Last week Calgary Economic Development presented its Report to the Community. The highlight of the event was Mayor Jyoti Gondek’s conversations with Rachel Notley and Danielle Smith. Gondek asked each leader 4 pre-set questions and 2 questions from the audience. She talked with Notley first and Smith second. It was
Continue readingTag: environment
Canadian Dimension: With climate indicators ‘off the charts,’ UN chief calls policies of rich nations a ‘death sentence’
Photo by Billy Wilson/Flickr The World Meteorological Organization warned Friday that climate change indicators are “off the charts,” one day after United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told officials from wealthy countries that their refusal to halt fossil fuel expansion amounts to a civilizational “death sentence” and pleaded with them to
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Canada’s War on the Environment
Canada has declared war on the environment. That is the only conclusion one can draw after viewing Tamara Lorincz’s presentation at the most recent annual meeting of Peace Alliance Winnipeg (of which I am a proud member). In her talk, Tamara discusses the key lessons contained in three reports –
Continue readingThings Are Good: Machine Learning Improves Enzyme Eating Plastic
A bacteria that eats plastic may sound too good to be true since we have so much plastic waste littering the planet. The rouble with plastic eating bacterias is that they aren’t efficient nor can they survive long outside the lab. So a research team turned to machine learning, or
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The John Snow Project discusses how government minimization of the ongoing risk of COVID-19 – including the removal of what few policies remained to limit its spread – is pushing people to neglect the continued danger. And Josh Lynn reports on the latest
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Frustrated Farmer Faults Feckless Finance Phony for Folly
Forgive me for being frank. Scott Moe’s government is going to do Eff all. Bottom line is our GHG emissions are rising at a time we desperately need to be curbing them. One of Regina’s best economists is noting how we’re not doing enough, too. It’s the carbon budget that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ritika Goel, Vanessa Redditt and Michaela Beder discuss how the Ford PCs are cruelly taking health care away from the marginalized people who need it most. And CBC News reports on the preferred right-wing model of privatized profit centres threatening patients into paying
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Mammoth Ideas For Past, Present, and Future – Sweetish Meatballs
Bread, beef and milk will be artificially produced pic.twitter.com/4AYs2kHe3N — Paul Fairie (@paulisci) March 27, 2023 Not now, meatball created from long exti wait what? pic.twitter.com/gXbcHg4aGU — tern (@1goodtern) March 28, 2023 They took extinct mammoth DNA, repaired it with elephant DNA, used sheep stem cells for replication, and created
Continue readingThings Are Good: Open Source, 3D Printed, Pollution Monitoring
Efforts to monitor pollution levels around the world aren’t new, but what is new is a system created by MIT’s Senseable City Lab that anyone can make. Called Flatburn, the system is designed to be put on a vehicle to monitor pollution levels throughout a city, which will provide more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Alejandro de la Garza writes about the devastation continuing to be wrought by COVID-19 in Lamb County, Texas even as the powers that be pretend the pandemic is in the past. And John Michael McGrath discusses why Ontario shouldn’t count on the Ford
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Al Shaw, Irena Hwang and Caroline Chen discuss how forest loss and changing interactions between people and wildlife could be the trigger for a future pandemic. Christian Elliott points out that thawing permafrost is likely to release neurotoxic methylmercury in addition to a
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: About eating meat
The Colorado River and those who depend on it are in trouble. A once-in-a-millennium drought now entering its third decade is shrinking water levels to disturbing numbers. The seven states and Mexico that rely on the Colorado are worried. As we should be. Two of the states, California and Arizona,
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: About eating meat
The Colorado River and those who depend on it are in trouble. A once-in-a-millennium drought now entering its third decade is shrinking water levels to disturbing numbers. The seven states and Mexico that rely on the Colorado are worried. As we should be. Two of the states, California and Arizona,
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Neighbourhoods Are Fighting Climate Change
Neighbourhoods in Canada are trying to change the world by focussing on their own street. Across the country there are streets of houses proving that a transition from using fossil fuels to heat and power a home is possible in a country that loves to subsidize the oil and gas
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: BIG step toward saving the oceans
Along with our other environmental sins, we are fishing the oceans dry. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, over a third of global fisheries have been fished beyond sustainable limits and almost two-thirds are being fished to their limits. Sharks and rays have declined by over 70 percent.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Luke Savage points out that even biased right-wing polling is finding broad support for stronger social programs and limitations on corporate domination in Canada and the U.S. But Jake Johnson writes that the Biden administration is instead increasing military funding while putting
Continue readingThings Are Good: New Maritime Law at UN Protects Ecosystems
Pirates love the high seas and so do illegal fishers and poachers; heck cruise ship companies love the high seas as a place to dump sewage. All in, we don’t respect the ecosystems in the oceans because there’s only a few laws that can be broken and enforcement is weak.
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Budget ’23: The Same Old Razzle Dazzle (with sprinkles on top)*
I’m not sure what Trevor Tombe did that caused Danielle Smith to say he was becoming one of her favourite economists, but it certainly wasn’t this. In a recent article about Budget 2023 Tombe said the budget moved Alberta into a “new fiscal reality where we are more reliant on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jonathan Lambert discusses how politicized messages have been used to weaponize uncertainty and changing information during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jonathan Howard points out how successful mitigation practices have been used to serve a misleading narrative downplaying the actual risks of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post: Researcher Regan Boychuk digs deep into the history of the RStar scheme
Like other commentators, in the past few weeks I’ve paid a lot of attention to the United Conservative Party’s so-called RStar scheme to forgive multibillion dollar oil corporations at least $100 million of their royalty payments to clean up oil and gas wells they’re already legally and financially obligated to
Continue reading