Tag Archives: Politics

Perpetual economic growth is unsustainable

globeThere’s little doubt in my mind that the three-legged stool economic model is flawed and needs replacement. Setting economic concerns as a priority above the environment when the environment is the grounds for all is irrational and adopting this never-ending growth model has had catastrophic consequences.

It has led to our elected people becoming the marionettes of the corporate king makers who pull their strings. It has led to abuse of the environment that we all rely upon for survival and it has led to systemic abuse throughout or societies. It has led to a sense of entitlement that ought not to exist at all.

When I read this article in the Orion magazine I agree whole heartedly with Derrick Jensen’s observations and his conclusion.

I’M CONTINUALLY stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do. — The Tyranny of Entitlement: A lesson in limits

It seems obvious to me that until we recognize that the crisis in the way we humans govern ourselves is due to viewing ourselves as being separate and apart from the environment that sustains all, no real changes will be made.

What’s your opinion?

What Would You Sacrifice for a Secure Future?

pink cloudsThe scientific evidence of global warming is overwhelming, and there is no reason not to act.  We ought to be rethinking and reducing oil dependency as it’s obvious  that we must act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to provide a cleaner planet for future generations.  There are many other sources of renewable energy, but every option comes with concern about public participation.

A new book, The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice, challenges the widely held assumption that people will not sacrifice for environmental goals. In his own take on the topic, Worldwatch senior researcher Erick Assadourian observes that even the word “sacrifice” has become taboo – associated more with violent rituals (think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) than with its root meaning, “to make “sacred.”

“The idea of sacrifice is the unspoken issue of environmental politics. Politicians, the media, and many environmentalists assume that well-off populations won’t make sacrifices now for future environmental benefits and won’t change their patterns and perceptions of consumption to make ecological room for the world’s three billion or so poor eager to improve their standard of living. The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice challenges these assumptions, arguing that they limit our policy options, weaken our ability to imagine bold action for change, and blind us to the ways sacrifice already figures in everyday life.  The concept of sacrifice has been curiously unexamined in both activist and academic conversations about environmental politics, and this book is the first to confront it directly.

The chapters bring a variety of disciplinary perspectives to the topic. Contributors offer alternatives to the conventional wisdom on sacrifice; identify connections between sacrifice and human fulfillment in everyday life, finding such concrete examples as parents’ sacrifices in raising children, religious practice, artists’ pursuit of their art, and soldiers and police officers who risk their lives to do their jobs; and examine particular policies and practices that shape our understanding of environmental problems, including the carbon tax, incentives for cyclists, and the perils of green consumption.

The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice puts “sacrifice” firmly into the conversation about effective environmental politics and policies, insisting that activists and scholars do more than change the subject when the idea is introduced.”   Read: Erick Assadourian’s take on What Would You Sacrifice for a Secure Future?

In their book The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice Michael Maniates, John Meyer and their ten fellow-contributors urge students, activists, scholars and citizens to ask, and keep asking, why sacrifice should be pushed to the margins, why narrow assumptions about the capacity and willingness of humans to sacrifice should prevail, why leaders remain reluctant to call on our ability to sacrifice on behalf of public aims.

Related posts
Simple Living: When Less is More
Simple Pleasures: Making Music
Balanced Living: Vacations are a Necessity
The Simple Life: Present Moment Living

End the War on Drugs

leafMarijuana  is used throughout the world for diverse purposes and has a long history. In Chinese medicine marijuana  is one of the fundamental herbs.  In shamanic medicine in North America it also has a lengthy history of use. Although smoking is thought to be the most common form of ingestion, there are many  healthy alternatives to smoking including vaporizing, cooking and baking, making tinctures, sprays and extracts.

Cannabis is a term that refers to marijuana and other drugs made from the same plant. If you are Canadian, the only way you can legally obtain  marijuana legally for medicinal use  is through the Medical Marihuana Access Division (MMAD) with an MMAR license.  Health Canada regulates and oversees the medical marijuana program and you can review the most up to date Marihuana Medical Access Regulations at the Department of Justice website.

The Flower

The Flower is a three-minute and 35 second animated anti-prohibition video was released on AlterNet. The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.

medical marijuanaI believe in decriminalization of marijuana, as opposed to legalization. I  believe that legalization would be ridiculous because it will only lead to the government handing production over to the pharmaceuticals, taxing it like liquor and cigarettes and then squandering the tax money on pet projects, while citizens go without health care and housing.  The higher priority for governments, ought to be making marijuana available to those who require it and removing the prohibition so citizens can grow this  herb for their own use.

