Category Archives: Random Musing
Should Canada sell its tar sands oil to China? An article by Winnie Hwo, Climate Change and Clean Energy Campaigner
This article was originally posted on the David Suzuki Foundation web site so readers be warned – you know where this article is going with this – I think Winnie brings up some interesting points. Find out more about climate change issues here.
Fort McMurray, Alberta. (Credit: kk+ via Flickr)
Will selling tar sands oil to China help that country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions? Dr. Wenran Jiang argues it will. In a talk at UBC titled “Putting Environment into the Canada-China Energy Equation”, Dr. Jiang said China burns lots of coal and burning coal creates high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. If Canada sells more tar sands bitumen to China, he said, we can help China lower its GHG emissions because burning oil creates fewer emissions than burning coal.
Dr. Jiang — who is the MacTaggart Chair at the University of Alberta, a senior adviser to the Alberta government and a frequent contributor to the Financial Post and CBC — gave his 90-minute presentation as the first of the China in Global Perspective: The Energy-Sustainability Nexus series hosted by the Institute of Asian Research, with Carbon Talks, the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and the Liu Centre for Global Issues.
Since 2006, China has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top overall greenhouse gas emitter. Although China’s current per capita GHG emissions are 6.8 tonnes per year, lower than the U.S.’s 16.9 tonnes and Canada’s 16.15 tonnes a year, at the existing rate of industrial and domestic growth in China, per capita GHG emissions could surpass those of the U.S. by 2017. Xie Zhenhua, vice chair of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said last year that this is not an option.
China’s GHG emissions and addiction to coal need to be reined in. China gets 70 per cent of its energy from coal, and nine per cent from renewable sources including wind, solar, hydro and nuclear. Four per cent is from natural gas and 15 per cent from petroleum, mainly from Africa and the Middle East.
As a Chinese Canadian, I may be expected to cheer for a plan that seemingly helps our economy while lowering China’s GHG emissions. But I don’t!
According to Dr. Jiang’s presentation, China’s “explosive” industrial growth, the expansion of the middle class and increasing urbanization will force an ever-expanding demand for fossil fuels. However, China’s main fossil fuel — coal — will lead to even more environmental degradation and GHG emissions. Dr. Jiang said China is now the largest auto consumer in the world, that 70 per cent of China’s water is polluted, that 90 per cent of global electronic waste is dumped in southern China, not to mention the burning of coal and other fossil fuels in China which made up 90 per cent of China’s fuel source. Beijing has become the poster boy for poor air quality capitals of the world. The total sum of China’s pollution, according to Dr. Jiang, is costing the Chinese economy $200 billion US a year. Continue reading
Filed under Random Musing
Saving Your Relationship One Room At A Time
It’s funny. I’ve always thought I was the easiest person to live with. Ever. I’m fun loving, easy-going, laid back, love to watch a good game of hockey – this is what I posted on my Lava Life profile anyways – which is really more or less a lie and oh yeah, I like to drink beer – this is actually an outright lie. And last but not least I like my house to be cosy and clean not messy with crap all over the place. So if there’s a mess in the house it’s absolutely Dave who has created it. I clean up the mess, I don’t create the mess. The tooth paste all over the bathroom wall, for example, is Dave’s. Every day I ask myself, “What the hell is Dave doing with that damn tooth brush? I don’t see anyone else with tooth paste all up and down their bathroom walls.”
Today I pulled out the vacuum. Dave literally jumped from his prone position on the couch and ran to the vacuum cleaner. “I’ll do it.” You see – he’s afraid I’ll blow the vacuum cleaner up and bend the prong thingies by plugging it in and dragging the vacuum behind me for kilometers and kilometers. And if it’s not that he definitely knows I’m going to put a hole or two in the walls and then he’s going to have to re-paint (I don’t paint but I do provide entertainment).
Frequently (let’s say every day) I tell him he micro manages me in our day to day living arrangements. For example, the dishwasher. Now I know there are people out there who are very particular about how the dishwasher is loaded. He’s not one of those. But he does say things like “Watch out for the wine glasses – don’t put little things in the lower rack because it will fall through and break the dishwasher.” Naturally I don’t listen to a word he says because I’m busy making lists in my head of things.
So today there was smoke in the house (I have a poor sense of smell due to allergies) and the dishwasher stopped. I guess it was close to breaking into fire because I forgot about the little plastic things and one fell through and got tangled up somewhere and almost broke the dishwasher.
I think it’s fair to say that Dave and I are polar opposites in cleaning styles. You see – I’m easy going and tidy and he’s always trying to boss me around and is messy. Our differences of being came to a head last December so we agreed to go room by room and make a list of all the things that bothered the other person about how the other person left stuff, broke stuff or threw stuff into that particular place. I thought this was a cunning way of showing how right I was and how wrong he was.
