http://cjme.com/story/controversy-over-high-river-gun-seizures-continues/117917
This is interesting. We all know that in every community there are baddies. The cops know who the people are that are generally responsible for a high percentage of the crime in their towns. And we know the police would love an excuse to enter their homes and see what they might be up to. And to be fair it would be a great pre-emptive strike that would benefit the communities. But we have this pesky charter of rights that includes protection against unlawful and UNREASONABLE search and seizure. There are an estimated 300 citizens of High River who did not evac. when they were told to. There are 160 cops keeping the town surrounded and locked down as of now. Does it seem reasonable for police to break into houses without the owners' permission and confiscate guns? Bear in mind that the story of body searches came out long after the searches and seizures were performed. I think it is just an attempt to placate the residents who were understandably upset knowing that police were rooting through their homes when they are perceived as the force that is supposed to protect the homes from being rooted through.
The town of High River is in a state in which there is more than one cop for every two citizens right now. That should make it SAFER than usual and therefore LESS necessary to implement extreme safety measures such as gun seizures. I would think removing people from houses would come before removing private property. And while they have locksmiths opening locks and law officials performing what amounts to police cat burglary, why not take knives and baseball bats and any other possibly dangerous weapons? Why stop there? If you see a grow op, a bag of coke, some pirated movies or albums, get rid of them too! What is the owner to do? "Hi, I'd like to report some illegal stuff that has been stolen from me." Perry Mason couldn't defend that charge in court.
Perhaps Larry Flynt said it best when he said that no matter how sleazy, perverted and indecent he was, rights and freedoms still applied to him. It doesn't matter how big a scumbag a person may be, or how frequent an offender, he or she has rights. And this is not to mention the majority of High Riverites who are law-abiding, good folks. I worked there for a couple years so I can say that. Imagine how they will feel going back to their damaged homes, (if they are still there), only to find that their belongings have been rummaged through. Talk about adding insult to injury!
Like I say, the town of High River is probably a bit safer after gun seizures that have taken place. And all the fortuitous information about illegal activity in the town that was stumbled upon during the seizures will probably help to clean up the area. But this was just not reasonable. And you can bet there will be more than 300 people who don't evacuate next time the river overflows for fear of criminals AND police. And there is no question the effect will be the same in every other town in Alberta, maybe even Canada, if we don't tidy up our laws and procedures a bit. How many people will this indirectly endanger or even potentially lead to their deaths?
These search and seizure actions may well have been performed with only good intentions but you can not overlook the fact that in the end the authorities may have shot themselves in the foot here. They could actually have endangered more people than they protected. And that's not in their job descriptions. Leastaways not how I reckon.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tort? Sure!
Coach trade! Rangers get Vigneault who had, as they say, "lost the room" in Vancouver and the Canucks get Tortorella who has turned some expensive and highly skilled teams in New York into shot-blocking, net-clogging underachievers... who don't like him. Nobody really says they don't get along with their coach but I think the best thing BOTH teams will get out of this deal will be the coaches farewell parties. (to which neither coach will be invited)
I like one comment by Henrik Sedin I read about this. He said something like it doesn't matter who the coach is, a player will play well if he wants to. Sounds like he can't wait to work with Torts! Thing is BOTH Sedins are in option years so you can bet they will want to play their best next season. Tortorella will in all likelihood get undeserved credit when that happens. One comment I have heard so often I am almost sick of it is, "He makes the players accountable." Really? What exactly does that mean? And is it even true? I know he has no qualms about benching big name players when he feels they aren't playing his style. He has already said the Sedins will be killing penalties and blocking shots. Plowing a field with a Ferrari.
The guy strikes me as an egotistical loudmouth. And not just because he's from Boston. Boston! Don't we hate them for stealing the Stanley Cup our Canucks rightfully earned a few years ago? Boston?! That's like George Bush coaching the Taliban. Even players he has coached in the past who LIKED him say things like there needed to be buffers between Tortorella and the players. The Canucks Booth have some Booth floaters who need a kick in the ass but Booth is this what the whole team needs? The only way I might support this is if Torts wanted to play the chance taking, offensive style that won him the Cup AND coach of the year when he was with the Lightning. If a player came to his office saying, "Coach, I'm getting tired of scoring and winning so much. I wanna play more defensively responsible." Then, yes, give him the belicose, belligerant bastard you see at the post loss interviews.
