Assorted content to end your week. – Ed Finn offers a reminder that Canada’s social safety net is leading to the perpetuation of poverty despite ample resources to end it. And Niall McCarthy discusses the worsening state of financial inequality across the developed world. – Hadrian Metrins-Kirkwood points out that
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Jay Shambaugh, Ryan Nunn, and Lauren Bauer discuss the need for U.S. law and policy to adapt to protect independent workers who have been excluded from normal employment rights: Armed with up-to-date, accurate data, policymakers and regulators can work to keep regulations relevant
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jonathan Amos and Victoria Gill report on Antarctica’s alarming rate of melting – with three trillion tons of ice lost in the past 25 years. Peter Erickson reminds us that the avoidable greenhouse gas emissions from subsidized oil sands development will only
Continue readingCarbon49 – Sustainability for Canadian businesses: Loblaws Changing How Canadians Eat
At the inaugural Arrell Food Summit, Loblaw CEO Galen G. Weston laid out an innovative vision for Canada’s food markets. Applying robotics, AI, and smart technologies, Loblaw plans to bring Canadians together through food while lowering footprint and reducing waste. Organized by the Arrell Food Institute at the University
Continue readingCarbon49 – Sustainability for Canadian businesses: Loblaws Changing How Canadians Eat
At the inaugural Arrell Food Summit, Loblaw CEO Galen G. Weston laid out an innovative vision for Canada’s food markets. Applying robotics, AI, and smart technologies, Loblaw plans to bring Canadians together through food while lowering footprint and reducing waste. Organized by the Arrell Food Institute at the University
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On full pictures
I’ve previously pointed out the obvious bad faith behind the Saskatchewan Party’s attempt (PDF) to monetize existing agricultural practices as a substitute for actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and particularly the one-sided nature of that plan: How we grow our crops, harvest our forests and protect our vital water
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Ball Is In Our Court
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
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
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
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mitchell Thompson discusses the absurdity of setting up Canada’s banks for collapses and bailouts, rather than ensuring they serve the public interest. And Colin Butler reports on CUPW’s continued push for a postal banking option to provide better service to far more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage project – cited incessantly by Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party as a substitute for a climate change action plan – has in fact proven a costly failure both as a power source and a means of reducing greenhouse gas
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ann Pettifor rightly questions the supposed gains from austerity in belatedly balancing budgets only at the expense of avoidable social devastation. And the CCPA documents the billions of dollars in lost assets and thousands of jobs slashed in Saskatchewan even when Brad Wall
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – J.W. Mason reviews Yanis Varoufakis’ Adults in the Room with a focus on how damaging austerity was forced on Greece by other governments. And Jan Rovny comments on the need for Europe’s left-wing parties to adapt to the precarious economy and evolving social
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Nick Falvo highlights some of the most important proposals in the CCPA’s alternative federal budget (parentheticals omitted): 3. Introduce a national pharmacare program. This proposal would help address the fact that many Canadians simply cannot access prescription medication; it would also result
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Family Day reading. – Gloria Galloway reports on Jagmeet Singh’s strong case for fair tax revenues as a key highlight from the NDP’s federal convention: In his speech to delegates, Mr. Singh lamented income inequality, urged the protection of pensions, called for publicly funded pharmacare and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Joe Romm discusses new research showing that man-made greenhouse gas emissions have ended an 11,000-year era of climate stability. – Thomas Walkom points out the contradictions in Justin Trudeau’s declaration that there will be no federal climate policy without new pipelines. And David
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nathan Akehurst writes that the Carillion collapse was just the tip of the iceberg in the corporatization and destruction of the UK’s public services. And Neil Macdonald points out that the Trudeau Libs are pitching privatized infrastructure as easy money for investors
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Nat Gas Killed Coal. Now It’s Time to Kill Off Nat Gas.
Natural gas remains widely seen as a helpful “bridge fuel” during the transition from high carbon fossil fuels to alternative, clean energy. That myth is based on end use comparisons. Natural gas power plants emit much less greenhouse gas than coal-fired power plants, ergo nat gas is cleaner. Here’s the
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Facing Hypocrisy
Last month, I read an article by the redoubtable George Monbiot that left me both shaken and, for a period of time, quite depressed. It forced me to face some unpleasant and inconvenient truths about people like me, and left me with the realization that when all is said and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – PressProgress points out Statistics Canada’s latest numbers on Canada’s extreme wealth disparity – with 60% of the population owning only 10% of the wealth while a lucky few amass gigantic fortunes. – Jordan Brennan discusses how a lack of labour conflict has led
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Note To Justin And Rachel
Please explain again why your insistence that we need to build more pipelines is valid, given these facts: A new world record price for electricity set earlier this month signals a radical disruption in global energy markets — and Canada, whose economy was once powered by some of the world’s
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