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CHORAL SINGERS REQUIRED

LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM

Shaare Zion Congregation, Montreal’s largest Conservative Synagogue seeks choral singers.

Applicants must read Hebrew and have a thourough knowledge of the liturgy.

Leadership Skills Development Workshops If you are a student involved in campus activities as an executive, organizer or event planner, you qualify for the Leadership Training Program’s FREE Skills Development Workshops.

Please reply in strict conidence to: Shimon Radu, Music Director, Shaare Zion Congregation 5575 Cote St. Luc Road, Montreal, QC H3X 2C9 or by email: shimon@shaarezion.org

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The Faculty of Arts presents A Maxwell-Cummings Lecture

Nineteeth Century Concepts of Citizenship: Classical Models, Contemporary Practices, Legacies Andreas Fahrmeir Professor of Modern History University of Frankfurt

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Andreas Fahrmeir (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) currently holds the Chair in Modern History at the University of Frankfurt. He has published extensively on political corruption in Europe over three centuries, the transformation of urban space in British cities during the 18th and 19th centuries, the evolution of migration control in the North Atlantic world, and most recently, the changing concept of citizenship. His more recent book, Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (Yale, 2007), provides full historical perspective about immigration and the nature of citizenship, demonstrating the contingency and changeability of the concept in the past and today.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 6:00 p.m.

Reception to follow

Stephen Leacock Building, Room 232 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal QC For more information, contact the Department of History Tel.: (514) 398-3975 Email: peter.hoffmann@mcgill.ca

mcgilldaily.com

Use Your Leadership Skills to Spice up Your CV

Table of Contents

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

3

THE ENERGY ISSUE NEWS 4 RETURN OF THE TRAM: MONTREAL DEBATES MASS TRANSIT Max Halparin 5 RACE FOR THE PRIZE: THE GLOBAL NORTH COMPETES FOR DIRTY FUEL Henry Gass COMMENTARY 10

THROUGH

11

DIRTY

THE LOOKING GLASS: ENERGY IN DEPRESSION AND TRANSITION

OIL’’S##HUMAN PRICE

Quinn Albaugh

Nora Hope

SCI+ + TECH 16 THE SPLIT BRAIN: POWER IN MASS MINDSETS 17

A

Daniel Lametti

TURN TO THE DARK SIDE: SEARCHING FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF ENERGY

David Zuluago Cano

CULTURE 18

POWERING

19

THE INVISIBLE

UP AGAIN: RECHARGING THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

Naomi Endicott

SOURCE: THE CITY’’S VANISHING ENERGY CENTRE

Anna Graham

4 News

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

Uncertain future for MTL mass transit Debate continues over metro expansion, Turcot re-design, and tramways Max Halparin News Writer

M

ontreal is buzzing with transit development plans that will shape the city for decades to come.

From the proposed metro expansion into Laval, Longueil, and Anjou, to the redevelopment of the Turcot Interchange in the Southwest, and the perennial promise of the streetcar resurrection, transit has once again emerged as a central issue in the city’s political scene.

“In a way, transport makes the city,” said Étienne Coutu, an architect and urban designer working with Projet Montréal at City Hall.

A central tenet to the burgeoning municipal party’s platform is the installation of 250 kilometres of tramway track to the city, ten per cent of which they hope to have completed by fall 2012. Mayor Gérald Tremblay, meanwhile, has pegged the opening of a tramway line connecting Côte-des-Neiges

to downtown and the Old Port for 2013.

“With a tramway, we’re giving space back to public transit,” Coutu said.

“The point is the experience – it’s calm, and it’s stable,” he said, adding that building tramways in Quebec would create jobs, and would also provide an incentive to redesign the streets around the new lines by widening sidewalks and adding green space.

Under Projet Montréal’s plan, a tramway would return to Parc – the most frequently serviced bus route in the city, and a major streetcar artery until the City swapped streetcars for buses in the midfifties.

At an estimated cost of $40- to 60-million per kilometre, however, others are not convinced that tramways are the best option for the city.

McGill urban planning professor Ahmed El-Geneidy favours increased bus frequency and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems.

“Exclusive bus-only lanes still take space away from cars – and

40

cost much less,” said El-Geneidy, whose Transportation Research At McGill (TRAM) group works closely with STM, the regional transit authority, and the Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) on projects such as the implementation of the express bus route 467 along St. Michel.

On January 22, the STM issued a press release stating it was about to finalize a $3-billion contract with the Consortium of Bombardier-Alstom SA for 765 new cars to replace its aging fleet, with an option for an additional 288.

However, the plan has stalled while China’s Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive attempts to join the bidding process with its steelwheeled trains. These wheels can run outside, and are regarded as more energy-efficient than the rubber tires currently used in Montreal’s metro system, which is set to expand soon.

Last September, Quebec premier Jean Charest announced that the provincial government would move forward with a plan to connect the orange line in Laval, extend the yel-

low line by five stops into Longueil, and add five kilometres on the east side of the blue line, at a potential cost of about $150 million per kilometre.

With the majority of the construction on the North and South Shores, however, both Coutu and El-Geneidy expressed concern that the proposals could clog the already-congested east side of the orange line.

El-Geneidy stressed that for the extension into Anjou to be successful, the metro expansion must be coupled with a land-use plan to attract retailers, offices, and businesses around the metro lines.

“Without a land use plan, it will succeed at the same level as the old blue line,” he said.

Coutu added that Projet Montréal would also like to see the west side of the blue line extended through Snowdon to connect to Montréal-Ouest, and a tram connecting Trudeau Airport to downtown.

As for the yellow line, “Longueil is going to be a joke,” said El-Geneidy,

adding that he would rather see an enhanced BRT service to feed into the existing metro.

However, recent squabbles between the STM, Laval, and Longueil over operating costs suggest the expansion may hit more political roadblocks in the future.

Laval withheld its annual $1.5-million share of operating costs until Longueil joined them in the TRAM 3 fare zone. Longueil is threatening to do the same.

“It’s like we’re in kindergarten, and no one wants to pay for the service,” said Coutu.

The argument raises the issue of the multitude of transit operators and fares in the region, with the STM’s single-fare metro and buses, the AMT’s multi-fare zone commuter trains, and separate suburban bus services like the Réseau de transport de Longueuil on the South Shore.

El-Geneidy said that competition between the agencies is a positive thing, but that the AMT should designate a consistent fare-zone system across the region.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L D E V E LO PM E N T R E S E A R C H C E N T R E

YEARS

Ideas. Innovation. Impact.

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International Development Week 2010

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

5

Global warming opens up Arctic oil Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Increased extraction of fossil fuels and minerals endangers the environment and international relations Henry Gass The McGill Daily

A

fter abandoning Arctic resource exploration in the eighties due to lack of p rofitability, the combination of rising oil and mineral prices and melting Arctic ice have reopened Canada’s North for extraction. The immense wealth of Arctic resources, believed to have enough undiscovered oil to fuel the world for three years, has attracted the interests of governments and private companies alike.

The five nations with Arctic borders – Canada, the U.S., Russia, Norway, and Denmark, via its control of Greenland, are in the process of proving the extent of their sovereignty over the Arctic and its resources by researching the reach of their continental shelf. Since each country has different international water rules, overlapping territorial claims have complicated the hunt for Arctic resources.

Amid this resource exploration and diplomatic sparring, the rapidly-warming Arctic and the volatile chemicals that are now beginning to be extracted from it are threatening local wildlife and the wellbeing of indigenous communities that rely on them.

The tip of the iceberg The competition for Northern Canada’s natural resources and minerals has been well underway for the past two years. In 2008, the Harper government launched the five-year Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (GEM) program to gain a clearer understanding of the resources available in Canada’s North. The federal government has already poured $34 million into the program, which will come to a cost of $100 million when finished.

Oil and natural gas have been known to exist in the Arctic for decades, but exploration had been put to a halt until recently. The economic viability of exploring oil reserves in the Arctic has been resurrected due to concerns over depletion in conventional oil-producing regions. “[The Arctic] is an expensive place to work,” said James Ford, a professor in McGill’s geography department who researches climate change vulnerability in Canada’s North. “But it becomes more profitable. With the prices of oil and metal increasing, it becomes more economically viable to explore.”

According to Wayne Pollard, a professor in McGill’s geography department who runs McGill’s Arctic Research Station, the U.S. is also looking for solutions to this potential crisis.

“Americans are interested [in Canadian Arctic reserves]. Oil and gas reserves in northern Alaska are running out,” said Pollard. “They are looking to develop gas on the Canadian side [of the border]. Oil and gas are some of the key resources.”

While oil and natural gas may be the most abundant resources in the Arctic, mineral deposits uncovered by the GEM project have also attracted attention both domestically and internationally.

“There are gold prospects in the Northwest Territories, [which are especially profitable] with the world prices of gold so high,” said Pollard. “Some people want diamonds to be mined, but there’s a market control of the diamond industry,” he said.

Pollard cited De Beers, the international diamond mining company founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes and based in South Africa, as a company that could have significant interests in the volume of minerals excavated in Canada’s North.

“There’s a tremendous potential for more [mineral deposits], but De Beers doesn’t want to flood the market with diamonds,” said Pollard.

According to Tracy Sarazin, spokesperson for the government of Nunavut, the province is currently being explored for gold, silver, uranium, base metals, and diamonds, but also has an estimated 25 to 75 billion barrels of oil and 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas undiscovered beneath the territory.

“Mineral exploration activity, which leads to new mines, is very strong in Nunavut; this is important not just for the North, but for all of Canada,” said Sarazin in an email.

A new Cold War? On August 2, 2007, Russia ignited a global controversy by piloting two mini-subs, Mir-1 and Mir-2, to the

seabed 40 km below the North Pole and planting a one-metre-high titanium Russian flag.

The mission was compared to planting a flag on the moon, and drew the ire of the four other nations with competing Arctic sovereignty claims.

This act was in direct violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) signed in 1982, which says that a country has economic rights over resources 200 nautical-miles from their coastline. However, the convention is open to appeal, and all five Arctic nations are attempting to extend their legal jurisdiction beyond the area spanning their continental shelf. Though the U.S. helped draft UNCLOS, it has not ratified the convention.

According to Ford, if nations are able to prove that their continental shelf extends beyond the 200 nautical mile zone, then they can exercise sovereignty over territory 350 nautical miles from their shoreline.

This could have significant implications for determining rights over oil and natural gas reserves.

Russia’s claim to an extended territory was rejected by an international panel in 2003. The country is in the process of developing another claim, which will have to be proved to a panel by 2013.

Canada is expected to submit a claim by 2015.

Pollard discussed the difficulties Canada faces in exerting its sovereignty in the Arctic as more nations claim their stake in the region for future resource exploration.

“There’s money going into

national defence to create a fleet of six patrol ships,” said Pollard, who said the money is coming from the Arctic Research Infrastructure Fund.

While this increasing militarization of the Arctic seems alarming, the sovereignty issues involved may in actuality be fairly trivial.

“We only have a couple of very small boundary disputes along the eastern and western edges of the Arctic,” said Michael Byers, a professor at the University of British Columbia and one of Canada’s leading polar experts. “[The disputes] concern 6,000 square miles of sea bed. [In a region where] distances are measured in thousands of miles, it’s not that big a dispute,” he said.

The issue of the Northwest Passage is particularly significant to Canada. As Arctic ice melts, the Passage has recently become more navigable, and with a higher volume of Arctic traffic, issues of policing the area are now more severe and complicated.

“The Northwest Passage is defined as an international waterway,” said Pollard. “It’s unresolved as to the degree Canada can police which ships go through and what they do, and there are no clear ideas how to resolve it.”

The third coastline The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth.

According to Ford, this phenomenon, called polar amplification, is a result of melting snow and ice, which reveals the dark surface beneath– further escalating

absorption of the sun’s heat.

The changing climate affects more than the companies operating in the Arctic, however, and local wildlife and indigenous populations are increasingly at risk.

“Oil takes a longer time to break down in the North [because of the cold],” said Ford, who also said that there is still oil trapped in the ice around the site of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

These developments, while directly attributable to the use of the very fuels being extracted from the Arctic and shipped south, are not only harmful to the environment but are also detrimental to companies seeking to operate in the region.

Changing conditions will make it more difficult to extract minerals. The ice roads that companies rely on to bring in equipment and to ship resources out become unusable after melting in the summer.

Pollard cited a lack of awareness of environmental risks in earlier Arctic explorations and said that there remained a lack of preparedness for potential oil spills – though he noted the shift toward greater consideration of the environmental impact. He cited the recently approved Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, a proposed pipeline that would carry oil through the Northwest Territories from the Beaufort Sea, as an example of the new rigours of environmental assessment.

“Environmental regulation has finally caught up [with industrial practices],” said Pollard. “[The pipeline] has gone through a full environmental assessment, and every indigenous group has signed on [to support its construction].”

Indeed, Pollard also elaborated on the greater inclusions of native communities in current resource exploration.

“There’s a high proportion of native employment [in the local energy companies], and the companies give financial compensation to nearby communities,” he said.

According to Sarazin, exploration projects in Nunavut are held to high environmental standards and nearby communities benefit significantly from the ventures.

“The regulatory processes that operate in Nunavut are very community-focused and ensure that communities potentially impacted by activity have the opportunity for input into all decisions,” said Sarazin in an email.

