Drivers know all too well that parking lots are hot, uncomfortable, and are never the right size. In France larger parking lots will now require shading in the form of solar panels, making the large swaths of asphalt a little more comfortable. The solar panels are projected to provide the
Continue readingTag: France
Things Are Good: France Pays People to Stop Driving and Start Riding
Car drivers take up way more road space than they need since the size of their vehicles are disproportionate to their usefulness. Smart countries aim to limit the number of single occupant vehicles on the road for this reason and to ensure that all people can easily get from one
Continue readingRecreating Eden: When a Veil Is Not a Veil: Fashion, Modesty and Evolving Rules
Just as France begins to consider prohibiting women from wearing niqab, or a full veil, fashion designer Riccardo Tisci features a very attractive young woman wearing a sort of pseudo-veil in his new collection for Givenchy, seen at left as shown in The Globe and Mail. The juxtaposition throws a
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Affordable electricity Decarbonization in OECD countries? Part I
After eight extensive posts about the Ontario electricity sector, I am expanding my geographic coverage to look at the electricity sectors in selected OECD countries. My focus will be on the historical and relative performance of each country’s sector with respect to decarbonization and prices. As in the case of
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Survey of Western powers points toward citizens’ assemblies
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center of the four major Western powers turned up some interesting if not altogether surprising results. The goal of the study was to determine how the citizens of the four—U.S., France, Germany and the UK—feel about their political systems. The survey suggested the
Continue readingThings Are Good: France Banning Short Flights to Reduce Carbon Output
Flying isn’t so popular right now due to the pandemic and many airlines are financially hurting, and in France they are helping the Air France. Due to ineffectiveness in the private company the French government stepped in and doubled it’s stake with one key condition: the airline eliminates some of
Continue readingNorthern Currents: The far right is more wrong than they think. Less than 5% of Spain and France have Covid-19 antibodies.
Share this: Both France and Spain have been hit much harder than Canada during the Covid 19 pandemic. Two studies with preliminary findings have shown that less than 5% of France and Spain’s population have been infected and have produced antibodies that appear to offer some form of protection from
Continue readingAlberta Politics: France is in turmoil and all we hear is crickets — what gives?
France is in turmoil and all we hear is crickets. What gives? The government of President Emmanuel Macron has introduced a scheme to overhaul pensions and retirement benefits for many workers, done as usual in the name of reform, rationalization and simplification. For most French workers, though, it will result
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Hope Lies In The Streets
The decay and rupture of the social bonds that once held our societies together have unleashed the dark pathologies of opioid, alcohol and gambling addictions and led to an explosion of hate Read more…
Continue readingThings Are Good: Free Transit In Dunkirk a Success
The French city of Dunkirk recently made a major decision to make all their public transit free to anyone. It’s worked really well and now people are hoping the idea spreads to other places in France. It’s noteworthy that the climate crisis wasn’t the driving factor behind the plan it
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Why Canadian media won’t call post-Brexit protests ‘pro-democracy demonstrations’
If there are riots in Britain after the hard Brexit Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party cronies have scheduled for Halloween, will mainstream media in Canada describe them as “pro-democracy demonstrations” as they do when similar violent outbursts take place nowadays in Hong Kong or Moscow? On the
Continue readingPostArctica: Tour de France 2019
Tour de France. Like the World Cup of soccer, the best of sports on a global scale. Or as my grade 8 teacher, Brother Victor, once referring to soccer as the only true world game, might say, this is the absolute summit of such a simple thing as bicycling. It
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: France – The Blue Collar Revolt – Gilets Jaunes
Paul Street writing at Counterpunch: “Yellow vest-wearers demand real democracy – popular self-rule. They have called for a popular referendum whereby 700,000 citizen signatories would force the French Parliament to debate and vote on a law within one year. There have been calls (evoking memories of the great French Revolution
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Seriously, what’s the good of an effective carbon tax if it’s politically impossible to implement?
Recent political developments in France and Alberta, though quite different in tone, suggest carbon taxes may not be a viable way to address climate change – leastways not without reaching an unlikely consensus they must be imposed. You may not believe me yet, but you can count on it, politicians
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Do we need a Canadian version of the Logan Act to put a stop to dangerous freelance diplomacy?
Most observers of Canada-U.S. politics and the two countries’ unexpectedly fraught trade relationship would agree former prime minister Stephen Harper’s no-longer-secret visit to the White House on Tuesday is unlikely to do much good and has the potential to do harm. What Mr. Harper, now just another private citizen in
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Mission accomplished in Syria? Don’t bet more than you can afford to lose on that claim!
Mission Accomplished? Donald Trump’s crowing Tweets prove the wisdom of Karl Marx’s dictum: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. This fact is a significant blessing, nonetheless, at least insofar as Friday night’s tactically and legally dubious missile raid by U.S. military forces on Syria is concerned. How
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Well, With the Week He’s Had Who Wouldn’t Want to Let Off a Little Steam?
The United States has launched missile strikes against government targets in Syria. This time Britain and France tossed in a few missiles of their own, brothers in arms sort of thing, I suppose. Trump announced the strikes in an address to the nation Friday evening. “The purpose of our action
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Macron and Trudeau shouldn’t be so proud of appointing women to their Cabinets
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron are obviously proud of the fact that they’ve both appointed gender-parity Cabinets. For Malliga Och, an Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Languages at Idaho State University, what’s more important for achieving meaningful gender equity is that women control key
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: A Tale of Two Elections
Two extraordinarily different elections occurred last week in Europe. The first, of course, was the 2017 UK general election, which was nothing short of historic. The second, was the French parliamentary elections in the wake of what appeared to be an equally historic presidential election earlier in May. Despite what
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your long weekend reading. – Cole Stangler interviews Raquel Garrido about the political critique behind Jean-Luc Melenchon’s emerging presidential campaign – and it sounds equally applicable in Canada: One of the reasons why the current regime is lacking consent in French society is because the process for
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