Look, when the Canucks won two straight President's Trophies for best record in the league they were also years when Daniel and Henrik were scoring champs, the Canuck power play was number one and team scoring was at the top of the league. Until the playoffs. They got within a game of glory by playing a ludicrously opposite defensive style forced onto them by the coach. And STILL almost won the Cup. But they didn't. And they have had a few years to wonder if they might have been better off playing the way they had won all season long. How do you think this club, made up of mostly the same scarred for life players, will react to yet another blowhard preaching defence to a team with skill to burn? How? The Canucks won one game in two playoff years under Vigneault STILL stagnating their skills. That's how. And this is a five year deal! I can't take five years of one-nothing losses. Or even wins!
But there may be good news. Tortorella seemed to genuinely regret some of his infamous coaching antics that were caused by conflict between him and his players. Solution? How about coaching a team where the players, the G.M. and for the love of Don Cherry the FANS all want an offensive style that is the only way you have ever coached successfully? Seems like a no brainer to me. But we shall see...
I like one comment by Henrik Sedin I read about this. He said something like it doesn't matter who the coach is, a player will play well if he wants to. Sounds like he can't wait to work with Torts! Thing is BOTH Sedins are in option years so you can bet they will want to play their best next season. Tortorella will in all likelihood get undeserved credit when that happens. One comment I have heard so often I am almost sick of it is, "He makes the players accountable." Really? What exactly does that mean? And is it even true? I know he has no qualms about benching big name players when he feels they aren't playing his style. He has already said the Sedins will be killing penalties and blocking shots. Plowing a field with a Ferrari.
The guy strikes me as an egotistical loudmouth. And not just because he's from Boston. Boston! Don't we hate them for stealing the Stanley Cup our Canucks rightfully earned a few years ago? Boston?! That's like George Bush coaching the Taliban. Even players he has coached in the past who LIKED him say things like there needed to be buffers between Tortorella and the players. The Canucks Booth have some Booth floaters who need a kick in the ass but Booth is this what the whole team needs? The only way I might support this is if Torts wanted to play the chance taking, offensive style that won him the Cup AND coach of the year when he was with the Lightning. If a player came to his office saying, "Coach, I'm getting tired of scoring and winning so much. I wanna play more defensively responsible." Then, yes, give him the belicose, belligerant bastard you see at the post loss interviews.
Look, when the Canucks won two straight President's Trophies for best record in the league they were also years when Daniel and Henrik were scoring champs, the Canuck power play was number one and team scoring was at the top of the league. Until the playoffs. They got within a game of glory by playing a ludicrously opposite defensive style forced onto them by the coach. And STILL almost won the Cup. But they didn't. And they have had a few years to wonder if they might have been better off playing the way they had won all season long. How do you think this club, made up of mostly the same scarred for life players, will react to yet another blowhard preaching defence to a team with skill to burn? How? The Canucks won one game in two playoff years under Vigneault STILL stagnating their skills. That's how. And this is a five year deal! I can't take five years of one-nothing losses. Or even wins!
But there may be good news. Tortorella seemed to genuinely regret some of his infamous coaching antics that were caused by conflict between him and his players. Solution? How about coaching a team where the players, the G.M. and for the love of Don Cherry the FANS all want an offensive style that is the only way you have ever coached successfully? Seems like a no brainer to me. But we shall see...
Monday, June 10, 2013
Titanic Trio of Tyrannical Terpitude Two
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-u0UnKZ_
Quite a while ago I wrote the first installment of T4, (the titanic trio of tyrannical terpitude), about government. In that entry I mentioned how governments operate under identical protocols as corporations, and are funded by banks and taxes collected a la Al Capone to pay for what we already have or will most likely never get. I was going to write one about banks and a separate entry here on my blog about corporations but it is so hard to keep them separate I have decided to, with the massive assistance of the right honourable Bernard Sanders, turn this into a sort of two part trilogy and deal with the banks, (which are in no way run any differently than standard corporations), and the corporations themselves in this single post.
