A story of gas frackers on the dole

A story of gas frackers on the dole

A study on the frack gas potential in the Whitehorse Trough was released by the Yukon Geological Survey on July 4, 2012 that had been commissioned in September 2011. 

 The choice of firm is of interest.

Petrel & Robertson, Calgary, is a consulting firm known for a stake in oil derivative speculation, as well as lobbying for oil subsidies and media consulting. A peculiar choice from the point of view of a level of objectivity in scientific endeavour.

 It suggests conventional field economics, which is what most people would imagine with regard to fossil energy or any other resource extraction, are only a part of the background. The other part is a shadowy world of street economics and financial illusions hiding behind industrial appearances.

Put that together with an industry context of natural gas price dumping to suck people into profiteering schemes and with the problem of shale gas and oil reserve estimates that have wildly fluctuated in recent years. 

 None of which is recognized in the study in as much as basic awareness. Definitions and geological characterizations that form assumptions on which such shale reserve estimates are based upon are less exact than the data that come from drilling for minerals or conventional oil and gas reservoirs. Shale gas is neither firmly anchored in rock, as are gold veins for example, nor does it flow freely as conventional oil and gas does from or within its reservoir cavities. 

 It is defined by complex conditions of a slow permeability that is unknown in its level of natural fracturedness containing gas or releasing gas until drilled, perfed, fracked and brittled foot by foot and inch by inch. 

 In deep, dark depths a perfect scenario appears for the expanding hedge fund, oil futures and subsidy lobby departments of Exxon Mobile, Shell Oil, Encana and Petrel & Robertson.

 The Potential Gas Committee, a US industry association, evaluated the likely total recoverable US reserves of natural gas as sufficient for 25 years of US demand. 

 The same data set shows shale gas reserves are good for 6 - 7 years of current US demand levels, not centuries, and that is without taking expanded use and export scenarios into account. 

 In 2009 the US Geological Survey downgraded the Marcellus Shale (New England) gas potential to 20 % down from the type of generous frack gas estimates Petrel & Robertson are presenting. 

 Balanced assumptions would have been critical for the analysis of frack gas potential in the Whse Trough.

 Among the referenced sources of the study is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists known for their support of climate denial.

 Temple burners taking over professional associations? It sounds like a joke as long as we don’t take stock of how many of the academics of Energy Mines and Resources in Yukon have surrendered their bullshit detector to such UnCanadian culture warring.

Impartial veterans of the natural gas resource industry, like Dr. Ingraffea of Cornell University, are not found among the sources.

 In those regards Petrel & Robertson present an unreconstructed impression of shale reserve analysis that is not updated with the best of caution regarding what realistically might be out there. 

 Their study in its suggestion of economic viability of frack gas production shows no intelligent risk assessment of the true data variance it deals with.

 What kind of accuracy can one expect for the commercial possibilities when the methane leakage is overlooked that would cook the climate faster than anything and a destruction of water tables that is guaranteed?

 Remember the role credit rating agencies like Moodies, Standard & Poor’s, Fitch Group have played and continue to play in assigning fictitious value to speculators and their papers? The Petrel & Robertsons are the Oil & Gas Moodies and Fitchs when it comes to creating gas reserve estimates by mixing geology with science fiction.

 Net energy and affordable energy from fossil fuels continue to decline more and faster all the time. The more hand outs which go to the already overstuffed Petrel & Robertsons and Exxons of this world, the greater the energy problem is becoming.

 It is entertainment we are offered that, even with a five year anti frack moratorium for the Whitehorse Trough in place, comes with a horrendous price tag. Gullibility of government is never excusable but a full spectrum gloss and glitz brain wash for natural gas sweeping all media can explain it.

 Brad J.R. Hayes, who authored the study, and others at Petrel & Robertson find their path smoothed by even bigger fish in the propaganda business. In 2009 the media consulting firm Hill & Knowlton was funded with tens of milions of dollars by America's Natural Gas Alliance alone to carry forward the media arrangements on behalf of gas fracking. This particular PR firm appears to have been chosen by the oil industry because of their legendary success in delaying anti-tobacco measures and awareness for several decades. Who gets hired matters.

Where the fracking problem came from

Where the fracking problem came from

The Yukon government has brought forth the idea that gas fracking would provide for our current and future energy needs. This is false.  

