Bikes VS Cars – Ride or Drive

There has been much debate in the mayoralty races in Canada’s largest city regarding the best way to get around town.

Some local wanna-be mayors are in full favour of adding bike lanes to busy Toronto streets, while others are opposed.

Those for them say they make it safer for cyclists, as it provides a lane dedicated to their chosen mode of transportation.

Those against say it takes away a lane from drivers, adding to traffic congestion.
Cycling in Canada isn’t a year-round method of travel. There are those brave – some might say crazy – souls, that will peddle their way around town in -30C wind chills, through the snow-covered streets in our typically Canadian winters.

However, even these rare cyclists aren’t able to hit their bikes during an ice-storm – it’s physically impossible to get enough traction on a standard bicycle when the sidewalks, walkways and roads are pure sheets of ice.

Cycling in Canada sadly is limited to the warmer months – spring, summer and fall. And even in these months, the challenges of Canadian weather can force even the most die-hard cycling enthusiast into a climate controlled car.

Try explaining to your potential employer why you are soaked, as you slosh into your chair during a job interview.

But does that mean we shouldn’t be investing in alternative modes of transportation for our urban centers?

Cycling is good for the environment, is good for exercise, and takes up a much smaller footprint on our streets, meaning it is generally better for traffic flow.

On top of all that, cycling doesn’t require oil-based fossil fuels from environmentally uncaring companies like British Petroleum (BP). BP still hasn’t fully stopped their leaking oil well which began polluting thousands of miles of wetlands along the Gulf of Mexico back in April. Scientists say it could take decades before the area is fully restored to what it was before the oil spill.

Not to single out BP – though it isn’t hard to do as their lack of planning is quite evident in their mismanagement of their own product’s storage, refinement and transportation. Other oil companies have had environmental accidents – some resulting in disasters like BP. Prior to BP’s fiasco in the Gulf, Exxon was known for its mega-oil tanker leak the Valdez in 1989 where about 750,000 barrels of crude oil slunk across Alaska to California.

Yes, taking away a lane of traffic from cars will aggravate drivers – as it should.
If more of us got pissed off at the cyclist whizzing past us, as we sat idling in our gas-based polluting automobiles, then maybe more of us would switch to cleaner peddle-power.

Unfortunately, many big city dwellers just curse, swear, and sometimes intentionally cut-off cyclists because they don’t see eye-to-eye with them. Road rage between a driver and a cyclist is never pretty. But in many instances it can be prevented by having a lane dedicated to cyclists.

And that’s why we need more – not less – bike lanes in all our towns and cities.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Soft Innovations of London's "Cycle Superhighways" (streetsblog.org)
• London's Cycle Superhighways: Hopes for the Future of the New Blue Network (worldchanging.com)
• Ont. bill compels cars to give bikes space (cbc.ca)
• Spoke Junkies at the OTB (timesunion.com)
• London builds bike 'superhighways' with groundbreaking blue paint (grist.org)
• When the rubber hits the road for cyclists (theglobeandmail.com)

Is BP Intentionally Stalling for It’s Own Good?

This morning, British Petroleum (BP) said it’s latest scheme to end the oil slick gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the past 12-weeks is on hold, because of a leaking pipe.

If it isn’t one thing, it is another – for 12-weeks – that’s over three-months – since the April 20 explosion which killed 11 people on the BP oil rig, and has been unleashing a torrent of toxic oil into ecosystems stretching thousands of kilometres.

The latest efforts to repair the deep drilled oil well – so deep even military divers can’t get down there, only robots can handle the pressures at those depths – was supposed to be “the” fix to finally stop the oil.

Less than 12-hours after it began, this fool-proof fix made fools of us all.

Or did it?

Granted, BP’s stock price has ridden the ups and downs of this fiasco, the company has had to shell out billions of dollars, and even took a very public dressing down from the most powerful man in the world – American President Barack Obama.

However, as the old saying goes, any press, is good press.

Despite the negative comments hurled at BP for creating the world’s worst human-caused environmental disaster – even when compared to the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 – BP has been consistently in the press for the past three-months.

That’s not all bad, because the more your name is out there, the more valuable your business is. Sure it isn’t good news, but that hasn’t stopped BP from making money.

And that’s why the question has been raised, that maybe BP is intentionally stalling it’s clean up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

What a horrible thing to say! To think that major, multinational company would intentionally do harm to the environment just to increase its value.

However it isn’t completely without basis, major multinational companies have gone to great lengths in the past to succeed, even when it means doing things not exactly kosher.