If you are not really clear on what I mean when I mention the corporate strategies which all three of the T4 use I urge you to watch the very well done documentary entitled, "The Corporation." Just google Topdocumentaries. It's either .com or .org but you will find it there. Or you can watch Bernie's speech I have provided a link to just above. Or you could just continue reading while I reproduce some of his main points for my busy blog readers. It IS almost a half hour vid.
Bernie notices that Americans are angry. If I may, this is one of only a few points I might edit in this speech. Traditionally when the constitutionally well-armed American is angry he/she shoots somebody. Fortunately, or maybe UNfortunately things have not yet arrived at this historically emancipating juncture. I believe the feeling in the US to be one similar or identical to one I have described inadequately on this very blog. That very emotion that finds me just a few more T4 sodomisings away from packing my bags and flying overseas in search of Bhutanese citizenship. Bhutanian? Bhutani? Bhutanish? I will have to do some studying before I can pass the citizenship exam.
At any rate I believe this extremely common sentiment Bernie has noticed is more of a dark, gothic, lugubrious recalcitrance that combines the anger he speaks of with the harsh fact that there is little we can do about it. Well little within our T4-induced and perpetuated states of appeasement. A dude once went to the woods to live deliberately with only the bare essentials sucking the marrow out of life to see what he could not learn from it and not, when it came time to die, realize that he had not lived. That dude said most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I see it as a kind of voluntary muting of our pre-birth, child-like, artistic, playful, essence in exchange for societally imposed goals, the reaching of which can never approach the joy you had before that essence was surrendered. I think it's all the same. It is a terribly disappointing way to live! But it is all part of the tyranny and terpitude of the titanic trio. Bernie brings up some of the details of how they pull it off in America. It holds true all around the world.
There are a lot of people out of work, broke and suffering through a recession that Sanders says was caused by the greed,recklessness and illegal behaviour of the people on Wall Street. Who does he mean by this? The banks and the corporations. He compares their behaviour to playing at a casino. Staked, of course, by the American tax payers. They have been "de-regulating" or privatizing Wall Street. So many things in the States are now privatized and it leads to some pretty bizarre exhibitions of avarice. I recently read of a judge who had summarily sentenced guilty AND innocent people to jailtime in order to fill up some empty, privatley owned prisons, and was well paid to do so. Well he got greedy so he got busted. Now he is paying back millions and he'll be getting to know some of his clients a little more intimately than he'd care to I'd bet.
One of the more shocking stats I have ever heard, and I trust most or all five of you, my readers have as well, was the 700 billion dollar bank bail-out that happened not so long ago. I know that if any more than a handful of Americans could actually wrap their heads around that figure it would have been revolution time. It certainly wouldn't take that much to wipe out the 15% real unemployment Bernie talks about. At the time I remember thinking and blogging that not much if any of that dough will "trickle down" to the folks who need it, but if it were given directly to them, most, in fact eventually ALL would trickle UP to the T4. And it would be more of a deluge than a trickle. Unbelievably the number of zero interest loans Sanders says that were given to financial institutions was actually more like a brain busting 16 TRILLION! Once numbers get that high I just can't understand them any more. But what I, and Bernie, DO understand is a fraction of that in zero interest loans to private citizens who really need it, and not to banks who don't, and pretty soon the people ain't angry any more cuz they ain't flat broke. But no that's not a viable solution because of a word we've been socialized to fear. Oh geez I almost just said it there. So like Mr. Mackey the banks,corporations and government will continue playing keep-away with that money from the average American joe because helping them out by sharing it would be socialism and children, socialism's bad mmmkay? Socialism's bayud.
Okay so to avoid that Bernie suggests a kind of Keynesian rebuilding of shoddy roads and bridges and infrastructure and transforming away from fossil fuel dependancy. This would create jobs while making America cleaner and more internationally competitive WHILE appeasing the citizens' anger. Mmmkay no. No children that's bayud... mmmkay. It's just bayud? So don't do it? Mmmkay? It's only bad for the T4. They import 300 billion a year in oil and if you read my last post you know about the coal. Screw the common good. Screw the country. WE want more to throw into our massive cash piles. Of course the "we" are the top 1% in America who own 40% of it and make 93% of all new income and are using it to buy the rest. This is the movement toward an oligarchic economic/poitical control Bernie Sanders warns of. We see giant campaign contributions made by corporations like, oh I dunno Monsanto, and look at all the key government posts TO Monsanto, like agricultural affairs, that are filled by former Monsanto employees.Government can now be bought. And then the people who need them least can legislate themselves and their corporations some pretty sweet tax breaks. The rich are paying their lowest tax rates in decades and in the Cayman Islands alone there is estimated to be some 18,000 corporations sheltering themselves from about 100,000,000,000 bucks a year of taxes. I don't know if Warren Buffet pays less tax than his maid, all I know is if he has a maid his income is pretty solid so he is probably not the guy any government should be taxing LESS than others. I think I even heard of Buffet saying the rich should be taxed more and that they wouldn't mind so much.