It’s hard to make sense of these extreme and shortsighted developments without at least a brief look into the oil and gas industry. It's a global scene with no insulated sphere of interest or operation, no matter how hard the government tried to keep information and involved identities from the public. The unfortunate reality is that the strength and capacity of the industry is fading, but they are able to maintain their position and power through manipulation of data, financial speculation and global military power.  

The Yukon recently set a 5 year moratorium on allowing oil and gas exploration in the Whitehorse Trough. We need to actively spend the next five years learning, and then educating and influencing our government, family and friends about the real truth about shale gas deposits.  

Shale gas deposits are generally overestimated.  Where they have been exploited, like the Texas Barnett shale, gas runs out within only 5, 6 or 7 years. 

Over the past five years, the production levels of large oil and gas deposits worldwide have entered a free fall mode. The significance for shale gas retrieval of this decline is that the economic viability of the entire fossil fuel system is now staked on shale.

In over 40 years no new 'giant oil or gas field' has been found, except for the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan which was discovered 33 years ago! 

Giant oil fields may be expected to maintain reasonable and efficient production levels for a period of 15 to 40 years.

The fossil fuel industry has its back to the wall, faced with the reality of climate change, and it’s net energy production has evaporated.

The deposits for extraction that once were cheap and did not require excessive and growing amounts of energy to be used during extraction, are history. 

There is a growing sense of desperation in Big Oil as they try to maintain contracts with governments in order to rake in record subsidies, regardless of the impact of their industry on the health and wealth of nations.

Over the past three years, Big Oil has systematically bought out the money-losing 'frack' gas sector to maintain the perception of viability. This in turn, has encouraged hedge fund profiteering and contributed to financial instability globally. 

The inflated numbers regarding the potential of reserves, their finances and net production figures of 'frack gas' (which is heavily subsidized) are at the fore front of the fossil fuel illusion. 

Mainstream media frequently represents the production peak or stagnation of oil output as a quasi philosophical question which is not real. The framing of the discussion in this way allows people to ignore our need to switch our energy sources from non-renewable to renewable. 

Energy planning and grid development are part of a truly complex evolutionary system change and cannot be forced over night. What the critics of renewables overlook is their politically created backlog of a now even over mature potential that in some countries is part of a successful catchup phase. 

What really matters for the big economic picture when producing energy is to achieve more than ten barrels of energy for each one barrel invested. The renewable energy sector has it and and improves it. The fossil fuel sector lost net energy efficiency years ago and there is no justification for operational expansion.

Does it make sense to use more and more energy to actually produce less and less energy? That is exactly what the current North American energy system continues to promote, as sources of fossil fuels become harder and harder to extract and process.  

As parts of our world choose to rely on energy sources like unconventional shale gas extraction (ie. fracking), and the mining of the Albertan tar sands, we are burning up huge amounts of conventional resources to do that. The use and promotion of these extreme processes clouds our judgement and presents a real danger to our environment, our health, our long-term economic capacity, our food security and our energy needs.

The end of fossil fuel domination is coming. It may not be tomorrow, but we will need to shift our energy demands and usage soon.  We would do well for ourselves to develop the infrastructure, the culture and the industrial capacity required to embrace renewable energy resources.  

In Yukon, public interest in renewable energy has grown significantly during this recent Oil and Gas Deposition process. 

The potential of industrial scale renewables need to be taken seriously.  

We need to move far beyond the hobby level development of renewable sources or the good-will gestures that all our political representatives seem to limit themselves to. 

It is exemplified by ineffectual, misleading and outdated concepts like net metering, base load obsession and denial of green energy legislation proposals.

If we continue using and making long term plans based upon fossil fuels, we will not only poison our water, soil and air but also diminish our future energy security and affordability, as well as economic well being. 

What about preserving some of this one time gift from nature as petrochemical manufacturing base for future generations?

A reality check is urgent as the coming weeks and months will likely see more 'crazy energy' proposals by government and Big Oil.

Happy Easter 2012 Rex Murphy,

I don’t why I listened to your show about the continuing F-35 debacle, I suppose even from evil bias one can learn something.

How did you manage to get through without mentioning or allowing to surface the leaked evaluation of the RAND corporation following war game simulations where the F-35 was outclassed by the Sukhoi Su-35 as well as a version of the Chinese Chengdu fighter series? It is what had triggered the international F-35 discontent, eventually spilling into Canada.

This capability study of the F-35 Lightning 2 aircraft was summarized by former US Air force officer and Rand researcher John Stillion with the following assessment: ”cant turn, can’t climb, can’t run”. The Australian government, the US Navy and others paid attention, but certainly not the Harper government. 

