The Green Party and the Leaders' Debates

Submitted by Silver Donald C... on Mon, 04/11/2011 - 13:49

In this Canadian federal election, the major parties have connived with the national broadcasters to prevent the inclusion of Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the televised “debates” that have become such an important feature of modern elections. The official fiction is that because the Greens have no seats in Parliament, they are not a national party – though they are running candidates in every riding, and won 7% of the vote -- nearly a million votes -- in the last election.

To counter that fiction, Elizabeth has been holding rallies from coast to coast – and on Saturday I spoke at the one in Halifax. I'm not a Green – Elizabeth would say, with a smile, “not yet” -- but a member of the New Democratic Party, Canada's social democratic party, which forms the provincial government here in Nova Scotia. If you'd like to see my five-minute speech, click here:  http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca/silver-donald-cameron-speaks-elizabeth-may-rally-democracy

By sheer coincidence, my eldest son, Dr. Maxwell Cameron, also spoke to the same point -- but in a very different context.  He is a political scientist at UBC. Here's his video clip: http://www.fairchildtv.com/news_headlines_ad.php?headlines_iid=3158

Nuclear Power: The Unaffordable Option (Today Magazine, 1982)

Submitted by Silver Donald C... on Mon, 03/28/2011 - 19:50

Note: This article was published in the weekend magazine supplement Today, in June, 1928] 

In 1953 President Dwight Eisenhower proposed an international Atoms for Peace program under which the United States would turn over to the United Nations its entire peace-time nuclear industry for the benefit of humanity at large. Lewis Strauss, Eisenhower's atomic energy advisor, enthusiastically predicted that nuclear-generated electricity would be “too cheap to meter.” That same year, Ontario Hydro chose a nuclear future.
 
Eisenhower's offer was deceptive, because the United States then had essentially no nuclear industry – and Strauss's soaring fantasies have crashed and shattered. In 1980, 16 planned nuclear plants were canceled in the United States, about 60 more postponed, and Americans were deriving more energy from firewood than from nuclear power. Southern California Edison had renounced nuclear expansion in favor of conservation, solar and wind power. Donald Cook, former chairman of American Electric Power, the largest privately owned U.S. utility, was publicly regretting that his company had been sent “down the wrong road [by] an erroneous conception of the economics of nuclear power. The economics that were projected...never materialized – and never will materialize.” Financial analysts on Wall Street, steering investors away from utilities with heavy nuclear commitments, were predicting that nuclear power would push some companies into bankruptcy.
 
And in Canada?