Case # 946 of our lack of democracy. Surely in a sane and democratic world the communities that are slated to have pipelines (or strip mines, dams, clear cutting, Walmarts etc) would have the right to vote on such issues in a referendum? If there was a practical consensus (two-thirds majority) in favor of such development there would be little protest. Protest and civil disobedience occur because democracy is being thwarted and these developments are being forced on the community. Hey Greens, NDP here is a platform for you. Extend democracy to the community! If you don't you might have an Oaxaca on your hands in the future!

Last time I checked, Grumpy, Canadians used plenty of oil and gas, too.

Same goes for products from mines and forests.

working man
Did you read Zandberg's piece?

This increase in pipeline capacity is for export - not to serve the domestic market.

Try and pay attention.

Kinder Morgan's reputation is atrocious and Enbridge is just as bad.

I hate like hell to quote Ronald Reagan but he did same something important every now and then:

"If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly,"

'same' above should be 'say'.
I'm on my way out the door, sorry!

Its simple, stop driving and flying. As long as people continue to use more fuel, projects like this are going to happen. Using less fuel also takes money out of their pockets.

Yet another opportunity to contact polititians.

According to a recent poll, the environment is the top issue for Canadians. Time to put pressure on the politians.

For starters, write provincial and federal politians and demand they spend more on public transit and less on highways so people have the option of driving less and thus reducing their GHG emmisions.

Thanks for committing to make a difference!!

Rt. Hon. Stephan Harper
Prime Minister of Canada

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cc:

Hon. Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
Hon. Bill Graham, Liberal Party and Opposition Leader
Hon. Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment
Hon. David Emerson, for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics
Hon. Jack Layton, Leader, New Democratic Party
Hon. John Godfrey, Liberal Critic, Environment
Hon. David McGinty, Liberal Critic, Transport
Hon. Andrew Scott, Liberal Critic, Infrastructure and Communities
Hon. Stephane Dion, MP, Liberal Party leadership candidate
Hon. Michael Ignatieff, MP, Liberal Party leadership candidate
Hon. Peter Julian, NDP Critic, Transport
Hon. Nathan Cullen, NDP Critic, Environment
James Moore, M.P., Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam
Bob Rae, Liberal Party leadership candidate

Premier Campbell

http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/38thParl/campbell.htm

BC MLA's can be found here:
http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/3-1-1.htm

Early in the morning last Sept. 18, a handful of local residents, angry they hadn't been told about the clear-cut being made behind their homes, banded together and told the loggers and backhoes to stop cutting.

It still isn't happening often or loud enough, of course, as this piece might be attempting to suggest, but there is a growing realization amongst folks generally, if low level, that I encounter, which is my personal and conclusive evidence that the "over development" and "over population" tendencies built within Endless Growth Capitalism carry significant price-tag consequences. It's rip, rape and run across the natural landscape tendency is about equal to the same tendency manifest in the social/community lives of the species: destruction, depletion, waste on a grand scale, and a growing impoverishment of people's lives. A denial. Big Lie level "denial".

Upon retirement I fled, the very next day, what appeared as the most obvious blight upon the landscape and social life to me: the mindless, greed driven urban sprawl of Vancouver and its growth consumption of the remaining wild places about it, upon which in the final analysis it is not only the bears which depend. That is our resource, sustenance and connection base which we need as much as bears do. (Bears in this case, being the canaries in the mine shaft cage., along with other "life sustaining possibilities" such as sturgeon and salmon etc.)

When we have finally created the "bourgeois/corporatist ideal world" in which they cannot exist, we will have also created the world in which neither can we.

I understand the intent of this article, but I still think it idealist naivete and much wishful thinking. The reality is that there may be an actual awakening happening about what we, our socio-economic morality system is doing to the life sustaining world upon which we, in the final analysis ALL depend, at least as much as bears and spotted owls, but I still do not see the alternative possibilties and people behaviours that would give me any real hope that we are going to beat the ticking of the disaster clock. (Actually, small town, with its own "individualist serving" over "community" preoccupations, has turned out to be only moderatly less disappointing than Big City. It is a system wide malaise.)