At the time my blog entry F-35 Double Insult was syndicated by several print and internet media.

It wouldn’t be me to bring it forward since I was blacklisted from your show on Remembrance Day 2007 because I mentioned the Canadian MacPap veterans from the Spanish Civil War. And the trinket you promised me for supposedly just not making it to one of the following shows after two hours stand by on the phone never arrived, showing disdain to liberty and honour, not very good, Rex.

Given the unfairness and disrespect you consistently show to oil and gas fracking critics and democratic tradition in general, I say:

You are a hopeless reactionary, but still, frack your drinking water

Peter Becker, Whitehorse

Reform Movement in the West and Confusion with ‘Capitalism'

Reform Movement in the West and Confusion with ‘Capitalism'

A great people’s movement is sweeping around the world without easy equals in recent times short of the democratic strides that were made the world over in the 1830s and 1840s.

Even with that in mind it is unique because this time the Bolivarian reforms in Latin

America, the Arab and muslim movements are ahead of the Western intellect and initiative that eventually resurfaced with the occupy movement.

And that is fine, except that its not yet worked out in which ways our Western reform thinking and activism are still to weak to actually break through. The movement will go where it goes but there is one small step ahead we can take. I am examining a very popular but a bit inaccurate approach that is quite typically used, especially as a way of summing up a situation. I think there is a downside in continuously confronting injustice by naming it as the so called ‘capitalism’. I am trying to show how this prevents a process of clarification and the building of a forceful momentum. By way of deep organizing, political, labour and rural movement grew powerful in times past exactly to such game changing levels.

The West is still the West for better or worse, from Spain to Greece to Italy, to Ireland, Germany, the US, Canada and many other great countries. Now as in the 1840s there is a remarkably common set of perceptions and also misperceptions that circumscribe the scene. It is a different narrative in Latin America and the illegal but successful mass strikes in China against sweatshop working conditions seem to remember European and North American labour history better than we do.

What is the Gordian knot problem in the story? What we have not quite inherited from movements before our time and in other places is the authentic bite in word and direction that gave and gives them positive populist ascendency. In the 17 and 18 hundreds middle class and capitalist sectors in society demanded from kings and feudal elites to scale back militarism, financial manipulation and real estate speculation. The first British PM Robert Walpole stopped the ruinous Great South Sea real estate bubble in Britain and launched infant industry investment by government initiative with phenomenal success. New found power and confidence engaged in and merged into many progressive trends. By way of struggle and also consensus, goals like education, children’s rights, suffrage, old age security and access to medical treatment materialized over time. New ways of a social contract emerged. Social rights morphed out of a slow swap with common wealth of in many situations once free pastures, security providing village life and treasures of the woods of a rural world that was invaded by industries.

Political and economic rights were achieved against feudal elites sometimes allied with industrial elites. But many capitalists like Robert Owen, Friedrich Engels and Andrew Carnegie but also Henry Ford and others supported workers partly because they were aware that their own means grew because of worker productivity as close twin to worker well being.

If there is a crisis of capitalism it means exactly that, a crisis in which two centuries of progressive trends, a lot of constructive, dynamic but also adversarially arrived at  achievements and characteristics are given up in favour of a pre industrial reach back. From a vantage point of consideration and heritage of who we are it hurts to hear from well meaning people the repetitious verbalism of challenging so called ‘capitalism’, regardless of how empty and misleading the false front has become. It follows that the capitalism criticism has a habit of calling crime proceeds profits, and there is more costly beautification.

What is the effect of this, how does confusion stall reform? Its not helpful to provide, with the capitalist label, unintentional acceptance or slack opposition to a wide range of reactionary trends of militarism, mercantilism and morbid banking monopolies. Further there is subsidization of outdated energy technology and marginalization of entrepreneurial infant industry. We see a revival of 18th century inspired commons enclosures in the privatization of commons spheres like water and generally in the destruction of ecological survival. In best feudal tradition discourse has become stilted and ritualized through the fabrication of free-trade foundations that never existed, anti science magic and anti literacy oriented image obsession. All these represent, significantly so, neo-feudal, anti democratic illnesses which are not actively clarified. Their proponents receive a free ride with the endorsement of being called capitalist. The imposter image of ‘capitalism’ is waterproofed by way of having it certified by its critics. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by validating totalitarian class warriors, criminals and ideologues who parade as market based entrepreneurs. In short, don’t empower the SOB positions. 

