oilsands projects. Both projects are now under construction in northern Alberta. In April, though, OSEC accused Shell of repudiating the agreements. Shell, meanwhile, claims it’s always been in “material compliance.”

The squabble marks the bitter end of a long and fruitful relationship between Shell and environmental groups. It also lays bare the failure of Canada’s favoured approach to controlling industrial greenhouse-gas emissions of the past several decades. But will nascent government regulations work any better?

Ever since the late 1980s, when the Canadian government first called for co-ordinated international efforts to fight climate change, the oil and gas industry sought to shape regulations on industrial greenhouse-gas emissions to its advantage. University of Toronto lecturer Douglas Macdonald portrayed this struggle in his 2007 book, Business and Environmental Politics in Canada. “By 2005, federal government negotiations with the oil and gas and other industrial sectors had resulted in a significant relaxation of the targets for industry reductions,” Macdonald writes, “but no law-based regulatory action had been taken.”

Instead, voluntarism prevailed. Since at least the 1990s, provincial and federal governments encouraged industries to reduce emissions of their own accord. Observers have suggested that governments did so because of insufficient resources to regulate GHGs outright, owing to aggressive budget cuts during that decade. And Macdonald argues that lobbying efforts by industry, which emphasized how regulations stifled employment and innovation, were successful. “There is no doubt that voluntarism constituted a relaxation of regulatory pressure,” he writes. “Firms were under no requirement, financial or legal, to change their environmental behaviour, and many chose not to do so.”

Shell Canada stood apart. While some of its competitors actively raised doubts about global warming and promoted contradictory viewpoints, Shell acknowledged it. In becoming the lone Canadian oilsands operator to set explicit emissions targets for greenhouse gases, Shell also became a leading evangelist for voluntarism. “[Shell’s] activities illustrate how a clear set of goals, even when voluntary, encourages innovation and investment that result in reduced greenhouse-gas emissions,” affirmed Linda Cook, Shell’s CEO in 2003. “I do not think we should underestimate the effectiveness of voluntary action—perhaps summed up by the phrase ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’”

The Athabasca Oil Sands Project, Shell’s first foray into the oilsands, embodied this philosophy. Completed in 2003, it included the Muskeg River Mine (situated north of Fort McMurray, Alta.) and the Scotford Upgrader north of Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., which processed the mined bitumen into synthetic crude oil. (Shell owns 60% of the operating company, Albian Sands Energy Inc.) Exploiting the advantages afforded by newer technology, it put the decades-old existing oilsands mines of Syncrude Canada Ltd. and Suncor Energy Inc. to shame on environmental performance.

But Shell didn’t stop there. It pledged to slash the project’s emissions by half between startup and 2010, either through improved efficiency or other means, like buying emissions credits. Shell also engaged its critics. It formed a Climate Change Advisory Panel, which included not only company executives but also representatives from environmental groups. Successive Shell CEOs praised the panel not only for helping the company devise its climate-change strategies, but also for holding the company accountable.

Granted, Shell and environmentalists remained awkward bedfellows. Green groups loudly took industry to task on everything from emissions to water use to land reclamation. Climate change was a singular flashpoint: an expanding oilsands industry meant Canada had little hope of reaching its international emissions obligations.

Nevertheless, Shell’s behaviour earned grudging respect. When Alberta’s Pembina Institute (an OSEC member) rated oilsands companies on environmental performance in early 2008, the Athabasca project scored 56%. While hardly a ringing endorsement, it was the best score in the industry. Pembina praised Shell for setting voluntary targets and meeting them. “Shell was traditionally the leader in the oilsands,” says Simon Dyer, Pembina’s oilsands program director. “It understood the greenhouse-gas issue perhaps better than most.”

That goodwill came in handy when Shell waded into the oilsands again. In 2002, Shell proposed another mine east of the Muskeg River site, which it called Jackpine. As with all such projects, Shell needed to secure approval from a joint panel appointed by provincial and federal regulators. But environmental groups and other concerned stakeholders often mount opposition at public hearings. OSEC would be there: an alliance of the Fort McMurray Environmental Association, the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta and Pembina, it harried virtually every major developer during the application process. Jackpine was an obvious target: the proposed intensity of its greenhouse-gas emissions (that is, its emissions per unit of production) was actually higher than that of the original Muskeg River Mine.

Instead of girding for battle, Shell and OSEC compromised. The company promised that at a minimum, Jackpine’s emissions would equal those of imported barrels of oil on a “wells-to-wheels” basis. (Environmental groups often claim that producing a barrel of oilsands crude generates between three and five times as much greenhouse gases as producing a conventional barrel. “Wells-to-wheels” encompasses all emissions associated with a barrel of oil, such as by a tanker transporting it crossing the Atlantic Ocean, or a Chevy pickup’s eight-cylinder engine burning gasoline.) To meet that objective, Shell vowed to develop a plan within nine months of having completed a feasibility study. In return, OSEC mounted no opposition at the regulatory hearings. Influenced partly by this agreement, the panel gave Jackpine a green light.

Then, in 2006, Shell went before another joint panel regarding a proposed expansion to its Muskeg River Mine. After Shell and OSEC signed a similar written agreement to the one they’d reached regarding Jackpine, OSEC again stepped aside. That project, too, was approved.

In retrospect, it’s tough to say how enforceable these agreements were. OSEC asked the joint panel to make the agreements conditions of Shell’s approvals. Both panels refused; one merely said it “does expect Albian to meets its commitments.” Moreover, OSEC was counting on targets that hadn’t even been calculated yet. And the agreements contained a number of possible escape clauses, such as vague wording and a broad set of factors Shell could consider when developing its emissions strategy. Nevertheless, OSEC believed it had struck a hard bargain. “It was a very significant commitment,” says Dyer. “And that’s the reason we didn’t oppose the Shell projects at the hearing that year.”

The honeymoon didn’t last long. “As early as 2006, Shell missed its first deadlines to set some of these targets,” Dyer says. “We started to grow concerned at that point.” Over the following three years, OSEC prodded Shell through letters and meetings, but made little progress.

What was going on? Publicly, Shell Canada executives continued talking up the virtues of voluntary commitments. As recently as May 2007, then CEO Clive Mather claimed that meeting them was “vital to our credibility as stewards of the oilsands resources.” Yet Mather represented the company’s past, not its future; its foundations were shifting beneath his feet.

In early 2006, rumours surfaced that Shell Canada’s majority shareholder, global oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC, wanted to buy out minority shareholders and bring the entire Canadian operation under its wing. By early 2007, Shell Canada was swallowed by its parent. Mather retired, and the Climate Change Advisory Panel was promptly disbanded.

