Environmentalism: Descent into irrelevance

I was scanning the "Mail Bag" in the most recent issue of MACLEAN'S (March 29th, 2010) and read a letter about plastic grocery bags. It seems that in Atlantic Canada, Loblaw's has dropped a five-cent fee for grocery bags because customers were switching to Sobeys rather than pay the fee. The letter writer went on to say "apparently, cheaper is more important than greener." Of course in some places (Toronto) the municipal government (one of the dumbest, most incompetent in the country) has made it a law that retailers will charge five-cents per bag in an attempt to curb their use.

Fortunately I don't live in Toronto, where the municipal council believes it knows how people should live their lives. My municipal council has other stupid laws - but not that one....yet. But I digress.
In today's Globe and Mail one of the regular columnists (Lawrence Martin) had an interesting comment about Elizabeth May and the Greens. The gist of the column is that May (leader) and her Party are slowly losing ground. Of course she has no elected MP's in the parliament (so not much to lose there) and the Greens seem to be a one issue team. That issue - with many names: environmentalism, climate change, green shifting. All of that seems to be fading away from the media spotlight and the public consciousness as Martin suggests, especially since the Copenhagen non-event. Whatever the reason, it is a good thing. Environmental responsibility need not be forced down each of our throats by zealots like the Gore's and Suzuki's and by governments that seek to pander to them.
Maybe now problems with the environment will be put into perspective, along with all the other important issues of the day. Who knows maybe people will start to see that the biggest issues can be dealt with right at home, right in your own country, your own province or state, your own town.  

Is the US Tea Party movement Libertarian?

It's a good question. They seem to want to limit the size and scope of government but, and its a huge BUT, they resemble too much the kind of Republicans that were just booted out of Washington last year. The Tea Party is a hodge-podge of disenchanted voters without a clear direction or director. Check out this libertarian point of view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbjyqKUZBFk

Welcome to Loonieland

In this video the Canadian Taxpayers Federation explains the new Federal Conservative Budget for 2010. Its an austerity budget so government will spend less, right? MMMMmm maybe not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4emBsiquyI

Meaningless terms: Right-Left, Conservative-Liberal, Republican-Democrat

Rarely do I read Rick Salutin's column in the Globe & Mail, and when I do I never agree with his comments. Today was no different but at least it caught my attention, so here I am.
Salutin's article talks about politics and religion, right up my alley. He points out that politics and religion are so linked now that secularists are leftists and religious types are right of centre. He says this split is clearest in the United States and he gives a quote from Bill O'Reilly the FOX News guy who said that the Globe and Mail is secular and therefore left-wing. Salutin then continues to ramble on finally talking about Avatar and Gaia.
For me this column just highlighted the fact that political terms like "Left and Right" have really no meaning at all and the language of politics must adjust to accommodate reality. If you've read any of my blogs you know that O'Reilly's simple categorization doesn't work, and it doesn't work in many people that I know.
So I propose using the terms "Statist" and "Libertarian", this way we lump guys like O'Reilly, Salutin, Leftists, Rightists, Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Communists, Fascists, and whatever into the category STATIST. That's because all these so-called political beliefs really advocate varying degrees of State control of individuals. Libertarians don't.

Ironically Glenn Beck, also of FOX News claims he is becoming Libertarian and used the Nolan Chart on his TV show recently to underscore my case for a new political map. First he's no Libertarian, but I loved the idea of getting away from the typical two-dimensional Left-Right spectrum of political thought. Who knows he may have actually done us a service!
But back to my point, let's start using terms that have meaning. Once people understand the new terms and their meanings things will be a lot clearer at election time, choices will be more stark and obvious. It couldn't hurt.  

Growing like topsy = Canadian Bureaucracy

Today in the Globe and Mail, Neil Reynolds has a great column that demonstrates how governments grow. The article Civil service: Too many jobs, too little service should be mandatory reading for all elected officials, and come to think of it for all electors as well.
Reynolds describes an incident in the town of Orleans, a suburb of Ottawa, where a plastic cow on a roof seemed to contravene a bylaw and required hiring a consultant (at $20 000) as part of the "public consultation". The story is almost laughable if it were not for the fact that its true and it illustrates the bigger issue that the public sector this year is larger than the public sector last year. Not only does that cost us all more, but those individuals who "work"  for government are not working in the private sector, therefore not creating wealth, not creating jobs and not adding to the productivity of Canada. Last October I wrote about how big government stifles enterprise and reduces productivity. Of course if government grows faster  than the economy, government must be financed by borrowing against the future. These loans (usually bonds) become a larger fraction of our GDP, sometimes so large that they actually endanger investor confidence in Canada. Have a look at this page that compares GDP vs. National Debt by country. While Canada's debt to GDP ratio is over 62%, take a look at Zimbabwe: 241%! Which country would you rather invest in? While Canada might look good in comparison, government continues to grow and if you read Reynolds' article to the end, you will appreciate the irony in Jim Flaherty's recent budget. It's really no joke.

