Next Year You Really Should Vote Green

The 2019 election isn't far off but the outcome seems preordained. Barring some disaster the Trudeau Liberals are expected to win another false majority. That will make Justin the prime beneficiary of his craven and utterly self-serving decision to renege on his promise of electoral reform.

Even if I'm wrong and Justin doesn't hang onto power, we'll have a false majority Conservative government, the flip side of the coin.

Sure they're different, a little bit here, a little bit there. One might smell a bit worse than the other but that's not really important.

What matters, I submit, is the urgent message delivered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest report. Remember, that's a "best case scenario" report as jarring as it seems. Still it warns that globally we must slash greenhouse gas emissions a staggering 45% by 2030, just 12-years from now.

Twelve years. In Canada that's three electoral cycles for false majority governance. That is not much time to get it right.

Here's why I suggest neither Liberal nor Conservative deserves your vote. They both promise conflicted leadership at a time that demands the utmost clarity to secure, so far as that still remains possible, the future of our children. Both will sell out our country.

Trudeau champions a relatively pointless carbon tax. He's bragging about numbers that are woefully inadequate, a small fraction of what's needed. Still it's a gesture and that's better than Andrew Scheer's backwardness. But that's not enough reason to back the Liberals.

It's what Scheer and Trudeau have in common, what they agree upon (albeit with minor differences) that matters. That begins with bitumen. Both are bitumen boosters, committed to flooding world markets with as much of the toxic, filthy, high-carbon, low-grade ersatz petroleum as possible.

Trudeau will at least talk about cutting Canadian GHG emissions - too little, too late as that may be - but, when it comes to bitumen, they're both doing what Big Tobacco did in the States. When the tobacco/cancer link started cutting into sales, Big Tobacco flooded foreign markets, particularly Asia with their cancer sticks. And Trudeau and Scheer would have us flood those selfsame markets with our own.

While that may take the government off the hook for the emissions load represented by every supertanker of bitumen burned overseas - and that is precisely the way they treat it - it's called "global" warming. It doesn't matter where that crud is burned. There's only one atmosphere.

What Justin Trudeau has shown us over the past three years is that he's not to be trusted. He'll lavish us with grand promises and then simply walk away from them.

I can't argue that it's time for the Greens to govern Canada. Not yet. It is, however, time that Canada was not fettered by ineffective false majority governments. We need consensus government to deal with the unparalleled challenges that confront us today. Since we cannot have electoral reform under Trudeau or Scheer, our only chance is to deny either party a false majority and instead elect enough Greens that we have minority government with the Greens holding the balance of power able to defeat the government on a confidence motion if they keep stalling on climate change.

We need truly disruptive change in the way we're governed federally and provincially. Let's start in 2019.

Polar Jet Brings Sahara to the Arctic

In today's freak weather news, scientists have discovered a new "atmospheric mechanism" whereby the polar jet drags hot dusty air from the Sahara to the eastern side of the North Atlantic into the Arctic.

It seems the polar jet, known for creating Rossby waves as shown above, triggered a cyclonic storm over the African Sahara (I know, Africa and Sahara are redundant). A few years ago this wave phenomenon brought a freezing ice storm that immobilized Atlanta, Georgia while simultaneously dragging warm air from the south to give Barrow, Alaska a balmy 62F February day. It's wacky, yeah I know.

Research scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi, along with other global researchers, have identified a new mechanism by which warm dust travels from the Sahara Desert to the Arctic Circle, which has been proven to affect rising temperatures and ice melt in Greenland. 

Their findings highlight the role that the polar jet and associated atmospheric circulation plays in the transport of mineral dust from the Sahara desert to the Arctic across eastern side of the North Atlantic Ocean. 

A meandering polar jet was discovered as responsible for both the emission and transport of dust from Northwest Africa to the Arctic. The emission has been linked to an intense Saharan cyclone that formed in early April 2011, which was caused by the intrusion of an upper-level trough emanating from the polar jet. 

The study has found that atmospheric circulation of this nature enables the transport of dust, warm and moist air masses from subtropics and mid-latitudes to the Arctic, where approximately half of the warming is now being attributed to increased moisture and heat fluxes transported to the region. 

The warm and moist air masses accompanying the Saharan dust caused a rise in surface temperature of 10C for more than three consecutive days upon reaching southeastern Greenland. Subsequent temperature observations detected increased melting within the ice across this same area. 

"The polar jet stream has been identified as the main driver for such events leading to the transport of large amount of dust to high-latitudes," said Diana Francis, atmospheric scientist at NYU Abu Dhabi and lead research scientist in this study. 

"If the polar jet is set to slow more frequently due to the changes in the Arctic climate system and to the Arctic Amplification, such events are expected to become more frequent," Francis added.

Fortunately our political leaders will put an end to this nonsense any day now. Sahara dust in the Arctic, really. What next? (hint: wait and see)

Michael Harris - On Climate Change, Canada Talks the Talk But Crawls the Walk

Michael Harris' latest column warns don't count on politicians, including Trudeau, to prevent a global warming apocalypse.

To believe what a politician says when she’s campaigning to become the government is a little like believing Donald Trump on a bad day — rational optimism that’s slipped its moorings. 

Just as voters focus on their self-interest, most politicians wind up focusing on re-election — not on the grand enterprise of doing the right (and sometimes difficult) thing, with power. Long-term thinking is rarely, if ever, rewarded at the ballot box, which is why we have so many short-term political thinkers. 

Ultimately, the failings of voters pale beside the failings of these politicians. According to the UN’s major new report, there are just a dozen years or so for governments around the world to get it right. After 25 years of rhetoric, the failure on this matter continues. The name of action on the environment is consistently lost in the heat of resolve. 

According to the UN report, based on 6,000 scientific references from 40 countries and 91 authors, it comes down to this: Either countries ditch coal and fossil fuels in the next decade or so, or Earth begins the irreversible slide into planetary chaos. Hurricane Michael has just left the future’s calling card with millions of people living on the Florida Panhandle. 

The scientists who produced this dire UN report realize they’re virtually asking the impossible from governments: a rapid economic transition from carbon economies to cleaner energy so “abrupt,” it has “no documented historic precedent.”

Unmasking the Dauphin, Our Fake Eco-Warrior

Canada talks a better game than Trump. Who doesn’t? But this country’s record under Justin Trudeau has been more than dubious; it’s been dreadful. 

New exploratory drilling permits for fossil fuels, publicly owned pipelines for oilsands bitumen, and the endorsement of highly questionable mega-projects like British Columbia’s Site C dam. And now LNG Canada. 

Just this week, Canada’s environment minister appeared on Vancouver CBC. As bright, articulate and telegenic as she is, Catherine McKenna came off more like the minister of finance or fossil fuels than the person leading the war against global warming. 