Shell Canada’s old ethos was incompatible with that of its parent. Though Royal Dutch Shell had once backed voluntarism, by 2007 it had become disenchanted. As it explained in a recent sustainability report: “Voluntary targets by a handful of companies just won’t work. Government policies are needed to reduce emissions across the entire economy without distorting competition.” So after its existing voluntary targets expire in 2010, Royal Dutch Shell declared, it would abandon the practice.

Following its integration, Shell Canada’s own praise for voluntary emissions reductions promptly ceased. In a letter to OSEC in January 2008, a new president, David Collyer, wrote that while the company remained committed to meeting its 50% target for the original Athabasca Oil Sands Project operation, it would not establish further voluntary targets. In a subsequent letter, Collyer indicated Shell would develop a GHG plan “aligned with the spirit of the agreements.” Asked for further clarification, Collyer wrote last fall that Shell felt it could fulfill its obligations to OSEC simply by following new and proposed emissions regulations introduced by government in recent years.

In April, OSEC threw down the gauntlet. It formally complained to the federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and Alberta’s Energy Resources and Conservation Board (ERCB), the two bodies that granted Shell’s regulatory approvals. OSEC wants the regulatory hearings for Jackpine and Muskeg River’s expansion reopened. “This is absolutely the last resort for us,” Dyer says. If regulators side with OSEC, Shell’s approvals could be in jeopardy. “We’ve had hearings reopened,” said ERCB spokesman Bob Curran. “It does happen.”

Shell, though, says its rights would be violated if hearings were reconvened, and OSEC lacks proper standing to bring such an application. “Public confidence in the ERCB is dependent on certainty and finality in the regulatory process,” the company wrote in a submission, noting that more than $8 billion had been spent on the projects since the approvals were granted. “These approvals should not be lightly interfered with simply because OSEC is not satisfied with the manner and pace in which Shell fulfils its public stakeholder commitments.”

One obvious question for regulators is: How binding were Shell’s commitments, really? The company’s pronouncements suggest that so far as it’s concerned compliance was voluntary, not contractual. “The need to reduce emissions is too important to rely on voluntary commitments,” said spokesperson Philip Vircoe. “These current regulations and the emerging Canadian ones are superseding the need for voluntary targets. …Voluntary was back several years ago, before regulations.” From OSEC’s perspective, Shell’s commitments ceased to be voluntary the moment the company put them in writing.

The dispute remained unresolved at press time. Its outcome might hinge on whether Shell’s correct that by meeting its regulatory requirements, it meets all obligations to OSEC. Shell’s emissions are restrained only by Alberta’s rules, which came into effect in July 2007. Under them, each of Shell’s existing and proposed facilities have three years after startup during which they can ramp up production. Their emissions in the third year will be divided by the facility’s annual production to calculate its emissions intensity, and that number becomes the facility’s baseline. In each of the following six years, the facility must reduce its emissions intensity by 2% from that baseline, for a total improvement of 12%.

By OSEC’s calculation, Shell would have to reduce emissions at Jackpine and the Muskeg River expansion by 30% or more under the written agreements. If true, it’s tough to see how Alberta’s rules could deliver an equivalent performance. In fact, there’s considerable uncertainty regarding what targets the province will set for the projects Shell’s now building. For example, Alberta has yet to decide whether the new facilities will receive their own baselines, or whether they will assume the existing one already set for Muskeg River Mine. As for proposed federal rules, Dyer points out they’re not available even in draft form. “Talking about regulations that don’t exist is a very curious way to say you’re meeting an agreement,” he says. Shell, though, emphasizes that its agreements with OSEC said Shell’s targets would takeinto account emerging regulatory requirements — and that external changes have since made it difficult for the company to satisfy OSEC’s expectations.

Why did Shell spurn OSEC? It may be that the company deemed following competing sets of commitments unduly onerous or costly. (It’s a common complaint—many major emitters don’t relish following both Albertan and federal emissions rules, and would like to see the two harmonized.) Or perhaps after years of championing voluntarism, the company tired of watching competitors reap the benefits of inaction. (In a statement responding to OSEC’s complaint, Shell executive vice-president of oilsands, John Abbott, said Shell demanded a regulatory framework that would reduce emissions “on a level playing field.”) Whatever the reason, Shell likely faces tougher opposition from environmental groups at future regulatory hearings, including those for later phases of Jackpine and its proposed Pierre River mine. “Obviously, there is no interest in continuing negotiations with Shell on future projects,” Dyer says.

What about relationships with other stakeholders? During the approval process, Shell also signed agreements with First Nations groups. Melody Lepine, director of industry relations with the Mikisew Cree First Nation, says Shell follows its agreements to the letter. “They have a very sophisticated system of tracking their commitments,” she says. “If it clearly says they will do it, they do.”

The problem, Lepine says, is that Shell won’t do anything beyond what the legal language requires. “At the time of making the commitments, it seemed like they were saying, ‘Trust us…we’re going to be your neighbour for 40–60 years. We can make changes as we move forward,’” she says. But her impression evaporated after Shell got its approvals. “If you didn’t get it in writing, then it’s very difficult to get it afterward. That’s the lesson I’ve learned personally in dealing with Shell. So now, I don’t take what they say very seriously.”

Lepine says the change in attitude began with Royal Dutch Shell’s takeover. Since then, its employees have been “much more difficult to work with — they’re almost somewhat adversarial and condescending,” she says. “In the early days with Shell, it was much more transparent and open. Today, that’s not the Shell we’re dealing with.” Clearly, some of the company’s partners will be paying closer attention to the fine print.

Sights and Sounds of the RCEN AGA

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:48:58 GMT

The national conference to which I've been obliquely referring was the Annual General Assembly (AGA) of the Canadian Environmental Network (RCEN). A set of YouTube videos providing an overview of the event is posted at http://www.youtube.com/user/RCEN1.

In 1989, the last RCEN AGA to be held in Alberta convened at Nakoda Lodge, Kananaskis. I first began attending RCEN AGAs in 1990 or 91 and so missed that event exactly 20 years ago now. It was part of what was then a practice of the national network to hold its assemblies on a rotating basis in every region of the country. However, an organizational crisis (I'll have to look up the years) ended this practice for at least half a decade when the event became confined to the Ottawa region.

In addition to the 20-year anniversary of the last time it convened beneath the wide Alberta sky, the 2009 RCEN AGA also upholds a return to the practice of regional rotation. In 2010, we'll be in Montreal, Quebec.

