Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Simon Lee, Hayley Fowler and Paul Davies discuss how the climate breakdown has undercut the basis for existing models and assumptions about the type of extreme weather we'll face. And Kiley Price writes about the connection between the climate crisis and worsening wildfires. But Tim Bousquet points out that decision-makers are reacting by shrugging their shoulders and continuing to spew carbon pollution, while  Susan Riley asks how long we'll keep barging ahead with climate denial as our core operating principle. 

- David Zipper discusses how car-free neighbourhoods avoid the noise pollution (and other health hazards) which we accept as a given within a car-based culture, while also pointing out that the U.S. is funding massive highway expansions based on the laughable assumption that inducing more care use will somehow reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

- George Monbiot highlights the numerous environmental and social benefits of a wealth tax, while asking who will back Brazil's push to implement one on an international scale. And Aaron Boley and Samantha Lawler note that the level of entitlement of the billionaire class has reached the point of endangering anybody on the surface of the Earth with uncontrolled falling space debris. 

- Philippa Roxby examines the connection between ultra-processed foods and poor health, while also noting the difficulty in demonstrating direct cause and effect. And Carl Bergstrom and C. Brandon Ogbunu write that social media is the junk food of information ingestion. 

- Finally, Jon Milton calls out the scam of "working-class conservatism" which uses the language of class politics as a means to further enrich and empower those who already have the most. Geoff Leo exposes the small- and large-C conservative connections of the shadowy group trying to take over Regina's city council. And David Climenhaga reports that Take Back Alberta is descending into the morass of criminality and internal bickering that represents the usual end point for a combination grift and right-wing ideological project.