In honour of Doris Anderson, take some time this week to check out what it will take for you to get involved in politics or to help a woman you know get elected. This online course was set up by Equal Voice Canada, an organization founded by Doris to advocate for electoral reforms and the removal of other barriers to increased representation of women in politics. The course is free but does require you to register.
An interesting article from Catherine Austin Fitts at Solari offered as a review of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth has one of my favourite Utah Phillips quotes "The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses." The article was written back in July 2006 but for some reasons it's just making the internet rounds now.
After kivetching for most of the last nine weeks about our crappy weather (the latest iteration is snowy rain or rainy snow, depending on your perspective), I was humbled to read of the catastrophe in Europe. 200 km/h winds, millions without power, 47 known dead, $1 billion euros in damage and counting. Now can we stop talking about Stanley Park and start talking about emissions reductions targets?
Attention budding filmmakers. The folks at EPIC, the upcoming Vancouver Sustainable Living Expo, are putting on a competition for films that show global warming solutions. Prizes include $5,000 cash, a Jorg&Olif City bike, a bunch of other stuff PLUS a screening at the March 16-18 EPIC. Check out their press release for more information.
Gendron beats Jensen for district seat
FRANK PEEBLES, Citizen staff
When you draw 21 you are impossible to beat in blackjack or Fraser Fort George Regional District elections. In the by-election to replace outgoing Area A representative Dee Burden, the final vote was 160 to 139 but Leif Jensen, the one on the short end of the score, said it was a much bigger defeat than that mere 21.
The winner was teacher and small business operator Denis Gendron, a provincial Green Party candidate in the last B.C. election who made it clear he opposed the removal of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve except in the most obvious of cases - an issue that causes division in an area that is both heavy on agriculture and keen to develop industry. Nonetheless, Gendron's "environment first" ideals prevailed.
Ted Howard is the guest blogger this month at onthecommons.org.
In his post Can We Prevent the Enclosure of Our
Cities? he examines the increasing gap between housing prices and
affordability and suggests that without action we will see something of a
medieval renaissance in the economies of our greatest North American cities. (The irony is that, of course, the greater the city, the more people who want to live there and thus the quicker the devolution of quality of life).
The antidote? He proposes the idea of Community
Land Trusts.
The Associated Press -- and 166 major media outlets around the globe including MSNBC, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NBC, CBS, Washington Post and the Sydney Morning Herald to name a few -- report "Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner." (more)
Meanwhile, absolutely no news outlets had stories on the 13,699 people that had died in the last 24 hours around the planet from a lack of access to clean drinking water...
Ask and you shall receive. A friend recently sent these photos of the damage in Stanley Park from the first wind storm that hit it back in mid-December. Too late for Minister Baird to save us from his carbon heavy trip but powerful viewing nonetheless.
Another long day of Way. Too. Much. Information. This time it wasn't Al/Mr. Gore helping us along but instead Andy Goodman. Andy is an expert in making public presentations and a former comedy writer and thus a very funny guy. His job as a member of the Climate Project faculty is to help us out with the vibe of the thing.
Incidentally, if you belong to a non-profit or one of a whole bunch of acronyms that weren't translated into Canadian but sounded important, you can get a FREE copy of his book on how to give better presentations. And may I just say as a former elected official who sat through way too many excruciating power point presentations, you (yes I mean you) could benefit from clicking on that link above.
24 hours into the Climate Project and my husband, friends and staff will be so pissed off to know that, 2000 miles away from home, I've been rendered (almost) speechless for the first time in quite a long while.
True, it was a long day which seems perhaps an inadequate way to describe sitting through the same 250+ slide power point twice in one day. First we did it "fast" (three plus hours) and then we did it slow (four plus hours). Somewhere around slide 191 on the second go-through I started to get that sublime out of body experience one has when their fever is really, really high. But I didn't have a fever, just a massive case of brain overload.
One of the reasons I came down here is because I was completely blown away by Al/Mr. Gore's ability to communicate in the movie. Given that I’m down here on his dime it’s probably impolitic to say it but I really didn’t find him that effective a communicator as a presidential candidate so I was doubly blown away by what he accomplished with the movie. Today, I was triply blown away.
