speaker

Each and all of us is partially responsible for global warming, If someone is to deny that without evidence to the contrary, and presents none in arguing that the threat should be dismissed then I would say that they are doubly responsible. Out of the Holocaust came the new legal definition of cime against humanity. Out of this unnecessary crises will come crimes against the environment. Ah ... so now it's the venture capitalists who are promoting green energy that are trying to drag down society. lol

This deserves one very large smiley face.

Sr. Chavez could learn some things from this board, M. Dancer. Just in this thread he has been called socialist, a communist, a tyrant, a national socialist, and a fascist. It just goes to show that no matter how hard you try you can't please everybody. You might as well be a Venezuelan and govern like one.

I think you are right B Max. I think as leaders get more insecure and unsuccessful in their attempts to maintain the status quo there will be more and more of this suppression of rights by government and industry working in concert. It's too bad but threatened people don't seem able to look on the bright side of change. Take Exxon, if it is true that Venezuelan compensation falls a couple of Billion short of the companies expectations, they should look at these refineries as an opportunity to increase the productive capacity in North America and incidentally lower gas prices. After all I'm sure Exxon could do a much more efficient job of managing them than their current Venezuealan owners.

Good ole Rex, eh? he has a way with words. This doesn't mean that he is right, or that global warming is any less of a real threat than it was before you read this monologue. Perhaps there is some desperation though amongst people who have the worlds interests at heart, like Prince Charles for example. There are still people out there who believe that their financial interests take precedence over such minor concerns as mass extinctions that are being forecast, almost makes you think of the Holocaust, doesn't it? There seem to be some who believe that since they will be dead before the impact reaches serious levels it isn't a concern. And still some who believe that no matter how bad it gets it won't affect them personally. You know,... first they took the Jews...., This wouldn't be so bad but no matter how large the body of scientific research that is available for examination it is easier to throw out a lot of unproven misinformation having the effect of causing denial in people who don't want to believe that they are partially responsible for the state of affairs.

Fortunately a good part of the solution to a lot of our problems in bringing about lower usage of our diminishing and increasingly costly fossil fuels. If we can avoid the worst effects of global warming in the process, so much the better.

Canuck E Stan who said that people haven't been concerned for more than the last 50 years, Forest industry, oil and gas, agribusiness, all following the auto industry. My question is if there are no borders to business why is Canada the only country without an auto industry or the other industries important to a nations welfare? I think the reason can be found in our continuing election of liberal and conservative businessmen from whatever party whose main interest is not in governing Canada but in making life as easy for themselves and their business buddies as possible which happens to be by selling us out as quickly as it's convenient.

buffycat, I understand that there are a lot of different problems facing us. Sustainability is the key. If we can control our excess use of our resources which by itself causes problems, then through that reduction we should have a better chance of cleaning up pollution, less of it around, and maintaining food supplies. If we proceed to blow our fossil fuels we make those problems worse and we bring on global warming which worsens it again.

Sunsettommy I had a look at the Hudson Institute op ed you are refferring to above that was written in 2003, kind of a collection of results from studies but not realy providing analysis of it. Here's another reference from the Hudson Institute from 2006 that might help to clear things up on the current understanding. http://cffss.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseacti...details&id=4917

Hey you don't need to tell me, I can't figure out why people keep throwing freedom of the press, and crowd suppression into the discussion when they are obviously not pertinent to the discussion because they aren't just in venezuela but are a world-wide problem. So tell me B Max, doesn't theft mean taking without compensation? In each case I've found there are written agreements for the transfers, and Exxon shares went up after the deals were finalized. Doesn't sound like theft to me. http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=44350

As opposed to that kind of thing in Vancouver, or Belfast, or France, or live rounds in Kent State, or Gaza.

Or maybe the reason there are so many poor is that this is the first Venezuelan government that hasn't been pro North American Corporate graft and greed. He must have a fair bit of popular support or his government wouldn't have lasted through the bloody coup attempt. Therefore he must be doing something right by his constituents. Whether it is socialism or South American capitalism, or something completely different in the process of developing it deserves the chance to work it out.

I'm not sure that anyone heading from Canada to the USA in search of a better life is going to qualify under the term brain drain. That said, both our countries are actively trying to suck the best and the brightest out of whatever country they are resident in, a sort of nationalist headhunting operation, partly because it is cheaper to import talent than to train our own. It's standards like these that the SPP elitists are missing out on.

There is the possibility that Chavez is a socialist, he is trying to recover his countries control over its assets. I understand he is trying to improve education, healthcare, transportation, and the economy, is working at land reform. Perhaps part of the reason he is paying the oil companies for their assets is to keep a larger share of the benefiits from his peoples oil for their benefit. All of these reforms cost money and if it's all going out to corporate pockets there just wouldn't be enough around Venezuela. I think it is true that despots try to control the media, like the republicans and the liberalconservatives here with the cutbacks to npr and cbc. That of course doesn't mean that any government that was threatened by media demands for violence wouldn't be in their rights to shut it down. A true despot, though, like some of the American supported regimes in central and south America would have just hauled off and shot the perpetrators. Chavez ain't that bad anyway.

