U.S. Streams Contaminated With Pesticides: Report

I can see the Fraser River from my window, and sadly it is one of Canada's fastest polluting rivers. Let's not pretend this is solely an American issue, we should look at ourselves first.

Unless you live in the very backwoods of Canada, everywhere around you is being polluted at record levels. Our landfills are filling up. The use of cars and trucks is hardly ceasing, and the rush to make shareholders rich takes precedence over the environment almost to a tee.

We are killing ourselves in the name of capitalism. Marx said capitalism would destroy itself. What's happening is not exactly what he meant, but it's close enough. With a cancer and asthma epidemic in Canada, our very children are our canaries in the mine-shaft. Yet we blissfully go on consuming and polluting like there is no tomorrow. Well there will be no tomorrow if we don't have a radical shift in how we conduct ourselves and our capitalist system.

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If there was ever a time for Canadians to become pushy - now is the time - for time is running out on this nation called Canada.

This might be a good program to watch tonight:<br />
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/">http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/</a><br />
<br />
If air, water, soil contamination is as widespread as this posting suggest, and if Wendy Mesley's Marketplace report is of any substance at all, it would help to explain why no government in Canada wants to tackle preventative medicine, as a way to lessenthe burden on our healthcare system. Imagine the lawsuits that would emerge as ordinary Canadians find out their ill health is due in no small part to the massive pollution that surrounds us......<p>---<br>RickW

A friend of mine mentioned the following to me a few weeks back, and I think it's worth noting:

If more people die before their retirement, then governments, and compaies don't have to dole out their benefits.

The Green Party has been yelling just that for the last ten years... sadly most even when they do know refuse to change very much. I grimace at the notion that people will only really catch on and truly start to care when it's too late.

Capitalism and the environment can coincide with one another - all it takes is forethought and direction, with strict oversight.

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If there was ever a time for Canadians to become pushy - now is the time - for time is running out on this nation called Canada.

We are killing ourselves. We share that much in common. But what to do?
We can spend our time and meagre resources fighting global warming, chasing expensive, unworkable climate models, that can't even predict the past, or we can fight the cancer causers that are in everything we breathe, touch or swallow.
The answer seem so obvious it is comical. Our first battle is for life.

Sorry friends, but I have to repeat it for the umpteenth time:

Wealth can not be created, only taken from other sectors, or the environment.

Costs can not be cut, only transferred on other sectors, the environment and the future.

There's no "win-win", only "win-pay".

The pollution of the waters and air, global warming, etc. are the transferred real costs of so called "wealth creating activities" and the reaction caused by resource and energy inputs.

This has been defined in the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics and Newton's Laws on Reaction and Speed, hundreds of years ago, then contradicted in all economic theories taught in our universities ever since.

The Marxists were probably the worst polluters, destroying large, fertile areas.

Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

Good post. You are right Ed, The only way to make less of a mess is to change the economic infrastructure system from inside to outside. Capitalism, (and all the other 'isms), ignores systemic inputs and outputs which show it is not economically feasible. Economics ignores science which shows it is a rich mans obfuscation mantra. We were born into a cesspool of ignorance. Is there a way out?


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"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
(Albert Einstein)

A good kick in the ass is usually the best way to put somebody on the way out.

In my case it was having become a homeless refugee at 18, living in camp and barrack conditions for 6 years and realizing that most everything I've learned before were lies.

From there on it was the toughest road of going against the established traffic, paved with more lies, but never regretted a minute of it.

Ed Deak.