Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jamie Ducharme examines the realities of a COVID-19 surge in progress – as well as the reason to worry that avoidable illness and death is being treated as the new normal. Kailin Yin et al. highlight the harm caused by systemic inflammation and
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Anthony Fernandez-Castaneda et al. examine the long-term neurological and cognitive damage caused even by “mild” cases of COVID. Sally Cutler discusses the implications of the Omicron COVID variant remaining transmissible longer than previously assumed even as governments and employers are adamant about forcing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Steven Lewis writes that the Saskatchewan Party’s mealy-mouthed messaging around the coronavirus looks to be a calculated political choice which is having devastating public health consequences: There has been a pattern in Saskatchewan’s communication about COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. The language is
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: It’s time to take our charities to the cleaners
The Oxfam sexual exploitation scandal signals the arrival of the moment for an honest public conversation about charities’ role in society, the white saviour mentality, gender relations, charity accountability, and the impact of western aid and power in developing countries. The post It’s time to take our charities to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tom Parkin points out that neither austerity nor isolationism offers any real solution to improve Canada’s fiscal and economic standing. And Rob Carrick highlights what should be the most worrisome form of debt – being the increased consumer debt taken on to allow
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Emily Badger discusses a new study showing just how much more expensive it is to be poor:(T)he problem isn’t simply that the poor aren’t savvy about sales or bulk buying. They’re more likely to use th…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Simon Kennedy highlights another key finding in Oxfam’s latest study on wealth, as the global 1% now owns as much as the other 99% combined. And Dennis Howlett reviews Gabriel Zucman’s Hidden Wealth of Nations, …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- Oxfam offers its latest look at global inequality, featuring the finding that 62 people now control as much wealth as half of the people on the planet. And the Equality Trust discusses how that extreme inequa…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Oxfam points out that without a major redistributive effort, hundreds of millions of people will be trapped in extreme poverty around the globe no matter how much top-end growth is generated.And Michael Valpy writes that the Cons have gone out of their
Continue readingA Different Point of View....: G7 false commitments won’t help us tackle 7-million air pollution deaths
During the hour that it took the world’s elite G7 politicians discussing climate change to wander through an enchanting meadow of flowers in Germany’s Bavarian Alps earlier this week, at least 800 people died prematurely from the impact of air pollution, most of it caused by the burning of non-renewable fossil fuels.
Wanting to show the world – particularly voters at home – that they care about the seven-million people a year dying from various pollution and carbon related causes, the leaders of the world’s richest countries, including Canada, signed a joint declaration calling for a global phasing-out of fossil fuels 85 years from now.
It’s unlikely that, during their deliberations in the picturesque Schloss Elmau at the foot of Germany’s highest mountain, anyone at the Summit reflected on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report of a year ago that said in 2012 around seven million people died – one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure.
Unfortunately, despite positive coverage in mainstream media in several countries, the section of the Summit dealing with climate change must be considered an over-blown failure.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was disappointed that G7 members – largely because of opposition from Canada and Japan – wouldn’t agree to a commitment to a low-carbon economy by 2050. Instead, the G7 agreed to a full-blown, no-carbon economy, but not until 2100.
According to their declaration, the G7 countries say they intend to insist on greenhouse gas reduction at least in the upper 40 to 70 per cent range by 2050. There’s also a promise to cut emission by 17 per cent by 2020.
But, despite the tough talk, no nation-specific targets were set, and the G7Declaration is not binding.
Canada, living up to its long-held reputation as the world’s leading foot dragger on climate issues, balked at Merkel’s earlier proposal that G7 countries would eliminate carbon emissions by 2050.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who rejects scientific information on the threat of global warming, said Canada would reach the G7 targets through developing new technologies, not by reducing living standards.
Meanwhile, the G7 countries – in a farcical display of public relations – agreed on a binding two degree target for limiting global warming. Again, no timeframe was set, but the G7 group will take their declaration with them to Paris in December for the crucial UN Climate Summit.
