A Valentine for the Earth

Good news! Al Gore is the new leader of British Columbia! That's the only possible explanation for the "state of the union" speech yesterday announcing the sudden conversion of the ruling party here (the Liberals) into a bunch of tree-huggers greener than my butt. Are they sincere, do they want to be re-elected, or both? Time will tell. But part of that speech was the announcement that any coal plants built in BC would henceforth have to emit zero greenhouse gases! Since "clean coal" is just an advertising slogan at this point, that means coal-fired electricity in BC is dead. And we were part of making that happen! Go Team HTBAF!

Of course, the plants might come back to life in some other form -- Compliance Energy already put out a press release about changing the plant so it burns "bug wood" -- trees that have been killed by our ever-present pine beetles (yummy in a light cream sauce). Hmm, let's see, global warming makes the winters too warm to kill off the pine beetles, so they kill all the trees, so we burn the trees and create emissions...that makes global warming worse! Climate change is clearly a growth industry!

But there's a bigger question I have my big red eye on: if we're the greenest province in the known universe, why are we digging up coal and selling it to other countries, where it'll be burned and make global warming much worse? Isn't kind of bogus to pay for all these plans to make BC green with money we get from toasting the rest of the planet? What do you think?