Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Guardian's This is Climate Breakdown series offers first-hand accounts of the current catastrophes arising out of the climate crisis. And Michael Mann writes that it's possible to avoid the worst anticipated effects of climate change - but only if we stop spewing carbon pollution in a hurry. 

- But Sehoon Kim discusses how the corporate sector is buying cheap and meaningless credits rather than taking steps to reduce its own environmental harm. Fatima Syed reports on Enbridge's laughable attempt to avoid any regulation of emissions by claiming that greenwashing is more than enough. And Angela Amato and Carly Penrose examine Alberta's plans for fossil fuel propaganda in schools - even as Breene Murphy notes that oil and gas aren't viable long-term investments.  

- John Clarke writes about the importance of cultivating truth and understanding against the entrenched interests seeking to drown out anything that might threaten their accumulation of wealth and power. But Charlie Warzel points out the immense resources being used to try to push people away from reality-based media, while Carole Cadwalladr discusses the especially dangerous combination of media and government power currently coalescing under the impending Trump regime. And Zak Vescera reports on Stockwell Day's role in building an alt-right echo chamber to try to install the BC Cons in government. 

- Finally, David Climenhaga reports on Danielle Smith's summary termination of the pension board it wants to put in charge of all Albertans' retirement income - while Paula Sambo, Layan Odeh and Dawn Lim confirm the UCP's plans for AIMCo are so political that they're planning to hand it over to Stephen Harper.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Emily Atkin writes about the importance of continuing to highlight the dangers of climate change even if - and indeed because - our political class refuses to fully engage with it. And Nature weighs in on the folly of planning to overshoot our planetary limits and trying to pull back only after the fact, while Discover points out that "deep warming" will continue to undermine habitability even if we're later able to zero out carbon emissions. 

- Arielle Samuelson discusses how Hurricane Milton became far more severe as a result of a warmed Gulf of Mexico. And Victoria Gill and Helen Briggs report on a jarring 73% drop in global wildlife populations over just the last half-century. 

- Michael Bachelard reports on the absolute fiction of Australia's largest source of carbon offsets. George Monbiot warns that UK Labour's plan to pour tens of billions of dollars into carbon capture and storage (while pleading poverty when it comes to anything that could actually help people) will inevitably turn into a similar fiasco in the making. And Jody MacPherson reports on a plea from Alberta's municipalities for the UCP to stop handing out money to oil companies while simultaneously relieving them of any responsibility for the costs of environmental degradation and cleanup. 

- Chris Hedges interviews Monbiot about the history and impact of neoliberalism as a means of undermining democracy:

- Ken Shirriff examines the continued concentration of wealth in the U.S., while Darren Major reports on the similar escalation of inequality in Canada. And David Olive discusses how workplace abuse is the norm in a society which treats workers as disposable commodities rather than people deserving of consideration and respect.

- Finally, Dale Smith calls out Danielle Smith's pitiful attempt to treat systemic denial and dehumanization of trans youth as being for their own good. 

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Rumtin Sepasspour and Courtney Tee write that it's impossible for governments to prevent and prepare for catastrophic risks when they're deliberately operating in denial that such risks even exist. And Crawford Kilian points out how the fact that we're still in the midst of a global pandemic doesn't mean we've developed mechanisms capable of responding to another one. 

- Meanwhile, Jamie Ducharme writes about the utter abandonment of anybody trying to maintain some level of COVID-19 precautions. And Erin Clack discusses the continuing stream of research showing the negative effects of COVID on the brain, while Lauren Pelley highlights how updated vaccines remain important even as their availability is becoming less and less certain. 

- Steven Trask reports on the latest revelation of a "carbon credit" project which has turned out to be an utter failure - which is worth keeping in mind in particular as the federal government's climate change consultation includes a predictable push to accept foreign credits as a substitute for emission reductions. And Natasha White examines how banks are recognizing the dangers of funding the fossil fuel sector - but how the financial sector is responding by shunting dirty loans into separate private entities. 

