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Moore wins world's most prestigious film award
Link chicken farming compensation to change
Big money enters global warming battle
Expensive gasoline praised
Don't eat the salmon
Moore wins world's most
prestigious film award
When Michael Moore won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last month, he
set Washington buzzing like a hornet's nest. His documentary film
on terrorism and the Iraq war not only ties the Bush clan to the
bin Ladens, it has new footage of tortured Iraqi prisoners and US
soldiers' caskets being censored by US TV. Fahrenheit 9/11 is constantly
evolving; the version shown at Cannes is different than what will
be released July 4 because new developments in the Iraq debacle
need to be included says Moore.
There's lots of money to be made from Fahrenheit 9/11, which puts
conservative Disney in a quandary. It hasn't succeeded in censoring
Moore and is behaving as if it didn't know it was financing a political
film. Now Disney is afraid of a backlash from Jeb Bush hurting its
Florida empire.
Other film distributors including Lions Gate of Vancouver are standing
in line hoping to pay off Disney's $6 million investment and take
over the Moore film.
The White House won't be able to stop Fahrenheit 9/11 but Republican
officials are reportedly trying to use the federal election commission
to shut the film down. That would be the best thing to happen to
Michael Moore he says since Charlton Heston granted him an interview
for his previous blockbuster Bowling for Columbine. www.michaelmoore.com
Link chicken farming
compensation to change
In response to the avian influenza disaster in the Fraser Valley,
the Green Party
of Canada recently called for a re-evaluation of the poultry industry,
by linking compensation to the promotion of more diverse, humane
and economically sound farming practices according to Green Party
deputy leader Andrew Lewis.
Almost 19 million chickens in the Fraser Valley are being slaughtered
by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency because of avian flu. The
federal and provincial governments are now considering public compensation
to support the industry during these devastating times.
"Before we give away a dime of taxpayer money, we first need an
alternative to intensive factory farming in the Fraser Valley that
directly contributed to the avian flu threat. Taxpayers, organic
small farms and 19 million chickens will pay the price if governments
proceed with their short-sighted compensation plans", said Lewis.
With 80 percent of BC's poultry in the Fraser Valley, de-clawed,
de-beaked and fed antibiotics, it is inevitable that poultry immune
response systems will be compromised and that epidemics such as
flu will spread farm to farm in such a small geographic area.
"It's time for the Canadian government to ask whether the corporate
health of Colonel Saunders comes first or the health of Canadians,"
said Lewis.
The concerns of the Green Party are that compensation without promoting
change will lead to a further loss of genetic diversity in poultry,
increased density in cages, increased concentration in the Fraser
Valley, and further taxpayer costs when the industry needs to be
bailed out next time. www.greenparty.ca
Big money enters global warming
battle
Swiss Re, the world's second-largest reinsurance company, recently
warned that the costs of natural disasters caused by global warming
is threatening humanity with a catastrophe of its own making.
Not only has Swiss Re been sponsoring documentary films about the
problem that many of have seen, but it has been in discussion with
almost 300 banks and investment companies with well over $1 trillion
in assets. The purpose is to get the message across that stocks
of corporations which are causing massive carbon dioxide releases
will be sold off if action isn't taken to turn the situation around.
As the value of oil company stocks for instance begins dropping,
investment companies will support CO2 neutral energy technologies.
Green alternatives to fossil fuels should get a rapid boost from
such a strategy.
In its report on how climate change is nearing the top of the corporate
agenda, Swiss Re said the climatic disasters threaten to double
to $150 billion per year in 10 years.
Reinsurers like Swiss Re insure insurance companies against catastrophic
losses and if it deems ocean front homes for instance as too risky
to insure because of rising sea levels then no insurance will be
available for those people.
Global warming is expected to trigger increasingly frequent and
violent storms, heat waves, flooding, tornadoes and cyclones while
other areas get colder and dryer. Sea levels are continuing to rise,
glaciers retreat and snow cover decline. www.swissre.ch
Expensive gasoline praised
As fuel prices loft into the stratosphere, likely never to come
down, we can soon expect indignation about how this will end the
world as we know it. Let's hope so.
Our long addiction to cheap oil has cost us dearly in terms of health,
global security, human rights and a changing climate. Maybe it's
time we looked at expensive fuel as a Godsend rather than a crisis.
First, let's remember that oil prices will likely continue to rise
and there is nothing we can do about it. Public proclamations aside,
OPEC members are quietly admitting that they have little excess
production capacity. Major oil companies such as Shell have recently
had to "revise" their reserve figures. Couple this with ballooning
demand in China and it all adds up to a simple fact: we are finally
running out of cheap oil.
Like a drunk on a bender, it might not be welcome news that our
favourite liquid is in short supply. There will be a hangover no
doubt, but we should think about the benefits of kicking the habit.
We may realize that our addiction has cost us far more than we realized.
The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) estimates that air pollution
in that province from burning fossil fuels causes 43 million sick
days, 13,000 hospital visits and 1,900 premature deaths each year.
