Saturday, June 30, 2012

Bjorn Lomborg: "The Skeptical Environmentalist"

Are all the billions of dollars spent on "saving the planet" from overheating wasted. YES, according to Bjorn Lomborg. 
Is recycling paper and glass smart? NO.

Here is Lomborg in conversation on ReasonTV advocating for sensible ways to help people and the planet.

 

Friday, June 29, 2012

Gaia Man says cool it on global warming

Now that Rio 20+ is over, you wonder if there is any point in continuing the long string of seemingly pointless annual environmental conferences.
This one did not go well according to two stories here and here. The first Rio Conference 20 years ago, was more generalized toward sustainability and environmental action on a broad front. As time went on, each succeeding conference became more and more focussed on the perceived immediate threat of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). That hysteria peaked at Copenhagen in 2009, and began to fade at Cancun in 2010. Since then, the idea that humans are responsible for bringing Earth out of the last ice age toward thermal doom from excess carbon dioxide has been getting 'colder-than-a-well-diggers-ass-in-the-Klondike' or similar such sayings.
Last week a noted purveyor of the AGW hypothesis recanted, and then, shock of shocks, the Father of Mother Earth Gaia shared his second thoughts on the AGW issue with The Guardian.
Ninety-two-year-old James Lovelock was one of the worlds leading alarmists on the AGW hypothesis. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote:“before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”  That is alarmist, wouldn't you say, right up there with Al Gore? But Lovelock is a respected scientist, and you have to wonder why he would bother doing this so late in his life with his contributions to environmental research assured? Why bother if he didn't feel strongly that this is an error? Lovelock first showed his change of heart in April 2012, in an interview with MSNBC, where he was quoted: “All right, I made a mistake.”

Lorrie Goldstein, writing in the Toronto Sun, this past week summarized some of Lovelock's views originally posted in The Guardian. Here are some of the observations:

(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.

As Lovelock observes, "Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They've gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it ... Let's be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it." (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)

(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.

"It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion," Lovelock observed. "I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use ... The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air."

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, "so-called ‘sustainable development' ... is meaningless drivel ... We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price."

(4) Finally, about claims "the science is settled" on global warming: "One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it."

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Food Choice: Children voted with their feet.

School is out for another year and the report card on Policy Memorandum 150 has just trickled in. What's that you ask?

In a December 2011 posting, I commented on the Ontario Ministry of Education's commitment to making schools healthier places for students by instituting Policy Memorandum 150, cooked up by the McGuinty Liberals. As I suggested then, the Liberals of Ontario are out to shape your world. Their tool of choice is to eliminate choice by instituting universal bans. In that December posting, I suggested that this ban might invite some enterprising students to flout the new rule. But my abilities at prediction seem to be no better than the legislators who crafted and instituted this policy. Government action frequently leads to unintended consequences, and that is the case here. Schools across the province are reporting shortfalls in cafeteria income (not surprisingly) that is used to fund a variety of programs.

The largest school board in Canada, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is forecasting a $1.2-million shortfall in cafeteria revenue this past school year. The Ottawa-Carleton School Board estimates a loss of $900,000 in cafeteria revenue, while the Greater Essex County District School Board in Windsor, which gets a commission from a private operator, has projected a $95,000 loss in revenue. This information is outlined in an article in the National Post this week.

In Toronto the shortfall would have been used to support cafeteria infrastructure and maintenance, in Ottawa cafeteria funds are used to pay for field trips, academic tournaments, clubs and sports teams. But the loss means parents can expect to pay more for their children's school activities. In Toronto alone, more than 30 money losing school cafeterias may be closed before next September.

Ontario was not the first jurisdiction to institute new rules for school food menus, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and British Columbia all do the same thing. Nova Scotia seems to have had more success in implementation, because it was done in stages over a number of years so students became educated and acclimatized to the changes. In Alberta, individual school boards are allowed to decide for themselves - a sensible course of action in my opinion.

The simple truth is that real food is cheaper and often more nutrient rich than so called junk food as the illustration above suggests. Students should be taught that lesson from their parents and their schools. But education is a gradual process and when choices are eliminated the wrong choice often become more appealing; that's human nature. Too bad there are not stats for the lunchtime boom in fast food restaurants near schools.