Despite these improvements, researchers say that the short-term economic gains do not outweigh the long-term environmental consequences. The ultimate contradiction of companies extracting resources in Canada’s North is that their actions will jeopardize the ecological stability of the region they rely on.

“There’s a bit of a contradiction there,” said Pollard. “But [the environmental issue] is offset between world economics. Countries’ need for things drives this,” he said.

6 News

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

Environmental narratives and energy solutions Three McGill professors weigh in on the future of energy and the environment Earth Day, retrospectively Thomas Jundt is a visiting instructor in the McGill Department of History. Jundt presented his paper “Earth Day and the Creation of the Green Middle Class,” at the annual convention of the American Society for Environmental History in 2003.

The McGill Daily: You say that the environmental movement had its beginnings in the United States prior to the first Earth Day in 1970 and Rachel Carson’s Silent Springs, published in 1962. What led you to this conclusion?

Thomas Jundt: When I first set out to write my book, I was going to write about the first Earth Day – April 22, 1970, which really was a huge event. There were 20 million Americans [who] took to the street.... The environmental move-

Energy’s just the beginning Robin Thomas Naylor is a professor in the McGill Department of Economics, who specializes in the black market, money laundering, environmental crime, and the financing of international terrorism. He has published 10 books.

The McGill Daily: What is your interest in climate change issues?

Robin Thomas Naylor: My work on this and interest in this is a little more general. I got a feeling that too much energy is being coopted by the climate change issue.

There are all kinds of other things out there, and some of them are related. There is no question that there will be feedbacks between them, but all of the energy and all of the big debate is talking about the

ment explained [this number] away one of two ways...but neither of those worked for me.

I started to think about what was going on in 1970. Had anything changed? There was anxiety about the [atomic] bomb, at that point, still. We all grew up in an era where there were fall-out shelter signs on public buildings. And so I decided to look at that, examine the bomb and [public] anxiety, and sure enough, what I found was that there was an apocalyptic sense that accompanied the bomb, understandably, from the beginning. That inspired narratives of other ways that we might be destroying the earth. People started writing in the late forties. There were books by Fairfield Osborn and William Vogt, who immediately began talking about environmental narratives of apocalypse.

MD: Throughout the fifties and sixties, how did changing circumstances lead Americans to recon-

impact of more CO2 – while we have a huge problem with the spread of reactive nitrogen in the biosphere.

We have problems – enormous problems – of soil exhaustion, water quality and quantity decline, biodiversity loss, slashing of rainforests, general chemical toxification of the biosphere, and on, and on, and on.

But the problem is, it’s not that climate change isn’t important...but the problem is all the energy directed at just this. As a result, I think people are expecting some sort of a magic bullet to solve all of these problems.

It’s as if you took away carbonbased fuels the world would suddenly be a more wonderful place – well, it isn’t if you’re losing 30 billion tons of topsoil every year.

It won’t be if the oceans are emptying out.

MD: So you think this focus on

sider the way that energy was produced, consider alternate sources of energy, and re-examine the way in which they were consuming energy?

TJ: In the early fifties, there were already some moves toward solar energy, and there were groups that were meeting to do this. But at the same time, there was atomic energy, and the government wanted to convince Americans who were very frightened in the atomic age that there were great benefits [to atomic energy] too.... [They] wanted to convince people that it would be a great, very cheap, very plentiful energy source, and [the U.S. government] put enormous funding into it. So at the same time that there were beginning movements for solar energy, it was greatly outdone by atomic energy [that had] both industrial backing and government funding.

— compiled by Lauren Liu

the production of energy within this discourse of carbon reduction is counterproductive?

RTN: Not counterproductive, except to the extent that everybody bandwagons and forgets the other issues. I think the carbon issue has to be looked at in the context of how human beings have screwed up the biosphere for 10,000 years. And in a sense, rather than it being a cause, the carbon increase in the atmosphere is a symptom of our collective stupidity.

So the basic issue is this highenergy, high-consumption economy – how long it can last without destroying the entire biosphere.

And that’s going to be a problem no matter what energy source you choose.

— compiled by Sam Neylon

Xiao Yu | The McGill Daily

McGill prof Christopher Green discusses alternative energy.

Technologicallyoriented Christopher Green is a professor in the McGill Department of Economics.

Last December, Green and PhD student Isabel Galiana co-authored an article entitled “Let the global technology race begin” in Nature. The article argues that the best way to respond to climate change is to adopt a technology-led climate policy, rather than to set emissions targets.

The McGill Daily: What do you mean when you refer to a “technology revolution”?

Christopher Green: Currently, 85 per cent of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels. If you want to stabilize climate by the end of this century, you need to reduce that to a very small amount. [This means that we need] a revolution in [energy-producing] technologies that are no longer carbon-emitting. Now, except for nuclear, we don’t have any large-scale technologies to do that. Nuclear finally began to overcome the bad name it got, and they’re starting to rebuild.

[As for] solar and wind [energy], we don’t know how to store it. Biomass: we haven’t gained anything, but we have driven up food prices.

Technologies are not developed overnight. There are basic breakthroughs that have yet to be made [on the levels of] testing, demonstrations, and scalability. There’s a lot of work going on. Who’s putting money into

this? Corporations: Exxon [has put] $800 million into algae [fuel]. I’m not here to support Exxon, but they know that it’s a technological problem.

One of the technologies that must contribute is carbon capture and storage. We’ve got so many coal-fired plants that we’ve got to capture carbon and bury it. It’s been done, on a small scale, but a modestly-sized, 400 -megawatt coal-fired plant generates 2.8 million tons per year of CO2 – and because there’s an energy penalty, if you try to capture it, it may take as much as four million tons of CO2.

And we have no experience of capturing and burying that amount, and of making sure it doesn’t come out.

MD: So a green technology revolution means building on the kind of green energy technologies that are nascent, but that we don’t have adequate capacity to make full use of?

CG: [You’ve got to be careful when using the term] green energy technology, because some people would say that nuclear [technology] isn’t green. So maybe the best word here is “low carbon-emitting” technologies. Carbon capture and storage, which doesn’t mean getting rid of a coal-fired plant, would certainly not be considered green by many people.

But we probably need, over the life of these plants, to do something along that line, if possible. Otherwise there are just too many emissions. We need to work on [carbon capture], and we need to work on nuclear.

— compiled by Lauren Liu

GTA council approves waste incinerator amid protest Alternative energy source linked to cancer and environmental concerns Ethan Feldman The McGill Daily

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fter a 16-hour debate and facing strong local opposition, the Durham Region Council voted 16 to 12 to recommend an energy plan to the provincial government on June 17, 2009.

The plan requests $235 million to build an energy-from-waste incinerator in Clarington, Ontario. The toxic emissions from waste incinerators have been linked to asthma, cancer, congenital birth defects, and neurological impairments in

children. The incinerator will be the first of its kind to be built in the greater Toronto area in 16 years.

The plan was opposed at the council meeting by over 80 citizen delegates who claimed that the environmental concerns are too grave, and that the proposal should be voted on by referendum this year. A citizen activist group called The Durham Environment Watch has been collecting signatures, and organizing events and demonstrations to protest the construction of the incinerator since 2005.

The Durham Environment Watch has gained the support

of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Durham Region Labour Council, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the Durham Regional Environmental Council, as well as Prevent Cancer Now, an organization whose goal is to do away with all preventable causes of cancer in Canada.

“Should we continue to buy local if the food that we grow and eat becomes contaminated with cancer-causing dioxins and other pollutants?” asks a flyer on the Durham Environment Watch’s web site. The site also includes links to over 300 letters to local newspapers regard-

ing the construction of the incinerator. A group of 75 Durham doctors also petitioned unsuccessfully for the Durham Region Council to reject the incinerator.

CUPE-Ontario has publicly called out for district organizations to fight the toxic incinerator. CUPEOntario president Sid Ryan warned members of the dangers associated with constructing a power plant that emits noxious fumes within 10 kilometres of 20 schools. Ryan also warned that the corporation that will be appointed to build the power plant has a history of disrespecting regulations.

“Covanta, the American company that is the preferred vendor, has a record of safety and labour regulations violations in the U.S. that is a mile wide,” said Ryan.

In 1992, the NDP’s minister of environment, Ruth Grier, banned all construction of solid waste incinerators in Ontario due to environmental and health concerns. The incinerator ban was lifted on February 15, 1994, by Mike Harris’s Conservatives as part of the “Environmental Bill of Rights Act” which was intended to permit municipalities to open their decision-making processes to freely select any energy policy.

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

7

Activists run so rivers can too Gas purging causes power plant explosion Company investigated for serious violations of safety standards

Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

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n February 7, the Kleen Energy power plant exploded in Middletown, Connecticut, killing five and injuring at least 12. The explosion was one of the worst industrial disasters in the U.S. in recent years.

Employees there had been working around the clock to complete the plant, which was slated to be the largest in New England and among the largest nationwide. The explosion was so powerful that it was felt 20 miles away.

Edward Badamo, chief of the Middletown fire department’s south district, was one of the first responders to reach the site of the explosion. “I wasn’t prepared for what I found when I showed up on scene,” he said, adding that he had spent 12 to 14 hours a day at the site since the explosion. “I leave my house, I go to the site, I come home from the site. I haven’t had any socialization off the site since the explosion.”

At the time of the explosion, plant operators had been performing a process known as “gas purging,” or the clearing of air from main gas lines. Purging is highly dangerous, and led to the explosion of a ConAgra plant in North Carolina in June 2009.

On February 4, three days before the Middletown explosion, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released urgent recommendations to change the codes that govern gas purging after months of investigation at the North Carolina plant.

CSB public affairs director Daniel Horowitz said that the Middletown explosion was one of the “largest [the CSB had] ever

dealt with.” Horowitz declined to comment on the details of the investigation, while maintaining that investigators would be at the site for at least weeks to come.

The site is also being investigated by a team from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a division of the U.S. Department of Labor.

A central focus for investigators involves hearing from workers, some of whom have claimed that they had been under pressure to finish the project, working as many as 80 hours a week in the days before the explosion.

Workers have also reported smelling gas as little as an hour before the explosion.

“We will look at all aspects of workplace safety,” said OSHA spokesman Ted Fitzgerald, while noting that he was not aware of any standards that regulate hours worked at the plant.

The Hartford Courant has reported that no safety officials were present during the purging of the gas lines at the plant, the construction of which had been contracted to O&G Industries, which is also a minority shareholder.

O&G’s director of human resources, Dan Carey, declined to comment on the safety proceedures surrounding the purging, saying, “It’s really inappropriate for us to respond to individual allegations.”

A review of OSHA’s records on O&G Industries revealed that the company paid a $6,300 fine in January 2008 for “serious” and “other than serious” workplace safety violations.

Since the explosion, Kleen Energy Systems has outsourced its media relations to a New York firm, which declined to comment.

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Hydro-Québec linked to aboriginal displacement and environmental destruction Dan Smith The McGill Daily

I

n September of last year, volunteers ran relay marathons of 42 miles each from Matagami in Quebec’s James Bay region to the Romaine River near the North Shore, stopping at the Montreal offices of Hydro-Québec along the way to deliver a message: environmentalists and local communities do not want their river dammed to generate hydroelectric power, or for any other purpose.

“All the rivers of Quebec are under siege by Hydro-Québec. These rivers need to flow for our future generations. They are true life-givers and we need not forget this,” read the message written by Roger Orr, a Cree resident of James Bay. The marathon was organized by the conservation coalition Alliance Romaine to draw attention to pending plans for a large hydroelectric complex on the Romaine River in the lower North Shore area of Quebec, about 1,100 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Green energy Hydro-Québec is a giant in the power sector. The company is responsible for meeting most of the domestic electricity demand in Quebec as well as substantial amounts in Ontario, New England, New York, and the maritime provinces. As 97 per cent of HydroQuébec’s electricity is hydro, its stature has only increased with the global focus on climate change.

Hydroelectricity is often considered a safe, renewable alternative to petroleum, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power – and Hydro-Québec is working to promote this image.

When asked if Hydro-Québec saw itself as a “green” corporation, spokeswoman Marie-Élaine Deveault said, “We don’t self-identify as a green company. We are identified as a green company…. I think hydro is part of the solution [to climate change].”

Deveault’s assertion points to Hydro-Québec’s increased focus on energy export, especially to the United States, which is seeking alternatives to coal in the era of climate change. American greenhouse gas emissions, Deveault stated, have been

Tell us, anonymity guaranteed. tips@mcgilldaily.com

offset by 37 million tons through Hydro-Québec’s provision of hydroelectricity between 2001 and 2007.

Innu resistance When constructing massive dams and flooding areas the size of Delaware, as in the case of the Churchill Falls project, social and environmental losses can result.

In the sixties and seventies, the development of the Upper Churchill Falls by Nalcor and Hydro-Québec proceeded without any consultation of local Innu communities. The permanent alteration of the Churchill River and the creation of a reservoir meant the loss of Innu hunting, trapping, and burial grounds that had been used for centuries. The Innu protested in 2006, Nalcor began exploring the possibility of a Lower Churchill Falls project downstream from the original development.

After protest and negotiations, in September 2008 the Innu brokered the Tshash Petapen – “New Dawn” in Montagnais – agreement with the Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams to receive annual compensation for the Upper Churchill Development, as well as land claims and a possible stake in the Lower Churchill Falls project.