Here in Canada it couldn't be much simpler. While the oil pipelines that our government is trying to cram down our throats WILL create jobs and bring money to Canada, it is environmentally irresponsible of them to even suggest pumping crude oil through those lines. Look at the news of just the past week! Oil spill in northern B.C. "Produced" water spill in northern Alberta. That's contaminated and toxic water created by the oil industry. We already HAVE spills. At least build some refineries in Canada which will employ untold numbers of people in making the product that flows through the pipelines safer. Then when, (not IF), we have spills, they won't be totally gutting to the environment.
Right here where I work Alberta Health Services fired a 10 member board for not obeying the Alberta Health Minister's directive to cancel some 3.2 million in bonus payments to executives. And to show you how integral to AHS they were, the ten of them were replaced by one chick. Fred Horne, the Health Minister, said that this board was made up of businesspeople running the health service like a bottom line corporation. If we could only get rid of these jerks where they are screwing things up all over Canada like that! Like the education system. Total corporation! And as stated before, our government itself. (Hey maybe AHS can use some of the 3.2 mil they saved to pay my salary if I get the job in the mailroom!)
And WE need to really commit to some alternative sources of energy too. How much wind is blowing across the prairies unharnessed? How much water and geothermal power could we take advantage of in Canada. These are the ways to employ people and make money in North America. No children that's bayud? Mmmkay? Medicare, education and social security cuts? The-the- these are good? Mmmkay?
So that is pretty much what the vid says. But do yourself a favour and watch his Larry Davidesque delivery. This guy is cool. And I don't say that about politicians ever. All I will add is that this whole vid/blog post is not just about America, it's about the whole world! This is how things need to change so we can start recovering from the stank we've been slappin' outta our planet for so long. And we can make some huge strides towards recovering a lot of the lost joy as well. There's a political economist named Gar Alperovitz who thinks that the next revolution in America will be the regular folks demanding some equality. He reckons that if the money were divvied up evenly every family of 4 would pull in 200,000 bucks a year. I think there are a huge majority of folks in the States who would be upset to know that. Maybe upset enough to get to the point of revolt. And that might not be so bad a model for the world to follow. Leastaways that's what Bernie, Gar and I reckon.
P.S. For all of you who have EXTRA time, (yeah right!), here's an article that deals with much the same things as I just wrote about. It calls the banks, governments, and corporations, (who are not ALWAYS co-operating with one another), the "transnational capitalist class." More scary stats here. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16965-global-power-project-part-1-exposing-the-transnational-capitalist-class
Quite a while ago I wrote the first installment of T4, (the titanic trio of tyrannical terpitude), about government. In that entry I mentioned how governments operate under identical protocols as corporations, and are funded by banks and taxes collected a la Al Capone to pay for what we already have or will most likely never get. I was going to write one about banks and a separate entry here on my blog about corporations but it is so hard to keep them separate I have decided to, with the massive assistance of the right honourable Bernard Sanders, turn this into a sort of two part trilogy and deal with the banks, (which are in no way run any differently than standard corporations), and the corporations themselves in this single post.
If you are not really clear on what I mean when I mention the corporate strategies which all three of the T4 use I urge you to watch the very well done documentary entitled, "The Corporation." Just google Topdocumentaries. It's either .com or .org but you will find it there. Or you can watch Bernie's speech I have provided a link to just above. Or you could just continue reading while I reproduce some of his main points for my busy blog readers. It IS almost a half hour vid.