Asthma, bronchitis and congestive heart failure all are made worse
by smog, estimated by the OMA to cost the provincial economy a staggering
$12 billion each year and rising.
Let's not forget car crashes, which cost the Ontario economy $9.1
billion each year, and cause 1,000 deaths and almost 90,000 injuries.
The costs associated with climate change are also adding up. Climate-related
disasters rose by 10 percent between 2002 and 2003, totaling over
$60 billion. The heat wave in Europe last summer killed an incredible
20,000 people. Swiss Re, one of the largest re-insurance companies
in the world announced last month that it expects that weather disasters
will climb to $150 billion per year in the next 10 years. As much
as we love our cars, as they say: there's no free lunch.
And then there's the ugly business of securing foreign oil supplies.
An obvious case in point is the clumsy and tragic intervention in
Iraq that now seems likely to sow the seeds of war and hatred for
generations. Over 700 US soldiers have been killed and probably
around 10,000 Iraqi civilians - the US is not counting. The monetary
cost is a staggering $113 billion and counting.
Here at home many of our civil liberties are being sacrificed on
the altar of the so-called war on terror. This nebulous conflict
has sprouted directly from our dependence on foreign oil and is
eroding many of the constitutional protections that define our free
and open society.
Our oil addiction has cost us dearly but there seems little hope
that we can kick the habit on our own.
That point was made abundantly clear recently by US Senator James
Inhofe, who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public
Works. At an international climate change conference last year he
made a brazen statement typical of an addict in denial: "I'm becoming
more and more convinced... that global warming is the greatest hoax
ever perpetrated on the American people and the world."
Hmmm - Who to believe? The leading climate scientists in the world,
or a senator from an oil-producing state in an election year?
Rising fuel prices will succeed where moral suasion has failed.
In fact, they already have. Sales of the automotive monstrosity,
the Hummer H2 have fallen 24 percent in the first four months of
this year. There is no better index of an improving planet. Higher
costs will also foster much needed interest, innovation and investment
in conservation and alternative technologies. Perhaps some oil companies
will turn their massive resources to developing these clean energy
alternatives rather than choosing to go down with their ship. That
would be money well spent here in BC, which has been estimated by
the World Energy Congress as having the greatest potential for wind
power in the world.
Our governments can play an important role in this transformation
by bringing in smart subsidies and progressive tax shifting that
favour conservation and innovation. Canada has an opportunity to
become a leader in alternative technologies that will sprout from
the ashes of our oil economy.
Change will come, and we should welcome it. When it comes to cheap
oil, the developed world has been like a bad drunk on a bender.
www.sierralegal.org
Don't eat the salmon
The carnage of 5 million British Columbia pink salmon is under
way according to Alexandra Morton, an eminent BC wild salmon advocate
and biologist.
Since 2001 there has been an unprecedented appearance of sea lice
on wild juvenile salmon in the heavily salmon-farmed waters of the
Broughton Archipelago according to Morton, an eminent BC wild salmon
advocate and biologist.
After identifying the epidemic in 2001, pink and chum fry were checked
coast wide and sea lice were found only on young salmon near salmon
farms.
Last year 11 salmon farms were fallowed in the Broughton and sea
lice numbers fell dramatically. This year the farm salmon are back
in the pens and the lice are back with a vengeance. The relationship
is undeniable.
In an act of ruthless negotiation farm operator Stolt was given
another site in exchange for fallowing one of its sites for a few
months last year and now both sites are stocked.
The DFO did a study at a cost of $1.2 million last year during the
fallow and held a news conference recently offering the take home
message that there is no problem here, in fact "juvenile salmon
with lice were more robust than those without lice." The scientific
community at large finds this ridiculous.
Now, the salmon farming industry is slated to expand up the coast
into even more productive wild salmon grounds.
The temptation must be great to disregard Morton's warnings, but
she has been correct for two years now on the size of this stock's
collapse. The reason she has been right is not because she's a great
scientist, but because the damage is so great. The number of infected
fish accurately predicts how many pink salmon will fail to return
to spawn.
This fall will see a good pink salmon return to the Broughton Archipelago
because these will be the fish that went to sea during the salmon
farm fallow. But if their offspring have to swim through clouds
of sea lice as this year's generation is doing now, a 5 million
strong population of pink salmon will cease to exist.
This scenario has been replayed world wide, wherever salmon farms
enter wild salmon waters. Norwegian scientists say they expected
this to happen. DFO has not offered its research to international
peer-review.
A large public resource is being annihilated by sheer sloppiness.
The salmon farms must be removed from Tribune Channel and the Burdwood
Islands by the end of this year for wild salmon to continue to exist
in the Broughton.
Hopefully the farmers will take this last opportunity to avoid the
legal implications and ruination of their industry and try something
new and brilliant. Denial of a problem this obvious is not the intelligent
move. A tiny army of young non-government scientists were in the
field last month, mostly without adequate funding. For photos disproving
DFO's claims see www.raincoastresearch.org/witness.htm
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