There is no difference in this regard between north am networks and stations from those in south America, that in USA and Canada the private for profit ones have to pay their shareholders, have to chase advertising, have to provide the service that the advertisers want, and that has to include slanted news. One thing about something that is out there in the media, if it is inciting people to violence or encouraging a coup d'etat, I would think that would be fairly obvious. Spearheading even.

Another paragraph in the same article said the.... "government is not renewing RCTV's license after 53 years on the air because of accusations that the broadcaster participated in a bungled 2002 coup against Chavez, incited violent demonstrations and aired immoral programming." How long would the Globe and Mail last if it participated in a bloody coup attempt against a Canadian Prime Minister or incited people to violence against the Country? Let's read the whole thing, eh? geoffrey, isn't it Venezuealan oil that is in the ground in Venezuela? They should be thankful. They can't do without us? I hope there is a lot of capitalist empire builders with that mentality. Let's see what happens over the next twenty years. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Venezuela could hire trained people to extract oil from the ground and sell it. Or is that in itself a bad thing?

Well said bush_cheney2004 ,,, If Canadians who have pride in our country, it's culture, social and environmental wealth, or it's political and international affairs, allow the SPP agenda to cause the demise of our freedom and opportunity then those losses are most certainly our responsibility.

The Reform Party was based on the ideals of a pretty good segment of western Canada. It occurred because the progressive element of the Conservative party got sucked into the party line and the people who backed the progressives got edged out. When Reform was stalled by electoral predjudice in the East the reformers got impatient, got a pretty good deal from the Conservatives, and began watching their ideals go down the drain as they did with the progressives. Maybe this time they will hang in there. It would be nice to see a party maintain its principles rather than devolve into another liberal or conservative old boy network where the major difference is in who gets the slush funds.

Thanks Electric Monk, good reference, sometimes you almost need a holistic detective agency to get to the bottom of these things.

bush_cheney2004, I think that any multi-national oil company is way more interested in making a profit than in being competitive. The more they can get the public to subsidize through lower employment standards, reduced royalties, non-existent environmental regulations or enforcement, or direct cash handouts, obviously the happier they will be. The trouble with the SPP is that they are trying to harmonize our regulations with advice from the various kinds of leveraging multi-nationals, and not from people who care one way or the other about the future or this country. It's bound to end bad. Wilber, Our business and our leaders are pretty much the same thing, they are the liberalconservatives, fundraisers and investers. Why shouldn't I blame them, between them they don't have the foresight of a one eyed dog with it's head in the food bucket. Certainly there is trade between neighbours, even investment, find a place where I said differently, we are agreed. The SPP is going beyond that. It is attempting to make over North America in the corporate image, "What's good for Chrysler is good for NorAm." "Government should be run like a business." That is so far out in Right field that it is leaving reality. We should drop this process and decide in a national debate whether we want to be members of the borg or be ourselves.

That's the truth, gad,, even bush isn't fighting it in public anymore. I seem to remember Kyoto as being a fairly good chunk of the debate before and through the last election. Dion had had the chance to do something, but didn't. Instead he complained that it is harder than it looks, and more complex. How does he expect people to believe he can do it now let alone run a country.

Topaz, Canada does have oil and gas reserves, but they are in the ground yet. I'm not sure about your figure of $28 for oil sands, seems pretty low from what I've been hearing about the social and environmental costs of that extraction. I wonder if it is taking into account the cost of the subsidies that we are paying the oil companies to develop it. Resource depletion is another factor. Quite often none of those costs are included, however I suppose tax revenues make a dint in the total expenses. I don't know of any legal reason why we can't sell to ourselves cheaper than we charge when we export, but I think we should engage in an assessment of what our costs are in production, and what the future value of our resource might be before we start selling too cheaply.

bush_cheney2004, Back in the bad old days of the sixties when the Canadian dollar was worth more than the American, When we knew that our worth was more than our dollar represented, when a worker had to have experience before being able to get a job, when we spent a higher proportion of our income on things we needed rather than conumer throw aways, and when the national debt was way, way, way smaller than it is now? From those perspectives it's not obvious that American investment has been either necessary or benevolent. Foreign investment is somewhat different from trade issues though both tend to collapse back to control of resources. Do you have some insight that American investment is what's driving the SPP? Wilber said "are we too stupid..." Wilber, Far be it for me to pass judgement like that on our political leaders. We should be kind and merely assume that they assumed the risk to our business people would be less if we could con the Americans into doing the investing. Our financial and political leaders, often one and the same, no doubt have benefitted greatly from the practise. I think it's time to review that direction.

Well I suppose you'd start with the Aarons and the Abigails but I don't see the point.. My point was that if the Alberta secessionists become the winners, then the Americans are actually going to be the winners. I think I'd rather have the bloc and the greens.

so you're saying the Canadian nightmare wouldn't exist without the American trade and investment? It would certainly be different. however the benefits and costs would likely leave us stronger for the long haul.