Defending the government’s massive energy project in Kitimat, McKenna said that switching energy sources can’t be done overnight, and that LNG was a “transition fuel.” 

Yet if you take methane emissions associated with LNG into account, it’s not a transition fuel; it’s worse than coal. Operating at full capacity, this project will put a large amount of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Estimates have run as high as 93 and as low as 3.5 million tonnes. If the Pembina Institute’s estimate of 8.6 million tonnes is correct, LNG Canada derails British Columbia’s climate action plan. 

Coincidentally, another of the Trudeau government’s justifications for LNG exports is to help get China off coal. 

But if that’s true, why doesn’t Canada do what the state of Oregon has already done: pass laws banning coal-fired power production by 2035, and double renewable energy sources by 2040? 

Instead, Canada continues to mine coal and ship it abroad through the port of Vancouver to Japan, South Korea and, yes, China. The most recent published figures for Canadian coal exports show that 76 per cent of it goes to Asia. Does that sound like trying to wean anyone off of coal to you?

He's Spinning So Fast It's a Surprise He Can Stand Up.

When McKenna rightly points out that dumping fossil fuels “overnight” is not possible, she forgets to add that commencing the dumping of said fuels is “overdue” — at least according to the science. The last time I looked, basing public policy on sound science was supposed to be a hallmark of Liberal governance in the post-Harper era. 

The reason that politicians like McKenna, and her counterparts around the world, don’t get it, is that getting it means taking serious hits to the gross domestic product and employment. 

When Trudeau announced the LNG Canada project for Kitimat, it was all about “big”: big numbers, big investment, big employment, big sales pitch. 

The PM talked about 10,000 jobs, even though, when the construction phase is done, the real number will be tiny. In making the announcement, Trudeau sounded more like former B.C. premier Christy Clark than the man who told the world in Paris that Canada was back on the environmental file.

We're All Environmentalists Now, Or We Should Be

If the scientists have it right, the house is on fire and leaders around the world are busy rearranging the furniture in the living room. Since the politicians won’t be putting out the blaze, it will be left up to voters to get the big picture right and vote accordingly in 2019. 

And the big picture is this. 

Environmentalists are not a special interest group, like those who support ballet, opera or racing cars. Air, water, soil and biodiversity are essential to human survival and transcend political parties and corporate interests. 

Getting serious about carbon emissions by 2050 just doesn’t do it anymore. 

We are all environmentalists now.

2030, the date by which the world must slash CO2 emissions by 45% is just three electoral cycles away. There's no time left to put up with more of this forked-tongue nonsense from Liberals and Conservatives.  We've run out of time for that and it's the only song they know.

In terms of governance we need to vote Green, give them enough seats that they can hold an effective balance of power in a minority Parliament, enough sway on the floor of the House of Commons that they can bend the next government, Liberal or Conservative, to the desperate needs of our nation and our people or else throw them out and bring in the next bunch until they come to their senses that they represent Canadians, not a high-carbon special interest group.

The Globe Shreds Andrew Scheer

The Globe editorial board has torn a strip off Andrew Scheer for his antics in India.

The Conservative leader is shunning pious photo ops at prominent temples and has not yet been filmed dancing.

If anyone was in danger of missing the point, Mr. Scheer has been happy to drive it home in interviews with Canadian media, repeating the word “serious” like a tic in an unsubtle effort to throw Mr. Trudeau’s jaunt into relief. 

The prospect of the Opposition chief using his time in India for partisan point-scoring has loomed since this summer, when the visit was announced as a bid to “repair” the damage Mr. Trudeau had wrought. The possibility irked then. It has been even more grating to see Mr. Scheer go through with it.

Opposition leaders are entitled to travel for research – indeed, it’s a good idea, in case they find themselves in power one day – but they have no business running a parallel foreign policy or trying to undermine their country’s leader with veiled jabs on foreign soil. 

But that is just what Mr. Scheer is doing – just as he did on a similar trip to Britain earlier this year. Speaking from New Delhi, he proudly told reporters about touting his plan to revive the Energy East pipeline and ship more Canadian oil to India in a private conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

You don't need to be a fan of Justin Trudeau or his Liberal Party to know that Scheer has gone way over the line, again, and has once again proven that he's not fit to lead this country.,

It's a Tall Order

It's called 'living within your means.' What parent doesn't teach that lesson to his/her children. Part of giving kids an allowance is to help them learn how to control their money.

How did we, as a species, humankind, come to believe we didn't have to live within our means?

How did we figure we didn't have to live within the finite limits of our planet, our one and only biosphere, Spaceship Earth?

For that's what our planet is to our species and our global civilization, a spaceship hurtling through the cosmos at incomprehensible speed.  Beyond it there is no life for us, at least not yet. Unless and until we reach another inhabitable spaceship, we'll have to make do with the one we're in now, Earth.

How we have abused Spaceship Earth and we managed to do it in the span of just two centuries. The place has been around for billions of years but, since the Industrial Revolution, we've been at it like a massive horde of Vandals.


Over-Population

Before the Industrial Revolution humankind numbered in the low to mid-600 millions. Today we're past 7.6 billion (if you knock off 7 billion, we would be back where we were pre-Industrial Revolution). In 2030, the year by which we're supposed to have cut overall greenhouse gas emissions, we're expected to hit 8.2 to 8.3 billion. 2050, barring some enormously murderous event, look for upwards of 9.4 billion.

The Rosy Future of the Carbon Economy

While we're supposed to be putting out the global dumpster fire, a.k.a. the carbon-economy, those in the fossil fuel business such as OPEC and the IEA, see fossil fuels, including coal, burgeoning at least as far out as 2040. Their projected increase, about another 30%. They say it will be the equivalent of adding another China plus another India of fossil fuel consumption. Not sure how that's going to affect our ability to cut global GHG emissions 45% in a breathtakingly brief 12 years.


Carbon Taxes and Fossil Fuel Subsidies

We can stop this madness, say some, with carbon taxes. Hey, we've got a prime minister who wants to do that very same thing. There's a snag. There's always a snag. Given where we are today, not where we were in the 80s, those who know how to run the numbers on this have identified an effective carbon tax, one that might really make a difference. They have a range. It begins at a low of $200 per ton of CO2 all the way up to $600 a ton.

Our guy wants $20 per ton up to a max of $50. And, while that's going on he's still going to keep up those direct and indirect subsidies to Canada's oil and bitumen barons. The IMF has our generosity to  Big Carbon pegged at upwards of $34 billion each year "in direct support and uncollected tax on externalized costs."  (the latest IMF estimate is considerably higher but I chose to go with the lower number)

As far as carbon taxing being some one-size-fits-all solution, the Conference Board of Canada's 2017 report, The Cost of a Cleaner Future, poured a bucket of ice-cold water on the carbon tax solution.

