Propane Blues

I was driving to work the other morning listening CBC. One of the news items was a story about the fact that the cost of propane in the rural areas of Ontario had almost doubled in the past few months (as natural gas is not available in rural areas, folks use propane). The story got my attention in part because we use to cook, heat our water and occasionally our house using propane. As a young family with only one income, that sort of increase would have put a serious dent in our monthly budget. I think there would have been some months where we would not have been able to both pay the propane bill and buy food. So I turned up the radio and listened to the story and the explanation from the "independent petroleum expert"

There are apparently two reasons why the cost of propane has increased so dramatically. One is quite simply (according to the expert) because more people are using the stuff. In the fall the corn farmers of the mid western United States needed more propane to dry their bumper crop; ever since November for most of the northern US and much of Canada it has been damn cold and people are using more to heat their houses. The expert didn't say that there was a shortage of propane in the ground or that the costs to process and ship the stuff had increase - the stuff had gone up because more people were using it. In other words - it cost more because the company could charge more and knew people would have no choice but to pay the increased costs.

The second reason why the price has increased (again according to this expert) is the decline of the Canadian dollar as compared against the American dollar. Really? Apparently the North American propane prices are set in Texas, which quite frankly seems a bit strange as it is Canadian propane. I don't understand why Ontario resident's propane costs reflect American prices. We have to pay more because the price is set in American dollars (and therefore we have to pay the exchange rate) in spite of the fact it never left this country. The absurdity of this argument becomes quickly apparent when one realized that the propane that was delivered to the rural family this week was bought weeks if not months ago when the Canadian dollar was at par.

I think understand capitalism. I think I understand that under that theory those who control the resources will maximize their profit regardless of who is abused or exploited.  What I don't understand is why they bother to pretend that they are not money grubbing SOBs. If you are going to rip me off - just do it.  Stop lying to me about the reasons why.

News Flash ------Joe Oliver, the Federal Minister of Energy, has ordered the price increases to be reviewed by the National Energy Board. Maybe I am being a bit too cynical.... but as much as it saddens me to say it. If your propane bill went up this month don't expect a fat rebate check any time soon.

Pete Seeger

I have spent part of the day listening to my CD of the Weavers. It is an enjoyable double set and I like to listen to it every once in awhile but today I listened to it because Pete Seeger was one of the Weavers (along with  Ronnie Gilbert Lee Hays and Fred Hillerman) and I wanted to hear his voice.

Pete Seeger died yesterday and my world is just a bit emptier than it was on Sunday. So much of the music that shaped my musical taste was his music. So many of my political beliefs were shaped by his politics. The whole folk music scene that existed in the 1950s and 60s and still exists today does so because of people like Seeger, the Weavers, Almanac Singers, Guthrie, Leadbelly and Cico Huston amongst others. All of the groups that followed them such as the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary or Fairport Convention could only have existed because folks like Peter Seeger spent a large part of the lives traveling the country singing their songs and telling their truths about peace and justice.

He was a man of conviction and he wore those convictions loudly and proudly. He not only never avoided a political confrontation , he actively went out and found them.  Whether it was refusing to participate at the McCarthy Hearings in the 1950s  or singing at Occupy New York or participating in the cleaning of the Hudson River - where ever he was - he sang for the truths that to him were self evident.

So the next time you sing around a campfire or at a protest march.... remember Pete Seeger. He showed us how.

Time for a change?

Last week Rick Mercer during his weekly rant on CBC mentioned that he had made a New Year's resolution to not get as angry at the Canadian Government; to at least make the attempt to look at both sides of the issue. It was a short lived resolution.

I never thought about making such a resolution. I am more of a realist than Mercer is both in terms of my ability to restrain myself and the government's apparent limitless capacity to make fools of themselves.

Keeping up with the disaster that is the Harper government can be exhausting. I am almost afraid to watch the 10:00 news on CBC. I know there will be at least one item that will cause me to, at one point during the night, lay awake and wonder what I can do. I keep on having this dream/nightmare that one day I will get to chat with Mr. Harper and then I can tell him how much I disagree with him. Of course I know that that would never happen and if it did there is nothing I can do to change his mind. We come from different planets. Or at least our perceptions of reality are profoundly different that we might as well.  I think I could live with those differences if he would acknowledge that not everyone agrees with him; that there is another point of view which has validity; and people who think differently are not terrorist, anti-Semitic or bad Canadians.

I am so tired of someone from the Harper Government starting a sentence with "all Canadians believe/think/feel or agree". I am tired of them making assumptions that they know what I think or believe (it is far more likely they just don't care how I think or feel). I am tired of them weakening our capacity to protect ourselves environmentally (by laying off or muzzling our scientists) and then saying that we have more protection than ever and that they are making decisions that are in best interests of all Canadians. I am beyond tired of their sanctimonious and condescending comments to other countries. We lecture them about human rights while denying the same rights to so many First Nation Canadians or to some Palestinians. We make big announcements about how wonderful we are, and then do nothing.

