Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- The Climate Historian writes that COP climate change conferences are now far more a matter of theatre than of action. Justin Rowlatt reports on yet another COP conference being hosted by a fossil fuel operative seeking to use the cover of climate action to cut oil and gas deals. And David Suzuki offers a reminder that fossil gas is a bridge to nowhere rather than any solution to the climate crisis.

- Meanwhile, James Dyke notes that the disastrous floods in Spain should remind us that even the most developed countries are far from equipped to deal with the catastrophe that's in store if we don't avert more of a climate breakdown.

- Stockholm University studies the harmful effects of plastic pollution on other environmental dimensions including the climate crisis, biodiversity and water safety. And Miriam Freedman and Heidi Busse note that microplastics may be responsible for unusual cloud formation (and resulting increases in precipitation).

- Steven Staples warns that Donald Trump is coming for Canada's already limited and threatened fresh water.

- Finally, Steven Waldman examines how voters' news sources are a strong indicator of their voting preferences - with voters who rely on social media or cable news unsurprisingly repeating the positions of right-wing echo chambers. And Don Moynihan points out that the loudest forms of identity politics are those seeking to maintain while male supremacy - even as they're normalized so as to make the public falsely perceive marginalized groups as having outsized influecen.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Raywat Deondanan discusses some of the lessons which we should have taken from the COVID-19 pandemic (if it wasn't being forcibly disappeared down a memory hole for all practical purposes). And Nicole Sarden and Bryan Yipp have found that the lasting effects of COVID include compromising the ability of people's immune systems to fight common invasive fungal infections. 

- Meanwhile, Larissa Kurz reports that Saskatchewan's death toll in 2022 includes a record number of lost lives due to drug poisonings. 

- Steven Staples discusses how the military-industry complex has pushed the Trudeau Libs to break their promise not to pour billions of federal dollars into F-35 fighters of questionable utility. And John Woodside investigates how the financial sector is pushing to water down regulations to avoid any consideration of whether fossil fuel extraction is compatible with meeting Canada's international climate commitments. 

- Finally, Umair Haque writes about the decline of disruptive science and innovation, as the power exerted by people profiting from the status quo is both resulting in new ideas being squelched and the essentials of life being priced out of the reach of a large number of people. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Chinta Sidharthan discusses new research on COVID-19 reinfections, showing that subsequent infections tend to produce similar immediate effects to a first one but with earlier long COVID effects. Ellen Phiddian reports on Brendan Crabb's observation that current immunity levels - through both vaccines and prior infections - are falling far short of managing the ongoing pandemic. And Andre Picard writes that the most virulent force that's been unleashed is glaring indifference toward others' health and well-being. 

- Meanwhile, Linda Silas points out that there are readily-available options to ameliorate Canada's health crisis. And Steven Staples discusses some of the public health care issues we should be watching in 2023. 

- Erin Bartram writes about the deteriorating working conditions for university adjuncts and graduate students - and how even professors with tenure and other formal protections are far worse off due to the precarity facing their colleagues.  

- Suzanne Shoush, Semir Bulle and Naheed Dosani highlight how it's investment in people - not in policing - that makes a community safe. And Jen St. Denis reports on how Vancouver-area police have harassed an individual for having the temerity to film an officer's violent assault on a citizen which had otherwise been covered up. 

- Finally, Rose Abramoff tells her story of being fired from a scientific research position merely for imploring fellow scientists to translate their knowledge into climate activism. And Damian Carrington reports that while authorities crack down on any effort to repair the harm we've done to our climate, the Earth's oceans have again reached a record high temperature in 2022. 

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Plenty of commentators are using the Labour Day weekend to discuss the place of workers in Canadian society. Sid Ryan notes that depressed wages are bad news for Canada's economy generally. And Morna Ballantyne and Steven Staples point out the need for unions to reach out beyond their membership - particularly to highlight how collective bargaining helps workers throughout the workforce.

- Meanwhile, Lorne Gunter longs for a future in which there's no such thing as a good job.

