Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

How important is the environment to you as an election issue?

Are you prepared to vote for the party that has the best environmental platform/policy?

It looks like we might see a federal election in the fall. But, as I write to you in the middle of the summer of 2008, how important is a “green” policy to you really?

I know we all say the right things. But how do we really feel when that proverbial push comes to a deliberate shove?

Here it is: the environment is not the number one issue in the Maritimes. And while the Tories have yet to unveil anything that makes sense, and while the NDP have “cap and trade” (which most voters don’t really understand), the Liberals want to tax carbon polluters and “shift” the tax burden. The Liberal plan includes tax cuts. They even have a financial calculator on their website www.thegrenshift.ca based on your income to see how much you would save (knowing that other costs will go up).

Can Liberal leader Stephane Dion sell it here? Sure he has integrity. Leadership means just that - and leading is also difficult. Dion is prepared to fight an election over this one or die trying. Good for him. Instead of telling us what we want to hear or pandering, he is taking the lead. But is leadership on this issue what we want now, and in this region?

The Maritimes face more limited effects of global warming due to the happenstance of geography, a smaller population, and ocean moderation and winds. Global warming does not hit us in the face as much as it does elsewhere (hurricane Juan notwithstanding).

Pocketbook issues rule here. And on that score, Dion’s green plan maybe making us inhale an economic tail pipe.

The gain for the pain is just not visceral enough. The light at the end of the carbon tax tunnel is just not bright enough on this side of the country.

Maritime condemnation over the Atlantic Accord and the political martyrdom of Bill Casey is still very much on the voter radar. Again, that was about the money.

In the Maritimes especially, it is about the money.

A judge just ruled this week on a man who was over the legal limit for alcohol consumption where a young boy was killed on a bicycle. An accident reconstruction indicated that alcohol was not a factor in the fatality due to the nature of the accident. Another 26-year-old woman was convicted and sentenced following a fatality of her a friend, a passenger where she was drunk and took the car off the road into the ditch.

It doesn’t matter about the names, or the specifics.

There will be more of these — many more. Simply incarcerating for life or giving the death penalty to drunk drivers won’t make a difference either. Despite what some say, it is not a question of deterrence. People will drink and drive — less, mind you, than in times past due to education and acquired societal censure, but drink and drive they will.

In the Maritimes, the problem is particularly acute for a variety of reasons: Celtic culture and reduced public transit, a relatively low population density with large rural areas; not enough cabs; most importantly, when it comes to cabs, income. Reduced income also means less disposable income for cabs themselves at longer distances.

Let’s talk about these economic metrics. The average Maritime resident has a combined household income of 53K, with two kids. Recreational drinking costs, over the course of a year, mandate that many people will play the angles and push the legal envelope of restraint. It is a fact that no one talks about.

The highest consumers of alcohol are also those who can least afford to recreationally drink safely, 18- to 34-year-olds. Now, many of these are also students who can stumble home, but many drive too.

The NSLC recently recorded record booze sales; the bar industry in Halifax alone employs hundreds and generates huge profits. Not to mention the liquor industry that promotes itself and, by extension, government profits.

There is an entire advertising/marketing culture and culture of reward/entitlement at work, as well as the usual human inclination to self-medicate. Even apes in the wild consume fermented fruit. It is also human nature. Fortunately apes don’t drive cars, but if they could, they would. And if the government could find some way to tax apes they would as well.

What we are left with is the lie of individual human responsibility where the collective society gets the real “get out of jail free” card.

Yes, people are responsible for their own actions. But a society that benefits so handsomely should stop winking at us and waiting for those who will inevitably fail - or kill.

The next time you hear a beer commercial, or see one on TV, or watch the Molson Indy, think about that ‘get out of jail free card’ that the system and the culture holds.

This Bud’s for you.

Cheers.

The government of Canada refuses to come clean on the real costs of the counter insurgency in Afghanistan. We just don’t know. Officials now admit that we are not doing as well as we’d hoped – that’s called losing.

