One "2015 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada" throws another under the bus

This week Tim Hortons, pressured by foreign-funded climate activists, tore up an advertising contract with energy company Enbridge.  Both companies occupy a spot near the top of the list of "2015 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada".  That apparently doesn't cut any ice with Tim's.

This is where climate sanctimony and related idiocies like sustainability and corporate social responsibility lead.

See also, Ezra Levant to sign the petition and chip in for ads.

Rex Murphy: I’m off to Second Cup. Timmys, we hardly knew ye

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Whatever the "morality" of using fossil fuels, Ezra Levant made the case for "Ethical Oil" from Canadian oil fields versus "unethical" oil from dirty, human rights abusing third world dictatorships.

Now philosopher Alex Epstein makes the "moral" case for fossil fuels, PERIOD!  The following three excerpts from his new book "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" were published in the Nat Po:

Making the world a better place — by using more fossil fuels

Wrapping our minds around climate change

The sustainability myth

Looks like an excellent read. I'm buying it.

 

The Trudeau Foundation

Peter Foster:

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation last week held a conference titled “Weathering Change: Pathways to Sustainability in Canada.” It confirmed that the pathway to serfdom now makes its way through the thickets of climate hysteria, past social-mediated mobs, and via smokeless backrooms filled with radical NGOs. ...

... essentially a sleeper cell to promote the kind of big and pervasive government favoured by its eponymous hero, who died in 2000, and now by his son, Justin. It was endowed in 2002, by a Liberal government, with $125-million of taxpayers’ money....

One big strategic difference since the days of Trudeau pere is that much of the bogus conversation has been hijacked by radical environmental groups masquerading as “civil society.”

Who knew?

Preston Manning - a traitor to his former conservative self

It would be interesting to know what has caused Preston's about face on conservative principles he so clearly championed as Reform leader. Advocating the use of weasel words to dupe the public into accepting a carbon tax does not sound like the Preston Manning I once voted for. Though we have to acknowledge that he has been spouting the sustainability mantra for several years.

Something happened to bring about his apparently new-found enthusiasms for more taxes, bigger government and Orwellian propaganda. It can't be evidence for the threat of man-made global warming - that has become nothing but weaker over the past two decades. Though since it figures in his push for a disguised carbon tax he's using it exactly as eco and far-left radicals do - as a tool to sell the public on an agenda they wouldn't otherwise support.

So what is it that motivates Preston's uncharacteristic, anti-conservative new stance? Why has he turned traitor to his former principles? "Green" seems to figure strongly. Maybe we should follow the money. Where does the Manning Centre get its green? Maybe it's from Big Green - eg. gigabuck foreign foundations like Tides, Rockefeller, Hewlett, etc.
[Update: Ezra notes that Manning is a member of the Pembina Institute Advisory Council. You can't get much more progressive and radically environmental than Pembina which has links to Tides and the Suzuki Foundation. See also.]

Whatever it is, it's sad.

Sign Ezra's petition.

UN Agenda 21 - global, totalitarian “sustainability”

To highlight Cheryl Gallant's excellent effort towards raising awareness of the threat posed by UN Agenda 21, I'm bringing forward (with updated links) my January, 2012 post on the subject:
 

******************************************************************************
A Democrat speaks to a Tea Party meeting about how UN Agenda 21 is being foisted on a largely unsuspecting public and subverting individual rights:



From the UN web page for Agenda 21:

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment. ... [Agenda 21 originated from the 1992 Rio Conference, thanks to Maurice Strong.]

Canada and Agenda 21:

Canada has signed or ratified at least 45 multilateral environmental conventions and agreements and is signatory to numerous agendas for action (e.g., Agenda 21, the Habitat Agenda, the World Summit on Sustainable Development [WSSD] Plan of Implementation, and the Kyoto Protocol) ...

Local community involvement:

Originally known as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), today the group simply calls itself “ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability.”

