TWO EXCELLENT ARTICLES IN TODAY'S K-W RECORD

The first is actually an Opinion piece by Dan Kraus a senior conservation biologist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada. It is titled "Think globally, conserve locally to help save a million species" and the second is by Josh Wingrove of Bloomberg News titled "Coal remains Canada's "dirty" little secret".

May 17 is World Endangered Species Day and a recent United Nations report by 455 scientists, researchers and experts has determined that one million species of either animals or plants are at risk of extinction. Extinction directly related to human activity which of course is significantly caused by human world wide population. Frankly we as a species are slowly killing everything else. This much needed reversal of habitat destruction and reduction in global biodiversity is negatively affecting we human beings as well. It is in everyone's and every living thing's interests to reverse this situation sooner than later. Nature provides benefits to human beings and in exchange we seem to do our very best to destroy nature.

Regarding the article on coal there are many ironies including Vancouver in British Columbia, long held as the hub of the Green movement in Canada, actually is also the hub of transportation of coal and crude oil. Oops! That takes some explaining and I suggest that this article does a fairly good job of doing that. Yes there are individuals getting filthy rich exploiting Canada's natural resources for their personal gain while the rest of us pay the environmental price. It is however not quite so black and white. There is a distinction made between "thermal" coal for electricity production (bad) and "metallurgical" coal used to make steel (good). To a certain point only I can understand that yes steel is a necessity for human beings however I also know that an awful lot of things are made with steel that certainly are not needed. You the readers can decide for yourselves how heavily you want to weigh "good" coal versus "bad" coal. You can also weigh how coal used for electricity is supposedly always bad whereas nuclear reactors producing electricity are always "good".

Two very interesting articles.