He's Got a Point

Law professor and environmental activist, Gus Speth, hit the nail on the head when he observed that science cannot solve climate change that threatens life on Earth.

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

Which leads me to an essay from Greater Good Magazine, "Why the world needs an empathy revolution." It may be a long overdue antidote to the selfishness, greed and apathy that Speth warns may bring us low on the climate front.

A Big, Fat Nothingburger

I don't know who did what in the SNC-Lavalin scandal that has ensnared Justin Trudeau. The question seems to be did the prime minister twist the arm of then Justice Minister Jody to take Lavalin off the hook and then retaliate against her for defying him by banishing her to the veterans affairs portfolio.

Some Liberals, taking a page out of the playbook of Congressional Republicans in the first two years of the Trump era, are dismissing the whole thing as a sort of nothingburger. Nothing to see here. Cabinet ministers serve at the prime minister's pleasure. No evidence of meddling, at least not yet. Yada, yada, yada.

Others, including the odd Liberal pundit, already have Justin Trudeau charged, tried and convicted of all manner of corruption and backroom skulduggery.

Who is right? I don't know but I don't much care either.  I have no dog in that fight. What I have is a sense of the problem.

It looks bad and it smells even worse. No matter how you cast the bones and read the entrails, it brings to the surface the ugly reality that, in Canada, there is one law for the big and well-connected and another law for the rest of us schmucks and the law they have for us isn't nearly as nice as the law reserved for "them."

Most of us don't like the idea of judicial outcomes being manipulated behind closed doors in the prime minister's office. Whether it's KPMG's Isle of Man tax scam or Lavalin, nobody ever seems to go to jail. No, the Greybar Hotel is for the plebs. After a while the government starts to look like some 17th century Cardinal flogging indulgences.

What we need here is transparency and accountability, that magical elixir that prime ministers have been promising us for, well, forever.  We need red lines that even a prime minister dare not cross.

Obama tells the story of when he first took office. He summoned his A.G. and all the district federal prosecutors from around America to the White House.  He told the gathering that they did not work for him, the president. No, they owed their duty and their loyalty to the American public, not some political boss.

We could use a dose of that independence in our own administration of justice.  If the prime minister wants to transfer a minister from agriculture to industry and trade, that's fine. If he wants to so blatantly demote his Attorney General, that's a different matter. He needs to be seen to be firing his Attorney General for legitimate reasons. Whim and prerogative aren't enough. He owes the public an explanation that assures them that the fix isn't in.

And for Christ's sake, Justin, stop with the weasel words. When you give a strained, technical explanation about how you didn't "direct" her to do something untoward that's not convincing. That's no assurance at all. It sounds bad and it smells even worse.

We know that Justin isn't always straight with us. The way he so freely jettisoned so many of his campaign promises taught us a bit about his credibility. Then there was that business about groping a young journalist in Creston "back in the day." He really flubbed that one. The KPMG business? Well that's not even on anyone's horizon today but it hasn't entirely gone away either. These things have a cumulative effect and it works to erode public confidence in what the prime minister says when he gets in a tight spot.

This, I think, would be a perfect opportunity for a clear restatement of the role of the Attorney-General and her/his place within the federal government. Justice must be done but it also must be seen to be done.

This prime minister has a lot of catching up to do.

Update:

If you haven't read it already, do check out Andrew Coyne's take on the Trudeau-Lavalin scandal. He makes a number of compelling arguments that show this is anything but a nothing burger.

Welcome to the People's Pipeline. Would You Like a Two Billion Dollar Subsidy With That?

It's bad enough that the Trudeau government overpaid for Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline just when the boys from Texas were about to throw in the towel. It's bad enough that it will take decades of transmitting climate killing, high-carbon bitumen to world markets to cover the cost of that new and improved pipeline.  Now the Liberals want to promote their pipeline with a two billion dollar promotional subsidy to the Bitumen Barons.

Trans Mountain is on track to deliver Canadian oil producers a $2-billion taxpayer-funded toll subsidy for capacity on its existing pipeline and has asked the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB) for permission. 

If the NEB approves the toll application Trans Mountain has filed with it, it will shift the burden for the roughly $3 billion Ottawa paid to buy the regulated assets onto Canadians, rather than into tolls charged to shippers where the recovery of these costs belongs.

You tell me. Is JT working for the fossil fuel industry or the Canadian people?

Hey, That Line's Already Taken

I thought there was something familiar when I read that Trump's nominee for Interior Secretary has pledged to balance energy and the environment. That's what Justin Trudeau pledged, to balance the economy and the environment.

This time it's coming from Dave Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist, who as the former No. 2 guy at Interior helped re-open millions of acres of public lands to drillers and miners.

Odd that he should sound so like our own prime minister.

The SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould/Trudeau Fracas - Who Cares?

Apparently Liberals care, or at least some of them care. The Conservatives, always looking for something, anything to distract the voting public from Chuckles the Scheer, care - a lot. Jagmeet cares, hoping this will weaken his Liberal opponent in the upcoming by-election.

Folks who care are taking sides. Do they believe what they read into ex-Justice minister Jody's unconvincing remarks about whether the prime minister strong-armed her to cut a sweetheart deal with SNC-Lavalin or do they believe Trudeau when he denies that he "directed" Wilson-Raybould to take Lavalin off the hook.

Sometime Liberal pundit, Kinsella, has his money on Jody. Others slag Jody which seems to be a prerequisite to backing Trudeau. Will Liberal bloodletting ensue?