It may be that we will yet, of course, for we are a resiliant species when we have to be. I just don't see it yet, at a level of understanding and response proportions that will be necessary.

And there really are no guarantees in any regard. The long run lesson of extended history is, of course, that periodic "extinctions" are a fact of life, which we presume does not include us, at our peril. Evolution has a remarkable capacity to shrug off all arrogances, even likely ours.

It is bigger even than just stopping "flying" and "driving". That is an attempt to dump the ruling class economic system's responsibilities onto all of us. Which they work mightily to do, and with many of our more naive actually buying into the bullshite.

Okay. We are all responsible for "allowing" the rulling class "status quo" economic and social system. That much I confess to.

Capitalism, the historical class system of which it is an extended history part, and the individualist greed this system, in all its manifestations generates is the problem. That much I also allow.

It is another pipeline through the Stoney Creek and Forest Grove area that should be a concern. Is it really necessary to run another high pressure line through a populated neighbourhood? Not bloody likely. The pipeline will pass IMMEDIATELY next to two elementary schools, Stoney Creek
Elementary and Forest Grove Elementary. The pipeline passes Stoney Creek within a hundred and fifty feet and goes under a community garden. The new line will mean a disaster for Stoney Creek itself and the newly restored salmon runs above the Lougheed Highway The line will be directly above Forest Grove Elementary. A pipeline blowout near either schools will be a tragedy beyond measure. It is time for the tank farms on
Burnaby Mountain to be removed.

PS. Re the removal of the trees along Forest Grove Drive. Kinder Morgan just beat Mother Nature and saved the City of Burnaby a lot of clearance money. The alder trees are past the best before date and are a hazard to all and sundry. Most of the alders need removal and the black cottonwood need serious topping for safety reasons if nothing else.

PPS Is there absolutely nothing that the Oil companies can do to stop or at least aleviate the obnoxious and revolting sour/sulpher gas odor that emits from their tankfarms ever month or so on Burnaby Mountain? After all Shell Oil at Hastings and Kensington have removed all their tanks thank goodness.

Alders are a hazard to all and sundry?

Pls elaborate.

Democracy was hung with the first FTA, then the NAFTA, WTO and will get the last shot into the back of its head with the GATS.

All these treaties have been planned and set up for the removal of all decision making rights by citizens and communities and replacing them with "Rules based trading regimes" . In other words, the profitability of the multinational corporate mafia, endorsed and enforced by our "business friendly" and busines owned governments, begging for more.

Watch the directorships Campbell, Harper & Co. will rack up when they're finished with selling the country.

Ed Deak.

Ed wrote, "Democracy was hung with the first FTA, then the NAFTA, WTO and will get the last shot into the back of its head with the GATS."

Exactly. But we have to take back, and indeed expand our democratic rights. This will lead eventually to a fight with NAFTA WHO and all the other alphabet soup front groups for the mulitinational gangsters, but what it means is that to maintain democracy we must tear up these treaties. NDP, Greens, ya listening?

I listened to a report on CBC news yesterday that said cars, planes and trains account for about 25% of all pollution. A significant problem for sure, but still not the majority problem. The majority problem then, I presume, comes from the more industrial over development side of the equation. For whereas the cars and planes are the mirror held up to the over-population side of the problem, and its concentration in massive megalopolis urban centres.

As a species, in my view, we need to be moving, as part of a New Modernization concept, towards a better balance between our species numbers, our economic morality code of conduct and over development system, and the degree of our impact that nature can realistically and sustainably absorb. And the signs that this fairly simple three sided equation are seriously out of balance, exist all around us, despite the persistance of the Neocon Ernst Zundel mentality "environmental disaster deniers".

Capitalism attempts to make it a more complex problem, of course, and to download responsibility onto the inadequacy of individuals and their cars, which autocentric community transportation system dependancy they worked to create and market through their urban planning models, of course. But, to me it seems, the proportioning of blame and key solutions, in their major outline, seem obvious enough to me and lies quite elsewhere.

