Daily Archives: March 23, 2010

 By Dan Wilson
 
Earth Hour is fast approaching. That’s the time of year, once a year when we’re encouraged to turn our lights off for an hour to show how much we love and care about the planet.

Started in 2007 by the World Wildlife Fund, individuals, families and businesses are asked to switch off their lights, TVs and other non-essential appliances at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27th.
 
According to the WWF website, hundreds of millions of people took part in last year’s Earth Hour, making it “the world’s largest global climate change initiative.”
 
To be honest, I haven’t been a big fan of previous Earth Hour events. The idea that the best we can do for THE PLANET THAT GIVES US LIFE is to turn off the lights for one hour is both sad and embarrassing to me. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“I don’t know how passing health care will play politically — but I know it’s right. Teddy Roosevelt knew it was right. Harry Truman knew that it was right. Ted Kennedy knew it was right. And if you believe that it’s right, then you’ve got to help us finish this fight. You’ve got to stand with me. … Do not quit, do not give up, we keep on going. We are going to get this done. We are going to make history. We are going to fix health care in America. …!”

– from a speech U.S. President Barack Obama delivered at George Mason University in Virginia on Friday, March  19, two days before a historic vote by the U.S Congress to reform health care.

It was, in the final few weeks leading up to the March 21 vote in the United States for milestone health-care reform, a heroic outpouring of passion by the U.S. president that would mostly certainly make Canada’s late father of Medicare, Tommy Douglas, feel proud.

U.S. President Barack Obama pushing his health reform bill before an audience in Virginia in the final days before its passage this March.

I’m going to begin this commentary by offering congratulations to a majority of my American friends and neighbours for saying ‘yes’ to a historic health reform bill – however weak it may be compared to the publicly paid for ‘Medicare-for-all’ dream embraced by the late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. 

At the end of it all, it is a reform bill that at least offers a chance for another 30 million U.S. citizens or more to afford health care, and that makes it harder for private health insurance companies to deprive people of coverage if they have any reason to believe a person has what they call a “pre-existing health condition.” Continue reading →

By John Bacher

Many of you may have had the inspiring pleasure of seeing the PBS documentary on the creation of the national parks system of the United States. If so, you will have seen how such towering figures as the Murie brothers (Olaus and Adolph), John Muir, and Ansel Adams protected the landscape of America over enormous opposition.

A stand of Carolinian forest on Parks Canada land that at least some Niagara residents want to see preserved as an eco park.

There is a place where you can create such heroics as the great environmental champions of the past, right here in Niagara. This is surprising since all the land in question is already publicly owned. It is even owned by the Canadian National Parks branch and protected by the Greenbelt.

What is strange however, is that this land, although it has a marsh estuary and an old growth Carolinian forest of over two hundreds acres, the largest remaining on the shores of Lake Ontario, is threatened by development pressure. Continue reading →