Talk of moving out from Ottawa began in early 2008 when the idea for meeting in Alberta first arose. The then Alberta Environmental Network's (AEN) National Council member, Andrea Waywanko, pitched the idea and then accepted my friendly amendment that it happen in June 2009 when the ICLEI World Congress would convene in Edmonton. The amended idea was accepted at the 2008 RCEN AGA in Richmond Hill, where Amandi Khera, Josh Brandon and I had found the horse-race betting parlour in the basement of the Best Western. (http://suite-mck.livejournal.com/33735.html?mode=reply)

More later.

The Next Case

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:18:23 GMT

It’s fair to say that maintaining a web-log is a kind of craft. Which is to also say that it’s a kind of work. I’ve fallen out of the practice, out of the discipline, of blogging in recent weeks due to the overwhelming distraction of organizing the Canadian Environmental Network’s national conference earlier this month.

I was told again this weekend that there are a few people who check this site daily to see if it has been updated, which reminds me that there is a performance standard that I’m supposed to be maintaining here.

If you are a member of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta, or would like to become one, please take note of this post.

Grade 9 social studies is the year my generation of Alberta students were introduced to the governance of Canada. The curriculum left me with the impression that we are governed within an orderly system, by wise men who have our best interests at heart. And to whatever extent I may have noticed the activist groups of the day taking companies or government agencies to court (my father was employed by a multi-national oil company after all), I perceived these incidents to be rare, and I assumed their rarity to be the result of widespread compliance with whatever laws were in effect.

When I ultimately found myself in the position of pressing such litigations as a member of such an activist group I learned that the opportunities to litigate are actually so abundant that we are limited by our resources and forced to pick and choose which case we might want to press based on the fact-set, precedent-value, and media opportunity. In fact, ever since Toxics Watch began using litigation as a tool, I don’t think we’ve had a complete calendar year without a case in process.

Suncor Millenium. Genessee/Keephills. TrueNorth Fort Hills. TrueNorth Fort Hills Appeal. PetroCanada (was TrueNorth) Fort Hills Leave to Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Imperial Kearl Lake.

I have a rule of thumb: no more than one court case at a time.

The premise behind legal work as an environmental advocacy tactic is that judicial rulings can create lasting incremental change in the environmental performance of industry by enforcing or clarifying the applicable rules. That’s the idea. The presumption.

We won the Suncor Millenium case, but in the next sitting of Parliament, the Canadian Government changed the law so that no such case would be lost again by a tar-sands company. In the case of the Genessee/Keephills power plants, the Government of Alberta changed the applicable laws retroactively (to 1996, five years before the case was even conceived) so we lost that one, proving what every Starfleet Captain knows: it’s hard to defeat your enemies when they can travel back in time and change history.

We lost, lost, lost at every step on the Fort Hills project – so we’ve learned that the Government can indeed reclassify a massive tar sands mine as a creek excavation project just by writing a letter to that effect.

And we did win on Kearl Lake - the judge did find that that government ignored climate change in rendering their decision – so the officials reconvened for a day, thought about climate change, then rendered the same decision that they did in the first place.

Such a string of experiences might lead one into cynicism and the conclusion that there really is no point to the risk and expense of litigation as a tactic. I’d be lying if I said that the thought hadn’t occurred to me.

But just when you think that you’re comfortably jaded, the powers that be simply escalate the level of patently egregious unfairness and the need to fight back arises all over again.

Notionally, no major industrial activity is allowed to occur unless the government deems that it is in the public interest. Determining whether a major industrial activity is in the public interest is the role of a government department or agency. In the case of Shell’s Muskeg River and Jackpine tar-sands mine, the government agency is the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB, or the Board).

The ERCB convenes public hearings on major industrial activities ~ which can be lengthy, costly affairs so the Board urges potential intervenors to work with the applicants (the companies) to try to resolve controversial issues before the hearings begin. They call this the Alternative Dispute Resolution Process. It’s kind of like the out-of-court settlements that you see on NBC’s Law & Order.

A coalition of environmental groups, including Toxics Watch, the Pembina Institute, and the Fort McMurray Environmental Association successfully negotiated an agreement with Shell which would substantially reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project. Having reached the agreement, our groups had no need to appear at the public before the ERCB.

Now, Shell has decided to break the agreement.

The ERCB has reviewed the situation, and agrees that Shell has broken the agreement.

But, the ERCB refuses to re-open Shell’s approval to hear the evidence that we would have presented if not for the (ultimately worthless) agreement Shell made in order to dissuade us from appearing.

The case at hand, then, is to secure a court ruling that the ERCB must re-open the Shell approvals to address the issues that were not presented because of ERCB’s own Alternative Dispute Resolution process.

You’d think it would be obvious, but apparently not.

What I've been keeping from you

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:24:43 GMT

My eyes are burning. I feel a mixture of complete exhaustion and astonishment.

I'm exhausted as the aftermath of four and half days of on-site co-direction of the Canadian Environmental Network's Annual General Assembly.

And I'm astonished that a file that has kept me from a complete night's sleep for the past 4 months and provoked such unmitigated frustration and true misery could have turned out to be such an acclaimed success.

I can't write anymore, but the AGA will be a source of several posts to come.

The Vacant Lot of Eden Municipal Wilderness Area

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:50:48 GMT

Bossy and Wrath, the magpie couple who reside in one of our spruce trees have another two juveniles hopping around our backyard this month. You might recall our introduction to them in this post from last spring. Consequently, whenever Hannah or I go out into the yard, or even appear in one of The Suite’s windows, one of the parent birds will take a perch about an arm’s length away from us and peck a branch, fence-board, or banister rail, all the while squawking some bossy message that we’re not to approach their adolescent offspring.

Yesterday, one of their moulty chicks was standing on our back deck. And at the same time, General Woundwort was lounging in his favourite spot in the Vacant Lot of Eden. There was a lot of wildlife traffic in our backyard yesterday.

The Mayan Economic Stimulus Package

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:57:42 GMT

A draft of this post has been sitting on my desktop since April 4th. I just capped it off this morning to post.

Under the terms of one of the side agreements of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the environment ministers of Canada, Mexico, and the United States make up the top-most echelon of an organization called the Council for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).

It was more than 10 years ago now that the CEC convened one of its public hearings in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Griz and I went down to testify about Alberta’s deregulation agenda that was underway at the time. Following the conference, I took a few extra days to visit some of the sites in the Oaxaca region.

A short bus ride from Oaxaca is Monte Alban, the ruins of an ancient Mayan city-state. Visitors were quite free to wander the dark, rough stone steps of the meso-American pyramids. I climbed the steps to the highest of the palace/temple rooms and paced the perimeters of the dilapidated domicile. I reckoned that the room of this Mayan god-king, a person who could command the life and death of human beings, was not much larger than my room in a shared house with three room-mates. And I had running water and electricity.

