Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Karl Nerenberg writes about the Parkland Institute's research showing how privatization has undermined  Alberta's health care system. And Mitchell Thompson warns that the UCP has a similar plan to turn what's already a housing crisis into a profit extraction extravaganza at the expense of the people living in what little public housing already exists.

- Meanwhile, Brandon Drenon reports on the disastrous wildfires sweeping across Alberta, while Ian Austen points out the provincial election campaign's glaring lack of discussion of the climate breakdown which is causing them. And John Vaillant writes that there's no excuse for feigning surprise that a refusal to rein in global warming is producing exactly the effects which have been predicted for decades. 

- Julia Simon reports on the damage caused by a ruptured CO2 pipeline in Satartia, Mississippi. And Mark Olalde notes that taking into account only site cleanup (and thus excluding air pollution and climate damage), the liabilities created by California's oil industry far exceed its profits - meaning that the perception of economic value is purely the result of failing to account for real costs. 

- Jonathan Barrett reports on new research showing how Australia's grocery giants have used the pandemic and associated inflation to goose their profit margins. And Delphine Strauss points out a similar story in the UK's milk market, which has seen an unprecedented gap between retail prices and the amount paid to producers.

- Finally, Cory Doctorow discusses how any reasonable utilitarian evaluation of well-being would focus far more on how policies affect a wider range of people, rather than treating the accumulation of extreme wealth by sociopaths (disguised as "GDP" or other cumulative wealth measures) as the most important consideration.