I Can't be bought, Assholes! Part 1

So it has started, each of the political hopefuls is armed and ready with their massive bags of loot in an attempt to bribe me into giving them one more chance to screw me and any chance of our being ready for the challenges of fiscal instability, global warming and peak oil.

Let's start with Dalton:

Planting 50 million trees is pretty impressive but does not make up for the broken promises on shutting coal fired plants and moves towards more nuclear plants when the ones we have are expensive, dangerous(leaking tritium) and unreliable since their retrofits.
40 Billion dollars would build a hell of a lot of wind turbines, provide subsidise for home efficiency retrofits, and fund transit.

17.5 Billion in new transit, that's not bad, good for the environment, divert people from their cars and it will better prepare us for peak oil. Of course this is not today's spending it's an election promise which may or not be implemented by a Fiberal Government and could be left to the last year of a mandate even if it was funded. This needed to be in the last budget not dangled as a future plan.

This new found concern for the environment is nullified by policies like new HOV lanes for the QEW. Now if these lanes were to replace existing ones it would encourage car pooling but no, these are additional lanes which will speed up commuting for HOV users AND those alone in their cars. For HOV lanes to work we need to replace lanes not increase lanes. Make the lives of those foolish enough to drive from Burlington to Toronto alone each day hell! This plan rewards everyone and is not incentive enough to encourage car pooling or transit use in the numbers required to make a difference.

A new holiday. Like everyone I like time off but considering Ontario's economy is going to suffer in the wake of higher dollars, U.S. economic downturn and our overall uncompetitiveness on the world stage how the hell can you justify more paid days off which will further raise production costs and lower efficiency. When manufacturers are complaining they are not competitive you'd think you would consult them before adding higher costs to their bottom line. This is the most shallow self serving promise so far! Perhaps it should be Cynic day not family day.

Let's not forget the impending U.S recession/depression and chance of some form of fiscal crisis in the banking industry. I hope parties don't make bold promises based on projected revenue growth since I expect growth to vanish in the next 12 months.

I'm sure we can count on more bribes from Dalton but so far he's not found my price. Future critiques will depend who pisses me off next.

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Agricultural Biodiversity in Danger

As reported in the BBC. UN findings show that many of the worlds livestock breeds are in imminent danger of extinction as the developing world moves to more productive but often environmentally unsuitable breeds. This trend away from indigenous breeds lowers biodiversity and often leads to catastrophic failures for farmers when highly productive western breeds are incapable of adapting to the stresses and less than perfect conditions of the developing world.

The loss of these blood lines would be a great loss of genetic variety, including disease resistance, drought/heat tolerance, ability to survive on low levels of feed, mothering instincts and easy birthing, all traits which do not increase yield but do increase survivability of animals in harsh conditions.

Recommendations by the researchers to improve the problem included:

-establish gene banks in Africa to store semen, eggs and embryos

-allow great mobility of breeds across national borders

-encourage farmers to maintain a variety of indigenous livestock

-use advanced genomic and geographical mapping to match breeds to suitable environments

The Problem however is not just a developing world problem, western farmers have most of their eggs in one basket with 90% of all cattle in 6 distinct breeds ignoring others who's genes may once again be needed in a lower yield post carbon farm or needed to rebuild herds after some agricultural plague to which the pampered, uniform and high intensity farming breeds might succumb.

See the 13 cattle varieties under watch by the Rare Breeds Canada, 16 Chicken and 8 Turkey breeds, as well as horses, water fowl and pigs.

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HIV Victims Buried Alive

This is one of most perverse and disturbing stories I've seen in awhile.

With an estimated 2% of the population of Papua New Guinea being HIV positive and locals having little education or Government support to care for the victims, people have begun to bury the infected alive when they reach the point that their families can no longer care for them.

I really don't know what to say,
Yikes.. WTF! are two things that come to mind

revisited

I just realized that they quoted 30% increase in diagnosis each year, that would double the numbers in 3 years, triple in 5 years,
double Yikes!!!!

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Deep Economy - hope for our future

I do try my best to keep up on relevant reading to the extent my pocket book and Newmarket's library will let me, so I was glad to find Deep Economy by Bill McKibben on my recent visit.