For once I really don't care. Que sera, sera. In the Tyee, columnist Crawford Kilian has already written Trudeau's political obituary. Sounds a bit premature to me but, hey, a guy has deadlines to meet. Kilian goes so far as to say the Libs only remaining hope is to elect Wilson-Raybould leader to take the party into the next general election. As if.

My take? That's clear. I'm already on record that this year's vote has to go Green because the future of our young people is in danger and there's no way this gang of Liberal, Conservative and New Dem petro-pols is going to come to their rescue.

And so, like everyone else, I too will take advantage of this tawdry Liberal fracas to invite every Liberal who is finally fed up with this nonsense to think seriously about giving the LPC a pass this year.

Monbiot Sees Disaster Capitalists Gathering in the Wings of Brexit.

There's money to be made out of chaos. That's the whole point of disaster capitalism and those who play that game see vast potential in the UK plummeting into a "no deal" Brexit.

Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, sees Britain's well-to-do doing even weller if they can steer Britain into a "hard Brexit."

It will be the poor who get hurt, first and worst. The rich leavers demanding the hardest of possible Brexits, with their offshore accounts, homes abroad and lavish pensions, will be all right. I remember the eerie silence of the City of London. While the bosses of companies producing goods and tangible services write anxious letters to the papers, the financial sector has stayed largely shtum. Shorting sterling is just the first of its possible gains.

...A no-deal Brexit might offer the regulatory vacuum the Brextremists fantasise about. The public protections people have fought so hard for, that we obtained only through British membership of the EU – preventing water companies from pouring raw sewage into our rivers, power stations from spraying acid rain across the land, chemical companies from contaminating our food – are suddenly at risk.

...Last week the Guardian reported panic within government about the likely pile-up of waste that Britain sends to the EU, in the event of no deal. The combination of a rubbish crisis, administrative chaos and mass distraction could be horrible: expect widespread fly-tipping and pollution. So much for the extremists’ euphemism for no deal: “clean Brexit”. 

The government’s commitment to upholding environmental standards relies to a remarkable extent on one man: the environment secretary, Michael Gove, who has so far doggedly resisted the demands of his fellow leavers. Had any one of his grisly predecessors been in post – Owen Paterson, Liz Truss, Andrea Leadsom – we wouldn’t have even the theoretical protections Gove has commissioned. Boris Johnson has suggested that leaving the EU will allow us to dismantle green standards for electrical goods and environmental impact assessments. Iain Duncan Smith has pressed for the removal after Brexit of the carbon floor price, which has more or less stopped coal-burning in the UK.

With Liam Fox in charge of trade policy, and the US demanding the destruction of food and environmental standards as the price of the trade deal he desperately seeks, nothing is safe. A joint trade review by the British and Indian governments contemplates reducing standards on pesticide residues in food, and hormone-disrupting chemicals in the plastics used in toys. This must be heartening for Jacob Rees-Mogg (known in some circles as Re-smog), who has proposed that we might accept “emission standards from India”, one of the most polluted nations on Earth. “We could say, if it’s good enough in India, it’s good enough for here.” 

There is no guarantee that Gove, the unlikely champion of public protection, will stay in his post after Brexit. If we crash out of Europe, the dark money that helped to buy Brexit will strive to use this opportunity to tear down our regulations: this, after all, was the point of the exercise. The tantalising prospect for the world’s pollutocrats is that the UK might become a giant export-processing zone, exempt from the laws that govern other rich nations. It’s a huge potential prize, which could begin to reconfigure the global relationship between capital and governments. They will fight as hard and dirty to achieve it as they did to win the vote.

Is Monbiot right? Will a hard Brexit be an ecological disaster for Britain? No one can know until this nightmare is over and the predators have had their chance with the prey.

If You Want to Understand Brexit, Think Ireland and the Rise of England.

It will take an hour of your time but, when you're done, Fintan O'Toole will help you understand why Brexit has so bedeviled Theresa May, the British House of Commons and the EU. It all comes down to one thing - Ireland.

What is the Green New Deal?

It's been all over the news lately, partially digested, often spiced up with a double dose of spin, but what is the Green New Deal?

Here it is, in its entirety. It's only 14 pages, not a tough read.

Does it sound radical? Sure it does - to a world in which the survival of human civilization is being treated as a dangerously radical notion.

Check it out.

In Praise of Canada - and Justin Trudeau

This must seem odd coming from me but it would be unfair of me not to mention Nicholas Kristof's op-ed in today's New York Times, "Thank God for Canada."

The veteran NYT columnist even calls Canada today's "moral leader of the free world." I guess, coming from Trumpland, Canada looks amazing.

Arms Race Update

Nukes are all the rage these days. The US and Russia just trashed the IRBM or intermediate range ballistic missile treaty inked by Reagan and Gorbachev back in the good old days.

But wait, there's more. A Russian diplomat warns that the New Start treaty signed by Obama and then Russian president Medvedev is also in peril.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov charged that the U.S. refusal to negotiate an extension to the New Start treaty signals Washington's intention to let it expire in 2021. He warned that time is running out to save the pact, which was signed in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. 

Ryabkov said that the U.S. has shown "no readiness or desire" to engage in substantive talks on extending the pact, which limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers.

...Ryabkov expressed particular worry about U.S. plans to produce new, low-yield nuclear weapons, warning that it could dramatically lower the threshold for their use. 

"It's very alarming," he said, adding that the plans could revive old Cold War era concepts. 

