We’re officially an environmental “fossil” according to the Globe and Mail today. What is it going to take for Canada, land of vast expanse of beautiful wilderness and landscapes, of bountiful natural resources, quits squandering our heritage and our future and wakes up and takes some initiative?

Canada has the ultimate opportunity to vault into the future and be the next supplier of tomorrow’s energy capabilities as well. We currently export oil, gas, uranium, generated power and refined petroleum in large quantities. We are reaping a very healthy profit from current high energy prices. The world has started to shift towards more alternative energy. It is currently an emerging market, one that will ultimately in various forms displace the current energy systems. Not immediately, and possibly not in our lifetimes even, but it will happen. Our current systems are inefficient and damaging. There is no reason to preserve them if better alternatives present themselves.

Those alternatives are presenting themselves. Not just solar, geothermal, biofuels, wind and tidal power. Leaps in efficiency and distributed generation. Better ways to use current energy sources more efficiently and less polluting in operation. Those are being pioneered in many places, and deployed aggressively in many nations, while Canada sits idly by, resting on our profitable laurels rather than investing those profits to lead the way into the future.

I’ve written to the Alberta government as noted before in this blog, and I’ve written to our environment minister, Rona Ambrose, asking that we lead environmentally and technologically into a cleaner future. The idea that doing so in any way undermines our current resource industries, especially in Alberta, is naive in the extreme. The growth curve on these technologies, and the time to mature them, is far beyond any reasonable business outlook on our current corporations and industries. US demand for our energy products will not disappear in a decade, but there will be increasing demand, some of which will not be fuelled by our current energy systems. It is this new, emerging market of both conscience and efficiency that will be high margin and growing as we move forward, and right now that market will be served by companies in the US, Israel, China and other nations in the Europe and throughout the world.

Canada is not encouraging the deployment or creation of these companies in our borders, so we will be importing the technologies and expertise, and we will lose our lead in energy supply and technology.

I had thought companies like Shell and BP were leading the thoughts in having solar divisions (the largest in the world, in addition to Sharp) and biofuels, but now they have divested those companies into spin-offs and divestitures to better reflect a profitable business to wall street. Short term gain for long term sacrifice. If you’re a shareholder, congratulations, but remember to sell. Consumers are finally forcing the car companies to get efficient-minded rather than having 8000 pounds of material driven by in excess of 350 horsepower. To move a single individual to and from work. A bit of a waste. Europe is leading the way in forcing the efficiency. And low and behold, the car companies CAN indeed make an efficient car, far superior to the offerings most of us use for transportation today.

I resent being labelled a fossil of the environment in this wonderful country of Canada. Mr. Harper and our government (and that ALSO includes the Liberal government that likewise did nothing for Kyoto or alternative energy industries) must take some initiative and get their corporate supporters to realize that the government pushing the regulations in will create a global opportunity more than it will cause any real damage. The other nations of the world are moving to better products and more efficient systems, and we are left, here in the past, slowly turning into an archaeologic dig of the future.

Currently playing in iTunes: Summertime Blues (Live at Leeds) by The Who

How tiresome. Followers of this blog know that I’m somewhat conservative in many social viewpoints, but also a believer in Canada’s social pact, health care system and much of our public policy. It’s also no secret that I support the Green Party openly, and am an energy efficiency enthusiast, but by no means an activist or radical. “Green Conservativism” might be applicable, but that label is kind of slippery, as I believe it is with any thinking voter in Canada.

Jack Layton has been in the press running down Harper on a number of notes while he rallies his radical-left caucus and faithful. He runs down taking action in Afghanistan. Why would he do that? Does he feel the Taliban should have been left openly repressing people and funding international terrorist organizations? It’s not like there’s a debate that there are other places also deserving of intervention, he’s not arguing that point. Claiming to stand for the poor, and for women’s rights, and for the rights of equality in so many dimensions, but only in Canada will he defend our belief in the charter or even the UN conventions? For that matter, he apparently believes that the Taliban is some legitimate, caring, rational government as he feels we should negotiate a peace with these radicals.

Let me be clear. I fear for our soldiers, and for the aid workers over there, and for the civilians caught in the middle. I wish they didn’t have to be there, but the UN was in favour of this action, and I believe this war has unfortunately some basis for legitimacy. I support our action, and I support our troops most of all, as they have a tough job in trying to stabilize and help that country that the US used as a stepping-off point to an invasion that has proven to have no legal basis whatsoever. [Update] I’d also like to state that those of us that believe in our Armed Forces as I do, be proud of our men and women serving our country, as they are doing so in the best military tradition. I also admire the fact that CBC gives a balanced viewpoint on this. It’s not all roses, but I would note that the “encirclement” tactic has a gap in it until it’s closed. (If the Taliban forces don’t get out, or if they aren’t trying to, which seems the case, they are making a grave tactical error in all likelihood.)

Layton and the NDP continues to be a party of idealists with no plan, no set attainable agenda, and no concept of the real world whatsoever. We’d all like better care for the elderly, lower cost for schooling, better medical care for everyone, but there is this small matter of money, and the NDP has shown eternally that they don’t care about balancing a budget. They would catapult us back to the deficits of Mulroney, Trudeau and countless other short-sighted fools we’ve had at the helm. Martin had a corrupt party, but either by luck, planning or some combination, we at least started to run a surplus, and pay down the debt we stand ready to hand to our children. Layton wants to live as best as he can today, and foist the load of that cost onto our kids. I’m willing to endure some hardship and pain to reduce that debt so our kids have more choices tomorrow.

