About a week ago our NDP labour premier okayed the building of a new LNG project in B.C.  No!  It means almost all of our politicians still don’t understand it.  This is a heading us towards human suicide.

LNG, or liquid gas, is a fossil fuel just like coal and oil.  Increasing fossil fuels in any way shape or form, is adding to the CO2, is increasing global warming.  We think this is far in the future, but it is NOW!  At this moment, acres and acres of farm land on earth are turning into desert every day, never to recuperate in this century for sure.  Millions of people are leaving their dead countryside, millions of immigrants who can never go home.  Where can they go?  Here.

For the first time more people are leaving California than arriving.  Their agriculture has emptied the aquifers of many states, their agriculture is barely hanging on.  If the CO2 goes up, which is doing rapidly, it only worsens the situation.  STOP IT.

Premier Horgan says that when he went to China he felt sorry for the poor Chinese with the pollution of visible particles, so he wanted to give them natural gas.  Listen, Horgan, coal gives visible pollution, but CO2 is invisible, and will give them, and us, much more damage than particles.  Global warming is going on right now, and it has to be halted now.  That means that CO2 has to come down NOW.  That means NO more pipelines, No more fossil fuel plants,  It is a lot easier to prevent these new fossil fuel attempts, than to back up on the existing fossil fuel production.

The atmosphere will reach 450 C2 (now at 409)  before 2050, our kids will just be starting families, and half of earth will be unlivable.  This is a dreadful prediction, but all the scientists agree.  We would love to be wrong, but so far, global destruction has been even faster than predicted.  Can we take a chance?  .

The fossil company spokespeople (our press) are saying that the LNG is just for the “transition.”  Wrong.  Now there is no need for transition, the alternate technology is here.  It would be much cheaper to install alternate energy for the “transition” than to make pipelines, LNG plants, and high-risk tankers on the water.

Our people are protesting the pipeline, being ignored.  They carry placards saying “Save our water”, “Save our coast.”   Those are important, but people will pay more attention, if the future protesters carry signs that  boldly scream SAVE OUR CHILDREN!

Lots of discussion these days about raising “minimum wage.”  The complaint is that our economy can’t afford to pay hard-working people $15 an hour, even if we are one of the richest countries on earth.  Imagine poor people rushing around, trying to bring up their families on $13 per hour, sometimes speeding to two different part time jobs.  There are TOO many of these people, particularly those with single working parents.  Those children can’t even dream of any extras the rest take for granted: no internet, no cable vision, no school trips, no hockey, no music lessons. no parent at home.  The least we can do is raise the wages to $15 an hour,

Ah, the world of employers cry, but we can’t afford it.  They say they will have to fire other workers in order to pay this little increase.  They complain that a raise “won’t work.”

First of all consider the big employers, the big corporations, where they can still afford to pay lots of bonuses.  They have fake tears, poor things.

Then consider all the small businesses who say that can’t afford any increase in wages, it could destroy them.  That is probably true, but that means that they are almost destroyed anyway.  It won’t be wages that take them down.  Thousands of bankruptcies are declared every year, that means it’s a small business that didn’t make it.  Yes, I think that’s terrible.  In many cases, the little business owner is not even paying himself and his family minimum wage.

What is the definition of “small business?”  Is it ten workers, fifty workers, or what number.  I once heard that if the owner could name all the people that work for him, maybe even a thousand, that would be a small business.  In the sustainable New Economy, the small business will be the soul of every community.  They will be the closest to the heart of every consumer.  Good small business don’t need loyalty cards, they don’t need to advertise, their customers love them.  Yes, we must do everything possible to help small businesses, but not paying employees is not the answer.

Here are some suggestions that government could do with the stroke of a pen, if it were so inclined:

1. Every commercial building can set its own rate for rent.  However, the rent per square foot has to be exactly the same price for the big business and the small business.      Since when do we have to always give preference to the big guys.
2. Every producer  and wholesaler can set whatever price they want, but it has to be the same wholesale price for small orders as well as large orders.  They will scream at losing their privileges.  They will give you dozens of “reasons” why this will destroy the economy.     Yes, it will make the small business a lot stronger.  That’s what we want.  Go, small businesses!

Yes, the American and Canadian politicians are patting themselves on the back because “the economy” for 2017 was better. and even a few more people employed.  Did you or I notice that the economy was better last year?  What is “the economy” anyway?  We think it means more jobs, better pay.  Did that happen to you?

Actually the economy is a bunch of numbers, don’t they say that numbers don’t lie?   The economy is measured in numbers called the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which measures the amount of money that is spent in the country that year.  Yes, every penny that is spent.  All that money, if it adds up better, is “good.”  If there was a huge disease epidemic, and millions of dollars were spent on antibiotics, that was “good.”  If there was a great war, and we had to spend trillions of dollars on defence, that was “good.”  If we sold more oil than ever before, and the CO2 soared up, it increased the GDP,  which helped the economy.

Yes, Trump  takes the credit for his economy better, the GDP higher, and a few more people employed last year.  How did that happen?  Easy.

First of all, increasing the money to the military certainly looked good as money spent.  All these cute little wars in everyone else’ backyard, certainly spent a lot of money.  They don’t count all the young lives that were innocently cut down, so many gullible  soldiers and bystanders.

Also, there is nothing like a good run of environmental tragedies to kick up sales.  Consider the repeated ferocious hurricanes in the US and the rest of the world last spring.  All that destruction had to be repaired, that had to cost a lot.  I guess the insurance companies were dinged on that one, but they’ll boost the rates, and people won’t dare be without it.  Then look at all the droughts, the crop failures, then the unbeatable forest fires, in California, Colorado, and many other the places.  Then even a mudslide followed.  Think of the destruction, even to the wealthy people, who can usually avoid it.

2017, was the hottest year recorded, the most hurricanes, and the worst forest fires.  Handling all of these tragedies certainly took money and manpower, thus the spending was up, the GDP was up, and “the economy” was good.  Were we happier or healthier?  Does it take an increase of tragedies, storms and wars for our governments to congratulate themselves?  Maybe there is something wrong with how our present system evaluates progress.

I find that money can be so mysterious.  I know, I go to work, I get paid for the work I do, then I go out and pay the rent and food.  We’ve always been told, money is the convenient way of exchanging our labour, time and goods.  Simple.

However, take for instance, the Owner of a factory wants to produce a Product.  He pays his Workers $1000 dollars to make the Product.  However, he wants to charge 1500 dollars so that he can make a profit.  Obviously the Workers cannot buy all the Product, because they only have 1000 dollars.  Thus the Owner must sell some product somewhere else.

He can try and sell the Product overseas, sometimes that works, but maybe he can’t.  He can always sell to the military, they have an unlimited budget.  However, he must sell this product in his own country, how can the workers get more money than they were paid, so they can buy his Product.

Aha, he tells the Workers,  “Go to your banker.”

The worker says, “I need more money,”  and the banker replies “No problem.”

The banker pulls out a card, gives it to the Worker, and says he can spend 500 dollars.  Where did the banker get the 500 dollars that he gives with the card?  From nowhere, from the air.  It’s not as if the Worker is borrowing other people’s money.

So the Worker spends the 500 dollars, and buys the Owner’s Product, and a few other things, then, since he is an honourable man, the Worker slowly pays back the 500 dollars to the bank.  This time this  is real money, that the Worker has sweated hard for, now the bank has 500 dollars of real money, that it didn’t have before.  It started out with 500 dollars of “air’ on a credit card, and Voila! turned it into 500 dollars of real money.   It’s Magic!