The problem only seems huge and intractable though, in my view, for so long as the current ruling class greed driven economic system remains in place, and folks generally fail to recognize and act upon that realization. In which case, if this persists long enough without redress, and the status quo system can't even seem to be able to act on the limited and inadequate in themselves remedial positions of Kyoto, a workable remedy only then comes with us hitting the proverbial "laws of nature" wall, and its forced reduction in our numbers and exploitation of nature activity. That is, assuming we don't become entirely extinct, of course. Not a given either.

And how that may finally manifest itself, is likely to be even more unpleasant than the other self and socially created voluntary compliance "Balance" solution I advocate for.

Agree, Fait. While I didn't get into it in my piece below you, the further development of democracy and its extension into all areas of the economy especially, with the local control that would provide, in my view, is the key to this evolving mess.

Don't use the current economic system as a reason not to take action now.

It doesn't matter who is to blame, it matters who can do something about it. By driving and flying less, one leads by example. Politians are using the excuse that people won't get our of their cars as a reason to build roads and not invest in public transit. Prove them wrong. Give others some hope while you are at it.

Regarding GHG emmissions, a large percentage are for the production of fuel and the production of automobiles. These emmissions are in addition to the 25% that come directly from automobiles.

GWest Alder trees are a first growth tree on bare mineral soil here in BC. The tree is fast growing and provides shade for second growth evergreeens. In 'normal' growing situations this is what Mother Nature does to replace areas burned off by natural causes. It doesn't work with clear cutting as the evergreen seed trees are all gone. Burnaby Mountain was clearcut over a hundred years ago plus all the tree cutting since for development reasons, etc. Alders have a nasty habit of out competing themselves and thus killing off most of the growing trees until the ones left are 60/100 years old. These trees are now at their climax stage and dying. This is the case thoughout the Forest Grove area, If you look at the Alders in the park next to Forest Grove school many of the trees are marked for removal with bright orange paint. The tops are broken off by wind, many dead branches and there are even standing dead trees just waiting to fall. Where alders grow to this state they are a hazard and need to be removed for safety and common sense. Leaving them to fall at their leisure is just not acceptable.

Burgess
But as part of a managed silvicultural program the alders play a part. The problem is with the silviculture in the area - as your post just acknowledged.

Clearcutting a sightline corridor is a convenience to Kinder Morgan - that pipeline has been there for years - and trying to spin it as good forest management is just lame.

Sorry if the impression is that I agree with the KM clear cutting. I don't. If they try to clear cut any trees along Stoney Creek I will be there along with anyone else to stop it to protect the time and effort folks put in to restore the salmon runs. I also think that to twin the pipe line through that neighbourhood is unacceptable. Too bad KM hadn't let Burnaby know what its plans were as it would have saved the city taxpayers the cost incurred this summer of thinning, cutting and removing dead trees in that exact stretch of road that was clear cut. Dumb.

Excellent. We're in complete agreement then.

90%, at least, of my transportation needs are met by my bicycle, summer and winter, even in this mountainous heavy snow country. And I'm 68 years old. So I don't need anyone preaching at me.

But that said, I still recognize the practical problem that simplistic solutions like the bicycle pose to real people living real lives, with home, work, various state of health and physical capacity, the needs of children, and limited time. Been there and done that. Most folks are just plain too goddamn swamped meeting the demands of "the system" to meet the needs of even my simplistic solution-, which I was not able to meet either until my family finally grew up and took some of the scheduling and "load" pressures off my life. (And I love this bicycling transportation "luxury" frankly. And it really is a luxury for the unhurried and unpressured few of us. That's a regrettable fact.)

It's real people with complex and busy needs, in most cases, we are talking about here, so one should take care without any real knowledge of their lives, about foisting our own "relatively" privileged solutions upon them-, to say nothing of our preaching.