In 1999, one of my longest-lasting files opened: particulate matter and ozone. Particulate matter (PM) refers to tiny, air-borne particles or droplets (aerosols). The most problematic particulate matter, from a human health perspective are those substances in the 10 micron and smaller size range. At 2.5 microns, these inhalable pollutants can reach deep areas of the lung and actually dissolve into our blood as though they were life-giving oxygen. Developing an approach to managing this type of air pollution was the job of a multi-stakeholder project team which included - among the upwards of a dozen people - myself, Geoff Granville of Shell, and Les Johnson of one of Alberta’s utility companies, EPCOR.

I think particular matter is an interesting pollutant. As I mentioned above, it can pass into the blood, so I imagine it as suspended grains of sand so small that they pass through the lung wall into the blood, making our blood into quicksand. In fact, the spike in deaths associated with high particulate matter events aren’t caused by respiratory distress, but cardio-events, as though weak hearts just give out from the effort of trying to pump thicker, quicksand blood.

It’s also interesting for being a non-threshold pollutant, which means that there is no level where no effects will occur. Statistically, at any concentration, you can calculate some number of people who are expected to die from air pollution. The less pollution, the fewer people will die.

Hannah and I borrowed the Edmonton Public Library’s copy of Chariots of the Gods a few weeks ago; a kind of documentary positing that ancient wonders like the Egyptian pyramids, the Nazca Lines of Peru, and the heads of Easter Island might actually constitute evidence that ancient peoples were once visited by extra-terrestrials. The film is a kooky-bit of Seventies ephemera.

The movie mentioned in passing how, when Mayan civilization was threatened, when crops were failing, or in other words when their economy was in crisis, the Mayan god-kings would order a ceremonial march to this perfectly round lake and a virgin would be sacrificed to appease the gods and restore prosperity.

In the course of the particulate matter and ozone project team, Geoff, Les and I were spun-off into a sub-group to develop a recommendation regarding the contentious question of at what concentration of pollution should we have to do something?

At Canada’s national level, it had already been decreed that action should take place at levels of 30 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metre of air despite that acknowledgement that this level was a compromise between human health and the cost of taking action. The decree was a document called the CANADA-WIDE STANDARDS for PARTICULATE MATTER (PM) and OZONE, which said, that the 30 microgram number “may not be fully protective and may need to be re-visited at some future date.” The science says that human health effects are measurable at 15.

The three of us argued whether Alberta should adopt the national standard, or, given that our air was much cleaner that that compromised number, if we shouldn’t require action before some statistician could start calculating how many people were dying each year from the air pollution arising from the growing fossil fuel based economic activity in our province.

And it occurred to me then, “We are a committee of god-kings. We are counting how many people we will sacrifice for our prosperity.”

What strikes me now as significantlyless civilized than the Mayan Way, is how we marginalize, blame, and otherwise deny that this is going on. In the ceremony and processionals associated with the Mayan death-walk to that holy, round lake, there was honour and prestige awarded to the sacrificial victims and their families. But today, if we think of the sacrificial folk at all, it is to blame them for being ‘hypersensitives’.

In this analogy, our god is money.

The irony, the near-irony, you have no idea

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:38:54 GMT

My leg hurts. I’ll get around to telling you why. You know, ellipses and all that…

The Saturday after the revelation of the Las Vegas Cigarette at the Playboy Club, a medical nurse visited The Suite to administer another health questionnaire and take blood and urine samples for analysis. The results would be sent to the insurance underwriter to determine the disposition of our application for term life insurance. We had been quoted a monthly premium of $94 per month on the basis of Hannah and I being non-smokers.

Our insurance agent phoned this morning with the results.

“Hannah is elite premium,” the agent said. Elite premium is the best tier and plays the lowest monthly premium, so for her share of the cost of our insurance; it went down from our quoted price.

“You came back as ‘standard smoker’,” she continued. “So, your monthly premium will be $147 per month.”

Some quick math and I assessed the cost of that cigarette upstairs at the Palms Casino at $6,360. An extra $53 per month over the course of a ten-year term life insurance policy.

“But we can re-apply in a year,” the agent added when I shared this calculation with her. “If you’re considered a non-smoker then, then you will qualify for a lower premium.” I mulled over the suggestion, briefly. I’d be paying $636 for the patently false excess risk arising from my miscategorization as a ‘smoker’ in exchange for the an extra years coverage under a $250,000 life insurance policy.

Remember that this is to replace the mortgage insurance that we already have in place.

“Or,” I countered. “We could just stay with the mortgage insurance for another year and a could reapply then. After all, this only matters if either Hannah or I die in the next year.”

“What do you mean?” the agent asked.

“You’re asking me to make a $600 bet that one of us will die in a year. I don’t think we will, so I could just stick with the mortgage insurance for another year, re-apply, and save myself $600. If I’m wrong, then at least one of us gets the mortgage paid out.” The agent didn’t think that made much sense, but we ended the call with her agreeing to go back to the underwriters and me agreeing to discuss it with Hannah.

I’m a graduate of the CanBike II defensive cycling course. I’ve been taught to ride a bike according to the rules of the road and I’ve ridden on some of the busiest roads in the city – in-traffic, down Connor’s Road, for example. There’s only one street where I ride on the sidewalk, and that’s 104th street, also called Calgary Trail, which heads out of the city connecting to Highway 2. It’s a 4-lane, one-way, arterial roadway, but between Whyte Avenue and 63rd Avenue, where the Centre for Environmental Business and Advocacy and Balloons stands, people drive on it like it’s a freeway.

I was riding my bike on the west sidewalk of 104th street. Four lanes of south-bound traffic was whooshing on the asphalt mere feet to my right. As an arterial roadway, 104th street is fed by feeder avenues at every block. It’s tricky to turn off one of these avenues onto 104th. Drivers have to stop at the intersection, look to their left (towards the north, watching the south-bound traffic) to time the open spaces in the traffic, then gun their vehicles to get in and up to speed. This means that a north-bound sidewalk cyclist is approaching from their right – the direction they are not looking.

A soccer mom in a black SUV was stopped at 65th avenue and 104th street. She was looking north. I rang my bike bell, unsure if the tinny ping would penetrate her steel mobile fortress. I pinged again before riding in front of her behemoth, her head turned, she nodded at me and I crossed before that huge chrome grill.

A maroon sedan was stopped at 67th avenue and 104th street. The older male driver’s neck was leathery, with deep folds in the skin as he faced away from me watching the south-bound traffic. I pinged, and not only did he turn to face me, he actually backed up his car to clear my riding path. I nodded my thanks and he nodded back.

