Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Emma Jackson highlights why we shouldn't treat carbon pricing as anything more than a tiny piece of a plan to avert a climate breakdown. Hadrian Metrins-Kirkwood writes about the importance of passing an ambitious Just Transition Act into law at the federal leve. And Noah Smith discusses how the U.S. (and other wealthier countries) can help to lead the technological side of a just transition, while Lara Fominoff reports on Ryan Meili's call to create green jobs and technology in Saskatchewan. 

- Meanwhile, Oliver Milman reports on the oil companies who have collected massive amounts of public subsidies linked to COVID relief while still laying off workers. And Loren Steffy discusses how abandoned oil infrastructure is posing an environmental and economic menace in Texas just like in Canada's petroprovinces. 

- Rebecca Solnit writes about the air pollution epidemic which kills millions every year - but which is largely ignored due to the limited wealth and power of the people who suffer from it.

- Yasmine Ghania reports on the passage through committee of a bill to effectively implement a global treaty against plastic waste - with the Libs filibustering and voting it against based on their desire to include a loophole allowing waste to be exported through the U.S.

- Finally, Tess McClure reports on New Zealand's new steps to increase taxes on the rich and enact a liveable minimum wage.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Luke Savage comments on Justin Trudeau's phony war against inequality:

His embrace of Keynesian economics has been equally ethereal. In 2015, apparently rebelling against the prevailing economic orthodoxy of austerity, the Liberal leader pledged to stimulate the economy through modest, deficit-financed social investment.

Upon implementation, however, some $15bn was channelled into an “infrastructure bank”, geared to attract private financing. The promises of “socially useful, non-commercial projects like childcare or affordable housing to cash-strapped cities” will take a back seat to those with “revenue-generating potential”. And while investors are likely to see big returns, it is the public who will shoulder much of the risk.

Trudeau has also remained ambivalent towards the kind of big programs that could actually redistribute wealth in a meaningful way. On childcare, for example, he favours a means-tested approach, rather than the universal, public provision of a desperately needed service. And in a 2016 conversation with a low-wage worker he dismissed the prospect of raising the minimum wage, echoing the talking points of the Canadian business lobby: “Maybe everything just gets more expensive or we have jobs leaving. We have to be very careful about that.” (A 2011 University of California, Berkeley study found the effects of raising the minimum wage on prices to be negligible at best. And the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has argued that service sector jobs that tend to pay the minimum wage are by their very nature immobile, which suggests the threat of mass job flight is a myth.)
...
(W)hile the prime minister calmly informs struggling workers that raising the minimum wage may have unintended consequences, the country’s wealthiest corporate executives get to keep their cushy tax advantages. The phony war rages on.

- Jennefer Laidley offers some suggestions to ensure income security in Ontario. And Eleanor Aigne Roy reports on Jacinda Ardern's push to find shelter for every homeless person in New Zealand before its winter hits - serving as a prime example as to what social policy can look like when it's actually aimed at meeting people's needs rather than putting off action.

- Ethan Trudeau comments on the value of organized labour and cooperative businesses in ensuring that prosperity is widely shared. And Jake Johnson offers a look at the regrets of workers who voted for Donald Trump based on the false promise of right-wing populism.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey writes about the real threat posed by the ignorant rage of the anti-woman alt-right.