The report, The Cost of a Cleaner Future, examines the impacts of carbon pricing and of the investments required to help Canada achieve significant emission reductions. It finds that even if carbon taxes were to reach $200 per tonne by 2025, this would only result in a 1.5 per cent reduction in GHG emissions outside of the power generation sector.

Then we reach the other conundrum. For a carbon tax to be relevant, it has to be global in application. Canadians are high-footprint GHG emitters but we're also just 36-million people out of 7.6 billion who share this Earth. How do you carbon tax the world when so many governments are hopelessly corrupt, so many nations failed states and so many fellow humans live in desperate poverty? Son of a bitch, I never thought of that until just now.


Petcoke-Laden Bitumen and Offshoring Emissions

Then we have another layer of hypocrisy. We focus on domestic emissions but, like Pilate, wash our hands of any responsibility for flooding world markets with toxic, filthy, high-carbon, petcoke laden bitumen. The carbon crimes that other nations may commit with that is no concern of ours. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has a 'hear no evil/see no evil/speak no evil' position on the petcoke they flog abroad. Deny everything. Hey, this is Canada, it works.

We could refine Athabasca's crud on site, in Alberta, and put that petcoke safely back in the ground where it can do no harm but, again, hey, this is Canada and we are a petro-state.


In Other News

We've taken a look at Spaceship Earth, the source of all life as we know it, in the context of over-population and our lethal carbon economy. There's one more major threat to consider, our rapacious over-consumption of Earth's resources.

We broke a major taboo around 1973 when, for the first time, mankind, then all 3 billion of us, consumed resources beyond Earth's ecological carrying capacity. We came to exceed the planet's ability to replenish these essential resources. We went after the Earth's reserves. We entered a state called 'overshoot.' The simple graph below illustrates how overshoot works. The red line represents our consumption. The dotted black line is Earth's ecological carrying capacity. The graph illustrates that, as overshoot worsens, the planet's carrying capacity degrades. Even as our demand goes up and up, the planet's ability to provide resources goes down and down and down. I won't go into detailed explanations of what occurs when the red consumption line passes its zenith except to point out how dramatically it plummets.

But how can this possibly be? Few of us have paid much attention to it but mankind has been going to town. It's called the 'Great Acceleration.' If you click on that link you will find no end of charts on where humanity has gone, especially since 1950, on everything from population to fertilizer consumption, GDP to energy use, CO2, methane emissions, and ocean acidification. The 1950 mark depicts how far mankind had come in 12,000 years of human civilization. The rest shows how much further we advanced in just the following 60 years. You'll see that the trend lines go sharply up until today they're almost vertical. We are reaching our zenith.

A recent study found that our planet's carrying capacity has already degraded to the point where it can support a maximum of two billion humans. And yet we think we're headed for nine billion.

We're now consuming the Earth's resources at more than 1.7 times the carrying capacity or replenishment rate. We've been raiding the reserves to pull this off. Those reserves are vanishing. The Earth is succumbing to exhaustion. It is visible to the naked eye from the International Space Station where astronauts can gaze down and see dried up lakes, rivers that no longer run to the sea, forests that have succumbed to logging or massive pest infestations, once fertile soil now reduced to sand that rises in great clouds over China and crosses the Pacific Ocean to reach North America, coastal dead zones and algae blooms that clog our rivers and lakes. And that's just some of the stuff you can see with the naked eye from space.


They're All Connected

We have to solve as best we can each of these threats if we're to have any prospect of solving any of them. Why must we deal with them all? The simple answer - chaos.

Focus on one - climate change is the flavour of the month - and the other two will defeat your best efforts. Even though different regions are impacted in ways and degrees not experienced in more fortunate countries and areas these are global threats that can only be addressed globally.

If Canada was to somehow decarbonize at the stroke of midnight tonight, what difference would it make in the global scheme of things. Not much, really. If the rest of the world or a significant fraction of it descends into chaos from famine, the collapse of freshwater resources, severe weather events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration, these nations and their peoples will not be able to contribute to the solutions. Those countries and regions will become destabilized and a threat to everyone else whether that takes the form of epidemics, war, terrorism even nuclear proliferation.

As Gwynne Dyer puts it, no tribe, no matter how peaceful, will allow its children to starve before it raids its neighbour.


The Tall Order

There are common threads that run through all these dilemmas and from those threads emerges the Tall Order.

The goal is to get back inside Spaceship Earth, the biosphere, the only place where life can be sustained. We're outside now. We're exposed and it's extremely precarious and worsening with each passing year.

The challenge is to find ways in which humanity can again live in harmony with Earth's environment, the biosphere. That is going to mean living within the planet's carrying capacity. We have far too many people. Our per capita carbon footprint is far too large. Our per capita consumption levels are massively beyond what the Earth can provide.

There are several ways these challenges can be met and a few by which they will be met in ways we'll deeply regret if we ignore the options that still remain open to us. Either we embrace the reality of our situation or it will extinguish us.

What'll it be? Your call.

The Real Danger of Climate Change - That Would Be You.

I have made an absolute Cassandra of myself writing about climate change for the past dozen years on this blog. Which is why the only surprise in Monday's jarring report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that it took so many by surprise.

I knew as soon as I scanned the summary that the report, while seemingly dire, didn't tell the complete story. Stuff, important stuff, was simply left out. They skirted the predictable consequences we'll see over the next twenty years. A lot of it has already begun to appear. Worst of all, they only dealt with man-made greenhouse gas emissions and gave a pass to something that could be far more destructive, natural feedback mechanisms that we have already triggered, the so called "tipping points" of runaway global warming.

The IPCC gave a pretty clear prescription. If we're to have a chance of avoiding the worst, we - our governments, our corporate giants, you and me - must slash our emissions by 45% within the next 12 years. That's 45% by 2030.

45% by 2030. It sounds straightforward enough yet it provides ample wiggle room for say anything/do nothing governments like our own to stay their high-carbon course.

For me, the most helpful comment was a remark by climate scientist, Kate Marvel, of the NASA Goddard Space Laboratory, who said:

The only thing humans can do is decide how many lives, homes, and species they’re willing to lose due to climate change—how long they’re willing to allow their respective governments to stall on what we know to be technically achievable.

It comes down to you. How long are you willing to allow your government to stall on what we know to be technically achievable? How long are you willing to allow our Liberal government or a future Conservative government to stall on what is already achievable?

You have to decide, as Kate Marvel puts it, how many lives, homes and species you're willing to lose to climate change.

