YUP, the story continues, it isn't easy fighting the money hungry corporations, but it is up to us to do it, so let's unite our signatures in our continuing battle to save Mother Earth and STOP the Tar Sands development. Have you read the stuff on The Dominion yet? If you have, you are probably also having the desire to march up to Fort "McMoney" and strapping yourselves to the oil rigs, so that SOMEONE will listen to the cries of the people who are getting cancer from the oil development; the earth, which is being torn apart into irreparable damage; the animals, whose habitat is once again being suffocated, causing death and driving populations to extinction; the rivers, which have become cancer pools, and the trees, who once again, are facing clearcutting beyond repair....It is up to US, you and I, to change the system we are living in, we must GET OFF THE GRID, stop this cycle, which is caused by our dependence on oil, gas, and other carbon emitting processes, which only help to further the environmental catastrophe we are heading towards, and already are in. By being dependent on Corporate Industry, we are aiding the destruction of our earth, which, if we haven't forgotten, we can't live without. Do you want to continue living in a world where our lives are being led by Corporate endeavours? where we face a future of wearing oxygen masks? where we face a future of having a cancerous, garbage-filled ocean, with no clean water to drink? where we are stuck in a SYSTEM of working for the interests of money driven people, rather than LIVING for our own health and welfare? IT IS NOT TOO LATE, this is the tipping point, decisions have to be made by us CANADIANS....Let's start now, and let's UNITE for a natural, wholesome future....SUMMER OF CHANGE 2009....see you there (and in the meantime, let's clean up our act!)
TAR SANDS PETITION
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
More Smoke and Mirrors from our Prime Minister!
Where do I begin? Listening to the CBC this morning made me lose any appetite for the food that I was cooking, as once again our government gives us more and more misinformation. The funny thing is, is that everyone knows that our government is lying to us, and is keeping very important details from us, such as our role in Afghanistan, and what is truly behind the Manley report. There are too many lies to get into right now, but first, there is the fact that Stephen Harper gave the panel certain guidelines, which they were not allowed to break, therefore, narrowing their ideas on how our troops should operate in Afghanistan. The panel was also made up of mostly old-Mulroney cronies, which says a lot, especially since this a war issue! As well, Harper's "good intentions" on training Afghans to defend themselves, is also questionable, as the Canadian forces are not highly looked upon, and are distrusted by the Afghan military, making this happy picture not a reality at this moment.
So, I must say, that the only people making sense on this issue, is everyone BUT the Conservative party and Stephen Harper, which brings me to my lack of appetite, and my passion to get Canadians to RISE UP, and gain the knowledge we must in order to put Canada together again...without a Harper government...just look at their website, and you will get the idea!
Here is an excerpt from the CBC (today's date). I added the Green Party website, because they have very knowledgeable information.
The panel received more than 200 submissions from interested people and organizations, including from the Liberal party and the Green party, the CBC's Rosemary Barton reported. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois, which have been critical of the panel, didn't submit suggestions, she said.
The Liberals have indicated they would like to see Canada's combat role in the south wind down by the 2009 deadline, with more emphasis placed on the development element of the mission.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he had not yet read the report and declined to offer detailed comment.
However, he repeated the party's long-held position that Canada's combat mission must end as scheduled in February 2009, although Canada could continue to play a role in construction, training and humanitarian aid.
"Our current position, as you know, is that the combat mission end in February 2009," he said at a Liberal caucus meeting in Kitchener, Ont.
"We have strong reasons for that. We think it's by far the most dangerous mission in Afghanistan. We have carried this mission during three years and it's time for Canada to do something else in Afghanistan."
NDP Leader Jack Layton, who has called for a complete and immediate Canadian withdrawal, reacted negatively to the recommendations.
"This report is clearly out of touch with the feelings of a great many Canadians and a careful reading of the report shows that this mission is failing on many, many fronts," Layton told reporters following a meeting with caucus members in Montebello, Que.
"The NDP continues to believe that a complete change of direction is essential in Afghanistan."
Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe also disagreed with extending the mission.
"Canadian and Quebec military have done more than their share. Other countries now must step in and take up the challenge," Duceppe said.
Seventy-seven Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed since the beginning of Canada's mission in Afghanistan in 2002.
GREEN PARTY WEBSITE
So, I must say, that the only people making sense on this issue, is everyone BUT the Conservative party and Stephen Harper, which brings me to my lack of appetite, and my passion to get Canadians to RISE UP, and gain the knowledge we must in order to put Canada together again...without a Harper government...just look at their website, and you will get the idea!