And while billions are being spent in Afghanistan our Navy goes without. With the ice cap melting, more and more Russians are taking the trip to mark their territory like a dog on a neighborhood post. Billions more dollars are at stake under the melting ice off shore.

And it is the off shore riches under the ice cap that our American friends want too. America does not accept some of our current Arctic territorial claims; imagine what the future will be like! As usual, Canada will cooperate. When it comes to Russia, Canada will only be successful when America backs our land claims in order to have their oil companies get the contract.

The more we divert money to the army to assist in America’s failed Afghan policy, the less capable we are at defending our own real, strategic interests in the Arctic. In terms of military expenditures, there are constraints here — this country will not support the percentage of GDP defense budgets that the U.S. does. Here, there are limits. It also takes years to build ships. We need to act now to support our Navy to protect our territorial waters. Yet, where are the new Destroyers? Where is the plan for the Navy?

The recent Tory fulminations on long-term military spending were a show, and nothing more. The good military intentions on the part of the Harper government were honest, the attempt to further brand the Conservative Party with the military was honest, but the short-term realities as presented were disingenuous: all the dough is going to Afghanistan. Also, Minority governments today cannot project themselves 20 years into future budgets as Harper would have you believe.

What no one will tell you is that with Afghanistan as the priority, we compromise our Arctic sovereignty. There simply is not enough money to go around – or political will.

What about Afghanistan?

NATO is worse off now then they were in 2001 (it only took six years to defeat Hitler).

Think about it this way, when the Taliban were in power and Osama Bin Laden was quiet, and the West was doing business with the Taliban, how bad was it? Outside of international relations circles, most people had no idea who the Taliban were prior to 9/11.

Right now, Osama Bin Laden is operating with impunity in Pakistan. But, are we invading Pakistan? Why not, if stopping him is a vital strategic interest? It is not the Taliban who attacked us, it was al-Qaeda.

Osama is still operating, just like the good old days prior to 9/11 when he lived in Afghanistan. There is no change.

In quicksand, the more you struggle, the more you sink.

And while hell freezes over, the Arctic melts.

The late, great, comedian George Carlin, famously challenged his audience with the notion that “politicians don’t suck,” as politicians are not born or otherwise resurrected from above or below, they are us – the public. It is “not the politicians who suck,” corrected Carlin, “it is the public”.

When Carlin spoke of the public’s tiresome and tireless rant against politicians he also included the idea of greedy, self-serving, politicians who are “the best we have,” in other words, they exhibit what we do and who we are, for better or worse.

This may seem like a blatant truism, not worthy of commentary, but far from it. Canadians, more than any other Western Liberal Democracy (Liberal in the constitutional sense), are complainers — a nation of whiners; partly due of course to having our land evolve from a former British protectorate to a de facto American Protectorate. Because Canadians have never had to do their own lifting, fighting in concert or by British command, we have never paid the price for nationhood, the way the U.S. has.

When Britain won the Seven Years war and the war of 1812 there was no Canadian self-consciousness, there was no Canada. It was a territory that belonged legally, and culturally, to another land across the pond. None of it was a “Canadian” victory; instead it evolved into a Canadian victory. That verb “evolved” is a key concept. So are the words inherited, developed, grew into, and metastasized. When we earned it, when we fought and died, it was never for our survival, it was for Britain’s, for the United Nations in Korea, for NATO in Afghanistan. Canada has never had the equal of America’s Revolutionary war where America said ‘no,” and America’s Civil War to define itself.

In modern times, Canadians have paid the price only in a multi-national context. By contrast, America’s multi-national experience was as a leader: in WW2 and in Korea, and as a Johnny-come-lately game changer in WW1.

“Going it alone” in terms of Foreign policy has served to negatively contribute to America’s self-definition in Vietnam and Iraq, specifically.

Canada is a Middle Power with an international outlook born from geographical good fortune and nice neighbor-relatives. It is the teenager that has inherited the house and doesn’t like the color.

