I have said it before – economy trumps environment every time. The global warming hype and hysteria is beginning to fade somewhat, but it isn’t gone yet. All I can hope is that the emphasis on carbon and warming will actually bring about a different kind of green shift: the overall awareness that we are polluting our environment with toxic substances daily, harming our water supplies, consuming irreplaceable resources and piling up wastes of all forms at an alarming rate.

If you are going to introduce “Green” taxes, they need to be based on something other than Carbon Dioxide. If you try and tax CO2, you tax EVERYTHING. That’s right, EVERYTHING. Food grown on farms? Fuel-burning equipment is needed to harvest and transport (and even package in some cases) all of it. Those prices rise. Home heating fuel? Headed up, up, up. Clothes? Goods? Appliances? Everything goes up, due to higher all-around manufacturing and transportation costs. This ridiculous idea that you can tax those things, make prices rise, and then give everything back as income tax credit is just wrong, no matter what economist you can get to speak on behalf of the “green shift”. The regular, average citizen-at-large is not going to be able to afford to finance these increases over the year they have to wait for their tax refund, and realistically, mid-year adjustments for the payroll tax deductions made by employers are going to introduce a lot of uncertainty.

If you want to create a positive attitude toward the environment, you can’t make people suffer too much. You ESPECIALLY can’t make them wonder if they will be able to heat their home or feed their kids or have transportation to work. We live in a democracy, so if you hurt the people who elected you, you are going to be quickly unelected.

Why do we have a problem with the environment right now? Because the majority of people have ALWAYS gone for the least expensive, easiest solution to their consumer needs. Cheap wins, end of story. The only way to win this battle is to make the most environmentally friendly products available ALSO have pricing competitive with the cheapest items. You are virtually stuck with government subsidies or rebate programs (SIGNIFICANT, easily obtained rebates) to accomplish this, which really sucks. This, obviously, costs money – but at least it is something consumers can see right away.  You also need to lean on companies with regulations to reduce emissions. Cap and trade programs could work if implemented appropriately, and the trickle-down effect is minimized.

The trickle-down seems to be an area of cognitive dissonance for folks like Jack Layton – massively RAISE taxes and the expenses for corporations, and everyone pays more because they just pass the expenses to consumers. Force them to comply with ridiculous over-regulation and over-taxation and they pull up stakes and move someplace else, costing jobs and therefore destabilizing the economy. Companies aren’t often altruistic – if they can dump unfiltered waste for free into the air and water of India and produce and ship those goods for cheaper than following environmental regulations here, guess where they are going to relocate to?

Harper hasn’t got a solution, yet he got re-elected.  All that fawning concern for the environment on the part of other parties didn’t produce a single, truly viable solution that would work in today’s economic environment, and that is why they did not make significant inroads into the Harper lead. Their failure to find a way to make environmental improvement something that didn’t risk inducing severe financial hardship handed the election to the Conservatives.

The way I see it is you put a modest tax on big polluters and  implement a strict cap-and-trade program based on that modest tax. You can’t go hard-core because it will harm the economy, it has to be something where you put the companies to a decision: lose a portion of their profits or work cleaner. It can’t be a decision where they are forced to operate at an economic loss, or it’s off to India with them. You then use the tax dollars generated to invest in green technologies, and to give substantial rebates on certifiably ‘green’ products to consumers.

If you properly invest (and not simply hand out grants), when a breakthrough is made in green tech the government stands to make a profit as a stakeholder in that technology. If enough customers buy ‘green’ products based on the rebates, the prices on those products will come down because they will be manufactured in bulk, reducing production expenses.  Once the prices have fallen, you can shift the rebates to other, lesser-purchased items to encourage purchases in that area, or you can take your former rebate money and invest it in ‘green’ research as well.

Is it too complicated? I don’t know. There  is a lot of fiddly government stuff in there that can get screwed up. How do you certify products are ‘green’, some kind of special committee? That costs money and could be open to corruption. How do you make sure your ‘green rebates’ are  fully in the public eye? Advertising costs money, too – do you give a tax break to media outlets that publish those ads for free or cheap? And how long does it take for this sort of a “green shift” to happen?

What I know is this: If you raise prices on everything, consumers can afford a lot less – and the economy stalls. But – IF a government can make it affordable to buy the most environmentally-friendly products out there by reducing the cost of acquiring them instead of RAISING prices on the less-eco-friendly ones, those are the products I am going to buy.