The agreement was considered a major victory by the leaders of the Innu Nation and a step forward for the aims of Nalcor. However, currently neither the compensation nor the power station itself has come to fruition, and some activist efforts persist.

Peter Penashue, deputy grand chief of the Innu Nation, said by text message, “Thirty years later we have a commitment for redress and hopefully the agreement will be a reality soon. It would have been so much better to deal with these issues at the beginning as opposed to 30 years later.”

Hydro-Québec consulted with and reached agreements with the communities surrounding the Romaine complex, including Minganie, Nutashkuan, Unamen Shipu, Pakua Shipi, and Ekuanitshit.

These agreements include cultural and economic support as well as employment.

Alliance Romaine While Alliance Romaine has associated with some representatives from the communities affect-

ed by the Romaine Complex, they approach the issue strictly from the perspective of environmentalism and conservation.

“We understand negotiations will take place and different groups will seek compensation, but as we see it large-scale hydro is not renewable,” said Fran Bristow, another member of Alliance Romaine.

Environmental consequences of large-scale hydroelectric development can include the release of methylmercury from soil due to flooding, which poisons fish and can contaminate the food chain, as well as alteration of downstream ecosystems and the possible reduction of biodiversity.

Paradoxically, large hydroelectric projects can also become a source of greenhouse gas emissions.

When areas of dense forest or other vegetation are flooded, CO2 and CH4 are released at a higher rate.

Hydro-Québec & climate politics Hydro-Québec insists that hydroelectricity is a sustainable, “green” alternative. Many dams have been removed throughout the United States to bolster fish populations decimated by hydroelectricity projects, but HydroQuébec advertises measures to maintain biodiversity and minimize the size of reservoirs in the Romaine Complex.

What is certain is that HydroQuébec has adapted its image well to the onset of global anxiety about the climate, aggressively emphasizing its role as a largescale provider of safe, renewable energy. While massive dams are a hard sell environmentally, hydroelectricity providers tend to argue that such developments are the best of all current options.

“We think hydroelectricity is one of the best choices. We do large-scale environmental assessments…to ensure the ecological footprint is at a minimum,” said Deveault.

Bristow opposes this logic.

“We’re not asking for something utopian. In our present situation we have a choice on that impact and it can be positive or negative, and dams are not positive. Energy conservation is positive. It should no longer be a question of the best of two evils.”

8 News

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

Audit of Shatner building finds room for improvement Aaron Vansintjan News Writer

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n Friday, SSMU executives received the initial results of an audit that measured the Society’s energy consumption. The audit showed how most of SSMU’s energy is consumed through ventilation and heating of cold air. The areas that use the most energy are the Shatner ballroom because of its size, and Gerts Bar, which is open the latest.

BPR, the Quebec-based environmental engineering company that conducted the audit, recommended that SSMU install energyefficient light fixtures and improve the building’s ventilation systems.

The retrofit’s cost is estimated to be more than $410,000, but would be recovered in the long run through reduced electricity and maintenance costs.

“The idea is that you invest a lot of money in the beginning for all the renovations but then it pays itself off in five years through all the money that you save,” said Sarah Olle, VP (Clubs & Services).

The audit was a result of a fall 2009 General Assembly (GA) motion penned by Olle, which resolved that SSMU should “undertake large scale projects” to decrease energy usage in the Shatner building. SSMU’s constitution emphasizes the importance of reducing its environmental impact.

According to Olle, concerns about energy use are “something that students have brought up so many times: our number one environmental footprint is our building”.

SSMU’s focus on improving the sustainability of the Shatner building is also part of “the incredible and influential Five Year Sustainability Plan,” described by Ivan Neilson, SSMU president, at the GA last Wednesday.

The GA motion stated that SSMU’s energy use is “40 per cent higher than the average for Canadian university buildings,” which is 2.87 gigajoules per square metre.

However, the BPR audit found the statistic, which was provided by McGill Facilities, to be an overestimate. According to the audit, the Shatner building uses less energy than McGill had previously claimed.

Nevertheless, SSMU is planning to start renovations in the summer of 2011.

The renovations should also be an important bargaining tool for SSMU’s lease renewal negotiations with the University next year.

According to Olle, it is in SSMU’s financial interest to renovate their utilities. “[McGill] pays our utility bill…but our rent is based on our utility bill,” Olle said.

SSMU is planning to ask the new Sustainable Projects Fund (SPF) for funding for these renovations and infrastructural changes. SPF was approved in this year’s fall referendum and will make an estimated $840,000 available annually to campus initiatives that promote environmental sustainability.

“This is the perfect pilot project,” stressed Olle. “This is exactly what this study is for. I can’t think of a better way to use the Sustainable Projects Fund than giving back to students through improving their

student centre.”

In addition, BPR suggested that Hydro-Québec could provide about $36,000 in subsidies if the building’s environmental conditions were improved.

According to Olle, BPR was hired

by McGill to conduct similar tests to the Redpath and McClennan libraries and the McGill Sports Centre, and suggested that SSMU do the same.

McGill sustainability director Dennis Fortune said that McGill is also “proposing to look at five buildings a year for straight energy retrofit.”

A recent audit of the Rutherford Physics Building by McGill Facilities found that replacing light fixtures and installing occupancy sensors could decrease electricity use from lighting by 39 per cent. Fortune remarked, however, that efficiency shouldn’t be the only focus. He commented that the overall energy use is itself an important side of the problem, and that turning off computers or using fewer refrigerators was also necessary to ensure sustainability.

Maggie Knight, SSMU sustainability coordinator, helped to compile a SSMU environment committee progress report, which was released last November.

Knight stressed the importance of an audit: “It’s to take a look at how we’re doing now and what the main issues are. There are a lot of barriers,” she said. “I mean, it’s definitely not a walk in the park, it’s gonna be a challenge, it’s gonna require some dedicated people to really see it through, but I think it can be done.”

T

he BPR audit advised SSMU to follow five specific recommendations.

SSMU plans to follow all of these recommendations within the next five years, and expenses are expected to be recuperated five years after initiating the projects.

Changing the lighting by replacing T12 fluorescent light fixtures with T8, which use less energy and last longer Estimated cost: $49,787 Estimated savings: $5,571 per year Modifying ventilation systems in bathrooms and kitchens Estimated cost: $8,184 Estimated savings: $21,628 per year Changing the ventilation system of the Shatner ballroom Estimated cost: $175,505 Estimated savings: $15,860 per year Changing the schedule of the ventilation of the building, specifically Gerts Bar Estimated cost: $44,385 Estimated savings: $8,809 per year Installing an improved heat pump Estimated cost: $141,020 Estimated savings: $36,250 per year

Algonquins protest uranium exploration Two years after arrests and protests, community still concerned with environmental impact Jenna Horner News Writer

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dispute between Frontenac Ventures Corporation (FVC), a business specializing in uranium exploration and development, and a nonstatus Ardoch Algonquin community over territory near Robertsville, Ontario has ended with the company acquiring full access to the land.

FVC began to stake out the territory in 2007, despite the fact that the Algonquin community had an ongoing land-claim involving the area. The dispute continued until 2008, and came to a head with a series of protests, jailings, and prosecutions.

Almost two years later, honorary Algonquin chief

Harold Perry said the community has exhausted itself. “[We have] reached a point where we’ve done all we can do,” Perry said.

At the height of local protests, the Ardoch community attempted to blockade a site near Sharbot Lake, Ontario, where FVC began testing for uranium deposits. The Shabot Obaadjiwan also lent their support to the blockade and eventually participated in their own mediations with the Ontario government.

But the legal dispute ultimately ended in favour of FVC. After failed government negotiations, Ardoch Algonquin co-chiefs Rob Lovelace and Paula Sherman were fined $15,000 and $25,000, respectively, for their participation in the protests and contempt of

a court injunction granting FVC access to the land.

Both were sentenced to six months jail time, though Sherman eventually conceded to court injunctions and her sentence was withdrawn.

Although the nearby Shabot Obaadjiwan collaborated with the Ardoch Algonquin to oppose the uranium company’s takeover, Perry said he was disappointed with the lack of support from the First Nations community at large. “We’re the only ones who came out against the uranium. They [other First Nations tribes] signed documents saying that we were the ones against it,” he said.

According to FVC president and CEO George White, his claim received adequate permission for uranium exploration in

Ontario and has legal claim to the land. White added that FVC creates 600 to 700 “primarily local jobs” in their exploration and development of low-grade uranium.

Canada is currently the world’s largest uranium exporter, and White pointed to its positive use in what he believes is the country’s nuclear future. “Canada and the U.S. trail far behind in nuclear power. France gets over 70 per cent of its power from nuclear energy,” he said.

Perry has cited public health and pollution to nearby lakes and streams as his major concern for development of the lands into mining or mining exploration sites.

However, Rob Ferguson, a represenatative of Ontario’s Ministry of

Northern Development, Mines, and Forestry said the site of contention was not used for mining.

“There was no mining.

This was an exploration site, consisting of mainly mapping and geological samples.... If the company had found minable deposits, substantial requirements would have kicked in [for mining],” Ferguson said.

When asked if he thought the First Nations involved in the FVC protest were aware of governmental procedures, Ferguson answered, “That’s complicated.”

Perry still laments the dispute that was eventually settled in favour of FVC exploration rights. “People don’t realize the impact that this holds on the future,” he said. “But at least we can say we tried.”

WHAT’S THE HAPS

SSMU raises the energy bar

Can we Trade Our Way to Lower Emissions?

Tuesday, February 16, 6:30-8 p.m.

Clubs Lounge, SSMU Building Join Climate and Sustainability Advocacy McGill for a workshop on the basics of international and domestic carbon trading, one of the more controversial approaches to reducing emissions and combating climate change. The workshop will address the potential merits and failings of carbon trading in regard to both social justice and environmental effectiveness.

Cinema Politica: American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein Tuesday, February 16, 8 p.m.

Leacock 219 The film, America Radical, portrays the life of Norman Finklestein, ardent critic of Israel and US Middle East policy.

Afghanistan: Occupation and Resistance Wednesday, February 17, 6-9 p.m.

Leacock 219 The panel discussion will focus on the occupation of Afghanistan and resistance to the war on campuses and across the country. Peggy Mason, a former diplomat who recently returned from Afghanistan, will critique the international occupying forces through firsthand accounts of the situation in Afghanistan. The event is hosted by QPIRG McGill as part of Social Justice Days, a week of activism-centred events.

Creating Sustainable Jobs Wednesday, February 18, 5:30 p.m.

Strathcona Dentistry and Anatomy Building, M1 Join former agricultural minister and German member of parliament Bärbel Höhn and Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May for a discussion on the future of a green job market. Discuss how green policies can create sustainable jobs in corporate social responsibility, policy making, urban planning, and engineering.

Interactive Radio for Justice: Using mass media to address war crimes Tuesday, February 16, 12:30–2 p.m.

Chancellor Day Hall, room. 101 Wanda Elizabeth Hall, founder and director of Interactive Radio for Justice, will share her efforts to foster dialogue between people in regions where the International Criminal Court is investigating the most serious crimes and the national and international authorities responsible for rendering justice to them.

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

9

Canadian emissions targets tied to US Quebec premier slammed by federal environment minister for independent stance Kallee Lins The McGill Daily

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n January 31, environment minister Jim Prentice announced Canada’s new emissions targets of 17 per cent below the 2005 level. This announcement, which brings Canada completely in line with the newly announced targets of the U.S. The second time in the last four years that Canada has lowered its emissions targets.

Given that Canada’s previous target, adopted in 2006 under the “Turning the Corner” plan, was a 20 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, the latest target of 17 per cent below 2005 levels is actually a weakening of Canada’s climate position.

It promises a reduction equal to 2.5 per cent below the 1990 levels. The 2010 commitment is 20 per cent less than its 2006 counterpart.

In a speech a few weeks ago in Calgary, Prentice restated that the latest reduction target would be accomplished within the next 10 years – while adding that development of the tar sands will continue with a consideration for environmental concerns.

Plans are also in the works between the Harper and Obama administrations to create North American emissions targets for the transportation industry. However, Prentice affirmed that no action would be taken toward the energy

sector until the U.S. has declared their position.

But Canadian environmental groups are worried that with Obama’s climate change legislation tangled up in Congress, a policy of synchronizing climate strategies with the U.S. will likely result in nothing but inaction for an extended period of time.

The environment minister maintains otherwise. In an Environment Canada press release, Prentice said, “It is absolutely counterproductive and utterly pointless for Canada and Canadian businesses to strike out on their own, to set and to pursue targets that will ultimately create barriers to trade and put us at a competitive disadvantage.”

Quebec premier Jean Charest has publicly denounced the federal government’s policy of mimicking the U.S. plan. Charest told the Globe and Mail, “The only federal plan is to align with the United States. However, I never in my life thought that aligning our policies with the United States was good enough for Canada.”

Quebec’s most recent commitment is a drastically steeper reductions target of 20 per cent below 1990 levels. The province has also applied a carbon tax on all fossil fuels.

Amid the plans to have a North American standard regarding transportation emissions by 2011, Quebec has gone ahead with its own strategy to implement strict regulations on both vehicle emis-

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

Canadian cities like Montreal are following standards set by their US counterparts. sions and the energy industry.

A federal official told the Globe and Mail that this move places Quebec dangerously outside of the North American norm. It is a move that prompted Prentice to warn Quebec “of the folly of attempting to go it alone in an integrated North American economy.”