- Finally, Cory Doctorow writes about the realities of trying to operate in systems which people can't fully understand under circumstances where the corporations with direct control and the governments who are supposed to serve the public interest have both proven utter failures in protecting our interests. And Sam Biddle exposes how any posturing by Elon Musk and X about the evils of government surveillance is entirely selective given that they've turned the sale of their own surveillance data into a profit centre. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Emmett Macfarlane discusses how the stakes in Alberta's election are no less than democracy and the rule of law - as Danielle Smith has made her contempt for both abundantly clear. But Andrew Nikiforuk points out that nothing in the current campaign holds any prospect of loosening the hold of petropolitics on the province.  

- Jennifer Lee reports on an open letter from 200 emergency room physicians pleading for recognition that hospitals are collapsing for lack of resources, while Taylor Lambert discusses Red Deer's overloaded facilities and exhausted providers as being emblematic of the province's health care system as a whole. And Annie Waldman's report on privatized vascular services in the U.S. offers a reminder of what happens when politicians choose treat the medical system primarily as a source of profit rather than a means of caring for people. 

- Nina Lakhani reports on new research from Corporate Accountability showing that most of the carbon offset credits claimed by Chevron as its excuse to keep pollution are worthless (if not actively destructive). And Patrick Greenfield reports on the resignation of the CEO of the world's largest provider of carbon credits Verra as its business model was shown to be a sham. 

- Finally, Emily Peck writes about the belated recognition by the economic powers that be that inflation rooted in price gouging is the main reason people are struggling with affordability - no matter how antithetical the very concept is to free-market idolatry. 

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The World Health Organization has updated its guidelines for COVID-19 prevention and response - including recommendations for masking and isolation periods even when these have been largely abandoned by governments. 

- Mitchell Thompson reports on the Ford PCs' plans for health care privatization which include facilitating corporate providers in upselling costly and unnecessary services to patients. And the Star's editorial board and Robert Bell each highlight the lack of any justification for privatized surgical operations even without that additional source of greed-based health care. 

- Sean Tucker writes about the need for far more to be done to keep workers safe in Saskatchewan. And Zak Vescera discusses the insufficient policy response to one of British Columbia's most prominent workplace fatalities. 

- Patrick Greenfield reports on an investigation finding that one of the largest carbon offset funds in the world is based on phantom emission reductions (and may in fact be worsening the climate breakdown). Robert Reich calls out the media's failure to connect California's severe storms to climate change. 

- Meanwhile, Oliver Milman offers a reminder that the healing of the Earth's ozone layer represents an important success story in cooperative environmental policy - with the near-elimination of the use of the substances responsible as a vital element of the achievement. 

- Finally, Kelvin Chan reports on Oxfam's push for a windfall tax on food companies. And D.T. Cochrane points out how price increases on existing products can be expected to correlate with economic stagnation due to corporate herd effects. 

Monday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Bryan Bushard reports on research showing how football games served as COVID-19 superspreaders even when less transmissible versions were circulating in 2020. And Akshay Kulkarni reports on the dangers of removing what few protections remain (including B.C.'s just-dropped self-isolation requirement for people infected with COVID), while Amina Zafar reminds us of the importance of staying home when sick.  

- Jeff Sparrow writes that extreme wealth is incompatible with effective democratic governance. And Frida Berrigan discusses how the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of hoarders is an intractable obstacle to needed climate action. 

- Meanwhile, Akshat Rathi, Natasha White and Demetrios Bogkas report on the sketchy math behind claims to carbon neutrality that aren't actually based on the reduction of a corporation's own emissions. And Darrin Qualman makes the case for Canada to set up a Canadian Farm Resilience Agency to ensure that agriculture isn't seen as incompatible with a needed transition to a clean economy.  