And you know you would, too.

Elizabeth  May is against abortion. She personally has made statements to the effect that she does not believe women should have the right to choose abortion (and therefore have control over their own reproduction). Frankly, I find this attitude disgusting and unethical.

Elizabeth May over-exaggerates global warming issues and the human role in them. In one interview I watched her spout the discredited belief that global warming causes more hurricanes.While I believe we may play a part, it is not the part suggested by the IPCC and our effect is not nearly as significant as the extremists in the environmental movement would have us believe.

Elizabeth May is a politician. Some time ago, when she became leader of the Green Party of Canada, I wondered how long it would take for her to start skewing views to suit the party agenda instead of simply stating facts. It really didn’t take very long…

Elizabeth May has quashed the right to free speech among members of the Green caucus.She forced out party candidate Kevin Potvin because of his article “A Revolting Confession“… claiming that it did not follow the non-violent views of the Green Party. But really, what it was about was media contextomy and her fear that the deliberate distortion of the point of the article by the press would result in bad publicity for the Greens. If, in fact holding a personal view that did not agree with the entire platform of the Green Party were grounds for being removed from the party, the first person on the list to leave should be Elizabeth May if only for her personal beliefs about abortion.

All this makes it sound like I am against the Green Party. Maybe I am one of those Conservative whack-jobs trying to make it sound like Elizabeth May thinks all Canadians are stupid by creative video editing. Maybe it sounds like I am one of those old-school Liberals who still believes that they were not only chosen by the majority of Canadians from 1993-2006 (they weren’t – they NEVER received more than 41.24%(1993) of the popular vote) to rule for 13 years and therefore the Liberals are ENTITLED to be in charge because, after all, they are the only ones with EXPERIENCE in the last 15 years… Or maybe – just maybe – you think I am one of those drones who follows Jack Layton who believes the state can provide lifetime, high-paying middle-class union manufacturing jobs for everyone who wants want by simply taxing all those evil companies out of existence. None of these scenarios is even close to the truth.

What I believe in is this:

1. Ecological Wisdom: Acknowledge that human beings are part of the natural world and respect the specific values of all forms of life, including non-human species.
2. Social Justice: Assert that the key to social justice is the equitable distribution of resources to ensure that all have full opportunities for personal and social development.
3. Participatory Democracy: Strive for a democracy in which all citizens have the right to express their views, and are able to directly participate in decisions which affect their lives.
4. Non-Violence: Declare a commitment to non-violence and strive for a culture of peace and cooperation between states.
5. Sustainability: Recognize the scope for the material expansion of society within the biosphere, and the need to maintain biodiversity through use of renewable resources.
6. Respect for Diversity: Honour and value equally the Earth’s biological and ecological diversity together with the cultural, linguistic, ethnic, sexual, religious and spiritual diversity.

What I believe in is matched by the values of the Green Party. That means that it doesn’t matter what Elizabeth May may believe in personally, or that she is American-born. It matters what the party is about, and nothing else. I don’t have to agree with Elizabeth May, and she doesn’t have to agree with me. We just need to see Canada the same way – fair and open to all.

What needs to happen is that people who may believe in different things but share a common vision for how Canada should be run (and can respect that everyone is different) need to break with those old partisan party politics and labels, and work together to change our country for the better.

That’s why I already voted Green at an advance poll. It is also why I will vote for what I believe in again, and keep on doing it, in future elections – regardless of the name on the party or the ruler at the helm.

Fact: most of what you could do – even if EVERYONE did it – would not make any difference in the realm of “Global Warming” because ultimately Mother Earth and her relationship to the solar system has more to say about it than you do. Earth regulates herself, and trying to screw with that usually does more harm than good.

That is not to say that I don’t think people should treat the planet better. But, honestly, does ruining the economy of any nation to “stop global warming” – be it our advanced industrialized countries or Third-world ones – qualify as anything OTHER than plain stupid? (You do need to keep in mind that there are environmental extremists out there who would happily make the human race extinct in order to “preserve the environment” – and this agenda is beginning to creep closer and closer to the mainstream…)

I usually score “OK” on those quizzes, but never get a spectacular score because they never take into account the MOST important factor in these things: TIME. Just because you suddenly had an environmental epiphany when you watched that Al Gore movie doesn’t mean you did not do more harm to the environment before you clued in than you can solve by changing now. Sorry, folks, you ALREADY screwed it up. It’s like expanding foam, you can’t put it back in the can. So now I am going to get all Holier-than-thou because I am sick of having people act that way toward me.