Bernie notices that Americans are angry. If I may, this is one of only a few points I might edit in this speech. Traditionally when the constitutionally well-armed American is angry he/she shoots somebody. Fortunately, or maybe UNfortunately things have not yet arrived at this historically emancipating juncture. I believe the feeling in the US to be one similar or identical to one I have described inadequately on this very blog. That very emotion that finds me just a few more T4 sodomisings away from packing my bags and flying overseas in search of Bhutanese citizenship. Bhutanian? Bhutani? Bhutanish? I will have to do some studying before I can pass the citizenship exam.
At any rate I believe this extremely common sentiment Bernie has noticed is more of a dark, gothic, lugubrious recalcitrance that combines the anger he speaks of with the harsh fact that there is little we can do about it. Well little within our T4-induced and perpetuated states of appeasement. A dude once went to the woods to live deliberately with only the bare essentials sucking the marrow out of life to see what he could not learn from it and not, when it came time to die, realize that he had not lived. That dude said most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I see it as a kind of voluntary muting of our pre-birth, child-like, artistic, playful, essence in exchange for societally imposed goals, the reaching of which can never approach the joy you had before that essence was surrendered. I think it's all the same. It is a terribly disappointing way to live! But it is all part of the tyranny and terpitude of the titanic trio. Bernie brings up some of the details of how they pull it off in America. It holds true all around the world.
There are a lot of people out of work, broke and suffering through a recession that Sanders says was caused by the greed,recklessness and illegal behaviour of the people on Wall Street. Who does he mean by this? The banks and the corporations. He compares their behaviour to playing at a casino. Staked, of course, by the American tax payers. They have been "de-regulating" or privatizing Wall Street. So many things in the States are now privatized and it leads to some pretty bizarre exhibitions of avarice. I recently read of a judge who had summarily sentenced guilty AND innocent people to jailtime in order to fill up some empty, privatley owned prisons, and was well paid to do so. Well he got greedy so he got busted. Now he is paying back millions and he'll be getting to know some of his clients a little more intimately than he'd care to I'd bet.
One of the more shocking stats I have ever heard, and I trust most or all five of you, my readers have as well, was the 700 billion dollar bank bail-out that happened not so long ago. I know that if any more than a handful of Americans could actually wrap their heads around that figure it would have been revolution time. It certainly wouldn't take that much to wipe out the 15% real unemployment Bernie talks about. At the time I remember thinking and blogging that not much if any of that dough will "trickle down" to the folks who need it, but if it were given directly to them, most, in fact eventually ALL would trickle UP to the T4. And it would be more of a deluge than a trickle. Unbelievably the number of zero interest loans Sanders says that were given to financial institutions was actually more like a brain busting 16 TRILLION! Once numbers get that high I just can't understand them any more. But what I, and Bernie, DO understand is a fraction of that in zero interest loans to private citizens who really need it, and not to banks who don't, and pretty soon the people ain't angry any more cuz they ain't flat broke. But no that's not a viable solution because of a word we've been socialized to fear. Oh geez I almost just said it there. So like Mr. Mackey the banks,corporations and government will continue playing keep-away with that money from the average American joe because helping them out by sharing it would be socialism and children, socialism's bad mmmkay? Socialism's bayud.
Okay so to avoid that Bernie suggests a kind of Keynesian rebuilding of shoddy roads and bridges and infrastructure and transforming away from fossil fuel dependancy. This would create jobs while making America cleaner and more internationally competitive WHILE appeasing the citizens' anger. Mmmkay no. No children that's bayud... mmmkay. It's just bayud? So don't do it? Mmmkay? It's only bad for the T4. They import 300 billion a year in oil and if you read my last post you know about the coal. Screw the common good. Screw the country. WE want more to throw into our massive cash piles. Of course the "we" are the top 1% in America who own 40% of it and make 93% of all new income and are using it to buy the rest. This is the movement toward an oligarchic economic/poitical control Bernie Sanders warns of. We see giant campaign contributions made by corporations like, oh I dunno Monsanto, and look at all the key government posts TO Monsanto, like agricultural affairs, that are filled by former Monsanto employees.Government can now be bought. And then the people who need them least can legislate themselves and their corporations some pretty sweet tax breaks. The rich are paying their lowest tax rates in decades and in the Cayman Islands alone there is estimated to be some 18,000 corporations sheltering themselves from about 100,000,000,000 bucks a year of taxes. I don't know if Warren Buffet pays less tax than his maid, all I know is if he has a maid his income is pretty solid so he is probably not the guy any government should be taxing LESS than others. I think I even heard of Buffet saying the rich should be taxed more and that they wouldn't mind so much.
