Our World and Everything in It

There is a coalition of Western states and Canadian provinces called the Western Climate Initiative that collaborate for ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the region. The states are Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Quebec, Utah, and Washington; and four Canadian provinces: British Columbia and Manitoba in the west, and Ontario and Quebec in the east. Last week this Initiative proposed a regional market based cap and trade program.

An article by Environmental News Service said, “The emissions trading program is intended to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.” It also said that, “The carbon reduction strategy will cover nearly 90 percent of the region’s emissions, including those from electricity, industry, transportation, and residential and commercial fuel use.” Impressive.

I especially liked the decision to let the market determine the most cost effective way to reduce emissions in a particular are. What troubles me is that a vast area of Canada is trying to voluntarily clean up as are some of our western states while many states like Michigan have failed to even produce a decent RPS, Renewable Portfolio Standards. Outside of fences in the sky, I would surmise that our pollution would continually slide over into cleaner territory. Not fair is it?

If as many governments are taking an initiative to curb emissions, it won’t be long before all of our states follow suit or risk looking like the bad guys spewing debris into their clean skies. Perhaps this will also help us understand what we have done to other nations at the receiving end of our pollution trail.

Read more: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-23-04.asp.

I’m so pleased to see our neighbor Canada is trying to do something for the polar bears and their habitat by the advertisement above my blog. Please sign the petition. I did.

An Environmental News Service article stated: “The Canadian government has announced that it will protect more than 450,000 hectares (1,737 square miles) of Arctic wilderness in the Nunavut Territory, including a globally significant Important Bird Area, by establishing three new National Wildlife Areas.”

The Canadian government is contributing $8.3 million to the effort. Prime Minister Harpter said, “This is a real demonstration of our commitment to protect our species and their incredible habitat in the North.” Too bad it’s not our North like ANWR.

Now watch how example works America. The article also stated that, “In another recent announcement, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, pledged to permanently protect 225,000 square kilometres (86,872 square miles) of boreal forest in the northern area of the province. Covering more than 20 percent of Ontario’s total land mass, the area to be protected is roughly the same size as the United Kingdom.” Outstanding!

The boreal forest is one of the largest undisturbed forest and wetland ecosystems. And it’s quite a carbon storage facility storing 186 billion tons. Quebec joined in the preservation program earlier in May pledging to protect “18,000 square kilometres (6,949 square miles) of forest and wetlands in 23 new conservation areas. Fifteen of these new conservation areas are in the boreal zone.”

Great for Canada. What about us selling off parcels of our national parks and forests to private ownership for the highest bid? We’re still not getting it.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-04-01.asp.

I love this. Canadian citizens as part of an environmental group called Friends of Canada are suing their country for breech of the Kyoto Treaty. Out of 180 countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol, Canada is the first to be brought to court for neglecting its legal commitment to fight global warming.

Canada’s government is conservative right now and evidently playing to big business polluters. Sounds like the U.S. As the chief exec of Friends of Earth stated: ‘While other industrialized countries actively work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, our government has offered pollution holidays for emitters for decades to come.’

So Canadians are taking their country to court over the environment. I wonder if they’re going to get specific and if it will affect Canada’s drilling for oil in the Great Lakes? The Friends of Canada exec said: ‘This government has broken the law [] and, as Canadian citizens, we have both a moral and legal imperative to insist on enforcement of our own laws on climate action.’

Geez, I wish Bush would have signed the Kyoto Treaty. He slid away from it with a promise to enforce our own environmental laws. We see what happened there.

This is going to be pretty interesting. It’s setting a precedent for one, and it could force the Canadian government to come up with detailed plans on how they plan to lower their emissions six percent below 1990 levels. This is legally binding but Canada says it cannot meet that goal. It seems to me the more a government monkeys around and stalls on actively and earnestly trying to produce alternative sources for energy the more impossible it is to meet specific goals that will curb catastrophic events down the line.

Mother Nature certainly isn’t going to wait around for us to figure out how to conserve. Look at the floods in corn country. It kinda puts a damper on massive ethanol production. We’re still not getting who is in charge here. The environment trumps just about everything. We absolutely need the cooperation of weather for so many things. Maybe gas prices are high to truck food to us, but without the cooperation of the climate, there simply won’t be any food to truck. There isn’t much we can do about Mother Nature. We can’t shoot missiles at her. We can’t blow her up. We can’t place embargos on her. There isn’t much we can do to Mother Nature except abuse or nurture her. If we decide to nurture, we make our own paradise where we live in harmony with our world and everything in it. Or we can continue the abuse until MN kills us out of self defense.

Read more: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2008/2008-06-18-02.asp

Look out Michigan. Rising oil prices are causing some of our legislators to get creative. There was talk on WXYZ about scouting around for more places to drill for oil in Michigan. Isn’t that going to be a lovely sight for tourists to see, or us for that matter? Erie, Michigan thought they had a big fight over Eminent Domain with the railroad; wait until the oil industry sets their sights on a spot to drill. They got their way with millionaire ranchers out west, forcing one of them to build a new home in a corner of his own ranch to get away from the noise and scenery of the oil drilling operations. He found out the hard way that he only owns the dirt on top. The government owns the mineral rights below. He was told to move over.

And don’t think the oil price squeeze isn’t squeezing out the idea of drilling in the Great Lakes again.  After all, Canada does it. Just because we think that Congress permanently banned drilling in the Great Lakes in 2005, doesn’t mean a thing. Look at the past 7 years in this country. What was in place is nada now. Endangered species, wildlife habitats, national parks, clean air, clean water, and even private property have been challenged when we thought, well, they were protected.

I’ve run across several articles about Canada’s drilling in the Great Lakes. One of them, in the Detroit News stated:

While Canadian authorities maintain drilling has been safe, “Dirty Drilling,” a 2002 report by the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan, calls spills common, producing ’significant’ pollution that endangers wildlife. The environmental group said drilling in Lake Erie led to 51 natural gas leaks between 1997 and 2001 and 83 oil spills between 1990 and 1995. “‘Drilling has been neither safe nor risk-free,” the report concluded. The report was part of the arsenal used by U.S. drilling foes to push for a ban.

And that ban to drill in the Great Lakes passed in Congress. It is law, yet there are reverberations in Michigan right now about drilling again. I found another environmental blogger that has been watching some of our Michigan Republicans relative to Great Lakes oil drilling. Check it out: http://classwarnotes.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-does-rep-tim-walberg-mi-7-love-big.html.

If you’re concerned about our Great Lakes, or the future scenario for Michigan, better nip this oil drilling in the bud, especially after the ruckus over BP wanting to expand their operations in Indiana relative to Lake Michigan pollution.  We need to remind our legislators, we’re serious about moving forward, away from fossil fuels altogether, not just foreign oil.

Another good article to read going back to the 90’s when the issue of drilling in the Great Lakes came to the forefront:

http://www.opensecrets.org/newsletter/ce76/oilside.asp.

About Canada’s oil drilling in the Great Lakes read the whole Detroit News article:

 http://www.detnews.com/2005/project/0508/14/Z15-275433.htm.