- Tonda MacCharles offers an Ontario perspective on the Cons' gutting of environmental assessments. But it's worth wondering whether the Cons' decision to decree that regulators have no business actually evaluating environmental impacts from a policy perspective will allow outside parties to play a greater role in shaping public opinion - such as, say, the experts who have concluded that tanker traffic off the B.C. coast poses unacceptable environmental risks. (Handy hint: I wouldn't want to be the one trying to justify allowing tankers to operate based on the claim that there's only a 73% chance of a major spill.)

- Finally, David Roberts raises some issues for journalists trying to cover parties who are outright hostile toward the idea that truth matters (among other norms which are normally required for a democracy to function):

The right term is “post-truth politics.” What Kevin is struggling to describe is that Romney’s campaign is not contesting the truth value of its assertions so much as contesting whether truth value itself is relevant.

One effect of the radicalization of the right over the last few decades has been the discovery of just how much our politics is held together by norms rather than rules. There’s no rule you can’t filibuster every bill in the Senate by default; there’s no rule you can’t interrupt a president’s State of the Union; there’s no rule you can’t hold the routine debt-ceiling vote hostage. It simply wasn’t done. But if you shrug off the norm and do it anyway, there’s nothing to stop you.

Similarly, it seems that the lip service given to truth in politics is but a norm itself, one with increasingly tenuous hold. Political campaigns have always lied and stretched the truth, but when caught in a lie, would typically defend themselves (claim it was actually true), retract, or at the very least stop repeating the lie. Either way, the presumption was that truth-telling had some moral force; one ought to tell the truth, even if that commandment was often honored in the breach.

What’s creepy about the Romney crew is that they don’t do any of those things. They don’t deny, they don’t stop, they just don’t care at all. What they’ve realized is that, given today’s hyper-polarization and fragmented media, there’s no practical risk to lying. It doesn’t hurt them, in terms of getting votes, so why shouldn’t they do it?

And lest there be any doubt, the combination of systematic fabrication and dishonesty and planned interference with democratic processes is just as much the modus operandi of the Harper Cons as the Romney Republicans.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Lana Payne weighs in on the Cons' goal of reducing wages for Canadian workers:

As an economist, Stephen Harper must know what his government’s changes to employment insurance (EI), the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the elimination of the Fair Wage Act and the assault on collective bargaining in the federal sector will mean for the wages and working conditions of Canadians.

Combined, they will result in a transformation of Canada’s labour market, erode the right to fair and free collective bargaining, and make workers more vulnerable, less demanding, more compliant. Combined, they work to the full advantage of employers, at least in the short-term.

The...message taken from all these policy measures to workers is lower your expectations. Don’t demand more or better. Put up. Shut up.

- It's bad enough to know that the Cons are determined to push through new pipelines without serious environmental review when the pipelines we have are dumping tens of thousands of barrels of oil into natural areas. But it's especially alarming that there's so little monitoring that the latest spill was only noticed by accident:

As with many recent pipeline accidents, Calgary-based Pace did not detect a problem, but was informed of the leak by another company after the spill was spotted from an aircraft. The spill, which killed one duck, now covers 4.3 hectares. Mr. Woods declined comment on how long it was leaking before detection.

- Steven Staples observes that Canada has no particular need for a military-industrial complex. 

- Chris Selley proposes that we measure poverty solely in terms of an absolute deprivation index - which is at least better than the Cons' habit of simply denying that any such thing exists. But I'm not sure there's any benefit to be had in developing a list of deprivation criteria while ignoring the continued importance of relative effects. After all, can't a set of basic expectations include the ability to participate in society at large which is limited by excessive resources gaps?

- It's a plus to see Thomas Mulcair's warm reception in Winnipeg receive some press. But even more significant is the message Mulcair is sending about the importance of encouraging younger voters to be heard:

Mulcair used his time at the podium to tell party members that his goal is to be Canada's next prime minister in 2015 and remain true not only to environmental protection, but tax fairness and accessible health care. 

 ...

But he said he can only do all this if he gets elected -- and that can only happen if more people ages 18 to 25 vote.

"When young people stop voting, the right wing wins and democracy loses," he said.
In an interview he said the NDP will target teenagers, who will be eligible to vote in the 2015 election, over the next three years.

