A Century of Scientific Discovery That Brought Life and Death

The Guardian

It's 100 years since Fritz Haber found a way to synthesise ammonia – helping to feed billions but also to kill millions, and contributing to the pollution of the planet…Details here.

Climate Change Report Predicts Warming Will Only Make Human Ills Worse

Huffington Post

Many of the ills of the modern world — starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease — are likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change...Full story here.

Floodwater blocks access to a rural home near 

Yorkton, Saskatchewan, CA - 2011. PLT photo

Canadians Head to Parliament Hill to Lobby for Carbon Fee and Dividend

Citizens Climate Lobby. 

In mid-November, as climate leaders gather in Warsaw, Poland for the 19th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, citizens from across Canada will be lobbying for Carbon Fee and Dividend on Parliament Hill. Full story here.


Storm clouds near Regina. PLT photo

Help Save The Bees

We are writing to ask you to send an email to Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency calling for a ban on neonicotinoids pesticides.  You may have seen media reports over the summer describing the critical situation of beekeepers. It is estimated that 40% of the bees in Ontario and Quebec were killed in 2012 and early reports from 2013 are looking just as bad. So bad in fact the Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency has posted this statement: “(we’ve) determined that current agricultural practices related to the use of neonicotinoid treated corn and soybean seed are affecting the environment due to their impacts on bees and other pollinators”.  PMRA went on to invite public comment on the use of neonicotinoids and we are passing the invitation on to you, please let them know what you think! Just click here, fill in the form and click “send”.

Reader Finds Me Disgusting

My  letter to the Editor, "Have our Servants Become Our Masters? - Why Fossil Fuels are No Longer Our Friends," published in The Roblin Review earlier this month, seems to have hit a nerve. 

It led to a follow-up letter from a reader in the north, published the following week in the same paper. He accuses me of being out to kill Canadian jobs and finds my letter a "disgusting piece of drivel" in the way I insult Mr. Harper and the oil patch.

Please read my response to that letter, below! 
Larry
======

Dear Editor,

I'm glad that John Titanich has seen fit to respond in the Review to my earlier letter about fossil fuels and why they are no longer our friends. After all, public debate is the bedrock of a healthy democracy. 

Mind you,  John did get a tad personal. But that comes with the territory, I guess. As for his suggestion you can't be an environmentalist if you drive anything more modern than an ox-cart, well, I've heard that one before, too. Of course, I leave a carbon footprint. Every human does.  My goal is to keep mine small. And I believe I have.

Yes, I drive a car. Mine happens to get up to 50 miles per gallon. I travel close to the speed limit which is not only safer but more fuel efficient (fewer greenhouse gases).  It has been said that, if every owner of a mid-sized SUV traded it in on a hybrid, they would save a whopping 70 percent on their fuel bills! 

While the environmental benefits of that scenario would be lost on folks like John, surely the economic ones should not!

And, since trains cause less harm to the climate than jet planes do, I also collect air miles and put them toward more Via Rail trips and less air travel. 

I know that the provocative comments I come up with are often "off the charts." They are obviously an attempt to over-compensate for the immovable forces,  like the Prime Minister and Big Oil, who are lined up against those of us who would choose a cleaner, greener world. These forces are not the least bit interested in compromising or making way for a future powered by more sustainable sources.

I believe many environmentalists realize, we aren't going to turn the Titanic around. But maybe we can change her course so she doesn't hit the iceberg. Trouble is, we are not changing course. We are steaming ever closer to disaster, eyes closed and hands firmly on the tiller. Our leaders are telling us "steady as she goes"apparently not knowing or wanting to know, what lies ahead. So maybe the time for polite, reasonable argument has passed.

As for wanting to kill Canadian jobs, I have no such wish, John. Other countries such as Germany have shown, there are plenty of jobs which could be created in a greener society. And I'll never give our leaders a "pass" for their lack of such will. 

It's worth noting that, since I wrote the "disgusting drivel" John refers to, the worst killer storm in a generation has rocked England and other parts of Europe, another oil fire on a train has terrorized a small town in Alberta, millions of litres of tar continue to leak from a drilling company's site into a lake near the traditional territory of an Alberta First Nation, and Australia is still reeling from another terrible round of wildfires, including ones which threatened Sydney, itself.

So, if the Titanic can't be turned around, or even diverted by the kind of rhetoric John would seem to favour, I guess he'll just have to settle for even more of my disgusting drivel.  

Larry Powell  

Neepawa, MB

Argentina Is Using More Pesticide Than Ever Before. And Now It Has Cancer Clusters.

Mother Jones

In Chaco, birth defects quadrupled in the decade after biotechnology dramatically expanded farming in Argentina. Details here.

Breach of Trust

Ill-informed and incoherent: the head of (Britain's) the National Trust talks nonsense on fracking. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 24th October 2013 “It’s not for me to judge the relative merits of fracking versus wind turbines.” So said Dame Helen Ghosh, the National Trust’s new director-general. To this there are two obvious responses. The first is: yes, as the head of Britain’s biggest conservation group, this is just the kind of judgement you should be making. You’ve been appointed to lead this organisation, and a crucial component of leadership is making judgements. Because it is a public organisation, these judgements should be explained to your membership and to others who take an interest in what the Trust does.