Well it proved to be an interesting exercise because unbeknownst to me I do things that irritate Dave. There’s a part of me that found this hard to believe but then when I thought about it I realized just how irritating I might be to live with. I did, after all, lie quite a bit on my Lava Life profile (which is how we met). I hate hockey (except for play-off very last round very last game kind of hockey – I’ve only had beer twice in my life and I hated it both times – I’m less a hamburger eating kind of easy-going girl than I am a vegetarian health freak. I’m not easy-going. I can be a domestic tyrant.
It turns out Dave’s list of irritations was at least as long as my own and included the ‘toothpaste issue’ which apparently is me being a maniac with the electric brush. It turns out he won’t put the hair dryer away (on my list of irritations) because I always stuff things in the cupboard (this is true) and he likes to put things neatly away. So now I don’t put things where the dryer should be and he more or less puts the dryer away.
I could go on and on (I really could) but it was an interesting exercise. It has definitely helped us at the very least understand where the source of living aggravation comes from – it definitely hasn’t resolved all the living issues but it has helped a lot – there are things I’m not sure how to change – like today when I almost blew-up the dishwasher and for Dave it’s the same – he loves having piles of everything everywhere which makes me want to hurl it all out of the window – but we’re getting there and in the meantime I’ve discovered that I too can be an aggravating soul to live with. Who would have guessed??
Filed under Random Musing, Uncategorized
Nikon D7000 – Girl In love With Her Dog
Filed under Dave's Pictures and Ma Movies, Dog Stuff, Random Musing
Poem of the Week: Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her thoughtful curation of these beautiful poems.
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For more information on W.H. Auden, please click here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/120
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Filed under Book Reviews, Random Musing
Ted Turner on the Keystone XL Pipeline
Life never fails to surprise me. This is an open letter Ted Turner has written highlighting the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. This letter can be found here.
Editor’s note: Ted Turner is the founder and chairman of the United Nations Foundation and the founder of CNN and Turner Broadcasting. He no longer plays an active role in CNN’s operations. He also founded and is the co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which seeks to reduce the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
(CNN) — I own a property in Fort Pierre, South Dakota, called the Bad River Ranch. It is a beautiful place, where we have worked very hard to restore the landscape, reintroduce native wildlife species and raise bison sustainably. But it sits about 15 miles downstream of the point where TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline would cross the Bad River, and being that close has led me to examine more closely the potential risks and benefits of a project about which I have been highly skeptical from the beginning. After careful scrutiny, I believe it is not in our national interest to pursue it. Continue reading
Filed under Random Musing
Poem of the Week: The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife by Michael Ondaatje
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
– your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers…
When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.
Thank you Michael Ondaatje for creating so many beautiful word sculptures.
Filed under Book Reviews, Random Musing
This Toaster Oven is Evil
Just when I’ve mastered our toaster we get a Toaster Oven – that magical thing that combines a toaster and you guessed it – an oven. Today the Toaster Oven burned my toast. Yesterday it didn’t toast it at all. The day before I baked it by mistake. I have received numerous lessons on how to use the Toaster Oven and on Toaster Oven Best Practices – all of which have gone in one ear and out the other.
You see the Toaster Oven is like every other gadget or mechanical thing in my life. I am genetically predetermined to not enjoy good relationships with most mechanical, digital, devices including screwdrivers, hammers, BBQ’s, tents, all IKEA furniture, stereo equipment when that was still around, and especially TV’s with more than one remote or any remote at all for that matter. Most of my iPhone remains a mystery except for texting which I’ve picked up with a passion probably because it has something to do with talking. Right now I would like to have a piece of toast but with my luck I’ll set the house on fire so I’ll sit on my couch and have a tete a tete with my mother who is god knows where and discuss why exactly she passed that dreaded chromosome on to me.
Filed under Random Musing
Poem of the Week: Overheard by Ross Gay
It’s a beautiful day
the small man said from behind me
and I could tell he had a slight limp
from the rasp of his boot against the sidewalk
and I was slow to look at him
because I’ve learned to close my ears
against the voices of passersby, which is easier than closing
them to my own mind,
and although he said it I did not hear it
until he said it a second or third time
but he did, he said It’s a beautiful day and something
in the way he pointed to the sun unfolding
between two oaks overhanging a basketball court
on 10th Street made me, too
catch hold of that light, opening my hands
to the dream of the soon blooming
and never did he say forget the crick in your neck
nor your bloody dreams; he did not say forget
the multiple shades of your mother’s heartbreak,
nor the father in your city
kneeling over his bloody child,
nor the five species of bird this second become memory,
no, he said only, It’s a beautiful day,
this tiny man
limping past me
with upturned palms
shaking his head
in disbelief.
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A big thank you to Alison McGhee for curating these poems.
For more information on Ross Gay, please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Gay
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Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts
Filed under Book Reviews, Random Musing
Condofire 