Ignatieff: I hear a statesman

This piece by Jane Taber of the Globe and Mail harangues Michael Ignatieff for his lack of specifics, but I think he sounds pretty reasonable here:

There was no mention of the hydro mega-project in the Liberal platform, released Sunday. But when asked about it Monday, Mr. Ignatieff spoke about involving Quebec – and maybe even Ontario – in a “pan-Canadian approach” to inter-provincial energy sharing.

“It’s not just a matter of Newfoundland and Labrador,” he said.

He argued that a Liberal government would not play off one province against another, suggesting that is what Mr. Harper is doing.

A federal government, he said, needs to “sit down with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the province of Quebec. ... Let’s think about this medium and long-term.”

He added: “But for heavens sake if we don’t sit in a room pretty soon we are going to be suboptimal as a country when we could be a superpower.”

The Liberal Leader suggested finding a way to “wheel this power through Quebec” and said that Canadians have to start “thinking big” on energy or risk having highly segmented markets that don’t speak to one another.

Contrast this approach to that of Harper, who has riled Québec premier Jean Charest by supporting federal bucks to develop the means to both harnass and transport reams of viable, renewable electricity to presumed New England markets via the maritime provinces - all to curry favour with the new premier of Newfoundland and Labrador in the hopes of taking a couple of parliamentary seats from that province. Never mind the ill will such a move might provoke in other jurisdictions.

It puzzles me that, despite this regional favouritism, Harper still refuses to cough up the dough his most prominent Québec ministers all but promised a few short months ago, to build a new NHL-ready arena for Québec City, on the grounds it would be unfair to other major cities in other provinces who are in the same situation.

I mean, what's a Québecois voter to think, anyway? Gilles Duceppe will gladly provide the answer. Ignatieff, too, except (poor bastard) he's gotta please somebody in 10 different provinces. Not just one.

Hence the statesmanship of his comments today.

And hence this blogger's newfound respect for the man. He is fighting the good fight, and it's possibly Canada's last best hope for a united future.

Moi, je m'occupe d'lui aider dès ce moment-là.

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We get mail - from US reporters wanting our opinions on other US reporters!

From: "Jacobon, Terry" [name changed]
To: randboro@yahoo.ca
Sent: Thu, June 3, 2010 3:56:46 PM
Subject: From Terry Jacobson [name changed] of the [MAJOR ESTABLISHED US NEWSPAPER]

Dear Scott in Montreal:

Hi. I’m a reporter for the [MAJOR ESTABLISHED US NEWSPAPER], and I’m writing under deadline about the media coverage of the BP oil spill.

I was intrigued by your comments on the Daily Kos about Anderson Cooper. He’s working hard and producing dramatic spots.

May I have a comment from you, for inclusion in my piece, about exactly *what* you think Anderson is doing right? What is he telling the world that others aren’t?

To include your quote, I’ll need your real name, and I assume your hometown is Montreal.

And I like Canada. I don’t think your government is sorry-ass. At least not always. Mine, well . . .

Terry Jacobson
Media Editor/Writer
[MAJOR ESTABLISHED US NEWSPAPER]

Re: From Terry Jacobson [name changed] of the [MAJOR ESTABLISHED US NEWSPAPER]
From: Randboro
To: "Jacobon, Terry" [name changed]

Sorry to get back to you so late. I am not typically an avid consumer of US media, although I have plenty of access to it. I usually focus on issues in my own country, plus (as a die-hard Habs fan) hating the Flyers, of course!

I cross-posted the dailykos diary to my own blog, btw, at randboro.blogspot.com. My name is Scott Murray and yes, I do live in Montreal. Quote me at will, if that helps you.

The thing Anderson did right yesterday was he communicated effectively to his audience, and took them by the hand so even a Tea Party stalwart could understand that in the case of BP, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Given that the medium is the message, an iconic telejournalist like Cooper is a medium unto himself, so when he came down from the mountain to discover corporations are selfish and heartless, that in itself is a powerful message, regardless of the numerous ways in which his basic reporting habits are wanting.

What Cooper did a good job of, was he dismantled the cone of silence (to some degree, at least) that BP is attempting to place on the media. That he got some workers to voice their concerns despite BP's attempts to stifle all comment was probably the most impressive part for me. He could easily have taken it a bit further, and called out BP for not supplying full protection from the fumes for all clean-up workers - like the people they showed in the stock video cleaning up the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Watching again tonight, I found myself wondering why he doesn't get an expert in mechanical engineering / physics / fluid mechanics on the program, instead of lamely shrugging and saying he isn't qualified to judge what they are actually looking at from the live feed. C'mon, you're CNN, get some experts to weigh in! That's Writing and Reporting 101 stuff (with his staff and budget, only his ego could possibly be getting in the way of doing this, no?)