We complain about politicians the way we used to complain about our domestic overlords – Mummy and Daddy.

Grow up. We have good ones here – especially in the Maritimes.

In no particular order NDP MLA Frank Corbett (who let me stay at his place when I first moved here), former Tory Bill Casey, Super-minister Peter Mackay, NDP leader Darryl Dexter, Conservative MLA Judy Stretch, Liberal Stephen McNeil, the witty and talented Scott Brison (a friend), the hard-working Liberal MP Michael Savage, Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald and New Brunswick Premier Shaun Graham, Saint John MP Paul Zed, (whom I have never met, nor interviewed, but whom I have heard good things about. Dion, Dryden, Ignatief, Bob Rae, all compelling people.

I am not a big fan of the PM for foreign policy reasons. But I respect his intelligence.

The next time you want to cast all politicians with the same brush of castigation, think of it this way: I don’t know if these politicians deserve you.

I know, I know, complaining is in your blood. After all, you’re a Canadian and a whiner. You inherited the house.

UFOs: The Secret History — David Cherniak’s feature-length documentary which airs on the History Channel will be my special guest at 11am on Monday on “Maritime Morning”.

It is interesting to see the range of approaches to the UFO phenomenon. UFOs have become something on a Rorschach/inkblot test, wherein people read into them what they themselves want to see; it is a projection.

In Medieval times, people saw religious “miracles”, and offered these visions as proof of God’s guiding hand.

Throughout time, there has been a very conscious and unconscious impulse to feel that “someone is watching over us from above”, that there is an advanced being among us. I blame this set of circumstances today on the issue of diffuse Christianity, where people maintain unfocussed religious beliefs and do a fair amount of psychological projection as a result. For example, it seems “more scientific” to believe in aliens that are an advanced life form than to deal with the rigors of a belief system like Christianity that actually makes demands of you. Nobody wants to do the hard work anymore, and loving yourself and your neighbor isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

The psychological dimensions of the UFO “mystery” remains an area where very little academic study has been done. Our world is a mass of contradictions where people in polls claim to believe in “something” greater than themselves without giving shape to it in a formal religious context. But the need for religion remains, however denied.

The great equalizer in all of this is the unknown. No matter how sophisticated we get scientifically, we are constantly surprised by that which we don’t know and by a science that seems inadequate.

There is a tremendous human vanity in the notion that we will never know everything, that the human spirit is ineffable; that the human spirit is too grand. Maybe it is.

But what if that human vanity of the spirit is false? Perhaps that is what scares us.

It is lonely at the top.

The “ghost in the machine” is a philosophical argument, or at least a response to another. But, as we move forward into a brave new world of machines that can think independently, why not impute the concept of soulfulness into the fabric of the nano-chip?

At the dawn of the last century, the concept of the computer was non-existent. Today, I talk to you on one and you access my blog with one. So, think of the leap from the Wright Brothers and Alexander Bell etc., to now, then add 100 years! Why not a soul soon? We seem to place conscious limits to our imaginations when it comes to what our man-made machines are capable.

At the University of Toronto in the early 80s I was exposed to the Cray computer — a real dinosaur today, but not then. For the longest time, computers like the Cray, and IBM’s Big Blue, could only perform “grunt work”, heavy lifting, number crunching – brute force computations. But these are only early generation machines.

Today, technology expert Ken Rutkowski (www.kenradio.com) joined us form L.A. to discuss the latest in technology in what is developing at exponential rates underneath us, and in our living rooms. And while he didn’t reflect upon talking computers this time or computers attaining a level of self-consciousness, he did discuss the fabulous interface of consumer culture and high-tech.

Voice mail is dead, he proclaims, and Ken provides these web sites as examples Spinvox,
,  PhoneTag , Yap  and Jott . 

He also mentioned that old tech items, such as “walkie-talkies” can now have a 50 mile radius — for next to nothing price-wise. And in a time where your text messages will now cost you, anything that can save money is a help.

