I guest-hosted TWiE podcast episode 137 a few days ago, an episode devoted to the Alberta oil sands / tar sands. If you ask me (and I realize none of you have 🙂 ) it’s well worth a listen! The week’s guest was US energy analyst Robert Rapier, who had
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Crawford Kilian discusses the growing influence of Thomas Piketty’s observations about wealth inequality and the unfairness of a system which inherently perpetuates privilege: What I take away is this: We are playing in a rigged game. The deck has always been stacked
Continue readingAre we gambling our economy on the tar sands?
Depending heavily for jobs, profits and taxes on our most rapidly increasing source of greenhouse gas emissions is environmental folly. It may mean more economic prosperity in the short term, but by contributing to global warming, it will undermine economic prosperity, and a lot else, in the long term. It
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Edward Greenspon’s report on the Keystone XL review process is well worth a read – particularly in exposing how the Harper Cons have handled their U.S. relations (along with many other policy areas) based on the presumption that nobody will ever see fit
Continue reading350 or bust: Indians And Cowboys Join Together To Reject & Protect
On April 22, an alliance of pipeline fighters — ranchers, farmers, tribal communities, and their friends — called the Cowboy and Indian Alliance rode into Washington DC and set up camp on the National Mall. For 5 days, they will hold ceremonies and demonstration to remind him of the threat
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Fur trade and tar sands
Here is Joseph Boyden talking with the Globe and Mail last fall about his novel Orenda: “You look at this novel and you think immigration, who you allow in and who you don’t. The Hurons allow in the ones who ulimately destroy them, because the Huron aren’t perfect either. They
Continue readingCommon sense in Kitimat
Good news over the weekend. The citizens of Kitimat B.C. had their say on the Northern Gateway pipeline, and they said NO. In a referendum on Saturday, they voted 1,793 to 1,278 to oppose running the pipeline to their town, the proposed terminus. Mayor Joanne Monaghan promised to discuss the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Ducks: A Story About the Tar Sands
Kate Beaton of Hark a Vagrant fame once worked in the Alberta tar sands. She recently made a short comic about her time working there (which she did to pay off student debt) and it provides a wonderful human side to the tar sands narrative. Read the comic here.
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Meet two ambassadors from Canada’s indigenous tar sands resistance
by Kristin Moe | First published by YES! Magazine on March 5, 2014 In 1885, a revolutionary leader wrote, “My people will sleep for one hundred years” and then wake up. In the “genocidal” wilderness of Canada’s tar sands, that renaissance has begun. The debate over the tar sands has heated up once again
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Will Hutton writes about Thomas Piketty’s rebuttal to the false claim that inequality has to be encouraged in the name of development – and the reality that we have a public policy choice whether to privilege returns on capital or broad-based growth: It
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig responds to the CCCE’s tax spin by pointing out what’s likely motivating the false attempt to be seen to contribute to society at large: Seemingly out of the blue this week, the head honchos of Canada’s biggest companies, the Canadian Council
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Andrew Nikiforuk on the end of cheap fossil fuels
John Twigg interviews award-winning energy journalist and author Andrew Nikiforuk on his latest book, The Energy of Slaves. “The era of cheap hydrocarbons is gone,” says Nikiforuk. We’re now into the difficult and ugly stuff – and it’s expensive. It’s going to affect the siz e of the middle class, which is
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Petro-state economy costs Canada far more jobs than it creates
Canada’s economy – including its dollar – is too attached to fossil fuels, financial experts warn The current trajectories of Canada’s predominant political economies are increasingly dysfunctional, due in no small part to the fact that we have become, in many respects, a petro state, rather than the much vaunted “Energy Superpower”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Dayen discusses the massive corporate tax giveaways handed out through the U.S.’ annual budget process. And in a system where lobbying by the wealthy is rewarded with a 24-to-1 return, it shouldn’t be much surprise if inequality is getting even worse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Coyne sees the powerful impact of local forces on nomination contests as evidence that grassroots democracy is still alive and well in Canada – no matter how much the Cons and Libs may wish otherwise: What’s common to both of these stories
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Macdonald studies Canada’s massive (and growing) wealth gap, and proposes some thoughtful solutions to ensure that growth in wealth results in at least some shared benefits: Attempting to limit inequality through traditional measures like restricting RRSP contributions or introducing new tax
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: New York Times op-ed: Canada tarring itself with oil sands
Photo: 350.org Read this New York Times op-ed by Jacques Leslie on the black eye Canada is giving itself in its rush to develop Alberta bitumen. Start with the term “tar sands.” In Canada only fervent opponents of oil development in northern Alberta dare to use those words; the preferred phrase
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Krugman compares the U.S.’ longtime recognition that concentrated wealth can do massive social harm to the Republicans’ recent efforts to claim that raising any revenue from the rich is somehow un-American: The truth is that, in the early 20th century, many leading
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Dean Starkman writes about the media’s failure to see and report on the culture of corruption and manipulation that led to the 2008 economic meltdown: Was the brewing crisis really such a secret? Was it all so complex as to be beyond
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The Star-Phoenix discusses how the Cons are systematically attacking the independent institutions which are necessary to ensure a functioning democratic system: When a handful of Conservative MPs from Saskatchewan attacked the integrity of the province’s electoral boundaries commissioners last year in an attempt
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