All posts by Chris Tindal

My Mini-Controversy

democracy and good government, ontario referendum on mmp, toronto

Thought you might want to know about something that’s been keeping me busy and occupying more than its fair share of my mind space these past few days.

Last week, I made a post to Torontoist explaining the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly’s proposal to change how we vote in Ontario, and outlining their reasons for making that decision. As you know, I tend to agree with them, if for no other reason than the fact that now that we’ve conducted this lengthy, democratic, and open consultation process to find out what Ontarians want, it would be pretty unwise to ignore, well, what Ontarians said they want.

I was going to let you know about that post anyway, but what followed was a combination of frustrating and amusing, and seems worth sharing as well. You should check out the chain of comments to my post yourself, but in summary:

  1. I was accused of being in a conflict of interest, because, not only do I support MMP, I also belong to organizations that support MMP. (Scandal!)
  2. The editors explained that I’m not in violation of the site’s conflict of interest policy, since I disclosed my interests in the post. Also, the policy actually only deals directly with people writing about their “professional” lives, which is a bit of a stretch since I’ve never been paid so much as a dime by any Green Party or Fair Vote organization.
  3. Andrew Potter (an author and MacLean’s contributor who once described MMP as an “electoral system for losers”) argued that Torontoist was obligated to let a guest contributer represent the “no” side.
  4. Other commenters pointed out that not only does MacLean’s not follow that standard, Torontoist is a blog (a blog!) with a clearly stated editorial point of view policy. Also, any Torontoist contributers who want to write in support of the “no” side are free to do so, but none have expressed interest.
  5. Other commenters briefly attempt to actually discuss the merits of MMP itself (including people who oppose MMP), but have to fight for space with this other meta-discussion.
  6. I’m accused of spreading “green party talking points” (as is later pointed out by someone else, all I’ve actually done is communicated the thinking of the Citizens’ Assembly) and participating in “political interference.”
  7. I’m accused of “hijacking” Torontoist, and using it as a “puppet” to spread “propaganda.”
  8. The same commenter (who isn’t using his or her real name) complains that there is “no room for dissent,” marking their third post to a page which is now more full of “dissent” than my original post.
  9. The same commenter calls for Torontoist to “give this site back to the people!” A friend of mine following the discussion IMs me: “When did you stop being a person?”
  10. I’m accused of being an “operative,” whatever that means.
  11. I’m again accused of being a “parrot…in the employ of the Green Party.”
  12. Andrew Potter complains about the whole thing on his MacLean’s blog. Demonstrating a brilliant understanding of irony, he frets that we’re not allowing for divergent viewpoints while writing on his own blog which doesn’t allow comments.

The important lesson I take out of the whole thing is that when people don’t know how to argue about the actual issues, they attack the person instead. Also, for some reason, the lower the stakes (again, we’re talking about a blog), the nastier things get.

Tonight I’m off to Midland to represent Fair Vote Canada at a referendum choice meeting there. The more we all talk about this the better. As the Citizens’ Assembly process proves, a randomly selected group of Ontarians that understands the issues will always choose MMP over our current system by a wide margin.

And We’re Back (With A Look At Carbon Credits!)

climate crisis, conservative party, economy, energy, green party, meta, social justice

The last few days I’ve had to focus my blog-related-energy on moving this website to a new host. My email addresses at this domain have stopped working four times in the past three months (I get about 100 emails a day, so it’s frustrating to try and guess what I might have missed), and iPowerWeb, who had been hosting this domain, didn’t even respond to my last email (yes, I was smart enough to send it from another working email address). The switch would have happened over the last 24 hours–hopefully you all survived.

I’m now on Dreamhost, which has some neat business practices I thought you might want to know about. For one, they’re employee owned, which is positive from a social justice perspective. They also have all sorts of open source applications that can be installed automatically (including the software this blog runs on), and open source is something I’m very supportive of.

The other neat thing about Dreamhost is that they’ve purchased carbon credits to offset the emissions created by running their business (including “paper in the office, electricity for our servers, even the gas in our cars that bring us to the office“). You can verify that this site is actually “hosted green” by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the right column of this page.

The basic idea behind carbon credits (aka carbon offsets) is to either pay someone else to reduce their emissions instead of reducing your own (buying credits), or to make money by reducing your carbon emissions more than the average bear (selling credits).

This carbon trading system works best when in conjunction with a “hard cap,” resulting in a “cap and trade” system. That means that each emitter is given a maximum amount of carbon they’re allowed to emit. If they exceed their limit, they’re forced to buy credits from other emitters who have reduced below their limit. The Green Party of Canada proposes setting up a cap and trade system for what’s known as Large Final Emitters (or LFE, for eco-geeks), but you could theoretically apply this system at the individual level as well.

Of course, carbon credits are a bit controversial these days, since for the most part there isn’t yet an easy and transparent way to ensure that buying a credit for one tonne of carbon actually results in one less tonne of carbon being released into the atmosphere. That’s really important because, from a climate change standpoint, the only thing that matters is that the over-all amount of greenhouse gases getting released into the atmosphere goes down (which is also why the “intensity targets” approach of George Bush and Stephen Harper is a hoax).

In other words, the purchase of carbon credits should only be used as a last resort, after a company or individual has done everything they can to reduce their emissions in the first place. For example, instead of buying offsets for your coal-generated electricity, buy your electricity from a clean supplier instead. Instead of buying offsets for your car, get a more efficient car or, you know, stop driving as much.

Dreamhost, as far as I can tell from their website, has taken at least some of those kinds of steps, but probably not as many as they could. But hey, none of us are perfect. For now I’m filing this under “better than nothing.”

ps. Seriously though, the main point of this post is, “if you emailed me in the last two days and haven’t heard back, please try again.”

