Good Sunday Morning,

Desmond Bull, a councilor with the Louis Bull Tribe, tells us, "As First Nations and Canadian citizens, we need to take care of each other, take care of the land and take care of future generations." In the heart of Alberta's oilsands, Louis Bull Tribe now powers its daycare with solar energy. Together with Iron & Earth, Louis Bull helped train oil and gas workers with new skills for a renewable energy future.

“The Government of Alberta’s Renewable Electricity Program has tremendous potential to do these things and to increase Indigenous participation in the green economy." Local Indigenous leaders welcome a new energy program. “Every day, Indigenous peoples see the effects of climate change first-hand,” Treaty 8 Grand Chief Rupert Meneen says. “We need to stand up, be heard and take action on this issue because it impacts everyone. Working together, we can create a better life for everybody – Indigenous peoples and Albertans.”

Good Sunday Morning,

"Mistakes were made but not by me." It's a fabulous book that explores the implications of our impulse to reduce cognitive dissonance. That impulse allows us to sleep at night but it also prevents us from not only embracing the reality of our situation but from avoiding behavior that is actually devastating to ourselves and the people we love. "We are emotionally motivated to reject findings that threaten our core beliefs, the beliefs that are most central to us, the stories we tell about our lives, [and] our world view."

In this talk to the Center for Inquiry last August, Carol Tavris explains how all of us—even skeptics—can easily fall prey to bias in order to deal with the uncomfortable feeling of dissonance when we are confronted with ideas which contradict what we believe—or need—to be true. For Donald Trump this is about coal. After Trump was elected, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was told to scrub the agency’s website of all information about climate change and redirect people to pictures of Trump posing with coal miners.

Good Sunday Morning,

We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century energy transition. There are three forces driving that transition. The first is decarbonization. Decarbonization is happening whether the carbon industry, and those who depend on it for votes, like it or not. It's not just because of the Paris Accord but because economically, a decarbonized future makes more sense. Already alternatives are so competitive that they are the energy of choice for new capacity being built all around the globe, including the US. And their costs continue to drop. That means the economics of maintaining outdated energy infrastructure will become less and less attractive, moving their inevitable date of obsolescence closer and closer.

To put it in simple terms, we will only put up with our poor quality, flaky and finicky VCR until we can afford a DVD. And now that we can stream movies at will on the web, why would we even bother dealing with the fingerprints on that shiny piece of plastic. The oil industry has successfully stifled innovation in transportation for decades, but their own efforts to globalize our economy and free global trade, are now overtaking them.

Good Sunday Morning,

I was hoping to offer some good news stories today. Or maybe write about political financing proposals in Bill C-50. Or about the Omnibus bill that entrenches a Harper like "fox in charge of the henhouse" regulatory agency that ensures the blind pursuit of oil industry profits is not hampered by independent environmental reviews.

But Rachel Notley's w(h)ine and poses war against BC made that pretty much impossible. After listening to Jim Carr basically dismiss British Columbia out of hand in his CBC interview on The House, I revved up my search engines. He started the interview by making it clear yet again that his government (with their 39% majority) made a decision in approving a pipeline that's in "the national interest." Then he ended the interview by basically telling British Columbia to get out of the way, we're going to build this pipeline.

Good Sunday Morning,

British Columbia has made a decision to protect its waterfront property. And the folks next door, who don't enjoy the beauty or indeed the economic benefits of our pristine coast, don't much like that idea. They want to ship their raw and dirty product through our tidewaters. And the Prime Minister, who has spent his youth kayaking our coast, has been persuaded to back them up.

So to understand their dogged determination, I wanted to see what the relationship was between direct employment in the tar sands and production trends. It is amazingly difficult to get those numbers. Even on the 'Oil Sands Facts and Statistics' section of the Government of Alberta's website they have no problem telling us exactly what the proven reserves are, or what the production numbers are, but when it comes to employment the closest they could get was: "In 2016, approximately 136,000 people were directly employed in Alberta’s mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector."

That may be because in 2014 the actual number working in the tar sands was already eclipsed by the folks working in the alternative energy sector.

Good Sunday Morning,

This week, Oxfam International released a report that the richest people in the world could have ended global extreme poverty seven times with the amount their wealth increased last year. The National Observer writes that Oxfam's annual wealth report says 2017 saw the biggest increase in billionaires in world history, with a new billionaire making the list every second day. It says 42 people hold as much wealth as the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorer half of the world's population. The international charity reports that the wealthiest one percent of the population holds 82 percent of the world's wealth. Their income increased by $762 billion while the poorest half of the world's population saw no increased income at all.

The CBC reports that in Davos Switzerland at least one central banker is warning of another 2008-style credit meltdown. "All the market indicators right now look very similar to what we saw before the Lehman crisis, but the lesson has somehow been forgotten," William White, head of the OECD's review board, said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. Evidence of a new raft of toxic loans, pinned to obscure bond markets, is emerging almost daily.

Good Sunday Morning,

My plan for today was to write a good news story around the inaugural Future of Mobility Summit to be held in Silicon Valley, California early in February. But as is so often the case, the week's events overtake these plans and I find myself writing about something else altogether.

For many of us here in Saanich Gulf Islands (SGI) this week revolved around Elizabeth's Town Halls. It was on the way to Tuesday's Town Hall on Salt Spring Island that Elizabeth's team received a phone call from CBC Television: "Can Elizabeth May do an interview with Terry Milewsky on Power and Politics?" Sure, was the reply as the ferry approached the Fulford Ferry dock. Fulford is one of those classic 'west coasts feel' communities which everyone around here knows, has no cell service.

So when Elizabeth and her staff made it back into cell coverage halfway to Ganges, the scramble was on. Where to find a reliable wifi connection that was quiet enough to do an interview on national television? Salt Spring Island Elementary School Library to the rescue. For those of us who have struggled with wifi passwords, it's easy to imagine the bead of sweat that must have appeared as the minutes closed in on the live interview. But they pulled it off. With laptop perched on a stack of books and both blackberries propped up in front of her, Elizabeth smiles at the camera and tells the nation what's really going on with the carbon tax. You can watch the interview starting at 1:16:40

Good Sunday Morning,

Once in a while, when I send out these weekly missives some emails "bounce". This can happen because someone changed their email address and didn't tell me about it or for some other mundane reason. But it can also happen if the "spambots" have decided that there are too many links in my email or that I'm trying to send you inappropriate marketing or porn messages, embedded in the text on the pictures. Spambots do this by collecting data on actual spam to profile email content, then filtering out anything that they associate with that profile. Nothing personal, just an automated process. The criteria they use is kept secret and changes constantly to make it harder for real spammers to work around it. 

Good Sunday Morning,

Welcome back, everyone! First, let me take a moment to extend a warm thank you to all the folks who responded so generously to our email asking for your thoughts on fundraising. Your feedback resonated deeply, both with Elizabeth and the direction that our SGI (Saanich-Gulf Islands) EDA (Electoral District Association) Executive Committee is taking. Thank you also for your generosity in supporting our efforts as an EDA to empower all elements in our party to work together and build a better democracy.

Good Sunday Morning,

Don't worry, I am taking the weekend off so this will be brief.

With Site C moving forward and the fight to stop Kinder Morgan continuing, disappointment and broken promises seems to be all that the old political parties can offer us.

But this blast from the past shows that the world is not going to wait for them. It's been one heck of a year for Greens and this clip from Guelph is here to invite all of you to ride the wave. 

Happy New Year!
Thomas