Hydro should tell whole story

Lately, the BC public has been bombarded with BC Hydro stating that BC is a net importer of electrical power. This would lead us to believe that if Campbell’s plan of private power generation is not implemented, all our latté machines will hiss to a cold stop.
True, BC is an importer of power. Not because we need it, but because it makes money. A large portion of out-of-province power is generated by thermal energy. These steam plants are designed to operate most efficiently when at full load and it is better to keep them at this level 24-seven. At night, this creates a surplus of power in the West. BC Hydro can buy this [coal and nuclear] power at a very low cost. This enables it to reduce the hydro dam output. During the day, when there is a large demand for power – mainly in the US western states – BC Hydro turns up its generating capacity at the dams. This power is then sold to the North American grid at a very high price. This is very good business practice; however, BC Hydro should tell the whole story.
In the last 40 years, political meddling with BC Hydro has cost us millions of dollars. First, there was the Hat Creek fiasco, and lately, Glen Clark’s Georgia Strait natural gas pipeline to Vancouver Island. Is Premier Campbell’s private power generation going to give us a third?

Dave Thomson, Cobble Hill, BC,
arthurcaldicott@sqwalk.com

Galvanize support for rivers

As a concerned citizen, I really want to know what I can do about the BC Hydro situation that you have outlined in your magazine. How is this problem realistically going to be solved? I am not a “negative Nelly,” but I feel like this is an avalanche. I see what you are saying, but what can I do? It would seem to me that it is up to the big media to cover this story and I know they won’t, so where does that leave us?
On a larger scale, I see that it is a systemic problem; how do you combat that? Getting information out is extremely important; is your publication at universities? What do students think? If you can’t galvanize the people, I think this issue will just keep chugging along. When is the last time people have been galvanized to take on a big issue other than getting Fox pulling its OJ special? I feel people are so disconnected from their surroundings that the best thing to do is duck and cover. Capitalism has pounded in the idea of every man for himself and I think it has finally landed in Canada. What can I do that won’t jeopardize my work and family? How do you make the average person aware without sounding like the sky is falling, even if it is? I would love to know.

Peter Skeels, Burnaby, BC

Climate change biggest terrorist
An open letter to the PM et al:

I note that you have committed $254 million to public transit systems in Canadian cities – not to improve those systems so that more riders will get out of their cars, but “to combat terrorism.”
There is no doubt that terrorists would like to retaliate, as long as “we” keep invading Islamic lands and killing Moslems, but there is considerable doubt about their ability to undertake terrorist attacks without being detected and thwarted by our security forces, especially now that those forces have been so fully alerted and beefed up by further hundreds of millions of dollars “… to improve security and combat terrorism” at our borders and throughout Canada.
There is, however, a far more dangerous and implacable force that has already destroyed almost all the pine forests of BC and Alberta, and which threatens to destroy forests right across Canada. This same terrible force has melted permafrost, threatening arctic species like the polar bear and destroying the Inuit way of life. It has already razed a major American city, and leading experts say that it poses a credible threat to raise the sea level by 20 to 40 feet, which will inundate coastal cities in Canada and around the globe. It poses a realistic threat to obliterate Bangladesh and other low-lying areas, destroy millions of hectares of agricultural land and cause tens of millions of people to become refugees.
Yet, while you spend hundreds of millions of extra dollars to ward off the possibility of a bomb on a bus or train – in case some terrorist should slip through our already fine-mesh net of security forces – you say that it would be too hard to do anything about the much greater danger until 2050.
What if you said it was too hard to do anything about terrorist threats until 2050? Yet who in their wildest nightmares could imagine terrorists doing one millionth the damage that global warming has already done, let alone its clear potential to disrupt human populations and, perhaps more real to you, economies around the globe?
Don’t you think it’s time to straighten out your priorities? I do.

Caspar Davis, Victoria, BC
Forwarded from Joe Hueglin’s Daily Digest.