- Finally, Mitchell Anderson rightly calls out Danielle Smith for governing based on little more than childish fantasies - though the same criticism applies with equal force to Scott Moe and his government of UCP cheerleaders. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Derrick O'Keefe calls for a mass movement to stop the Harper Cons in their tracks now, rather than waiting for 2015:

Thoughts of ousting Harper in 2015 are well and good, but not nearly sufficient at this perilous moment for democracy and social justice in Canada. Given Bill C-38 and the events of the past few months - think about the "robocalls" scandal and the F-35 cost fiasco, for starters - nothing less than an unprecedented mass movement in the streets will suffice to push back and change the correlation of forces in political life in this country.

The rapid spread of protest actions - both with the Occupy encampments last fall, and the Casseroles in solidarity in Quebec these past weeks - illustrates, I think, a yearning for unity and mobilization amongst everyone opposed to Harper and the corporate agenda. It's been incredibly inspiring to watch, for example, how quickly the idea of 'Casseroles Night in Canada' spread. These moments are signs that there is a hunger for real, substantive change. 

The experiences of Occupy and the Casseroles, however, have also revealed the limits of our capacities at present. Mobilizations spread quickly, but participation is fickle and large protests fleeting - this is inevitable without the backing and active support of big organizations, and without widespread politicization in general. 

The strength of Quebec's student and social movements has been built up over years of base-building, and exist in the context of a much more developed progressive political culture than the rest of Canada. To admit this is not to give up, but rather to take a longer-term perspective to the task at hand - it's a war of position, not an insurrection.

- Meanwhile, Jason Fekete confirms that the Cons' push for resource extraction at all costs bears no resemblance at all to what Canadians want to see. And John Geddes points out that the list of radical environmentalists who expect carbon pricing to play a part in the global economy includes the likes of the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.

- In the "just behind the curve" department, Chris Selley speculates that a political party might be able to succeed in Quebec while challenging the sacred cow that is the asbestos industry. This surely comes as news to all concerned.

- Finally, Steve V rightly wonders how the influence of corporate advertising dollars may affect media coverage.

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.

A cool reception

Shorter Terence Corcoran (2 for 1 special edition!):
I simply can't conceive of a value system which would prioritize the survival of half the species on Earth, along with a substantial proportion of humanity, over a cheaper supply of consumer goods.

-and-

Having successfully lobbied the Con government to thumb its nose at Canada's Kyoto obligations, allow me to lecture you on the sacrosanct inviolability of international trade agreements.

On targets

With the Greens apparently joining the Libs in refusing to take a stand against "intensity" non-targets for greenhouse gas emissions (leaving the NDP as the only party firmly backing the concept of real reduction targets), one of the most important issues in the climate change debate seems to be on the verge of tipping in the wrong direction. And on the surface, the TD Bank's influential call for environmental action doesn't help matters either in its failure to specify the type of targets required for an effective emission trading system.

But reading between the lines of the TD analysis, much of the argument for an emissions trading plan ultimately supports the need for firm targets rather than "intensity" ones. Let's take a closer look at what the TD analysis calls for - and why an "intensity" structure would fail to meet the requirements.

According to TD (at p. 12), the following two factors are musts for any effective permit trading system:

(R)egulation that imposes reasonable emissions caps on industries. Without a supply constraint to emissions, permit prices would trend to zero, making the program completely ineffective.

What goes unsaid is that under an intensity-based system, an industry can generate a limitless supply of emissions credits to the extent that it's able to increase production without a fully corresponding increase in emissions. In contrast, the supply constraint under a hard cap system is obvious, as the maximum number of available emissions credits is set from the outset.

Effective and timely monitoring mechanisms of emissions. This requires the installation of costly monitoring technology as well as the development of administrative programs for audit and repair.

What's missing here is the fact that under an intensity system, any monitoring is bound to become all the more difficult and costly. After all, an additional variable is added to the mix in the form of units produced - and a company's permitted emission level for a given time period isn't even known until this factor is first measured. Moreover, any audit process is bound to be more complex when it has to accurately determine precisely which units were manufactured by a given industry, rather than merely having to ensure the accuracy of emission measurements.

