Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Michael Mikulewicz and Tahseen Jafry discuss the responsibility wealthy countries bear for increasingly severe weather events - as well as the best way to start bearing an appropriate share of the resulting human and economic costs:

In all this inequality, the world’s wealthiest countries are heavily culpable. It stems from a complex economic system that disadvantages the Global South – not to mention the centuries-long experience of colonialism, the effects of which have hampered human development until this day.

In a world where 26 billionaires own as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity, the prospect of more frequent and intense climate disasters is only bound to exacerbate those inequalities. At the same time, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe contribute only a small fraction of the emissions that are causing such disasters. The West’s responsibility – along with other big emitters such as China – is therefore also a matter of climate justice.
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Besides the high-profile attempts to reduce global emissions, countries such as the UK should be offering support to poorer countries with everything from building flood defences to supporting social services to transferring technology. They should be forgiving national debt, redistributing wealth or at least giving them preferential trade deals to help them adapt to climate change themselves. This requires a rethinking not just of humanitarian aid but of development assistance in general. 

- Doug Cuthand highlights the need for a united front against white supremacy even as right-wing politicians try to wink and nod toward it. And Paul Willcocks discusses the mortality crisis among Indigenous teen girls as a glaring example of the conditions demanding a response from political leaders.

- Carhy Stephanow highlights how Saskatchewan's budget was nominally balanced on the backs of the poor who have seen already-inadequate standards of living do nothing but degrade over the Sask Party's time in power. And Jesse Winter points out the folly of pushing patients from hospitals immediately into homeless shelters rather than having appropriate housing available.

- Elieen Banks discusses how Jason Kenney's rhetoric about farms is based entirely in ignorance about NDP action to make farm work safer.

- Finally, Alex Marland writes about the dangers of the total control exercised by leaders' offices over elected Members of Parliament.