MAYhem in almonte!

The event last night was awesome! The Ironworks pub were great hosts and provided an excellent setting. The room we booked could hold 50 or so as close personal friends, but double that number made an appearance.

I was in the hall around the corner leading in to the room with 20 other people listening to Elizabeth and the other speakers. The room was packed beyond standing room.

I know it will be the same tonight in London!

We signed up several new members and secured some donations for Elizabeth's campaign. A great night all around.

Here is the only photo I currently have. It is of me (on the left), Elizabeth, and Rick (on the right) the CFO for the CMM FGPA.

Cell phones make you reachable 24/7 if...

... you leave them on ;)

Politique Vert (PV) has an item about a new study that indicates cell phones could be harmful, you can find it here.

PV goes on to say that she doesn't own herself because she doesn't want to be reachable 24/7. I can understand that. I solve that problem myself by turning the phone off when I don't want to be reachable. It's a simple solution really.

Elizabeth May in Almonte Tonight!

Elizabeth May will be at the ironworks pub in Almonte tonight. If you live in Carleton Mississippi-Mills this is your chance to come out and hear Elizabeth speak and have a chance to meet her.

Rumour also has it that two people will announce they are running for the nomination for the Green Party in CMM! Come out and meet them.

Food and drink (non-alcoholic) will be available.

Thanks to Devon for creating an image to help show our support for Elizabeth May's run in London North-Centre.

Game ON!!!!

Elizabeth's running in the London (my old hometown) by-election!
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/22/london-may.html

Elizabeth May on CTV Question Period & Cross Country Checkup this Sunday

Tune in to CTV's Question Period on Sunday at noon to see Elizabeth May participate in a panel with environment critics from the Liberals and NDP.

Also, Elizabeth will be on CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup with Rex Murphy on Sunday at 4:50 pm. The show this week will focus entirely on the Clean Air Act, so if you want to call in to make your views known, please do so - 1-888-416-8333. Their website is www.cbc.ca/checkup.

-forwarded message from Camille Labchuk

Reality Check: Ambrose versus the facts

See attached for a detailed review of the "Clean Air Act". Eight mistakes by Minister Ambrose in less than an hour. It's important that people are not misled by the speech, and actually understand the content of the act. Read the discrepancies identified in the annoucement here:
http://greenparty.ca/mediarelease190.html

Over 3 more years before regulations in place?
Over 13 more years until targets for cutting pollutants are set?
Over 43 more years to get to ~50% reduction in emissions, from 2003 levels.
(ref.http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061018/environment_act_061019/20061019?hub=TopStories)

MPtv - Interview with Green Party of Canada Leader, Elizabeth May - October 17, 2006

This is an interview of Elizabeth May conducted by Garth Turner, Conservative MP for Halton. It is interesting to note that Garth was suspended from the Tory caucus the day after this interview was posted to his blog. Coincidence?

Rick Mercer Report / This Hour has 22 Minutes

Elizabeth is set to appear on both RMR and 22 minutes tonight on CBC (check your local listings).

She is also scheduled to appear on Question Period on Sunday morning.

Lots of television coverage, and the best part is that it is coverage I actually watch ;).

Update: The 22 minutes segment got bumped until, likely, next week. Oh, and the tree Elizabeth cut down on RMR was already dead.

CMM Greens Blog

The Human Cost of the War in Iraq
This tragic report uses epidemiological techniques to estimate war deaths instead of passive reports (like media), and is peer-reviewed.

The CNN link below has a link to the document:
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/index.html

It also has a clip of Mr. Bush sputtering and stumbling over what to say about it, other than "it has beed discredited...".

Bush's conclusions are not peer reviewed by any respectible source, as far as I can tell....

CMM Greens Blog: Harper has head in the tar sands

Breast cancer more common in farm workers: study
Report published in Thursday's issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (author author James Brophy, executive director of the Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers in Windsor).

Study says women are 2.8 times more likely to develop breast cancer than those not in farming. No specific cause reported, however Brophy speculated pesticides and diesel fumes.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/10/12/breastcancer-farm.html

Elizabeth May on TV!

CBC will be airing a 15 minute profile of Elizabeth May on the National tonight.

Also look for Elizabeth on the Rick Mercer Report. Possibly next Tuesday.

Update: If you missed the newscast you can watch it online today until 11:30PM ET here, it is about 40 minutes into the program.

Harper has head in the tar sands

Will the new Conservative government keep its head buried in the tar sands, or will it come up for air?

Elizabeth May, October 11, 2006

You can read the entire piece, published in the Globe and Mail, here.

Green Party’s first appearance before House committe

From greenparty.ca:

The Green Party of Canada recorded a historic first Tuesday when Senior Deputy Leader David Chernushenko testified to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Witnesses from all major parties testified on Bill C-16, designed to introduce fixed election dates in Canada. It was the first time that the Green Party has been invited, along with other parties with sitting MPs, to appear before a House committee.

A committee official said the Green Party will continue to be invited to hearings because it now receives federal funding. Parties receiving over 2% of the total vote get $1.79 per vote every year in federal funds. The Green Party qualified by garnering 4.3% of the vote in 2004 and following that with 4.5% in the 2006 election.

