What energy crisis?
It seems that over the last couple of years the impending energy crisis is finally being recognized by the wider population (in North America anyhow).
SUV sales have plummetted, hybrid vehicle options are becoming widely available and are a huge selling point, the car companies leading the industry are the same ones offering the most competitive and available highly fuel efficient vehicles. Way to go North America.
I'm reminded of this because of two articles I read in the Globe & Mail this morning:
The first was on Joe Clark's company Clark Sustainable Resources (or some similar company name... I can't find it online) and how they're planning to log an old growth hardwood forest in Ghana. Since when is a old-growth forest a renewable resource? When the forest is underwater! I just thought this sounded more like the plot for Michael Bay's newest movie than a real resource concern. The project still has all the trappings of the old clear-cutting projects: we're going in and removing millions of tonnes of biomass, which will disrupt or destroy the existing ecosystem.
By now you may be wondering why an old growth forest is underwater in the first place. The Ghanan government made the lake by damming one of their rivers. If we're going to exonerate ourselves from the label of 'clearcutters' in any circumstance in which the forest is underwater, it doesn't work if we're the ones that drowned the forest to start with. The article didn't go into what Clark's intentions are with the project so I can't judge him on that, but if I were running a sustainable resource company, I can't imagine a good reason that a logging project would even show up on my radar.
Also, if nuclear energy is going to be the next big energy resource, finding new sources of nuclear materials had better be on our priority list because since the turn of the century our uranium resources have been depleting quickly as was the subject of the second energy article of the morning.
That was one of 4 articles I saw this morning focusing on how we're getting and using our energy and how it's impacting our lifestyle and environment. It's very heartening to see the attention that's been given to the issue lately, but it also seems that as we look further into the problem of feasible alternative energy sources, we end up with more questions than answers about how we'll heat our homes 30 years from now.
SUV sales have plummetted, hybrid vehicle options are becoming widely available and are a huge selling point, the car companies leading the industry are the same ones offering the most competitive and available highly fuel efficient vehicles. Way to go North America.
I'm reminded of this because of two articles I read in the Globe & Mail this morning:
The first was on Joe Clark's company Clark Sustainable Resources (or some similar company name... I can't find it online) and how they're planning to log an old growth hardwood forest in Ghana. Since when is a old-growth forest a renewable resource? When the forest is underwater! I just thought this sounded more like the plot for Michael Bay's newest movie than a real resource concern. The project still has all the trappings of the old clear-cutting projects: we're going in and removing millions of tonnes of biomass, which will disrupt or destroy the existing ecosystem.
By now you may be wondering why an old growth forest is underwater in the first place. The Ghanan government made the lake by damming one of their rivers. If we're going to exonerate ourselves from the label of 'clearcutters' in any circumstance in which the forest is underwater, it doesn't work if we're the ones that drowned the forest to start with. The article didn't go into what Clark's intentions are with the project so I can't judge him on that, but if I were running a sustainable resource company, I can't imagine a good reason that a logging project would even show up on my radar.
Also, if nuclear energy is going to be the next big energy resource, finding new sources of nuclear materials had better be on our priority list because since the turn of the century our uranium resources have been depleting quickly as was the subject of the second energy article of the morning.
That was one of 4 articles I saw this morning focusing on how we're getting and using our energy and how it's impacting our lifestyle and environment. It's very heartening to see the attention that's been given to the issue lately, but it also seems that as we look further into the problem of feasible alternative energy sources, we end up with more questions than answers about how we'll heat our homes 30 years from now.
