Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tiffany Crawford interviews Kirsten Zickfeld about the contradiction between new fossil fuel infrastructure and any serious attempt to reverse our climate breakdown. Murray Mandryk offers a reminder of the local costs of climate change. Fatima Syed highlights how Doug Ford's supposed climate plan consists of nothing more than a determination to scrap anything which has already been working, while the Calgary Herald's editorial board calls out both Ford and Jason Kenney for their utter lack of anything constructive to contribute. And Simon Enoch recognizes that the new strategy of climate defeatism only highlights the urgency of immediate action:

We can certainly lament the fact that the discourse on climate action has sunk so low that shrugging our shoulders has become a valid argument from our political leaders. But we can also take solace in the fact that the opponents of real climate action have been forced to make such a terrifyingly prosaic argument. It means they recognize that their previous arguments of denial and delay are running out os steam. The realities of global warming are becoming too evident to even entertain denial, while the speed of climate change is making delay look more and more reckless. Urgent, radical action will soon be the only reasonable means forward to a sustainable future. The only response the defeatists can muster is to foreclose that future altogether. Let climate defeatism be the sad last gasp of those who have stood in the way of climate progress for the past thirty years and are about to be swept aside by history.

- George Eaton points out that the UK Conservatives' austerity (like that of other governments) has failed even on its own terms. Jerry Dias responds to Ford's attacks on a fair minimum wage by noting that there hasn't been any meaningful tradeoff between real gains in wages for workers, and the jobs which the business lobby wrongly claims to be at risk. And Simon Lewsen comments on the shameful presence of hunger in the midst of Canada's wealth - including the reality that food may be the most easily-cut expense item in households living in poverty. 

- Tim Pearson discusses how governments elected under proportional representation systems are more likely to take care of both our environment and our economy, rather than being focused solely on single-party political interests.

- Finally, Meagan Day looks at the Trump administration as a prime example of the dangers of putting corporate autocrats in charge of the public sector.