Michael Moore made a doc film presenting a notion which is well captured in the film’s title “Capitalism a Love Story”. And then his empathetically told stories of injustice caused by robbery evaporated somewhat by barking up the wrong tree.

Who is in love with what and who can’t let go of it?

Just look at the downward spiral of manufacturing in North America, capital investment in the production of goods which constitutes, which defines capitalism, is in full retreat. Feudal colonialism really comes home to many places in the West with a gas fracking craze that reminds of King Leopold’s obsession for resource extraction in the Congo. A hasty industrial retreat is not without consequences as exporting jobs and giving up on infrastructure progress here also means to literally poison labour and life conditions as well as land and water and invade self determination for people in China and other developing countries; Aside to blindly burning away, as transport diesel, the petrochemical production base of their and our future generations in the name of a giddy shipping frenzy, called globalization that has run its course.

Totalitarian democracy like other dictatorial systems tend to build on false populism, on the demonization of government and its representative purpose. Sounds like incoherent nonsense?  Yes, because incoherency, magical thinking, anti literacy without memory deploying a drunken populism has always been the game of authoritarian rule.

The occupy movement has not yet grown out of the mesmeric impact of overwhelming media mind control in the west, embedded in plenty of false imagery from the ‘capitalism’ road show. Somewhere in that particular culture wasteland the emergence of a galvanizing and grounded narrative for progress is stuck so far.

Let’s  find a way to escape this long lasting flatness of pop culture, of the soaps and the Simpsons, of a teenage way of relating to the world without attention to elders, without carrying memory and without admiring wonder.

Our problems with relativism and false populism go on in the digital era with an uncritical enthusiasm for distorted rightwing and racist interpretations in movies like Zeitgeist and Strive. It shows how vulnerable we are to confusion tactics that sow doubt into our minds and distrust into our ability to produce true leadership.

In contrast the Bolivarian, the social democratic reformers in Latin America evolved by very carefully thinking through a difference between capital investment in production and innovation and education, be it private or public, and the destruction of neoliberal thinking. Because they understood the latter as an anti democratic, anti justice orientation towards outdated ways of speculation and colonialism. Consequently there was and is no lack of intellectual dynamics that would limit a reform process from becoming a transformative and self determining movement. 

Its not easy for us after decades of hypnotic saturation exposure to neoliberal media propaganda defrauding us from much of memory and reality. 

But galvanizing power, leadership and vision in a democracy movement is always possible if the narrative has the courage of a Midas touch. Think about the Matewan miner strike in West Virginia or the far reaching reforms that came out of the Mackenzie Papineau rebellion in Upper Canada. Overcome was a laziness to think, to debate, or even look.

From there the virtues, the vitality of communities together with investment in infant industries, like green energy, intense ecological agriculture, commons spheres like transportation, healthcare and education and remembering freedom of association for workers and neighbourhoods, can be renewed.

We have no time to loose in building strength and rolling with the punches. There is peace to achieve and to keep, as war and jingoism are the methods with which wounded empires attack solidarity.

Lincoln's Farm Dirt and Obama's Harvard Dust in ten raw points

1. Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama both stand out as presidents with necessary scholarly and oratory attributes in a time of crisis.

2. Lincoln appointed a team "Team of Rivals" (book title by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln and his government) who became both, critical debaters and loyal collaborators.
Obama may have his 'team of rivals' who behave like a team of traitors. (Since I wrote the essay this aspect has been documented by a veteran Washington journalist, I'll try to remember who it was)