"It throws us many decades back to the ideology of nuclear battlefield weapons," he said. "There are just a couple of steps left ... before the revival of nuclear artillery, nuclear mortars, nuclear mines, nuclear grenades and other things like that. It appears to reflect the eagerness of those who have grown up in the age of computer games to easily push the button."

In what might be a first, Russia, the United States and France yesterday launched nuclear capable missiles within hours of each other.

But wait, there's more.  Not to be left out, China is making nuke news of its own.  The South China Morning Post reports that, after 55 years, China is mulling over its "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons.

China might come under pressure to reconsider its long-standing “no first use” nuclear policy as it engages in a maritime arms race with the United States, analysts have warned.

According to Zhao Tong, a fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Programme, based at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy, the US and its allies are stepping up their anti-submarine warfare in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

In a report late last year, Zhao said this was increasing mistrust between the two countries and raising the possibility that Beijing might rethink the “no first use” nuclear weapons policy, which has been in place since the first Chinese nuclear test in 1964. 

In a separate report, the Washington-based US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said Beijing was looking at expanding its nuclear delivery systems, setting off debate in China over whether its nuclear arms should be used only as a deterrent and not as a “first strike”. 

The United States and China are both capable of delivering nuclear weapons through three systems: land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear missile-armed submarines and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles.

But wait, there's more. Satellite images have come out in the press lately of a ballistic missile factory in the desert near Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis, it seems, want a missile capability similar to Iran's. That's the almost good news. The bad news is who is apparently giving the Saudis a hand - Pakistan and China.

US defence experts told CNBC that the development indicates a growing desire by Riyadh, Washington’s longtime ally, to take offensive measures without the approval of its main weapons sponsor. 

“There’s an arms race underway,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and Arab affairs expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “Whiplash policy changes in Washington have had their impact on Riyadh: Saudi authorities are no longer going to be constrained by White House whispers. The Saudis are demonstrating that they can take matters into their own hands.” 

Missile expert Jeffrey Lewis also stressed that heavy investment in missiles often correlates with an interest in nuclear weapons, adding, “I would be a little worried that we’re underestimating the Saudis’ ambitions here.” 

Moreover, Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and expert on Persian Gulf affairs, said that the timing of the Saudi missile factory construction “underscores a willingness to ignore Washington’s interests and policies” from the beginning of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power.

Pakistan conducted its first nuclear bomb test in 1998.  India now believes Pakistan has amassed upwards of 140 nuclear warheads.  At one point, early in its nuclear history, Pakistan's Ali Bhutto referred to his country's device as the "Islamic Bomb." That was interpreted as imbuing the weapon with a pan-Muslim (Sunni, that is) connotation. And, in fairness, the father of Pakistan's bomb, Abdul Khan, who stole most of the secret technology while working in Europe, was involved in helping Qaddafi's Libya with its own nuke programme.

Well, I could go on but I think that's enough nuke news for one day.

Hmm, Five for Five. Is There a Message Here?

The five hottest years on record have been the last five years on record. Five for five. What's that mean to you?

NASA scientists confirmed in a report Wednesday that 2018 was one of the hottest years on record, continuing what the New York Times called "an unmistakable warming trend." 

Last year was the fourth-warmest on record since scientists began recording such data 140 years ago, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). This finding makes the last five years the five hottest years ever, scientists said, slapping down any question that the planet is growing warmer. 

"2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend," said GISS director Gavin Schmidt in a statement. 

"The five warmest years have, in fact, been the last five years," he told the Times. "We're no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future. It's here. It's now."

And what about the next five years, our next climate five-pack? Surely there's a cooling break here somewhere. No, sorry. The next five years are supposed to be hotter, record breaking hotter.

NASA and NOAA climate scientists said even though 2018 was a tad cooler than the three previous years that’s mostly due to random weather variations. 

“Never mind the little wiggles from year to year. The trend is going relentlessly up, and it will continue to do so,” Potsdam Institute climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf said in an email. “Those who live in denial of this fact are in denial of physics.”

Using computer simulations, the British weather office forecast s that the next five years will average somewhere between 58.51 and 59.49 degrees (14.73 to 15.27 Celsius). That would be warmer than the last four years.

But, but, but... we've got billions of barrels of bitumen in the ground and "no country would just leave them there." Five for five. You wanna go ten for ten?

He's done some good things but, when it comes to climate change and Canada's environment, the prime minister is an eco-poseur. Today's column from Michael Harris looks at Justin Trudeau's unconvincing treatment of our Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Does the Prime Minister really care about the environment, as he always claims? Or is he just “genuinely insincere,” as Ottawa Life Magazine recently put it? Not an unimportant query, with this fall’s general election just eight months away.

By the way, a bit of introspection. I will try to stop going on about "your new normal" when writing about climate change. There is no new normal, only your new normal for now - until there's more change, and then that will become your new normal for a while. It's all very fleeting, you see.

Five for five.

Breaking the Backs of America's Farmers, One Bankruptcy at a Time

When Trump launched his trade wars he didn't pay much attention to those Americans likely to become his collateral damage. Among those were America's farmers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump's trade antics were the straw that broke the farmers' back, triggering a wave of bankruptcies across America's farm belt.

Bankruptcies in three regions covering major farm states last year rose to the highest level in at least 10 years. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, had double the bankruptcies in 2018 compared with 2008. In the Eighth Circuit, which includes states from North Dakota to Arkansas, bankruptcies swelled 96%. The 10th Circuit, which covers Kansas and other states, last year had 59% more bankruptcies than a decade earlier. 

