Tuesday Evening Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Gary Mason discusses how politicians are fiddling while our planet burns. And Jonathan Watts reports on the strongest sea ice in the Arctic breaking up for the first time in recorded history, as well as the likelihood that Arctic warming bears part of the blame for exceptionally hot summer weather getting "stuck" elsewhere.

- CBC News reports on the Libs' choice to set unambitious poverty reduction targets - yet also positioning themselves to fail by refusing to commit a single nickel to the cause in the next dozen years. And PressAssociation takes note of new research from the UK showing that a family with two minimum-wage earners will still fall short of a bare minimum "no frills" lifestyle, while Caitlin Morrison reports on the explosion of household debt that's temporarily papering over insufficient wages.

- Trish Hennessy and Ricardo Tranjan point out that skilled professionals are vulnerable to the forces causing precarity and economic insecurity.

- Seth Klein and Vyas Saran make the case for electoral reform in British Columbia:

Our current two-party system narrows our political choices and limits our discourse, discouraging bold and long-lasting policies. FPTP can only reflect so many viewpoints in the rooms where policies, laws and other important decisions are made—and what does get through tends to be heavily shaped by elite interests, if not catering to them outright. When we limit our capacity to consider a wider range of views and evidence, it takes years to address serious issues like climate change and unaffordable housing, and change only happens when we’re deep in crisis-mode, if at all.

British Columbians cannot afford to wait until we are unbearably deep in poverty, priced out of our cities, and experiencing the full impact of climate change for our representatives to take action.

- Finally, Travis Lupick offers a simple reminder that the elimination of supervised injection sites will result in people dying.