If you're going to support the establishment parties, both of which support the madness of a 50 year pipeline to flood world markets with low value, filthy, high-carbon bitumen, then you've made your decision on climate change.

The "Unspeakable" Donald Trump

Jean Chretien has come out swinging in his remarks about America's Mango Mussolini, Donald J. Trump.

Chretien unleashes that unflattering opinion of Trump in a new book of anecdotes from his 10 years as Canada’s prime minister.

Although it’s entitled “My Stories, My Times,” Chretien, who retired from politics in 2003 after winning three majority mandates, does not shy away from opining on current events — most notably on Trump. 

In the preface, Chretien says writing the book over the past year helped him recover his serenity when he got “tired of observing the surrealist vagaries of President Trump and of listening to his nonsense.” 

“It’s been very sad to observe the monumental error our neighbours to the south made in November 2016,” he writes in a later chapter, in which he recounts happy times he and his wife, Aline, have spent with former U.S. president Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, who was defeated by Trump.

“I fear that Hillary’s defeat, and the arrival of the fanatical Trump, mark the true end of the American Empire. You can understand why Aline and I are so happy to have the Clintons as friends, and almost as proud to be removed as far as possible from the unspeakable Donald Trump.”

The Case for Climate Pessimism

That's the title of an article in The New Republic that, in the wake of the latest IPCC report, wrestles with the merits and drawbacks of climate optimism, "we can still do this," and climate pessimism, "we're screwed." There is a case to be made for each.

This is a tough topic and it was bound to spark emotional outpouring as we reached the point where ignoring it was no longer possible. We seem to be either near or at that point today.

The case for rapidly slashing greenhouse gas emissions - 45% by 2030.

This goal is technically achievable, according to both the report and Paul Romer, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics on Monday for his work on climate policy solutions. “It is entirely possible for humans to produce less carbon,” he said receiving the award, which he shared with William Nordhaus. “Once we start to try to reduce carbon emissions, we’ll be surprised that it wasn’t as hard as we anticipated.” Technological advancements in efficiency, combined with massive cultural shifts toward sustainability, could rapidly reduce human demand for energy. The world’s biggest governments could place heavy taxes on carbon dioxide emissions to reduce the incentive to consume. They could also heavily invest in reforestation, biofuels, and carbon capture, an unproven technology for taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

But very few people, scientists least of all, see these things happening by 2030. “Given the present political debate, I don’t see much chance of these near-term cuts happening, even in places that take climate very seriously,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at at Texas A&M University. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann agreed. “As I’ve stated before, 1.5 degrees Celsius is probably not realistically on the table,” he said. “We’re better focusing on achievable targets.”

The pitfalls of hope.

... But it’s folly to rely on hope that is demonstrably false. “The whole idea that everything’s going to work out isn’t really helpful, because it isn’t going to work out,” said Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Climate change is going to worsen to a point where millions of lives, homes, and species are put at risk, she said. The only thing humans can do is decide how many lives, homes, and species they’re willing to lose due to climate change—how long they’re willing to allow their respective governments to stall on what we know to be technically achievable.

Action relies on courage, not hope. “You shouldn’t need the guarantee of a happy ending to do what you know to be right,” Marvel said. Monday’s U.N. report gives us no logical reason to be optimistic about the planet’s survival, and no logical reason to hope. But pessimism just might convince enough people about the urgency of climate change, and encourage them to find the resolve to join the fight.

I Thought They Left Something Out. Gaping Holes in the IPCC Climate Report.

Yesterday's report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was pretty jarring with its dire warning that we had just a dozen years to cut our carbon emissions by almost half or face catastrophic global warming.

But, hey, I did try to warn you that, coming from the IPCC, what you read was a "best possible scenario" outlook.

As I read through it I noticed something was missing. If anything that was to be expected from the IPCC. So what didn't make it into the report?

Tipping points, positive feedback loops, all the ways that nature itself has already become a major player in driving climate change. It's one thing to warn that human civilization is driving us to the edge of a cliff. It's another thing entirely when you include this powerful natural force now pushing us from behind. We are not the only player any longer.

Think of disappearing Arctic sea ice, the decline of major ice caps and glaciers, the warming Arctic Ocean, the increasing volumes of water vapour in the atmosphere, changes in the major oceanic currents, the thawing of permafrost releasing methane into the atmosphere, the accelerating loss of Antarctic ice, on and on and on.

The IPCC report sets out the world’s current knowledge of the impacts of 1.5C of warming and clearly shows the dangers of breaching such a limit. However, many scientists are increasingly worried about factors about which we know much less. 

These “known unknowns” of climate change are tipping points, or feedback mechanisms within the climate system – thresholds that, if passed, could send the Earth into a spiral of runaway climate change. 

Tipping points merit only a few mentions in the IPCC report. Durwood Zaelke, founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said: “The IPCC report fails to focus on the weakest link in the climate chain: the self-reinforcing feedbacks which, if allowed to continue, will accelerate warming and risk cascading climate tipping points and runaway warming.”

...Bob Ward, of the Grantham Institute, said: “The IPCC summary for policymakers only mentions the west Antarctica and Greenland tipping points, which we may already have reached.”

...One of the problems with tipping point thresholds is that we may not know when they are reached. Robert Larter, of the British Antarctic Survey, called polar ice sheets “sleeping giants”, which if they pass a tipping point will cause devastation.

...Further unknowns include the effects of climate change on carbon sinks, such as soils and forests: higher temperatures could dry out some soils, causing them to release stored carbon into the air. But increased rainfall – a symptom of climate change in some regions – could in other areas be making it harder for forest soils to trap greenhouse gases such as methane.

Mario Molina, who shared the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1995 for his work on depletion of the ozone layer, said: “The IPCC report demonstrates that it is still possible to keep the climate relatively safe, provided we muster an unprecedented level of cooperation, extraordinary speed and heroic scale of action. But even with its description of the increasing impacts that lie ahead, the IPCC understates a key risk: that self-reinforcing feedback loops could push the climate system into chaos before we have time to tame our energy system, and the other sources of climate pollution.”

...While governments have the means to affect how much CO2 gets released through policies that radically cut the use of fossil fuels, it would be much harder to get a grip on thawing permafrosts, mass forest collapses or the loss of polar sea ice.

By failing to get a grip on a thing that’s feasibly under your control, we end up risking the release a whole gang of other monsters that we can’t.

As a co-author of the IPCC report, professor Will Steffen, of the Australian National University and Stockholm Resilience Centre, knows too well what's missing - feedback loops, knock-on effects, cascades - the whole dark side of climate change.

