Monthly Archives: July 2010

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so

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Offshore oil production is a growth industry that has  produced numerous large-scale oil spills destroying  an immense amount habitat and devastating wildlife.  Clearly drilling is not the answer to any of our energy problems. It creates far fewer jobs than clean energy,  it won’t help us become energy independent,  and it definitely won’t help solve the climate change crisis.

This and what follows are what my visitors are discussing as we share our holiday together. Alberta supplies about 1.4m barrels of oil a day to the US, both from the oil sands and conventional wells. The oil sands, which contain the world’s biggest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, are set to grow as several projects come on stream.

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so.

The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill demonstrates the consequences of offshore drilling can be devastating to the coastal communities that depend on fishing and tourism.  Approximately 640 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline is currently oiled:  100 miles in Florida, 362 miles in Louisiana, 108 miles in Mississippi and 70 miles in Alabama.  About 1.84 million gallons of total dispersant have been applied: 1.07 million on the surface and 771,000 subsea. More than 34.7 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.

As of July 28, although sporadic sightings of tar balls may continue, Florida’s shoreline is not expected to receive additional impacts over the next 72 hours. Observations by NOAA continue to indicate no significant amounts of oil moving toward the Loop Current.

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so.

Early Tuesday a tugboat was pushing a dredge barge when the dredger hit a wellhead. Since then the wellhead has been spewing a mixture of oil, natural gas, and water into Barataria Bay in southeastern Louisiana. The resulting sheen covers more than six square miles.  Cedyco Corp. of Houston is responsible for the well abandoned in 2008, and the company has hired Wild Well to secure it. –  Read the full article.

EPA: Michigan oil spill may have exceeded 1M gallons

The Environmental Protection Agency says it believes more than a million gallons of oil may have leaked this week into a major southern Michigan waterway that leads to Lake Michigan.

On Monday July 26, 2010, a 30-inch pipeline in Marshall, Mich. belonging to Enbridge Inc. burst. EPA estimates over 1 million gallons of crude oil spilled into Talmadge Creek, a waterway which feeds into the Kalamazoo River.

The site currently includes a 25-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River, which is at higher than average levels due to heavy rainfalls. The site area lies between Marshall and Battle Creek and includes marshlands, residential areas, farmland, and businesses. — Source

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so.

The B.C. government has been lobbing to get Ottawa to lift the offshore drilling and tanker moratoriums for years.   British Columbians are rightly concerned as oil share oil drilling destroys more habitat than the province’s forest companies do.

On June 26 during events on English Bay, in Victoria, in Kelowna, and on Hornby Island and on beaches across B.C.  gathered to oppose offshore drilling in non-political Hands Across the Sand rallies that began in Florida. “There is a message for people to wake up and see the damage that is being done and to say ‘no,’” said Renee Lindstrom, an organizer.

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so.

The moratorium on offshore oil development in B.C. won’t be lifted any time soon, especially in the wake of the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice. Read the full article.

Federal ban on offshore drilling, oil tankers not legally binding

The Harper government has quietly affirmed that it isn’t legally bound to maintain a moratorium on oil drilling off the coast of British Columbia.

The government has also determined that the ban doesn’t apply to oil-tanker traffic, despite the widely held view that such vessels are prohibited from plying the waters along B.C.’s northern coast.  — Read the full article

Ignatieff supports oil tanker ban off B.C. coast

The federal Liberals want to ban oil supertankers from British Columbia’s northwestern coast, a promise that would halt the building of a proposed $5.5-billion oil sands pipeline from Alberta through northern B.C.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s announcement that a future Liberal government would legislate a ban on the tankers pits his party against one of Canada’s largest companies, Enbridge Inc. — Read the full article

Tankers in Georgia Strait- the risk is growing

Here in the Strait, an increase in tankers taking crude from the oil sands out through Burrard Inlet means our waters are more at risk from a catastrophic oil spill than ever before. The decision to increase tanker traffic was made without any public consultation and the question has to be asked: are we ready?  The answer is – no we’re not.  Read more about the issue.

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so.

Creativity in the Flow

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flow imageMihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

The intensity of the flow experience is one we all recognize as a creative one that goes beyond everyday consciousness. One reference is being “in the zone”. Csikszentmihalyi lists conditions necessary for the occurrence and continuation of flow experience:

  1. clear goals and feedback;
  2. balance between challenges and skills;
  3. action and awareness merged;
  4. concentration on task;
  5. sense of potential control;
  6. loss of self-consciousness;
  7. altered sense of time;
  8. autotelic (self-rewarding) experience.