As I crossed 69th avenue, I was advancing towards a pedestrian standing on the corner, a young woman who might’ve been a student at nearby Scona Highschool. We have several mixed-use bike routes in Edmonton – basically sidewalks where it is legal to ride a bike amid pedestrians – and one of the rules of use is to ring your bike bell before passing. She was facing away from me, and I pinged twice.

My front tire was already in front of her when I saw the glowing white cords of iPod earbuds dangling from beneath her knitted cap.

F = ma.

Force is equal to mass times acceleration.

How much force could a teenage girl generate accelerating across half the width of a sidewalk?

She hit me full force in the left side of my body. Good for her under the circumstances, since it meant that she took no force from an impact of me and my bike colliding with her. But I landed well into the nearest lane of southbound traffic. Thankfully, because her burst of speed was intended to get her across four lanes of traffic, I wasn’t in any immediate danger of being hit by a car.

She apologize two or three times, then took advantage of another gap in traffic to run across 104th street.

I stood for a few minutes, leaning on my bike, the handle bars now slightly misaligned.

My legs hurt. My right leg a little more than my left. Nothing was broken though, so the operation my life wasn’t going to be affected by this event.

But the force of that collision – being hit by a teenage girl accelerating half the width of a sidewalk?

Man, I never want to get hit by anything bigger than that.

Compassion

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:24:57 GMT

It has been tough finding the time to post lately. l am chairing the organizing committee of the annual national conference of the Canadian Environmental Network - a profoundly distracting endeavor. It's been affecting my sleep pattern and keeping most bloggable thoughts out of my mind. (Alternatively, I suppose, I could’ve been blogging about chairing the organizing committee of the national conference…)

But l experienced a bit of a break-though this week: two people in my life sompetimes counsel compassion to me :Hannah and Amandi. And for some reason this advice took hold of me Monday morning as l rode my bike to the Saffron office. Compassion: the emotion that moves us to spare others from suffering. Compassion First.

The Reverend K once counseled that we must first have compassion for ourselves. So, what first must l do to spare myself from suffering? (Suffering in the broadest sense of the word, however, as little of what I experience living in one of the wealthiest jurisdictions on Earth constitutes “suffering” compared to what many other people endure.)

I should spare myself the suffering of the anxious panic that inevitably arises from procrastination.

I should spare myself the suffering that arises from trying to fulfill more responsibilities than my capabilities can manage.

I should spare others from the suffering that arises from the suffering I create for myself.

Oops. End of lunch hour.

Until Birnam Wood Comes to Dunsinane

Thu, 21 May 2009 03:33:15 GMT

Perhaps there is no accounting for taste because even when you do, the account doesn’t really mean very much.

I’m pretty sure that I once read a story in school, written by a student, about his English teacher. The teacher was remarkable for having a crooked mustache which partially concealed a scar on his upper lip, and for the heart-felt way he taught “Macbeth” over any other topic in his syllabus.

We learn in the story that the teacher served in World War II as a crewman on a B-17, a large bomber aircraft with a bottom mounted gun turret. One mission, his plane took heavy enemy fire causing such extensive damage that the pilot could not lower the landing gear, and further, the damage trapped the gunner inside the armored bubble on the bottom of the plane.

As the B-17 flew in for a crash landing, the teacher struggled vainly to free his colleague. Just before the landing impact that crushed the turret beneath 15 tons of flying fortress, the gunner looked him in the eye and said, “Macbeth is the best play ever written.”

I’m pretty sure I read this story. Does it sound familiar to anyone? It sticks in my memory like a fond in my brainpan.

I see any version of Macbeth that I come across. It also sticks with me that Playboy produced Roman Polanski’s movie version in 1971. Last year, Hannah and I saw a mounting of Macbeth at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre which set the story in World War II with Macbeth as a Hitler-esque German officer.

But my new favourite Macbeth is Geoffrey Wright’s modern gangster version. So awesome!

The Three Witches

Duncan's Highrise

Double, double, toil and trouble...

Malcolm and Macduff bust through the gate of Dunsinane Mansion with the Birnam Timber Company's logging truck. The whole assault team is hiding amid the logs.

Macbeth fears little since none of woman born shall harm him.

Lead on, MacDuff!!!

It's true, what they say...

Mon, 18 May 2009 19:55:06 GMT

For over a year now, Hannah and I have been meeting with two representatives of World Financial Group. WFG is the Avon of financial services. They pitch their product at home visits. They host cultish, motivational parties for their associates. They employ a multi-level marketing compensation scheme. Much about the organization offends my sensibilities, but one of the two representatives we’ve been meeting with is a long-time associate of mine through many years of volunteering for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, so giving her some business seems like a friendly thing to do. And they make house calls.

The product we have applied for is term life insurance to replace the unimaginably revolting mortgage insurance Hannah and I have been carrying since we financed The Suite.

Mortgage insurance is such a scam. For a premium of $80 per month, our mortgage provider promises that, in the event of either of our deaths, the mortgage will be paid-off – basically, written off by the institution. It’s scam-ish because the potential award of this insurance is determined by the amount owing on the mortgage. So if you owe $100,000.00 on your mortgage you’re paying for a $100,000.00 insurance policy.

But that same $80 per month premium would buy about $225,000.00 in term life insurance. In the event of either of our deaths, the survivor could pay-off the mortgage amount owing and still have $125,000.00 remaining for other expenses. Furthermore, as your mortgage is paid off over time, the value of your potential award declines while the premiums stay the same! Replacing our mortgage insurance with term-life insurance is our course of action.

Welcome to this post’s ellipse.

“I figured you’d write one post about the trip,” Amandi Khera commented, not long after we had returned from the New Year’s in Las Vegas trip with Carlos Montoya and Prairie Jamie. “But it’s like this on-going series of stories.”

On January 24, 2009 I left the story at:

After 'Mamma Mia', Jamie, Amandi, Carlo and I returned to our Strip-side hotel room at the Monte Carlo to do a health assessment. Jamie was at the end of her stamina for the day so she and Carlo decided to return to their room at the Red Rock, and Amandi and I changed clothes for the nightclubs.

There is a black&white photograph of me at age 4 taken by my mother. In it, I am sitting on our family couch, looking up at the camera with an expression of clear surprise. There is a Playboy magazine across my lap, open at the centerfold.

It’s not likely that my awareness of Playboy Clubs began in that fraction of a second in 1969, but it was definitely in my childhood that I began creating mental models of what the places must be like. They were as fantastical as castles. And Playboy Bunnies occupied the same domain of rarified existence as Disney Princesses. It was impossible to believe that I would ever set foot in a Playboy Club.

So, I’ve been [thinking about] them for almost forty years.