Authoritarian Paternalism

The photo is a satellite picture of the island of Hispaniola; the red line divides the island into the Dominican Republic on the right and Haiti on the left.


My fellow Canadians are quite familiar with the Dominican as a sunny refuge in winter, and a source of some very good baseball players. Haiti is known for its poverty and its chief export to Canada, people. Over one hundred thousand Haitians live in Canada, mostly in Quebec. These are hard working proud people that have made substantial contributions to Canada including giving us our current Governor General.

I’ve avoided writing about Haiti after the catastrophic earthquake in January because I had little to add to what was then, and still is a desperate situation. Haiti is a basket case as far as governance, economics, rights, freedoms, justice, in fact by any measure one might choose. Of course the problem is that Haiti was a basket case before the earthquake, now, well it’s a head shaker. Before the earthquake there were thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGO's) pouring money into Haiti, now that number has increased and governments have joined the rescue. Will it save Haiti? I’m not optimistic. Today in the Globe and Mail my view is shared by Margaret Wente, have a look. Her view is that Haiti, if it is to be saved will be saved by its chief export to places like Canada, its people.

Computer models vs. Reality

The recent earthquake in Chile has caused scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii to reexamine their computer models. While the Chilean earthquake did produce a tsunami, its most devastating effects were local and quick – mostly along the Chilean coast and nearby islands. Even though this was a monster quake (Richter 8.8) the feared tsunami that might hit Hawaii was miniscule compared to the South Asian tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people on Boxing Day 2004 as far away as Africa.
Computer models are relatively new tools used in many science related fields, like engineering, weather forecasting and of course climate change forecasting. Models always need to be tweaked to accommodate all known variables and then need to be back tested against actual events to see how the models performed. That process is ongoing, continuing toward bringing the model closer to reality because the science is never settled, the probabilities are just shifted.

More climate meltdown

Even the mainline press is starting to question the "settled science" of climate change. A recent opinion in the Wall Street Journal Online suggests that the IPCC claims on impending climate doom could bear with more scrutiny. The article challenges some IPCC claims spin and spins it in a different direction. Of course as these contradictory positions mount up, public opinion becomes more confused than ever over a very complex issue. The good news is that the likelihood of government action may diminish.       

Hockey is Golden

Isn't Hockey great without the dumb fights? In Olympic competition fights are banned. The NHL should copy this rule.

Climate Change Humour

I think this is funny, I wish it were true. Double-click to see it enlarged. Its from:
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/the-pseudo-science-is-settled-new-hockey-stick-graph-shows-unprecedented-rise-in-global-warming-skeptics

An IPCC prediction gone awry

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the very name does not make me feel warm and fuzzy all over. Any belief I may have once nurtured that the United Nations is the solution to the ills of the world has long gone, along with the belief that the government is my friend and is there to protect my rights. So you can imagine my bias towards the IPCC. Their publications and predictions form the foundation of Climate Change activism around the world. The pearls of wisdom shed by the IPCC are examined like chicken entrails by a voodoo medicine man to discern what calamities may befall us if we don’t defer to their predictive powers. So when a prediction of the IPCC doesn’t jive with reality it should give us all reason to be skeptical.
Certainly climate change has been occurring, those of us in Southern Ontario are acutely aware that this entire region was covered by kilometre thick ice sheets several times throughout history, the last time was roughly 13 000 years ago. I live within short driving distance of the moraine ridges and drumlins left by the glacial retreat. The Great Lakes themselves are stark reminders as glacial puddles left by the continent sized glacier. The glaciers have retreated to the far north where they still exist in alpine regions but now vast areas of Tundra are all that remain in Canada.

This is true in Europe and Asia as well and this fact has meant great changes for the indigenous peoples of the north. In Canada the Inuit have experienced such rapid change that community elders still talk of the good old days. The indigenous peoples of Northern Europe will tell similar stories.

In the IPCC predictions of human catastrophe the greatest impact it says will be climate migration due to coastal flooding as sea-levels rise around the world. They predict that upwards of 200 million people will move as a result, overwhelming cities and creating massive upheavals to those countries involved.

Wait a minute, maybe not, maybe some of these impoverished indigenous peoples will adapt (humans are crazy like that) as they did to the ice ages millennia ago. Remarkable is it not, how a species (Homo sapiens), whose origins were in the savannah of central Africa can adapt to living in the High Arctic? Anyway, I digress, a recent study of the Sami the Inuit analogues of Finland shows that maybe the IPCC predictions are a bit overblown.

