Politics and Press

California burning

Mackenzie Brothers — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:01:47 +0000

There is no shred of good coming from the out of control fires up and down the coast and in the northern mountains of California, except that there are still many courageous and daring firefighters willing to take on the filthy and dangerous business of trying to control them. So far it has been a torturously futile attempt as lightning strikes start new fires long before the worst of the old ones are contained. For anyone who has spent time in places like the Yolla Bolly or Trinity Alps mountain preserves or the wilderness area east of Big Sur (not to mention easily accessible Big Sur itself), as my brother and I often have, it is a tragically sad spectacle to see these beautiful places being destroyed for at least many decades. For as natural as lightning burns have always been, bringing in long-lasting good with the temporary bad, these fires seem different. They are way too early, they are happening because there has been no rain in many parts of central and northern california since the winter, and there is not enough available water to fight them in a co-ordinated way.

These are the canaries in the coal mine of climate change and big, beautiful (for the most part) California is surely one of the most vulnerable places on earth as much of it has been built in almost desert-like locations which must import water to sustain life on the scale that has been placed there. And water is what California does not have enough of, particularly southern California and especially the megalopolis of San Diego to Santa Barbara. For decades the waters of northern California and the diverted Colorado River have kept these places water-solvent but that time is coming to or has already reached an end. 20% of the California budget is devoted to pumping the waters of the north to the south, especially from the Sacramento River delta, whose dikes are now considered under a greater threat than were those of New Orleans before they broke. If the salt water of San Francisco Bay breaks through into the fresh water of the delta, the nightmare scenario, it is hard to imagine the future of Los Angeles. It is in any case hard to imagine how a life style pushing rice field agriculture, green lawns, swimming pools and golf courses can be tolerated,as it should be perfectly clear by now that water is the most valuable of all commodities for life - gas is incomparably less important - and that in southern California it is being wasted in an intolerable fashion. There are no replacements - the Colorado River is being siphoned dry by all the states it runs through. Neither Oregon nor Washington have any water they are going to spare for their wasteful southern neighbours, and it is against the law to export water from water-rich Canada, even if it were so inclined. San Diego is now setting up desalinization pilot projects, but this process causes many problems of its own and cannot solve the basic one - much more water is being used than is available. Perhaps Governor Arnie, who seems to have a good understanding of the problem, can convince some of those professors at his best universities to come to grips somehow with this really existential problem..

A tale of two journeys

Mackenzie Brothers — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:41:26 +0000

If you live in Iceland and wish to travel to Estonia or Bulgaria, or Malta, you can now take a short plane ride and rent a car or take a train and in a couple of days you will arrive at your desired destination without having crossed a single controlled border. But if you get in your car in Vancouver and drive 45 minutes south to Point Roberts, Washington, you will reach a border control very reminiscent of the old European borders between the Soviet-bloc nations and western Europe, but with enough sophisticated and expensive electronic detection equipment to convince even the most sophisticated terrorist to try another route.
if you are lucky and hit this border at a time when there is not a hour-long lineup (or more) and then manage to pass muster at the guard station, by displaying a valid passport and a believable story about why you want to go to Point Roberts (usually to go to the post office as the US postal system is much cheaper and more reliable than the Canadian one), and then drive another 15 minutes in any direction, you will hit salt water since Point Roberts is US territory accessible by land only through Canada. Kids who live there have to be bussed out to US schools in the main part of the US by passing across this border, making the misery of school bus journeys four times as trying as it is for any other US kids, since they now must cross heavily guarded borders 4 times a day.
OK this is the most absurd of all the East German-like US border crossings, but it is not at all funny at places like the Peace Arch Crossing between Seattle and Vancouver, the highway between Winnipeg and Minneapolis, the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor or the bridge at Niagara Falls. In these places, and in many lesser ones all along what used to be an unguarded border, normal travel regularly comes to a complete standstill as cars wait for hours in lineups that, among other things, make any talk about an interest in cutting down pollution from idling cars ridiculous. Does anyone out there know of a single terrorist who has been captured at a Canada/US border crossing?

