Fracking & LNG

About that LNG Prosperity Fund

Feb 18, 2014
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Budget 2014 contains some new information about how the province intends to pay for all of the ponies BC children have been promised from LNG riches. Alas, there is not much there – a three page text box that mostly restates the hype on LNG – and from what has been revealed it looks a… View Article

BC’s Big Favour?

Jan 30, 2014
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The hype on LNG has grown to staggering proportions. I have not had much time to debunk all of the government’s grotesque exaggerations and outright falsehoods. But Christy Clark’s claim that BC is “doing the world a favour” by exporting LNG to Asia made me write this oped, which got picked up in today’s Vancouver… View Article

Annotated Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy

Nov 4, 2013
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BC recently signed on to a new Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, which includes California, Oregon and Washington states. On the surface it seems like the province is recommitting to climate policy, but don’t believe the hype: it was just a few years ago that BC was in negotiations with those same… View Article

LNG: BC’s Quest for a New Staple Industry

Oct 21, 2013
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I have a post as part of a new series from the Progressive Economics Forum celebrating 50 years of Mel Watkins’ publication of “A Staple Theory of Economic Growth.” Watkins’ piece follows the insight of Harold Innis to develop an understanding of economic growth uniquely rooted in the Canadian experience. The series begins with an… View Article

Does Premier Clark, the great petro pretender, have a Plan B?

Jun 24, 2013
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In January, one of the world’s most sophisticated deep-sea drilling vessels, the $540-million Chikyu, left the Japanese Port of Shimizu destined for a distant point in the Phillippine Sea. The voyage marked a milestone in what by then was an 18-year, $700-million research and development effort aimed at one day weaning Japan off of its… View Article

Time to give shale gas industry a closer look before we’re totally fracked

Nov 9, 2011
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Despite the recent release by Canada’s natural gas industry of a set of guiding principles governing the controversial gas well “stimulation” method known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, and despite the almost immediate endorsement of those principles by BC Premier and industry cheerleader Christy Clark, more and more British Columbians are justifiably worried about what… View Article

The Wild West and dysfunctional B.C. politics

Jun 14, 2011
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Anyone wanting to see just how dysfunctional politics in B.C. has become should check out Bob Simpson’s recent Private Members’ statement in the provincial legislature. For seven minutes Simpson, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Cariboo North and one of two Independent MLAs, spoke about why he and fellow Independent Vicki Huntington (Delta South), had… View Article