Deep Economy is an intriguing book that looks at the standard model of endless economic growth and the problems associated with it in the context of climate change, resource depletion and the rampant "Hyper individualism" of the capitalist west. The average house has doubled in size in 30 years while families have shrunk. We work more, travel more, make more money and yet we are increasingly isolated, less happy and unfulfilled for our efforts.
The system he describes is not attainable, sustainable and not even desirable for the entire world and is destined to collapse and likely quite soon.

Scattered throughout the book are examples of how new and in some cases very old economic relationships in communities can establish prosperity with a smaller more sustainable carbon foot print and increased satisfaction. Mckibben's stories, derived from his travels show how communities when measured by GDP would actually show stagnation or decline and yet can improve the environment, increase health, education, and happiness through local initiatives. Other experiments such as local currencies, urban farming, transit that works, local power generation, cooperative stores, and co-housing to mention a few can offer opportunities, increase local wealth all without the corporate mega mall sucking a community dry

While McKibben does not end the book with a definitive fix for the problems he does show us enough to question the real validity of a economic system that believes progress and utility are only measured by GDP. McKibben also gives us hope that small answers can help solve big problems and that acting locally can make a difference and in the end may be our best hope of sustainability.

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Is nothing sacred to China?

I realized I was fixating with 3-4 posts in as many weeks on Chinese business practices so I layed off for a while but in the last several weeks there have been so many new scandals that I can’t hold back any longer.

First there was the Mattel recall and then another Mattel recall,
Then some quarter of a million unsafe tires had to be called back
Today I find two more stories, unsafe baby bids which have excessive lead levels, gee no chance of a bib getting in contact with a babies mouth is there?

In the second story Chinese entrepreneurs think it’s OK to package cheap white wine from concentrate and labeling it as ice-wine. It’s neither VQA as required, it’s not even necessarily Canadian grape juice and it sure as hell is not made from frozen fruit as one manufacturer admits its concentrate and “pure water”. There isn’t any water added to make ice-wine. High end fake booze with names like Chivas Regal are commonly sold to a knowing and accepting public more concerned about prestige than quality, safety or legality

Is nothing sacred to China? I mean its one thing to fake a Prada purse but to mess with a peoples libations is more than criminal.

Where is our Government in all this, ignoring the issue and failing to support businesses trapped in prolonged legal battles with Chinese crooks.Recommend this Post

Trees vs Biofuels.........Trees Win says UK study

The BBC reports that a UK study proves food crop Biofuels are not the correct direction and are not an effective method of curbing CO2 emission.

The UK study shows that reforestation will suck up 9 time more Co2 than the avoided emissions by using biofuels rather than oil.

Biofuels will encourage deforestation and habitat destruction adding more problems to the mix while reforestation will sequester large amounts of existing carbon from the atmosphere.

The only aspect of the biofuels that was deemed possibly useful in mitigating CO2 emissions was waste or cellulose ethanol but refinery cost is several times higher than the simple corn/cane/palm oil. Hopefully this study will deter the food for fuel momentum, encourage reforestation and cellulose only biofuel technology.

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Even a Kettle can make a difference

I mentioned last week that I had just finished reading the Carbon Buster's Home Energy Handbook and that it was a good resource for cutting your carbon footprint. One section discussing cookware mentioned a gas kettle called the Simplex Copper Kettle that used coils in the base to trap and transfer heat more efficiently


Since I was in need of a kettle anyways (as mine was sputtering slightly from a growing leak around the spout weld) I figured lets see if I can find one. The book mentioned they were a high quality hand made English kettle so I expected that the $100 mentioned would be a minimum price. When I went looking I was surprised to find a vendor with the model shown in the picture here, the chrome version of the kettle that was discontinued. The discontinued price was only $40 U.S. with $8 dollars shipping from a homesteading, Amish kinda store in Ohio called Lehman's.

Carbon Busters claimed that this design is at least 25% more efficient vs. flat bottom kettles (on gas stoves) and on our trial run with equal quantity and temperature of water, the Simplex took just over 1/2 the time hence 1/2 the energy as the old flat bottom kettle.

This Kettle is only for gas ranges but for those trying to cut back it's a quality product at a discontinued price while they remain available. For a bonus it's not made in China.

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