Just look at the Enron scandal, where the company intentionally mislead investors by over inflating it’s profits by $1 billion dollars in 2001. This lead to criminal convictions, suicides by executives, and the eventual failure of the company.

Or look at American Airlines, which has repeatedly delayed repairs ordered by the American government’s Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) regarding its fleet of aging MD-80 airliners. Some of these repairs could affect the lives of everyone on-board, as failing to repair cracks to pressure bulkheads could cause the cabin to depressurize, leading to the catastrophic loss of the plane.

Clearly, business ethics aren’t front and center in the hearts and minds of the world’s corporate elite.

So, is BP stalling to make the most of a bad situation?

Only the time will tell.

Meanwhile, the environment and those who live in the affected areas continue to suffer, due to BP’s continued negligence.

Related articles by Zemanta

• NYT: Spill highlights BP's boldness, blunders (msnbc.msn.com)
• CORRECTED - WRAPUP 1-BP runs crucial test on Gulf oil leak (reuters.com)
• Leak Halts BP Test On Well Capping Device (news.sky.com)
• Americans in 73% Majority Oppose Ban on Deepwater Oil Drilling (businessweek.com)
• UK firms suffer after BP oil spill (telegraph.co.uk)
• Gulf oil spill: Pressure testing begins on BP well (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Libyan bomber link, oil spill sparks U.S. anger at BP (thestar.com)

American President Tries Hand at Mother Nature

Tonight at 8pm EST, American President Barack Obama will address his nation for the first time from the Oval Office.

Oval Office speeches are nothing new to American presidents. They have been used to give calming messages of action, during times of crisis.

American President Ronald Reagan was famous for his slick orations from the Oval Office. They even started the Jelly Bean Meter, where journalists joked that the bigger the crisis, the more Jelly Beans filled the jar which always sat on President Reagan’s Oval Office desk.

The speech tonight by President Obama is going to be mostly about the British Petroleum (BP) oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, sliming its way along America’s southern coastline. The oil has penetrated the shorelines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, since an explosion released it from the BP Deepwater drilling site on April 20.

The people that live and work along the coastal areas now submerged in dirty, black crude oil, are in a state of panic. Their lives are literally threatened, as drinking water tables are becoming contaminated. Their food stocks are threatened, as fish and wildlife die off from being buried in the thick black goo. Businesses are at risk, as outsiders aren’t venturing in, so tourism is at an all time low.

The BP oil leak, is the worst corporate-caused environmental disaster since another famed oil company released its liquid gold into the environment – the Exxon. Back in 1989, Exxon’s oil tanker the Valdez, ran aground dumping 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

According to the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are approximately 98 m³ (26,000 gallons) of Valdez crude oil still in Alaska's sand and soil today.

But that’s not going to happen, because American President Barack Obama – the former Chicago Senator, turned President – is now tackling a new role – Mother Nature.

In tonight’s live address from the Oval Office, President Obama is going to lay out his plans for cleaning up the Gulf Coast.

Should be quite a show, seeing as Mother Nature herself is still struggling with the oil left in the Alaskan sands left over from the Exxon Valdez.

It will take billions and billions – if not trillions of dollars – to clear most of the crude oil. And it will take several years – decades – before the environment is completely recovered from BP’s leaking oil well.

President Obama should leave the recovery of the planet to Mother Nature, and use his political power as it was intended – politically. President Obama has the political power to force his citizens to adopt a lifestyle less dependent upon oil.

Crude Oil – a slimy, highly toxic substance, is formed as fossil remains from plants and animals are crushed between the layers of the Earth and sea over thousands of years.

We human beings consume about 30 billion barrels of crude oil year. Crude oil is the building block for almost everything – it forms the basis for toothpaste, plastics, and chewing gum. We use it to heat our homes, power our cars, and keep our world in order – most of the parts in a computer are made out of petroleum products.

Yet in its natural unaltered state, crude oil is one of the most dangerous substances on the planet. It is highly flammable – even the slightest spark can – and has – cause disaster. Its viscous thick goo clogs the pores of living things, slowly suffocating them. If taken orally, it poisons the body, causing a slow and painful death, as your vital organs shut down one-by-one.

Processing this stuff is no safer. One of the side effects to its many uses are the many toxins produced when it is manipulated. Petro chemical by products toxic to any and all life such as benzene, chlorine, carbon dioxide and many others are by-products of oil production.

Our society has become too dependent on a highly toxic substance. If crude oil was directly administered to us, it would be no different than being addicted to cocaine.

Instead of trying to do the impossible, American President Barack Obama should do the possible – create laws, policies and procedures which move his country away from the dependency on crude oil.