It had taken some negotiation with Amandi for her to agree to visit the Playboy Club at the Palms Casino with me. I trust that patronizing an institution so closely associated with our culture’s objectification of women underlay Amandi’s objections, but we worked out the deal that she would accompany me to the club and I would accompany her to MOON, one of Las Vegas’ best dance clubs, conveniently located one story higher in the Palms Tower.

Amandi and I each geared up in our night-club finery, and Carlos dropped us off at the Palms as he and Prairie Jamie headed back to their room at the Red Rock Casino.

The line behind the velvet ropes leading to the Playboy elevators was about two-hours long, time enough for us to have another losing bout at the craps tables before we were able to enter the elevator car and visit the legendary environ of the world’s only remaining Playboy Club.

It was kitchy and modern at the same time. The hostesses and blackjack dealers wore the classic, bunny uniforms, and one of the hostess bunnies asked us if we needed anything once we’d sat down in a pair of zebra-skinned armchairs.

“There!” Amandi noted in a congratulatory tone. “Now you’ve talked with a real Playboy Bunny!” I was pretty pleased about that, and with the irony that Amandi had discovered herself more displeased by the other female patrons whose skanky-manner-of-dress was more revealing than that of the Playboy Bunnies.

Amandi drew a cigarette. And though I’m a non-smoker, I suggested that sitting in a zebra-skinned armchair in a 60’s reminiscent Playboy Club would be the most fitting circumstances for me to have a smoke. Amandi agreed, passed me one, and offered me a light. She asked if I wanted inhalation instructions, but I didn’t take her up on them.

We each had a drink. I played five $25 hands of Bunny-dealt blackjack (the minimum bet at the club). She dealt herself three 21s, pushed my 20, and beat my 19. So, down another $100, Amandi and I finished off the night upstairs at MOON. Amandi said MOON was a great dance club, and its views of the Las Vegas Strip were spectacular.

The World Financial Group advisors rattled through our health questionnaires quickly. After meeting with us bimonthly throughout 2008, they had a pretty good impression of our lifestyles.

“… and you’re both non-smokers,” one of them said as she sped through the checklist of lifestyle habits.

“That’s right,” Hannah answered quickly.

The advisor seemed to take notice at my pause.

“I had one cigarette on December 30th, 2008,” I reported, dutifully.

“What?” Hannah exclaimed. The advisor sat back in her chair and exhaled.

“I have to report that as ‘smoker’,” the advisor explained, as it was within one year of the date of application. “This might change the premium from what I’ve quoted you.” She offered that she would submit the application to the insurance underwriters with a cover letter explaining the circumstances of the single cigarette, hopefully nullifying its financial impact, but she could not promise anything.

It’s true, you know: what happens in Vegas really should stay in Vegas.

Dandelion Hearts

Sun, 10 May 2009 02:58:05 GMT

My weed books refer to the white part of the dandelion that connects the root to the leaves as the “crown”, but the term is confusing. Crowns are at the top of things, where the blossom on a dandelion is. As I was picking dandelions this afternoon for both this post and for a side dish to tonight’s Cassoulet-style Chicken dinner, it occurred to me that this part of the dandelion is the dandelion ‘heart’, just like the heart of celery, or the artichoke heart.

So, from now on, I’m calling them “dandelion hearts”.

Pick, trim and clean as many dandelion hearts as you wish to serve. I halve or quarter the larger hearts so that they are all a uniform bite size.

Previously, I’ve blanched them in boiling water for two minutes as is recommended to reduce the bitterness associated with dandelions, but I’m going to skip that step tonight to see what they’re like full-strength.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan and sauté the dandelion hearts with a chopped clove of garlic until the hearts are tender.

Sprinkle with lemon juice and a dash of sea salt.

"How would you describe the taste?" I asked Hannah as we dined.

"I don't think they have much of a taste," she replied. "I thought we eat them because they're supposed to be good for you."

To me, they taste like mild brussel sprouts. Which gives me some new ideas about how to cook with dandelion hearts.

Brussel sprouts, or 'generic vegetable flavour".

Yard Food Day 2009

Sun, 03 May 2009 03:08:33 GMT

This is the traditional journal entry to record the first day of the year I've eaten something that was growing in the backyard.

Hannah and I were planting peas this evening and in the course of preparing the beds, I harvested enough dandelion crowns to serve alongside a grilled cheese sandwich for supper. Like last year, they were blanched, then sauted in garlic and olive oil. As I type this, I'm drinking the blanch water also.

Previous Yard Food post at: http://mylesk.livejournal.com/54114.html

Yea, Earth!

Green groups want Shell oil sands permits rescinded

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:06:55 GMT

Wed Apr 8, 2009 2:31pm EDT
By Scott Haggett

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian environmental groups asked regulators on Wednesday to rescind approvals for part of a $13.7 billion expansion of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s oil sands project, alleging the company backed off promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Oil Sands Environmental Coalition — which includes the Pembina Institute, the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta and the Fort McMurray Environmental Association — say Shell has broken a negotiated agreement to significantly cut the output of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide from an expansion of its Muskeg River and Jackpine oil sands mines in northern Alberta.

The coalition is asking the Canadian government and Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board, who jointly approved the project, to reconsider their ruling through a new public hearing because Shell’s promise was a factor in the decision.

“Shell has broken a binding agreement,” said Simon Dyer, oil sands program director at the Pembina Institute. Regulators “can reopen those approvals given that Shell has clearly reneged on its commitment.”

The groups claim Shell agreed to come up with specific targets for cuts to greenhouse gas emissions at the mine sites. Instead, they say the company told them it will not quantify its GHG cuts, deciding instead to wait for the federal government to come up with regulations on emissions.

Canada’s oil sands have the largest reserves outside the Middle East. However separating the tar-like bitumen from sand and soil and upgrading it into refinery-ready synthetic crude is more energy intensive and emits more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.

In a release, Shell said it would work with stakeholders to strengthen carbon dioxide emissions policies and was looking to the government to establish its rules.

“The need to reduce emissions is too important to rely on voluntary commitments, and along with the rest of the industry we are now focused on meeting these new regulatory targets,” the company said.

Bob Curran, a spokesman for Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board, said it is reviewing the coalition’s application. He did not say when a decision would be made.

Shell has a 60 percent stake in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, which includes an oil sands mine near Fort McMurray and an upgrader near Edmonton. Its partners, each controlling 20 percent, are Chevron Corp and Marathon Oil Corp.

The 100,000 barrel per day expansion would boost output from the project to 255,000 barrels a day, and includes a new mining project and additional capacity at the Scotford upgrader. The project is expected to be complete late next year.

(Editing by Rob Wilson)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

What makes this development so disgusting is the remembrance of all the years these companies have said, "don't regulate us on climate change! Establish a registry of voluntary actions (the old Voluntary Challenge Registry)!"

