by Mike Thomas on March 9, 2009

This week I received a response to my Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Transportation in British Columbia. My request read:

Under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, I am requesting information including Ministry staff and/or consultant reports, Ministerial briefings, memorandums, emails, or other records on the topic of peak oil (declining fossil fuel availability, the price of oil, gas and diesel, and other related topics) and the impact on highway traffic volumes, traffic design standards, alternative transportation options and road maintenance and construction funding.

My intention in asking for this stemmed from a search on the Ministry of Transportation website for the phrase “Peak Oil” to which there are no results. I thought that surely it is in the public’s best interests to know what the Ministry intends to do with its assets worth billions of dollars (that are still being expanded), and can be maintained only with cheap, plentiful oil - not the likely situation in years to come, so I went through the Freedom of Information channel…

Apparently I bit off more than I can chew, and received an estimate that the cost of retrieving and photocopying this information was going to be $805.00. Click on the image to the right for an excerpt of the response. Read the complete Post.

VANCOUVER (January 29th, 2009) - A one-minute animated film made by a group of Vancouver filmmakers won the year-end “2008 People’s Choice Award” in the Friends of the Earth One-Minute Film Competition. Winners were announced in London, England by Friends of the Earth, an international organization seeking to inspire solutions to environmental problems.

Viewers from around the world voted for How to Boil a Frog as their favorite 60-second film among the top 10 entries shown online.  This “cheeky animation of a frog incensed by the world hotting up due to climate change” was written and produced by North Vancouver filmmaker, Jon Cooksey.  Cooksey has won a lunch in London with one of the judges, Trainspotting Producer Andrew MacDonald.  In describing the film, MacDonald said, “The animation How to Boil a Frog is professionally made and fun - it pulls viewers in and gets them thinking about climate change through its original entertaining style.”

How To Boil a Frog tells the story of Lou, a South American tree frog, who appears to be enjoying a Jacuzzi, until we see that he is the proverbial boiling frog, and the heat source is a burning Earth. Lou tastes the planet, and discovers the source of this global warming:  oil, factories, and cars. He yanks out the offending fossil-fuelled culprits, and bounces away on a happier planet.

Read the complete Post.

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