If he can do that, he’ll really make a world of difference – America is the largest consumer of crude oil in the world, using 24 percent of those 30 billion barrels consumed annually. Canada on average uses about 16 percent of those 30 billion barrels of crude annually, while other countries trail far behind.

So if the largest consumer of crude oil – The United States of America – starts to wean off of our drug-like dependency, the rest of the world will follow.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Obama Plans Oval Office Address To The Nation On Gulf Oil Spill (huffingtonpost.com)
• Obama Plans Fourth Tour of Gulf Oil Spill (abcnews.go.com)
• Sensors deployed to better track oil (msnbc.msn.com)
• Palin to Obama: 'Give Me a Call' (time.com)
• Louisiana rig explosion: millions of gallons of oil spill into Gulf of Mexico (telegraph.co.uk)
• Underwater Sensors Deployed To Better Track Gulf Oil Spill (huffingtonpost.com)

World Leaders Fail to Use BP Oil Spill for a Greener Good

Funny thing, with all the media coverage of British Petroleum’s (BP) failure to cap its massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico – it has been over a month since the problem smeared across the waters – and around the world – no one is thinking green.

Yes, it is of utmost importance to put an end to the gushing gallons of crude oil – about 5,000 barrels or 210,000 gallons of the icky slimy stuff billow out per day.

But even the once so-called “most green American president ever,” President Barock Obama hasn’t used this ecological disaster to forward his county’s green agenda.

Yet wasn’t it President Obama who boldly declared from his lofty pedestal in the White House’s Rose Garden: “We have to reduce America’s dependency on oil?”

Ironic, as America – and most of the western world – still depends on the highly toxic fossil fuel for everything from heating our homes, powering our cars, to creating plastics and rubbers used in everything from medical hoses to carry drugs and oxygen to patients, to the tires on our cars.

If the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth can’t truly go green, all hope may be lost.

One person may make a difference, but what really matters are the differences made by those in positions of real power.

So, don’t stop your recycling, and don’t switch back to energy wasting incandescent light bulbs just yet. By reducing your impact on the environment, you are making a difference.

However, oil slicks polluting our wetlands and killing off millions of fish, endangering the lives of birds, trashing our drinking water, and even harming human beings involved in the cleanup efforts will continue until world leaders – like President Obama – stop talking about making a difference and actually do.

Sure, President Obama has extended an American-led ban on deep-water oil drilling, but that was his response to a crisis which could have been prevented, had he acted on his previous promise to move his country further away from a dependency on oil. All he did today when he extended this moratorium to six-months was media damage control for his public image.

Sure, President Obama’s administration is holding congressional hearings specifically on BP’s oil spill – but even if BP is fined, and forced to pay the enormous costs to clean up their mess, that won’t prevent future oil disasters.

President Obama, and other worldly leaders need to get together on greening the planet – and I’m not talking about token carbon emissions. Whenever world leaders meet, they talk about reducing Greenhouse Gases by setting specific emission reduction goals –which often aren’t met.

What our world leaders need to do is to create a functional, working plan for implementing green energy alternatives in their respective countries.

Solar, wind and geothermal won’t work in every part of the globe. Not every spot on Earth receives enough sunlight for solar power, nor enough wind for wind power, nor has the underwater hotspots needed for geothermal.

However, every part of the globe can make use of at least one or more of these green alternatives – to realistically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

We may not completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels such as oil – yet. But if we had world leaders that made it law to use environmentally-friendly alternatives wherever possible, it would be just the incentive we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, while invigorating the drive to research new ways to power our high-energy consumption lives.

Big business wouldn’t see green energy alternatives as a costly hassle, but rather a cheaper alternative to over-using fossil fuels and having to pay fines or added taxes for their wasteful ways. Having fines and heavy taxes on those relying on oil and other fossil fuels would also encourage companies to fund research into green energy alternatives, as it would now be in their interests to use the greener energy sources.

Having court hearings as to what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico, and why after a month, the toxic crude oil is still leaking is important – we need to find out what went wrong to prevent oil spills from happening due to the same cause.

But the real way – the only way – we will ever truly avoid destroying the only planet we know of capable of sustaining our lives in our universe – is for world leaders to mandate environmentally-friendly alternatives to the point when they aren’t alternatives – they are the norm.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Obama's Oil and Energy Opportunity (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com)
• As oil spills, Obama touts alternative energy (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• The Oxen Report: Daily Musing - The Failure of the Fossil Fuel Market and The Alternative (philstockworld.com)
• Oil spill is BP's wake-up call | John Sauven (guardian.co.uk)