The Hustler – Being in the flow state

Here’s a move clip circa 1961 with Paul Newman talking about being in the flow state.

Tony posted a video of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in a TED talk explaining his studies about the roots of happiness and the concept of flow for which he is famous.

‘What makes human beings happy?’ Is the question he was looking for an answer to. Flow is his answer to the question

In our normal experience he looked at where we feel really happy. “Ecstacy in Greek meant to stand to the side of something. A step into an alternative reality. Such an intense experience that it feels like you don’t exist.” When you are in a state of flow, you are able to face high challenges using a high level of skills.

The entire concept of flow is really intriguing, at least to me. What do you think?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow

In Buddhism, there is a form of meditation called samatha bhavana, which can lead to blissful states, like flow. In ‘samatha’ the mind becomes like a still, clear pool completely free from disturbance and anger, and ready to mirror on its surface the nature of things as they really are, m which is hidden from ordinary knowledge by the restlessness of desire and craving. You meditate until you attain jhana. Jhana is a meditative state of profound stillness and concentration in which the mind becomes fully immersed and absorbed in the chosen object of attention. It is the cornerstone in the development of right concentration.

Csikszentmihalyi illustrates that creativity is the central source of meaning in our lives and for better or for worse the planet’s future is closely tied to human creativity. Our capacity for being in the flow and ability to face higher challenges and succeed in what we do will in large part directly affect the planet’s future.  –  Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

No matter what walk of life we are in or what we may find ourselves completely absorbed in – we may be enjoying a flow experience.  What do you think about flow?

Celebrities: Love ‘em or hate ‘em

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The mind-boggling “celebrities – love em – hate em” behavior that afflicts so many idle and easily preoccupied people is the subject of this post.  For the record I don’t “hate” celebrities nor do I “love” them. I don’t know them, or follow them, or give fig about what they do or don’t do. I don’t put them on pedestals and watch them slip and fall and then criticize them when they hit bottom. In fact, I don’t invest any energy into hating anyone.

I think the obsession with celebrities and their lives and the fact that those who are obsessed with following what they do (both fans and haters) speak as if they actually know the celebs points out how socially fragmented we have become. Legions of people are searching for their identity and it’s telling that the most bored and sedentary adolescents and least educated adults, who are so far removed from reality identify with celebs and speak of them as though they live next door.

It makes no sense for the average person to hang on the words of celebrities they find in tabloids, magazines, on Twitter, radios or on the tube, nor does it make sense that they cannot get enough of the paparazzi’s photo shots, unless or until one understands that

(1) fantasy plays a huge role in human lives;

(2) rituals also play a huge role in human lives;

(3) many remain primitive thinkers even after becoming adults;

(4) the younger, poorer and less educated we are, and the more far removed from realizing a celebrity lifestyle we are, the more likely we are to become addicted to celeb watching either as celeb fans or as celeb haters;

(4) the behaviors of celebs often exceed the societal norms and boundaries, and those who worship them are bound by providing a sense of vicarious “guilty pleasure” while what binds their “haters” is a sense of self righteous indignation;

(5) we live in a youth driven cultures so gossiping about this or that celeb and emulating them externally (hairstyles, clothing, etc.) provides a point of connection and bonding with other fantasizers within a peer group, and a means of defining separation between peer groups;;

(6) celebrity worship or it’s antithesis celebrity hatred can be a substitute for actually investing in more conventional relationships and a diversion from coping with existing relationships problems;

(7) learning about celebrities from tabloids and defending them or railing against them provides a false sense of being educated, knowledgeable and competent when in fact the celebrity worshiper or celebrity hater can rarely be described as possessing more knowledge then the average highschool drop-out.

Read about the study of around 700 people aged 18 to 60 discovered that there were three types of Celebrity Worship Syndrome.

Entertainment-social

This dimension comprises attitudes that fans are attracted to a favorite celebrity because of their perceived ability to entertain and become a social focus such as “I love to talk with others who admire my favorite celebrity” and “I like watching and hearing about my favorite celebrity when I am with a large group of people”.

Intense-personal

Intense-personal aspect of celebrity worship reflects intensive and compulsive feelings about the celebrity, akin to the obsessional tendencies of fans often referred to in the literature; for example “I share with my favorite celebrity a special bond that cannot be described in words” and “When something bad happens to my favorite celebrity I feel like it happened to me’”.