Here in Canada it couldn't be much simpler. While the oil pipelines that our government is trying to cram down our throats WILL create jobs and bring money to Canada, it is environmentally irresponsible of them to even suggest pumping crude oil through those lines. Look at the news of just the past week! Oil spill in northern B.C. "Produced" water spill in northern Alberta. That's contaminated and toxic water created by the oil industry. We already HAVE spills. At least build some refineries in Canada which will employ untold numbers of people in making the product that flows through the pipelines safer. Then when, (not IF), we have spills, they won't be totally gutting to the environment.
Right here where I work Alberta Health Services fired a 10 member board for not obeying the Alberta Health Minister's directive to cancel some 3.2 million in bonus payments to executives. And to show you how integral to AHS they were, the ten of them were replaced by one chick. Fred Horne, the Health Minister, said that this board was made up of businesspeople running the health service like a bottom line corporation. If we could only get rid of these jerks where they are screwing things up all over Canada like that! Like the education system. Total corporation! And as stated before, our government itself. (Hey maybe AHS can use some of the 3.2 mil they saved to pay my salary if I get the job in the mailroom!)
And WE need to really commit to some alternative sources of energy too. How much wind is blowing across the prairies unharnessed? How much water and geothermal power could we take advantage of in Canada. These are the ways to employ people and make money in North America. No children that's bayud? Mmmkay? Medicare, education and social security cuts? The-the- these are good? Mmmkay?
So that is pretty much what the vid says. But do yourself a favour and watch his Larry Davidesque delivery. This guy is cool. And I don't say that about politicians ever. All I will add is that this whole vid/blog post is not just about America, it's about the whole world! This is how things need to change so we can start recovering from the stank we've been slappin' outta our planet for so long. And we can make some huge strides towards recovering a lot of the lost joy as well. There's a political economist named Gar Alperovitz who thinks that the next revolution in America will be the regular folks demanding some equality. He reckons that if the money were divvied up evenly every family of 4 would pull in 200,000 bucks a year. I think there are a huge majority of folks in the States who would be upset to know that. Maybe upset enough to get to the point of revolt. And that might not be so bad a model for the world to follow. Leastaways that's what Bernie, Gar and I reckon.
P.S. For all of you who have EXTRA time, (yeah right!), here's an article that deals with much the same things as I just wrote about. It calls the banks, governments, and corporations, (who are not ALWAYS co-operating with one another), the "transnational capitalist class." More scary stats here. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16965-global-power-project-part-1-exposing-the-transnational-capitalist-class
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Just Coal Me Pessimistic
http://t.co/uiPT7RCBqN
Taking advantage of the "everything in life is a competition" part of the well entrenched consumer programming to bring about some good seemed to me rather capitulatory if I didn't just make that word up. lf we can't beat 'em join 'em. Don't even continue to try to deprogram the folks and get them working together for common good, the grad students gave that a token attempt and crashed and burned. Trying to impress our peers, people we mostly don't know or even like is in large part what has led to the hellish state of global ecology so it can't be the source of any solution. This bugged me but it wasn't the main flaw in the plan.
In the first few minutes, shortly after fully admiring the solid wardrobe selection I learned from Alex something that shocked me. Coal is 90% inefficient and is the number one source of power to light the lightbulbs of the world. Really??!! Holy underwear, do you suppose we could expound on this? Nope. Let's skip right past that and onto how a very few minor contributors to the problem can make some sacrifices that will amount to an almost insignificant dent in a major problem. This was what urked me.