Charest’s decision to retain Quebec’s standards independently from the federal plan continues to raise tensions between Harper and Charest. As Prentice rails Charest for

placing Quebec outside of the North American climate norms, recent polls showed a drop in Conservative popularity in Quebec.

The strained relationship between Harper and Charest on the climate regulation issue may account for why Quebec was denied a request for a role at last month’s international conference on Haiti, though it was held in Montreal.

Charest and Harper clashed again at the economic forum in Switzerland last week when Harper spoke in

favour of a national securities regulator. Charest stood in strong opposition of the plan.

When asked about the official federal position in regard to Quebec’s independent targets, a spokesperson from Environment Canada replied, “The government of Canada has consistently encouraged all provinces and territories to take action on greenhouse gas emissions. Effectively addressing climate change will require action by all levels of government in Canada.”

Resisting the winds of change Ontario community concerned with the proximity of wind farms to residents Tomas Urbina The McGill Daily

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esidents of Prince Edward County, Ontario, are opposing the push of several large wind power developers eager to begin building in the area. Situated south of Belleville between the Bay of Quinte and Lake Ontario, the region is a peninsula. The high and relatively consistent airflow makes it attractive to wind-powered energy developers. However, business and citizen groups in the county argue that wind power developments pose a threat to human health and safety, wildlife, and the economic prosperity in the region.

Orville Walsh, a representative of the County Coalition for Safe and Appropriate Green Energy (CCSAGE), explained some of the health effects of living near wind farms. “On a global basis, you’ll find people that are living close to [turbines] are having a lot of troubles with either noise or low-

frequency vibrations – and by close I mean less than two kilometres,” Walsh said.

Commonly reported side effects of living near turbines include “sleep disturbance, fatigue, nausea, headaches, dizziness, and tinnitus,” or a ringing in the ear, according to Neal Michelutti, an environmental scientist at Queen’s University.

Michelutti has undertaken research to discover whether a new wind farm on Wolfe Island in Lake Ontario will lead to adverse health effects on the island’s residents.

Research began before the installations were built, giving the Queen’s team an opportunity to study people’s health over time, before and after the wind farm.

“A lot of the [scientific] literature that’s out there is not really scientifically sound,” said Michelutti, whose group consulted epidemiologists at the University to ensure an appropriate research design. The researchers are using two separate questionnaires to monitor general health and also specific symptoms associated

with wind turbines elsewhere.

The non-profit group Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, co-founded by Krystyn Tully, first became involved with wind developments because of environmental concerns regarding 12 turbines on Wolfe Island. “For every turbine that is built a road also has to be built. In the case of Wolfe Island, you’re talking about roads being built, through wetlands and sensitive marshlands”, explained Tully.

In Prince Edward County, the problem is scale. “If every project that is proposed for [the county] were to go through, it would be 285 turbines, including 142 offshore,” said Tully. “It’s the cumulative effect of all those put together that nobody has looked at.” She insisted that no less than an individual environmental assessment will be adequate.

Groups like CCSAGE and others across Canada are not opposed to wind power, but simply aim to have wind farms constructed in a way they deem responsible. A central issue for such groups is setbacks,

the regulated distance of a turbine or group of turbines from “receptors,” like homes, schools, or businesses.

“Regardless of the merits of wind energy, just don’t put them close to people,” said Walsh.

In Canada, each province establishes its own setback regulations.

Currently, Ontario’s Ministry of Environment is proposing setbacks of 550 metres for individual turbines and up to 1,500 metres for groups of turbines, depending on noise levels. This regulation, however, would still fall short of the twokilometre range that groups like CCSAGE are seeking.

Despite opposition and a weakened global economy, wind energy grew at a rate of up to 40 per cent in Canada and 31 per cent globally in 2009, according to the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA).

Part of this growth is linked to new legislation, like Ontario’s Green Energy Act, implemented in May 2009. The act’s feed-in tar-

iff program guarantees premium prices for electricity produced by industrial wind projects. CanWEA is currently petitioning the federal government to extend its ecoEnergy Renewable Power Program, which fed $1.48 billion into renewable energy projects from 2007 to 2009.

Many groups, however, remain unconvinced of the benefits of large-scale wind power, which has been marketed as leading to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, reduced pollution, and new jobs and stimulus for the green economy.

“It’s politically appealing to the governments in power that generally people living in urban areas are not threatened by [wind farms] and so it’s basically being foisted on the rural populations,” said Walsh. “[Politicians] talk about green economy and employment, but even that looks suspect when you look at the experience in Europe where rising energy costs basically have created a net loss of jobs.”

10Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

Through the looking glass Energy in depression and transition

Binary is for computers Quinn Albaugh

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often like to talk about trans issues in the abstract. But particularly after last week’s discussion of suicide, I feel a need to address a very personal issue for me: depression.

Before I transitioned, I had no energy. I slept constantly. I had little interest in eating. And I couldn’t really muster enthusiasm about anything, even when I had strong opinions. I was depressed.

For some people, depression comes from certain life events. For others, depression has no clear cause at all – it might be a result of brain chemistry. For me, depression is a result of the inescapable fact that my internal body map is female while my body is not. My brain tells me that my body should be female, including all the parts, even though my eyes have always told me that I don’t have them.

When I first heard about phantom limbs, I couldn’t help but compare the phenomenon with my own experiences, since I’m missing body parts that my brain expects to be there. No matter how much I tried to tell myself that I was wrong, I couldn’t escape this reality.

Puberty was hell. I developed

all the wrong secondary sex characteristics – hair all over the place, a prodigious beard, and a voice so low that I often sang the lowest bass notes in choirs. I also had to feel myself developing a male sex drive.

That particular development was so distressing that I often imagined my life would be better without any sex drive at all.

Shortly after puberty started, I went online and learned about transsexuality. When I read about what transsexuality felt like, I knew instantly that the concept fit me – and that I would be much happier if I could make my body more like how I knew it should be. But then I thought about how other people might react – especially my parents – and I started developing rationalizations about how I wasn’t really trans. For example, my attraction to women and my lack of interest in female clothing helped me convince myself that I was “really” a man. I couldn’t escape into denial completely, though; every month, I had at least a couple days when I couldn’t do anything but confront the incongruence between my brain and my body.

This problem had gone unaddressed for so long that I didn’t even realize I was depressed – I

Rebeccah Hartz | The McGill Daily

The depression resulting from repressed transsexuality can sap you of energy in a serious way. had always felt the same way.

Eventually, though, the situation reached a point where I could no longer be oblivious: to keep functioning, I had to address the issue.

When I went on hormones at the beginning of my transition, I felt an immediate sense of relief.

That feeling has grown since then.

However, I still have to deal with low energy moments. Whenever I present myself as a man in pub-

lic, whenever someone takes me as male, I feel drained. For me, interacting socially as a man is essentially an act. I’ve learned the part passably, but that’s not who I actually am. I also still have trouble avoiding presenting myself as a man because some of my features, my voice and facial hair especially, unavoidably cue people into thinking that I’m male.

I’m not telling you about my experiences because I have a deep

desire to talk about myself. In fact, I’d rather not relive my pre-transition years. I’m telling you this because we cannot just discuss depression, sex, or gender in the abstract. We need stories like mine to remind us that these issues are a part of real people’s lives.

Quinn Albaugh writes in this space every week. Use some energy to communicate with them: binaryforcomputers@mcgilldaily.com.

COMMENT

Recharging our understanding of electricity Emilio Comay del Junco

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onsuming energy hasn’t always been a matter of flipping switches, plugging in cables, and turning dials. Before the advent of electricity, any energy not provided by brute human or animal force needed to be generated at the same time and in the same place that it was needed.

Electrification enabled the huge technological advances of the last century, but in doing so, has also distanced us from the sources of the energy it brings.

The issue is conceptual, but has practical ramifications as well. Electricity is no more than a medium for storing and consuming energy. It can be generated in innumerable ways, from solar panels to natural gas. Likewise, fossil fuels are simply means to generate energy, which is the same whether its sources are harmful or not.

While electricity is undeniably

essential, it also obscures the generation of our energy. A light bulb looks the same whether it is powered by electricity generated from a wind turbine or coal – which emits the most greenhouse gases of any fossil fuel.

Though huge plants in the hinterlands of major cities now burn thousands of tons of coal each day to create electricity, energy users no longer see the tangible effects of their energy consumption. Energy production has been taken out of their hands and moved to distant locations. They no longer need to keep a furnace or fireplace stoked, dispose of ashes throughout the day, or see dark smoke rising from their house. Coal’s effects, however, remain just as harmful and noxious as they were when its smoke blackened cities and lungs during the Industrial Revolution.

Of course, it’s possible to get information on how and where one’s electricity is generated. A Google search will tell you that 95 per cent of Quebec’s electric-

ity comes from hydroelectric projects in the province’s north, while 70 per cent of the United States’ energy is derived from fossil fuels.

However, the physical and conceptual distance between us and these sources often prevents us from using this information meaningfully.

In addition, the fact that most electricity is provided by monopolistic, often government-owned corporations means that there’s little meaningful action that an individual can take to move toward consuming electricity generated from less harmful sources of energy.

Projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions by encouraging people to use less electricity – like the federal government’s nowcancelled “One Ton Challenge” program that tried to reduce personal carbon emissions to one ton of CO2 a year – have had limited success. Detractors point to general apathy among citizens of developed countries, but this can be linked to the abstract terms in

which energy is necessarily discussed, given how distanced its generation has become from our quotidian existences.

Electricity grids and centralized electrical generation are obviously here to stay; it is nonetheless vital that we develop a more concrete sense of what energy is and how it is produced.

Not only should governments and energy producers make more information on the production of electricity more easily available, but they should also make it easier for individuals and communities to generate some of their own power – through sources like wind and solar energy.

Support should also be given for sources of energy that skip the conduit of electricity altogether. Passive solar heating, for example, is not only cheap and reliable if properly designed, but also connects the user to the source of their heating since it is fundamentally integrated into the physical structure of their day-to-

day life.

Climate change activists often speak to the need for systemic change, pointing out that residential consumption accounts for only about 17 per cent of total energy consumption in Canada. It is no doubt vital that industrial energy consumption be severely reduced and attitudes toward energy, rethought.

However, a shift toward generating electricity closer to home, as well as energy sources that bypass electricity altogether, can make people more aware of how energy is produced and consumed. With more direct attunement to these issues, we can hope for greater commitment not only to reducing personal energy consumption, but also to advocating for a systemic rethinking of how energy is produced.

Emilio Comay del Junco is a U1 Arts student and one of The Daily’s design editors. Write him at emiliocdj@gmail.com.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

11

HYDE PARK

Fight the power Thoughts from the rez energy-saving contest Margaret Waterhouse & Jonathan Wald

F

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

The usually high cancer rates at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta have been linked to the tar sands.

HYDE PARK

Dirty oil’s human price Social and health injustice in Alberta’s tar sands Nora Hope

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he industrial wasteland left in the wake of development of Alberta’s tar sands is far more than an environmental eyesore. The toxins generated by the crude oil refining process present a serious threat to human health and indigenous sovereignty.

The tar sands are composed of bitumen, clay, sand, and heavy metals. In order to produce synthetic crude oil from the bitumen, massive amounts of energy, steam, and water are required to melt the

Nations community of 1,200 situated downstream from the tar sands, is a devastating illustration of the human costs of bitumen oil extraction. Several years ago, John O’Connor, the doctor of Fort Chipewyan, began to speak up about the high number of incidences of cancer he was encountering. A 2009 study by Alberta Health Services in the community of Fort Chipewyan confirmed statistically elevated rates of rare cancers that are usually linked to environmental factors. Notably, between 1995 and 2006, cancers of the blood and lymphatic system were more than double what

It is largely First Nations communities that are bearing the hidden costs of tar sands development oil out of the sand. Five barrels of fresh water are required to produce one barrel of oil. The remnants of this extraction process are left in tailing ponds. “Ponds” is a misleading euphemism: these toxic sludge deposits span over 50 square kilometres of formerly pristine boreal forest and are a serious health threat to local communities.

The crux of the problem with tailing ponds is that they leak. They leak in a major way. According to reports directly from tar sands developer Suncor Energy, a single tailing pond by the name of “Tar Island Dyke” is estimated to leak 67 litres of contaminated water per second. This tailing pond directly borders the Athabasca River.

Fort Chipewyan, a First

would be typically expected in the community.

A report released in November

by Alberta ecologists Kevin Timoney and Peter Lee found significant reason for concern over elevated levels of toxins in water samples drawn from the Peace and Athabasca Rivers, near Fort Chipewyan. Furthermore, arsenic, mercury, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were found in dangerous levels in local fish, fowl, and moose – species that comprise much of the traditional diet of the community. These toxins are known carcinogens. The report concluded that abnormal levels of arsenic and mercury in the local fish make them unsuitable for local consumption. The contamination

of this food supply endangers the cultural identity, subsistence food sources, and health of the community.

In their recent Shell Jackpine mining proposal to increase bitumen extraction, Shell Canada has admitted that changes to groundwater quality “will be long term and irreversible.” Yet the Canadian government has failed to systematically regulate the full-scale effects of tar sands development on local water quality.

Despite growing concerns in the community and among activists, neither the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency nor the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have conducted a full assessment on the effect of the tar sands on water quality and local ecosystems.