States in those circuits accounted for nearly half of all sales of U.S. farm products in 2017, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. 

The rise in farm bankruptcies represents a reckoning for rural America, which has suffered a multiyear slump in prices for corn, soybeans and other farm commodities touched off by a world-wide glut, made worse by growing competition from agriculture powerhouses such as Russia and Brazil.

Trade disputes under the Trump administration with major buyers of U.S. farm goods, such as China and Mexico, have further roiled agricultural markets and pressured farmers’ incomes. Prices for soybeans and hogs plummeted after those countries retaliated against U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs by imposing duties on U.S. products like oilseeds and pork, slashing shipments to big buyers. 

Low milk prices are driving dairy farmers out of business in a market that’s also struggling with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheese from Mexico and China. Tariffs on U.S. pork have helped contribute to a record buildup in U.S. meat supplies, leading to lower prices for beef and chicken.

...Agricultural lenders, bankruptcy attorneys and farm advisers warn further bankruptcies are in the offing as more farmers shed assets and get deeper in debt, and banks deny the funds needed to plant a crop this spring.

...Conversations with distressed farmers have become more frequent for Frank Friar, a retired agricultural lender who mans phones at the Wisconsin Farm Center. The organization advises dairy farmers and crop producers on financing options, bankruptcy and when to leave the farm behind. Last year, it received more than 2,300 calls, the most since 2010, and the center has hired more staff in the past two years. 

About a dozen times a year, Mr. Friar and his colleagues talk with a farmer who seems to be contemplating suicide, he said. The center’s staff often calls family members or neighbors who can check on the farmers, and sometimes Mr. Friar drives out to farms himself. “The uncertainty, will they survive on the home farm, is [causing] more people to think negatively,” Mr. Friar said.

Most of these farmers are from Heartland states that Trump took in a landslide in 2016. I'm pretty sure they weren't expecting this is how he would make America great again.

Photo: Trump speaks at American Farm Bureau convention in January, 2018

That 1.5 Degree Celsius Target? Gone by 2023.

Who can forget those halcyon days in late 2015 when Justin Trudeau and Cathy McKenna swept into the Paris climate summit, helping to set the goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius? If the nations could just cut emissions enough we might be able to hold warming to a somewhat livable 1.5 C.

Then they packed their bags, flew back home and decided, "screw that." Talk is cheap but pipelines aren't and, besides, who could say no to all that revenue from flooding world markets with high-carbon bitumen.  Not Team Justin, that's for sure.

So, instead of cutting emissions they grew. They grew in 2018 and they'll grow even faster this year. And lordy, lordy, lordy, guess what? The British Met Office  says we'll blow through that 1.5 C "do not exceed" target by 2023.

It's not Armageddon. It should be a temporary thing, an event. But still.

Since 2014, the world has experienced the four hottest years since records began in 1850, but these highs are likely to be exceeded soon. From now until 2023, the Met has 90% confidence that mean annual temperatures will range between 1.03C and 1.57C above pre-industrial levels.

The recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on warming of 1.5C, highlighted the calamitous difference even a fraction of a degree above could make to coral reefs, Arctic ecosystems and hundreds of millions of lives. Starting now, the report said emissions would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 to have any chance of holding to that level. 

“Breaching 1.5C of global warming does indeed mean that we failed to limit warming to that ‘safe’ level, but not that our understanding of a safe level of climate change has suddenly changed and climate change should go unchecked,” said Rogelj, who was was a coordinating lead author on the UN report. “Every tenth of a degree matters. So if 1.5C of global warming would be exceeded for whatever reason, this would be a call for steeper emissions reductions.”

2023 is the year by which Camilo Mora's climate science team from the University of Hawaii predicts will mark the beginning of "climate departure."

“The coldest year in the future will be warmer than the hottest year in the past,” said Camilo Mora, the lead scientist on a paper published in the journal Nature. 

Unprecedented climates will arrive even sooner in the tropics, Dr. Mora’s group predicts, putting increasing stress on human societies there, on the coral reefs that supply millions of people with fish, and on the world’s greatest forests. 

“Go back in your life to think about the hottest, most traumatic event you have experienced,” Dr. Mora said in an interview. “What we’re saying is that very soon, that event is going to become the norm.”

Is Trump Losing His Mojo?

If, by mojo, you mean every bully's stock in trade, the ability to instill fear in others, the answer seems to be "yes." It's usually a bad day for a bully when the crowd stops fearing. The New York Times argues that is precisely what's happening to Donald J. Trump.

Richard M. Nixon once said, “People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.” 

No president since has deployed fear quite like Donald J. Trump. Whether it is the prospect of a crime wave at the border with Mexico or nuclear war with North Korea, President Trump has persuaded his supporters that there is plenty to fear beyond fear itself. 

In an interview as a presidential candidate in 2016 with the Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Mr. Trump said, “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”

...Few outside the Republican Party are afraid of him, and they may be less intimidated after the disastrous government shutdown.

...He could well face a challenge for the Republican nomination in 2020, and congressional Republicans from swing states could begin to distance themselves from him. 

One of the clearest signals came last week when Republicans, backing an amendment offered by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, opposed the president’s call for withdrawal of United States military forces from Syria and Afghanistan as part of a Middle East policy bill. Only three Republicans voted against it.

...there is little evidence that President Xi Jinping of China, or any other foreign leader, is cowed. 

And certainly not Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The president initially said he felt comfortable negotiating with Ms. Pelosi, but in interviews aired on Sunday, he sharpened his attacks on her and said her obstinacy on the border wall was damaging the country. 

