climate change ← Progressive Bloggers // Blogues progressistes

A Puff of Absurdity: Inconceivable! His Dinner with Chomsky

Aug

16

2017

Wallace Shawn sat down for a chat with Noam Chomsky, and here’s what they talked about – slightly abridged and loosely quoted (for clarification purposes) with links. It’s a great recharge for activists! Shawn – Many people are shocked to see the president is now a cruel, brutal, greedy type of a man, and this ...

Alberta Politics: Guest Post: UCP polarization of Alberta politics neutralizes the language of right-wing extremism

Aug

15

2017

PHOTOS: Young anti-Bill 6 protesters interviewed by a reporter at the Alberta Legislature in November 2015. Note the overheated genocide rhetoric in the sign at bottom right. Below: More extreme rhetoric from the same event; commentators Barret Weber, the author of this post, Naomi Lakritz, and Ricardo Acuña. Guest Post by Barret Weber Last weekend’s ...

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links

Aug

9

2017

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Linda McQuaig makes the case as to why any NAFTA renegotiation needs to focus on workers’ rights: NAFTA has been key to the transformation of Canada over the last two decades, enabling corporations to become ever more dominant economically and politically, while rendering our labour force increasingly vulnerable ...

Politics and its Discontents: What Would You Be Willing To Sacrifice?

Aug

7

2017

Ed Finn has a blog entry at rabble.ca that I highly recommend. His thesis can roughly be summarized in this excerpt: The glue that holds any society together is faith in its governments, courts, churches, unions and non-profits — faith that these organizations, no matter how flawed, will always be committed to serving their basic ...

Politics and its Discontents: The Fast-Approaching Abyss

Aug

5

2017

While North American politicians give us either sunny platitudes or outright denials, the reality of the climate-change abyss we are quickly approaching should now be becoming apparent to even the most benighted among us: Recommend this Post

Politics and its Discontents: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Jul

30

2017

Although hardly the greatest peril to come about as a result of climate change, the following is likely to get many people’s attention. What is it The Bible says? “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” If the above is too sedate for your sensibilities, take a look at this American report which has, shall ...

A Puff of Absurdity: Paradigm Shift in Climate Change Policy

Jul

27

2017

In the news, Caroline Lucas, in The Guardian says one good policy isn’t enough; we need a paradigm shift: “Rather than simply looking for one headline-grabbing policy, the government should be embarking on a paradigm shift when it comes to how we get about in this country. …Ultimately we need a green transport revolution, not ...

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links

Jul

26

2017

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Louis-Philippe Rochon discusses the need for monetary policy to be better coordinated with fiscal policy to ensure both sustainable economic growth and a more fair distribution of wealth: Monetary policy has been a failure. It has failed to encourage growth, as has been plainly obvious in this lost decade, ...

350 or bust: Relief for Climate Anxiety

Jul

24

2017

EFT, also called Tapping, is a great mind/body tool that’s been shown to alleviate stress and change stuck emotional patterns in our nervous system. In this video, Christine Penner Polle, climate-concerned mom and author of Unfreeze Yourself: Five ways to take action on climate change NOW for the sake of your family, your health, and ...

Accidental Deliberations: Leadership 2017 Links

Jul

23

2017

The latest from the federal NDP’s leadership campaign. – Alex Ballingall reports on Niki Ashton’s environmental platform which identifies corporate greed as a major obstacle to environmental justice, and proposes a new Crown corporation to ensure public investment in response. Manishna Krishnan examines Jagmeet Singh’s plan to end racial profiling, while Doug King comments on ...

Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links

Jul

23

2017

This and that for your Sunday reading. – Martin Lukacs discusses the need for collective action to fight climate change – and the dangers of allowing ourselves to be distracted by calls to focus solely on individual choices: These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream ...