"The most important thing for us to do is make all young people understand that they're having an enormous debt laid on them by the Conservative party's choices across Canada," he said.

- And that message dovetails nicely with Andrew Jackson's commentary on youth unemployment (and the need for public steps to reduce it). 

Jack Layton Links

I won't try to catalogue all of the writing about Jack Layton's passing today, but here are a few pieces worth a look...

- Steven Staples concludes that Layton's reputation will rank him second only to the leader who first drew him to the NDP among Canada's political figures.
- As easy as it is to criticize Jane Taber much of the time, she's at her best in getting the inside story when it comes to personal moments like these - and her poignant quotes from Anne McGrath and Brian Topp are worth a read.
- Meanwhile, Les Perreaux and Ingrid Peritz survey some reactions from Quebec.
- Paul Wells charts the movement built by Layton since he started his work as the federal NDP's leader.
- And Alice traces Layton's federal political career by the numbers while raising some questions about what comes next.

Update: More from Aaron Wherry and The Mark.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your perusal...

- Steven Staples' report on the Cons' plan to spend $16 billion on F-35s has mostly been noted for its suggestion that Canada rely on drones for operations abroad. But the most important point seems to me to be Staples' observation as to what kind of capabilities actually matter in defending Canada's own terrain - and the folly of spending billions on add-ons that serve absolutely no purpose in that context:

(I)ntercepts do not in any case require an aircraft with the advanced technology of an F-35. Cutting-edge air-to-air combat and “stealth” capabilities, in
particular, are irrelevant. Bombers (and spy planes) do not dogfight, and they don’t operate search radars, for the simple reason that to do so would expose their own location and thus make them more susceptible to being shot down.

The continuing need for identification and control of civilian aircraft (and the desire to prevent theoretical “Bears over Winnipeg” options) argue against the elimination of all air defence capabilities, but these roles do not require a capability even more sophisticated than that of our existing CF-18 force...

- In retrospect, it's surprising that the issue of First Nations ownership of resources other than oil and gas has been left undetermined as long as it has. But presumably based on the sheer amount of money at stake in Saskatchewan's potash industry, it doesn't look like the issue will go unaddressed much longer.

- Brian Topp notes one particularly remarkable polling result after the Libs's concerted recent effort to sell their own leader and slam the NDP's:

Mr. Layton and Stephen Harper both continue to enjoy satisfaction and leadership numbers at around the 30 per cent mark, while Mr. Ignatieff has emerged from his latest honeymoon still tracking at only half that level in most polls. Since leadership perception can be a leading indicator of party support, we can say that as things stand today, Mr. Harper is efficiently supporting his party at its current level; Mr. Layton has the opportunity once again to help grow his party; and that Mr. Ignatieff would be a drag on Liberal support were an election to happen now.

- Finally, Don Martin rightly recognizes that the Cons may face the most difficult transition to an economic recovery of any federal party due to the reduction in their ability to pay for photo ops:

Thanks to international agreements on the need for massive stimulus spending, Harper had political cover to launch drunken-sailor spending, his government paving every pothole and cutting every ribbon, all of marked by thousands of look-at-us signs promoting their Economic Action Plan.

Yet as a minority mandate to deliver Conservative change, the last two years have been a major bust. Harper’s disappointed party puritans and made many enemies when straying from the economic file.

Senate reform has given way to senatorial stuffing, with Harper’s 32 appointments setting a single-year record in 2009. The bureaucracy has bulged, the balanced budget been delayed and there’s a hard-sell, single-source jet fighter contract on the horizon.

Academics, cities and provinces have been outraged by his census-altering shenanigans. His reckless spending on the G8-G20 summits was gobsmackingly profligate for the alleged party of prudence. Injured veterans are at war against a government which prided itself on being military-friendly. Environmentalists, as usual, feel shunned by climate change inaction.

Their government hasn’t shrunk, ministerial accountability has been selectively enforced, parliamentary decorum is still toxic and our status in the world, if this week’s United Nations smackdown means anything, is soiled.
...
The recession saved Stephen Harper from his own trivial pursuits. Perhaps he should be wary of the recovery.