It is time to toot my own horn a little here, because I am sure there are lots of readers (oh yeah, like I have READERS) who think I am advocating you DON’T do anything when I call things BS, and that is not true. My position is that you should have been doing it all along!!! I ALWAYS say “Stop wasting shit!!!” I have always said, “Don’t buy offsets, INVEST in companies making or researching new technologies.” Remember that companies selling “offsets” are not accountable for what they do with your money, but as an INVESTOR you are a shareholder and they are accountable to you. Even so, the message that comes across and is remembered, the one that gets people all worked up, is when I say the “Climate Crisis is bullshit” – and that leads them to ignore everything else because I am a ‘crackpot’. No, sorry, not a crackpot… I am just not a SHEEP.

We can’t afford a lot, so we can’t (and don’t) buy a lot of the “environmentally-friendly” products that are priced higher than others. Most of the extra you pay goes into the marketing of them more than the production or research, anyway, so even if we had the cash I doubt it would go toward such products. In this house, we must live efficiently and frugally in order to have what we have. My Mac computer, which I got for $200, took about 6 weeks of planning and squeezing the budget to buy and had to be paid for with smaller broken-up payments instead of a lump sum. I have never (even when I was healthy) had the resources to just throw money at a problem to try and make it go away, and that has forced me to think long and hard about every situation and every item over the years. I don’t pretend that I do some things ONLY for environmental reasons, sometimes I do them because they make long-term financial sense, too. That is exactly how governments need to deal with these issues on the large scale, as well. It is often CHEAPER to do it in an environmentally-friendly way because there is less waste.
I have been an environmental advocate for a long time. By long time, I mean since I was very young: 30-odd years or more. And here is what I have done over that time:

• I have always loved cars, but I have done my best to balance what I could afford with efficiency in my vehicles. Every vehicle I have ever owned has had 6 or fewer cylinders (except maybe one we owned in Cape Breton for a month when we could find nothing else). When we needed a family vehicle that could get through snow in the country, instead of buying a huge 8-cylinder 4×4 we bought a much lighter S10 Blazer. It was no Prius, to be sure, but it wasn’t a Suburban either. I have always bought a vehicle that met my needs at the time most efficiently.
• I really enjoyed driving, and sometimes I did it just for pleasure when I was younger. Kind of wasteful, I imagine, but I didn’t do it all the time. We will still sometimes go out for a family drive every now and then, without a specific destination in mind. Other than those occasions, every trip out has to have a good reason. All trips that can be combined into one are combined, and a lot of meticulous planning goes into our monthly travels to the grocery stores and medical appointments. It is not good for me physically to do this these days, but I will NOT make half a dozen inefficient runs to places if I can make 1 trip and combine all the errands.
• When I was healthy and the weather was good, I did most of my grocery shopping and the like by bicycle. I had saddle bags, a book rack, and a backpack to carry things. I didn’t drive if I could bike. If I didn’t need to get there fast, I would walk. That’s changed now because my health situation is different, but that’s how I did things then.
• Before recycling was available, I got on my parent’s case constantly about throwing away items that could be taken someplace for recycling. As a result, they bundled newspapers and conserved things they otherwise would have tossed into landfill. When the voluntary recycling programs started, we were among the first on our street to have a blue box out all the time. My parents, being Baby-Boomers, were very much of that throw-it-away-and-forget-it-existed mentality, and I hope I had SOME influence on changing their behaviour, even if just for a little while.
• I have recycled, frequently at my own inconvenience. When I lived in places that did not have blue-box collection I have stored recyclables and taken them to be recycled at any outlet that would accept them (of course, I was not making special trips out just for this, as I mentioned above). I carry bottles and cans home from the park or conservation area to blue-box them if there is only a garbage can there. I NEVER litter.
• Every place I could manage to do it, including some of the apartments (and I have spent a LOT of time living in different apartments) I have lived in, I have composted everything that is compostable, and used the compost to grow stuff in pots or my garden. In my life I may have put one or two bags of leaves out to the street just because I didn’t have anywhere else to put them – if even that many.
• When I had a dog, I used a composter for the dog poop as well. This is different from the regular composter, but it was worth the investment, in my opinion. Poop gets broken down by the special enzymes you put in the composter. No run-off, no hauling costs to take it to a landfill, no contamination.
• Since the day I got my first apartment, I have used efficient compact-fluorescent lighting. They cost more than $9 a bulb back in 1986, but I have used them everywhere that didn’t require a dimmer or other specific property of a different kind of light bulb. That’s 22+ years that I have been using less electricity and therefore generating less waste and pollution by power plants.
• I have always owned the most efficient appliances I could afford. That does not mean that everything was “EnerGuide EnergyStar Uber-efficient”, but it means that I always chose what I could to make a difference. When I owned a house, I bought a used stove but I bought a new, efficient fridge, because that is what runs all the time. We use a toaster oven and microwave as much as possible because they are more efficient.
• I have always used timers and so on to turn up and down the thermostat (except for this rental house we are in now) or lights. The house I owned in the early 90s had motion sensing lights, timed fixtures and appliances, a set-back automatic thermostat on the furnace, and even though I had no central air I ALSO had a plug-in thermostat/timer for the window-unit air conditioner.
• I have NEVER set a house thermostat over 20° Celsius for heating. I have never set it below about 24° for cooling. “If you are cold, put on a sweater” rings through our house all winter long.
• If there is a choice between an item with excess packaging and an item without, I buy the one without. We buy many things in bulk to reduce waste. If an item has ridiculously excessive packaging, I often write to the manufacturer to suggest they waste less. We always remember that the first R in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is REDUCE.
• We use reusable shopping bags and minimize the use of plastic bags. We don’t use wrapping paper except on RARE occasions where there is almost no acceptable way around it, eschewing it for reusable gift bags, boxes, and so on. Every bag or package that can be reused is reused again and again until it wears out. We always remember that the second R in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is REUSE.