Take for example the issue of Syrian refuges. As noted by the CBC Sweden has welcomed approximately 14,000 refugees from that war torn country. Canada's commitment? To take a total of 1,300 individuals between 2012 and 2014. Sweden has a population of less than ten million but have already accepted ten times as many people as Canada has promised to do. Makes Canada look rather ungenerous. We have nothing to brag about. Similarly last week Harper made a big deal about money given to Palestine. From numbers available from The Globe and Mail it looks as if the aid package committed to that country is less than it was last year although quite frankly with the way the Harper Government makes numerous announcements about the same pot of money it is hard to tell.

Most of all I am tired at Harper's assumption that I don't care or that I am stupid. Neither is true. I am hoping there are millions of Canadians who can and will say the same thing.

Science and the Canadian Government

I watched a depressing, sad and infuriating TV program last night. CBC's The Fifth Estate devoted the entire hour to a discussion about how internationally recognized Canadian scientist are being laid off and world renown Canadian scientific programs are being dismantled by the current government. This is not a new story. Bits and pieces of it have been on the national news for the past five or six years. (Although the news that the government had closed a number of scientific libraries and dispersed/ destroyed the information only came to light this week). But it was, at least to me, incredibly sad to hear from and to see the faces of the scientists who had lost their jobs speak with such passion about their work. 

Click on the above link and watch the program. It is worth the time. We all need to know what is going on. We need to understand the consequences of the Conservative Government's decision to ignore science when it says things they don't like. But there is also a deeper perhaps more worrying aspect to the story; there is a lesson to be learned about the political strategy that this government employs to weaken the country and thereby reduce resistance to the changes that they are bringing about regardless of whether or not the majority want them.

When I was attending university about 10 years ago, there was a lot of conversation in the "Arts" part of the school. There was great concern and frustration amongst those who had a passion for the Humanities and for the Social Sciences that funding was being re-directed from their programs courses to the science departments. There was a sense that the courses that talked about the world in terms of history, literature and how people matured as societies had become less important AND that the science folks thought that that was the way it should be. I never heard anyone say that both the arts and the sciences were equally integral to the university community. Quite frankly I think most of the science departments were delighted that they had more access to funding and therefore to the power at the administrative level of the university. The very people who had made it their life's work to understand how the world worked from a social point of view were demoted to a second class position within some universities. 

Now science is being attacked or at least certain branches of it are. It makes one wonder who is in line to have their funding chopped and their research maligned.  Will the "golden programs" of economic or applied research be next? One could almost wonder why the government appears to be afraid of anyone who thinks differently from them?

This tactic of divide and conquer is not a new tactic. Mike Harris won two elections in Ontario using this strategy. One wonders when we, as a collective, will understand and stop responding to it.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
 
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
 
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
 
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
 

Martin Niemöller

Holocaust Encyclopaedia

Light Bulbs

I do not like being told what to do. I especially do not like to being lied to, tricked or manipulated into doing the "right thing".  My most recent complaint is the Canadian government's moral high ground stance on saving the planet by insisting that I need to switch to using compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. 

It is an absurd proposition to assume that if everyone uses a more efficient light bulb we will start to resolve the issues around climate change. It is the same sort of logic that argued that we should turn off the water when we brush our teeth to deal with the issues of water shortages. I would perhaps be more supportive of such government initiatives if that government demonstrated an equal concern about how industry uses water or electrical energy.

For example the Tar Sands of Alberta - so dearly loved by the Conservative Government - use "to produce 1 barrel of oil from the Athabasca oil sands ....., on average 2 to 4 barrels of water in the case of mining projects or.4 barrels of water in the case of SAGD projects " (Industry Report).( see also United Nations Environmental Alert Service).  Turning off the water when I brush my teeth (which I do) is not going to address the issue of the reduction of available groundwater. Far more water would be saved if the government banned the raising of beef for the simple reason that the production of meat uses a surprising amount of water. For example  "In 2010, 838 million cubic metres of water (in Canada) were used for irrigation"(Statistics Canada) . Hay was the most common crop watered (ibid)).

There are so many ways that we could save energy. Getting out of the Tar Sands is one obvious way. According the Globe and Mail, it is anticipated that the amount of energy needed to produce a barrel of oil will continue to increase. In a different article the same news service reported that "a new estimate by Ziff Energy Group, a Calgary-based energy advisory, predicts that oil sands gas consumption will rise to three billion cubic feet (bcf) a day, up from 1.1 bcf today" (Globe and Mail). To be clear -  we are using natural gas to extract oil - why don't we just use the natural gas?

On a personal level we could start to turn off the lights when we leave a room and turn off all of electronic gadgets. (10% of the average electric bill is because of phantom power) 

In the meantime we are stuck with a weak law that has so many holes in it that it is not going to be very effective. For the next year "75- and 100-watt incandescent bulbs will be banned, followed by 40- and 60-watt versions on Dec. 31, 2014" (CBC News). On top of that, the aforementioned bulbs can still be sold as long as they were manufactured before January 1, 2014. Who wants to bet that there is a huge stock pile somewhere and that those bulbs will start to become more and more expensive? It is a law that will allow the government to say it cares about the environment and perhaps even worse, allow people (who can afford to purchase the far more expensive CFL bulbs) say that they are doing something useful.

It is a bad law that does little good and may in fact do harm. I believe that we all need to do our part. But we need to make sure that we are focusing our efforts in the right direction. We also need honest leadership.