America Takes on Mother Nature

Jeff — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:14:10 +0000

Bob and Doug Mackenzie have reported on the successful – but huge – investment of the Dutch in controlling Mother Nature – or at least adapting to Her powers. But in doing so they cast aspersions on the United States’ ability to do the same, unpleasantly referring to Katrina.

Well, as it turns out Bob and Doug have missed the big story developing in the Southeastern United States. After a year long drought that has led to dangerous lows in drinking water supplies in Georgia and Alabama as well as major, long-burning fires, the governors of those two states have taken action. And you better believe that they are not going to waste a whole baggage car full of taxpayers’ money to do so.

An AP story in today’s NY Times reported that:

“…Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue stepped up to a podium outside the state Capitol on Tuesday and led a solemn crowd of several hundred people in a prayer for rain on his drought-stricken state.

‘’We’ve come together here simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm,'’ Perdue said after a choir provided a hymn. …'’It’s time to appeal to Him who can and will make a difference,'’ Perdue told the crowd….

Alas the AP report continued:

Meteorologists said earlier this week there was a slight possibility of rain Tuesday, but less of a chance of precipitation was predicted for the rest of the week.

That Governor Perdue persisted in his prayer strategy showed special faith since Alabama Gov. Bob Riley had issued a proclamation declaring a week in July as ‘’Days of Prayer for Rain'’ to ‘’humbly ask for His blessings and to hold us steady in times of difficulty.'’ Alas, those prayers remain unanswered.

In a related story, President Bush announced that special presidential advisor Pat Robertson would be leading the nation in a day of prayer aimed at reducing the price of oil.

The Great White North looks at the Map

Mackenzie Brothers — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:07:05 +0000

Colleague Jeff has supplied a convincing overview of Canada’s difficult role in the Arctic. Canada likes to mythologize its great open spaces in the wild north, creating emblems ranging from lines in the national anthem - “the true north strong and free” - to films like “Nanook of the North” to art like the sandstone sculptures and Baker Lake prints that southerners pay plenty of loonies to own to Stan Roger’s great song “The Northwest Passage” to the Edmonton Eskimos football team. Norm Kwong, one of their legendary players and perhaps the only major (ethnically) Chinese football player in history, recalls once hearing an Edmonton matron in the audience for one of his interviews tell her neighbour, “See I told you they were real Eskimos”.

But what Canada, the world’s second largest country, hasn’t done is provide military support for its mythology, making it vulnerable to the aggressiveness of the first and third largest countries, which face it in the Arctic. Instead it has slugged it out with tiny Denmark (controlling gigantic Greenland) in a farcical struggle over miniscule Hans Island. The excuse for lack of muscle in the Arctic has been strictly economic in the past, but this may be changing because the tide of Canadian public opinion has swung for the Arctic, and that has the politicians’ ears. Almost twenty years ago Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney cancelled Liberal plans for ice breakers for the navy, something which both Norway and Denmark manage to finance, and the US and Russia have both ice breakers and nuclear submarines out on Arctic patrol. In its lead editorial today, the conservative Vancouver Province advised the government to lease ice breakers if they are too cheap to build them, but to get them before it is too late to the newly announced far north military base with deep water port on the northern tip of Baffin Island, and to the beefed-up existing bases. Canadians will soon see whether their government is serious when it says it will provide protection for Canadian values from sea to sea to sea.

Canada Takes on Russia: Cold War II?

Jeff — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:42:14 +0000

Bob and Doug McKenzie are on assignment in the Arctic, traveling with Prime Minister Harper who visited the Arctic to plant the Maple Leaf to lay claim to its rich mineral deposits for Canada. This trip was in response to Russian President Putin’s sneak attack last week with two miniature submarines planting the Russian flag somewhere beneath the North Pole. These moves are partially in response to global warming which is melting the Arctic ice cap in direct defiance to U.S. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma who claims global warming is a fraudulent tool manufactured by the infidels (e.g. Democrats and non-Christians).

