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daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Knickers in a twist over David Suzuki’s U of A honorary degree

Apr

24

2018

Photo: Environmentalist, scientist, author, and broadcaster David Suzuki (credit: David Climenhaga) The decision by the University of Alberta Senate to present an honorary degree to high profile environmentalist, scientist, author, broadcaster and Order of Canada recipient Dr. David Suzuki has aroused much controversy from conservative partisans, Postmedia columnists, U of A donors and staff. It even ...

Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links

Apr

23

2018

Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robert Costanza reviews Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, and highlights its focus on attaching proper importance to priorities that aren’t reflected in prices: (T)he current mainstream ‘marginalist’ concept bases value on market exchanges: price, as revealed by the interaction of supply and demand in markets, determines value, ...

Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links

Apr

22

2018

This and that for your Sunday reading. – Denise Balkissoon writes about the importance of ensuring a just transition for fossil fuel workers – rather than using their jobs as bargaining chips to preserve oil industry profits. And Andrea Olive, Emily Eaton and Randy Besco point out that there’s plenty of public support for carbon ...

Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links

Apr

21

2018

Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Quirks & Quarks examines the potentially devastating effects of a dilbit spill on British Columbia’s coast. And David Climenhaga warns that Kinder Morgan is looking at NAFTA to provide it an alternate source of risk-free profits at public expense. – Mia Rabson reports on Canada’s continued failure to ...

Politics and its Discontents: An Angry Planet

Apr

19

2018

The future is rapidly arriving, and it isn’t pretty, thanks to climate change that is causing rising seas and more volatile storms, of particular threat to low-lying nations of the world right now. The first video shows what happened when a heavy storm hit Hawaii: The second video, available with this link, shows the true ...

Song of the Watermelon: National Post Letter

Apr

19

2018

In today’s National Post, I’ve got another letter to the editor on everyone’s favourite topic: the Trans Mountain pipeline. (I’ll stop repeating myself once people start listening!) My letter appears only in the print edition, so I cannot provide a link. Accordingly, here is the full text: The pipeline crisis Re: PM takes right tack ...

daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Fear of Soviet bombers a concern during the Trans Mountain Pipeline debate of 1952

Apr

17

2018

The current debate around the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline centres around political posturing, provincial jurisdiction, investment priorities, climate change, coastal protection and consent by First Nations communities, but when the pipeline was originally being built in 1952, civil defence and the threat of war with the Soviet Union was a going concern. According to ...

Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links

Apr

17

2018

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Krugman writes that a transition to a clean energy economy is well within reach – as long as politicians don’t put the interests of oil money over our economic and environmental future. But Gordon Laxer notes that NAFTA already limits Canada’s ability to take the steps ...

Politics and its Discontents: The Ball Is In Our Court

Apr

17

2018

I am well past the age when I feel any real hope for the future of our species. Far too many of us are content to define our lives by the ease and conveniences afforded by technology, technology that is leaving us with an increasingly unstable environment and climate. And now, of course, we are ...

Accidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links

Apr

13

2018

Assorted content to end your week. – Sean Farrell reports on a new OECD study recommending the application of inheritance taxes to reduce wealth inequality. – And Harry Quilter-Pinner discusses Finland’s confirmation that the obvious solution to homelessness – providing housing to people who need it – is also the best. – Nicole Goodkind analyzes ...

Politics and its Discontents: Defining The National Interest

Apr

13

2018

As the video included in yesterday’s post shows, Justin Trudeau likes to defend the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline as in ‘the national interest.” The term itself is a contentious one, given its nebulous nature. For the Prime Minister, it seems to mean economic growth, moving Alberta’s bitumen to port, and bolstering Rachel Notley’s ...

Politics and its Discontents: As The Mask Slips Away

Apr

12

2018

My late father-in-law, a man of deep conviction and integrity, was fond of this saying: “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.” Although he did not originate the adage, he felt it firmly described the thinking of those who control the levers of power, our governments. And now that his mask is slipping away, ...

Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links

Apr

12

2018

This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ashley Renders reports on the Canadian mining companies which are using corporate trade deals to threaten developing countries with billion-dollar claims to stifle environmental protections. And Mike Blanchfield and Andy Blatchford report that China wants any trade deals to similarly privilege investors alone while making no allowances ...

