starting out to be a rough month. It’s only been 10 minutes into May. I forgot my reading glasses again at work or Anne cleaned out my bag and hid them on me while she’s having one of her mood swings. I’m able to see a reasonably even though things are a little blurry.

I went into work feeling fairly good. It was beautiful out there even though a little on the breezy side. We ended up doing baseball again into our 2nd week. After work I got in and there were lights on that were not on when I left, which told me Anne was home, sure enough. I watched Raw and she made me a nice lunch. Raw indecently was pretty good. On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate it a 7, good stuff.

Yesterday was a busy day what with the “new look” of the website and all and running over to use the pay phone to find out about why my gst cheaque was delayed. It’s being mailed May 4th, so add about 10 days after that.

I’m about to get political again. On Sunday I learned that Saturday everyone’s favorite gloom and doom poster boy Al Gore was in Toronto preaching to the party faithful the “dismal job” our Prime Minister is doing to handle climate change/global warming. Excuse me Al but who the hell are you an American to come to Canada and tell Canadians were not doing a good job combating so called global warming. How about cleaning up your own back yard before you come in here with your agenda telling us we’re not doing ours!

And there’s good ol David Suzuki giving the environment minister the evil eye. Basically this is all about one thing: Alberta’s oil and gas industry. Dave and the NDP greens want nothing less then have Ottawa shut down our oil and gas industry. Why: because Alberta is carrying the country economically. Our PM wants to by July 1st put a 12% cap on emissions, which will account for an annual loss of 5% of the GDP. Alberta can handle that with a reduction in oil revenues. It’ll slow our economy down but not by much. Now Jack of the NDP opposition says this is not enough he’s not happy with that, he wants it all. What this will mean is that it will devastate our economy. More importantly our local economy.   

I say it’s high time Alberta takes a good hard look at what Ottawa is doing to us (again). If we let Ottawa do this and pull the plug on our oil and gas industry, thanks to the NDP idiots and Albertan’s do nothing and let them, then Albertan’s are fools of the highest order and you get what you pay for.

So what’s the answer? Firstly Albertan’s need to see the forest for the trees. Albertan’s need to see the long term economic affects of what the Federal NDP plan on doing to our oil and gas industry. I’m sure I’m not the only Albertan that has lived as an adult during the early 1980’s. I recall vividly the disastrous affects the last time Ottawa interfered with our oil and gas industry. It took well over a decade to recover from it. If you’re an adult reading this and recall those times here in Alberta, this is what’s going to happen if the NDP get their way and pull the plug. The answer might be then for us as Albertan’s to take a good hard look at separating from the rest of Canada. We have the infrastructure in place as there are political voices here in Alberta that think and feel the same way I do. We have let Ottawa push us around for way to long now. It’s now time to stand up for a Free and independent Alberta. They need us more then we need them.

That’s why in my own limited way, I’m going to support the Alberta Separation Party. I’ve had enough of Ottawa dictating to us what we can and can’t do. We don’t need another variation of the National Energy Program just because Alberta is an embarrassment economically to the rest of Canada. We can go it alone. If BC wants to join us, then fine.

Some might say, well why all the big panic Jim? For the same reason I give above. The bulk of our economy here in Alberta is our oil and gas industry. Even if the price of a barrel of oil drops to $30 a barrel we know this is just economic cycles. Alberta is and has always since 1947 a boom and bust economy. And Ottawa has always tried to interfere in our business before many times. We’re basically on thin ice folks. Consider once the oil and gas industry here in Alberta is gone where will we get our fuel from? If Dave and his people have their way, all oil and gas activity here in Canada will end. And it won’t stop there. The greens want total collapse of all oil and gas activity world wide.

So step back a bit and think about the ramifications of this.

Us science fiction writers have a great capacity to see the future and if the environmentalists like Al Gore get their way, all oil and gas activity will die the way of the dinosaur the future doesn’t look good. Our economy our way of life will be transported back into the horse and buggy age. Lots of questions remain if this should happen. How do we get food to market? Since there is no way to transport food to Safeway how do we eat? The world we know it now will drastically change. And what about plastics? Plastics are made from the oil and gas industry. “But Jim, we don’t have to shut the whole oil and gas industry down. Just a bit when we need it.”  Sorry folks it doesn’t work that way. Big Oil isn’t just going to produce oil just for plastics. “But Jim we have ethanol.” Ethanol doesn’t work in all climates. And what are you going to do, take all farm country and turn it into massive ethanol farms? Impractical and it won’t satisfy even our nations energy needs little alone what we export. Not just this but I’m barely scratching the surface.

Okay, sorry for the long Rant but I’m just reacting to the big Al Gore do here in Toronto on Saturday.

Anyway, I’m going into work today for only a few hours and I’m bringing my copy of Rollback because I want to meet with Robert J Sawyer at Audrey’s books this evening. I’d like to bring Anne along with me but she’s sticking with her Wednesday hump day off. I’ll bring my camera along just in case I can get a photo of me and Rob together. I’m looking forward to this.   

This will probably be about it for me for Today.

 e. Jim