This and that for your Tuesday reading. – John Woodside weighs in on the UN’s recognition of the need to stop our dependence on dirty energy. And Jillian Ambrose reports on the International Energy Agency’s projections which foresee the beginning of the end of fossil fuel use. – Leo Collis points
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jamey Keaten and Seth Borenstein report on the World Meteorological Association’s finding that we’ve just had the hottest summer in recorded history. And Chelsey Harvey highlights how the combination of extreme heat and other climate calamities looks to be a harbinger of worse
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Bigfoot Blog
“Here’s a Hollywood production that depicts an oil company … as wanting to murder children to oppose environmental progress…The NDP, that’s who they’re defending…They’ve always been against our largest industry.” – Jason Kenney doubling down on the War Room’s anti-Bigfoot campaign Sigh. Here we are, bracing for the third wave
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Use the war room to educate Albertans?
In December 2019, the Alberta government launched the Canadian Energy Centre. The new UCP government had fulfilled its election promise of an energy “war room” that would “fight fake news and share the truth about Alberta’s resource sector and energy issues.” The promise has turned out to be a huge
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – John Metta discusses how low-income workers have been barely treading water for decades even before the coronavirus collapse. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points out how we can take the failure of EI during the pandemic as a signal that we need
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Miller takes note of the corporate media’s bias against Wet’suwet’en land defenders and others engaged in demonstrations in solidarity. Stuart Trew comments that we shouldn’t let demands for convenience override the ongoing need for reconciliation. Paige Raibmon writes about the obvious error
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: 2020 The Year We Push Back
Kudos to the citizens who parse Jason Kenney’s policies and winnow the truth from the lies. This takes tremendous courage given the government’s thin-skinned and overly aggressive response to criticism. (Check its Twitter and Facebook posts, they’re replete with attacks on anyone and everyone from Calgary’s mayor to doctors, academics,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nathan Robinson writes that there’s every reason for younger people – in the U.S. and elsewhere – to support the principle of socialism based on a desire to achieve gains for everybody rather than only a privileged few: A better definition, at
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: War Rooms and Coal Barons
Alberta’s recently constituted “war room,” sometimes known as the Canadian Energy Centre, is off to a rocky start. First we learned it plagiarized its logo and now it turns out one of its spokesmen has been misrepresenting himself as a reporter. Not an auspicious beginning for the ministry of truth.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Stephen Buranyi laments the reality that the public’s increased awareness and concern about our ongoing climate breakdown isn’t being reflected in political decisions. And Noah Smith writes that while the rapid drop in prices for renewable energy may help us avoid the worst
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rebranded ‘War Room’ aims for ‘measured tone’ in riposte to acerbic Medicine Hat News column, doesn’t quite succeed
All the Alberta Government’s rebranded Energy War Room is trying to do, pleaded Managing Director Tom Olsen yesterday in his much anticipated riposte to an acerbic column last week in the Medicine Hat News, is to bring a little civility to the debate about whether or not foreign-funded enviro-propagandists are
Continue readingAlberta Politics: That’s embarrassing! Alberta’s court filing in carbon tax fight says NDP carbon tax did no harm
The linked weekend revelations that the NDP’s carbon tax had no meaningful negative impact on Alberta’s economy and that 40 per cent of Albertans received carbon-tax rebates larger than the tax they paid were ill timed from the government’s perspective. After all, the CBC’s report on Saturday of what the
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Promises Made, Promises Kept…or Not
The UCP government continues to tell Albertans it’s delivering on its promise of jobs, economy, pipelines, when in fact it’s not. The latest example of this Orwellian doublespeak is the UCP government’s “promises made, promises kept” report. This is the second PMPK report. Like the first one it lists
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 44: Live from the Parkland Institute Conference: Truth, the First Casualty? War Rooms and Rumours of War Rooms
Daveberta Podcast host Dave Cournoyer teamed up with AlbertaPolitics.ca writer David Climenhaga at the annual Parkland Institute Conference at the University of Alberta last weekend to share what we know and what we speculate might happen with the Canadian Energy Centre Ltd. (a.k.a. the War Room) and the Public Inquiry
Continue readingWar Rooms, Secrecy and a Little Patronage—Democracy in Alberta
Former journalist and conservative lobbyist Tom Olsen was the UCP candidate in my riding of Calgary-Buffalo in this spring’s Alberta election. Tom lost to Joe Ceci of the NDP, but his loss was only temporary. Recently it turned into a handsome reward. He was named by Energy Minister Sonya Savage
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Greta Thunberg heads for Wild Rose Country: first chance for the UCP’s War Roomers to mess up big time!
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist who seems to have turned the world upside down by mobilizing young people to do something about global climate change, tweeted last night that she is on her way to Alberta. At this is written, while there was lots of excited chatter on social
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: The surreallity of life in Alberta
Living in Alberta, I sometimes get the feeling I live in a place shifted a few degrees off centre from reality. For example, in the real world we are faced with the overarching threat of global warming, a crisis we have brought down upon ourselves. But, despite near unanimous agreement
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Left by the pope with a choice between glory to God and death to the carbon tax, what will Jason do?
Turns out you really can’t serve God and Mammon! Who knew? Tout le monde Conservative Alberta was reeling over the weekend at Friday’s news from Rome that Pope Francis, leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, has declared global warming to be a real thing and putting a price on carbon to
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Open letter from an Albertan to his government
14 June 2019 The Honourable Sonya Savage, Minister of Energy Government of Alberta 324 Legislature Building 10800 – 97 Avenue NW Edmonton, AB Dear Minister: Recently I read in the news that you are establishing a “war room” to defend the oil and gas industry from criticism. I urge you
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s not much Jason Kenney’s ‘war room’ can do to ease medical concerns about health impacts of climate change
FREDERICTON, N.B. – Whatever will Jason Kenney’s $30-million “war room” do about people like the nurses and physicians around the world growing increasingly troubled by the health impacts of climate change? They are, after all, members of two professions most trusted by the Canadians according to survey after survey going
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