Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Richard Sima examines how the steps needed to limit the spread of COVID-19 in indoor workplaces would also help address longstanding air quality issues. But Robert Pearl notes that rather than taking systemic steps to protect health from COVID as well as other issues, political leaders are pushing an ethic of immoral disregard for the well-being of others in order to facilitate the continuation of business as usual. 

- Fiona Harvey reports on Katharine Hayhoe's warning that we can't adapt out way out of the climate crisis, while John Fialka discusses how methane spikes are producing particularly rapid warming at the exact point when we need to be pushing in the opposite direction. The Energy Mix points out Deloitte's research estimating a $178 trillion cost of climate inaction over the next 50 years (compared to a positive return on investing in an energy transition). And Natasha Bulowski reports on the problems with the Libs' idea of consultations on a just transition where the witness list is slanted toward fossil fuel interests. 

- Meanwhile, in case there weren't enough reasons to rule out technology which doesn't yet exist and won't even reach the pilot stage for a decade as a substitute for a transition to renewables now, Mark Shwartz reports on new research showing that small modular reactors would create an even worse nuclear waste issue than existing power plants (whose waste of course still hasn't been dealt with after decades of use). 

- Bruce Campbell offers a reminder that Lac-Megantic and other preventable disasters signal the dangers of letting businesses decide how they're going to be regulated. And Anand Giridharadas talks to David Gelles about the need for business media to be far more skeptical about the assumption that the corporate lobby has anybody's best interests at heart. 

- Finally, David Moscrop is frustrated with the apparent malaise reflected in Ontario's election today, while Kaneera Uthayakumaran offers the hope of a young voter excited to exercise a voice in the direction of the province. Lucas Powers and John Rieti highlight how housing looks to be the key issue for may voters - though that should surely militate against support for a government determined to generate profit for developers rather than meeting the right to a home. And Stephen Magusiak and Luke LeBrun's late-campaign bombshell about PC insiders looking to use Doug Ford's government to get around sanctions against Russian oligarchs would seem to confirm that the already-obvious corruption within the current government is just the tip of the iceberg.