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links

Apr

11

2018

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Linda Givetash reports on the increasing cost and decreasing availability of housing in Canada. And Patrick Greenfield and Sarah March note that an appalling increase in the number of homeless people in the UK is being reflected in the number of deaths on the street. – Tithi Bhattacharya ...

Politics and its Discontents: That Was Then; This Is Now

Apr

11

2018

Funny about campaign promises. Most people take them with a large grain of salt, yet once in awhile, large segments of us are drawn in by the hope for a better day, hope fueled by an earnest politician who seems intent on upending the traditional shoddy, cynical and ultimately heart-breaking way of doing things that ...

Politics and its Discontents: That’s Another Fine Mess He’s Gotten Himself Into

Apr

10

2018

In a post yesterday, The Mound offered a searing assessment of Justin Trudeau’s abject failure on the climate-change file. Only the most ardent acolytes of the Prime Minister will fail to see that his soaring rhetoric has far outpaced his level of achievement. Says Mound: Raising public awareness about climate change as needed to secure ...

Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Up Is Down In Moe Town

Apr

10

2018

Will @CBCSask and @leaderpost and @620ckrm let the Premier continue to lie without being challenged?Does @ryanmeili or someone else have to say something first? Is there no permission to correct the Premier's lies?#skpoli #carbontax — Saskboy (@saskboy) April 3, 2018 Saskatchewan's emissions are going up, not down https://t.co/nlZxCrOsv3 pic.twitter.com/KspZuhpexX — Regina Leader-Post (@leaderpost) April 4, ...

daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Kinder Morgan drops a Sunday afternoon bombshell in the never-ending Trans Mountain Pipeline dispute

Apr

8

2018

“Alberta is prepared to do whatever it takes to get this pipeline built” – Rachel Notley It was a busy Sunday afternoon in Alberta politics. We appear to have reached another stage in what feels like a never-ending political dispute over the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby. Late on ...

Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links

Apr

7

2018

Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper write about the need for much more affordable social housing across the income spectrum. Rhys Kesselman responds to a few of the more laughable attacks on British Columbia’s more progressive property tax. And Stephen Punwasi discusses the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s warning ...

Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links

Apr

5

2018

This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Canadian Press reports on new research showing how wealth shocks at any level of income or wealth are associated with a higher risk of mortality: Middle-aged Americans who experienced a sudden, large economic blow were more likely to die during the following years than those who ...

Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links

Apr

4

2018

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andre Picard writes about the unjustifiable limitations and inconsistencies in Canada’s health care system: Break your leg and the X-ray and cast will be covered, but you will need to pay for the crutches. Break your jaw and it will be wired at no cost; break your teeth ...

Politics and its Discontents: Are Two Sellouts Pending?

Apr

4

2018

He’s loved of the distracted multitude, multitude, who like not in their judgement, but their eyes. Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 3 As Claudius in the above states, there will always be those who suspend their deeper thinking when evaluating public figures, preferring to reflexively accept the public images the latter so carefully cultivate, often at ...

Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links

Apr

3

2018

This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Amy Remeikis reports on new research showing how educational inequality translates into an even wider economic gap. – Hannah Johnston and Chris Land-Kazlauskas examine (PDF) the gig economy and the need for workers to be able to organize around it. But Rebecca Moss discusses another of Donald ...

The Disaffected Lib: I’ll Bet You Didn’t Know That…

Mar

29

2018

They don’t have a clue. Your federal government and our various provincial governments are in the same boat. None of them has assessed the risks we face from climate change or what we need to do to adapt to it. This is kicking the can down the road and whistling past the graveyard at the ...

daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Notley claims victory in the courts, but pipeline opponents aren’t going to just disappear.

Mar

28

2018

“Another victory for our economy. Another victory for our climate plan. Another victory for the pipeline and another victory for all Albertans and all Canadians,” was the message Alberta Premier Rachel Notley reportedly delivered at a press conference in St. Albert. Notley was of course referring to the decision by the Federal Court of Appeal ...