In 1992, ICLEI was one of the groups instrumental in creating Agenda 21. The group’s mission is to push local communities to regulate the environment—and it’s having tremendous success. [Note that 30 Canadian member communities are listed]

British Columbia is using its carbon tax to bribe communities to get on its "Climate Action" programme:

“The Climate Action Revenue Incentive program will be a new conditional grant equal to what local governments pay in the carbon tax, with only one string attached – to be eligible, communities must sign onto the Climate Action Charter and commit to becoming carbon-neutral by 2012,” said Premier Campbell. “If communities do that, and publicly report on their plan and progress in meeting that goal, they will be eligible to receive a grant equal to 100 per cent of their carbon tax costs.” [Big surprise: all 176 BC communities signed on.]

Defining "sustainability"

Does anyone know what "sustainability" means?  Every eco-freak, NGO activist and city mayor and council attempting to brand their city as the greenest on the planet uses it with abandon.  A good way to get a handle on it may be to list those things that are considered unsustainable.  The chief global promoter of "sustainability" hysteria is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In its Global Biodiversity Assessment it identified human activities it seeks to suppress or reverse, including:

337 – Ski Runs

350 – Grazing of Livestock: cows, sheep, goats, horses

351 – Disturbance of the Soil Surface (livestock)

351 – Fencing of Pastures or Paddocks

728 – Agriculture

728 – Modern Farm Production Systems

728 – Chemical Fertilizers

728  -Herbicides

728 – Building Materials

730 – Industrial Activities

....

....

....

And the list goes on and on.  If  the U.N. and it's global network of eco-radicals succeed in reducing or eliminating all that, what's left?  It's a very scary, profoundly anti-human agenda (and part of UN Agenda 21).

Jim Balsillie at the Vancouver Globe conference

Fittingly, on the eve of Earth Hour, Vancouver hosted the 2014 Globe Series conference which featured such liberal luminaries as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie.

Peter Foster reports:

... on Wednesday, Mr. Balsillie brought some of sustainability’s cloudcuckooland notions down to Vancouver’s Globe, which is itself traditionally a combination of eco guiltfest and sustainability huckstering. ... 

... the former co-head of Blackberry Ltd., gave an example of how green policy could be good for business.... Just look at how well South Korea’s Samsung had done out of Ontario’s Green Energy Act.

... Balsillie's bizarre suggestions wouldn’t be quite so frightening if the Conservatives had not last year appointed Mr. Balsillie to chair Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a boondoggle created by the Liberals to invest in clean tech. ... The Conservatives’ choice of Mr. Balsillie appeared a little strange, even by the standards of Byzantium on the Rideau. He is not only a dyed-in the-wool liberal, but founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, CIGI, a think tank that supports UN dreams of global governance. ...

One would think that Balsillie, whose governance of BlackBerry led that company into oblivion, would show less enthusiasm for global governance. On the other hand that's one of those things that helps define him as a "died-in-the-wool liberal".

Thanks for attending, Peter, so that I didn't have to (I went to the International Auto Show next door instead).

"Smart" grids, "smart" cities, "smart" growth - "subversive, or dumb or both"

Peter Foster:

... “smart” has ... become a ubiquitous weasel word that, like “social” and “sustainable,” conceals a multitude of political dangers. 

When it comes to smart grids, smart cities and smart growth, we are dealing with concepts that are potentially subversive, or dumb, or both.  

... Technology will obviously continue to shape the city, but the dangers of “over-specification,” that is inflexible top-down design, are highlighted in a recent pamphlet, “Against the smart city”, by New York based urban designer Adam Greenfield. 

... Mr. Greenfield does a wonderful job of explaining the manifest shortcomings and dangers of the overdesigned smart city, but his critique ultimately flies off the rapid transit rails because he sees these urban monstrosities as an offshoot of the “neoliberal agenda,” a Chomskyan phrase that speaks volumes about anybody who uses it. 

... The smart city may be a cover for the moralistic city, and moralism is often a cover for power-seeking.  Indeed, the overweening ambition of “seamlessly coordinating everything” is the very model of sustainable development as conceived by the likes of Canada’s former UN mastermind Maurice Strong.

In fact, the "smart" concept reeks of U.N. Agenda 21, the sustainable development mantra, which a whole lot of "smart" bureaucrats and politicians in a whole lot of cities round the world have enthusiastically signed on to.  Subversive indeed!

Eco-obsession invades medical science

I'd give these medical students a big fat FAIL for wasting their time studying this eco-obsessive topic:

Operations to replace worn out knees in Canada ... generating nearly half a million kilograms of surgical waste every year, according to a new study that says more needs to be done to "green" the nation's ORs.

