Our Environment

missed a week of posting. A few notes:
1) I finished reading Varda Burtsyn's book - Water Inc. - B+. At the 65% point the book became very interesting "couldn't put the book down". One of the those fiction novels that rings true on several levels - geography/real places, real life world issues/history ( same model as Dan Brown's DaVinci Code). Only challenge I felt in reading the book was the character development.

2) Watched with interest Elizabeth May's "whistle-stop" tour in Western Canada to Toronto and on to Ottawa.

3) Went to a local presentation to listen to John Seed, Australian eco-activist. Very interesting. Many take-aways for me, the best one for immediate implementation is to stop referring to "the environment", it is "our environment". Our environment is not separate from living life forms, replace 'the" with "our". Unless I can find some magical way of not breathing air, drinking water or eating nutrients. Death at this point is not magical.

Water Inc. & Green Party of Canada

My current night-time reading is a book by now local Peterborough author, Varda Burtsyn...the book is Water Inc. http://www.vardaburstyn.com - early stages - up to Chapter 8 but now getting intrigued with the characters. The book is "semi-fictional", I can actually visualize events happening in real life the way they are being told in the book. Scary to think what will happen in the USA when big parts of the country run out of water. (impacts of climate change- severe drought in the US Southwest). Even scarier as to what will happen in Canada, when the militaristic giant to our south demands to be given our water.

Watched CPAC http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&template_id=46&lang=e last night (Thursday) - the Jim Harris tribute at the Green Party of Canada Convention in Ottawa. The Green Party is the only political party in Canada with "grassroots" democracy in action. The Green Party leader has to be a facilitator, organizer, and "cheerleader". The party members establish Policy. The other Canadian political parties work "top-down", especially the Conservatives - the Harper Inner Circle makes all the decisions for the party.

I am a big fan of Elizabeth May. I voted for her to be Green Party leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_May_(environmentalist)
http://www.elizabethmay.ca/

Elizabeth will attract media attention to the party and its objectives, new members will join, and the Party will become a legitimate voting choice for Canadians.