I began the blog today, and my broadcast this morning, with the discussion of souls, and soulfulness, and whether or not the Catholic Church should embrace the Church of England’s approach when it comes to the ordination of women as Bishops.

Are women spiritual equals? Shoud we have a female Pope?

Callers pointed out to tradition, Literalists pointed to the “word of God”. Controversial Christian Gretta Vosper (“With or Without God” author) challenged us by saying traditons are shackles and anyone who says that they are literalists have not really read the Bible! According to Vosper, when it comes to the Bible, we all cherry-pick, we are all selective; that to accept all aspects of the Good Book in its totality is to run into contradiciton and absurdity.

Perhaps the most challenging thing Gretta Vosper posed today is why would God create a species of fallible sinners and then sacrifice his only son to pay for it? Why kill to redeem in the first place? Why create sin?

Turning to the future, I wonder if computers will ever attain self-consciousness, and, if so, what God they will choose, and whom they might sacrifice?

iPod or iGod?

One of the bright solar lights in a sea of fossil fuel blues is a little young company in Nova Scotia called Second Source Power — from manufacturing wind turbines to installing solar panels; the company radiates the kind of entrepreneurial zeal the oil men had in the last century. It is gushing.

Three men in studio today included Mark Richard, President, Sandy Hines (solar expert), and Engineer Stan Mason. Behind the scenes Chief Operating Officer Jeff Larson, eagerly listened and took his mental victory lap knowing that their time has come.

As Sandy pointed out, in Europe, German homes often add to the grid system due to the ubiquitous use of solar panels on homes. And with solar power technology increasing, so will the efficiency of the panels themselves.

The future of homes will be a mix of solar, and wind, and new batteries in cars and homes (solar batteries) with increasing use of nuclear power for cities. The days when one source, fossil fuels, does everything are over.

Second Source Power is a company to watch — an example of the new green economy: www.secondsourcepower.com.

Later on my broadcast today I discussed “Who Killed the Grand Banks” with investigative journalist Alex Rose. His research led him to two conclusions: 1) Newfoundland did it to themselves with the assistance of short-term thinking politicians and an incompetent DFO. 2) Nothing has changed. Soon it will be the salmon out west.

Tomorrow, I will investigate the compensation announced today for Stephen Truscott. Julian Sher is the author of “Until You Are Dead”.

It always amuses me, and somewhat infuriates, that I still receive emails from Global warming naysayers.

Despite the scientific analysis of over 6,000 experts in the field, all of whom say the jury is in when it comes to human carbon emission contributions, despite the clear facts of human environmental impact (effects that we see all around us), despite our own empirical knowledge of pollution and climate change, there is a loud minority of people, (the same who believe man never landed on the moon), that maintain that global warming has two sides to it, that there should be a “debate”, that Al Gore is a phony and that the scientists are all wrong.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no “opinion” when it comes to scientific method(s). Scientific process is there to achieve quantifiable evidence that is tested. People will say to me “Well, my opinion is that”. But what they fail to realize is that anyone can have a point of view on anything, but that doesn’t make it valid, or even listenable.

Anti-global warmers will try and trot out other “evidence” from researchers (many of whom come from the energy lobby in some form), that points to the opposite notion.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has more than dealt with the evidence. Moreover, the world scientific body has no axe to grind economically – they do not profit one way or the other when it comes to their conclusions. Certainly, the fossil fuel sectors — the coal, gas, and oil lobbies — have much to gain by playing down the effects of greenhouse gas emissions that traps heat from the sun. They want as much coal and gas and oil used as possible — and these folks are in the world of record profits right now.

The most obvious problem with the nay sayers, is their total lack of scientific understanding. What exists, generally, with these people is newspaper knowledge — no books read; no studies read; no real work — just the internet.

The problem with the internet is that you can find anything about everything: talking dogs, alien visitations, Elvis clones, to the notion that the Holocaust was a hoax. Any view can find reinforcement, no matter how crank-strewn.

But forget the scientists for a moment.

You know when Stephen Harper comes in from the cold on this one that there must be something to it.