U.S. military is the single biggest oil user in the world.

 U.S. military is the single biggest oil user in the world. As both Obama and Romney continue to support this inherent institution of violence, reducing the use of fossil fuel and thus global warming would seem a moot prospect indeed. A focused political push against military spending is obviously required but is not likely to  bear fruit given that the only arena in which the U.S. remains dominant in the world is the military. Americans continue to believe they're "exceptional," let's not forget. Sad.

Oil "security" = "military" security = "US security" = corporate profit for military contractors and Big Oil - a vicious equation. (These terms are under Derridean erasure.)

Wakeup Call for Business Community?

From the very heart of the business community comes the magazine cover of the year. Get it, Big Oil?

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math | Politics News — www.rollingstone.com — Readability

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math | Politics News — www.rollingstone.com — Readability





 "...the planet does indeed have an enemy – one far more committed to action than governments or individuals. Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization. 'Lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices,' says veteran anti-corporate leader Naomi Klein, who is at work on a book about the climate crisis. 'But these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It's what they do.'"

Forget about your energy-efficient light bulbs, your hybrid car, your energy star appliances, washing your clothes in off-peak hours, and your solar panels. Forget about lobbying your MP or MPP. Forget about signing petitions and marching on Parliament Hill or the streets of your city. This is where your focus should only be: your enemy, the planet's enemy, is the fossil-fuel industry. Never forget it. And that makes those such as the Harper Regime who aid and abet this destruction in the service of ruthless profit your enemies too.

a tiny glimpse into the ways our government serves the corporate and financial world, not the people of Canada

Some Key Areas Where Neoliberal Policy Undermines both the Industrial Economy and Canadian Democracy

Under the Harper Regime, the investor class is constantly being protected at the expense of the real industrial economy, for just about all policy decisions privilege both the financial sector, with its market-driven initiatives and debt-driven growth strategies, and of course corporations - in particular resource corporations in oil, gas, and mining, all of which combined have a heavily weighted presence on the TSX and, in fact, together with financials drive the TSX index. The obsession with deficit reduction and austerity are part of this process in order to maintain socalled  “market confidence,” played off ironically, as they always are around the world, against sustainable growth. And do I need to mention successive corporate tax cuts presumably designed to attract investment, but the success of which no economist has ever measured accurately? Much if not all of the financial sector is, of course, composed of corporations.

Foreign worker policy is designed both to drive wages down with differential pay scales, and targeted immigrant recruitment is designed to enhance a neoliberal policy of economic growth in the sectors the Regime favours as being in “Canada’s national interest.”

Anti-labour, anti-union, policies and back-to-work legislation are obviously designed to suppress wages and erode workers’  benefits. Throw the newly proposed changes in EI into the mix here too, and it’s a war on  the majority of Canada’s very own citizenry.

Reducing in effect government financial participation, pension reforms clearly favour the financial class because of the profit possibilities of the  Pooled Registered Pension Plan proposal, as do the OAS changes that will force many to seek private pension arrangements if they can afford it or otherwise to stay in the workforce for longer than planned.  Add the corporate management shift to defined contribution plans, which also obviously aid corporate bottom lines and, in turn,  shareholders and the investor class, and we see another neoliberal triumph.

Gutting of a myriad of regulations and other laws and policies wherever and whenever possible to allow corporations to exploit both people and the planet at will for profit is now commonplace for the Regime. The legislative assault on long-standing environmental regulations is only the latest, but countless not-so-subtle manoeuvres in foreign policy, whereby Foreign Affair diplomats become sales people, so-called shifts in foreign aid such as the new CEDA relationship with mining companies, and the assault on charities  through the CRA also come readily to mind.

All the free trade agreements negotiated by the Regime serve a neo-liberal agenda, as they did, to be fair, under Liberal rule as well.  Even as we can’t change NAFTA through parliamentary process, we will not be able to change any of these other, more recent international trade agreements, including CETA, simply because they’re international. We lack the power nationally in law to do so, though there are costly international mechanisms we could avail ourselves of but, it would seem,  never do.

 Gutting expenditures and a host of smaller programs  for Social Services, including limited Health transfers to the provinces, wherever possible is de rigueur in such neoliberal driven government such as ours.

This is a mere but, alas, sad glimpse into some of the ways our government serves the corporate and financial world, not the people of Canada.

McGuinty-Redford Dollar-Tar Sands Dance

Wouldn't a lower Canadian dollar encourage both foreign investment in Canada and investment and saving by Canadians in Canada where purchasing power would be stronger than in a foreign market? And wouldn't it also make Canadian export goods, no matter which province is their source, more attractive to foreign buyers since they would have greater purchasing power given our lower dollar vis-a-vis   the U.S. dollar, the de facto reserve and trade currency of the world? And, finally, wouldn't a lower dollar also speed up paying down the deficit because the lower currency would wipe out part of the debt automatically because of its lower value? 