For those who understand the idea of a carbon budget – where scientists have calculated how much CO2 you could emit before hitting certain temperature rises – it looks even meaner than before if Steffen and his colleagues are right. 

But as they also point out, several of these feedbacks might have “tipping points” that then set off a cascade of other issues. Steffen says:

“Even at the current level of warming of about 1C above pre-industrial, we may have already crossed a tipping point for one of the feedback processes (Arctic summer sea ice), and we see instabilities in others – permafrost melting, Amazon forest dieback, boreal forest dieback and weakening of land and ocean physiological carbon sinks. 

And we emphasise that these processes are not linear and often have built-in feedback processes that generate tipping point behaviour. For example, for melting permafrost, the chemical process that decomposes the peat generates heat itself, which leads to further melting and so on.”

I expect by now you've had enough. I'll leave the interwoven challenges such as overpopulation and over consumption of the planet's resources for now. Yet the identified omissions in the IPCC report, the emerging dark side of climate change that is not under human control, is what makes me leery that we actually have until 2030 to cut our carbon emissions by half. 

This has become a race between humanity and nature to avert runaway global warming and that is going to be decided well before we reach 2030.

Is This the Smoking Gun?

A powerful article in The New Yorker chronicles "back channel" online communications between Trump's team and Russia's Alfa Bank during the 2016 election campaign.

I'm borderline computer illiterate so I'll invite you to read the article and decide for yourself.

What of Your "Moral Obligation?" What of Mine?

It strikes me as the height of naivete to expect something as structurally amoral as a neoliberal government to recognize a "moral obligation to act" even on something as existential as catastrophic climate change.

This is borne out by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. That much is clear from the manner in which environment minister, Catherine McKenna, blew off today's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The panel threw down the glove when they said that world leaders have "a moral obligation to act" to avert truly catastrophic global warming.

For me, the Liberal government's dereliction raises the question of what moral obligation do ordinary Canadians have to act if our government will not?

I'm of that age where a lot, okay most, of my contemporaries are gushing at the arrival of newborn grandchildren. How many of them genuinely love those grandkids yet are indifferent to the fate we are bequeathing to them in twenty, thirty or forty years down the road?

What moral obligation to act do we owe to those newborns?

If the government won't act to protect them and all the other newborns around the world, do we have a moral obligation to intervene with our government? Does that moral obligation, if it exists, extend to acts of civil disobedience?

And what if we don't stand up to this government and whatever government is next to claim the throne? Is that an act of betrayal of these new Canadians and those that will follow them?

I don't have any easy or pat answers to these immensely difficult questions. Even I have moments when I find the enormity of our predicament difficult to accept. I too want it all to go away. Only it's not going away. It's only beginning.

illustration: the Gordion Knot

Suck It Up, Snowflakes!!

They're already soiling their dainties down in Florida in fear of the arrival of Hurricane Michael later this week.

Their climate change denier in chief, governor Rick Scott, calls it a "monstrous hurricane," and has already declared a state of emergency in 35 counties. Scott's administration even gagged state employees, prohibiting them from mentioning the dreaded "climate change" in their papers and presentations.

So, to the good people of Florida, suck it up Snowflakes. You elect these rightwing jerks at the statehouse and in congress. Compared to so many people in so many hard hit places, you sort of have this one coming.

For Someone Who Claims She's "No Quitter," McKenna is Sure Quick to Throw In the Towel.

"Bleat, bleat. Bleat, bleat." That's about as much sense as you'll get out of Canada's environment minister, Catherine McKenna.

The latest and most worrisome report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn't cut much ice with Dame Cathy.  Responding to the IPCC demand for an overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 45% by 2030, Cathy said there'll be no change to her government's already pathetic climate change initiative.

In an interview with The Canadian Press recently, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said she knew the IPCC report would say "we're not on track to be hitting 1.5 degrees." 

"We acknowledge this and we all know we need to do more," she said. "That's why the Paris agreement is set up the way it is. Every country in the world needs to take action, and then we need to be more ambitious about the action we are willing to take." 

But Canada has no immediate plans to increase its own ambition. Instead, the focus is on implementing the current plans, which include a national price on carbon, eliminating coal-fired power plants, making homes and businesses more energy-efficient, and investing in clean technologies and renewable energy.

No, Cathy. We all know that you and the prime minister you work for need to do more, way more. And you need to start in a major way now. We don't have time to waste, Cathy, on a pissing contest with the premiers over a laughably inadequate carbon tax. 2030 is twelve years away, the blink of an eye in governmental time frames. You've had the reins for three years and you've got bugger all to show for it.

There's only one way we have even a hope of achieving the 45% by 2030 prescription and that demands that we abandon fossil fuels, starting with the dirtiest, highest-carbon garbage - thermal coal and bitumen. Your government's reckless pursuit of flooding world markets with every tanker load of bitumen possible for forty, fifty, perhaps even sixty years to come undermines the world's hope of somehow achieving that bottom line target. You and your prime minister are in bed with the Barons of Bitumen.

The Moral Imperative of Climate Change

The time for pretending is over. World leaders have a "moral obligation to act" to avert the worst impacts of climate change and that's going to take a huge and decisive change of attitude across their ranks.

World leaders have been told they have moral obligation to ramp up their action on the climate crisis in the wake of a new UN report that shows even half a degree of extra warming will affect hundreds of millions of people, decimate corals and intensify heat extremes. 

But the muted response by Britain, Australia and other governments highlights the immense political challenges facing adoption of pathways to the relatively safe limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures outlined on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

With the report set to be presented at a major climate summit in Poland in December, known as COP24, there is little time for squabbles. The report noted that emissions need to be cut by 45% by 2030 in order to keep warming within 1.5C. That means decisions have to be taken in the next two years to decommission coal power plants and replace them with renewables, because major investments usually have a lifecycle of at least a decade.

Fortunately Canada has a leader who styles himself a paragon of moral obligation so we can expect the True North to rally to the call to decarbonize. The new IPCC report leaves no doubt that the filthiest, highest-carbon fossil reserves will have to be left in the ground. The future of humanity demands no less.

The party's over. The current prime minister has a choice to make. He can no longer claim to have it both ways. That's utter sophistry. He's either on the side of mankind or he's on the side of the Bitumen Barons and their political stooges.

Just twelve years. In the greater scheme of things that's hardly any time at all. Cutting emissions by 45% by 2030 is an extremely tall order. You could blow a dozen years just studying such a Herculean chore and be no closer to concrete measures than we are today. We haven't got twelve years and one or two changes of government to meet Canada's "moral obligation." If we shirk our responsibilities, our moral obligation, it only encourages others to do precisely the same. Going down that road, the path we're currently on, consigns our grandkids to a pretty horrible fate.