3. Lincoln was not afraid to stare down anyone in the market square, think of the Douglas debates. At the height of the Civil War Lincoln met personally with Christopher Spencer, the inventor of the Spencer repeating rifle and carbine in an era of muzzle loaders. This was after the design had been rejected by the war department and was followed up on by Lincoln himself trying the rifle out on the White House lawn; 150 000 Spencer rifles performed a decisive argument in freeing the slaves.
On a similar note regards visionary technology the Obama administration gives zero emission transportation and therefore green industries no real chance. Despite an auto industry bail out GM was encouraged to continue to build vehicles within the game of the oil industry. Some time after the GM bail out GM announced a release date of November 2010 for the Chevy Volt electrical car. Its plug in range of 40 miles is a joke because it is about a quarter only of the range of the GM EV1 and Chevy Volt S-10 EV pick up trucks that were built in the 1990s before all of them were pulled back from their lessees and crushed, quasi as a signal to de-industrialize North America. Transportation technologies have always been the catalyst for overall industrial standards and this renewed blow to zero tailpipe emission transportation represents a serious set back for renewable energy technology. Fluffy thinking is wasting the opportunity for crucial green infant industry planning. Contrary to 'free' market and globalization ideologues from the Chicago business school the nurture and seed planting rules for public investment are no different now than for at one time kick starting fledgling coal, steel, shipping, military equipment, cotton and every other market. Weak industrial seedlings die and the ones nurtured to start up strength may live in a diverse market when government stops subsidizing and interfering on behalf of senile monopolies who are choking the market competition. Wall Street and Walmart, Fox News, the oil oligarchy and Eisenhower's "military industrial congressional complex" suffocate market activities with an anti entrepreneurial lobby culture driven stranglehold. This extends also to the so called agribusinesses like Monsanto, where lobby experts for a hellish genetic fascism had legislation changed in order to attack the essence of life, food. Such anti industrial financialism is not good for business, it just wiped close to half the world's wealth off the book. Entrepreneurial capitalism can return. 'Free' market means anti-market, an Orwellian code word, a demagogue's clever juggler trick. However, there is a little problem. Obama himself is an ivory tower 'free' trader, so when the Tea Party says that America was founded on 'free' trade and 'free' market principles he has nothing to come back with. Without ideological tie in it would be easy to point out that these are fairy tales, only some time after after WW2 did so called 'free' trade, 'free' market dogma, Washington Consensus and a variety of other globalization schemes start to play a dominant role. These constructs describe something very different than a market economy, they describe a radical elitism, a bankster feudalism where being born poor means to die poor, the exact opposite of the American traditions. With some gravity Obama needs to confront the demagogic extremisms of his time which is exactly what Lincoln did, recognize ecological limitations together with economic opportunities of the future. From there will come less momentum for foreign oil wars which undermine constitutional rights at home. A 'full measure of devotion' (Gettysburg Address) and conflicting technocratic measures are very different.

4. Lincoln's Secretary of State William H. Seward and others in his cabinet were even more impatient abolitionists than the President.
Whereas Obama's vice president Joe Biden is a strong supporter of George Bush's bankruptcy law targeting little people, a step towards new debt slavery. Obama left it to the banks to eventually stop fraudulent foreclosures, far too late. A lost opportunity 'to cross the aisle' on a people's level. Compromise in policy is possible on the basis of the constitutional representative, legislative, executive and judicative structure but not with totalitarian sentiment of false populist instigators, like Rupert Murdoch for example who have severed loyalty with all democratic institutions; be it public schools and libraries, be it the judiciary and the law of the land like obligations under US broadcasting laws not to censor news, be it free and fair elections, a military that follows orders and not attempts to dictate to government.

5. Lincoln who was conscious of the danger that can come from influence of banks on government has famously expressed the notion that: "... facing the Confederate army with the banks behind me I fear the banks more."
Obama appointed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner who takes sides with financial free trade by opposing or even ignoring the possibility of a return of the Glass-Steagall legislation with which Franklin Delano Roosevelt controlled cancerous speculation that had lead to the Great Depression. Until 1999, when it was repealed under Bill Clinton, Glass-Steagall had protected people's savings and pensions but also commercial banking from theft hiding behind fancy titles. Obama's and Geitner's refusal to bring back this proven protective measure against crime continues to be an agent of chaos but also serves as the 'bail out' pathway for the greatest wealth shift of history into a 21th century feudalism.

6. Abraham Lincoln, as did Jefferson ("Light and Liberty go together" T. Jefferson 1795), supported the modern idea of public education, understood broad access to education as vital for a democratic society and for prosperity.
Obama adopts some of the worst of Democrat's heritage while ignoring the best of Republican's legacy in favoring the old class oriented concept of privatized schools, which nowadays appear largely in the form of Charter Schools. These Charter Schools are not just derived from 17th/18th century European aristocracy, in 19 century America private schools were founded to keep black children out.

7. President Lincoln opposed military adventurism when William Seward wanted to declare war on Spain and France and compromised domestically with great skill in order prevent a civil war, while this was possible.
Obama escalated the Afghanistan conflict, and in foreboding Vietnam War reminiscence widened the war of occupation and of bombing people, in this case into Pakistan. A futile calculation of gains from control of Central Asia and perhaps more from domestically playing a 'war on terror' propaganda is also behind his threats of war against Iran; and revenge regarding democratically elected Mosaddegh's nationalization of Persian oil in 1951 of course. Sowing wind in the Inner Asian Steppes right on the door steps and/or land borders of four nuclear powers, India, Pakistan, China and Russia, may yet reap storm.