Mr. Trump has found that his lack of experience in politics and diplomacy, which require policy knowledge, team building and nuanced negotiating ability, has left him at a decided disadvantage despite his boasts about his deal-making prowess.

“He’s surrounded in these standoffs by people who have all those boxes checked,” said Timothy O’Brien, the author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” “Nancy Pelosi has been doing this for quite a while, Putin has been doing this for a quite a while, Xi has been doing this quite a while. They’ve all been running circles around him.”

...American allies, diplomats said, have more a sense of resignation than fear in dealing with him. The list of threats from Mr. Trump is long, but the number of times he has followed through is exceedingly short. 

“He is playing a role, and the role, much like on ‘The Apprentice,’ was of the strong, able character, but it’s a role,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “Every foreign leader and every practicing politician has taken a measure of him and understands the basics, that he responds to strength and there’s not a lot behind the facade.”

...Even Nixon later acknowledged that he did not really believe fear was a successful prime motivator.

“Nixon said that, but he didn’t believe it and he didn’t practice it,” said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian and author of the recent best seller “Presidents of War.” “He actually spent decades building relationships in Washington, with his party leaders, with Democrats, and around the world. So yes, there were certainly elements of fear in all those relationships, but he knew you needed both the carrot and the stick. 

... “It’s almost as if he only has one tool in his toolbox,” Mr. Beschloss said.

Curiously not mentioned in the NYT article is the recent initiative of European states to circumvent Trump's trade sanctions against Iran by facilitating European trade in non-US currency. That's a sublime act of defiance of the Mango Mussolini, one that Trump avoids mentioning.

Freedom House Report - Democracy in Retreat

The Washington-based rights group, Freedom House, has released its 2019 report on the global state of democracy and it's not pretty. Democracy is again in retreat although most of us probably realized that anyway.

Sweden came in first with a perfect score of 100. Canada did almost as well with a 99 score.

The US? Well, not so good. Of the 87 nations judged as "free," America ranked 51st. Trump's new pals? Orban's Hungary was in the "partly free" class with a score of 70. Poland scored a surprising 84. Duterte's Philippines a partly free 61. Brazil, which has just elected a Trump clone authoritarian clocks 75 (for now). Israel oddly enough scores 78. Erdogan's Turkey scores a solid not free 31. Sisi's Egypt not surprisingly comes in with a "not free" 22 with Russia at just 20.  America looks pretty good compared to Trump's playmates.

The rankings are here.

Sixty eight countries suffered net declines in political rights and civil liberties during 2018, according to the report. The United States ranked on a level with Greece, Croatia and Mongolia but well below other democracies such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

“The greatest danger comes from the fact that American democracy is not infinitely durable, especially if a president shows little respect for its tenets,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House. “Antidemocratic rhetoric and the rejection of democratic constraints on power can be first steps toward real restrictions on freedom.” 

Such deterioration in established democracies such as the United States also could potentially hurt the cause of freedom globally, the report said. “Other nations watch what is happening in the United States and take cues from its leaders’ behavior. The ongoing deterioration of American democracy will accelerate the decline of democracy around the world,” said Abramowitz. 

This is the 13th straight year that the “Freedom in the World” report has found a decline in global freedom. “Just as we have called out foreign leaders for undermining democratic norms in their countries, we must draw attention to the same sorts of warning signs in our own country,” said Abramowitz.

Why Intermediate Range Missiles Matter

Despite glasnost and all the disarmament talk since Reagan and Gorbachev inked the IRT, the world is still up to its arse in nuclear weapons.  There are silo-launched ICBMs like the US Minuteman. The Russians and Chinese are fond of mobile ICBMs that can be hauled up and down highways to supposedly make them harder to target. There are, of course, submarine launched ballistic missiles. Then you've got nuclear-capable cruise missiles and even good, old fashioned nuclear gravity bombs.

What made the last generation of intermediate range missiles so insidious was their range and speed. You could literally park them on your adversary's doorstep and, when launched, they could be on target in a heartbeat. America's Pershing II had a speed of Mach 8. That was the problem. There might not be enough time for the target nation to activate the human chain of command. Those missiles raised the risk that your enemy could take you by surprise before you could even lift a finger to fire back.

This led to a new technology of "launch on detect." It cut out the middleman, humans. When your radar saw what it perceived as an incoming missile attack it simply fired back. There would be missiles in the air and nobody pushed a button much less ordered the salvoes. There wasn't even time to call back an errant launch.

Of course, mistakes happen. Radar systems at times can't tell a benign return from an incoming strike. That's where humans are needed to intervene and interpret as they did in 1995 when the Norwegians launched a Canadian Black Brant research rocket that had a radar profile almost identical to a US submarine launched Trident missile.

The matter was decided when the Brant separated, dropped one of its engines, and fired up another. The radar signature now looked so much like a multiple re-entry vehicle (MRV), a missile carrying multiple nuclear warheads, that military officers no longer had any doubt. 

There were now five minutes during which the missile's trajectory would be un-tracked by Russian radar, and when it could strike Moscow; a slice of time that was devoted to deciding whether to launch a counterattack. 

Boris Yeltsin was alerted, and immediately given the Cheget, the "nuclear briefcase" that connects senior officials while they decide whether or not to launch Russia's nuclear weapons. Nuclear submarine commanders were ordered to full battle alert and told to stand by. 