Borderline-pathological

This dimension is typified by uncontrollable behaviors and fantasies regarding scenarios involving their celebrities, such as “I have frequent thoughts about my favorite celebrity, even when I don’t want to” and “my favorite celebrity would immediately come to my rescue if I needed help”. — Celebrity Worship Syndrome

Rethinking and reducing oil dependency

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My husband and I awoke to the news that BP Plc is preparing for a key procedure to replace the containment cap over its blown-out Macondo well, which could temporarily cause more oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.  This provoked a long and thoughtful discussion about global warming and what additional steps we can take to reduce out own dependency on oil.

Richard has published two though provoking articles  in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and  NASA photos depicting the effects of global warming around the globe. The first is titled Our addiction to oil: The cost in pictures and the second is titled Oil slick around Mississippi barrier islands. They provided much food for thought and evoked distress about how little governments, including our own Canadian government, are doing to address the issues and stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry.

exxon valdez aerial imageThe need to kick our addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible is before us and “in our faces” so to speak. But is it possible to energize people the world over to embrace the green energy changes be made, without evoking the fear that arises from accidents like the Exxon Valdez and now the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Images are so powerful and can become motivators for change.  When my husband and I viewed the images by AP Photographer Charlie Riedel of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island we were heartsick.

As BP engineers began their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, we feared our federal  government, which is in bed with big business, might lift the moratorium and allow off shore oil drilling permits do even more tankers would be transporting oil up and down the Canadian coastline and increasing the risk of blow outs and spills.   But on May 21st, 2010 Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice said that the moratorium on offshore oil development in B.C. won’t be lifted any time soon, especially in the wake of the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico  B.C. offshore drilling moratorium stays: Prentice

The National Wildlife Federation has also released a powerful video titled Crude Awakening: BP Oil Spill/NWF Spec PSA. It was made as an unsolicited donation to the organization and drives home the impact of the BP oil spill on wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico by depicting a young woman’s perfect world consumed by oil.

oil covered girl in ocean Chicago-based Jane Fulton photographed more than a dozen people drenched in an oil-like substance while standing on local beaches. “When I started to photograph, people would come up and ask if they could be involved,” she said. “The pictures just flowed.” Fulton worked temporarily as a clinical social worker in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and says she can’t forget the wrenching photographs of oil-drenched birds.  Crude Awakening (15 photos)

I believe it’s reasonable to expect our governments to ensure that industry complies with the laws of our land and to strengthen them.  I believe we must insist regulatory oversight be put into place to protect the environment and must be stringently enforced.  I believe maintaining oil as a energy resource and relying on oil based economies only serves to keep some people rich at the cost of the environment and the future ability of our beautiful planet to meet the needs of its inhabitants.

We must rid ourselves of the faulty economic model referred to as the three legged stool and the governance model founded upon it. The environment is grounds for all and without it we have nothing.

The fact that our western culture has placed a higher priority on economic growth than it does on environmental health can explain much of the present deteriorating state in which we find the environment and thus ourselves.

Will we ever understand our place on this planet and choose to live within the limits set by the biosphere? Perhaps, but not by using the “three legs of the stool” as a model for sustainable development. Why? Because it continues to place us [humans and our activities] outside those limits. And while we may be able to think outside the limits, we cannot live outside the limits. — Neil K. Dawe & Kenneth L. Ryan in The Faulty Three-Legged-Stool Model of Sustainable Development (PDF)

Motivated by the images the reality of the risks,and failures and our fear of worse yet to come, we must all live up to our personal responsibility to reduce our oil dependency in every way that we can.  In this regard,  Sandra Lee recently published an informative article titled Reducing your oil use saying, in part:

In the wake of recent disasters you too may be reconsidering the wisdom of an oil-based lifestyle.  Petroleum derived products are all pervasive in our culture.  To help you out, I’ve compiled a short list of ways to reduce oil dependence.  Since you’ve probably already taken the most obvious steps, they are last on the list.   Suggestions for digging deeper and fine-tuning are included first.

After a careful reading and re-reading of her article, I recognized that despite the many changes my husband and I have still have more changes to make.

Tragic events like the Exxon Valdez and the BP oil spill make it clear that it’s time for our governments and their oil and gas industry puppet masters to stop tinkering with energy policies, destroying the environment we all depend upon for survival and change our energy strategy – now.

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Naked in Eden Book Trailer

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This is so exciting. My friend Robin Easton adventurer, writer and blogger has released her Naked in Eden book trailer. It’s the remarkable story of her adventures and awakening in the Australian rainforest. The book will be released Sept 2010. Follow the Naked in Eden Blog – Robin Easton for updates. And while you are visiting treat yourself to reading some of her excellent blog posts.

Naked in Eden: Book Trailer