8. Lincoln at times had an uncanny intuition of things to come. In a speech he gave to the Illinois House of Representatives on Dec., 18 in 1840 he said: "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."


Different to Lincoln being able to look back at the great prohibition failure from 1920 - 1933, Obama continues Nixon's dirty war on drugs which polices and incarcerates almost exclusively low income people, who as a fact, consume no more street drugs than the well to do. It practically is "The New Jim Crow" (report by Michelle Alexander), which eats the wealth of nations and single handedly creates crime cartels that destroy entire countries such as Mexico.

9. Lincoln was good at timing, he knew a window of opportunity when it presented itself.
Obama still has one, he can prosecute the banksters, bring the Glass-Steagall legislation back, the appointment of Elizabeth Warren in connection with the new Consumer Protection Bureau was a hopeful sign. Since Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, was ousted, she is a lonesome first in a 'team of rivals' that has Abraham Lincoln smiling.

10. In his appointments Lincoln played intentionally with fire but shrewdly guided and wisely harnessed its power on behalf of the people who he took great effort to win over; that is why Abraham Lincoln was re-elected for a second term in 1864. He would have known how to sort out the leadership of the Republican Fox Tea-V party especially when and where old or new slavery propaganda attacks the constitution. By breaking up totalitarian measures of predecessor Bush, like the off shore concentration camps of Bagram and Guantanamo and the Military Commissions Act and by remembering freedom of speech and association is not just for elites but also for working people? Its not just about Obama, if he fails another chance at a democratic revival may be generations away. In the presidential election of 2012 first African-American president and reluctant Lincoln scholar ...

Carbon Pricing Backfires

Carbon Pricing Backfires 

The basic premise of carbon pricing policies is simple, make fossil fuels more expensive to discourage and reduce their use and with that reduce CO2 emissions, pollution and other associated problems. A range of NGOs and political parties with an ecological mandate support such concepts. Off course even a simple sounding strategy involves some assumptions to make it work, some understanding of the situation. The one premise that appears to go without saying is the idea of a more or less functioning market place where punitive or subsidy measures would achieve their desired effect.
So what is the working order of the market mechanism in terms of oil, gas and coal extraction and use?
What stands out is that especially oil is already higher priced than the market can afford, and increasingly uncompetitive in a variety of road, rail, agricultural and other applications. Net energy returns and production in tired fossil fuel reserves are diminishing dramatically, shifting the focus to crazy energy. In the tar sands example net energy return is around zero. Far too much energy doesn’t benefit the economy but goes straight back into the brinksmanship of heavily subsidized, speculation prone energy operations like gas fracking, tar sands mining and deep sea drilling. Such a financially, ecologically and operationally instable and generally lawless bent translates into an energy volatility that causes jarring impacts to the world economy. It comes in a cyclical pattern since the big financial melt down and the preceding end of the critical oil production increases overall. Since then a cycle plays out starting with shortage and price spikes, then contraction and demand destruction before economic activity picks up following lower oil prices, and then deflecting back down again repelled by an energy and specifically transportation ceiling of high priced oil that is in short supply.

Now, what carbon taxes, carbon emission trade premiums and such achieve is to increase and destabilize the end user price for carbon even further and with that increase the economic volatility in economy and oil market. This is bad for infant industry initiatives like renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and for industrial and value adding sectors in general which need predictability and vitality for their business plans. Its one more way in which carbon pricing measures defeat their own stated purpose of reducing green house gas emissions. What about the unfairness of handing out free carbon permits to big polluters and a flat tax like burden to small businesses and families?

Then, among a host of problems, there is the mathematical near impossibility to minimize GHG emissions with an emissions credit trade system. What is capped are GHG reductions, naturally emissions increase under these regimes. Entities who emit less trade with those who emit more with the process aiming to remain under a ceiling of minimum effect. Futility of an ideological still picture unable to describe dynamic events. 

Unlike acid rain or ozone depletion the climate problem cannot be addressed with a bit of tinkering and regulation. Carbon pricing comes with a share of naivete regarding the inertia and depth of global energy systems which are much bigger even than in any other industrial sector that can be cited or remembered. It requires not just sustainable farming with soils that are alive and sink the carbon they lost through agribusiness mistreatment, also in the energy sector a generational change over of technology is overdue. And those technology waves like the coming on of computers, microsurgery, newspaper print etc. never happen by quota, conferences or agreements. 