The labour union in BC has also showed an appalling lack of intelligence recently as the view of Canadian Citenzenship applied to the migrant seasonal workers in the British Columbia agriculture industry. I’m sorry, but as I support our troops, I also believe that being Canadian means a great deal more than holding a job and living the good life. It has a commitment to ideas of fairness, of hard work, of continual improvement, and of not shirking the responsibility for things. If you want to fix the situation of those workers, and I believe that it sounds as though it does need fixing, fix the working regulations and labour laws to give those workers some rights and protection while working in Canada. They don’t need to be Canadian Citizens to do that. If they want to become Canadians, they can pursue that separately. Canadian Citizenship is not a Work Permit Mr. Sinclair, while you would reduce what it means to be Canadian to a question of where you work.

This has me too irritated to even listen to tunes at present. I’m so sick of this complete drivel and nonsense getting press time when the Green Party and other more legitimate viewpoints can be included in national debates or panels.

Apologies for so few links to background, but I’ve been working and thinking this through for a long while. It’s all a miasma of facts condensing to opinion.

I’ve disputed a number of our intellectual property laws and copyright initiatives in the past. It would appear that our “Education Ministers” are heading down a very, very foolish path. Rather than this nonsense, perhaps working to enable a funding model to get our kids more accessible levels of costs for post-secondary education would be a better use of their time and our money.

Michael Geist is a very effective critic and analyst on Canada’s IP law among other things, and raises a very large warning in his recent post of Education Ministers’ Copyright Proposal Needs a Rewrite. It would appear from his analysis that we’re heading down a blind alley that can really only work to make things worse. A bad law is worse than no law. That’s something I believe it would be very useful to teach a course in to new and old legislators.

I’d also encourage you to read Michael’s other posts on DRM. I’m not a total opponent to DRM due to the inability of far too many people to respect the needs and rights and efforts of the artist. I am fine with DRM that allows me to work with the media and material in a fair way in my own uses and environment, which includes ripping to my iPod (I bought the music, but I don’t always agree with the format for playing it) but will not allow me to redistribute it freely without some barrier.

Conversely, being neck-deep in technology for a living, I know what proprietary formats do to really muck up honest people, and it’s just painful. ANY DRM is by definition at this point proprietary, regardless of vendor claims to the contrary. It’s a balance that is very difficult to strike properly because the simple fact that far too many people believe that copying music is OK. This is really inexcusable when the cost for a track is very cheap by any standard. I’m a musician, and though I don’t make a living from it, I respect the time and effort and talent required to create something people really enjoy. Anyone who does should compensate the musician. If an artist chooses â la the Grateful Dead to release recording for free (tape trees) in order to drive people to live performances, and thus to make a living off of performances, that is their choice, not the choice of the listener. Some artists cannot perform their works, or do not choose the lifestyle of the road, and it is not our right via theft to force them to do so or to give up their art. DRM is a pain in the neck to all those honest patrons because too may people lack the respect for the artist to compensate their efforts. I doubt most of those people would be willing to do their job for free in return.

Read up on this copyright issue, and please, get on to your provincial education minister and other government representatives and express the need to strike a fair balance, which the current copyright law does quite well for education, and to understand the environment we’re moving into and look for ways that people are compensated for their time, and fair use is guaranteed. Canada doesn’t need to make the same mistakes other Industrialized nations are with Intellectual Property.

Currently playing in iTunes: Ain’t No Mystery by Smash Mouth

Perhaps the airlines will have to start actually feeding us again as we can’t bring anything on board to counter the altitude-assisted dehydration. The problem is the security measure is a placebo as people who analyse this stuff for a living a quick to point out. Case in point, Bruce Schneier in Schneier on Security: Last Week’s Terrorism Arrests: “http://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1051”

The UK security teams and all assisting them need the real kudos, and it’s the legwork and brainwork that needs the funding, not trying to detect these chemicals and compounds in all these areas. I think Bruce is right in the assessment of too many targets. Tom Clancy wrote about running planes into buildings in the book A Debt Of Honor long before 9/11. He also wrote about terrorists using a nuclear weapon to take out the Superbowl game in Sum of All Fears. The targets will always be there. To stop the madness, there’s two things we need to do.

One is outlined by Bruce. Don’t be terrorized. Easier said than done, but people living in Northern Ireland when the IRA was actively destroying things, in Quebec during the FLQ, and in so many other places in the world continue their lives in the face of these people wantonly destroying lives without communicating their point. It’s too bad that these terrorists feel that their point is better communicated by killing a number of innocent civilians than by writing a blog on the web explaining the issues and the desires of their cause. Alternative media such as Indymedia.orgare trying to show the other side of many of these stories, and a lot of people unconvinced by CNN, BBC, CBC and others are wisely trying to see both sides of the story.

The second task is facilitated by this communication. If rather than raising our defensiveness, our ire, our fear and our aggression they were to engage the western civilizations in understanding what has made them feel so wronged, and what needs to be done to correct these wrongs, then the second task which amounts to “Quit pissing them off if we can” falls into place. Right now, there’s a growing feeling that the foreign policies of the US and other countries in the West have brought about much of this hatred. If that’s correct, then just maybe we cut the dependency on the Middle East for energy by other approaches and get our noses out of their countries until they start behaving reasonably.

Don’t mistake me for some naive optimist on this. I’m slicing some big issues very coarsely, and I know full well that the histories in these issues and the political environments aren’t going to turn on a dime and come up peace lilies tomorrow, but we need to start understanding rather than escalating.

We can’t continue to surrender our freedoms and our way of life so easily. We need to search for a better, more fundamental solution, and to do that we need to dig for the more fundamental causal problem.

Currently playing in iTunes: Simple Gifts by Paul Schwartz