Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Caroline Chen discusses why opening restaurants and other indoor venues which involve prolonged contact is the worst possible choice if one wants to contain the spread of COVID-19.

- Michal Rozworski argues that we shouldn't see the relief efforts needed in the wake of a pandemic as an reason to focus on basic incomes at the expense of basic services and economic planning.

- Tiffany Crawford reports on what may be the most damning research yet into the disparity of opportunity by gender, showing that men with failing grades in high school receive as much of an opportunity in leadership roles as women with straight-A marks. Bethany Lindsey reports on Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's findings as to the disparity in health care between Indigenous people and other British Columbia residents. And Zak Vescera reports on the doubling of Saskatchewan's overdose death rate in 2020 even as the Moe government pretended to be concerned about addictions and harm reduction only to the extent it served their goal of keeping corporate profits flowing.

- Sharanjit Leyl reports on Mark Carney's recognition that the climate crisis will ultimately prove even more damaging than the coronavirus pandemic if we don't built the capacity for collective action needed to fight it, while Matthew Green reports on the massive death toll already caused by dirty fuels. Michael Patrick Smith writes about the need to kick our fossil fuel habit (from the viewpoint of somebody who has depended on it for his own job). And Andrew McWhinney discusses the need to talk about our climate breakdown in a way that appropriately calls out the role of capital in pushing for continued harm to people and the natural environment.

- Finally, Sharon Riley exposes the UCP's attempt to divert essential water supplies to coal mining in the face of fierce public opposition. And Scott Schmidt writes that Jason Kenney's gaslighting is no longer having the same effect as Albertans realize they don't have to accept his disinformation, while Bruce Livesey documents Kenney's fall from inevitable premier to cause and recipient of mass anger within his own chosen province.