Except for a few major centres, vehicle charge points for electric vehicles for example are not available and carbon taxes and fees are therefor perceived as cynical. There often simply are no low carbon options that can be reasonably accessed by people. Feed in tariffs and other democratic elements of energy industry that allow participation of renewable energy producers, small and large, to sell renewable power back to the grid only exist in Ontario, as far as Canada is concerned. There are close to 50 countries now that have a concept like Ontario where sustainability and energy security are spelled out in terms of action, not ideology. What an outdated energy policy of subsidizing the oil, gas and nuclear industry (oil and gas to the tune of 200 billion dollars annually according to the 2011 KAIROS report “Pumped Up”) and carbon pricing like cap and trade systems unfortunately have in common is this.
Carbon pricing and masked subsidizing of carbon, both imply to hide away the most basic of facts that carbon becomes increasingly too expensive as fuel; and this is before externalized environment and health costs are counted. This compares to renewable energies that in case of wind, geothermal and photovoltaics are unlimited and free with the harnessing gear getting cheaper, wind power now often beating out every alternative.

Its not that hard to see how carbon pricing ideas lock up the thinking inside the fossil fuel bubble. But this neoliberal failure in the method of phony market tools that do not tackle green house gas emissions also hands the political momentum to the extreme carbon fuel proponents. A reality gap on the side of ecologically minded community leaders could become a decisive weakness for Southern Yukon and other areas in the face of a proven to be consistently destructive gas fracking onslaught ready to sacrifice our surface and ground water.

F - 35 Double Insult

F - 35 Double Insult                                                                      

The procurement of 65 F-35 Lightning 2 aircraft from Lockheed Martin is degrading to Canada, exemplifying a larger situation. It reminds of Harper’s dubious purchase of mortgage securities to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars from the Canadian banks, another bankrupting expenditure that is defying the common sense and public language of Canada.

With interest have I read “The New Solitudes” in the March issue of the Walrus magazine, as I was already compiling some thoughts on a piece about Canada’s crisis of democracy. Erna Paris did steal some thunder of my thinking but there still is an untold story.

In the essay “The New Solitudes” Erna Paris describes the take over of Canada and descent into ideological polarization against the backdrop of a list of identity nurturing values such as humanist and social ones. They were shown as part of a broader, lateral display of traits that supposedly came into being after WW2. Not quite true, she brings up a popular misconception that has a bearing on major controversies like the one about the F-35. Perhaps these Canadian characteristics are rather an outflow of a pre-existing identity that emerged from the way of life in a very small population in Nouvelle France that had became expert in diplomatic, economic and military survival. Intermarriage and cultural exchange with aboriginal people had coalesced into a unique Western awakening from medieval European stupor.

Somewhat loosely following from there, the war of 1812, the Mackenzie Papineau rebellion and a few other things converged essentially into non violent foundations of community collaboration and statehood that were laid down by Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine. Between 1840 - 1848 they formed Canadian governments, clearing the way for confederation. Unlike today’s elites they had inherited an older public language, as a common language as well as a scholarly language.

The particular Canadian historic groove surfaced in the coming about of a tradition of world class historians, science and political figures who shaped much of the positive action and positive possibilities of the world around us.

Margaret McMillan explained the origin of today’s world structures and conflicts in “Paris 1919, Six Months that changed the World”.

Karl Polanyi who wrote “The Great Transformation, The Political and Economic Origins of our Time” is widely credited as the man who put the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith back on his feet. It is immensely important in an age of neoliberal junk economics that had bastardized the honourable Adam Smith to their hearts content.

Harold Innis before Marshall McLuhan in “The Bias of Communication” foresaw an electronic communications revolution.

Long before Tommy Douglas became father of Medicare during Treaty 6 negotiations at Fort Carlton, Duck Lake and Fort Pitt in 1876 Cree chief Poundmaker together with other chiefs had insisted to make the first public Medicare provisions part of this Canadian legal document.

Lester Pearson as Prime Minister of two minority governments introduced Medicare on a national level, and had already been instrumental in the founding of the United Nations and in the establishment of the UN Security Council.

Half a century ago Avro Canada engineers designed and build a fighter interceptor aircraft, the Avro Arrow, that had a greater flight envelope than the F-35 ever will have.

There really is a memory component in the Canadian mind of which an element is military history and here we meet the F-35 fighter/bomber procurement again.