Now it's, “The need to reduce emissions is too important to rely on voluntary commitments...",

Government and corporate personnel turn-over with sufficient regularity that today's spokesperson can issue these key messages with the clear conscience bourne of historical ignorance. I guess I've been around long enough now to remember when their predecessors used to say the exact opposite.

Friday Night Fun

Sat, 02 May 2009 21:39:28 GMT

“Is this what it’s come to?” Hannah asked, lowering her head so that it rested on the back cushions of our couch. “Is this Friday night at the Kitagawa’s house?”

As you might recall one of the Ant Rules that I follow requires that, on my bicycle commutes to and from the Centre for Environmental Business and Advocacy and Balloons, I pick up littered returnable beverage containers. For any Ephemeral Tourist who does not reside in a jurisdiction with beverage container deposit legislation, “returnable beverage container” is the legal term for pop cans or bottles with a refundable deposit paid on them, claimed when the drink packaging is taken to a bottle depot facility.

“Guess how many returnable beverage containers I picked up today, Hannah,” I said to my wife when Episode 3 of the National Film Board’s mini-series The War of 1812 concluded.

“How many?” she asked.

“Guess,” I repeated.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s why you have to guess,” I explained.

“Five.”

“Higher.”

“Ten.”

“Higher.”

“Twenty.”

“Lower.”

“Fifteen.”

“Higher.”

“Eighteen.”

“Right.” Hannah hung her head and made the exclamation at the opening of this post.

“Wasn’t that fun?” I asked.

It was funny.

Great Unexpectations

Fri, 01 May 2009 04:16:26 GMT

Two things I never expected happened yesterday.

I wasn’t sure how much I was looking forward to the afternoon meeting with the one person in the administrative branch of the Alberta Government whom I most consider my nemesis; the person who I think of as the opposite of everything I stand for. Yet, the meeting had to happen. A meeting of a 22-member board on which we both serve is scheduled for next week and the top outstanding issue is between us. If we’re going to have a fight in front of 20 other people, it’s best to get the lay of the land before going into battle.

It might not seem that important a thing; three words in a single sentence in a 65 page policy document.

The vision for air in Alberta is:
[The air will have no adverse odour, taste or visual impact and have no effect on Albertans, animals or the environment.] OR
[The air will have no adverse odour, taste or visual impact and have no effect on population health, animals or the environment.]

In fact, my team sector chair has told me that if I think it’s important, I should go for it, but he doesn’t think vision statements are particularly valuable.

Me, though ~ I consider them to be an expression of our ideal selves. What we hope one day to achieve.

Nemesis and I met in a food court coffee shop. We shared some perspectives on other matters of common interest to us (Broadway-style musicals), and then began laying out our arguments. Why the right words were important. What our deep fears are with the other’s position. What we each think the other means and wants.

What I didn’t expect was to discover that we both want, fear, believe, and understand exactly the same things. We each believe that our own choice of words in this issue expresses what we both agree on. We oppose each other because we both read our fears into the other’s words.

It was quite a discovery.

Riding home to the Suite on the $89 London Drugs bicycle, I remembered that, in my back pocket, I had a set of discount coupons for my favourite fast food: Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I’d used one last week sometime at my local KFC Store #1712 ~ but something was wrong. The fries were soggy with oil and, similarly, a greasy, clear liquid seemed to gush out of the chicken pieces and I didn’t eat them all. In any ranking of things, something has to be at the bottom of the list, and last week’s three-piece meal was the worst serving of Kentucky Fried Chicken I’d ever had.

Remembering, as I rode by store #1712, that I had another coupon in my pocket, I turned into the KFC parking lot, but the smell of oil that seem to vent from the building made me nauseous and I rejected the ideal of purchasing a 10-piece bonus pak.

That’s never happened before.

Service

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:15:24 GMT

It’s good to be able to see the ground again. Maybe that’s one of the things that I find so hard about March; it’s the month that I’ve been separated from the soil for the longest time.

Today is the first Sunday following the official Earth Day date (April 22nd) so it means that Earth Day is being observed in Edmonton today. This also means that it’s probably too cold to be sitting in a tent down at Hawrelak Park tending to a tabletop display and listening to musicians trying to play their guitars with numb fingers. Outside my window, I can see flakes of snow falling. Over the years, I’ve seen more Earth Days like this than not.

I can’t recall the last time I participated in an Earth Day observance down in Edmonton's celebrated river valley park. And I don’t think I have ever attended as a representative of the Alberta Environmental Network. My argument has always been that it doesn’t make sense to me to promote to the public an organization that members of the public cannot join. Membership in the AEN is restricted to environmental groups. There is no individual membership category, although there have been a few instances where groups of one have formed and functioned with varying degrees of effectiveness – from not at all effective (sock-puppet groups) to transforming the legal landscape of environmental protection in Canada (as Martha Kostuch did).

In October 2003, it was looking as though the AEN was going to close due to the actions of its then-managing director. From the perspective of the Toxics Watch Society (my AEN member group) there were certain functions that we needed to continue and our organization stepped in to carry out those aspects. What I haven’t been very disciplined about over the past 5 years has been containing my activity to within those areas of Toxics Watch’s interest and have experienced that phenomenon sometimes referred to as ‘mandate drift’ – finding myself now committed to tasks increasingly distant from my core interests.

April 23rd was the sponsor’s reception for one of Alberta’s provincial environmental award programs, the Emerald Awards, where this year’s finalists were announced. It was held in the humid environs of the Citadel Theatre’s semi-tropical atrium and I attended as a member of the Emerald Foundation. Speaking at the event was Edmonton’s Mayor, the Alberta Minister of the Environment, and mingling in the crowd was City Councilor, Ben Henderson. Ben and I were both candidates in the 2001 municipal election, and I volunteered on his most recent campaign when he was finally elected to council.

Ben and I were chatting over our import beers and hors d'oeuvres, and during a lull in our conversation I said, “I feel like I should be lobbying you about something right now.” I couldn’t think of anything, so I told him that members of my community league feel strongly about keeping our neighborhood swimming pool open.

I don’t swim myself. And it kind of bugs me how some members of the league demand service from us volunteer board members and yet do not otherwise participate in keeping the league going. But at that moment in time, speaking to a municipal government decision-maker the only issue that came to my mind as though it were effortlessly already there was the one that someone else has nagged me about. And writing right now I recall that the previous time I saw Ben I talked to him about ending municipal water fluoridation; again, a topic that someone else is always haranguing me to work on.

It wasn’t until the morning after that I remembered that I do have a particular change I want made to municipal rules: I think that rather than allowing each citizen to keep 74 pigeons each, Edmonton should permit them to have 2 chickens.