... "It is imperative that efforts to promote sustainable OR practices are strengthened," they said. [There's that annoying, over-used and... abused word "sustainable" again. When I hear it, I want to reach for my 357 Magnum.]

"... average surgical waste per surgery was 13.3 kilograms. When extrapolated to the more than 47,000 knee replacements performed in Canada in 2008-09, the authors estimated knee surgeries generated 407,889 kg of landfill waste."

The "researchers" extrapolate to generate what they think are impressive levels of landfill waste.  For some real perspective, let's calculate that waste on a per capita basis: 408,000/(34 million) = .012 Kg per person = less than 1/2 of one ounce per person PER YEAR of landfill waste. Every Canadian generates many times that amount of waste on a DAILY basis much less annually.  It's a drop in the bucket.

This kind of "study" may be suitable for majors in eco-freakery or anal-efficiency, but medicine? If this is what the three medical students think important to the advancement of medical science, then, when they graduate and become MD's, please, KEEP THEM THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!

Nudge, nudge - the Sunstein doctrine

Peter Foster:

Cass Sunstein obviously takes pride in having been called “The most dangerous man in America”...

... Mr. Sunstein dangerous was that ...  he is the leading peddler of the “nudge” doctrine, which aims at bigger, smarter, more subtle government.

The Orwellian rationale for this Brave New Government ... Nudgery says that governments should use these foibles in a clever form of policy jujitsu, utilizing individuals’ own stupidity to guide them towards falling on the “right” choices.

... the complex of psychological quirks that determine their own immoveable, history-free, left-liberal interventionist mentality, not to mention the fact that politicians invariably use public ignorance not for the public good, but to gain power.

... The clear and present danger represented by Mr. Sunstein is on display in his new book, Simpler: The Future of Government, and in an article he penned for the Globe and Mail on Saturday, titled Green by default.

... According to Mr. Sunstein, the answer to using more green energy is to make it ... the default “choice.”

... Ontario’s experience ... shows that Mr. Sunstein’s suggestion that “green default” would “save money” is pure biomass.  

...

 There's lots of evidence of green nudgery being applied here in BC:

Our provincial carbon tax is being used to bribe BC cities, towns and municipalities to sign on to the BC Climate Action Charter. (All driven or guided by UN Agenda 21 and ICLEI)

Vancouver Mayor Gregor ("Moonbeam") Robertson's and other cities' "smart growth" schemes (thanks again to UN Agenda 21 and ICLEI) with everything from laneway housing (boosting population density) to dedicated bike lanes (discouraging automobiles).

My own city's planning documents are saturated with green "sustainability" bafflegab that drives everything from building construction to casino approvals to our brand new, expensive (and pain in the ass) waste collection and recycling system.

This is why the left are so dedicated to pushing the global warming theme.  It enables easier nudging of the sheep into their socialist pens.

The Unilever CEO's “Global Salvationism”

Peter Foster:

Paul Polman, chief executive of British consumer goods giant Unilever .... confirmed that he ranks as perhaps the world’s foremost peddler of “Global Salvationism.”

... Mr. Polman is not only a co-chair of Davos, he is incoming chair of the WBCSD [World Business Council on Sustainable Development] and a prominent member of the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Mr. Polman’s speech ticked all the boxes of what [is] also called “millennium collectivism.” He denigrated business short-sightedness, promoted climate catastrophism and suggested that what was needed was a “new model” of capitalism in which giant corporations would sacrifice shareholders in order to solve global problems.

... The problem of the modern corporation is not that it forces single-minded devotion to the bottom line on its managers, but that it gives them too much leeway to dabble with dangerous fads. Meanwhile, those who spout about a “new model” for capitalism invariably hold an inaccurate and demonic image of the free-market original, which is still the only truly “sustainable” version.

Rio+20 "... a farce, even if everybody keeps a straight face"

Peter Foster:

The Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development, which starts in two weeks, will be a farce, even if everybody keeps a straight face. The grand UN-based system conceived to co-ordinate the activities of all mankind has proved utterly unsustainable, a dysfunctional mess that generates nothing but endless meetings, agendas and reports.