Apparently Yeltsin doubted the U.S. would launch a surreptitious attack and within five minutes, Russian radar came back confirming the missile was heading harmlessly out to sea. 

Russian citizens didn't find about about the incident for weeks, and of course it's been reported in the U.S. news since. But the event never achieved the renown of the Cuban Missile Crisis, though it seems to have brought us even closer to the brink of nuclear war.

Now, imagine Russia still had a "launch on detect" system, the kind needed to deter a first strike intermediate range missile attack. Yeltsin's intuition would not be a factor.  Which is why the intermediate ballistic missile treaty matters more than most nuclear accords.

Update:

If you're in the mood for another "blast from the past," here's Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb.

Animals. They're Nothing But Animals.

Recent revelations that the Trump administration doesn't know how many thousand migrant children it might have separated from their parents or even where they wound up were shocking enough. But the Trumpsters showed they're not even ashamed of their disgraceful abuse of these kids.

When the American Civil Liberties Union moved to intervene, the Trump administration doubled down:

The Trump administration says it would require extraordinary effort to reunite what may be thousands of migrant children who have been separated from their parents and, even if it could, the children would likely be emotionally harmed. 

Jonathan White, who leads the Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents, said removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents “would present grave child welfare concerns.” He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors.

Ann Maxwell, Health and Human Services’ assistant inspector general for evaluations, said last month that the number of separated children was certainly larger than the 2,737 listed by the government in court documents. The department’s inspector general report didn’t have a precise count, but Maxwell said staff estimated it to be in the thousands. 

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents, and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney.

Canada's Great Petro Swindle

It's a classic con - two sets of books. There's one set "cooked" for public consumption to mislead investors, creditors and regulators and another set of books that reveals the skulduggery no one else must ever see.  Swindlers use it all the time. So too do politicians, especially those with a petro-economy.  Eventually the truth emerges and the scam falls apart. Think EnRon. Think the government of Alberta.

Alberta isn't alone. Canada has plenty of energy miscreants scattered throughout its political ranks but Alberta is the poster boy of the big con.  Alberta's native son, energy scribe Andrew Nikiforuk, gets into this disaster in waiting in today's Tyee.  It's a tale of greed and cowardice in equal measure.

Nikiforuk writes that last week's decision of the Supreme Court of Canada requiring environmental liabilities to be met before even secured creditors can get at the assets of energy companies comes too late to correct the mess that has already beset the Wild Rose province.

Technically the 5-2 court decision will make it easier for provinces to prevent insolvent companies from selling assets to pay creditors while dumping the cleanup bill onto taxpayers.  

That’s been a big problem in Western Canada, where lower provincial court decisions have allowed bankrupt firms to pay off banks first and ignore their cleanup obligations under provincial laws. 

As a result, a number of firms in Alberta walked away from more than 1,800 inactive wells and dumped more than $110 million worth of liabilities onto the lap of the provincial regulator over the last three years. 

The province’s Orphan Well Association, a non-profit supported by annual $30-million industry levies to prevent taxpayers from footing the cleanup bill, is now so overwhelmed that it was rescued with a $300-million loan from the province and federal government. 

The Orphan Well Association handled 74 orphan wells (properties with no legal or financial owner) in 2012. Now it has a backlog of 3,000 wells, with each well averaging $300,000 for plugging and reclamation.

“The court decision doesn’t solve the underlying problem,” noted Regan Boychuk, an independent researcher with campaign group Reclaim Alberta.

“The industry is not making enough money to pay for these liabilities. Outside of the oilsands sector, companies aren’t making much profit and are losing money.”

Edmonton lawyer, Keith Wilson, says provincial governments were complicit in allowing the energy giants to grab the money and run.

“It is a known fact that the oil and gas industry has made some of the biggest profits in commerce in history. The money was there, but the companies never put some aside to deal with their liabilities and governments allowed them to do that with their eyes wide open,” said Wilson.

Governments simply avoid the problem, for now, by looking the other way.

Alberta’s Liability Management Rating program, for example, has kept track of growing liabilities compared to assets for about 800 companies in the oil patch for nearly two decades, but it doesn’t collect money for cleaning up liabilities until the companies are “already showing declining financial capacity,” said Wadsworth. 

In 2005, for example, it calculated that more than 33,000 inactive wells and 9,322 unreclaimed facilities created a liability of $9.4 billion, with a $20-million security deposit. The same program has watched as liabilities have grown exponentially. There are now more than 80,000 inactive wells and related liabilities worth $31 billion, with a security deposit of $226 million. 

“With no timelines for cleaning up inactive wells, the government has incentivized companies to do nothing,” said Wilson.

British Columbia and Saskatchewan are in the same boat although to a much lower extent.

In Alberta, the biggest obstacle to reforms remains the province’s divisive and oily politics, says Edmonton lawyer Wilson. 

“The NDP and the United Conservative Party are now in competition for being the biggest cheerleaders for industry. The NDP won’t do anything because they are afraid that the UCP will use it as an example that they are against the oil and gas industry,” he said. 

As a result, neither party is serving the best interests of the environment or taxpayers, said Wilson.

Meanwhile Rachel Notley has mastered the petro-state shuck and jive:

“It’s a problem that has accrued over, I guess now we’d be talking 47 years, but it’s not one that happened overnight and, unfortunately, it’s not one that we can fix overnight,” she told reporters. 

Wilson said the problem is “not only monumental but complicated.” 

“If the government implemented a five-year timeline for cleaning up nearly 200,000 inactive wells, a large part of the industry would go bankrupt.”

