Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Heather Scoffield writes that a genuine commitment to fighting climate change could resolve multiple major issues facing Canada - while delay serves only to exacerbate them:

At the core of today’s western alienation and of today’s search for prosperity is a much larger issue: the future of energy in a warming climate.

It wasn’t on the agenda for the ministers and was only mentioned in passing in the prime minister’s mandate letter of marching orders for federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau. And that’s a missed opportunity to tackle the challenges of a carbon-based economy head-on and amplify what so many other key players in Canada are leapfrogging each other to act upon.
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In an economy that depends so deeply on resource extraction, energy production and the financing and services around those sectors, climate change is primordial. In a recent paper from the Bank of Canada that sets out where central bank researchers need to assess the impact, the author points to oil and gas of course, but also real estate, agriculture and transportation. Electricity generation, infrastructure and any industry that uses a lot of energy are also on the front lines. Insurers, banks, pension funds, investment funds and real estate trusts are also in flux.

And from a consumer point of view, climate is affecting the price of everything, as well as the way we heat and cool our houses, drive our cars, clothe our children and prepare our food.

Global warming, and its fix — decarbonization — touches almost every corner of what we do, and the risks to the economy are enormous, starting now. At stake are our profits, our businesses, our governments’ tax revenues and our very quality of life

- But Marieke Walsh points out the gap between Canada's actions and its already-insufficient emission reduction commitments. And Keith Gerein discusses the utter lack of substance behind the anti-carbon-tax bleatings of the UCP and their right-wing allies.

- Jaskiran Dhillon and Will Parrish exposes the lethal violence authorized by the RCMP against peaceful land defenders in the interest of pushing through pipelines.

- Stuart Thompson and Charlie Warzel examine the information that can be gleaned - and the risks that can be created - from a single set of cell phone location data.

- Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood writes about the Libs' extension of EI sick leave benefits, while noting the need to go much further in filling in the gaps in our social safety net.

- And finally, Erica West comments on the multiple meanings of the term "emotional labour" - and the reality that all of them reflect the perpetuation of gender imbalances.