As The Guardian article notes this can't be achieved without a desperate fight.

...there is increasing pushback by the world’s powerful fossil fuel and agribusiness interests, who are supporting politicians who are apathetic or hostile to climate action. The new IPCC report stressed the urgent need for reforestation and greater forest protection, but within hours of its release the first round of the Brazilian presidential election ended with a huge lead for Jair Bolsonaro, who has promised to quit the Paris accord and open up the Amazon rainforest to farmers and miners. 

Donald Trump has also announced that the US will pull out of the climate deal. And in Australia, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said there was no money for “global climate conferences and all that nonsense”.

As I wrote recently, we have arrived at Justin Trudeau's "fish or cut bait" moment. I don't hold out much hope that he'll do the right thing. Do you?

Best Case Scenario? We've Got Twelve Years.

The persistently optimistic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gives humanity twelve years to mend our ways.

Within a dozen years, i.e. by 2030, the world must have massively curbed our consumption of fossil fuels if we're to have any hope of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Can it be done? Sure. Will it be? That's another matter entirely. The odds are not looking good.

Just two weeks ago, OPEC released a forecast of a rosy future for all fossil fuels, including coal.

Opec expects global oil demand to reach nearly 112m barrels per day by 2040, driven by transportation and petrochemicals. That is up from almost 100m today and higher than last year’s projection. 

Coal will continue to be be burned in record amounts, despite concerns about its impact on climate change. Opec estimates that coal usage in the OECD countries will plummet by a third by 2040, but it will increase by 20% in developing countries to reach five times the volumes burned in the west.

The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook, 2018 won't be out for another month but this is from the 2017 Outlook:

In the New Policies Scenario, global energy needs rise more slowly than in the past but still expand by 30% between today and 2040. This is the equivalent of adding another China and India to today’s global demand.

Do you see the problem there? We desperately need fossil energy consumption to plummet - no, to crater - but it's headed in the other direction and fast. And every state that has fossil fuel reserves, even bitumen, is racing to get on that gravy train of civilizational ruin.

There's now roughly thirty trillion dollars in fossil energy reserves subscribed on the stock exchanges and bourses of the world. That's the infamous "Carbon Bubble" that has the global economy in a choke hold. Burst it and some warn it will plunge the world into a global depression like nothing seen in the 20th century.  Yet it was that Carbon Bubble that former Potsdam Institute director, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber spoke of at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 when he said the delegates' only hope of meeting even the 2 degree Celsius warming limit depended on the "induced implosion" of the fossil energy industry.

Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, an adviser to the German government and Pope Francis, said on Friday: “In the end it is a moral decision. Do you want to be part of the generation that screwed up the planet for the next 1,000 years? I don’t think we should make that decision.”

The Paris conference was attended by more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries. Schellnhuber told the delegates: “In order to stay below 2C (36F) [the internationally agreed limit for global warming], or even 3C, we need to have something really disruptive, which I would call an induced implosion of the carbon economy over the next 20-30 years. Otherwise we have no chance of avoiding dangerous, perhaps disastrous, climate change.”

Governments must euthanize their fossil fuel industries which, logically, begins with halting production of the highest-carbon, most climate dangerous fuels, thermal coal and bitumen. Those products need to be left safely in the ground. Now. If we can't stop the really dirty fuels we'll never stop the rest. We'll be making the lethal projections of OPEC and the IEA a reality.

Why does 1.5C matter?

2 degrees of warming, 1.5 degrees of warming, or, as the Trump White House recently conceded, 4 degrees Celsius of warming, why does it matter? I addressed that question recently in response to Trump's astonishing indifference.

We're now playing with the future of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They don't get a say in our government's energy policy but our government has a powerful voice in making whatever future awaits them far more brutal than it need be. Just because we're not overtly writing them off changes nothing. We're doing it nonetheless. The parties so many Canadians support, Liberal and Conservative, are on the same page on this one. When you vote for these parties you're endorsing their high-carbon energy policies. That's right, you.

The Guardian article addresses what's at stake in keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. I won't repeat it all again.

Carbon pollution would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 – compared with a 20% cut under the 2C pathway – and come down to zero by 2050, compared with 2075 for 2C. This would require carbon prices that are three to four times higher than for a 2C target. But the costs of doing nothing would be far higher. 

“We have presented governments with pretty hard choices. We have pointed out the enormous benefits of keeping to 1.5C, and also the unprecedented shift in energy systems and transport that would be needed to achieve that,” said Jim Skea, a co-chair of the working group on mitigation. “We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry. Then the final tick box is political will. We cannot answer that. Only our audience can – and that is the governments that receive it.”

Don't underestimate what it would mean to cut carbon pollution by 45% by 2030. It would mean bursting the Carbon Bubble, writing off trillions of dollars of resources from the global financial statement. It would mean the end of Athabasca bitumen just as our government was neck deep in billions of dollars of revenue squandered on Justin Trudeau's pipeline. Not a pretty sight.

The most compelling argument for doing whatever it takes to slash carbon emissions massively enough to give us a chance at a 1.5C (near term) cap, came from a brief comment by an IPCC scientist on BBC News this morning. She said the urgency of holding the line at 1.5C was to "buy time" desperately needed to implement adaptation strategies for the next few generations. We need to buy time so that we can make the climate change impacts they will experience as manageable as possible.

We need to buy time for our grandkids and their kids. We need to buy time and it won't be cheap.

"Fish or Cut Bait" Time Looms for Trudeau Liberals

For the past three years since his "Canada's back" performance at the 2015 Paris Climate Summit, our freewheeling prime minister has perfected the laughable pitch that Canada can be a full blown petro-state and meet the nation's targets for slashing greenhouse emissions. Those targets, by the way, were set by climate-change denier and petro-pol extraordinaire, Sideshow Steve Harper. And, while Justin has spun this nonsense that bitumen is the key to a green future for Canada, even his very own Environment Canada says we're not remotely on course to meet Harper's targets.

Justin may be heading for his comeuppance over the next few months. For starters, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is about to release its next report and the news isn't good for petro-pols.

This week, scientists are gathering in South Korea to draw together the last five years of advances in climate science to answer key questions for policymakers. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) celebrates its 30th birthday this year with what is likely to be a landmark report to be released on Monday 8 October. What is expected to emerge will be the strongest warning yet that these unusual occurrences will add up to a pattern that can only be overcome with drastic action.

...This time, the scientists will attempt to answer whether and how the world can meet the “aspiration” set in the Paris agreement of 2015 to hold warming to no more than 1.5C, beyond which many low-lying states and islands are likely to face dangerous sea level rises. 