We do indeed have a petrol dollar albeit driven by foreign demand for our tar sands oil and the Harper Regime's desire to sell to absolutely anyone regardless of their moral or political values.  That dollar is only going to get higher as the price of oil continues to rise because of the slow but inevitable process of depletion and the increasing costs of extraction as we move more and more away of necessity from conventional sources of oil.  We have indeed reached Peak Oil  in the sense not of reserves but of a maximum point before decline begins its inevitable process. 


And why, if we had a moral conscience, would we want to make that significant Canadian contribution to the destruction of the planet the centre of the Canadian economy? Redford's appeal to Ontario is embarrassing. It's understandable from a naked capitalist point of view, of course, a perspective in which profit trumps both the environment and morality - the basic modus operandi of  the Harper Regime, her partner in environmental crime - but does that make it right? Only if you're a neo-liberal bent on increasing the wealth of the investor class, oil executives, and banksters at the expense of the rest of us.


Note: Brent Oil crude, which determines the price of gasoline in Canada, has risen 30% since last October reaching a high price of more than US $125.00. WTI oil prices have also risen by 42% to US $110 a barrel. Something's got to give. 

Weaver's Data is on #tarsands is Incomplete: It's not the Whole Picture

As I predicted, there was much hype this week about Andrew Weaver's research from the oil industry and some specious logic from a few suckered journalists who hopped on the story as a repudiation of exaggerated claims made by environmentalists about the tar sands. But, as Weaver himself points out (http://t.co/v5E28Xr3), his findings are not a get out of jail card for the tar sands, which still have the fastest growing emissions rate of any project in Canada. The emissions findings do not take into account a host of other factors in the enterprise that contribute to GHGs - among them the well documented extraordinary extraction energy outputs, the costs and intensity of which are only going to  increase as conventional energy continues on its inevitable depletion path,  and the energy outputs associated with trying to combat the negative effects of the environmental and social damage of the project over time -  which are considerable - not to mention the obvious energy refining outputs, energy distribution, and energy transportation costs. So if we were to add all these outputs up plus Weaver's finding, the total emissions output would certainly be significantly higher.  Weaver simply did not handle the media release about his research well.


Note: "Bitumen, from which oil is produced, takes more energy per barrel to get at than conventional oil pumped from the ground. Because it needs more energy, bitumen-derived oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming than conventional oil." The difference here is what the Harper Regime fails to recognize, wilfully or not. " ... that gap will widen as more steam-driven in-situ production comes on line, since in-situ uses more energy than open-face mining of bitumen." Jeffrey Simpson 

Keystone, Northern Gateway pipelines raise questions that need answers before approval

The Star:  This is the most realistic and sensible perspective I've seen on the environment-oil-pipeline dilemma. Olive is right:  oil as our primary source of energy is not going to go away any time soon. It took well over 50 years to shift from coal as a primary source of energy to oil and natural gas.  Given the slow pace of commercializing innovations in alternative energy, the complexities of implementation, and governments' lack of political will to drive the development of alternative sources aggressively and cooperatively, it will be much longer before we witness a fully established energy paradigm shift - probably not in our lifetimes. 

Bottom line: while living with oil as the primary source of our energy - about which we have no choice -  we must in that context seek energy efficiency and ensure environmental safety everywhere we can in order to lessen the impact on the planet. This may involve focusing on the two pipelines not necessarily with the goal of stopping them since - let's be realistic - that's impossible, but with the goal of ensuring maximum environment safety and energy efficiency. That is actually acheiveable because both Trans Canada and Enbridge so desperately seek approval of these projects, and if we demand such stringency there's a very good chance they will accede.   Is such a position a compromise? You decide.


Robert Kennedy, Jr. said as much in his interview on CTV's Question Period. But David Hughes, a well-known energy analyst, says Gateway is unnecessary and that the pace of extractions from the tarsands themselves should be more evenly paced. Instead of pushing to sell oil to Asia and the U.S., he says, we should develop a comprehensive national energy policy and ship that oil east to central and eastern Canada to wean those regions off foreign oil, which is going to peak long before the tarsands. Agreed, but is there an ounce of political will from the Harper Regime for such a sensible idea?

U.S. Self-sufficient Oil Production would be a Threat to both the Tarsands and the Keystone Pipeline XL

U.S. Oil Production a Threat to Canadian Oil Industry So let's say the U.S. becomes relatively oil self-sufficient by 2017, as some argue, and let's say that self-sufficiency does not fully offset imported oil from Mexico and Venezuela, as the Tarsands organizations would hope. What happens to the main if not the only market for Alberta Oil? I think there is a compelling argument for the U.S. to keep the imports taps from Mexico and Venezuela as supplements when necessary, for this would not only  mitigate potential shortages but, more importantly,  solve one gigantic political and environment issue raging right now: namely, with relative self-sufficiency and supplementary backup sources, why allow the contentious Keystone XL pipeline to be built? Several downside factors would remain, however: the U.S. may still want to built the pipeline to create jobs and stimulate the economy, the U.S. would continue to deepen its dependency on oil instead of aggressively pursuing alternate green forms of energy, and the tarsands group would begin no doubt to seek Asian markets through our West Coast much more aggressively.