Here is an excerpt from the CBC (today's date). I added the Green Party website, because they have very knowledgeable information.
The panel received more than 200 submissions from interested people and organizations, including from the Liberal party and the Green party, the CBC's Rosemary Barton reported. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois, which have been critical of the panel, didn't submit suggestions, she said.
The Liberals have indicated they would like to see Canada's combat role in the south wind down by the 2009 deadline, with more emphasis placed on the development element of the mission.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he had not yet read the report and declined to offer detailed comment.
However, he repeated the party's long-held position that Canada's combat mission must end as scheduled in February 2009, although Canada could continue to play a role in construction, training and humanitarian aid.
"Our current position, as you know, is that the combat mission end in February 2009," he said at a Liberal caucus meeting in Kitchener, Ont.
"We have strong reasons for that. We think it's by far the most dangerous mission in Afghanistan. We have carried this mission during three years and it's time for Canada to do something else in Afghanistan."
NDP Leader Jack Layton, who has called for a complete and immediate Canadian withdrawal, reacted negatively to the recommendations.
"This report is clearly out of touch with the feelings of a great many Canadians and a careful reading of the report shows that this mission is failing on many, many fronts," Layton told reporters following a meeting with caucus members in Montebello, Que.
"The NDP continues to believe that a complete change of direction is essential in Afghanistan."
Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe also disagreed with extending the mission.
"Canadian and Quebec military have done more than their share. Other countries now must step in and take up the challenge," Duceppe said.
Seventy-seven Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed since the beginning of Canada's mission in Afghanistan in 2002.
GREEN PARTY WEBSITE
Monday, January 21, 2008
RISE UP AND ACT!
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
How you can help the Summer of Change Festival...
•Tell nature-loving people about it and come to the festival with environmental fervor
•Become a vendor if you are ecologically friendly
•Run an eco-friendly information booth to spread your knowledge to fellow Canadians
•Be a speaker
•Volunteer to advertise by putting up posters and handing out flyers
•Enter the Poster Art Contest
If you would like to help, please email us at veganmountain@gmail.com
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Keeping up with the Tar Sands
The ULTIMATE up to date source, check out Tar Sands Watch.
Let's show our support for our fellow Canadians who are suffering right now due to the environmental effects of the Alberta Tar Sands, and to the environment itself, which is under an incredible amount of distress. Canada is committing a huge crime right under our apathetic noses...
Check out Money Week, to answer the question, is it worth it?
Visit a Macleans magazine story on the Tar Sands, to get some more objective reporting, and see for yourself if Canada is heading towards its own Doomsday.
Let's show our support for our fellow Canadians who are suffering right now due to the environmental effects of the Alberta Tar Sands, and to the environment itself, which is under an incredible amount of distress. Canada is committing a huge crime right under our apathetic noses...
Check out Money Week, to answer the question, is it worth it?
Visit a Macleans magazine story on the Tar Sands, to get some more objective reporting, and see for yourself if Canada is heading towards its own Doomsday.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Stephen Harper Rapes Mother Earth!
We Canadians are letting this happen, we need to FIGHT this total devastation that is happening in Northern Alberta, called the TAR SANDS! I felt like strapping myself to the pipelines when i read about the atrocities happening in our own country...please read this carefully, you might need to take breaks, since it is pretty scary stuff. I will be starting a petition soon to demand that Canadians have a voice when it comes to such huge issues as this one. I think democracy is starting to really wane here in Canada, and I don't want just another Harper to come along every four years to make it even worse (think of the States!)...so please open this link and read The 48th issue of The Dominion, to get some knowledge on the what is happening in Fort McMurray, or as some are calling it, Fort McMoney...
Write a letter to the Federal Environment Minister John Baird right now, it is all set up for you HERE! Thank you!
Write a letter to the Federal Environment Minister John Baird right now, it is all set up for you HERE! Thank you!
Monday, January 14, 2008
POSTER CONTEST FOR SUMMER OF CHANGE 2009
The guidelines for the poster competition is as follows:
1. Read the ENTIRE blog to get an idea on what the Summer of Change Festival is all about.
2. Have the words: Summer of Change 2009 somewhere in the poster.
3. Take a look at the poster displayed on the right; drawn by vegan mountain to get an idea.
4. The poster must be in black and white.
5. Have the blog contact: www.summerofchange2009.blogspot.com somewhere visible in the poster, and the date of the festival June 21-22, 2009
6. Poster size: 8 1/2 x 11 (letter size paper)
7. Have your name on your poster for credit.
8. Get creative, get grassroots and have fun!
9. Send your entry to: veganmountain@gmail.com...i just scanned mine and sent it as a jpg file, which worked out fine, just make sure it is clear!