That sustainable development would inevitably collapse under its own contradictions was inevitable. What is fascinating is why every country on Earth — including Canada — would earnestly have committed to a concept hatched by a cabal of ardent socialists. ....

... Canada’s “national submission” to the Rio conference is yet another model of bureaucratic pretension and political hypocrisy, in which an ostensibly right-wing government calls for more comprehensive and effective progress toward the socialist dreams of Brundtland and Rio ’92. ...

UN Agenda 21 and environmental Marxism

Lord Christopher Monckton expounds:



[Via Brian Lilley's post (in the comments)]

facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is "a self-serving hypocrite"

Peter Foster: "Two-faced book"

... [Adam] Smith noted that businessmen — like all human beings — are often self-serving hypocrites. His point was that free commercial markets turned self-interest into public benefit. We can only serve ourselves by serving others. Meanwhile Smith scoffed at those who would “trade for the public good.”

Posturing obviously comes more easily to the search engine and Internet tycoons because they can claim they are more virtuous than those who run wicked old smokestack industries. Except, that is, when they are advertising their products, which just happens to be how the new tykes make most of their money. This brings us to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s letter in this week’s IPO filing.

... In his letter, Mr. Zuckerberg, who stands to be worth up to US$28-billion, claims that Facebook was “built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.”

... Where it really gets murky is where he writes, “Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.”

... We have representative democracies for a reason. They don’t always work that well, but they are certainly preferable to the rule of any NGO-stoked Occupy cybermob.

... it’s worth noting that while rattling on about higher purpose and the voice of the people, Mr. Zuckerberg ... is keeping a firm grip on Facebook control via a dual share structure.  ... while he is paying lip service to the meddlers, he is doing his best to insulate himself from them. We knew he was a smart young man. Shame about the bafflegab.

Great column!  Read any corporate annual report and you'll find it filled with the same kind of posturing bafflegab about "stakeholders", "corporate social responsibility" and "sustainability". They dedicate people as full-time generators of this bullcrap and to sucking up to NGOs.

UN Agenda 21 - global, totalitarian “sustainability”

A Democrat speaks to a Tea Party meeting about how UN Agenda 21 is being foisted on a largely unsuspecting public and subverting individual rights:



From the UN web page for Agenda 21:

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment. ... [Agenda 21 originated from the 1992 Rio Conference, thanks to Maurice Strong.]

Canada and Agenda 21:

Canada has signed or ratified at least 45 multilateral environmental conventions and agreements and is signatory to numerous agendas for action (e.g., Agenda 21, the Habitat Agenda, the World Summit on Sustainable Development [WSSD] Plan of Implementation, and the Kyoto Protocol) ...

Local community involvement:

Originally known as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), today the group simply calls itself “ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability.”

In 1992, ICLEI was one of the groups instrumental in creating Agenda 21. The group’s mission is to push local communities to regulate the environment—and it’s having tremendous success. [Note that 30 Canadian member communities are listed]

British Columbia is using its carbon tax to bribe communities to get on its "Climate Action" programme:

“The Climate Action Revenue Incentive program will be a new conditional grant equal to what local governments pay in the carbon tax, with only one string attached – to be eligible, communities must sign onto the Climate Action Charter and commit to becoming carbon-neutral by 2012,” said Premier Campbell. “If communities do that, and publicly report on their plan and progress in meeting that goal, they will be eligible to receive a grant equal to 100 per cent of their carbon tax costs.” [Big surprise: all 176 BC communities signed on.]

Corporate Social Responsibiliy - Milton's Loophole

Peter Foster:

It was more than 40 years ago that economist Milton Friedman described the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as “pure and unadulterated socialism.” He noted that the embrace of CSR by businessmen helped to “strengthen the already prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked and immoral and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of government bureaucrats.”

In fact, a new “iron fist” has emerged in the intervening period to “curb the market.” It belongs not to bureaucrats but to radical environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), who have achieved a stunning amount of boardroom influence. They have done this, paradoxically, by learning from Prof. Friedman, and in particular by exploiting what might be called “Milton’s loophole.”

Prof. Friedman said that part of an executive’s role, beyond his primary task of serving shareholders, was to conform to “the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical customs.” ...

