A Cold Lay Up

Micheal Harris continues to chronicle the demise of the Experimental Lakes Area.  A poll conducted by Forum Research has revealed that  "a whopping 50 percent of Canadians disagreed with the decision to close down the world’s only whole-lake eco-system experimental facility that has made so many planet-improving discoveries."

So the Harper government has been scrambling, trying to get  a Canadian university -- or a consortium of universities -- to take over ownership of the ELA.  But Dr. Carol Kelly, a former professor of Microbiology at the University of Manitoba, says:

The idea that ELA research is more suitable to universities is incorrect. This is because university funding is always short-term, whereas the whole ecosystem experiments were and are long-term, usually requiring a decade of work. This is because the lakes must be studied before the manipulation is done, during the manipulation, and then after as the lake recovers. So far, government has been the only institution with this type of long-term capability, by making use of a permanent facility and a permanent staff.”

The Harper government, of course, will offer no funding at all.

If a white knight cannot be found, the government has invented a new Orwellian term to describe the mothballing of ELA. It will undergo a "cold lay up"  It sounds so antiseptic, clean and harmless. Actually, the term is yet another example of what comes out of the back end of a horse.

This entry is cross posted at Eradicating Ecocide.