Plus, while those three oil-basted birds make great symbols of the carnage, I can't help thinking that an oceanographer would be a big help in explaining the long-term consequences to the food chain. That, to me, is the biggest long-term scary-scary outcome of all this; and it demands serious consideration by the media on the whole. Maybe Cooper and his producers are pacing themselves, and first dealing with the current #1 priority of their viewers, but who knows? I fear that long-term, the massive shock to oceanic biodiversity will be the legacy of this disaster, more than just the loss of fishermen's livelihoods. Like Vonnegut's Ice-9.

You should read up on the 1990s' collapse of the Newfoundland cod fisheries to get a bead on what Louisiana and other Gulf states may have to look forward to, economically. In that case, it was government mismanagement that took the brunt of the blame (and here I thought it was the insatiable worldwide demand for McDonald's Filet-o-Fish sandwiches).

I like the [MAJOR ESTABLISHED US NEWSPAPER]. Great legacy. Best of luck to you.

Scott

Blowing Up is Hard to Do

"This scares everybody"
--British Petroleum COO Doug Suttles, on May 29, 2010, commenting on the failure of the "Top Kill" attempt to stave off the worst crude oil contamination in history

Well folks, it looks like this Gulf of Mexico oil spill is ripe for a good 'ol blow-up, Neil Sedaka style.



Only this time, we are not talking about SCTV's Farm Film Celebrity Blow-up; we are actually discussing using nuclear weapons to halt the runaway oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, as per Raw Story:

As the latest effort to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico meets with failure, the idea of nuking the immediate undersea area to seal the oil underground is gaining steam among some energy experts and researchers.

One prominent energy expert known for predicting the oil price spike of 2008 says sending a small nuclear bomb down the leaking well is "probably the only thing we can do" to stop the leak.

Lord (and I am an athiest, mind) help us.

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Canada: Part of the Global Warming Problem

Greenpeace has done a lovely job creating a fake Alberta tourism site to educate us (through cutting humour) on the massive environmental toll being paid for the benefit of getting at all that juicy tar-sands oil. From the government-sanctioned and wanton destruction of pristine boreale forest, to the ghastly and toxic "Tailing ponds" left in their wake, this surely will count as one of the most shameful pillagings of mother nature in human history.

And that's not even taking into account the cumulative effect on greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels to get at other fossil fuels that will eventually be burned (and require more fossil fuels to transport them to and from refineries using fossil fuels via fossil fuel burning trucks on tarmac roads made in part from fossil-oil products...) And whoops, our heads are spinning wildly before we even consider the effect of losing all that good carbon-trapping forest!

We really have to find a better way to deal with our collective hunger for energy. There is probably no greater effect we can have than to change our mindset of what is normal behaviour.

For example, I recently discovered that I can walk all the way to and from work (if I set aside 40-45 minutes to do so). And it is an enjoyable walk at that, coming with the health benefit of getting a degree of exercise. Previously, I would take a 15-20 minute bus trip at rush hour, having waited anywhere between 2 and 20 minutes for the bus to arrive, then be sandwiched-in uncomfortably while the bus jerked and heaved to deal with Montreal traffic.

Weather permitting, my wife bikes the kids to daycare, which is conveniently only a half-kilometre away from home, and around the corner from the studio where she works. We also chose to live in a neighbourhood where it is often possible to shop on foot - except for the big haul grocery buys. Our home is insulated and heated with electricity, but certainly could be more energy-efficient, and that's something to be investigated soon.

That's partly because I am in a neighbourhood that was designed to be more energy-efficient - back in the 1920's. But some of our friends live in the suburbs, designed post-WWII - with three times the living space to heat or cool (completely detached), huge lawns to tend, long commutes to work and no option to walk to the pharmacy or dentist, etc. While I am proud to be living more energy-efficiently, I can't say I'm not jealous of the space they have, but at least I live near a huge park for the kids to play in.

If we stop building communities on the premise of having cheap and abundant energy, and go back to tighter quarters and smaller-scale neighbourhoods the way we used to between the wars, this would go a very long way towards decreasing our energy thirst, at least in high-density population areas.

Now that energy prices are moving towards being value-costed, the North American lifestyle might just revert, especially if more people start thinking and living the way we do. And I sense this is already beginning to be reflected in the growing market value of the properties in densely-built older urban communities such as my own.

Now if only we can go back to rail transport as the primary means of moving goods around! (More on that in a future post.)

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