''House committees recognize that the Green Party should be part of major national discussions,'' said Mr. Chernushenko. “It is time for broadcasters to follow suit and include us in the televised leader debates.”

You can read the historic statement here: http://www.greenparty.ca/page292.html

Climate Change: From Inconvenient Truth to Political Action

Last Monday, I went to the public forum listed here. It featured Elizabeth, Ralph Torrie, Jose Etcheverry, and Patti Edwards. Here are the notes on how it went.

The hall was, I think, full. Somebody estimated it at 400 people, maybe more.
The discussions were interesting and knowledgeable (of course, who am i to judge), the audience was enthusiastic, - I think it went really well. All the panelists were good, but Elizabeth was getting more applause than anybody else!!

First, each participant gave an 8 minute speech.

Patti Edwards
- from Environment Canada, Atmospheric and Climate Science
- talked about what climate changes are currently seen, models used to predict them
- there is no doubt about the anthropogenic origin of the changes
- the rate of temperature change is increasing

Ralph Torrie
- (see http://www.icfi.com/Newsroom/torrie-hire.asp for bio)
- studied climate change for the past 30 years
- went through a dozen slides that he prepared (with graphs, models...)
(It was given as a handout; let me know if you want to see it.)
- in the past 10 years, all previous predictions came true
- We're in for 100 years of climate change (that is certain and can't be stopped). Any actions we take will be prevent further damage

Elizabeth May
- continued with the more political part of the issue
- At a conference 18 years ago (missed the name), they said that climate change will be an "experiment second only to nuclear war"
- Conservative party does not believe the "hockey stick" graph
- ironic to see RonaA as chair of international climate change program
- Canada is the only Kyoto nation to not try to follow Kyoto
- goverment with "head stuck in the tar sands" [a LOT of applause followed]

Jose Etcheverry
- Research and Policy Analyst, David Suzuki Foundation
- went on to the solutions part
- there are some bad carbon offsets, e.g. Brazilian Eucalyptus plantations
- Kyoto is not only about emission reductions, but also sustainable development
- What we need: 1. National carbon trade system, 2. carbon taxes
- mentioned some efforts by European nations
- Nov 1 in Toronto: announcement of the plan for Ontario (I think)
(he mentioned Nov 1 emphatically a few times, but I missed what was about - does anybody know?)

Then the microphone was turned to audience questions. Some of the answers:

EM:
- difference between "alarmist" and "alarming"
- 80% of Canadians support Kyoto
- The fact that there are so many SUVs is not contradictory: the gov't effectively encourages SUVs by keeping gas prices artificially low.
RT:
- Gov't was planning for the SUV's - the demand for SUVs is manufactured.
- There is a disconnect between national strategies and local initiatives that
actually work.

EM:
- carbon released by airplanes (at the altitude) has 7 times the effect that it would if it were released at ground level.
JE:
- airline industry is unregulated (in terms of emissions)

EM:
- James Lovelock is wrong to say (in his new book) that nothing can be done any more

EM:
- example: Pine beatle destroying forests in BC because there are no more cold snaps

JE:
- Hydro Quebec - Quebec has enormous wind capacity
- Calgary's "Ride the wind" public transit program
- It is possible to have our electricity generated entirely by renewable sources!

RT:
- Even if we consider nuclear power, it actually has only a very small potential for contribution to the solution.
- Now Ontario is predicting a power gap. However, similar gaps predicted in the 70's and 80's never happened.

An audience member noted that some jobs have ownership of a car as a requirement, even though driving has nothing to do with the job's needs (social work).
EM:
- As of this moment, it is now in the Green platform: Car ownership should not be a barrier to employment.

By the door, a few groups were handing out fliers, collecting signatures.
Something I found interesting: car rental a la Amsterdam (or is it Denmark that does that?)

On Nuclear power

It saddens me that we in the greens continue to be so adamantly against nuclear power generation. The arguments against it on the basis of the links between its technologies and nuclear warfare are clouding us from seeing nuclear power as the greenest electricity generation technology of all.

Without a question, no ifs and or buts, nuclear warfare would be disastrous for all of Gaia. Any global conflict involving atom or hydrogen bombs will destroy not only our civilisation, but the capacity of the earth to maintain current life. Nuclear winter would deny all photosynthesis for a long enough time that most plant forms would die; without plants most animal and insect forms including microbial would be unable to survive. Nuclear fallout would finish off those that did manage to survive, through radiation sickness and biological mutations.

However we proceed we desperately need to curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons in a world increasingly filled with sociopaths in political positions, the west far from excluded.

But this is not what nuclear power is about. Nuclear power is the cleanest and greenest of power sources of all. Quite apart from being the only source of the energy of all that is on the earth, deriving from the sun, and from being the source of the heat internally in the earth, nuclear energy, pound for pound is millions of times more effective than any other known form of fuel -- E = mc^2 after all.

We would be idiots to ignore it.

And indeed we havent. 41% of Ontario's power comes from nuclear. Somewhere around 80% of France's electricity comes from nuclear, and the UK is around 25%.

If we were to lose our nuclear generation facilities we would be in the dark. The cost to our current way of life would be inestimable. A disaster.

I call for a healthy debate and reassessment of our policies on this issue.