America has created an enormous debt by squandering trillions of dollars on the so-called “war on drugs”. They have imprisoned hundreds of thousands of the little dealers and mules at public expense, without getting near the “drug lords,” and thereby have demonstrated that the idiotic “war of drugs” is costly and ineffectual. Worse still they have saddled generations to come with the obligation to pay that debt. The same is also true of Mexico and in Central America where innocent bystanders have been slain during the war on the cartels.

Mexico’s former president Ernesto Zedillo, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and former Colombian president César Gaviria—issued a joint statement in an opinion piece that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal. In it they express their view that the drug war was too costly and difficult for countries like Mexico, and recommending that the United States start looking at alternatives, like legalizing marijuana. “The war on drugs has failed. And it’s high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies,” the statement begins. — Latin American Panel Calls U.S. Drug War a Failure

Let common sense prevail

Obviously, the most sensible way of dealing with this artificially created problem of supply and demand for a natural occurring plant, a weed that can be readily grown in many climatic zones in the backyards of both countries, is for both countries to decriminalize marijuana and cut the cartels off at the knees.

Decriminalizing marijuana would free up trillions of dollars that could be put to good use in both countries. It would mean that the jails that are bursting at the seams would not be full of small time dealers and mules and the court system that’s plugged up with these petty criminals could be relieved of the burden that draws so heavily on tax dollars. It would also mean that policemen and women could be put into service in areas where their labor is sorely needed.

Who benefits from the prohibition?

So why is marijuana not legal? Because the people keeping it illegal are the ones profiting from the continued prohibition. Think about it….

It’s police services, pharmaceutical, paper, oil and textiles corporations, who have a vested interest in guaranteeing that both  marijuana and hemp remain prohibited.

“In sum, there is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use.” – National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine (IOM). — Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base.

U.S. Marijuana Laws – Click on your state to see the current marijuana laws.

Police services don’t want it to legalized because it would greatly reduce their need for narcotics departments and k-9 units.

Big Pharma doesn’t want it legalized because it would be a lot easier and cheaper to grow some legal marijuana than purchase high-priced pharmaceuticals with the same benefits and more side effects.

Big Oil doesn’t want it because it can be used as an alternative fuel source, similar to corn. Every crop would be a dollar out of their pocket.

Big Paper and Big Textiles  doesn’t want it legal because they would then see a rise in a major competitor with a much faster growing renewable crop.

According to the White House’s National Drug Control Strategy Budgets, as cited in Action America’s Drug War Cost Clock, the federal government alone is projected to spend over $22 billion on the War on Drugs in 2009. State spending totals are harder to isolate, but Action America cites a 1998 Columbia University study which found that states spent over $30 billion on drug law enforcement during that year. — Key Facts About the War on Drugs Read also:  Jeffrey A. Miron, Department of Economics, Harvard University: “The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition,” December 2008.

Marijuana Heals Cancer …Cannabinoid Receptors In The Human Body

August 25, 2010-  BBC special on Cannabinoid Receptors…below an article by Steve Kubby, Sierra Times …A new study published in Nature Reviews-Cancer provides an historic and detailed explanation about how THC and natural cannabinoids counteract cancer, but preserve normal cells. It is hard to believe that the knowledge that cannabis can be used to fight cancer has been suppressed for almost thirty years , yet it seems likely that it will continue to be suppressed. Why?

According to Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition . “If this article and its predecessors from 2000 and 1974 were the only evidence of the suppression of medical cannabis, then one might perhaps be able to rationalize it in some herniated way. However, there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values,” Cowan notes.

Millions of people have died horrible deaths and in many cases, families exhausted their savings on dangerous, toxic and expensive drugs. Now we are just beginning to realize that while marijuana has never killed anyone, marijuana prohibition has killed millions.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law

Cured: A Cannabis Story (A Film By David Triplett)

Flashback to Reefer Madness (1936)

The propaganda/exploitation film from 1936, in its entirety. This film is public domain. Reefer Madness was originally known as Tell Your Children, and over the years had its reception transformed from being one of the expose films popular at the time to being widely regarded as a camp classic made by people who had no idea what they were talking about. It’s relentlessly sensationalist tone is hard to take seriously, that’s for sure, but its moralising is equally suspect as it’s clearly an exploitation movie dressed up with a serious message in an attempt to win ill-deserved credibility, credibility that completely evaporated around the seventies when it was re-released to college crowds in America to laugh at in derision, usually as they puffed away themselves. Yet, the prohibition lingers on.

Fast forward to Why is Marijuana Illegal?

Discussion question:
Do you believe it’s time to end the so-called “War on Drugs?”

Offshore drilling is bad news, and we should say so

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.