GRAND PRIZE WINNER GET $150.00, and the 4 runner up winners will also get his/her poster printed up and put up all over Canada with credit to his/her name!
Entries must be in by May 1st 2009.
GOOD LUCK!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
IT IS TIME TO ACT
article from O2q paper Nov 2007, with help from The Nation magazine...
CAN we buy our way out of our growing climate crisis? Sure we can. Just ask the corporations and the politicians they own. All we have to do is buy into, or buy up, all the wonderful technological quick fixes they promise to provide and all our climate crisis problems will be solved. Well, not quite.
Quick fixes such as "clean coal," and biofuels are not so quick and just as likely to land us in a whole new set of fixes.
"Clean coal" depends on technologies that optimists say are two decades away, if ever. In the meantime, coal mining ravages the earth. In Appalachia, more than 500 mountaintops have been blown off to uncover the coal inside, with the toxic waste dumped into local rivers.
Proposed government subsidies to support biofuel production in the USA are nearly equal to those funding the Iraq war. Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Cargill and other mega agri-corporations are converting US farms to corn for ethanol, not food. Their new agrofuel plantations in poor and indigenous areas of South America, Asia and Africa are displacing thousands of farmers.
It takes 450 pounds of corn to make enough ethanol to fill one SUV tank with gas. To try to use corn ethanol to replace even 10 percent of the fossil fuels used globally would require finding new or converting agricultural lands equal to about half the area of the United States.
Feed cars, not people-is destined to be the first rallying cries of the corporate solution to our climate crisis.
Other corporations are getting on the consumerism bandwagon. The idea is, you buy jeans or dozens of other things, and some of your money goes to Environmental Defense and other do-gooders, who plant enough trees to offset the greenhouse gases created in making the products. It's carbon trading through shopping.
Eco-conscious families are turning up with two, three, many Priuses, so every member of the family can help save the planet.
Sorry, but shopping even "smart" shopping, is not our way out of the crisis. Al that stuff is made of something scarce that came from the Earth, and it took scarce energy to put it together.
Overconsumption, corporatism, advertising, the drive for growth and profit-those are the roots of this crisis. Real solutions begin with the recognition that the Earth has limits that are now in plain sight. Ultimately all solutions will involve "powering down," using less energy, fewer materials-less consumerism.
"Less and local" should be the standard, as well as deeply rethinking whether we can afford a system based on growth and wealth accumulation rather than sustainability, sufficiency and equity.
CAN we buy our way out of our growing climate crisis? Sure we can. Just ask the corporations and the politicians they own. All we have to do is buy into, or buy up, all the wonderful technological quick fixes they promise to provide and all our climate crisis problems will be solved. Well, not quite.
Quick fixes such as "clean coal," and biofuels are not so quick and just as likely to land us in a whole new set of fixes.
"Clean coal" depends on technologies that optimists say are two decades away, if ever. In the meantime, coal mining ravages the earth. In Appalachia, more than 500 mountaintops have been blown off to uncover the coal inside, with the toxic waste dumped into local rivers.
Proposed government subsidies to support biofuel production in the USA are nearly equal to those funding the Iraq war. Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, Cargill and other mega agri-corporations are converting US farms to corn for ethanol, not food. Their new agrofuel plantations in poor and indigenous areas of South America, Asia and Africa are displacing thousands of farmers.
It takes 450 pounds of corn to make enough ethanol to fill one SUV tank with gas. To try to use corn ethanol to replace even 10 percent of the fossil fuels used globally would require finding new or converting agricultural lands equal to about half the area of the United States.
Feed cars, not people-is destined to be the first rallying cries of the corporate solution to our climate crisis.
Other corporations are getting on the consumerism bandwagon. The idea is, you buy jeans or dozens of other things, and some of your money goes to Environmental Defense and other do-gooders, who plant enough trees to offset the greenhouse gases created in making the products. It's carbon trading through shopping.
Eco-conscious families are turning up with two, three, many Priuses, so every member of the family can help save the planet.
Sorry, but shopping even "smart" shopping, is not our way out of the crisis. Al that stuff is made of something scarce that came from the Earth, and it took scarce energy to put it together.