Which raises the question of why Trudeau is aiding and abetting this racket by using billions of dollars from the already depleted federal treasury to buy and develop the Trans Mountain pipeline? I'm sure you'll never get a straight answer out of him.

Mulcair Wades Into the Fray

A couple of days ago I argued that the Liberals and the Conservatives and, for that matter, the NDP did not deserve your vote in this year's federal election. In the piece, entitled, "This Year, This Vote, Is Different. It Matters Like It Never Mattered Before," I said this time common decency demands that we reject these parties and vote, instead, for the future, for our 7 million young people and those who will follow them who will never have a say in their future, not in time.  My point was that if we even take 5 per cent or 10 per cent of the vote it will be enough to force Trudeau or Scheer or Singh to give up on the petro-state and start doing what these younger generations so badly need.

It was with this in mind that I read Chantal Hebert's piece in today's Toronto Star:

Former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair was not being malicious when he suggested the Green party might be becoming a refuge for orphan progressive voters in the lead-up to next fall’s federal election. 

“Progressives are looking for a home on environmental issues,” Mulcair said on Sunday’s edition of CTV’s Question Period, adding that “people who believe that environmental issues should be top of mind are…going to start paying attention to Elizabeth May’s Green party.”

...If Singh does secure a seat in Parliament later this month, it will take more than a good performance in question period to right his listing ship in time for the fall campaign. 

The Green party by comparison has entered the election year buoyed by a string of modest but nevertheless significant provincial breakthroughs. 

The party tripled its seat count from one to three in New Brunswick, a result that comes with some leverage in a provincial legislative assembly dominated by the opposition. 

Polls show the Greens in contention for government in Prince Edward Island.

The argument is sound. Canada can no longer afford the maladministration of Tories and Liberals, not if the country is to have a future.  Even the IPCC with its perpetual optimism, warns we have until 2030 to slash man made greenhouse gas emissions by half if human civilization is to avert catastrophic climate change. That is nowhere on the Liberals' or the Tories' or the New Dems' policy radar.

This is the year we need seismic political change. We cannot afford to lose another four years to Trudeau or Scheer. They have to be brought to heel and a weak Liberal minority would be a good start.

Harris Mocks Scheer

Michael Harris deserves some sort of prize for this line: 

Unless Doug Ford campaigns for him in a thong, things couldn’t get worse for Andrew Scheer in the 2019 federal election.

Writing in The Tyee, Harris makes short work of Scheer and his hapless campaign.

Polling poorly in Quebec, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada, this is a man without a vision leading a party without a narrative. 

After a year and a half in office, people can be forgiven if they think Scheer is still Speaker of the House of Commons. Leaders lead, and by doing that, gain recognition. 

Scheer merely lurks with that silly smile on his face, a political non-entity who acts like he’s gunning for the doorman’s job at Walmart.

Who doesn't have that same sense of Andrew Scheer. Okay, his wife, sure and probably one of his kids, maybe.  Then there's the First Nations:

First Nations had a big beef with Scheer’s former boss, and for good reason. The only thing Harper didn’t do to Indigenous peoples was bring back Indian Agents. He humiliated leaders like Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat First Nation, cut national funding, ignored problems and tried to run a federal bulldozer over native constitutional rights. 

Scheer’s answer? The one thing you can’t say to people who have been waiting for decades for social justice — you’ll have to be patient.

Tawdry Tony Clement.

While Clement was busily cyber-sharing his private parts hither and yon, eventually ensnaring himself in a web of extortion, Scheer acted like a coach whose player had missed practice.

...Scheer actually thought he could keep the former cabinet minister in caucus as the MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka. So much for Conservative party family values. And this from a man who refuses to march in Pride parades. 

But the facts swiftly exposed Scheer’s awful judgment. 

Soon it became clear that Clement’s adventure in cyber-flashing was no one-off. Several women came forward to say that they too had received creepy communications from the man who sprinkled his riding with gazebos during the G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and Huntsville. 

Using the pathetic fig leaf that Clement had lied to him to explain his initial under-reaction, Scheer was finally forced to kick Clement out of caucus.

The Trump Thing Flops.

An inkling of how completely Scheer is devoid of executive acumen is provided by his poor man’s imitation of the drooling baboon who temporarily runs the United States. Donald Trump has famously called the press the “enemy of the people,” a fallen profession who make their living by flogging “fake news.” 

Scheer and his crowd were quick to embrace the attack line. Not only did the Conservative leader revamp his communications operations, the better to attack news stories and journalists they didn’t like, but Scheer himself said Canadians needed a PM who would stand up to the “media” and the “elite.”

Trudeau's policies on climate change may be lousy but Scheer has no policies at all.

Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shone like Venus on the global stage in Paris, he lost resolve in the heat of action back home. The PM conflated rhetoric with reality, the time-honoured ploy of most politicians. 

As David Suzuki has observed, Trudeau ignored all the “low-hanging fruit.” He failed to do away with subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, failed to champion electrification for all sectors, and continued to approve new exploration and drilling for yesterday’s energy source. 

And if Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux has it right, at $4.4 billion Trudeau vastly overpaid when he made the dubious decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan. 

Despite the huge political opening created by the government’s own record, Scheer remains mum on his own climate plan. 

All that Canadians know is what Scheer told his own party at the Conservative policy convention last August: dismantling the Trudeau government’s carbon tax would be his first act as prime minister. Meanwhile, Scheer wants Canadians to wait for the details of how he would bring down Earth’s fever. Patience from the patient, if you please.

