Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Nikiforuk writes that Canada is currently failing to carry out any energy transition, as any expanded use of renewables is only being added to rising fossil fuel extraction and consumption. Natasha Bulowski writes about a new Senate committee report showing how our transportation infrastructure is ill equipped to deal with the climate breakdown. And Dan Hendry discusses how free transit for youth represents one of the most promising ways to create healthy transportation habits. 

- But Alex Steffen notes that the oligarchs at the centre of the Trump administration have plans to make massive profits off of the climate breakdown. And Michelle Cyca discusses how politicians in Canada (like elsewhere) are choosing to amplify conspiracy theories and disinformation in order to avoid having to engage with the climate crisis. 

- Owen Jones comments on the collapse of any "centre" element to right-wing parties across the western world - and the concurrent rise of increasingly extreme and antisocial figures. Karl Bode worries that the pollution of the U.S.' media ecosystem with disinformation may be terminal, while Michael Harris warns about Donald Trump's plans to destroy the news media (and how that may spill over into Canada). And Matt Pearce points out how two corporate outlets are looking to undermine the Associated Press as one of the last credible sources of news standing. 

- Ned Resnikoff points out how the success of a Housing First policy for U.S. veterans makes clear that there's a readily-available option to help homeless people generally. Ehsan Noroozinejad Farsangi and T.Y. Yang discuss the need for federal leadership in treating housing as a right - not merely funding new technologies and hoping other jurisdictions will fix the lack of avaiable homes. Phil Tank notes that the Moe government is choosing to utterly neglect the soaring homelessness counts in Saskatchewan's major cities. And Neil Howard discusses how strings attached to basic social supports serve primarily to divert resources away from people who need it toward bureaucratic controls. 

- Finally, Zhu Li et al. study how poverty is a distinct cause of diabetes (among other dangers to health and well-being). Nick Tsergas talks to Dr. Joss Reimer about the state of Canada's health care system - including the need to ensure that fixable issues of process and capacity aren't used as excuses to allow the spread of pay-to-play medicine. And Maya Miller and Duaa Eldeib point out the perverse incentives from the U.S.' for-profit insurance system, as people receiving mental health care see their coverage cut off because their treatment is too successful.