Comments for Ecosocialism Canada » Ecosocialism Canada

Comment on BC’s carbon tax: Where’s the tax? by Doug

Doug — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 21:02:09 +0000

I agree, but I will continue to find it hard to take the BC initiative seriously as long as the province’s rapidly growing unconventional natural gas play is outside the initiative and as long as the reality of methane emissions associated with the play are ignored. When was the last provincial aggregate calculated and did it include the gas play’s intended and rogue methane emissions?

Comment on BC’s carbon tax: Where’s the tax? by Jeff White

Jeff White — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 03:06:40 +0000

Not a bad article, but Rozworsky is too quick to concede that the carbon tax has had a real impact on B.C.’s emissions. From the charts he refers to, it’s clear in one of them that B.C.’s per-capita energy-related GHG emissions have pretty much paralleled those of Canada as a whole from 2007 to 2011 (the latest year for which data are available).

But why use “per capita” data? B.C.’s population actually grew at a slightly faster rate than the Canada average between 2007 and 2011; so per-capita emissions figures serve to mask the fact that B.C.’s emissions reductions were actually outpaced by Canada’s overall during that period.

Comment on End auto subsidies! Ecosocialists on unions, jobs and transportation by Greenhick

Greenhick — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 17:45:25 +0000

Generally supportive of your stance, to which we might add a couple of comments.

There would conceivably be a large number of delivery vehicles as well that can build or retrofitted for pure electric or hybrid-diesel operations.

The kind of factories that can produce cars and were repurposed for wartime manufacturing during the 1940s might be similarly repurposed for renewable energy manufacturing–wind and microhydro turbines, solar thermal.

This will of course be unlikely to happen under capitalist corporatism. Why not promote with Unifor targeted programs of worker-owned, managed factories, and the renationalization of companies in the areas of critical infrastructure, energy, and those perennially in need of direct or indirect public subsidy, evader of tax, off loaders of ecosocial costs, and regulatory delinquents.

Comment on Belleville protesters challenge tar sands pipeline by Darach Seaton

Darach Seaton — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 01:14:30 +0000

Can I ask something …? I am entirely sympathetic to the revulsion against the oil sands, and the pipelines, proposed and extant, transporting oil across the continent. But I would appreciate a conversation that also addresses the utter dependence of almost every element of our economy on fossil fuel products – the creation and transport of most goods & life necessities, bluntly speeking. I feel like a hypocrite protesting these various petroleum projects, knowing my entire life comes precisely from products of the same kinds of projects I protest.

So can we have a realistic “anti-fossil fuel” discussion that actually discusses realistic alternatives – especially in the short term? I know the truisms – solar power, geothermal, wind, tidal; ethanol fuel for cars; hydroelectric projects (though I’m often against them, too); electric cars. But none of these, even collectively, seem like truly plausible alternatives to the massive global power generated by fossil fuels, especially if we admit that the infrastructure for these non-fossil projects still comes from fossil-fuel mined and manufactured materials.

It’s fine to be against pipelines and oil sands and so on – but is there any way we can begin to build alternatives to the truly hypocritical lives we are all (at a guess, every one of us) still living in our oil-fueled economies? If we were having this discussion, I wouldn’t feel like our protests in the name of the environment were only NIMBY-inspired window-dressing for our own “progressive” egos.

Comment on Clearing the Plains: Canada’s politics of starvation by Ian Angus

Ian Angus — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 21:41:56 +0000

An email from contributor Roger Annis points out a book and essay that reinforce and extend the points made in Clearing the Plains -- Review of: Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian reserve farmers and government policy, by Sarah A. Carter; McGill Queen’s University Press, 352 pp, 1990 An essay on this book and subject by the Metis Cree indigenous activist âpihtawikosisân.