Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- George Monbiot recognizes that our climate policy needs to be based on maximizing our shift to a sustainable society, not on trying to barely reach insufficient emission reduction targets:

It’s not just the target that’s wrong, but the very notion of setting targets in an emergency.

When firefighters arrive at a burning building, they don’t set themselves a target of rescuing three of the five inhabitants. They seek – aware that they may not succeed – to rescue everyone they can. Their aim is to maximise the number of lives they save. In the climate emergency, our aim should be to maximise both the reduction of emissions and the drawing down of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. There is no safe level of global heating: every increment kills.

Maximisation is implicit in the Paris agreement: it requires governments to pursue “the highest possible ambition”. In its land-use report, the CCC repeatedly admits that it could go further, but insists it doesn’t need to, because its policies will meet the target. The target has supplanted the ultimate objective, which is to respond appropriately to the climate emergency. This is a classic vindication of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
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The appropriate response to the climate emergency is a legal duty to maximise climate action. The CCC’s board should be disbanded and replaced by people whose mandate is rigorously to explore every economic sector in search of the maximum possible cuts in greenhouse gases, and the maximum possible drawdown. We have arrived at the burning building. The only humane and reasonable aim is to rescue everyone inside.

- Paul Krugman discusses how the movement to combat climate change has a far better grasp of economics than the elites trying to operate in denial. The Financial Times backs the EU's move toward carbon border taxes which ensure emissions can't be exported. And Emily Atkin notes that what's typically referred to as green-washing by the fossil fuel industry is better summarized as false advertising.

- Brigid Delaney writes about the profound physical effects of Australia's summer of scorching heat and uncontrollable fire. Laura Kane interviews Mike Pearson about the harm Trans Mountain construction is inflicting on natural salmon habitats. And Kieran Leavitt offers a reminder of the known health risks of fracking.

- Faisal Chaudhry points out the web of intellectual property provisions which lock in massive profits for the pharmaceutical industry while limiting access to needed medications.

- Finally, Katie Hyslop examines how to eliminate single-parent poverty in British Columbia. Corey Ranger calls out the Kenney UCP's targeted attacks on Alberta's most vulnerable people. And Darren Walker writes about the need for structural change - rather than philanthropy - in order to improve the living conditions of the people now suffering the most.