Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- George Monbiot makes the case for popular sovereignty mechanisms to supplement systems of representative government which fail to reflect the will of the people. And Ian Bremmer reports on Chile's mass protest seeking a public voice to end economic unfairness.  

- Katrina Miller notes that Canadian voters looking to solve affordability concerns prefer progressive solutions. Ilya Banares reports on new polling showing that a strong majority of voters who would rather see cooperation between the Libs and NDP than watch Justin Trudeau implement Conservative policies, while Rick Salutin points out the agreement on broad principles among two-third of voters. And Andrew Nikiforuk writes about the need for more cooperative politics if we're to have any hope of transitioning toward a sustainable society.

- Zane Schwartz reports on one interesting bit of discussion about worthwhile public investments, as the Canada Infrastructure Bank (flawed though it is) has been examining the possibility of a national public utility for telecommunications.

- Lisa Johnson examines the utter implausibility of the UCP's claim that its giveaways to big corporations will result in anything but the further accumulation of wealth by people who already have more than they need. And Hannah Kost reports on Naheed Nenshi's reply to an Alberta budget positively calculated to maximize the pain caused to people and public institutions alike.

- Finally, Taylor Kubota points out new research confirming the problems with carbon capture as anything but an excuse to avoid transitioning away from fossil fuels. Fatima Syed reports on Saskatchewan's indoctrination of students with oil industry propaganda while ostensibly teaching about climate change. And Dennis Gruending highlights how Scott Moe and Jason Kenney are speaking only for the oil sector - rather than for their constituents or the public good - in their climate denialism and gaslighting.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Ezra Klein discusses how a corporate focus on buybacks and dividends rather than actually investing capital leads to less opportunities for workers. Nora Loreto offers her take on precarious work in Canada. And Lynne Fernandez and Kirsten Bernas make the case for a living wage in Manitoba and elsewhere.

- Paul Krugman writes that if the Republicans manage to take both houses of Congress, we can expect them to turn voodoo economics into the default means of evaluating policy choices.

- Murray Mandryk crunches some numbers and finds that the main effect of the much-ballyhooed SaskPower carbon capture and sequestration project is to transfer a massive amount of money from the public to the oil sector. And SaskWind follows up by pointing out that it's already possible to secure better value for money investing in wind power.

- Andrew MacLeod exposes how the B.C. Libs want to take another step in silencing non-profits - this time by giving outsiders (and particularly those with enough money to fund constant court proceedings) the ability to force any non-profit to comply with their view of the public interest. And Vaughn Palmer notes that it's nothing new for the Clark Libs to bully people using the power of the state and the public purse.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg writes that the purpose of the latest Iraq war is simply to defend the legacy of failure arising out of previous ones. And the Star-Phoenix' editorial board argues that it's time to stop the march to war before it's too late.

On responsibility

Leftdog has already weighed in on one key connection to be drawn based on the latest news about the siphoning of money from a supposed attempt to toward insiders with a sole-sourced deal to provide computers at inflated prices. But let's look at a couple more points arising out of the story.

All of this seems to contradict what Donna Harpauer, the government minister responsible, told the NDP Opposition last June.

"The contract cost was within the acceptable range for similar goods and services and the goods and services were necessary," Harpauer said at the time.

Now, Harpauer says she made that claim based on what she had been told by government members on the IPAC board.

Asked recently if it sounded like taxpayers got value for their money, she said no.

Now, the combination of public funding and government board representation would seem to make it obvious that Brad Wall can't escape direct responsibility for the misuse of public money. But the Sask Party is now pointing fingers at its own representatives for providing false information, while trying to pretend it doesn't bear responsibility for having appointed them in the first place. (Which should put to rest any pretense that the Sask Party's communications philosophy differs at all from the finger-pointing and distraction so favoured by the Harper Cons.)

That said, if the Wall regime had been particularly concerned about any long-term results from IPAC, it presumably would have put more thought into who it appointed and how it tracked IPAC's activities. Instead, the fact that IPAC was billed for millions of dollars for little of value without anybody noticing at the time suggests that this was simply another example of Wall wanting to be able to make an announcement tangentially connected to climate change, while being at best ambivalent as to whether or not it succeeded.

As a result, the IPAC/CVI debacle serves as a case in point as to the dangers of that model based on publicity rather than results. But it's hardly the only example of the Wall government's efforts to draw confusing lines between funding and responsibility. And the combination of incompetent administration and a lack of idea what funding is intended to accomplish offers an all-too-clear invitation for abuse - leaving us to wonder just how many of the Sask Party's "innovative" announcements are really only creating opportunities for growth in the fields of rent-seeking and scam artistry.

Dead and buried

Others have already pointed out last week's news that oil-sands operators are pulling out of a major carbon capture and storage project. But it's worth taking a closer look at their explanation, and how it compares to the Cons' claim to have the slightest interest in dealing with climate change.

Here's why the oil industry isn't bothering with CCS:

“Our decision was essentially based on the fact that we could not see a way to make the economics of our CCS project work as we originally intended,” said Don Wharton, vice-president of policy and sustainability at TransAlta.

He said markets for pure carbon didn’t develop as expected, and federal and provincial governments took no steps to recognize the value of reduced emissions by implementing a price on carbon, for example, or a cap-and-trade system.

In short, despite nearly $800 million in government subsidies, the company had no incentive to invest in CCS.

Let's keep in mind that the Harper Cons haven't merely poured hundreds of millions of dollars into CCS: they've in fact done so to the exclusion of any other climate-change funding (since their initial period of poorly-feigned interest in the environment when Stephane Dion was Lib leader). And after once suggesting they were willing to implement cap-and-trade as an alternative to a carbon tax, the Cons have since taking to claiming that all they're willing to do about greenhouse gas emissions is to pour money into unspecified innovation.

Such as, for example, the CCS project which is falling apart in the absence of a carbon price. In effect, tar sands operators have figured out the reality that the Cons are determined to avoid any regulation that could require the oil industry to pay any of the cost of the emissions it generates - and are making their long-term business decisions on the assumption that there will never be meaningful regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada as long as Harper holds power.

Now, we shouldn't pretend that CCS - in the tar sands or in power generation - was ever itself much more than an excuse to avoid broader steps to deal with greenhouse gas emissions. (Indeed, I'm sure the time put into promoting it can be described as another elegant excuse for inaction.) But the oil industry has just discarded the Cons' last remaining fig leaf - and that leaves the Cons instead trying to bury the emissions data which exposes their entire climate-change policy as a fraud.

An improbable failure

Not surprisingly, the Saskatchewan NDP has been all over the apparent demise of the province's joint carbon capture project with the government of Montana. But it's worth pointing out just how remarkable it is that the Wall government has managed not to get any support from the Harper Cons.

After all, carbon capture and storage has been basically the only idea with any environmental application that the Cons happily funded at every turn. And the reason for that is obvious based on their consistent desire to hand money to the oil patch.

If CCS gets fully developed on a commercial scale, it would at least eliminate much of the risk associated with future greenhouse gas emission regulations. But even more significantly, CCS would effectively create a license for the oil industry to print money if combined with the Cons' plan for "intensity" targets - as the industry would be able to ramp up production (and maybe even overall emissions) while using technology developed at public expense to sell carbon credits as well.

That combination of theoretical environmental appeal and a potential windfall for the oil industry is why the Cons have made CCS a regular recipient of federal largesse while they've been in power. So the province's pitch for funding should have been roughly as difficult as selling water to a traveller stranded in the desert.

But even a bar that low is apparently more than the Wall government can clear. Which makes the failure of the Montana project just one more reason to wonder how much else the Sask Party is managing to foul up against all odds.