It is not for purely selfish reasons that I support a chicken bylaw, though I would want eggs for myself. Like the edible plants that grow in the Vacant Lot of Eden, backyard eggs would have a dramatically smaller carbon footprint, and contribute to local self-reliance and overall sustainability.

I need to retreat from this situation which obliges me to help others achieve their goals that often do not intersect with my own.

I have my own things to accomplish.

History in my neighborhood 1

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:45:28 GMT

A communications consultant we’d often engaged at the recycling authority regularly reminded us, “people only understand things that are connected to things they already understand”. Consequently, the ability to teach something new is limited by what your audience already knows.

Hearing this was useful to me personally because I think it makes my learning easier; seeking out the connections between what I’m trying to remember and what is effortlessly already in my head.

I’m still doing that Six Degrees of Separation exercise. Last month some team members working on Alberta’s recommended new Clean Air Strategy went for a post-meeting dinner at Calgary’s Eau Claire Olde Spaghetti Factory and while waiting for our entrées I posed the question: who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?

The industry co-chair of the team, Al Mok, once rode a Hong Kong elevator with Bruce Lee. And a fine fellow from Alberta Energy is also a jazz bass player who backed-up Diana Krall. Pretty cool.

It is effortlessly already in my head that The Suite is located across the street from John Gaddis Tipton Park, the last of the Gyro service club playgrounds, and named for one of the city councilors in office during the amalgamation of the cities of Edmonton and Strathcona in 1912. The park is part of my neighborhood.

According to geneologist, Mona Knight, John Gaddis Tipton had an elder brother, Samuel S. Tipton, who served in the 103rd Illinois Union Regiment that mustered in Fulton County, Illinois in the fall of 1862.

So, now I’m much more interested in John G. Tipton, Younger Brother of 103rd Illinois Adjutant Samuel S. Tipton.

As wondershot once observed, all things in my mindscape eventually connect to the United States Civil War. America in 1861-1865 is effortlessly already in my head.

I was sort of hoping to learn something awesomely cool about Samuel S. Tipton, something that would make me feel a degree or two closer to Robert E. Lee, but it got a little disappointing.

William M. Anderson reported on Adjutant Samuel Tipton in his paper, Civil War in Fulton County, by quoting a letter by Captain Charles Wills who was describing the negative reaction in the regiment to President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation:

"When the 1st of January proclamation was issued a number of our officers became very much excited. Several of them talked strongly of tendering their resignations in consequence thereof, and one of them really did. But we were too strong for the d—d compromising lickspittles, and to-day you can't hear a whimper against it. The major and adjutant were strongly opposed to it but they dare not say so to-day."

Adjutant Tipton resigned from the 103rd in June 1863, six months before they saw their first combat at Missionary Ridge, Tennesee.

Another e-mail-based post

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:43:44 GMT

Let me know if you think this is blog-cheating.

A correspondent has circulated this article over the Alberta Environmental Network list-serv:

Ban Carbon Emissions, Don’t Price them: Why Cap and Dividend is the Best Approach

I replied by e-mail:

Hi [Correspondents],

I'm replying to you both because [Correspondent 1] is the promulgator of the Cliff Stainsby's article, and because I've recently spoken against the instrument of carbon credits to [Correspondent 2] (who is likely trying to rationalize my arguments with Stainsby's position).

Stainsby undermines his argument that carbon pricing is immoral in the end because his Cap and Dividend (C&D) system still relies on the sale of permits to emit carbon. All that moralizing in the long middle of his article is dashed in his one-line that says permits will be sold. What difference does it make how the money for the dividend is raised - whether it's by a $30 tax per tonne of carbon, or the sale of a $30 permit to emit a tonne of carbon?

I can think of two differences: the permit system will require the creation of an entire permitting infrastructure (like a market), whereas a tax wouldn't; and you can (theoretically) limit the amount of permits in the system.

Re: 1 - a tax would have significantly lower administrative burden, so I think we should choose that.
Re: 2 - I can't imagine a government would issue fewer permits than are actually required by the economy (as [Correspondent 2] reports the Europeans are doing). In other words, the economy will determine the number of permits rather than any government being bold enough to limit the size of an economy through the permits.

Better to "tax-and-dividend", I say. We also refer to this idea as 'revenue-recycling' - the most elegant example being the Swedish NOx charge http://www.iisd.org/greenbud/nitro.htm.

If the carbon-tax is set marginally higher than the cost per tonne of to reduce carbon emissions, we can trust the market to drive economically rational decisions (ie. that people/corporations will choose whatever is the cheaper option).

~ Myles.

Lunch break & local offsets

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:17:32 GMT

It's lunch time!

From June 12-14, 2009, the Canadian Environmental Network will convene its annual general assembly in our fair city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I have been serving on the organizing committee for this event. In the course of this service, I've come to realize that I am quite far behind my national counterparts in terms of political correctness. My attentiveness to affirmative action-type policies is effectively zero, so I'm surprised when people say to me that I don't have enough women, First Nations, youth, Francophones, or visible minorities on the program, and once I'm over that surprise, an new round of work ensues to correct for my oversight.

I doubt I'll ever get over this. It isn't that I don't work with women, First Nations, youth, Francophones, or visible minorities. It's just their status within these categories is such a minor aspect in my consciousness that I'm always overlooking it.

I've been asked via e-mail for my approval of the carbon off-sets service we'll be engaging for the assembly, and I gave my green-light to http://www.econeutral.com/, but added in my response:

What I find awkwardly ironic is that Shell is one of their clients and with my Toxics Watch hat on, I've argued to Shell that these types of programs were not acceptable to us because we wanted Shell to use local offsets.

I've been asked to explain why we favour use of local offsets.

The logic for local offsets arises from the desire to realize local co-benefits from the offset project. Shell argues that we should accept a carbon offset project anywhere in the world for the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from its Scottford Refinery expansion east of Edmonton. Our view is that the East Edmonton airshed is at capacity for emissions other than CO2 as well, and that a well-selected GHG offset project would also reduce emissions of these pollutants. By accepting a GHG offset project outside the Edmonton area, we feel we would be allowing the co-benefit of reduced criteria air contaminant pollution to accrue to another region. Shell gets the credit for a global off-set, but people in East Edmonton still get an increase in air pollution.

In other words, we care about more than just GHGs and argue that national or multi-national organizations should give preference to off-set projects in the region that they are also impacting in other ways.

I do agree with [one of my correspondents] that local off-set are less important with the AGA because the most of the emissions associated with the RCEN AGA arise from travel whose impacts are spread out across the country, so it probably matters less that the off-set project is not in the same region/province as the event itself.

End of lunch break.