Here, on how Brad Wall’s call for Canada to stop funding international climate change adaptation and mitigation reflects just one more example of his government’s tendency to kick down at the people least able to defend themselves. For further reading…– Gregory Beatty again documented the background to Wall’s abandonment of
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Politics and its Discontents: This Sounds Promising
Whether this will turn out to be another idea that holds great promise but then comes to nothing will only be known, I guess, in the future, but it does sound promising: The danger of the ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere has become one of the
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Liberal 1 Year Report Card
The Trudeau Liberals returned to power on October 19, 2015. In the last year they’ve done some things I’ve disagreed with, and some things I approve of. I’ll list them from memory, because if I can’t recall them, they probably didn’t leave too much of a negative or positive impression:
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Wall Wants It Both Ways on #carbontax
The Premier says Saskatchewan doesn’t make a difference in world pollution because of our small population, despite our world-record pollution rate when measured on a per-capita basis. Then he argues to keep Canadian money from going to where in the world it will make the biggest difference in reducing emissions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Vanessa Williamson writes that plenty of Americans want to see wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share of taxes – only to have that strong desire ignored by policymakers. And Joseph Stiglitz and Erika Siu discuss the glaring need for stronger tax
Continue readingEnvironmental Law Alert Blog: Will Canada’s national carbon price clean up our climate mess?
Monday, October 17, 2016 Canada will soon have a national price on carbon. West Coast has been calling for carbon pricing for over twenty years – putting a price on harm to our atmosphere is a good first step in dealing with the gigatonnes of fossil fuel pollution that Canada produces
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ellen Gould comments on how the CETA and other trade deals constrain democratic governance – and the fact that corporate bigwigs are threatening any government which considers giving effect to popular opposition doesn’t exactly provide any comfort. Meanwhile, Scott Sinclair points out
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Johnstone: Supports Coal, But Calls Out Wall’s Lack of Plan
A notable column in the Star Phoenix from Bruce Johnstone, as he chastises Premier Wall’s “grandstanding” and for having no plan to deal with climate change. Wall called the plan, […] a “betrayal” of the PM’s promise to develop a collaborative climate change policy with the provinces. This despite the
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: We Hear #carbontax Won’t Work But It Will Change Behaviour
Coyne has a point: .@acoyne @ZackSiezmagraff Yes, exactly. Same way people don't like paying taxes so they avoid them, but a #carbontax won't change behaviour. — Saskboy (@saskboy) October 14, 2016 Kevin replies, “I’m planning the purchase of a wood stove…” Would you normally buy a wood stove? No, but
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joel Wood highlights the social cost of carbon as a crucial reason to work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions rather than insisting on doing the absolute least the rest of the world will tolerate. And needless to say, Brad Wall’s idea of an
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: As Humans Do
Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016). Killed by coal, ocean acidification and climate change: https://t.co/V4npCbP1yR — 350 dot org (@350) October 14, 2016 Idle conversation among strangers around the office printer: -“How are you today?” “Fine… aside from the problem that the world might end due to climate change
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Foreseeable Future of Oil
Cameron MacGillivray, the president and CEO of Enform, says he’s not hearing [a year and a half ago] many concerns about the job market of the future. Rather than getting questions about the oil and gas industry prospects, he says he is asked about what kinds of jobs are most
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Alex Himelfarb discusses why a proportional electoral system can be expected to produce better and more representative public policy: The adversarial approach often means major policy lurches when the government changes. For example, the Harper government undid some important initiatives of the previous
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Meanwhile, Closer To Home
Much of the climate-change video material I post on my blog shows the devastation being wrought in the United States. I feature such material because it receives extensive coverage on American networks. It would, of course, be foolish to assume that such effects are confined to that country. Climate change
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You
While much of western society enjoys living in willful ignorance about climate change, the fact is, what you don’t know can hurt you. Tim Wallace of the New York Times reports that much of the heat of our rapidly warming world is being absorbed by oceans, and the long-term effects
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Cindy Blackstock offers a reminder of Canada’s long and shameful history of discrimination against First Nations children. And Donna Ferreiro takes a look at some of the faces of the Sixties Scoop which saw Indigenous children separated from their families due solely
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Star Readers Write
These days, my faith in the future is quite limited. The proliferation of war and the ongoing reluctance of governments to do anything substantive about climate change, despite its increasingly obvious effects, both speak to the refusal of our species to rise above our base animal impulses and use the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jim Stanford writes about the obvious problems with globalization as it’s currently structured – and the need to meaningfully take into account the public interest before anybody other than the investor class can be expected to participate in the process: The reality is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alex Himelfarb and Trish Hennessy offer their take as to what we should expect out of Ontario’s basic income experiment: Critics rightly argue that basic income is no magic bullet, that indeed there are no magic bullets. The history of the idea of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Libs’ carbon price rollout managed to maximize the resulting sound and fury while signifying little actual progress. For further reading…– Marc Lee offered a reality check on the minimal effect of Justin Trudeau’s price announcement, with reference to Marc Jaccard’s study here (PDF). And Karri Munn-Venn
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