Ayn Rand is back!

Some of us know she never really left, but lately her life and ideas have been resurrected, dusted off and presented as new and improved.


In the mid 1960’s in my impressionable late teens it was suggested to me that I read Atlas Shrugged. By the end of this very long novel, I was presented with a consistent, coherent, all encompassing philosophy of life that I still adhere to, but with some very important modifications. Back then and to this day I can’t think of a more acceptable philosophy that includes my deep distrust of mysticism and religion with the belief in individual liberty and rational self-interest. Rand had it all in her philosophy of Objectivism which was roughly presented in Atlas but later refined through other books and a monthly magazine called The Objectivist to which I subscribed.

Rand has had a rebirth in social networking groups like Facebook, and many of her ideas have been accepted among American Conservative groups even though many contain Evangelical Christians. Apparently they are prepared to ignore Rand’s atheism. This rebirth seems to be associated with the deep recession in the United States and the almost prophetic plot of Atlas Shrugged. This has resulted in increased sales of Atlas Shrugged which the American Library of Congress has called the second most influential book ever published next to the bible. Rand has had an impact, no doubt.

One thing I hate is that people who accept some or all of Rand’s ideas are often termed “acolytes” and in groups they are referred to as a “cult” especially by the media. This is distasteful because both terms have derogatory religious connotations besides being contradictory for a philosophy that advocates atheism, individualism and rational self-interest. The media would never refer to Christianity, Islamism or Buddhism and the like as cults – but of course they really are.

Rand came across to many as being cold, tough, and uncharitable with a sprinkling of other less flattering terms. While she was married, it was a childless marriage and a strange marriage (at least to me). Maybe that’s why her view of family life and charity seemed so out of touch with so many as it does to me, so that’s where we differ. But I choose to ignore that aspect of her life much the way the Christian Conservatives now ignore her atheism. She gave us so much more.

I'm rethinking my support of Charter Schools

My last post insinuated that the public school system in the US or Canada is structured more for the employment of teachers than the education of students.
One way to increase the choices of parents and give them more control over the schooling of their children is the use of Charter Schools. Basically the parent's tax dollars would be redirected to the school of their choice and if it were a private school then that school would get public dollars.
An article (We Don't Need No State Education) by Sheldon Richman posted today at the Freeman-Online points out that maybe the state should not be involved with education at all.

Do more teachers improve education or is it just a make work program?

According to the Cato Institute it’s a make work program. You might think that increasing the number of teachers per 100 students would have a positive impact on math and reading scores. Not according to this graph which shows data going back over 30 years. Cato concludes that keeping teaching jobs and adding teaching jobs is not about the kids at all, but rather the adults employed in education that also are able to vote for their own jobs.


In Canada the statistics aren’t as clear as the US graph shows, but the Fraser Institute does a pretty good job examining and comparing Canadian Education policies. Their conclusions are not substantially different from the Cato conclusions.

An excerpt from a September 2006 policy study titled Why Canadian Education Isn’t Improving (by Merrifield, Dare and Hepburn) shows how the unions and government are partners for the benefit of teachers rather than students.

Now that some provincial governments negotiate teacher contracts, their teacher unions have even greater political power.

The special interest groups, especially the teachers’ unions, have a great deal of money at their disposal. Each year, every public school teacher has hundreds of dollars deducted from his paycheck at the source, money that the school boards send directly to the unions, providing them with a guaranteed revenue stream of millions of dollars every year. The unions’ financial power, combined with their ability to mobilize thousands of teachers, makes them very influential in the political arena.

Teachers’ unions participate in school board elections, often providing financial and logistical support, as well as urging their members to vote for certain candidates. Since voter turnout is low for school board elections and a disproportionate number of educators vote, the unions are frequently successful in electing a number of union sympathizers to the school boards (Moe, 2006). When contract negotiation time comes around, pro-union trustees sometimes represent management at the bargaining table, thus allowing the teachers’ unions to have representatives on both sides of the table (Moe, 2006).

Democracy in action!

We are PIIGS too

That’s not a misspelling; the PIIGS are Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. These European democracies are verging on bankruptcy and if we add Iceland, which depending on whom you believe has already defaulted the spelling becomes PIIIGS!


We in Canada should not gloat, things while better, are bad enough that problems will inevitably start showing up soon if drastic measures aren’t taken.

In today’s Globe and Mail Neil Reynolds has an excellent article which holds a mirror up to the Western democracies and the reflection is ugly. It’s absolutely worth your time.