There is not a company on Earth that now fails to pay obeisance to the essentially socialist notion of “sustainable development” (SD), ... Corporations keen to achieve their CSR and SD badges have, meanwhile, found themselves cast as mouthpieces for radical environmentalism.

... A classic example appeared in a recent ad in USA Today. The ad features the names of both California-based grocery chain Trader Joe’s and ENGO ForestEthics...

It seems astonishing that a company would allow itself to be the ventriloquist’s puppet for so much misinformation. ...

Today there were two responses, one from Greenpeace Canada:

[From the first letter] ... firms would not respond to environmentalist bullying if they didn’t think it would help their bottom lines [more accurately avoid having their bottom lines damaged by smear campaigns].

[From Greenpeace]... Milton Friedman would surely have approved of this Greenpeace tactic: private actors negotiating with private actors for the public good ...

The first admits the "bullying" which Greenpeace calls "negotiating".  What neither will acknowledge is that the Trader Joe ad is dishonest scare-mongering aimed at intimidating oil sands producers and fund raising.  Greenpeace's and ForestEthics' "bottom lines" come from the money they raise from whipping up public environmental hysteria. Milton Friedman would definitely NOT approve of such dishonest, extortionate tactics.

Environmental fraud - the 2,4D scare

Today, on page 5 of the Post, Terence Corcoran responded to Monday's happy-faced front-page story about dandelions:

So now the old "yellow flower" is a thing of horticultural attraction. This glorious news hit the front page of the National Post Monday in a report that portrayed the weedy dandelion as a reborn object of beauty and affection.

... Unfortunately, the yellow dandelion flower has a halflife of about nine hours, after which it starts cranking out fluffy white seed carriers that scatter billions of future dandelions all over the urban nation.

... oh how the green activists and environmental alliances must have loved that story. What an achievement, a great science con job, a brilliant bait-and-switch policy scam, and a model for future activism. It's a con job the National Post story, brightly illustrated and with an upbeat headline (Dandelions finally get their day in the sun), failed to mention.

Ottawa, the Quebec government and Dow AgroSciences settled a lawsuit under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Dow AgroSciences had sued over Quebec government claims the pesticide 2,4-D, the key dandelion exterminator, was a health risk.

The settlement agreement, a victory for the company, includes a statement from the government of Quebec saying the pesticide 2,4-D does "not pose an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment" when used according to instructions. It is too late, however, to undo the damage at the municipal level.

... Governments have long known that 2,4-D is safe, but they eventually caved in to activists, who ... turned the pesticide battle into a war on cosmetic pesticides as a "precautionary" move. [The same fraudulent "logic" they use to push their AGW scare-mongering.]

... Celebrating seeming acceptance of the weeds as "flowers" is to celebrate the triumph of the politics of social and esthetic control by government. The dandelion is the official flower of statism.

Now, if only I can get my strata landscaping committee to resume use of 2,4D before their new "environmentally sensitive" pesticide-free lawn keeping takes its toll any more than it already has. That is, assuming that the push for a complete ban doesn't come to pass. Oops - my City of Surrey, a self-proclaimed champion of the environment and "sustainability", has already effectively banned it.

Environmental shakedown racket?

Peter Foster fills us in on an interesting "partnership" between the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and cement giant Lafarge:

I came across an example of the WWF's earning power at the recent Globe conference on business and the environment in Vancouver. The Cement Association of Canada had just produced its second "Sustainability Report."

... In the interests of transparency, I decided to ask three questions: What was the cost to Lafarge of meeting the WWF's demands? How much was Lafarge paying the WWF? And, since the freedom to criticize was such an important part of the partnership, what criticism did Lafarge have of the WWF's approach?

The Lafarge executive on the dais suddenly looked like a deer in headlights. He didn't have a clue what meeting the WWF's demands was costing. Moreover, he would presumably rather have chewed off his own arm than criticize the WWF.

Subsequently ... I discovered [from the WWF chief executive]...that the figure [paid to WWF] was ... $2.4-million, annually over three years ... [but he] didn't have a figure for the cost of meeting the WWF's demands (beyond what Lafarge would have done anyway).

The WWF thus seems to have found a very profitable and powerful niche for itself, both as business and political consultant, while at the same time somehow retaining its posture as guardian of the planet.