Early in May a couple of enterprising young lads posted a widely viewed YouTube video that expressed their displeasure with the Ontario ban. That was a clue certainly to what the financial report verified this week.

So what did McGuinty say about this story? “They put a man on the moon 40 years ago, don’t tell me that we can’t make healthy, delicious, tasty, attractive food for teenagers in the province of Ontario in 2012.” Brilliant.
    

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Sacred Cows and the Dairy Tax

Cowed by politics?
Name a product that is found in the refrigerators of virtually every home in Canada and for which we each pay too much? Yes, milk, good guess.

The average Canadian family pays up to $1.44 a litre more for milk than their American counterparts, up to $300 more per year, even though the dollars are roughly at par today. That amount does not count the additional price of cheese, butter, ice cream, or eggs. Yes, eggs too and chickens!
What's going on?
The irony here is that most Canadians are typically so disconnected from politics they have no clue they are being robbed BECAUSE of their own ignorance and misplaced trust. The scheme called "supply management" was cooked up more than 40 years ago by farmers in cahoots with politicians. The misplaced trust is in the politicians.
Everyone knows what is meant by supply and demand, that is how economics is supposed to work. Too much supply, prices should drop, too much demand, prices should rise. Price has meaning and it regulates supply. But what if supply is regulated by a powerful lobby group, that uses its monopoly powers to exclude competition, and set its own prices by controlling how much supply is produced. That is supply management. Here is another explanation from a recent article.  
"What is “supply management”? It is a government scheme to raise agricultural prices and farm incomes by a strictly enforced system of licences and quotas that controls who may produce a handful of important commodities, such as milk, cheese, poultry and eggs, and how much they may produce. High tariffs also are imposed on imports of these commodities. By thus controlling both domestic and foreign supply, supply management increases the price of covered commodities. Thus do we repel potential trade partners who would like to sell those commodities to Canadians at competitive prices." 
This issue is a sacred cow amongst politicians and the extra cost borne by all Canadians amounts to a hidden tax adding even more to the cost of living. (ibid)
"Do supply management’s domestic benefits outweigh its obstruction of trade?
On the contrary, its domestic costs are high, and are borne disproportionately by low-income Canadians.
The lower a household’s income, the higher the share of their income that goes to food. In fact, lower income households spend nearly a quarter of their income on food compared to middle- and upper-income Canadians, who normally spend 5% to 10% of their income on that category.
Just as supply management disproportionately burdens lower-income families, eliminating it and lowering prices for basic food goods disproportionately benefits lower-income families. They would immediately have more disposable income for other necessities, thus increasing their standard of living."
So much for the sham of politicians helping the poor, they just help themselves.

All of the major political parties favour supply management, why not, the parties are kept happy by generous donations from Canadian Dairy Farmers due to the unwarranted profits made through supply management.

Supply management has come to the fore in recent weeks because of two different papers published here and here, as well as recent trade negotiations.

Canada is a trading nation, however, the high tariffs imposed by supply management act as a barrier to this trade as spelled out here:
"That’s exactly why Canada agonized in Los Cabos over U.S. president Barack Obama’s invitation to join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Our system of supply management is not acceptable to many of that trade club’s members; and while we may now be at the negotiating table, we are not in the TPP yet.
Canada is a trading nation, and joining the TPP would give us access to the fastest growing markets in the global economy. The TPP originated in 2005 with Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile. Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, Japan and others including China may join in due course. It may well be one of the most important trade blocs in the 21st Century.
The sheer size of the countries involved represents a real opportunity for Canada to expand its opportunities for trade. If all the potential members join the TPP, it will represent $35.2-trillion in GDP and 2.7 billion people."
 
The National Post ends its recent editorial on this issue with:
"...both New Zealand and Australia offer models of how Canada could manage a phased transition to a free-market dairy industry. In both of those countries, consumers and producers alike have prospered, with lower prices and higher productivity, just as economists would expect.
This is what the future of our quota-controlled agricultural industries should look like. In furtherance of that vision, we urge that the two reports published this week become required reading in Ottawa. Stephen Harper's government already has proven its free-market bona fides by removing the monopsony power of the Wheat Board. Many other agricultural sectors cry out for similar reform."