The TD analysis goes on at p. 13 to discuss targets in somewhat more detail:

(D)etermining the target reduction in GHG is very important. This requires getting the science right. Some factors that complicate the baseline estimate are the state of the economy, technological innovation, and weather patterns. Emissions are influenced by economic activity as first produce more when demand for their products intensifies. Accordingly, the sample period must be chosen with care to include a complete business cycle.

In addition to this, if the emission target is established during a period prior to any major innovation, the result may be a target that is too easily reached - with the effect of too many permits being issued which in turn will drive down their value and be less of an incentive to reduce emissions.

Once again, the introduction of another variable into the mix only complicates matters: it's not hard to anticipate an extensive lobbying effort on the part of each industry to set its target based on a low-production, high-emission period for that industry - while a target related only to emissions would instead lend itself to simply taking the same baseline for all industries, and letting the trading system sort out any changes in the interim.

Meanwhile, the problem pointed out in the second paragraph is again only amplified if a firm can not only reduce its emissions for a given output too easily due to an industry-specific technological innovation, but can also take advantage of that innovation to ramp up its production in order to generate more credits for sale.

Finally, it's worth noting that the TD repeatedly mentions the U.S.' cap-and-trade system as its example of an effective trading regime, as that system couldn't be more clear in emphasizing the need for "an overall cap, or maximum amount of emissions per compliance period, for all sources under the program".

Again, it's a shame that the TD report doesn't say in so many words what kind of targets would be preferred. But on a close look, it's clear that hard targets are necessary both to the TD's suggestions for an effective emissions trading market, and for any real environmental improvement. And it isn't too late for the parties who have been on the wrong side of the issue to agree that hard targets are needed.

On means of production

Reader Deanna points out this post at While the Earth Burns, highlighting a Wayne Roberts article on the emission-reduction benefits of organic farming.

Suffice it to say that the tradeoff between the farming methods discussed in the article sounds like exactly the kind of area where a functioning emissions market could be a catalyst for a significant (and low-cost) change toward more responsible use of resources. And that in turn helps to show how far off course the Cons are in refusing to work toward that market structure.

Buying into the market

It's never been much secret that one of the primary models for the Harper government has been the Australian government of John Howard. Which makes it worth watching how PMS will respond to Howard's public declaration that "carbon pricing" mechanisms are needed to fight greenhouse gas emissions:

Australia must place a price on carbon emissions to fight climate change, Prime Minister John Howard said Monday in an apparent softening on his refusal to join in global emissions trading.

Australia, the world's largest exporter of coal, joined the United States is refusing to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which called for deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions believed to worsen global warming. Australia is also one of the world's worst greenhouse gas polluters per capita because of its dependence on coal to generate electricity.

“Market mechanisms including carbon pricing will be integral to any long-term response to climate change,” Mr. Howard said in his weekly radio address to the nation.

Carbon pricing is usually based on a permit trading system in which polluters can buy and sell credits to emit carbon on an open market and reap financial rewards for using cleaner technology.

Another option is a tax that would financially penalize polluters for the amount of carbon they emit.

Mind you, there is reason to be suspicious as to just how the term "carbon pricing" can be manipulated aside from the two possibilities mentioned in the article. But if indeed Howard is accepting the need for an emissions trading regime (and today's message seems to be another step forward following his establishment of a task force last fall), then that shift in the international handling of the issue may provide yet another reason for the Cons to move toward a cap-and-trade system in Canada as well.

An idea worth expanding

Tony Clement has announced his intention to remove his own "carbon footprint" by donating enough money to a foreign non-profit (the Carbon Fund) to invest in renewable energy. While he deserves plenty of credit for doing so personally, couldn't he accomplish far more by pointing out the value of such an investment to a government which seems to believe that emission reductions don't count for anything unless they happen in Canada?