We backtrack for a moment and understand the whole idea of modern military capability is based on air superiority. There is no air superiority, no protective umbrella for peace keeping missions for example, without air superiority fighter aircraft capability. In this regard the governments of Australia and the Netherlands share growing international concerns over the capabilities of the F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft. It was vocalized in a leaked evaluation of the RAND corporation (originally founded by the US Airforce) following war games where the F-35 was outclassed by the Sukhoi Su-35 as well as a version of the Chinese Chengdu fighter series.

This capability study of the F-35 Lightning 2 aircraft was summarized by former US Air force officer and Rand researcher John Stillion with the following assessment: ”cant turn, can’t climb, can’t run”. The Australian government paid attention.

Its a not to be repeated lesson the US Air force learned in Vietnam where a small number of air superior MIG 21s flew circles around them and shot down US aircraft in unexpected numbers.

Exclusive reliance on fighting in The Beyond Visual Range Regime that supposedly allowed to give up quick maneuverability and close range cannon fire was eventually abandoned with the MIG21 reality asserting itself. As a consequence air superiority fighters like the F-15 were built, fighter pilots were retrained which inspired the “Top Gun” movie and the problem was fixed; for a while. Today more than ever air to air rocketry failure is never more than one cheap new electronic decoy or heat seeking, radar guidance deflecting gimmick away.

In a security outlook where the International Energy Agency expects nuclear weapons proliferation to 20 or even 30 countries by 2025 – 2030 focused conventional defence abilities to undercut almost inevitable nuclear antics, errors and reflexes matter.

One might ask what is the point, why employ ineffectual equipment limitations and tactics? Why want a fighter aircraft that on somebody’s paper has all kinds of multi purpose characteristics but is inferior in air to air combat?

For government lobbyists and financial speculators who look past the real estate bubble this is one more new opportunity. Following the F-35 cost overrun concerns of the US Air Force and the US Air Force Association that are shared by former US government official and defence analyst Winslow Wheeler, internationally the F-35 project is expected to take on a financing volume past the trillion dollar mark. It also means our government is dramatically low balling its cost estimates. Partly for the cost reason the US Navy is considering to buy F-18s instead.

Like with other over sophisticated so called stealth aircraft the mission capability rate of the F-35 will be about 55% only. Stretching our air defences so thin once the F-18 fleet is decommissioned means that asserting arctic sovereignty can become one more future liability of the F-35 which will likely result in even more aircraft purchases.

The response of the Canadian people is going to be particularly comprehensive because of our awareness that weapons and tactics play a role, are structural tools in military and civilian politics.

Therefore a costly lemon is not only unaffordable its outright dangerous.

Effective military operations that don’t stagnate and escalate into mass slaughter always required an element of democracy, a form of power sharing and communication between the ones that have rank and authority with the ones who carry out action in the field or in the air or on the water. In WW1 it was Arthur Currie who insisted to lead the Canadian army onto Vimy Ridge based on these principles. He had to overcome political resistance because priorities in favour of elitist award distribution regimes, a trend towards aristocratic ivory tower politics and power grabs don’t welcome the idea of field officers, pilots and artillery hands calling some of the shots. This is true then as now.

Political, economic and military elites tend to like mathematically abstract dimensions, exemplified in a puppy love for very vulnerable, fragile tools such as attack helicopters and other so called multi-purpose aircraft like the F-35 Lightning 2. These have a universal, quasi naive Swiss army knife like planning appeal for the technocrats who don’t want to ask questions, or listen to what fits where, or collaborate or share thoughts with just anybody.

For Stephen Harper who was inundated with underhanded class thinking and disrespect for our constitutional conventions by political science professor Tom Flanagan through years of mentorship in Calgary it makes sense to attack us in our military legacy; nobody would be suspicious. However, the military dimension in Canada is not a playground for bullies, its somewhat low key, deeply rooted in our minds but not talked about everyday in postmodern realities. Harper seems to over estimate the so so stealth capabilities of the F-35 and assume its attack on us will fly under the radar and will take out his longstanding list of Canadian targets topped by Medicare. Since his days with the Canadian Taxpayer Federation he had been searching for a clever way to cut out our hearts to which closely we keep Medicare. Not only does the F-35 procurement weaken the integrity of our military ethics it bankrupts Canada by giving free reign to the despot with toxic leadership. The insult of the useless F-35 to militarily expose us and economically impoverish us for a generation no Canadian will forgive.