Had they been more concerned about the hardship people around their world are experiencing – including people in some of their own countries – perhaps the Summit would have taken a more realistic, more dynamic approach to tackling the world’s most pressing problem.
Environmental groups were divided
in their opinions of the Summit.
Christoph Bals from the NGO Germanwatch said “the summit sends a strong signal for a successful climate agreement at the end of the year in Paris.”
But the development organization Oxfam said the outcome was inadequate. “If the G7 really want to implement their decisions, they must take concrete measures – such as promptly initiating a phase-out of harmful coal,” said Oxfam climate protection analyst Jan Kowalzig.
“Coal is the biggest single cause of climate change”, says Oxfam, “yet the G7 countries are still burning huge amounts, despite efficient, affordable, renewable alternatives being available. G7 coal power stations emit twice as much fossil fuel CO2 as the whole of Africa, and their contribution to global warming will cost Africa alone more than $43-billion per year by the 2080s . . . .”
In addition, despite the bravado in Germany, G7 countries have pledged US$8-billion per year in subsidies to expand fossil fuel production. This runs totally contrary to their claimed emission commitment positions.
Despite U.S. President Obama’s action-oriented position in Germany, the globe’s second largest polluter is not committed to substantive action on climate change. Back home, 70 per cent of Republicans in the Senate and 53 percent of Republicans in the House deny the existence of human-caused global warming.
In view of such contradictions, holding global warming to two degrees appears to be a monumental challenge.
In fact, expectations for a successful outcome in Paris have been waning, and the lack of any concrete action by the G7 further decreases expectations.
If the planet is to avoid large increases in global warming, massive actions never before accomplished by humankind will be necessary.
No doubt some progress will be made but, according to the independent Climate Action Tracker, the world’s current policies would result in global warming of 3.6 to 4.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. Even the current pledges of the G7 countries, if converted into effective policies, probably would not be enough for the world to stay under the target of keeping warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
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A Different Point of View....: G7 false commitments won’t help us tackle 7-million air pollution deaths
During the hour that it took the world’s elite G7 politicians discussing climate change to wander through an enchanting meadow of flowers in Germany’s Bavarian Alps earlier this week, at least 800 people died prematurely from the impact of air pollution, most of it caused by the burning of non-renewable
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress weighs in on corporate Canada’s twelve-figure tax avoidance, while noting that the Cons’ decision to slash enforcement against tax cheats (while attacking charities instead) goes a long way toward explaining the amount of money flowing offshore. And Oxfam is working on its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Economist argues that lower oil prices offer an ideal opportunity to rethink our energy policy (with a focus on cleaner sources). And Mitchell Anderson offers a eulogy for Alberta’s most recent oil bender: For now the latest Alberta bender is over,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Rosenberg writes about the high-priced effort to undermine public institutions and the collective good in the U.S. And Paul Krugman highlights how the Republicans’ stubborn belief in the impossibly of good government (regardless of large amounts of evidence that such a thing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Oxfam studies the spread of extreme inequality around the globe, as well as the policies needed to combat it: Oxfam’s decades of experience in the world’s poorest communities have taught us that poverty and inequality are not inevitable or accidental, but the
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Stephen Harper and the Baby Killers
He is a man who lost his moral compass a long time ago, if he ever had one.He is a liar, a bully, a cheat, a grubby little dictator.But at least he won't be able to pose as Mother Harper anymore. As he was doing just two months ago when
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the recent spate of Saskatchewan women being fired for getting pregnant represents only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gender inequality. For further reading…– The Leader-Post reported on the increase in pregnancy-related firings here. And its editorial board weighs in here. – Oxfam’s report
Continue readingWealth gap—the greatest ever?
A couple of items I encountered recently demonstrated perfectly the extremes of the now much talked about wealth gap. First, was a report by Oxfam entitled “Working for the Few” which revealed that the world’s richest 85 people own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5-billion, a staggering statistic. At
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Graeme Wearden reports on Oxfam’s latest study on inequality and the outsized political influence of the wealthy few: The Oxfam report found that over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues
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