Instead, we are left to rely on industry reports and independently contracted reports, such as that of Timoney and Lee. It is largely First Nations communities that are bearing the hidden costs of tar sands development.

The injustice of an economic gain that profits select Canadians while jeopardizing others’ health and access to clean water is undeniable.

We must ask ourselves: what value is being placed on human life in the cost-benefit analysis of the tar sands?

The Albertan landscape needs a biopsy: the tar sands are a growing tumour that we can’t afford to ignore any longer.

Nora Hope is a U2 Psychology student. She’s a campaign coordinator with Greenpeace McGill and a member of the Climate And Sustainability Advocacy Project, but the views expressed here are her own. Write her at nora.hope@ mail.mcgill.ca.

or five evenings during the bitter tail end of January, the courtyard of Douglas Hall played host to a strange scene. As the hour grew late, and the temperature dropped to the chilly depths of a Montreal winter’s night, seven students trooped out of the warm building and into tents staked out on the snow-covered lawn.

Through the first night of steady rain that left them sleeping in tentsized puddles, to the last morning when they awoke with icicles in the tent and frost-encrusted boots, the campers, both experienced and neophytes, endured the elements by night and their classes by day.

The endeavour impressed some; others were decidedly unimpressed; others still, incredulous.

Many were simply puzzled. What was the point of all this? Was the camping, which coincided with the first week of Fight the Power (an energy-saving competition among the first-year residences), a bid to save electricity that had been taken to a ludicrous extreme?

Two of the participants discuss their motives, their experiences, and what they learned from their nights out in the cold: Jonathan Wald: For me, our plan started off as a joke, but turned into something that I thought would be fun to do.

Margaret Waterhouse: Well, some of us had an environmental agenda as well.

JW: I didn’t mean to say that it didn’t have an environmental statement. It picked up that meaning once we chose the power-saving week as the dates.

MW: For me it was always a statement of what humans can live without, which is why I gave up my laptop, my cell phone, and showering.

JW: I’m sure your classmates thanked you for that. I never wanted the camping experience to interfere with my studies or social life, and for the most part, they didn’t. That said, I think the experience did indicate that much of our reliance on technology is at least unnecessary.

MW: Really? I thought giving

up technology was really hard. It became a full-time job. It seems our society now makes the assumption that everyone is using these technologies and structures itself around that assumption. It scares me to think that one day it might be considered irrational to live without a laptop and cell phone. I mean, our tent living was seen as irrational by some observers, and that wasn’t a huge departure from the norm.

JW: I agree that our society now takes technology for granted, but that in itself doesn’t worry me.

For me, the time in the tents reinforced the fact that one can live without technology and that life can continue even if we lose our appliances. However, I don’t think that we should demonize technology, since it can be a tool used to resolve societal issues like climate change.

MW: Except sometimes there are unforeseen consequences of these tools. Look at cars. When they were first produced, they held the promise of making our lives so much better. When we built our lives and our cities around them, even expressly for them – suburbs – we had no idea of the havoc they would wreak on the environment.

Even now that we do realize the consequences, we feel trapped between the environment and our “normal” lifestyles.

JW: I don’t think that one historical example implies that technology is always a doomed endeavour.

To me, it shows that we need to analyze tools critically, for example by asking ourselves what we are using laptops for, and remaining flexible enough to act upon our conclusions. By that, I mean rethinking our approach to technology, rather than fearing it.

MW: We need to rethink it, and we need to actually change. The progress technology promises is irrelevant in a destroyed world.

Margaret Waterhouse is a U1 Environment student and Jonathan Wald is a U0 Arts student. This piece was written in collaboration with Rose Karabush, a U1 IDS student.

Continue the dialogue: mmw@ omsoft.com.

Don’t like what you see?

Send a letter. letters@mcgilldaily.com

12Features

Crude planning

1

Slated expansion of the tar sands demands radical restructuring of North American pipelines

FORT MCMURRAY he tar sands has been called the most environmentally destructive industrial project in the world. The process begins with the clear-cutting of the boreal forest in the area. Companies must first dig 40 to 50 metres deep to access a mixture of bitumen, dirt, and clay. Two tons of this material must be processed in order to produce a single barrel of oil, leading to greenhouse gas emissions three times higher than conventional oil production. The water used to process the bitumen – two to five barrels per barrel of oil – is dumped into tailing ponds, along with toxins and known carcinogens, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

First Nations communities downstream on the Athabasca River have been experiencing extraordinary levels of lymphoma, lupus, leukemia, and other cancers in recent years, likely the result of toxic seepage into the groundwater system.

T

Niko Block The McGill Daily

D

espite the nationwide opposition to the Albertan tar sands, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers intends to ramp up the project’s output from approximately one million barrels per day to nearly three million by 2015. In 2008, Canadian oil company Enbridge announced its plans to deliver oil from Alberta’s tar sands project to the Texas Gulf Coast. If the $350-million venture, named the Trailbreaker, is realized, it would see 250,000 barrels per day arriving at refineries in and around Houston. The project would be accompanied by a longterm increase in oil production from the sands. Amid last year’s financial downturn, Enbridge was forced to officially shelve the project in January 2009. Whether it’s revisited depends on a “whole range of factors,” including the price of oil, according to Enbridge spokesperson Jennifer Varey.

However, the company remains committed to expanding the market for Albertan oil, and its web site still promotes the project. In Quebec, the Trailbreaker would mean reversing the flow of oil in the Line 9 pipeline (in blue), which runs from Sarnia, Ontario through Montreal to Portland, Maine. In spite of Enbridge’s assertion that the project is still officially on hold, Montreal Pipelines, which operates Line 9, continues to push forward with its plans to start pumping western oil to the Atlantic.

ILLINOIS n order to access the lucrative oil markets in the southeastern U.S., Enbridge plans to construct a new pipeline to complement the Trailbreaker. This alternative method of transporting Albertan oil to the Gulf of Texas is the Texas Access Project, which would connect pre-existing pipelines in Illinois directly to the Houston area. Construction of the new pipeline, however, has faced staunch resistance from farmers in Illinois; many are concerned about deforestation and the possibility of oil leaks, which would contaminate their soil. Two weeks ago, a federal court ruled that Enbridge may build on farms whose owners had signed a similar agreement with another oil company – which was later bought by Enbridge – in the thirties.

I

2

14Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

Zionism is not racism Little bitter Riva Gold

T

he oft-proclaimed, illresearched phrase “Zionism is racism” is both inaccurate and woefully unhelpful.

“Zionism,” to be sure, could be the belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, generally in the land of Israel. It is neither a static nor a monolithic concept, but rather a bundle of positions that encompasses a myriad of political and religious views.

“Racism,” in contrast, is the privileging or disadvantaging of a group of people based on their race. Note the lack of overlap.

The only way that Zionism is racism is if all forms of nationalism are racism. If Zionism is racism, then any time a historical or religious group seeks self-determination, it ought to be considered racism. In this case, Tibetan nationalism is racism, French nationalism is racism, and, by extension, the belief in the right of Palestinians to selfdetermination would also be a form of racism. Strangely, most anti-Zionists are reluctant to admit those analogous claims.

Perhaps a recounting of the origin of “Zionism is racism” will be informative. The phrase was first

propounded by the U.N. General Assembly in 1975. Shockingly, the baseless name-calling didn’t solve the sensitive Middle Eastern conflict. When the U.N. passed the resolution, Israelis and Jews across the world lost trust and support in the United Nations rather than in Zionist cause. Politically, the most extreme Zionists felt marginalized and alone in the world. Sensing that the U.N. would never treat them fairly, they only became further devoted to Zionism and skeptical of the U.N. as a reasonable partner or broker of peace. What the motion did achieve, however, was a stagnation of the peace process. The slanderous phrase was used to justify the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank.

Though the U.N. rescinded the motion in 1991, the phrase didn’t die there. In the name of Palestinian rights, groups across campus have plastered the slogan and virulently – if not a bit thoughtlessly – adopted it. Obviously, criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is a legitimate endeavour. But to do so by slandering Zionism as a whole is both misguided and ineffectual at

Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

Zionism is the notion that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination. helping the Palestinians.

There exists a wide spectrum of moderate Zionist positions, many of which have advocated for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Given that Zionism is primarily the simple belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination, many Zionist groups openly oppose the settlements in Israel and agitate for better treatment of Palestinians and racial minorities within Israel. To claim that the mere belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination implies poor treatment of Palestinians is inaccurate, but also further alienates domestic support for Palestinian rights and moder-

ate, peaceful negotiations.

Domestically, Israel also has a fairly good record of its legal treatment of minority races and cultures, particularly for the region.

Of the roughly 6.7 million Israelis, about 1.3 million are non-Jews.

Arabs currently hold eight seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and Arabic is an official language of Israel.

The only legal distinction between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel is that the latter are not required to serve in the Israeli army. This doesn’t mean there isn’t still some discrimination in practice, but it does suggest that Israel is being held to a much higher standard here than its neighbours.

To support cultural autonomy

and self-determination in dozens of peoples across the world but deny it to a single people is in itself discriminatory. For a people who have, in the last century, faced unprecedented persecution and discrimination on the grounds of religion alone, charges of racism are particularly abhorrent. As Alan Dershowitz puts it, “A world that closed its doors to Jews who sought escape from Hitler’s ovens lacks the moral standing to complain about Israel’s giving preference to Jews.”

Zionism isn’t racism, but perhaps anti-Zionism is.

dare one say it – beauty. From the “unborn oil” of Colorado shale to the “dead oil” of Alberta’s tar sands, oil runs an entire spectrum of quality and availability, and companies and countries will go to enormous trouble for seemingly small amounts of it. It’s an industry of no-nonsense Texans and African dictators where the true figures are jealously hidden, and where oil is both weapon and prize for forces as disparate as rebels in Colombia and sheikdoms in Arabia. It faces challenges and will eventually need to be replaced entirely, an inevitability Shah does not overlook, weighing the relative merits of hydrogen, nuclear, and solar options in a manner that is concise yet anything but cursory.

All things considered, this book is one that, for once, deserves the cliché and abused sobriquet of “must-read.” Oil is beyond ques-

tion the supreme bargaining chip of the international economy, a coveted prize, and closer to home, the backbone of Canadian credit and the strength of the loonie. It influences politics and governance, presents unique challenges in finance and management, employs some of the best minds in science and engineering, and has been the prime mover of socioeconomic change from Angola to Alberta to Abu Dhabi since, at least, the seventies. It is the ink in which our histories and destinies are scripted, so grab a copy of Crude from Schulich today because, as ExxonMobil’s Lee Raymond says, “You kinda have to go where the oil is.”

Riva Gold writes in this space every week. React to her at littlebitter@ mcgilldaily.com.

HYDE PARK

Where there’s oil, there’s action Crude is central to our civilization Manosij Majumdar

I

finished Sonia Shah’s Crude in a single sitting, and I was quite sincerely blown away.

Written with elegance and clarity, it is a survey of the life and times of oil that speaks to the concerns of “oilmen” (that nebulous class that includes business people, managers, geologists, engineers, financiers, contractors, et cetera), academics, historians, economists, and environmentalists. It remains accessible and entertaining for the layman who has a passing interest in the history and business of the life-blood of modern civilization.

Shah starts with a chapter on the formation of oil, writing with all the enthusiasm of a marine biologist.

A hundred or so fascinating pages later, she ends with a look into the

future from a perspective that is at once novel and appropriate, stating the fact that in the seven-billion years or so the Earth will exist, oil will be formed again and again, and someone else – our descendants, or some other, distant branch of the tree of life – will be faced with the same questions.

Reverent and cynical, Shah does not fall into the trap of being either a follower blind to the resource’s inevitable exhaustion nor a fanatic Greenpeace-type advocating a sudden abstinence from humanity’s single most vital asset. She instead strikes an admirably journalistic stance, presenting facts and figures with an understanding yet critical eye that does credit to her profession.

She does not gloss over the more appalling pronouncements of “oilmen” (for example, ExxonMobil’s Rex Tillerson calling renewables so-

called renewables) or circumstances in which oil is produced (such as in Nigeria, where it involves oil company-sponsored armies and navies). At the same time, she takes a moment to reflect upon the term “production” (as if something was actually produced instead of simply recovered from the crust). She considers the nature of Nigerian oil: “the oil itself is just beautiful: light, sweet, low in sulfur, and hardly any polluting impurities” – using the same tones bright-eyed young entrants and knowing veterans of the field alike often use, mulling on oil as an old friend or an admired sweetheart.

Oil is a many-headed, omnipresent god, in fuel, in plastics, in fertilizers, in space, and under the sea, sometimes benevolent, often vengeful, moody, and stubborn, and again surprising in its bounty and –

Manosij Majumdar is a U3 Chemical Engineering student. Tell him about your favourite reads at manosij. majumdar@mail.mcgill.ca.

Can’t get enough Commentary? Check our web site for more ’pinions. mcgilldaily.com/sections/commentary

Letters

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

15

Re: “Defending diversity, excellence, community engagement” | Commentary | February 8

This approach reminds me of the antics of top party leaders that I previously witnessed in communist Poland.

