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It's Global Warming, Stupid!

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- by Larry Powell 1997 Red River flood turned St. Adolphe into an island So I hear another flood "of biblical proportions" could be headed Manitoba way! A swollen Red River already has officials in North Dakota and even our province on high alert. Word is this one could be as bad or even worse, (if that's possible) than the one in '97 that brought tragedy and grief to both farmers and small town residents in the flood plain. They called the one back then "the worst of the century," following what had been "the worst blizzard of all-time." (Or was it the other way around?) Whichever the case, it makes me feel like screaming, "It's climate change, stupid!" What is it going to take for you politicians and you, "average Joes" to wake up from your stupor and see the light? (That industry and big polluting corporations do nothing, is no surprise. I expect better of you.) As you watch growing evidence of the climate

WHY ARE WE FLUSHING AWAY OUR GREATEST RESOURCES?

This issue has been a pet pee, er, I mean peeve of mine for years! - PLT ======= Courtesy ALTERNET. By Laurie David and Allen Hershkowitz . Posted March 11, 2009 . Each flush of a urinal wastes more than a gallon of water, millions of times each day. It's time to go waterless.

Are We Breeding Ourselves to Extinction?

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted March 11, 2009. Cutting back on fossil fuels, shutting down our coal plants, and building seas of wind turbines, will be useless unless we nip population growth. All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age

LOUISIANA PACIFIC TAKES POLLUTION CONTROLS OFFLINE IN MANITOBA - UNACCEPTABLE IN U.S!

THE BOREAL ACTION PROJECT. 205-180 Market Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R3B 0P7 Susanne McCrea (204) 297-0321 Coordinator For immediate release MARCH 6, 2009 Manitoba’s Louisiana Pacific Plant Takes Pollution Controls Offline Unacceptable in the U.S. Even the neighbours of Louisiana Pacific’s Swan River OSB plant didn’t know the pollution controls had been taken offline, until local resident, Margaret Romak went and knocked on some doors. Louisiana Pacific’s Swan Valley OSB mill, near Minitonas, has been releasing more toxic chemicals into the air since, last January. “I stopped at a house about one mile in each of the four directions from the plant. Not one person knew that this had already been done”, said Romak. “There is something very badly wrong with that. The Province granted “temporary” discontinuation of the RTO pollution control system to LP, in spite of the Clean Environment Commission’s insistence on it as a condition of the company’s operation in the province. “There

TELL THE EPA TO PROTECT HONEY BEES FROM A TOXIC PESTICIDE!

Just click here to find out how!

FOOTNOTE BY DAN SOPROVICH, AN ECOLOGIST, FORESTRY EXPERT AND LONG-TIME WATCHDOG OF "LP" OPERATIONS

Some 8 years or so ago, natural gas came to Swan River, primarily as an aid to LP because this would be cheaper than the propane that the Company was using to power its RTOs. My recollection is that LP were to use about 88% of the gas initially, per figures provided to the Public Utilities Board. LP put in a bit of money, I think $300,000 or something. The feds were in for about $1.7 million, the province for $1.7 million, and local ratepayers for about $1.7 million. At the time, my calculation was that the three local ratepayers who were not on gas would subsidize the one ratepayer who signed up to the tune of about $1000 each, or $3000. Some absurd estimate of ultimate signup by local ratepayers was presented to the Board, perhaps 8 of 10; it never happened. Bottom line on this issue, if the province allows LP to shut down its RTOs (justifiably or otherwise), this will represent an approximate $5 million subsidy to LP that will be mostly lost. This subsidy occurred un