I just realized I could probably go on forever – there is so much more I could add.

I always, and have always, balanced the value of what I do on all levels, environmentally and financially. I didn’t just START because of Al Gore – reading his biography, I think I was probably concerned about the environment before he even clued in that an environmental movement existed (he participated in congressional hearings in the late 1970s, and I started before I was 10). I didn’t change my behaviour because ‘the world is going to end’. I didn’t change my behaviour just because I had kids – I was doing as much as I could do back before I ever thought I would have kids.

I am going to leave you with one final thing. I have a dream house. I have planned it out, on paper in the past, on the computer, and in other ways. At one time I had made 3-D models of it. My wife and I have discussed it many times since we met. Is my dream house a mansion? No. However, it is built out of renewable, environmentally friendly materials with highly efficient insulation. It will be self-sufficient, harvesting wind energy and solar energy for electricity, as well as solar heating for hot water and use a substantial number of passive-solar features. It will have a turf roof, a central masonry stove and heat-sink to distribute heat evenly and efficiently. It will have some in-floor hot water heating. It will make highly efficient use of gray-water to recycle water for toilets, and it will have a cistern and a water tower for collecting water for gardening and non-drinking purposes as well. In the last 5 years, I have changed my plans from using dirty storage batteries filled with harmful chemicals and heavy metals to using hydrogen storage and a hydrogen fuel cell for electrical reserves, since that has become an option. My home, if I can ever afford it, will NOT be some wasteful, chemical-filled cookie-cutter real estate agent’s million-dollar wet-dream “Executive Home” built in a subdivision. It will be one that can exist independent of the electrical grid, using wireless communications for connectivity to the outside world, and it will be quietly tucked away someplace where there won’t be a huge need for “impressing the neighbours”-type appearances. No matter what it ends up looking like, it will be beautiful to me, because it really will be a “green” home.

I started planning this home a long time ago, and no part of it is designed to prevent “Global Warming”. The plan existed before the manufactured climate-crisis. I have ALWAYS tried to live green.

Can YOU say the same, Mr(or Ms) I-Just-Bought-A-Hybrid-So-I-Am-Green?

The main problem for me these days is how utterly gullible people are about what is “environmentally friendly”. They don’t really do any checking up on the claims of greedy companies – they simply buy into whatever the hype of the day is, and begin participating in whatever practice is the flavour du jour even if it is complete slacktivism.

