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Canada has a parliamentary democracy, similar to the UK. This election (an internal affair open to party members only) made Dion the leader of the Liberal Party. That party currently holds 102 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, compared to 124 for the governing Conservative Party. Dion gets to lead the country only if the Liberals gain enough seats in the next election to surpass the Conservatives. The date of the next election is unknown, but is likely to be relatively soon, since the Conservatives have only a minority government. That means they have less than an absolute majority of the seats in parliament, possible because we have 4 parties with seats in the House.
After the next election, if the Liberals win more seats than any other party they will form the government, and their leader becomes the Prime Minister. If they win at least 155 seats they will have a majority government, which can govern for up to 5 years. Less than that, and they will form a minority government, which can govern as long as they are not defeated by an ad hoc coalition of opposition parties in what is called a vote of non-confidence.
As for next elections, a good number of analyst predict that before the next budget, there could be a trigering of election.
Support for Dion is still unkown in the general population but he is sharp.
He knows about Peak Oil
Here is why :
He came this summer in our city and the journalist told him about me and my report about peak oil. He told the journalist (and then me thereafter) that he read the following books : Twilight, Beyond Oil, The Party is over and many other reports.
I personaly sent him a copy of the french report I made and he told me it was one of the few french document available in Canada at this time.
So I think he will steer the party and the politics toward the talking of this problem, which is yet to be done here in Canada, especialy in Quebec.
He his the kind of Chef I would run for office with (I'm thinking about it)
Have a good night!
As for running for election, if next election can wait 1 or 2 years, there is much chance that I will take the plunge. Before that I would need local support from opinion leaders, I'm getting there but it is much work.
I have to put forward our local currency first (more like purchase coupon) and then is I can a business incubator within the Chamber of commerce. Those two thing will enable me to get large local support.
I Stoneleigh want it, I can talk about the business incubator more thoroughly, it is planed with all kind of energy economy and new building principles. It's getting support within the local here.
However If I would need to do a quick decision, I'm involved in so much organisation here that I'm already known by many people.
...and then is I can a business...
should be
... and then if I can start a business incubator...
I would love to see your report Wolfric. (I can read french better than I can type it :) ).
Very encouraging information indeed.
Merci.
If I had know that Stephan Dion had read the three books I have, I might have stayed with the Liberal and helped him with his leadership campaign.
The likelihood of a business as usually candidate such as Ignatieff or Rae, was just turning me off.
anywho point is.. we "recognize the limits to growth argument"
and if your argument against us is that we dont see it as our number one concern.. well i dont believe we need a #1 concern, thats like having a car about to hit you at the same time as being in the path of a train. guess what i dont care which one i should be MORE worried about, there both about to kill me!
My number one concern is that people are too scared to take a chance, and elect a party with some real progressive policy!
Go ahead, vote Dion, because he did sooo much as the Liberals environment minister!
You keep your eye on the second and you will mis the first.
Global Warming is now, our actions in the next 10 years have a huge impact on the climate of the planet in the subsequent 100.
There is a wealth of scientific evidence that CO2 concentrations are rising faster than we thought, and that the effects of this (Greenland Ice Sheet melting, acidification of the oceans, release of methane from permafrost) is greater than our models indicated. There is a growing alarm amongst the scientific community that we are crossing a number of natural 'tipping points' where CO2 accumulation will become unstoppable, or at the very least the necessary abatement of our emissions will become unfeasible.
Moreover the choices we make now determine our CO2 output 20 to 50 years from now: a coal or nuclear fired plant built now, will still be running in 2050. A car bought now lasts for 14 years, a commercial vehicle potentially much longer. So there are enormous lead times to 'turn the supertanker'.
The Greens are absolutely right on this one.
(where I think they are wrong is on the question of nuclear power. Ontario, for example, would be one of the worst CO2 emitters in North America if it didn't have 12,000MW of nuclear power).
Peak Oil is a hypothesis, which remains unproven. We have one, unambiguous, signal about PO: the price of oil. The price of oil is the point at which
supply +/- changes in inventory = demand
That is tautologically true.
Right now the price of oil is saying there is demand for oil, and it is being met, at a price. It is not saying that there is an impending shortage of oil.
(It is trivially true that oil will run out, ie Peak, this is the definition of an exhaustible resource. The question is when?)
All data on oil reserves and future oil production is suspect to a greater or lesser extent: the key players, the large state-owned oil companies, do not submit themselves to outside audit.
I would be the first to argue that a current commodity price, nor a futures oil price, set by financial markets, is not an exact unbiased forecast of the future price of oil.
But it is the best piece of data we have, and it is not saying we are running out (yet).
If we do hit Peak Oil (and in some ways, Peak Gas will be worse), then the outlook for Global Warming is even more gloomy than if we do not, because we will burn more coal and coal is one of the key roots of world CO2 emission (about half of world electricity production, and about 30% of world CO2 production, currently-- I'd have to check the exact number).
Peak and running out are definitely not the same thing, that is fundamental to understanding PO. You put far too much faith in pricing, it's production figures that will indicate the peak. Anyway, doesn't a 300% increase in price indicate something?
For practical planning purposes both PO and GW are issues that need addressing now, as you put it.
You write lots of words, under your ironic "ValueThinker" tag, but still you seem completely clueless about the basics.
Valuethink means I like low PE stocks which I think are undervalued -- nothing more, nothing less.
You attack me personally, and in that, entirely devalue any criticism you make of the content my arguments.
Let's put this another way: you are a grade A plonker (or behaving like one, it may not be innate) who doesn't know how to structure an argument.
I shall treat your 'arguments' with a similar level of courtesy and attention to the principles of rhetoric ;-).
This will help. But the rate of energy descent will be outstripping the rate of ingenious technical fixes.
There seems to be need of a social rearrangement. If Elizabeth were to sell the need to accept a significant reduction in material conveniences, then I would be convinced that the Greens understood the limits to growth.
We need a revolution, not a violent one of course, but a revolution in thinking. I like the way Thomas Homer-Dixon describes it. We need to build resilience into our societies not stretching out further on a limb.
I think that the difference between the Greens and the Liberals could be that the Greens emphasize that building resilience is central to all other institutions where as Liberals (quoting Dion) wants to do a balancing act. A balancing act won't prevent a crash since everything is so out of balance. The analogy is going off a cliff. Either you crash, or you have prepared and you glide to a landing(possibly rough).