A Puff of Absurdity: Climate Comedies

Jul

17

2017

I caught Al Franken and David Letterman’s Funny or Die series on climate change: Boiling the Frog. It’s vaguely informative and not particularly funny, but fans of either guy might be willing to check it out. They focus on what their children and grandchildren will have to live with, and how they’ll answer when asked ...

Politics and its Discontents: But Are They Listening?

Jul

16

2017

Unless we live in complete and willful ignorance, all of us are aware, on at least a minimal level, of the perils currently confronting and engulfing our world. Those perils, which some refer to as the sixth extinction, are real, and their magnitude is such that few seem willing or able to confront them in ...

Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links

Jul

15

2017

Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Economist observes that the effects of climate change fall disproportionately on poorer people, rather than the wealthier ones who have caused more of the damage: The costs of global climate change will again be unevenly (and uncertainly) distributed, but harm will often be smaller for richer, temperate ...

A Puff of Absurdity: On Hedges’ Veganism Claims

Jul

14

2017

Chris Hedges’ recent article, “Eating Our Way to Disease,” largely just advertises the new doc What the Health: “Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn—whose documentary Cowspiracy, about the environmental impact of the animal agriculture industry, led me to become a vegan—recently released a new film, What the Health, which looks at how highly processed animal products are ...

A Puff of Absurdity: Sooner Than You Think

Jul

12

2017

Yesterday’s NYTimes has a lengthy article, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” subtitled, “What Climate Change Could Wreak – Sooner Than You Think.” In a nutshell: “…the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming … that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer ...

Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links

Jul

11

2017

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Kate Aronoff writes that in addition to being a political loser, corporate-friendly centrism is extremely dangerous in allowing for far less than the effort we should be putting into fighting climate change. And Tess Riley reports on new research that only a hundred companies are responsible for ...

Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links

Jul

9

2017

This and that for your Sunday reading. – Damian Carrington reports on new research showing that the actual change in temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions may be larger than anticipated in even the most cautious forecasts to date. And Chloe Farand highlights France’s plan to rein in its contribution to climate change by banning ...

Politics and its Discontents: Bravo, Jerry Brown

Jul

6

2017

While Donald Trump is content to call climate change a hoax, his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accord does not mean that others are just throwing up their hands in exasperation or surrender. The West Coast seems particularly resistant to backward thinking and, no doubt, California Governor Jerry Brown is joining a long list ...

Politics and its Discontents: Truly, Profoundly Disturbing

Jul

3

2017

I have just finished reading a long article in National Geographic, one that, without any use of hyperbole, should disturb all of us deeply and profoundly. But thanks to our capacity to ignore anything that disturbs our worldview, the article’s dire warning will likely provoke little concern and no alteration of our bloated, cossetted and ...

Politics and its Discontents: A Thing Of Beauty: Rick Perry’s Comeuppance At The Hands Of Al Franken

Jun

28

2017

If you start at the two-minute mark, you will see the start of Senator Al Franken’s public humiliation of Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, as the latter amply demonstrates both his intellectual deficiencies and his abject obeisance to the oil industry. a Recommend this Post

Politics and its Discontents: Dispatches From Hell

Jun

27

2017

… with a little water thrown in at the end to balance things out. Meanwhile, Fortune Magazine predicts that things will only get much, much worse in the years to come. Recommend this Post

Politics and its Discontents: Sign Signs, Everywhere A Sign

Jun

22

2017

With apologies to the Five Man Electrical Band: Would it be fair to say we are drowning in our excesses? Recommend this Post

Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links

Jun

22

2017

This and that for your Thursday reading. – Alex Collinson discusses how insecure work makes it impossible to reliably structure an individual’s life: Many respondents told us about how difficult it is to budget without knowing how much you’ll be earning from one week to the next. The number of hours we are given every ...

Politics and its Discontents: I Wonder

Jun

21

2017

When even the dimmest and most ideologically bent among us realize they backed the wrong pony when they ignored the warnings about climate change, and when it is far too late to do anything about it (as it almost is now), who will they blame? Will it be their political ‘leaders’, the corporate obstructionists, or ...