As described in the NY Times, the race for mineral rights in the Arctic looms as a possible Worldwide Cold War as the Danes race to the region to map their own claims that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range, is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland, making it a geological extension of the Arctic island.

Norway and the U.S. also make claims to rights in the area but the U.S. is apparently banking on winning the Iraq War sometime in the next century and stealing all of their oil to power the next generation of Hummers. Talk of moving Vice President Cheney’s office to the Arctic was squelched by White House sources, as “wishful thinking by the American people”.

The world watches these developments with anxious concern mixed with admiration for the audacity of Canada as it takes on the Russian Bear while the U.S. waits to move in after the dirty work is done.

In other news President George W. Bush refused to add 5 cents to the federal tax on gasoline saying it “would be premature”, and that “ we will cross that bridge when we have the funds to fix it.”

The More Climate Changes the More We’re Screwed

Kiwi — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:01:00 +0000

Among the decisions at last months EU summit two were related. Related in that way that allows one to see between the lines. Allows one to read the political sub-text that is usually meant to be obscured.

The big publicized decision was the EU ordering member states to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020. This decision also required specific methods to reach that mandate. (Tho some of the new members grumped — saying they had hoped to leave micro-managed state planning behind when they escaped the USSR— maybe climate change required a bit of extra discipline.) Anyway,among the specific steps to be taken is forced replacement in each nation of a percentage of carbon-intensive light bulbs with more eco-friendly (and expensive) ones.

Well. okay.

But then came the–less publicized– related decision. A 100% tariff on imports of these
eco-friendly bulbs was extended to 2020. Seimens, the German manufacturer has a virtual lock on the EU market. It can pocket the excess profit europeans are forced by law to fork up.

So the sub-text comes into focus.

Eco-terrified Europeans are demanding climate change action. EU authorities are giving it to them. So to speak. Climate change policy comes with baggage europeans aren’t asking for. The baggage from the left is increased central control of european local decisions. The baggage from the right is increased protection of corporate profits.

The capitalists and the authoritarians are immediate big winners. And, hey, maybe there’ll actually be some climate change benefit by 2020. European’s will have to wait to see on that one. Mean time they pay up and shut up.

If this were just a one-off thing confined to the EU it wouldn’t be worth blogging. But maybe there is a universal theme? A sorta cynical global political manipulation of popular terror over climate change? A charade in which the left and right seem to fight each other but you and I are the only ones getting bruises?

In the US there is a worrying coalescence that looks remarkably similar. The Washington Post today reports on a climate change debate between Kerry and Gingrich that was billed as a “smackdown fight” but degenerated into a love-in. Trees were being hugged by left and right alike.

So what? Nothing, really. Except that as voters we want to be careful what we ask for.

Europeans asked for action on climate change. What they’re getting is poorer and less autonomous.

Canada Leaves Green for Brown

Mackenzie Brothers — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 15:33:38 +0000

Canada is making it into the German papers more than it used to, but it’s not always for flattering reasons. It used to be that the only Canadian stories worth carrying had to do with grizzly bear attacks, Quebec separatism (almost always misportrayed) and sports; Steve Nash is Dirk Nowitzky’s best friend or Canadian thugs won another match against European skilled squads. The latter has however disappeared of late as Sweden showed it could beat anybody in any number of ways, including thuggery.
Bur now Prime Minister Harper actually gets his photo in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, just like the fantastic twins now ruling Poland. And that’s a bad sign, because the twins never get in unless they’ve done something extremely silly. So there was Harper making a speech in which he attempted to announce that Canada was getting out of its Kyoto commitments. This did not go over well, to put it mildly, and now this decision will have to be reconsidered. A Canadian prime minister should know he’s in big trouble when the foreign press begins to compare him very unfavourably to Arnold Schwarzenegger.