Overconsumption, corporatism, advertising, the drive for growth and profit-those are the roots of this crisis. Real solutions begin with the recognition that the Earth has limits that are now in plain sight. Ultimately all solutions will involve "powering down," using less energy, fewer materials-less consumerism.
"Less and local" should be the standard, as well as deeply rethinking whether we can afford a system based on growth and wealth accumulation rather than sustainability, sufficiency and equity.
Monday, January 7, 2008
STOP THE TAR SANDS!
Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms Naomi Klein Canada (Update 06-11-07)
Lookout by Naomi Klein
Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms
[from the June 18, 2007 issue]
The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely "tax holidays" and pay a laughable 1 percent in royalties to the government.
This isn't the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law--that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: As Baghdad burns, destabilizing the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.
Here is how chaos in Iraq unleashed what the Financial Times recently called "north America's biggest resources boom since the Klondike gold rush." Albertans have always known that in the northern part of their province, there are vast deposits of bitumen--black, tarlike goo that is mixed with sand, clay, water and oil. There are approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of the stuff, the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world.
It is possible to turn Alberta's crud into crude, but it's awfully hard. One method is to mine it in vast open pits: First forests are clear-cut, then topsoil scraped away. Next, huge machines dig out the black goop and load it into the largest dump trucks in the world (two stories high, a single wheel costs $100,000). The tar is diluted with water and solvents in giant vats, which spin it around until the oil rises to the top, while the massive tailings are dumped in ponds larger than the region's natural lakes. Another method is to separate the oil where it is: Large drill-pipes push steam deep underground, which melts the tar, while another pipe sucks it out and transports it through several more stages of refining, much of it powered by natural gas.
Both techniques are costly: between $18 and $23 per barrel, just in expenses. Until quite recently, that made no economic sense. In the mid-1980s, oil sold for $20 a barrel; in 1998-99, it was down to $12 a barrel. The major international players had no intention of paying more to get the oil than they could sell it for, which is why, when global oil reserves were calculated, the tar sands weren't even factored in. Everyone but a few heavily subsidized Canadian companies knew that the tar was staying put.
Then came the US invasion of Iraq. In March 2003, the price of oil reached $35 a barrel, raising the prospect of making a profit from the tar sands (the industry calls them "oil sands"). That year, the United States Energy Information Administration "discovered" oil in the tar sands. It announced that Alberta--previously thought to have only 5 billion barrels of oil--was actually sitting on at least 174 billion "economically recoverable" barrels. The next year, Canada overtook Saudi Arabia as the leading provider of foreign oil to the United States.
All this has meant that Iraq's oil boom has not been delayed; it has been relocated. All the majors, save BP, have rushed to northern Alberta: ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, which alone plans to spend $9-$14 billion. In April, Shell paid $8 billion to take full control of its Canadian subsidiary. The town of Fort McMurray, ground zero of the boom, has nowhere to house the tens of thousands of new workers, and one company has built its own airstrip so it can fly in the people it needs.
Seventy-five percent of the oil from the tar sands flows directly to the United States, prompting Brian Hall, an energy consultant with Colorado-based IHS, to call the tar sands "America's energy security blanket." There is a certain irony there: The United States invaded Iraq at least in part to secure access to its oil. Now, thanks partly to economic blowback from that disastrous decision, it has found the "security" it was looking for right next door.
It has become fashionable to predict that high oil prices will spark a free-market response to climate change, setting off an "explosion of innovation in alternatives," as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently. Alberta puts the lie to that claim. High prices have indeed led to an R&D extravaganza, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a "novel thermal recovery process"--embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth.
And that's the Alberta tar sands for you: The industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat. The process of refining bitumen emits three to four times the greenhouse gases produced by extracting oil from traditional wells, making the tar sands the largest single contributor to Canada's growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the industry plans to more than triple production by 2020, with no end in sight. If prices stay high, it will soon become profitable to extract an additional 141 billion barrels from the tar sand, which would place the largest oil reserves in the world in Alberta.
Developing the sands is devouring trees and wildlife--the Pembina Institute, the leading authority on the tar sands' environmental impact, warns that boreal forests covering "an area as large as the State of Florida" risk being leveled. Now it turns out that the main river feeding the industry the massive quantities of water it needs is in jeopardy. Climate scientists say that dropping water levels are the result--fittingly enough--of climate warming.