One place I could rant about is Hybrid cars, but I am not going to bother when the show Bullshit! has done a far more complete job than I can do here. Suffice to say, hybrids are actually mind-bogglingly wasteful in most ways, gaining only slightly in the area of mileage while requiring many toxic substances in order to manufacture their batteries and systems. It is TRENDY to drive a hybrid, so it is the car of choice for slacktivists – but someone who truly cares about the environment is going to find the most efficient conventional car they can buy, plan their trips to avoid waste, drive sensibly without mashing the gas or the brake, and sometimes forgo the car when they can ride their bike or walk. A Mercedes smart achieves far better mileage than most hybrids and has a very efficient conventional engine. And don’t feed me a line about how it is too small – by the time you put the damn batteries in a hybrid, you’ve sucked up the better part of the space you gained by driving that bigger piece of shit. The RIDICULOUS Chevy Malibu Hybrid gives well under a 10% gain in mileage over its conventional counterpart, while requiring numerous additional hazardous elements in its manufacture – and still gets the same or worse mileage than similar non-hybrid models from Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, and scores a 6 out of 10 from the EPA for the amount of air pollution it creates! This is not a cleaner, more efficient vehicle, but it represents the “latest technology” GM offers. Oh – and don’t even get me STARTED on the scarcity of lithium for the best battery technology we’ve come up with to day…

So, to sum up so far: in my view, if you drive a hybrid, you’re nothing more (and nothing less) than a pretentious, pack-following idiotic douchebag. Yes, Ed Begley, I’m looking at you, too – the solar panels don’t save you from the ridicule.

But that wasn’t what I was REALLY annoyed at. Oh, no, not by a long shot. What was it, you ask, gentle reader (assuming you don’t drive a hybrid and are already so hacked off at me you want to burn down my house)?

Timers.

Timers are great for some things when it comes to improving efficiency. A timer that turns down your thermostat at night or when you are not home is a fantastic idea, and saves a vast sum of energy. Timers which shut off your oven when the food is done cooking or turn out the lights when they are not needed – great idea! They actually serve a purpose.

What has me pissed off as hell is advertising I have been watching lately telling people to put timers on things like their stereo system or their microwave oven, because they “draw a little bit of power all the time” and it is not efficient. Those timers I will refer to, from now on, as FUCKING TIMERS.

Well, lets start with the obvious: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK POWERS THE FUCKING TIMER? TICKY-TOCKY FAIRIES? LITTLE GNOMES THAT SNEAK IN THE HOUSE AND WIND IT ALL NIGHT LONG? Cheese and fucking CRACKERS!!! The amount of power needed to keep the clock set on your microwave or the stations preset in the stereo, or the television stations programmed to your cable company is not that significantly different from the amount of power needed to run the FUCKING TIMER.

On top of that – where do you think these fucking timers come from? Do you think they plant little seeds on the shelves in the Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire store, and by morning they are grown and available for sale, springing forth fully-formed like Venus arises from the sea in Botticelli’s masterpiece?

No… those little pieces of plastic and metal have to be assembled in a factory. A factory which has to have the raw materials mined from the ground and shipped to it, and which then has to use energy to power their lights and machines to make the fucking timer, and then to package and ship them to the warehouse of the retailer, which then has to ship them to the store. How much damn energy do you think this takes, let’s say, on a PER FUCKING TIMER basis? I suppose you also eat organic produce they have to SHIP IN from Chile because organic is more “environmentally friendly”, don’t you, dumbass?

Sorry, but unless you are turning off your hot water heater overnight when you are not using it, you aren’t saving enough energy to justify those fucking timers. You just aren’t. If you are that worried about the trickle of power that maintains your electronic stuff – UNPLUG THE GOD-DAMN THINGS. Put it on a power bar and turn it off when you are not using it. Pull the fuse, open the circuit breaker, whatever floats your boat – but don’t put it on some FUCKING TIMER and then sneer superciliously at your “environmentally unfriendly” acquaintances that don’t.

There are sensible ways to save power. Efficient lighting turned on only when needed, high-efficiency appliances, and just (yes, here it comes again) NOT WASTING SHIT are only a few.

Padding the pockets of some greedy company which has hornswoggled some amoeba-minded government bureaucrat into making commercials to promote this idiotic practice is NOT on the short list.