Slawomir Poplawski Technician in the mining and materials engineering department

Put your money where your mouth is, McGill Re: “Defending diversity, excellence, community engagement” | Commentary | February 8 It is heartening that our administration cares about the concerns raised in The Daily about McGill policies. However, the response by our senior policy advisor, Victoria Meikle, in her Hyde Park is narrowly focused on convincing the readers that the Principal’s Task Force on Diversity, Excellence, and Community Engagement was extensively publicized. In this way, she sidesteps the silence of the official media in the last 20-30 days before the first deadline for written submissions to the task force (January 8, 2010). Meikle also fails to address in her reply the whole concept of expanding the principal’s town halls into local communities and involving lower level administrators.

This approach reminds me of the antics of top party leaders that I previously witnessed in communist Poland. They would organize big and noisy campaigns in the media which were construed as constructive consultations with the whole nation.

People were asked to share their concerns and suggest some changes and improvements for specially organized committees. A select few and possibly naïve people participated in these actions. Nobody with common sense expected to hear something truly new or revolutionary following these “consultations” and nothing better emerged from the corrupted power until the total collapse of this political system.

The situation at McGill can develop differently if we “exploit” some of

Errata

the key details revealed in Meikle’s response. She informed us that “the Principal’s Task Force on Diversity, Excellence, and Community Engagement has now received 50 submissions.” She also mentioned that “25 talented members of the McGill community have undertaken to work with the principal” on this project.

They will analyze these submissions and provide their report after consultations with other McGill’s governing bodies at the end of 2011.

That our administration recently “agreed to all requests to submit beyond the deadline date [and] not refuse a submission from a member of the McGill community whenever it is received” is a positive step forward. With this spirit of openness, I propose that all 50 submissions be immediately published in a link on the McGill web site. It would take the McGill network specialist no longer than 30 minutes to post these submissions after receiving them from Meikle. At stake isn’t only speeding up this whole process, but also mobilizing our whole community.

We shouldn’t passively wait for the next two years for the final report.

The availability to read online all the submissions will not only push us for deeper reflections, but also further motivate our “25 talented members of the McGill community.” Their awareness that the whole community can read the provided submissions and compare the conclusions from both sides (25 chosen talented members vs. community) is really essential for a fruitful and meaningful final report.

Slawomir Poplawski Technician in the mining and materials engineering department

In the article “Children in perpetual trauma: the West Bank through a psychiatrist’s eyes” (Mind and Body, February 4), statistics from a study done on high-school-aged children in refugee camps in the West Bank were attributed to a study conducted by Evan Kanter of the University of Washington. In fact, they were cited in a lecture given by Evan Kanter. The Daily is trying to verify where the statistics came from and will make this clarification at the soonest possible opportunity.

Minor majority? I didn’t know there were so many under-18s at McGill Re: “Operation Cast Lead comes to campus” | Commentary | February 11 There are few assertions put forth in Sana Saeed’s column which I’d like to address. Firstly, let’s look at the assertion (and thinly disguised reference) that “shells of identity politics” are being cast upon all those “who dared to speak out against Israeli aggression.” This mixing of self-righteousness and self-pity for holding a political viewpoint is immature and obnoxious for the reader. If Saeed truly believes that she, and those holding similar views, stand on the side of a great untold truth, then they should expect and welcome the dissent that will be thrown their way. When in history have unpopular views been welcomed with open arms? Also, considering that denouncements of the Israeli government are commonplace in international media, international governments, and governing bodies, as well as in the streets and on university campuses world wide, it seems that Saeed’s political views aren’t even that unpopular, further making her self-righteousness unwarranted.

SRS: essential to Albaugh’s message Re: “Oh snap” | Letters | February 11 Quinn Albaugh doesn’t seem to get Mike Prebil’s duties as public editor. Prebil has not criticized The Daily for not being “mainstream.” Rather he has suggested that The Daily open itself to a more mainstream audience.

What’s the point of an anti-oppressive newspaper with a clear statement of principles if only a splinter of the student body is engaged with it? The public editor should note when clarification is needed so that informative columns like Albaugh’s can communicate with as many readers as possible. Prebil’s confusion illustrates that

Let’s turn now to the assertion that “any small public debate on any issue even mentioning Palestine or Israel” is shut down. First, a SSMU general assembly isn’t a public debate – it isn’t even public. The General Assembly is a private meeting for McGill students whose representatives have chosen to follow Robert’s Rules of Order in conducting the assembly. Second, it isn’t a debate. The GA exists as a popular legislative body that decides relevant policy. While each bill is open for debate, the goal of the assembly is to democratically enact policy, not force everyone to hear your viewpoint. Is it fair that a minor majority can silence a passionate minority?

This is debatable and I’ll admit that popular democracy has its drawbacks. If a truly public debate was shut down or censored I’d certainly be on your side that a violation of free speech has been committed. I quote Thomas Paine on free speech: “He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”

Peter Fusco U2 Political Science & Jewish Studies VP External, JSSA, AUS Council

Albaugh’s column may have been unclear to some readers. An activist author should not assume that “most people who read The Daily can learn more online” and decline to “educate people about details” essential to their message. Prebil merely recommended that Albaugh avoid preaching to the choir and try to reach some new ears. Albaugh’s ultimatum for the public editor to “do his job or abandon ship” is backed only by the petty complaint that he dare criticize their column. Quinn Albaugh needs to be open to constructive criticism or abandon ship.

Alex Weisler U2 History & Geography

Adequate, shmadequate Re: “Research policy still in flux” | News | February 11 I would like to make a correction to the article “Research policy still in flux.”

The fourth paragraph in the article said, “There was a general consensus among the administration and senators that the new policy adequately addresses the problems that arose when the first draft was brought to Senate in November.”

In fact, the consensus was that there were improvements in the policy, but it still does not adequately address the problems that arose.

The largest issue senators had with the first draft presented in November was that it had removed the regulation, which requires that “[a]pplicants for contracts or grants whose source is a government military agency shall indicate on the check list/approval form of the Office of Technology Transfer or the Research Grants Office whether this research has direct harmful consequences.”

The McGill administration and Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) Denis Thérien’s team obviously tried to brush these concerns aside by including them ever so vaguely and briefly in the preamble.

According to Darin Barney, Faculty of Arts senator and professor in the department of art history and communications studies, there is a lot of “interpretative latitude and flexibility” in preamble language.

This implies that there is a gaping loophole in the new policy that will allow research funded by the military, pharmaceutical companies, and the asbestos mining industry, among other private corporations, to slip by and have a detrimental and devastating impact on global and societal wellbeing.

Instead of adequately addressing our concerns, the new policy is adequately showing the administration’s lack of concern.

Stephanie Law MSc Epidemiology II

In the article “Research policy still in flux” (News, February 11), it was incorrectly stated that “[there] was a general consensus among the administration and senators that the new policy adequately addresses the problems that arose when the first draft was brought to Senate in November.” The new policy in fact addresses some, but not all, of the problems that arose with the first draft.

The Daily regrets the errors.

The Daily received more letters than it could print this issue. The rest will appear in the next issue – but only if you send us enough letters in the meantime, so get writing. Send your dispatches to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print letters that are islamophobic, ableist, misogynistic, or otherwise.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

16

Power in mass mindsets Can random number generators detect global consciousness?

The Split Brain Daniel Lametti events the project has looked at since it began, the odds against the array randomly producing the numbers it did are more than a million to one – like winning the lottery, being struck by lightning, or drowning in your bathtub.

T

he Global Consciousness Project grew from research performed by Nelson and other scientists in the 1980s at the nowclosed Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory. The PEAR lab was particularly interested in determining if human consciousness could alter the behaviour of machines. In one experiment, subjects were shown random numbers on a display and asked to try – by thinking – to raise or lower the numbers they saw. Remarkably, the researchers claimed they found a small but statistically significant effect.

In the 1990s, Nelson trucked REGs to famous holy sites around the world and set them running; he even brought one inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. He then compared the results to data he collected at more mundane locations – business meetings and academic gatherings. To him, the findings seemed clear: an REG running inside the Great Pyramid, for whatever reason, produced numbers that were more non-random than one running in a boardroom.

Based on his earlier work in the PEAR lab, Nelson speculated that the effect might be related to coherent thoughts that create a sort of group consciousness powerful enough to throw the REGs off.

Then, when Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash and the world reacted with a huge outpouring of grief, Nelson decided to test his theory on a larger scale. He asked 14 of his friends and colleagues that happened to have REGs to collect data during the six-hour televised funeral. The result was small, but significant. The REGs spat out numbers that normally would only

Compiled by Diane Salema with data from noosphere.princeton.edu

The jagged curve on the graph shows how non-random these results really are. If the data generated were truly random, the jagged line would instead zigzag above and below the horizontal line.

occur once in 100 tries – enough to convince Nelson to set up a permanent array of REGs around the world to record a history of the effect.

I

spoke with Nelson over Skype at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. We’d planned to talk the night before but he postponed the conversation through a one-sided flurry of emails, reneged on the postponement, and then, 15 minutes later, re-postponed our interview. “Sorry about the seemingly random fluctuations,” he wrote rather fittingly after we’d finally settled on a time to chat.

Secured on the line, Nelson launched into a description of the random number generators he’s made a career studying, quickly pointing out that they are not based on computer algorithms as most people assume.

“We set up a circuit that pushes electrons against a barrier,” he said.

“A few electrons do what is called quantum tunneling; they appear on the other side of the barrier in a fashion that is only explainable using quantum mechanics. It’s a completely unpredictable phenomenon.”

If some scientists consider the project controversial – and many do – it’s typically not because of Nelson’s math. All the data from the experiment is available to the public on a web site Nelson maintains, and his statistics have been independently analyzed. But he runs into trouble when he tries to explain how group consciousness, if there even is such a thing, might make the output from his array less random.

Before interviewing him, I had confidently surmised (largely based on a careful study of the final LukeVader battle scene in The Empire Strikes Back) that coherent thought might create a disruptive electromagnetic field, perturbing the REGs like a radio in a room full of microwaves.

“The devices are designed to be

not susceptible to electromagnetic fields,” Nelson replied flatly, deflating my hypothesis. They are, he explained, incased in heavy shielding, and frequently tested to make sure that electrical devices can’t influence them.

But if the shielding solves one problem, it creates another that causes most of the controversy surrounding the project: if the REGs can’t be influenced at a distance by any known particle that exists within the laws of physics, then what causes the effect?

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

A

s a 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook Haiti last month, a desktop computer in a New Jersey basement rapidly collected data from a worldwide array of cigarette pack-sized devices, each designed to spit out one random number per second.

Strangely, for several hours after the earthquake struck, the devices seemed to malfunction; the stream of usually unpredictable numbers became suddenly predictable.

This network of random event generators, or REGs, is part of a controversial experiment known as the Global Consciousness Project.

The project was started in 1998 by Roger Nelson, then a professor of engineering at Princeton.

Nelson, who is now retired and runs the project from an office in his basement, claims that when major events occur in the world – the death of Princess Diana, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the inauguration of Barack Obama – his array of REGs suddenly starts spitting out numbers that he can show are mathematically non-random.

The statistical evidence is compelling. Averaged over the 321

L

ast October, Nelson posted a note on his web site: the project’s Wikipedia entry, he wrote, had been highjacked, “becoming the focus of biased editors with an agenda.” In just over 2,000 words – twice the number of words in the Wikipedia entry – he carefully rebutted every altered piece of information in the article that he deemed false or misleading.

“They seem pretty sure that this is all hogwash, nonsense, and craziness,” Nelson said about the rogue Wikipedia editors. “What we do is a step beyond the ordinary psychology of experience; it touches areas that some people react to. But really good scientists tend to have quite a different response – they’re likely to be interested.”

As we wrapped up our interview, I asked him if the controversy ever caused him to doubt his own work. “I’m confident that the results are good solid science,” he replied, stopping to think for a second. “The interpretation of the results as some kind of an indicator that there is global consciousness – about that, I have plenty of doubts.”

Daniel Lametti’s column will be back again in March. Until then, you can share your REG hypotheses with him at thesplitbrain@ mcgilldaily.com.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, Febrary 15, 2010

17

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Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

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Miscellaneous Psychology professors and grad/ undergrad students. Can you help a psychology student, senior citizen, who was assaulted and robbed. All psychology texts were stolen. Donations of used/old undergrad and grad psychology books urgently needed. An old copy of DSM III will be deeply appreciated. Please call: 514-2772029. Thank you.

David Zuluaga Cano The McGill Daily

I

t’s a lot easier to disprove a theory than to prove it. Many scientific models rest on educated guesses – sometimes little more than large assumptions – that can explain phenomena in the real world, but these invisible mechanisms are only good as long as experimental observation cannot contradict them. Liberal economics has the invisible hand, evolutionary biology has natural selection, and, for astrophysics, there is dark energy.

Dark energy is a hypothetical type of energy that, according to the current space-time model, makes up approximately 74 per cent of the total mass-energy in the universe. The existence of dark energy is a key component of the theories that make up our current understanding of the universe. Astrophysicists know from observing supernovae (bright stellar explosions) not only that the universe is expanding, but that it is doing so at an increasing rate.

When this was first established in 1998, scientists were baffled – the observations seemed to contradict gravity. All objects with mass attract one another, so assuming our universe is still expanding from the Big Bang, the rate of expansion should be decreasing in the absence of outside forces. Gravity would be trying to pull all mass together.

