Who killed the electric car?

Well besides the provocative title, the movie though not as powerful or professionally done as other muckracing movies of late, does provoke a lot of questions about the future of the automobile.

There are a few conspiracy theory type moments, like the revelation that GM destroyed all of its electric cars, and one of the big moments is when the vigil surrounding the last 78 EV1 (electric cars), which happened to be stored in one parking lot are taken to the middle of the desert and destroyed.


In general this movie stays away from conspiracy theories and concentrates on the central issues. It attempts to prove that there was demand for the electric car, and the interviews with several of the owners proves only that there were some who loved the car, and that the potential was there to build that demand.

The movie also attempts to prove that the limitations on the car were real, but the dificulties were possible to overcome.

Of course Big Oil is given a role as one of the guilty parties in destroying the electric car, but not a very prominent one. The big bad guy is the head of the California Air Resources Board. The board came up with the regulations which were to force the car companies to build electric (Zero emission vehicles) cars. These were repealed by this 'bad' guy (I can't remember his name) after there was heavy lobbying by oil companies and car companies and the fedreal government decided to sue california so that the regulation could not come into effect.

One of the funniest moments was when they showed the advertising for the electric car. The entire ad focused on the negatives and barely portrayed the positives of the car. With ads like that i'm not surprised it failed.

The entire movie endeavoured to show that GM effectively built a wonderful product but undermined it every step of the way. The main thread is that it threatened too many people, and in fact GMs entire product line would have been threatened.

It makes a rather compelling case, though the usual caveats about bias need to be mentioned as well.

I thought it was a good movie, well worth seeing.

The really really shocking thing for me, was the degree to whihc lobbyists have penetrated and really deformed (in John Ralston Saul's formulation) the democratic process. Every single public official in the movie was bought off by someone. It was disgusting. It is only at our peril that we imagine the same thing isn't true here in Canada.

Guess who bought an Ipod

Me...

That and meeting crazy Brent on the bus were pretty much the highlights of my week so far.

I bought the Ipod yesterday on a whim, and it's really nice, I'm not someone who has tons and tons of music, but i've been riping all my favorite tracks from ym Cds to my computer since I bought the new computer a month ago or so.

Wow is the Ipod really easy to use, I got a 2Gig one and it's black and so tiny!

And it does all sorts of fun things when you push the centre button

Nothing much to report...

Nothing much going on around here, had my girlfriend's brother up for a few days.

Went to go see the parliament buildings, and man is the library of parliament ever gorgeous now. What an impressive building. The tour had a few things I hadn't seen before as well, and we even got to go inside the house of commons.

I'm having trouble registering for my course at Carleton so i'm hoping that gets resolved soon.

That's all

Those wacky liberals

I have to say this isn't the most political of blogs, but I am someone who follows politics quite closely.

I think the Liberal leadership race is really a race among second tier candidates. Not that any of the candidates are second tier, but the fact of the matter is the timing is not good for any of them. There is also the fact that none of them are heavyweights within the liberal party, this may or may not be a good thing.

I think the liberals are really in a tough spot, they need to find someone who can grow the party, and who can stand up to Stephen Harper. I find it unlikely that Harper will allow the leader to get very comfortable before an election is called. He'll try to do what Chretien did to Stockwell Day, destroy the opponent before they even have a chance.

I think the Liberals need to take some time to reflect on why they lost to Stephen Harper, they haven't really begun that process yet.

I think the Liberals lost because they have no idea what thye stand for anymore. Canadian politics has been moving towards a more ideological politics which favours those on the left and on the right with strong ideologies. This environment doesn't favour a party without principles.

The liberals also have to face the fact that they cannot continue to talk left and act right forever. Someone has to realize the contradiction sooner or later. The hypocrisy is evident especially in their positions on Kyoto. We'll sign it but DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to acheive the goals, other than budget a bunch of money that will eventually be spent on something relating to Kyoto.

Will any of the leaders be able to create something coherent out of the current Liberal mess, well I certainly don't think so, nor would I want that job

Picture Post

Pictures from Kingston.. We did a boat cruise of the thousand Islands. Which from Kingston esentially consists of going to the thousand islands and as soon as you see them... turn around.. (and this takes 3 hrs) but anyways....

Fireworks!!!

I went to go see the Grand Feux du Casino at Lac Leamy today. It was fantastic, for only 10$ we got to see a 30 minute fireworks idsplay that was of an amazing quality.

Fireworks set to music with all sorts of special effects. We didn't get the full spectacle because of a tree in the way but it was amazing nonetheless.

In other news..well there isn't any.

Looking for some kind of engagement

I have spent the past week in 'training' for my new job. The training is really really tedious and boring, especially because I have had a smilar job in the not so recent past.

I have spent osme time therefore thinking about what I want in the future and what the job market looks like for people like me. This was further compounded by a discussion at work, about how a university degree is not enough as well as a recent article in the NY times about how a lot of older workers are unemployed and not working. (of course this points to a large problem about the accuracy of unemployment figures. In economic theory you have to be looking for a job to be considered unemployed. Only those who are actively looking are therefore counted in unemployment statistics.)

I finished reading Jeremy Rifkin's book The end of work a little while ago and it seems that the example from the NY times article seems to reinforce the immediacy of the problems that he identifies.

Now I don't want to get into a technical argument in this point, but I feel like there are few opportunities for young people these days to find decent work doing something engaging and actually getting paid a decent wage. Sure tons of NGOs hire people, but a lot of it is volunteer or low paying jobs.

I guess I shouldn't complain because I have a job, but I need to find something that engages me. I see a lot of people in my situation, they graduated from University and couldn't find anything in thier field and end up working a low-paid service industry job. I'm not knocking the service industry but it's starting to feel like a waste of my job. These are jobs that need to be done, but at the same time most of the jobs that are created nowadays are low paying, low skilled service jobs. Where have all the other jobs gone?

I think i'm a bit lucky because the boomers are strating to retire soon, so hopefully the shortage created by their loss will allow me to find something more meaningful. But i feel bad for many of the people 10 years ahead of me, they really seem to have been screwed by the boomers.

One thing I was also thinking about recently was how the move to 24 hour a day businesses, wether grocery stores, or shopping malls moving to later hours has provided a boom in service industry jobs. This can't continue forever, I wonder if anybody has done any research on anything like that.