Arguments Against Nuclear Power

energy

I randomly came across this website the other day. It took me a little longer than it should have to realize it was a sarcastic joke, but once I got there I was quite amused. Ilovenukes.ca (which appears to be a project of Greenpeace) is a mocking and timely look at nuclear power, and the misinformation that we’re being fed about it. (Timely, because nuclear power has been back in the news recently, and will likely should be a major issue in the next provincial election.)

When I first joined the Green Party a few years ago, I was reluctant to declare myself anti-nuclear. What I’d heard and read had led me to believe that nuclear power was a good solution to our energy needs, especially in the context of the need to fight climate change. What I’ve learned since then has changed my mind. In fact, by using the keywords “affordable, reliable, and clean” in their PR campaigns, it’s almost as if the nuclear industry thought it would be funny to identify their greatest weaknesses and try and convince us they were actually strengths.

Affordable?
For many, of all the arguments against nuclear, none are more convincing than the economic ones. Nuclear power plants are insanely expensive to build, insanely expensive to maintain, almost always go over budget, and require ongoing hidden government subsidization in the form of expensive insurance and other financial support. For example, the Darlington plant was originally budgeted at $2.5 Billion and came in at $14.4 Billion. In fact, we have an entire corporate entity in Ontario dedicated to managing the debt that we still have left over from the nuclear plants we’ve already built. And now, Dalton McGuinty is proposing to spend another $40,000,000,000 on new plants. That works out to about $4000 per individual, or $16,000 for a household of four. Imagine the investments that could be made in conservation and decentralized, local generation for that kind of money. Now try and imagine anyone wanting to pay for nuclear power if they had to pay the true, full cost.

Reliable?
Our history with nuclear power in Ontario has taught us that it’s anything but. Reactors go down more often and for longer periods of time than they’re supposed to. And when a nuclear reactor goes down, it’s a big, expensive, time-consuming problem to fix (in stark contrast to, say, if a wind turbine stops turning for a few hours or even days).

Clean?
It’s simply untrue to claim that nuclear is “emissions free.” While it does have fewer direct emissions than coal, the process of mining and transporting the radioactive uranium is a dirty and fossil-fuel-dependent process. Then, of course, there’s the little issue of the waste that’s left over.

Secure?
Centralized forms of electricity generation like nuclear are fundamentally less secure than decentralized ones like small-scale hydro, wind and solar, geothermal, and demand shifting. Never mind the fact that in 2003 one tree branch was able to take down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard (a result of rigid, centralized systems), nuclear power plants make great targets for terrorists. I’d suggest we don’t need any more targets in a time when our own senate says we can’t even secure our airports.

Nuclear Weapons?
On a related note, there’s a closer connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons than we’d generally like to admit. There are therefore ethical implications not only to developing nuclear power domestically, but also to selling our technology internationally.

Sustainable?
Nuclear power is unsustainable on two counts, and on a relatively short timeline. First, nuclear power is dependent–throughout many stages of production–on fossil fuels. Now that geologists are debating not if we’re going to run out of easily accessible oil, but when, the reality is that nuclear power will become increasingly expensive and unfeasible as we pass peak oil and descend down the unsatisfying dénouement on the other side. Second, there is a finite amount of available and appropriate uranium in the world. According to National Geographic, “readily available uranium fuel won’t last much more than 50 years.” Technological advancements will no doubt draw this number out (maybe 100 years? 150?), but it’s worth keeping in mind, especially when taking into account how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant in the first place (about 12 years).

As I’ve mentioned throughout this post, there are lots of alternatives to nuclear. Proponents of nuclear power will always counter by pointing out that there’s nothing else that can produce the huge amount of electricity that nuclear does, and they’re right. But that doesn’t make all of the above problems magically disapear. The bottom line is, we need to use less energy.

ps. Oops, apparently I’m repeating myself, and getting more verbose in my old age.

Government delivers PR, but it’s the wrong kind

conservative party, democracy and good government,

The following press release was just released, and is also here.

OTTAWA – In public opinion polls, provincial referenda and the recent Citizens’ Assembly in Ontario, Canadians continue to make it clear that they have one priority for democratic reform: scrap the current antiquated and inequitable first-past-the-post voting system and replace it with PR – Proportional Representation.

This week, in its much-heralded “Week of Democratic Reform”, the federal government has delivered PR – public relations.

“It would be laughable if it wasn’t so worrying,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “What we are seeing is a government so deeply committed to deflection and avoiding the real issues that they are starting to believe their own spin.”

Ms. May said that the so-called Week of Democratic Reform was really a week of gimmickry and housekeeping: new rules on loans to political parties; more seats in parliament for growing provinces and an extra day of voting.

“Meanwhile, the government happily stands by and watches our electoral system teeter on the shaky foundation of an unpopular and fundamentally unfair voting system that most countries abandoned years ago.

“On the occasion of Democratic Reform Week, I call on all parties in the House of Commons to stand with the vast majority of Canadians who believe that our current electoral system produces unfair results and that proportional representation needs to be explored.”

Green Party democratic reform advocate Chris Tindal said that any conversation about democratic reform that does not include proportional representation is a joke.

“Does [minister responsible for democratic reform] Peter Van Loan really believe that adding another day of voting is going to arrest the slide in voter turnout?

“People have stopped voting because they’re disillusioned with politicians, and because they don’t think their vote makes a difference. Real democratic reform would make every vote count.”

Ms. May repeated her call for an open and transparent nationwide consultation on the issue of proportional representation. “Ontario’s Citizens’ Assembly is a great model,” she said, “and the fact that it has come out overwhelmingly in favour of the change to proportional representation proves that this is an idea whose time has come.”

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