When the scientists deliver their verdict, the onus will pass to politicians to translate their advice into concrete action. Already in recent weeks, global initiatives have begun aimed at doing so: the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco last month spurred protests, and dozens of local governments and multinational companies to make pledges; the second One Planet Summit saw advances in climate finance; while at the UN General Assembly, secretary general António Guterres urged world leaders to step up, calling climate change “the defining issue of our time”.

...Nicholas Stern, co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, said: “Current economic models fail to capture both the powerful dynamics and very attractive qualities of new technologies and structures [that reduce carbon]. Thus we know that we are grossly underestimating the benefits of this new growth story. Further, it becomes ever clearer that the risks of the damage from climate change are immense, and tipping points and irreversibilities getting ever closer.”

The existence of tipping points – thresholds of temperature beyond which certain natural processes become irreversible, such as the melting of permafrost, which may release the greenhouse gas methane and create runaway warming effects – is a key concern of many climate scientists. The faster emissions rise, the sooner we may unwittingly pass some of these key points.

For all these reasons, the IPCC’s special report comes at a crucial point. Scientists and economists have warned that if the world cannot shift course within the next few years, the consequences will be dire, as new infrastructure built now – in energy generation, transport and the built environment – will be made either to low-emissions standards or in the high-emissions habits of the past. As the IPCC’s next comprehensive assessment of climate science will not be available until 2021, this year’s report will be vital in shaping policy.

Under Harper, Canada was regularly labeled a "climate pariah."  Time is fast approaching for Trudeau to prove that he's no Harper. A 50-year dilbit pipeline is going to be hard to explain away.

Eat the Rich - Unless They Get You First

When the Trump administration recently sought to justify scrapping Obama's initiative to substantially improve vehicle fuel economy, it used what seemed to be a bizarre argument: we're already screwed so why bother?

...the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed. 

The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket. 

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

The jolting nature of Trump's admission got me thinking. Was he just openly saying what other national leaders, including our own, are keeping to themselves? Are they also ready to sell out our future generations?

We know where we're at, we know where we're heading, we have had plenty of warnings and we know what we must do if we want civilization to survive. We know that time is not on our side. Just recently the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said we have until 2020 to implement major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions if we're to avert truly runaway global warming. 

We know that Trump's response is "meh." What about our own government's response? How is Canada's government moving to decarbonize our society and our economy? Is it on the side of Team Science or is it actually on the side of Team Trump?

The idea that, on climate change, we're in the same camp with Trump is going to offend some people. 

Is this where Justin gets his ideas about flooding world markets with high-carbon bitumen.? He hasn't said that our planet's fate is already sealed but he certainly acts as though he believes it. And he's following in the footsteps of his predecessors.

But, wait, that can't be. Justin has young children of his own. He wouldn't set fire to their future, surely not.  Then I stumbled upon this today in the Globe & Mail, an article by Denise Balkisoon, "Climate adaptation for the rich: Bye-bye planet earth."

According to the author Douglas Rushkoff, many of the very rich believe their wealth can protect them, especially if they leave the rest of us behind.

Mr. Rushkoff teaches media theory and digital economics at the City University of New York. In July, he wrote an essay that opened with an anecdoteabout being paid half his annual salary to give a talk on “the future of technology.” 

He ended up around a table, he says, with “five super-wealthy guys – yes, all men – from the upper echelon of the hedge-fund world.” The increasingly shocking questions they posed included urgent inquiries into whether New Zealand or Alaska would be safer from rising seas.

Here are a few excerpts from Rushkoff's essay, "Survival of the Richest."

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

...The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down. 

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time. 

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

...When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now. 

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars. 

Luckily, those of us without the funding to consider disowning our own humanity have much better options available to us. We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

The New Criminal Enterprise - Our Very Own Aristocracy

"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

One thing that separated the aristocracy from the plebs was the rule of law. Sure, in theory you might hang a nobleman as quickly as you would hang a peasant for stealing a loaf of bread, but you weren't apt to find a nobleman so desperately short of sustenance.

Which brings us to Paul Krugman's Friday column in The New York Times. "Trump and the Aristocracy of Fraud: Government of tax cheats, by tax cheats, for tax cheats." Welcome to the 21st century.

Even among those unhappy at the extent to which we live in an era of soaring inequality and growing concentration of wealth at the top, there has been a tendency to believe that great wealth is, more often than not, earned more or less honestly. It’s only now that the amounts of sheer corruption and lawbreaking that underlie our march toward oligarchy have started to come into focus.

Until recently, my guess is that most economists, even tax experts, would have agreed that tax avoidance by corporations and the wealthy — which is legal — was a big issue, but tax evasion — hiding money from the tax man — was a lesser one. It was obvious that some rich people were exploiting legal if morally dubious loopholes in the tax code, but the prevailing view was that simply defrauding the tax authorities and hence the public wasn’t that widespread in advanced countries. 

But this view always rested on shaky foundations. After all, tax evasion, almost by definition, doesn’t show up in official statistics, and the super-wealthy aren’t in the habit of mouthing off about what great tax cheats they are. To get a real picture of how much fraud is going on, you either have to do what The Times did — exhaustively investigate the finances of a particular family — or rely on lucky breaks that reveal what was previously hidden. 

Two years ago, a huge lucky break came in the form of the Panama Papers, a trove of data leaked from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in helping people hide their wealth in offshore havens, and a smaller leak from HSBC. While the unsavory details revealed by these leaks made headlines right away, their true significance has only become clear with work done by Berkeley’s Gabriel Zucman and associates in cooperation with Scandinavian tax authorities.

...If America’s wealthy evade taxes on the same scale (which they almost surely do), they’re probably costing the government around as much as the food stamp program does. And they’re also using tax evasion to entrench their privilege and pass it on to their heirs, which is the real Trump story.

The obvious question is, what are our elected representatives doing about this epidemic of cheating? Well, Republicans in Congress have been on the case for years: They’ve been systematically defunding the Internal Revenue Service, crippling its ability to investigate tax fraud. We don’t just have government by tax cheats; we have government of tax cheats, for tax cheats.

What we’re learning, then, is that the story of what’s happening to our society is even worse than we thought. It’s not just that the president of the United States is, as veteran tax reporter David Cay Johnston put it, a “financial vampire,” cheating taxpayers the way he has cheated just about everyone else who deals with him. 

Beyond that, our trend toward oligarchy — rule by the few — is also looking more and more like kakistocracy — rule by the worst, or at least the most unscrupulous. The corruption isn’t subtle; on the contrary, it’s cruder than almost anyone imagined. It also runs deep, and it has infected our politics, quite literally up to its highest levels.