Compact communities with short travel distances, complete with work and shopping solutions nearby, adequate incomes, and effective, cheap and speedy public transport are the real need of most busy, busy people. It's just not scale cost effective enough for the money, profit sucking demands of the private corporate system is all-, so to get that they foist dependency upon the automobile upon most folks, as the only practical solution-, and at our personal rather than social expense-, by and large.

The prevailing economic and social system IS the main obstacle to progress here.

And blame the individual worker/consumer is the coporate, as your game.

My view anyway.

same old story...

traitorous politicians give us traitorous public policy.

when are we going to start hearing the "T" being hurled at the lib's in the bc leg?

gawd knows, its long overdue.

tks,
rjm

Vancouver Island's ancient forests are among the most spectacular
landscapes anywhere on Earth. They're home unique
wildlife and are a fundamental part of Vancouver
Island's tourism economy. They are also of great
cultural importance to the First Nations of the Island,
most of whom never gave up ownership over their forests
through any treaties.

See viforest.org for more info and to sign our
online petition.

But they're going fast! The most recent photo analysis
based on 2004 satellite images shows that:

- 73% of the original productive old-growth forests of
Vancouver Island have been logged.
- 87% of the original productive old-growth forests on
southern Vancouver Island, south of Barkley
Sound/Alberni Canal, have been logged. ie.13% remains
- 90% of the low, flat (eg. valley bottoms) ancient
forests where the largest trees grow and the greatest
biodiversity resides, have been logged. ie. 10%
remains

The Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) is
calling on the BC government to protect the ancient
forests of Vancouver Island by immediately banning
logging in the most endangered old-growth forest types
and quickly phasing-out old-growth logging from the
rest of Vancouver Island by 2015, with a rapid
transition to second-growth logging at a slower, more
sustainable rate of cut. Unprotected ancient forests
here include the Upper Walbran Valley, Clayoquot Valley, Flores Island,
Sydney Valley, Ursus Valley, Nootka Trail, South Cathedral Grove, and hundreds of other places.

Other jurisdictions, including New Zealand and
southwestern Australia, have banned old-growth logging
in recent years. BC can feasibly do the same for
Vancouver Island, as already 90% of the richest valley
bottom forests (where logging is most profitable) have
already been converted into second growth forests where
logging can occur at a reduced pace, while freeing-up
the remaining ancient forests for protection.

FLOOD THE BC GOVERNMENT and PROVINCIAL POLITICIANS with
LETTERS!

Right now, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee is
embarking on a major mobilization to flood the BC
government and all MLA's with thousands of letters for
Vancouver Island's ancient forests and local jobs. YOUR
letter is vital - politicians are forced to do the
right things when enough people know, care, and SPEAK
UP! Numbers count!

Let the BC politicians know whether or not you believe
they should:

- Protect the remaining old-growth forests of Vancouver
Island, forcing the industry to make a rapid transition
into second-growth logging at a reduced, more
sustainable rate of cut.
- Ban raw log exports to protect BC millworker jobs.
- Establish a new Land Use Plan to expand the protected
areas sytem on Vancouver Island, based on open public
input, conservation biology science, and First Nations
Land Use Plans.
- Restore public service employment levels in the
Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Lands, and
Forests in order to better enforce regulations and
monitor the activities of logging corporations in our
public forests.

Write to:

Premier Gordon Campbell
Legislative Buildings, Victoria, BC V8V 1X4
Fax: (250) 387-0087
Email:

Also, if you live in BC, write to your own provincial
Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) who represents
you in your area, whether NDP NDP or BC Liberal. You
can find him/her at:
http://www.leg.bc.ca/mla/3-1-1.htm or by calling
Enquiry BC at (250) 387-6121 in Victoria; (604)
660-2421 in Vancouver; or 1-800-663-7867 elsewhere in
BC

Politicians know that every letter they receive
represents HUNDREDS of other citizens who haven't
written yet!

Western Canada Wilderness Committee
Victoria Office and Rainforest Store
651 Johnson St., Victoria, BC V8W 1M7
250-388-9292 (phone)

(email)
wcwcvictoria.org (Victoria)