Six years after the Red Hill Expressway was built we take a look back at the situation that was the year of 2003. Starting the year 2010 is frightening for me. I know too much now to want to think. What I was covering was considered “alternative grass roots news” only six years ago, is now major Documentaries being aired on CBC and the Discovery Channel. Still, the reality news I see in my work is not really shown on the main stream news channels. Afraid of scaring the masses I suppose, or upsetting the advertisers, the glut of them being related to the Oil Corporations. Each evening like clockwork you can see the commercials turning to nothing but car and truck ads. Like a mantra, it is still being shoved into our heads that life is so much better if you own a new “whatever” as long as it is on wheels. The highways, no matter how many are being built are all clogged. The calls for radical change still being ignored. The recent airing of Expedition Alaska <http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/alaska/slide-shows/expedition-alaska.html> Was frightening to watch. It was airing at 2 pm in the afternoon, but hopefully will be shown in the prime time evening time slot, and on-line in full, so people can watch all the shows. Scientists and Film makers were up close and very personal with the changes happening to the Eco system in Alaska. The message was very clear. The Warming Climate should have been dealt with at least 3 decades ago. How to make the change, if there is still any possibility to control the warming, is lost to most of us. We are a society trapped by the Oil Industry. While I watched the Glaciers melting, I noticed that the commercials were largely about cars and trucks. Our Government gives these mega Motor companies money, from our tax dollars, in hopes we keep jobs and our economy going. But the very Economic system that North America lives on is flawed, and now that there is so much pollution and so many people, we see how that kind of system is killing us. Locally in Hamilton, for Fifty years the people of Eastern Hamilton, and specifically Stoney Creek have fought to keep an urban Forest, Notiabley called “Kings Forest”. But the pressure of local developers and International Transportation magnates, finally squashed out First Nations people and protesters of all kinds. They wanted to build a 7 kilometer road. Now that the Expressway is built, we really feel the loss of those trees. The award winning road - the Red Hill Expressway floods with the heavy rains that are our new version of a rain storm. Another example of how engineers did not understand climate change. Now at a time when tress are most needed, developers still push to do what they have done for the past fifty or more years. It doesn't work. It kills the air, the water, and now the very eco system we need to live. Some Scientists have told me the Polar Bears will be extinct in 3 years Others have told me that the exponential rate of environmental change will get faster and faster until we are suddenly faced with a Sea rise of anywhere from 7 to 300 feet. All coastal areas will be under water. ­In North America, the push to become one Continent continues. The Transportation Corridor runs right up the middle of the United States, to Kansas where there are vast underground storage areas and roads. Built because of threatening climate changes it is aptly named Subtroplis. From there highways shoots off in 4 directions into Canada. The best web page to see this plan is here http://www.growthnetworld.com/na_corridors/add_a_map.html . Everything that Jane Jacobs warned us about is more true. Exemplified by the mass production of disaster movies. We will all be living those disaster movies soon, and I wonder how we will come out of it. The Discovery Channel is already advertising two new series. “Licence to Drill”, which focuses on the Oil drilling in the Arctic, and “The Colony,” a bizzaro future world where only a handful of people survive. These videos are there to warn us, as most documentaries are. Most recently the “Age of Stupid” reflects our future. But will we listen. It is up to each and every one of us to push our governments on all levels to stop giving “licences” to Drill, and build roads, and sub divisions, but it seems that most of our councillors don't have enough knowledge. They are also buried in the piles of paperwork and research documents purposely produced by those that stand to benefit from continued road building. Our main stream media isn't going to tell them. It is up to each of us to research and look seriously at the work others, that do have the knowledge have offered to us to learn. And to take that work, understand it's message, and stop thinking money. We are past that, we need to think survival. M.Hughes January 5th 2010