Ayles ice shelf , An Inconvient Truth and the need for a robust inner-city bus system in Southern Ontario

I heard that Ayles ice shelf separated from Ellesmere island over the Christmas break. That is only when it symbolically separated for the general public. It actually snapped free on August 19, 2005, proving we do have a bit of a time lag in our media reportage.

The Ayles ice shelf was the size of 11 000 football fields, or 60 km squared. I'm getting concerned about the environment. A month ago Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was shown during an environmental rally at Wilfrid Laurier University. It freaked me out for two reasons:

1) The climate change thing is real - it's above zero in January in Waterloo Canada right now (and it certainly ain't El Nino!). New Brunswick, where I would have been snowboarding in at least 3 feet of snow 10 years ago, has about an inch of snow. Ski hills from Ontario to NS can't open.

2) I've known about the green house effect since I was in grade 5 (1990) and I was somehow able to forget about the environment (at a political level) for the last 5 years. How was this done? 9/11. The old 9/11 smoke screen, erected so that a few key players can shovel shitloads of money into their portfolios while those poor enough not to be able to afford international space travel are left to sink in the global titanic.

Here's what pisses me off: Stop and go traffic 45 minutes outside of Toronto. I was looking around during the drive back from North Bay last week. I realized that the car is the shape of the nuclear family. We have the infrastructure to support a robust intercity bus system that would reduce traffic from the Waterloo, Guelph, London, Cambridge, etc... to Toronto by at least half, if it was subsidized by the government, and made as affordable as driving your own car. The Koreans have done it; albeit they are much more communitarian then we are. But I could do with being a bit more connected to people. The social element of modernity (or hyper or post - whatever) sucks. The bus would bring a little Durkheim back in our lives, a little society. And here is the selling line: you gain an extra two hours of productivity because the bus could be wifi compatible. Bring your laptop on the bus, do your business shit, read the paper. Screw the pooch on YouTube, at least you're not popping the clutch between first and second, stalling the car in stop and go (and inadvertently undermining the polar ice cap)

The infrastructure is there, it just needs to be utilized. The truth is the inconvenient truth isn't even all that inconvenient.