Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Nikiforuk writes that what information we continue to receive about COVID shows that we can't afford to stop working on preventing its spread. And Katherine Wu offers a warning as to what this winter's flu season might bring based on the experience of southern-hemisphere countries over the summer. 

- Umain Haque points out that we should have a fairly easy decision to make in determining whether to fund a transition to clean energy - as the price of doing the work would pay for itself in six years, while the long-term cost of failure is an existential threat to civilization. Max Wakefield discusses how the UK is paying an alarming price - while fossil fuel operators rake in gigantic windfall profits - due to its subsidization of oil and gas over efficiency and renewable energy. And Damien Gayle reports on research showing how oil giants' much-publicized funding for clean alternatives is a tiny fraction of the riches they've hoarded by perpetuating dirty energy. 

- Meanwhile, Damian Carrington reports on a new study showing that we're passing or approaching some of the most crucial tipping points in determining whether we fall into catastrophic climate breakdown. And David Wallace-Wells discusses how massive floods are exposing Pakistan's vulnerability to extreme weather events. 

- Eric Gardner points out that discount stores are the latest example of corporate behemoths filling their coffers at the expense of affordable necessities for workers. Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell expose the Calgary Police Service's ties to a seedy California degree mill which is supposedly providing training on crisis intervention. And Kaley Kennedy writes about the need to take profits out of child care. 

- Finally, Madeleine Carlisle discusses how U.S. libraries are in the cross-hairs due to Republican efforts to disappear books which could result in the inconvenient development of empathy and recognition of diversity. Jeff Labine warns that the extreme right is looking to take over school boards in Canada as it's already managed to do south of the border. And Bob Hepburn calls out Pierre Poilievre for fomenting the deplorable culture of bigotry and exclusion.