Today I heard the premier of Alberta, Alison Redford use the term “bitumen bubble” to describe the reason why Alberta’s provincial revenues have fallen so much that the province now faces an $8 billion deficit. The obvious answer – surprisingly being trotted out by Chambers of Commerce, oil companies and conservative governments! – is that we need to build a pipeline to the west coast to get Alberta tar to an Asian market so that Alberta based oil companies can charge higher prices and therefore more tax revenue will flow to the coffers. I have a new term too: “gaiacide.” …
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Just beautiful weather here the last week. We have been living under a high pressure system that is forcing some wonderful meterological phenomena. Notably, the high pressure traps cold air near the sea and creates an inversion, meaning that the moisture can’t escape and form clouds, so it lingers at sea level forming think banks of fog that fill the Strait of Greorgia and Parts of Howe Sound. Last night the fog bansk were as thick as they can get and all night long we were treated to the soothing symphony of dozens of different fog horns sounding out in …
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Just in from an hour SUPping around Mannion Bay and Miller’s Landing. It is sunny and warm today – 5 degrees C – and there is not a breath of wind out. The water is so calm there isn’t even any swell in the Queen Charlotte Channel. Everything is flat and calm and quiet, like a long sigh. I started out from Pebbly Beach and rounded the north point. Headed out towards Miller’s Landing for 20 minutes, and then sat on my board, bobbing on the sea. Out in the channel, a seal was splashing. No sign of the huge …
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Very few of us have our hands on the real levers of power. We lack the money and influence to write policy, create tax codes, move resources around or start and stop wars. Most of us spend almost all of our time going along with the macro trends of the world. We might hate the implications of a fossil fuel economy, but everything we do is firmly embedded within it. We might despise colonization, but we know that we are alos guilty of it in many small ways, The reason challenges like that are difficult to resolve is that we …
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Several little realignings in my life have meant that this blog has gone through one of it’s periodic wanings. Also, I have been enjoying some time off and some time developing projects which aren’t ready to be written about yet. But I’m still here, watching calendars tick over, watching the rhythms of light and darkness oscillate in everything, and committed more than ever to a kind of gratitude of the present moment that seems helpful in a world where we are increasingly disenfranchised from everything that lies outside the skin (and some that lies within as well.) Meg Wheatley has …