It's that Hansel and Gretel effect once again. To save you scrolling down to my last entry, the H&G effect is to just skip past the glaringly obvious solution to the problem and move on to one that might even make things worse. Because the family was poor and starving, the parents of Hansel and Gretel decided to leave their kids for dead deep in the FOREST when the Dad was a wood cutter. So there was that solution staring them in the face. Then during the second attempt at child abandonment Hansel took along a few loaves of BREAD and left a trail of bread crumbs. Killing the kids won't make things better for the parents of H&G. It will just add guilt and criminal records to their hunger. How could things get worse by encouraging energy saving competition between neighbours you ask? It might even lead to entire countries competing to use less coal, less energy, maybe even find some more efficient and cleaner energy sources you add. Why, this could snowball into an ecological competition that could save the earth you exclaim. Well coal me a pessimist but I don't share your overzealous positivity, imaginary friend. Here's why:
In areas most crucial to the rescuing of this sinking ship where all us deeply flawed humans live, the earth, there seem to be three ways of doing things: the right way, the corporate way, and the Chinese way. To be fair, since they pretty much invented it, the corporate way might as well be called the American way. But it has gone viral this kind of capitalist, profit-at-all-cost thinking. Ironically if there is a student that has taken this philosophy beyond that of the teacher, it is communist China. Let's investigate just one single blight on our planet this philosophy has led to shall we? It's the one featured in this particular ted talk: coal.
There are 3 countries that burn 3/4 of the coal on this planet. More shockingly, there is ONE country that burns about half of it. Can you guess the number one and number two countries? I knew you could. According to figures from the US Energy Information Administration, measured in thousands of short tons, China burned 3,826,869 in 2011 while the whole world burned 8,144,308. Allowing that China increased from '07 to '11 more than a million I'd hazard a guess that they just may be beyond half the world coal consumption by now. Have you seen pictures of China lately? Just scroll on down. Oops! How did pictures of those terrible eyesores, wind turbines, get in there? Probably something to do with my posting this whole story via cellphone. What a challenge that has been! But rest assured those ones aren't pics of China.
The US has actually shown signs of cutting down on coal usage in recent years. They may be below the million mark in 2013 for all I know. They dropped from 1,127,998 in 2007 to 1,003,066 in 2011. But two of the fastest growing economies in the world, those of China and India, are powering their industrial growth with coal. India's coal usage went from 587,255 to 721,419 between '07 and '11. By now they could be catching up to the US. Every other country, surprisingly even Russia, uses negligable amounts in comparison. So it would seem a fairly easy fix. Certainly it is great for private American citizens to watch their waste but it is very doubtful that that is making an observable difference. In fact even if there was a groundswell of energy conservation among the citizens of China it likely wouldn't make much difference.
That's the other big aspect of this vid that made it a bit depressing to me. What it boils down to is industry using cheaper, dirtier, more convenient fuel while ignoring all the alternatives that won't scourge the earth into surrender. How long has it taken to get a miniscule measure of social resposibility into the industries of most of the world? Yes, even in the States there's a Prius for everyone. But only recently. I don't know about India, but can anybody out there foresee Chinese business owners EVER choosing the more expensive, green alternative? Don't take it from me, ask a Chinese perrson. They will laauugghh... then they will cough... then they will laugh some more.
This is gonna sound really negative but look at all the success the world has had just trying to stop China from, "committing human rights violations" euphamistically speaking. Speaking like a normal person the Chinese Communist Party still kills people. Do you think they give a fortune cookie about smog? No country has more smokers than China. Know why? It's fresh air compared to what they breathe in many areas. I have no proof of that but a little hyperbole for effect. But without exaggeration how do you suppose we can convince a country that shows so little respect for non-violence to do their part for the protection of ALL people when they don't much care about their own? It is a scary question. Leastaways that's what I reckon.
This vid was posted on facebook by a buddy of mine. I like the guy's sweater and his points are valid and all... but even though this is a hopeful, ecologically positive vid I couldn't shake the nagging spectre of "here we go again!"
I thought at first it might have been the fact that the grad students' appeals to citizens' desires to save money, save the planet and just be nice went over like hot Pepsi on a summer day. But it wasn't just that.
Taking advantage of the "everything in life is a competition" part of the well entrenched consumer programming to bring about some good seemed to me rather capitulatory if I didn't just make that word up. lf we can't beat 'em join 'em. Don't even continue to try to deprogram the folks and get them working together for common good, the grad students gave that a token attempt and crashed and burned. Trying to impress our peers, people we mostly don't know or even like is in large part what has led to the hellish state of global ecology so it can't be the source of any solution. This bugged me but it wasn't the main flaw in the plan.