There are two competing theories that would account for this accelerating expansion, and both hinge on the presence of dark

energy. The first theory, the cosmological constant, comes from Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Stricken from Einstein’s universebalancing equation when Edwin Hubble – after whom the NASA telescope is named – confirmed in 1929 that neighbouring galaxies are moving away from us, the cosmological constant has since come into vogue again. It represents a kind of energy reservoir. So a positive value for the constant would, mathematically speaking, result in an accelerated expansion of empty space.

One of the biggest problems with the cosmological constant theory, however, is that the amount of energy required to drive the expansion is not consistent with observations gathered by NASA’s Voyager probes. Moreover, some scientists argue that if this kind of acceleration had been present at the beginning of the universe, stars and galaxies could not have formed.

A competing theory takes a different approach. It posits that the universe is filled with a fluid-like substance, named quintessence, which has a negative gravitational mass. This theory has been thus far unsuccessful in working out some of the simpler models.

Dark energy is not only central to explaining the shape and behaviour of the universe – it may also eventually be the cause of its demise. Some astrophysicists theorize that, when the density of the dark energy present in the universe becomes great enough, all matter will eventually be reduced to its elementary particles. This theory, dubbed the Big Rip, holds that the outward acceleration caused

by this dense “phantom energy” will be strong enough to tear apart everything in the universe – down to the atomic level.

Not all scientists agree with this prediction. Anton Baushev, from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia, argues that current models can be interpreted to show that the aging of the universe will not necessarily produce this gravitational effect.

“Even if the phantom energy prevails in the universe, the Big Rip does not necessarily occur,” writes Baushev in a recent article in the journal Physics Letters B. “A more probable outcome of the cosmological evolution is the decay of the phantom field into ‘normal’ matter.”

Scientists hope to learn more about the nature of dark energy through an experiment that is taking place at the Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory in Chile.

The Dark Energy Survey Project, an international consortium of universities and government institutions, is building a massive camera that will allow the observatory’s telescope to take very precise measurements of the redshift of distant stellar bodies – that is, the change in the wavelength of light that occurs when the light-emitter and the lightobserver are at motion in respect to one another.

The data gathered by this $35-million apparatus will allow them to calculate the dark energy density to a precision margin of five to 15 per cent, bringing physicists one step closer to figuring out how well this theory represents reality.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

18

Powering up again Conserving the architecture behind yesterday’s consumption Naomi Endicott The McGill Daily

T

he regeneration of industrial areas has certainly been in vogue recently. Developers have taken full advantage of yuppies’ love for exposed brick and conversation starters like “My dining room used to be a blast furnace,” and their efforts show in pretty much every major city.

Toronto has the Distillery District, London has Bankside – home of more modern art galleries than you can shake a sheep’s carcass at – and even McGill has Solin Hall, a former factory that has produced chocolate, kites, and plastic bottles in years past.

Renovating fossil-fuel power plants can be a particularly great success. The Tate Modern in Bankside, London, is housed in a former oil-burning power station.

Since its opening in 2000, the Tate Modern has turned a dilapidated area in the full grip of deindustrialization into a cultural mecca. Not only is this an example of the beneficial reuse of an existing building, it refreshes our minds as to why early 20th-century industrial buildings should be preserved. Bankside, a treasured example of early 20thcentury architecture, was a major work of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott – arguably the greatest British architect since Sir Christopher Wren, seeing as he also designed the iconic red telephone box.

Raphäel Fischler, associate professor at McGill’s School of Urban Planning, emphasized that there is a major difference between renovating individual buildings and regenerating entire areas. He cited St. Laurent lofts as an example of the former, and Griffintown and St-Henri as the latter. “In the first case,” he said, “the challenge is related to the financial viability...in the second case, the challenge is also related to the potential transformation of a neighbourhood.” In regards to the latter practice, its gentrifying side effects have become synonymous with the architectural renewal it provides. As Fischler explained, “In old industrial areas, rents tend to be low; bringing…renovated buildings means introducing households with higher incomes.”

The resulting rise in house prices dramatically affects existing residents: even if they can still afford their houses (and in a city such as Montreal where so many properties are rented rather than owned, this is often unlikely), children are forced elsewhere when they leave home.

The most profitable oppor-

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Buildings from chocolate factories to coal plants can be turned into projects as diverse as residences and art galleries. tunities lie in recycling industrial buildings into residences, as exemplified by Toronto’s Distillery District. But the benefits aren’t all so mercenary. Adam Feldman was the Project Architect with architectsAlliance, who were involved in developing the residential areas of the Distillery District: constructing condominiums on the edges of the site, “to help with the vibrancy of the neighbourhood.” But, he added, “Part of that, unfortunately, was the demolition of an old rackhouse [whisky aging] building from the twenties, but the problem...was there was no way to adaptively reuse it.”

Fischler explained that “in many cases, taking down the building to make room for a new project is the best way to go, [for example]

the demolition of the old General Motors plant in Boisbrilland.”

Regarding the future redevelopment of residences, Feldman predicted that legalities of ownership would be a greater hurdle to regeneration than architecture.

“That’s going to be the biggest thing to see – when these buildings get toward the end of their life it’s difficult because it’s a group of people.…[The condominiums] are built very durable.” He admitted that “Toronto has a very different relationship with old buildings than Montreal does – we haven’t preserved and maintained them nearly as well.”

But nonetheless, industrial buildings – particularly energy infrastructure, from the early 20th century – are a far cry from mod-

ern ones. Cleaning up coal-fuelled power plants is much easier than making deactivated nuclear plants safe. Although the energy that fossil fuel-powered plants produce is undeniably detrimental to the environment, the structures still have the advantage of being recyclable.

They provide cheap brownfield (previously developed) land that is usually eligible for government grants, with popular appeal for its heritage value. In stark contrast, redeveloping the new generation of power plants can involve an offputting rigamarole, and their locations are isolated from public spaces; earlier power stations are almost universally in prime locations because residential areas and towns sprang up around them.

Of course, “new generation”

rather refers to the nuclear plants of the late 20th century, which are now becoming obsolete. Truly “green” plants – those processing, wind and solar power, et cetera – are so recent a development that they are nearly all still operational. In addition, these green power plants have such an exact design – compare a hydroelectric dam, which could not possibly serve any other purpose, to a coal-burning plant that could be recycled into anything from an art gallery to several hundred condominiums. We will have to wait for decades to see the full consequences of new design in industrial architecture, but in the meantime, we’re running out of old buildings to redevelop, and new land is becoming increasingly rare and desirable as a commodity.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

19

The source A walk through the city’s vanishing energy centre

Jessie Marchessault for The McGill Daily

Anna Graham Culture Writer

W

ith a little gust of wind, molecules of oil refinery leftovers are wafted into your nose. Maybe if you live in the area, you cease to appreciate the fine bouquet. I can only imagine what it’s like on breezy, hot summer days. The Montreal-Est Refinery takes up a lot of room, and most of it is wide open space, presided over by tall industrial buildings and stacks that glitter like snippets of Vegas at night. Located a 20-minute bus ride east of Honoré-Beaugrand metro on Sherbrooke, the refinery is Shell Canada’s largest, and

has been in operation since 1933.

According to an article on Shell’s web site, it produces “gasoline, distillates, jet fuel, lubricating oils, waxes, and bitumen.” In 1933, it processed 5,000 barrels of crude oil per day (bpd), but increasing demand, coupled with numerous expansions and advances in technologies, means the refinery now pumps out more than 130,000 bpd. From as far away as Parc Thomas Chapais, about three kilometres west, you can see the clouds of gases rising above houses.

These clouds are made of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, benzene, and volatile hydrocarbons. In the nineties, Environment Canada found that the levels of benzene

and other hydrocarbons were “a growing health concern.” Although measures have been taken to reduce emissions, there were still 10 tons of benzene launched into the atmosphere in 2003. According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, long term benzene exposure can cause reduced circulation of red, white, and clotting blood cells, and leukemia.

Despite better health standards, demand for oil has actually dropped recently as a result of the economic recession. Shell announced in January that the plant will be converted into a fuel terminal, meaning it will serve as an oasis for gas stations, airports, and other clients in

the area.

The refinery is a massive, but tucked away, monument to society’s energy greed. The contrast between downtown Montreal and Montreal-Est is striking. Downtown is dense, tall, historic, and social; Montreal-Est is open, flat, utilitarian, and inorganic. Downtown sucks energy into itself like an overeager child with a slushie; Montreal-Est serves that slushie. Montreal-Est is a lonely area, and not hospitable to the visitor on foot; it is a landscape that has been sacrificed and hidden to support the maintenance of a more picturesque one.

However, walking along the side of Sherbrooke (which is more like a highway in that part of the city), it

is difficult not to grasp how integral oil refineries are to our daily lives.

We don’t like to see where our energy comes from, or what the waste products are – we don’t like to meet the cow we’re about to eat – but it’s a valuable dose of the reality about the price we have to pay for modern comforts. After all, those clouds of gas travel – even if they’re usually invisible by the time they float over downtown Montreal.

Now, with the refinery closing, the area will serve a slightly different purpose, but ultimately one that serves the same goal – to be the kitchen for our energy appetites. If the refinery was a stove before, now it will be a server. And the smell might be better.

own water tank and an extensive garden – making it completely off the grid. In an interview with Babcock, Nabob said, “I know I sound like a hippie going back to nature…[but] this lifestyle has the best karma for me. I look outside and have a relationship to the land.

In the city, water and electricity are metered. Walking down the sidewalk, chances are there’s a camera pointed on me. Where do I draw the line between capitalism and what I define as freedom?”

The album, called one of the ten best albums of 2008 by UNCUT in the U.K., was recorded entirely using solar power. The lyrics contrast bucolic images of the American southwest with haunting undertones of anti-coal and anti-nuclear sentiment. Their meagre, understated way of life is reflected in the music they make.

Propelled by crawling baselines,

slow horns, trembling piano, and Nabob’s ambient vocalization, there is a simplicity and ease reflected in it – a comfort with the surroundings, sparse and simple though they may be.

What sets Nabob and Hughes apart from other activists is that their dedication to the environment is not merely a cause they are championing, but a lifestyle in which they have completely immersed themselves. They are not the sort of celebrities who speak out against poverty, only to return to lives of extravagance and excess. They are devoting themselves to something they truly believe in, completely altering the way they live. Though, as Nabob revealed to Entrepreneur, there are times when the solar power gives out mid-rehearsal.

These are the times he pulls out the acoustic guitar and plays under the light of the oil lamps.

The desert light sound Brightblack Morning Light and their self-sustaining lifestyle Tim Beeler Culture Writer

N

athan “Nabob” Shineywater sung every word of his most recent tour with an arrowhead resting in his mouth. “I was not singing for war, but to engage the spirit of the maker of the arrowhead itself, to offer up Peace, that his warrior effort find a new respect, and to help my own warrior spirit sing in Peace,” he writes on his label’s web site. Nabob, the lead singer of the critically-acclaimed and nearly indefinable alternative/ southern/gospel/easy listening band Brightblack Morning Light, has taken many steps toward reducing his impact on the environment – all as non-traditional as his music.

He and his bandmate and lifelong friend, Rachel “Rabob” Hughes, are committed to touring, recording,

and living in an environmentallyneutral way.

Much of this sentiment undoubtedly comes from Nabob and Hughes’ connection – and subsequent disillusionment with – rural Alabama, where they both grew up. On their web site, they say, “We both left [Alabama] for the same reason, the environmental degradation due to corporate development is staggering & unchecked, it makes us disgusted. However, in the Western USA we are gathered with the many folks to protect wilderness, rivers & oceans. Ecology has a place in the West’s culture, even if it’s on a small scale right now.” This intimate relationship with nature is evident in the lives of both individuals. Before the band started growing in popularity, Nabob enjoyed a nomadic lifestyle, sleeping on the beach or in tents upon returning from tours.

Brightblack Morning Light has

made touring a green initiative as well. There is a standing notice on the band’s web site: “If we are playing your town and you have some new information specifically on local environmental justice issues, please approach the band’s vending table with any printed pamphlets explaining the issue with ways folks can take action.” Recently, the band has also started purchasing carbon credits to counteract the unavoidable pollution produced as a result of travelling.

After returning from the tour in support of their album Motion to Rejoin, it was not the beach that Nabob turned to – but instead an adobe house in a remote and unpopulated area powered by only four solar panels. Described

by Jay Babcock in a recent feature for Arthur magazine, the house is twenty minutes from the nearest paved road and complete with its

20Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

A voice crying in the wilderness Kira Josefsson The McGill Daily

T

he tag line of Chris Smith’s documentary Collapse tells us that every great civilization has experienced a downfall.

And it’s true: Rome, the USSR, the British Empire, even the kingdom of the dinosaurs eventually collapsed.

Michael Ruppert, radical thinker or conspiracy theorist, depending on who you ask, predicts that the industrial world is on the brink of just such a collapse. Nearly the entire film consists of Ruppert, chain smoking on a lone chair in an empty warehouse, explaining why he thinks that the end of the world as we know it is very near.

Ruppert left his job as a Los Angeles police officer in the late 1970s after having blown the whistle on a CIA drug smuggling scandal.

Deeply disappointed by the lack of effective response, he turned to investigative journalism instead, and in 1998 started the blog “From the Wilderness.” The blog’s objective is to cover controversial and otherwise unreported news, often linked to the theory of peak oil and its consequences. Simply stated, the peak oil movement argues that we are at or past the point of maximum global petroleum extraction, and that from now on, the extraction rate will only decline, until the world’s oil fields are finally depleted.

