Product manufacturers don’t like it, but the public forced them to start indicating the grams of trans fats their products contain on their labels. The idea is that consumers need to know how much trans fats are in a product to be able to make wise, healthy choices that take into account more than just prices.

So how about another new item on product labeling making clear the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that were created in the manufacture and shipping of that product? This is also a matter of consumers being able to make wise choices when it comes to their health. In examining bananas and apples at the store, a consumer needs to know how much GHG emissions are involved in each choice.

Yes, yes, there would be new bureaucracy, new regulations, lots of new rules, and no doubt a raft of other reasons why such a new product labeling system would be onerous on the economy. On the other hand, with such a system, consumers can begin making choices that reduce their contributions to climate change, and surely we can put up with a bit of economic drag for that good benefit.

IOC beats up local citizens at Vancouver Parks Board without even showing up

Critics of the Vancouver Olympic bid, way back during the non-debate prior to the 2003 plebiscite, predicted massive distortions in spending priorities to suit the IOC ahead of local needs. Nonsense, said proponents. But the phenomenon is now plainly evident.

Minor hockey families, trailing kids in their hockey uniforms, packed a Parks Board meeting the night of January 29. The issue was to do with the schedule of construction on the replacement of two venerable east side hockey rinks, Trout Lake and Killarney. Parks Board staff recommended to elected commissionaires to proceed with the tear down and rebuild of the two rinks simultaneously, even though that would reduce by half the number of rinks available to the Vancouver Minor Hockey Association. The staff report suggested that ice practice and game times could still be mostly maintained, but only if ice time starting at 4:30 in the morning and ran to 12:30 at night.

The families, speaking through a number of delegates, argued that the second rink should be torn down only when the first one is rebuilt, so that only one rink would be removed from the system at a time, obviating the need for such unhealthy, and undoable, ice times. It would normally be a very sensible decision. Both rinks are old and need to be rebuilt, but it makes no sense to cause undo stress to users of the rinks in rebuilding them. Kids who play hockey are responding to years of municipal, provincial and federal government encouragements to get physically active, get involved in sports and the local community, and develop leadership skills. One year of 4:30 practice times would be enough to discourage the most stout of kids and parents, and one year out of the sport would likely mean the end of that sport for that kid.

The spanner in the works is the very hard deadline of the Olympic schedule. Consecutive construction schedules would not make the second rink late, but would reduce the buffer period to four months between expected completion and the promised delivery date, a space of time apparently risky if a labour strike or materials shortage should occur. Staff were sure the second rink would be finished anyway, but not without the risk of overtime if there were problems. In the end, the Parks Board heard the parents and kids and moved halfway—the second rink would be torn down halfway through the season instead of at the start of the season, leaving an eight month buffer at the other end of its construction period. It was a compromise and the parents filed out of the meeting mostly pleased, but not happy. And the lesson is, even when every citizen involved in an issue feels extremely strongly about it, agree en masse on the solution, and take precious time out to attend a meeting to express their minds, that still isn’t enough to sway authorities who give equal weight, if not greater weight, to the massive corporate and international bodies involved in the Olympic festival who know they don’t even have to bother to send a delegate to a public meeting to explain themselves and their needs, in keeping with the democratic spirit. That’s John Furlong’s way, that’s the Vanoc way, and that’s the IOC’s way everywhere it goes to do business.

The irony is, the amateur youth who are involved in winter sports in Vancouver are still going to suffer for the sake of the ideal of amateur youth in winter sports as supposedly exemplified by the Olympics.

How long will slow-witted climate change deniers block the road?

Lorne Gunter, long-time senior columnist in The National Post: “In the past decade, the Southern Hemisphere has warmed only half as fast as the Northern Hemisphere. Ice cover at the South Pole is expanding rather than melting. Since 2003, the upper layer of the Atlantic has lost 25% of the extra heat it had built up in the past three decades. Worries that the Atlantic currents were slowing due to warming have been shown recently to be unfounded. . . . The broad consensus among solar scientists is that the Earth’s warming is almost entirely explicable by increased solar activity.”

This amazing display of how deep in the sand one can push one’s head shows that it may not be the case that knowledge and informed debate can lead to rational public policy. Minds need to be changed, and compared to that, moving mountains is a cakewalk.

Look how far, for example, Gunter has to come. Thomas Kuhn, who studied the sociology of scientific communities, and specifically how prevailing theories in different disciplines changed, concluded that individuals within those disciplines never change their minds. A science revolution only occurs when new young scientists finish replacing old retiring scientists. Old, out-dated beliefs, he found, don’t die even in the face of overwhelming evidence of their inadequacies. They only die when their proponents go away.

Is this the only way the political world will switch over to climate change-sensitive public policies? There may not be time, but it can’t hurt in the meantime for responsible publishers like the National Post to hurry the process along and push unhelpful writers like Gunter off a glacier’s edge. If one can still be found.

Will Bush bolt for Paraguay?

George W Bush and his partner, Laura Bush, recently purchased a large ranch in Paraguay, as reported by the Associate Press. One of their daughters was seen in Paraguay recently touring the ranch, checking it out, as it were.

Now what in the world would the President and his wife want with a ranch in Paraguay when they famously have a perfectly good ranch in Texas? It turns out the wiley wabit isn’t as stupid as we’ve made him out to be. Paraguay does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

The path is well-trodden: Fujimori, Pinochet, Marcos and Suharto all made a run for it when the jig was up. It wouldn’t be the first time war criminals made for safe havens in South America ahead of trials and lynchings back home. Bush may just be prudently keeping his options open, the wittle wascle!