In the first few minutes, shortly after fully admiring the solid wardrobe selection I learned from Alex something that shocked me. Coal is 90% inefficient and is the number one source of power to light the lightbulbs of the world. Really??!! Holy underwear, do you suppose we could expound on this? Nope. Let's skip right past that and onto how a very few minor contributors to the problem can make some sacrifices that will amount to an almost insignificant dent in a major problem. This was what urked me.
It's that Hansel and Gretel effect once again. To save you scrolling down to my last entry, the H&G effect is to just skip past the glaringly obvious solution to the problem and move on to one that might even make things worse. Because the family was poor and starving, the parents of Hansel and Gretel decided to leave their kids for dead deep in the FOREST when the Dad was a wood cutter. So there was that solution staring them in the face. Then during the second attempt at child abandonment Hansel took along a few loaves of BREAD and left a trail of bread crumbs. Killing the kids won't make things better for the parents of H&G. It will just add guilt and criminal records to their hunger. How could things get worse by encouraging energy saving competition between neighbours you ask? It might even lead to entire countries competing to use less coal, less energy, maybe even find some more efficient and cleaner energy sources you add. Why, this could snowball into an ecological competition that could save the earth you exclaim. Well coal me a pessimist but I don't share your overzealous positivity, imaginary friend. Here's why:
In areas most crucial to the rescuing of this sinking ship where all us deeply flawed humans live, the earth, there seem to be three ways of doing things: the right way, the corporate way, and the Chinese way. To be fair, since they pretty much invented it, the corporate way might as well be called the American way. But it has gone viral this kind of capitalist, profit-at-all-cost thinking. Ironically if there is a student that has taken this philosophy beyond that of the teacher, it is communist China. Let's investigate just one single blight on our planet this philosophy has led to shall we? It's the one featured in this particular ted talk: coal.
There are 3 countries that burn 3/4 of the coal on this planet. More shockingly, there is ONE country that burns about half of it. Can you guess the number one and number two countries? I knew you could. According to figures from the US Energy Information Administration, measured in thousands of short tons, China burned 3,826,869 in 2011 while the whole world burned 8,144,308. Allowing that China increased from '07 to '11 more than a million I'd hazard a guess that they just may be beyond half the world coal consumption by now. Have you seen pictures of China lately? Just scroll on down. Oops! How did pictures of those terrible eyesores, wind turbines, get in there? Probably something to do with my posting this whole story via cellphone. What a challenge that has been! But rest assured those ones aren't pics of China.
The US has actually shown signs of cutting down on coal usage in recent years. They may be below the million mark in 2013 for all I know. They dropped from 1,127,998 in 2007 to 1,003,066 in 2011. But two of the fastest growing economies in the world, those of China and India, are powering their industrial growth with coal. India's coal usage went from 587,255 to 721,419 between '07 and '11. By now they could be catching up to the US. Every other country, surprisingly even Russia, uses negligable amounts in comparison. So it would seem a fairly easy fix. Certainly it is great for private American citizens to watch their waste but it is very doubtful that that is making an observable difference. In fact even if there was a groundswell of energy conservation among the citizens of China it likely wouldn't make much difference.
That's the other big aspect of this vid that made it a bit depressing to me. What it boils down to is industry using cheaper, dirtier, more convenient fuel while ignoring all the alternatives that won't scourge the earth into surrender. How long has it taken to get a miniscule measure of social resposibility into the industries of most of the world? Yes, even in the States there's a Prius for everyone. But only recently. I don't know about India, but can anybody out there foresee Chinese business owners EVER choosing the more expensive, green alternative? Don't take it from me, ask a Chinese perrson. They will laauugghh... then they will cough... then they will laugh some more.
This is gonna sound really negative but look at all the success the world has had just trying to stop China from, "committing human rights violations" euphamistically speaking. Speaking like a normal person the Chinese Communist Party still kills people. Do you think they give a fortune cookie about smog? No country has more smokers than China. Know why? It's fresh air compared to what they breathe in many areas. I have no proof of that but a little hyperbole for effect. But without exaggeration how do you suppose we can convince a country that shows so little respect for non-violence to do their part for the protection of ALL people when they don't much care about their own? It is a scary question. Leastaways that's what I reckon.
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