This is very bad news. The decline will be much faster than the climb, and our society is extremely dependent on petroleum. It functions not only as fuel, but also as a fundamental component of the plastic materials with which things like bottles or tires are produced. The objects that aren’t made of petroleum were manufactured and transported with the aid of petroleum poweredvehicles. Even something apparently immaterial like the Internet is dependent on oil for the building and fuelling of servers. Because of petroleum’s omnipresence, the world economy is tightly linked to the world’s oil supplies, and, peak oil activists claim, the depletion of them is the fundamental cause of economic crises like the one that started in 2008.

Without oil, the world would effectively stop functioning and chaos would ensue; most people agree on this much. However, the peak oil theory is not endorsed by all (although the loudest voices

rejecting it completely are major oil companies whose livelihood depends on the continued belief in the sustainability of a petroleumbased society), and even among the supporters, not everyone believes that the turning point is as close as Ruppert and his colleagues claim. Even more controversially, Ruppert says that most of the world’s governments are aware of peak oil and its urgency and are keeping their populations ignorant – either because they want to stave off panic, or because they have too much to profit from the status quo.

It is difficult to assess with certainty the veracity of Ruppert’s predictions, in part due to the denialist or apathetic approaches most commentators take to the issue. Either we are told that global warming is a sham, that the recession is over and that things are going back to normal – no need to worry, keep driving your SUV with an Evian in hand – or, perhaps more commonly, media solicits attention through alarmist but insubstantive reporting on melting ice caps and housing foreclosures, without getting to the root of the problem which binds these events together. Mainstream media’s alleged concerns over the precarious state of the world don’t really take us anywhere, as evidenced by the miserable failure of the Copenhagen talks, despite scores of media attention. Sure, we are aware that something is happening, but it seems as though the status quo is bad, but tenable; the problem, if it exists, becomes trivialized and it looks as though we could go on living like this forever.

Is there anyone who gains from this sensationalist but impotent reporting? Not to sound conspiratorial or anything, but it does seem like the only clear effect of mainstream greenwashing is that more newspapers get sold.

Ruppert may seem like a doomster, but his stance is not motivated by profit. And if we really do think that the environmental and financial crises are worrying, perhaps we should start listening to people like him when they tell us to connect the dots, pointing toward rapidly decreasing oil reserves. Perhaps, as they advocate, radical action must be taken. At least they don’t try to convince us that consumption, whether it is buying a reusable coffee mug or an environmentally friendly car, will save the world.

Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

New documentary profiles peak oil prophet

Michael Ruppert predicts that the collapse of our global, petroleum-based economy is not far off.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

CULTURE BRIEF Future jazz

Fusions have been ubiquitous in popular culture for many years; from Cuban-Asian cuisine to raprock to jeggings (yes, the jeans/ leggings hybrid) – they’re usually pretty questionable in quality.

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music and Technology (CIRMMT), however, has faith in fusion. This Wednesday, they’re producing a concert that exhibits fusion music with a more traditional precedent. The CIRMMT is bringing Andy Milne and Benoit Delbecq to the stage, a pair of master jazz pianists who incorporate live electronics into their performance.

“Live electronics,” you wonder?

Like, robots? Not quite. Though it may not be – thank God – the Transformers film on stage, Milne and Delbecq improvise jazz in a contemporary manner while experimenting with art and audio technology, using both electronic synthesizers and computers. This means you are likely to see some bizarre and beautiful instruments on stage during their performance.

Primarily, though, Milne and Delbecq perform on an acoustic piano. The sound they propound is somewhere between poppy synth and Cuban, African, funk and hip hop infused jazz. The effect produced has led the New York Times to dub their music “strangely beautiful.”

All the aforementioned influences come together to provide a concert experience that promises to be not only aurally pleasing but also visually immersing.

Taking into account texture, timbre, space, and time, the duo engage with the spaces they play in using an individual approach each time in order to ensure that every performance is unique.

More so than any other fusion you are likely to come across, Milne and Delbecq’s music maintains a harmonious relationship between its various elements.

Though their work may seem complicated in its description, its elegant complexity is exactly what makes it exciting music to see performed.

Andy Milne and Benoit Delbecq perform on February 17 at 8p.m. at Pollack Hall (555 Sherbrooke O.).

—Zara Meerza

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

From the quill to construction CCA exhibition examines the relationship between writing and architecture Sophie Furse Culture Writer

A

Accelerate you future with the Diploma in Accounting Program (DAP) at the University of British Columbia.

DAP prepares university graduates with limited or no training in accounting for entry into a professional accounting designation (CA, CGA, CMA or CPA in the US).

21

rchitecture and writing are not the two most similar concepts. Glance at an architecture student’s portfolio and you will see it consists of intense, almost constipatedly detailed drawings, with text relegated to illegible corners. Moreover, architecture students are the only undergraduates that spend all-nighters fixing models rather than in coffee shops hunched over their notes. However, there is a creative and conceptual legacy powering these drawings and models, one that is born out of a writing movement that originated with a few thinkers in the sixties and seventies. These architects sought to supplement, counteract, or explore the conceptual potential of architecture through articles, books, new institutions, drawings... and jokes.

An exhibition called “Take Note” is currently on display at the Canadian Centre of Architecture (CCA), and centres on the this movement. Beginning with essays such as “Notes on Conceptual Architecture” (1970) by Peter Eisenman, the movement was propagated by the founding of academic institutions such as the Institute for Urban Studies and Architecture by Eisenman in 1967. The movement’s landmark contributors, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Bruce Mau, Bow Wow, and Frank Gehry,

produced publications that continue to impact modern architecture. These professionals mixed or supplemented architectural design with conceptual, graphic, and academic publication.

“Take Note” offers some interesting archival material from the sixties onward, in the same footnoted style of Eisenman’s “Notes of Conceptual Architecture.” Annotated drafts of Eisenman’s book include the salient advice, “this is bullshit,” written by Rosalind Krauss as she edited a particular paragraph. Although many of her scribblings were obeyed, the “bullshit” was, in the end, published, and can be seen in the display cabinet above. Also amusing are the Bernard Tschumi Advertisement for Architecture posters from 1976-78.

Although it may be hard for some to agree that “architecture is the ultimate erotic act,” as one poster states, Tschumi pairs eye-catching photographs with cryptic architectural quips, which, if nothing else, serve to ignite architectural curiosity. The poster that reads, “To really appreciate architecture you may even need to commit murder” shows a woman throwing a man out of a window. Intellectually, this relates to the concept that form, dictated by architects, can never shape how a building is used, or how the life inside it is experienced. For the layperson, the work has the same amusing yet sinister effect as all Tschumi’s graphics.

Another poster shows a man who is tied up, coupled with the words,

“the rules of architecture have the erotic significance of bondage. The more numerous and significant the restraints the greater the pleasure.”

So at least it gives the viewer insight onto what architects enjoy.

Typifying the word-and-architecture relationship at the exhibition is a full diagram from the 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas that shows a dense strip of bars, restaurants, and hotels in the middle of the city. The diagram of overlapping words represents the spatial relation of signs on top of the buildings to their position on the strip. These signs made modernist buildings decorative, articulating their function and form through signage. As a whole, the book hoped to rebuke orthodox, functional modernism, in part by pointing out that architecture was bringing back ornamentation through its grandiose signage. Hence the diagram, which only consists of the sign names, successfully conveys the architectural significance of words in architectural study.

The CCA exhibition might not blow you away, but the building itself houses an interesting collection and it makes a nice change from the Museum of Contemporary Art if you need a contemporary culture fix.

Make sure you check out the Rem Koolhaas lectures for exciting stuff; or his books Delirious New York, S,M,L,XL, or Content to get your own little piece of architectural history.

“Take Note” is on display through May 30 at the CCA (1920 Baile).

Culture meetings Tuesdays 5:30 Shatner B-24

Compendium!

22

The McGill Daily, Monday, February 15, 2010

Lies, half-truths, and power/knowledge

Girl Talk » McGill Daily editors, this reporter unimpressed Mémène Sansfaçon The McGill Daily

1: Non-cafeteria is no good!!

Fuck you, RVC non-caf. If I want to wear my goddamn slippers downstairs to the row of shelves holding the pomegranates (that you can’t even eat without a fucking knife and a sink beneath you) and muffins in the common room, I’ll do it. Don’t tell me it’s a cafeteria (simply because it’s open for a few more hours) and that I have to wear proper shoe attire just to access the little food we have in the first place.

What is the concern, really? Is the floor too clean for me to be walking around in my socks? Are my slippers going to contaminate all of the prepackaged foods you’re serving us?

If you’re going to decide not to refund me any of my rent this year, fine. If you’re going to say that I only get to keep two hundred unspent dollars of the EIGHT HUNDRED that I will probably have left to put on my meal plans next year, fine. If you’re going to hold off opening the cafeteria until the last week of February at the earliest, fine.

BUT I’M NOT PUTTING ON MY FUCKING SHOES BECAUSE IT’S NOT EVEN A REAL CAF.

2: Your student fees at dinner

A

fter promising that “even The Daily will like” SSMU’s super secret concert this spring, SSMU VP Internal B’Lex Arown tweeted excitedly that Girl Talk’s coming (and tickets are only $10).

According to B-24 insiders, The Daily’s not as totally excited as promised.

“Well, they’re no post-industrial Kosmiche, but whatevs,” said Culture editor Gaston-Marie LaFleur. “We might write a brief if our interview with this guy...Foo....

Foucault falls through – which is likely, because apparently he died.”

A student sitting in Cultural Studies Café who said she “might go” to Girl Talk cited “insider” blog Hipster Runoff, which said Girl Talk has become the music of choice for “altbros” and “has entered the genre of ‘music that uninteresting people like in order to seem more interesting.’”

“Greg Gillis is dead to me,” she said. “But I supposed if SSMU really wanted he Daily to like their concert, they coulda asked TONSTARTSSBANDHT or Pop Winds or some combination thereof or Marx and Adorno or something.”

This reporter, for one, was so unimpressed that her editor ignored her for a week and now this story is old.

Apparently a faculty asSUSciation took another SSMUdent association out for a nice dinner at the Keg! And that dinner cost $800! And they weren’t even working! I’m really glad that for all the yelling that goes on about accessible education, tuition fees, and transparency, really tasty bribes ahem meals can still be shared between hierarchical groups. I’m sorry, but FUCK THIS. Fuck This! is a therapeutic anonymous rant column, not necessarily about cafeterias and shit. Send your 200-word-or-less rants every week to compendium@mcgilldaily.com. Anonymity guaranteed, but nothing hateful – just frustrated!

Don’t make me laugh!

BUT ACTUALLY DO MAKE ME LAUGH. compendium@mcgilldaily.com

Valentine’s Day sucks!

Text: Télésphore Sansouci / Illustration: Nadezhda Poplawskaja | The McGill Daily

Joyeuse St-Valentin!

Across

The Crossword Fairies

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1. Dead centre?

5. Helping theorem 10. Come clean, with “up” 14. Arabic for “commander” 15. ___ like the plague 16. Face-to-face exam 17. Acute 18. Pasta choice 19. Breakfast joint lady 20. Yesterday 23. Cultivated land 24. Secluded valleys 25. Gets money for a cheque 28. Anger 30. Bellum, chamber, ater 31. Adult insect 33. One of a couple 36. Hypercube home 40. Football lineman 41. No __ barred 42. Biblical birthright seller 43. ___ hJon (tetler) 44. Undiluted 46. Physical attribute of 42-across, en francais 49. Replenish, perhaps with liquor 51. Achieved goals 57. Gab 58. Petrol unit 59. Indian bread 60. Sea eagles 61. Broadcasting 62. Novice 63. ___ lily

64. The Queen’s coins 65. School zone sign

Down

34. Horse color 35. Like a bug in a rug 37. Monotonous guitar strum 38. Coal carrier 39. Slytherin mascots 43. The Tempest king 44. V=(4/3)(pi)(r3) 45. Belly button location 46. Treasure map distances 47. Autumn color 48. Cake topper 49. Prometheus, for one 50. Hamlet courtier 52. Failed skipping stone sound 53. Ancestry 54. Do perfectly 55. Hawaiian tuber 56. Falling flakes

1. Bill & ___ Excellent Adventure 2. Fail to mention 3. Multiple Independentlytargeted Reentry Vehicle 4. You sit down to take one 5. Shirt parts 6. Curling, e.g.

7. Three per season 8. Short skirt 9. Gulf of ___, off the coast of Yemen 10. Forward part of a ship 11. Grind down 12. It’s a wrap 13. Kills, as Solution to “Sugar never tasted so good” a dragon 21. Deception U T A H D E F E R S A R I 22. Encourage R O B E A L O N E C R A M 25. Study P I C O T A S I A I D E A location?

C O L D S H O U L D E R I N G 26. Soon, W O N T S L A S S O to a bard A F F I N E S T A B 27. __ muffin C L A N S H E E N H U E 28. St. Louis H A R D H E A R T E D N E S S team A N G S T I R E S E G O 29. Cause of D U D E D E C O D E wrinkles S P A R K A L G I N 31. Doing F I R S T L I E U T E N A N T nothing A N D R E A R E A O N E S 32. Central 33. Japanese R O G E R M I S C O G E E soup K N E E S E A S T T O T S