Social Impacts

After the killing of two non-Canadian "guest workers" from China only weeks ago, a second part of the same structures has collapsed, only thanks to a stop work order was life loss averted. This scenario will play out over and again as the rush to work has people who have no training working on the job and learning at the same time. They want to quintuple production and are out of "domestic labour sources" already. What to do? Kill a few people who aren't even allowed to apply to stay past their temporary work.

--M

Second Storage Tank Collapses at Canadian Natural Oil Sands Site

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/ing/f140507i.html
Fidel Castro
May 14, 2007

María Luisa Mendonça brought to the meeting in Havana, a powerful documentary film on the subject of manual sugarcane cutting in Brazil.

As I did in my previous reflection, I have written a summary using María Luisa’s own paragraphs and phrases. It goes as follows:

A press release below from the EUB-- the same people telling us that Nuclear Powerplants that take years to construct, and then more years of operation to start being a reduction in Greenhouse gas emissions, are an "environmental benefit". Their track record is no longer credible. Here below, spilling oil is not dangerous to your health. So says the EUB.

--M

EUB Completes Investigation Into Rainbow Pipeline Failure Near Slave Lake

Calgary, Alberta (May 9, 2007) The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board
(EUB) has completed its investigation into a pipeline leak that

Tory MPs storm out of meeting on energy sharing; Canada left short to aid U.S., says professor
The Edmonton Journal (A6) The Ottawa Citizen (A3) The Montreal Gazette (A12)
Fri 11 May 2007

OTTAWA - Amid heated charges of a coverup, Tory MPs on Thursday abruptly shut down parliamentary hearings on a controversial plan to further integrate Canada and the U.S.

Signs of out-of-control growth...

May 1, 2007 6:37:00 PM MST
National Energy Board says hot energy climate means six fold increase in hearings (NEB-Hearings)
http://www.oilweek.com/news.asp?ID=8834

CALGARY (CP) _ The National Energy Board, Canada‘s federal energy regulator, says its hearings days increased six-fold last year thanks to a hot energy sector.

The NEB Annual reports says the regulator spent 141 days last year hearing applications for development to Canada‘s energy sector; nearly one-third devoted to the multi-billion dollar Mackenzie Gas Project.

The point of this article is, unfortunately, to give advice to major corporations who are decimating nature at a nearly unparalleled rate a way to do so less horridly (like a smart bomb, the terminology is far more distracting than illuminating). Nonetheless, the developers who look at the single largest industrial project in history are salivating at ways to expand it into their own realm.

Whitecourt bids for nuclear plant
Upstart Calgary firm prepares to file applications for $6.2-billion Candu project
Jason Markusoff, The Edmonton Journal
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=24103fc4-5cc5-4...
May 04, 2007

EDMONTON - An upstart Calgary energy firm is thrusting Alberta headlong into the nuclear debate, with plans to apply next month to build a $6.2-billion twin reactor in northern Alberta that would become the largest -- and most controversial -- power plant in the province.

"Meanwhile, Canada falls farther behind in its rail infrastructure, continues to build sprawling, car-dependent, single-family houses on local farmland, and continues to invest in the appallingly destructive Alberta Tar Sands, Harper's home turf and financial base.

Canada cannot do its part to save the lives of those millions of people who will be victims of climate change until it decarbonizes its economy. That means no more Tar Sands and no more automobile suburbs."

National Climate Change Plans Come Nowhere Near What We Need to Do
Posted 2007/05/01 | By: Ryan McGreal

The language of "inevitability" is the only thing that is truly inevitable. A rule of thumb for something that your instincts tell you may not be a good idea and perhaps might see opposition is that the moment it is treated as "inevitable" means that those who plan such things truly fear it is actually not at all inevitable.

China's consul general flies to Fort McMurray
Meets with 120 Chinese workers after fatal accident
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=0166748b-62c8-4...
Published: Friday, April 27, 2007

EDMONTON Chinas Calgary-based consul general flew to Fort McMurray Friday to meet with a group of Chinese workers based at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.s Horizon oilsands project in the wake of a workplace accident that left two men dead and four others injured.