Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Benji Jones writes that the long-predicted mass death of coral reefs due to climate change is coming to pass even as the climate breakdown continues to escalate. Adam Bailey highlights the obscene amounts of money still being thrown at fossil fuels - and the opportunity cost of spending to lock ourselves into dirty energy rather than building a clean future. And Kevin Jiang asks why Canadian governments are ignoring readily-available plans to make indoor air healthy for children. 

- Matteo Cimellaro reports on the work being done by Indigenous leaders to call out the use of the Arctic region as a dumping ground for plastic waste and other dangerous substances. And Maria Paula Rubiano discusses new research showing that exposure to chemicals in plastics results in an increased risk of cancer (among other dangers to health). 

- Ed Zitron writes about the deliberate process which resulted in Google undermining the usefulness of its search engine in order to extract value from users and advertisers alike. And Stephen Moore is nostalgic for the sense of curiosity and excitement which has been ground down by the corporate takeover of online activity.  

- Luke LeBrun talks to economists about the typical false debate playing out over fair taxation - as overwrought Con attacks on feeble Lib plans ignore the reality that there's room to ensure the rich contribute far more to the sources of their wealth.  

- Finally, Arno Kopecky discusses how Pierre Poilievre is bent on seeing the next election fought over a false portrayal of carbon pricing - to the exclusion of any issues which could actually improve people's lives to any meaningful extent. And Christopher Holcroft writes about the risks of normalizing Poilievre's contempt for truth and democracy. 

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Gary Fuller reports on the European Environment Agency's estimate that EU countries alone are responsible for 238,000 deaths a year arising from their failure to meet World Health Organization air pollution guidelines.  

- Adam Lowenstein discusses the Center for Climate Integrity's report tracing the plastics industry's half-century-long pattern of deceit about the inability of recycling programs to avert a plastic waste crisis. And Francesca Fionda, Jeffrey Jones and Chen Wang report on the massive unfunded mining liabilities which stand to be absorbed by the public in British Columbia. 

- Robert Frank reports on new figures from the IRS showing that tax evasion by U.S. millionaires costs upwards of $150 billions every year. And Christine Wen et al. highlight how tax giveaways to already-profitable businesses have starved education systems and other social supports. 

- Cory Doctorow notes that Google has long since broken the "monopolist's bargain" of claiming that perpetually increasing dominance is necessary to preserve long-abandoned claims to security and functionality. And Steven D'Souza et al. report on the effects of monopoly food pricing in Canada's North - as well as the Libs' utter lack of interest in doing anything but subsidizing the problem. 

- Finally, Mike Elgan points out how return-to-office mandates have resulted in immense losses to workers without producing any discernible benefit for the employers imposing them.  

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Michaels, Emily Spieler and Gregory Wagner examine how negligent pandemic policies (even when COVID-19 wasn't being treated as a matter of general denialism) resulted in tens of thousands of worker deaths in the US alone. Olivia Man et al. find that prenatal exposure to COVID may produce severe health effects, while Mary Kekatos points out how the continued spread of respiratory viruses increases the risk of heart problems. And Nate Bear discusses why it will never be accurate to treat COVID as "just a cold".

- Oliver Milman reports on new documents showing that the dirty oil industry has had - and suppressed - warning about the damage expected from climate change since at least 1954. And Robert Jones reports on just another oil round of deceit, as oil companies in New Brunswick have been falsely claiming they're subject to higher federal regulatory requirements in order to gouge consumers. 

- Joseph Keller, Manann Donoghoe and Andre Perry write about the climate impacts of AI and other tech industries which pretend there's no cost or environmental harm from consuming immense amounts of energy. Adrienne LaFrance writes about the rise of techno-authoritarianism as the dominant ideology of the tech giants. And Thomas Germain reports on research showing that search results are becoming demonstrably worse due to the combination of increased focus on advertising dollars, and the gaming of search algorithms by spammers.  

- Cory Doctorow writes about the decades-long slumber of regulators - and the hope that they're starting to regain consciousness. And Meghan Smith highlights a few stories which illustrate the value of a right to repair taking priority over corporate control over products. 

- Finally, Rachel Donald and Tim Parrique discuss how individual-level deprivation is entirely the result of grossly distorted distribution rather than a lack of overall output - meaning that the only means to ensure people's needs are met is to focus on redistribution rather than endless growth. 

At least one answer

Predictably, Stephen Harper's Google interview was just as free of any substantive content as his answers in any other forum. But the surrounding reporting is starting to set up a useful timeline on the preferential treatment given to the Cons by Google:

Dimitri Soudas, Mr. Harper's press secretary, said officials from Google, which owns the site, approached with the offer about a month ago.

“It didn't take us long to say, ‘this is great,'” he said Tuesday. Indeed it is, if you're a politician.

Compare that to CBC's report on Google's interactions with the NDP:

We met with two representatives from Google a few weeks ago - no members of other parties were present. They pitched us on the live streaming technology that Google's American arm used for President Obama's State of the Union and which Prime Minister Harper took advantage of today.

At the time, they said that the infrastructure to support this stream was not yet available in Canada but gauged our interest in making use of it, if and when it was available.

From those passages, it looks like it was Google which approached Canada's political parties to offer its pitch for live-streaming to build on its use of the technology for the State of the Union address. And perhaps not surprisingly, Google apparently approached the Cons first - which isn't problematic from the standpoint of working their way down the list of Canada's parties based on seat totals.

But its message toward the NDP was different after it made its offer of an interview to the Cons - who, of course, would have been in a position to dictate whether or not Google received access to Harper comparable to what they received from Obama.

So the key question would seem to be, what caused Google to offer a different pitch to the NDP than it offered to Harper? And did the Cons set conditions on Google's access to Harper which resulted in its refusing to work with Canada's other political parties on the same terms offered to them?

The company they keep

Shorter National Post editorial board:

Why would Google allow its technology to be used as a political tool of an all-controlling government in China when it can do the same much more easily right here in Canada?

On business decisions

Following up on the Cons' sweetheart deal from Google for free live-streaming of Stephen Harper at a time when the NDP was being told that the technology wasn't even available in Canada, let's note one other potentially significant aspect of the story.

Remember that in the 2008 federal election campaign, there was exactly one political party which actually made use of Google's paid advertising as a means of reaching people searching key election-related terms. And of course, that party was the NDP. So one would think that Google would have had ample experience with the NDP's interest in pioneering its services in Canada - which presumably would make for reason to keep the NDP in the loop as to what new options were going to be available absent some pressure to withhold that information.

Mind you, I wouldn't expect Google to treat the NDP better than any other customer. But the apparently misleading information given to the NDP to stands in stark contrast to the obviously preferential treatment offered to the Cons - and some explanations are surely in order as to why that distinction was drawn.

On unanswered questions

CBC's reporting on the use of Youtube live-streaming for Stephen Harper's reply to the throne speech alone (while Google was telling the NDP that such technology was both unavailable and to eventually be offered only for a price) is both simple and damning on its face:

Google gives preferential treatment to the Cons while lobbying them on copyright and telecommunications issues.
CBC reports the story.
The Cons attack CBC for daring to report on their perks.

But while there's apparently a request out to Google as to whether they "checked the lobby registry", it seems to me that the current direction largely misses the most important point. Isn't the bigger issue regarding Google the lack of an explanation for the difference in how Canadian parties' requests were treated? And shouldn't there be some question as to when the Cons first made contact to discuss the live-streaming, and how that might have affected Google's treatment of other parties?