Apparently kids are rioting in favour of trashing our final wild river systems so that Californians can run their air-conditioners in season. (see comments from Tom Fletcher below)
Seems to me that if these BAU collaborators want buy-in from the BC enviro-community, which they have characterized as a bunch of neanderthal climate-change deniers too ignorant to comprehend the dire straits of global heating, - if they want buy-in for their privatization and trashing of wild rivers for IPP projects, they should insist that for every kilowatt of purported "Green Power" brought on-line, there must be a corresponding and measurable reduction of Brown Power; along with a credible effort to reduce power consumption overall. Perhaps the trashing and privatization of these irreplaceable rivers might be more acceptable to the community then.
The problem has always been with "Business As Usual" (BAU) and collaborating with growth, expansion, consumption proponents like Gordon Campbell will never turn around our hell-bent race to disaster.
It should terrify us all that cozy collaborators like ForestEthics, who would help re-elect the most environmentally illiterate government ever to rule this province, - the Gordon Campbell "Liberals," with the Enbridge Dirty-Oil Pipeline and Energy Corridor as their central platform plank, now wish to lead the effort to fight that development.
Cheers, Ingmar
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Rafe Mair responds on rivers, salmon
Tom Fletcher
BC Local News
November 01,2009
Former Socred cabinet minister and broadcaster Rafe Mair submitted the
following letter to the editor to our 70 B.C. newspapers in response to
last week's column on the salmon crisis. He asks a number of questions,
which I attempt to address here.
• • •
Editor:
Re: Usual suspects in the salmon crisis (B.C. Views, Oct. 28).
Tom Fletcher describes my opposition to salmon farms and run-of-river
power projects as "bunk". I realize that he is a right-winger with a
right-wing paper but surely that doesn't exempt him from telling the whole
truth.
Regarding fish farms, does he not know that the run of pinks that was
abundant this year passed fallowed fish farms when they migrated as
smolts, and that this return confirms Alexandra Morton's findings? That
this was an experiment that proved the point of every private scientist
who has examined this issue?
Regarding run-of-river, how can he ignore that fact that the bulk of the
private power is to be exported if only because it's produced when BC
Hydro doesn't need it? How can BC Hydro give take-or-pay contracts with
private power companies at double the amount they can sell it for on the
export market?
Regarding his earlier description of the Bute Inlet project hearing in
Campbell River at which I spoke, how extraordinary of him to object to the
word "shit." Even more extraordinary was his failure to observe that the
crowd was angry because they had no opportunity – and indeed had never had
– to deal with the "merits" but were confined to the "terms of reference"
for an environmental assessment of a project they didn't want.
Does he have no concern for the environmental havoc private power projects
wreak?
Rafe Mair
Lions Bay
Hi All, as we await the inevitable news, - that Tzeporah Berman, Andrew Weaver et al will be appointed to Gordo's "Green Energy Task Force" as their reward for stumping for the BC Liberals during the last election, here's Matt Price promoting ForestEthics propaganda. 