The whole thing comes across as a kind of protection shakedown --- with links to that notorious international man of mystery:

This ... reminded me of the modus operandi of Maurice Strong, the den father of radical environmentalism. It is surely not a coincidence that Mr. Strong ...was one of the earliest and most influential members of the WWF. Meanwhile, the Cement Association's Sustainability Report came about as a result of the "Cement Sustainability Initiative" of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The WBCSD was started by? Go on, have a guess!

And finally, remember to mark Earth Hour:

So if you love freedom, and possess the slightest trace of ability to think independently, don't forget to keep those lights burning brightly between 8 and 9 P.M. on Saturday night.

Cow farts, Chairman Mo and the “tiny perfect Minister”

Peter Foster is blogging from the Globe Conference in Vancouver. As might be expected his reports are chock-a-block with great insights and hilarious lines:

Well, here I am, possibly the only climate change skeptic and sustainability naysayer at the huge Globe Biennial Trade Fair and Conference in beautiful downtown Vancouver.

I ... plan to keep my eye out for humour, hoping that something may crop up to equal TransAlta’s purchase a couple of conferences ago of emissions credits based on restraining Ugandan cows’ farts. You can’t make stuff like that up. Which is one of the reasons why I’m here.

.... noted the absence of one of this conference’s greatest supporters, Maurice Strong, who is apparently confined, for health reasons, to his home in Beijing. Since Beijing is one of the smoggiest cities on earth, and Mr. Strong is a severe asthmatic, this is a somewhat strange hidey hole for Chairman Mo. Presumably it is the bracing air of Communist rule in which his lungs rejoice ...

... one of my favourite analogies for the non-likelihood of governments being able to promote new technologies is that of the drunk looking under the lamppost for his car keys..... You can imagine my surprise and delight, therefore, when I came across Canada’s tiny perfect Minister of Natural Resources, Gary Lunn, standing Thursday under a solar lamppost!

... a stunning $3.6-billion that the .... government is “investing” in so-called ecoENERGY projects. These are designed both to teach dim-bulb Canadians how to save their money, and to promote technologies that seem, by definition, to be economically”unsustainable,” since they can’t hack it without subsidies.

It’s too bad Peter doesn’t have a speaking part at the conference.

Update: Sustainability - it's for the children:

Do you love your children? Then you must be for sustainable development.

... Could anything be more bizarre than the concept of destroying the jobs of present parents so that those jobs might somehow, magically, be teleported to their great-grandchildren? Is there a more obvious and objectionable strategy for writing off your intellectual opponents than implying that they lack the love for their children that you have for yours?

Water ‘conservation’ idiocy

This survey today reminded me of another of my pet gripes - idiotic conservationsim.

A perennial bugaboo of the local Victoria press, politicians and enviro-nuts is the state of the fresh water supply. The Regional water Nazis restrict water usage during the dry months and hector the populace year round to conserve. UVic and the local newspaper recently teamed up to publish a conservation bulletin just chock-full of nifty recommendations for cutting down on water use including: multiple toilet uses before flushing, halving time spent the shower, not running the tap while brushing teeth, etc.

As Glenn Beck would say - this is a load of conservationist bullcrap!

There is no shortage of water! This is the Pacific Northwest for God’s sake! We get 5 feet of rainfall every year. We’re surrounded by rain forests. If there were a shortage of anything (and there isn’t, except for common sense) it would not be water but water storage capacity.

If we don’t use the stuff it collects in the reservoir which overflows in January every year (December last year) and flows into the frickin’ ocean. So instead of flowing out our taps, down the sewer pipes and into the ocean, it just flows over the top of the reservoir dam and straight into the ocean. With the amount of available fresh water it’s not possible to ‘waste’ it. It’s an annually renewable resource.

So why the phony hype about conservation - as if using it today is somehow robbing future generations? I don’t know. It’s hard to figure except that it gives the Regional government ‘authorities’ a chance to yap about what wonderful ‘stewards-of-the-earth’ they are. In my estimation, given all the fresh water that falls out the sky here, the Regional authority’s principal job is to make sure that enough of it is collected in reservoirs and avoid having to hector us with stupid ‘conservation’ suggestions.