Trump promised the Gullibillies that he would drain the swamp. He is the swamp and they put him in power. Trump is the product of a family that itself was a criminal enterprise. It is in this context that his "tax reform" - a massive shift in tax burden from the rich to the poor, neatly masked by deficits few of Trump's base understand, must be seen. The trick is that it's all temporarily funded by foreign borrowings. Eventually, though, they'll turn on the Gullibillies to fund those tax cuts with commensurate cuts to medicare and social security.

And what of Canada? What of KPMG and the Isle of Man tax evasion scheme? That was outright criminality and yet the government looked the other way. Why have we not seen these unscrupulous tax wizards who masterminded and sold this scheme sitting in the prisoners' dock? Why did we settle with their clients, the tax scofflaws, for nominal sums?

When Samuel L. Jackson Ran Into Brett Kavanaugh

In case you haven't seen it yet -

When Science Speaks Truth (Sort Of) to Power

It can't be easy to be the bearer of bad news to a crew of powerful individuals who would rather not know.

It must be all the harder for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC keeps getting its climate change forecasts wrong. The biggest drawback is the requirement that the Panel only report "consensus" findings. Contrarians or holdouts can have an undue influence on conclusions. The second major drawback is that the reports are routinely based on very old data. The latest studies are not reviewed.  And so IPCC reports have proven to be unduly optimistic and of date which partly explains why world governments are failing to keep up with the progress of climate change. As UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, recently observed, world leaders are falling ever further behind the advance of climate change.

In Incheon, South Korea, this week, representatives of over 130 countries and about 50 scientists have packed into a large conference center going over every line of an all-important report: What chance does the planet have of keeping climate change to a moderate, controllable level? 

When they can’t agree, they form “contact groups” outside the hall, trying to strike an agreement and move the process along. They are trying to reach consensus on what it would mean — and what it would take — to limit the warming of the planet to just 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, when 1 degree Celsius has already occurred and greenhouse gas emissions remain at record highs. 

“It’s the biggest peer-review exercise there is,” said Jonathan Lynn, head of communications for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It involves hundreds or even thousands of people looking at it.”

...It is universally recognized that the pledges made in Paris would lead to a warming far beyond 1.5 degrees — more like 2.5 or 3 degrees Celsius, or even more. And that was before the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, decided to try to back out. 

“The pledges countries made during the Paris climate accord don’t get us anywhere close to what we have to do,” said Drew Shindell, a climate expert at Duke University and one of the authors of the IPCC report. “They haven’t really followed through with actions to reduce their emissions in any way commensurate with what they profess to be aiming for.” 

The new 1.5 C report will feed into a process called the “Talanoa Dialogue,” in which parties to the Paris agreement begin to consider the large gap between what they say they want to achieve and what they are actually doing. The dialogue will unfold in December at an annual United Nations climate meeting in [coal friendly] Katowice, Poland.

...At issue is what scientists call the ‘carbon budget’: Because carbon dioxide lives in the atmosphere for so long, there’s only a limited amount that can be emitted before it becomes impossible to avoid a given temperature, like 1.5 degrees Celsius. And since the world emits about 41 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, if the remaining budget is 410 billion tons (for example), then scientists can say we have 10 years until the budget is gone and 1.5 C is locked in.
Unless emissions start to decline — which gives more time. This is why scenarios for holding warming to 1.5 degrees C require rapid and deep changes to how we get energy. 

The window may now be as narrow as around 15 years of current emissions, but since we don’t know for sure, according to the researchers, that really depends on how much of a margin of error we’re willing to give ourselves. 

And if we can’t cut other gases — such as methane — or if the Arctic permafrost starts emitting large volumes of additional gases, then the budget gets even narrower. 

“It would be an enormous challenge to keep warming below a threshold” of 1.5 degrees Celsius, said Shindell, bluntly. “This would be a really enormous lift.” 

So enormous, he said, that it would require a monumental shift toward decarbonization. By 2030 — barely a decade away — the world’s emissions would need to drop by about 40 percent. By the middle of the century, societies would need to have zero net emissions. What might that look like? In part, it would include things such as no more gas-powered vehicles, a phaseout of coal-fired power plants and airplanes running on biofuels, he said. 

“It’s a drastic change,” he said. “These are huge, huge shifts … This would really be an unprecedented rate and magnitude of change.”

Manitoba Nixes Trudeau Carbon Tax

Manitoba has joined Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario in rejecting the federal government's carbon pricing initiative.

The Manitoba government says it is pulling out of its plan to charge a carbon tax and is joining some other provinces opposed to the federal government’s demands.

Premier Brian Pallister says Ottawa has not respected the province’s right to come up with its own plan with a lower rate.

The federal government has demanded provinces charge a tax on carbon emissions starting at $10 per tonne by the end of this year and rising to $50 per tonne by 2022.

It's in The New York Times. It Must Be True. Trump the Tax Scheme Scofflaw.

The New York Times is dismembering Donald Trump's claim to be a "self made man" who built an empire with his own hard work and his own money.

It turns out that a lot of the money that grew into Trump's real estate empire was money that Trump and his father owed to the Internal Revenue Service.

President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found. 

Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. 

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day. 

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

...The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances. 

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

The United States has strict limitations for income taxes, generally three years from the date of filing.  The statutory limitations, however, don't apply in the case of tax fraud:

It is ...important to note that no deadline applies where the IRS can establish that a taxpayer has: 1) filed a false or fraudulent return; 2) willfully attempted to evade tax; or 3) failed to file a return. Unlike the circumstances above where tax returns are filed (even with errors), these are cases in which a taxpayer is willfully or intentionally not filing taxes or is filing fraudulent return(s). Not only will there be no time limit on IRS action against such taxpayers, but heightened interest fees and penalties will apply. 

Worse yet, tax fraud and evasion are criminal violations and offenders face the prospect of fines and jail time if the government seeks to prosecute them for the offenses. Nevertheless, every year thousands of individuals fail to pay their taxes, but the IRS usually prefers to resolve tax problems outside of the judicial system in most cases. Coming forward voluntarily and cooperating with the IRS to determine any taxes that are due and establishing a payment plan is sometimes a good way of both avoiding criminal liability and getting back in the relative good graces of the IRS.

The Times article is certainly timely. Yesterday the new Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Charles Rettig, was sworn into office.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on June 28, 2018, Rettig "told lawmakers he would ensure that the agency is 'impartial and non-biased from top to bottom' and follows the law."

Rettig shows up on Day One to be greeted with a detailed account of a half-billion dollar tax cheat, the guy who nominated him to head the IRS. Hey Chuck, remember your "impartial and non-biased from top to bottom" pledge? Well you've got a case all made out for you thanks to a newspaper's forensic audit and it should be like pushing on an open door. Go git 'er, Chuck.