Contemplating the collective madness in Alberta--a scene even the Financial Times has labeled "some dystopian fantasy"--it strikes me that Canada has ended up with more than Iraq's displaced oil boom. We have its elusive weapons of mass destruction too. They are out near Fort McMurray, in the jet-black goo beneath the earth's crust. And with the help of trucks, pipes, steam and gas, these weapons are being detonated.
Lookout by Naomi Klein
Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms
[from the June 18, 2007 issue]
The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely "tax holidays" and pay a laughable 1 percent in royalties to the government.
This isn't the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law--that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: As Baghdad burns, destabilizing the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.
Here is how chaos in Iraq unleashed what the Financial Times recently called "north America's biggest resources boom since the Klondike gold rush." Albertans have always known that in the northern part of their province, there are vast deposits of bitumen--black, tarlike goo that is mixed with sand, clay, water and oil. There are approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of the stuff, the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world.
It is possible to turn Alberta's crud into crude, but it's awfully hard. One method is to mine it in vast open pits: First forests are clear-cut, then topsoil scraped away. Next, huge machines dig out the black goop and load it into the largest dump trucks in the world (two stories high, a single wheel costs $100,000). The tar is diluted with water and solvents in giant vats, which spin it around until the oil rises to the top, while the massive tailings are dumped in ponds larger than the region's natural lakes. Another method is to separate the oil where it is: Large drill-pipes push steam deep underground, which melts the tar, while another pipe sucks it out and transports it through several more stages of refining, much of it powered by natural gas.
Both techniques are costly: between $18 and $23 per barrel, just in expenses. Until quite recently, that made no economic sense. In the mid-1980s, oil sold for $20 a barrel; in 1998-99, it was down to $12 a barrel. The major international players had no intention of paying more to get the oil than they could sell it for, which is why, when global oil reserves were calculated, the tar sands weren't even factored in. Everyone but a few heavily subsidized Canadian companies knew that the tar was staying put.
Then came the US invasion of Iraq. In March 2003, the price of oil reached $35 a barrel, raising the prospect of making a profit from the tar sands (the industry calls them "oil sands"). That year, the United States Energy Information Administration "discovered" oil in the tar sands. It announced that Alberta--previously thought to have only 5 billion barrels of oil--was actually sitting on at least 174 billion "economically recoverable" barrels. The next year, Canada overtook Saudi Arabia as the leading provider of foreign oil to the United States.
All this has meant that Iraq's oil boom has not been delayed; it has been relocated. All the majors, save BP, have rushed to northern Alberta: ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, which alone plans to spend $9-$14 billion. In April, Shell paid $8 billion to take full control of its Canadian subsidiary. The town of Fort McMurray, ground zero of the boom, has nowhere to house the tens of thousands of new workers, and one company has built its own airstrip so it can fly in the people it needs.
Seventy-five percent of the oil from the tar sands flows directly to the United States, prompting Brian Hall, an energy consultant with Colorado-based IHS, to call the tar sands "America's energy security blanket." There is a certain irony there: The United States invaded Iraq at least in part to secure access to its oil. Now, thanks partly to economic blowback from that disastrous decision, it has found the "security" it was looking for right next door.
It has become fashionable to predict that high oil prices will spark a free-market response to climate change, setting off an "explosion of innovation in alternatives," as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently. Alberta puts the lie to that claim. High prices have indeed led to an R&D extravaganza, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a "novel thermal recovery process"--embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth.
And that's the Alberta tar sands for you: The industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat. The process of refining bitumen emits three to four times the greenhouse gases produced by extracting oil from traditional wells, making the tar sands the largest single contributor to Canada's growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the industry plans to more than triple production by 2020, with no end in sight. If prices stay high, it will soon become profitable to extract an additional 141 billion barrels from the tar sand, which would place the largest oil reserves in the world in Alberta.
Developing the sands is devouring trees and wildlife--the Pembina Institute, the leading authority on the tar sands' environmental impact, warns that boreal forests covering "an area as large as the State of Florida" risk being leveled. Now it turns out that the main river feeding the industry the massive quantities of water it needs is in jeopardy. Climate scientists say that dropping water levels are the result--fittingly enough--of climate warming.
Contemplating the collective madness in Alberta--a scene even the Financial Times has labeled "some dystopian fantasy"--it strikes me that Canada has ended up with more than Iraq's displaced oil boom. We have its elusive weapons of mass destruction too. They are out near Fort McMurray, in the jet-black goo beneath the earth's crust. And with the help of trucks, pipes, steam and gas, these weapons are being detonated.
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