Harris is right. It's hard to imagine what Trudeau could do at this point to screw up badly enough that Scheer might win. 

Hedges - Trump Has Trashed the Greenback

In his weekly column, Chris Hedges writes that Donald Trump has inflicted a mortal wound on the very foundation of America's economy, the world's acceptance of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, although Iran had abided by the agreement, and demand that European nations also withdraw or endure U.S. sanctions saw European nations defect and establish an alternative monetary exchange system that excludes the United States. Iran no longer accepts the dollar for oil on international markets and has replaced it with the euro, not a small factor in Washington’s deep animus to Teheran. Turkey is also abandoning the dollar. The U.S. demand that Germany and other European states halt the importation of Russian gas likewise saw the Europeans ignore Washington. China and Russia, traditionally antagonistic, are now working in tandem to free themselves from the dollar. Moscow has transferred $100 billion of its reserves into Chinese yuan, Japanese yen and euros. And, as ominously, foreign governments since 2014 are no longer storing their gold reserves in the United States or, as with Germany, removing them from the Federal Reserve. Germany has repatriated its 300 tons of gold ingots. The Netherlands repatriated its 100 tons.

...The dollar, because of astronomical government debt now at $21 trillion, a debt that will be augmented by Trump’s tax cuts costing the U.S. Treasury $1.5 trillion over the next decade, is becoming less and less trustworthy. The debt-to-GDP ratio is now more than 100 percent, a flashing red light for economists. Our massive trade deficit depends on selling treasury bonds abroad. Once those bonds decline in value and are no longer considered a stable investment, the dollar will suffer a huge devaluation. There are signs this process is underway. Central-bank reserves hold fewer dollars than they did in 2004. There are fewer SWIFT payments–the exchange for interbank fund transfers–in dollars than in 2015. Half of international trade is invoiced in dollars, although the U.S. share of international trade is only 10 percent. 

“Ultimately, we will have reserve currencies other than the U.S. dollar,” the Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney announced last month.

"A Different League" - How Netanyahu Became Israel's Trump

Israelis approaching Jerusalem are being greeted with an 8-storey poster of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu beneath a caption, "a different league."

To Haaretz correspondent, Bradley Burston, these towering campaign posters send a message. Netanyahu and his followers have lost what it means to be Jews. They're MAGA people and that's how they're running Israel.

...my Haaretz colleague, Larry Derfner, in a Facebook post Sunday, wrote, 

"The word 'Jewish' has positive connotations for me. I think of warmth, humanity, humility, humor, honesty. When I look at Binyamin Netanyahu's face, at the coldness, contemptuousness and bottomless cynicism in his eyes, I see none of those qualities. There's nothing Jewish there." 

And there it is. So profoundly, in so many ways, is Benjamin Netanyahu not a Jew. Neither are many, many of the members of his government. Foul of heart, gutter snide, they have no regard for the teachings of Judaism which forbid shaming, command respect for the non-Jew and the migrant, set out the the ideals of compassion, lovingkindness, universal human rights, charity of spirit and material generosity. Bibi and his close loyalists spit with disgust on the idea that all were created in the image of God - even leftists, Palestinians, journalists. 

They are not Jews – the Oren Hazans, the Miri Regevs, the David Amsalems, the David Bitans. Neither are the nominally religious Kahane wannabes aching to claw their way into the Knesset. 

They are MAGA people. And they run Israel. 

...a Sunday drive to Jerusalem removed any doubt. Approach from the west, and it's not the city which welcomes you, but Donald Trump. All eight stories of him, in Stalin-grade living color. Drive a bit closer, and Bibi comes into view beside him, same size, hand in hand with Trump. Above it all: "NETANYAHU. A DIFFERENT LEAGUE." 

For once, truth in political advertising. It's absolutely accurate. Netanyahu is in a different league. Not at all the league of the Jewish people. Not at all the league of a country with the values of the Jewish prophets.

It's the league of Netanyahu's friends Viktor Orban in Hungary and Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago. It is the league of enablers and exploiters of Holocaust denial, supremacism, Hitler appreciation, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, scorn for the disabled, and outright anti-Semitism.

It is the league which is fast learning to speak MAGA in a wide variety of world dialects. It is the league which prides itself on cruelty as an ideology. A league which thrives and grows on the principle that the only true "ism" is sadism.

...On Bibi's watch, Israel has become a nation which discriminates against Jews as no other on earth. It tells them how they can worship and how they cannot, whom they can marry and whom they cannot, whether, if female, they can sing in the presence of men, whether, if non-Orthodox, they can be considered Jews at all. Whether, if left-wing, they can enter Israel at all.

The less Jewish Israel becomes, the less its leaders – and especially, its state-paid extremist rabbis – are guided by Jewish values, the more they worship idols in the form of settlements and geography, the more they divide the Jewish people into Jews (the pro-Netanyahu Right) and Negligible, Disloyal Leftists (everyone else), the harder Netanyahu works at passing bills like the Jewish national-state law. 

The law that, more than any other, violates Jewish values. 

The "Jewish" law which intentionally, brutally, unflinchingly repealed the blueprint for Israel which had committed the nation to ancient Jewish directives for social justice, the Declaration of Independence. 

The "Jewish" law explicitly written to counter and negate sections of the Declaration based on teachings of the Torah. The "Jewish" law meant to quash the Declaration's pledge that Israel would be "based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

How About Two Billion, Does That Cut Any Ice?

One aspect of climate change that is often missing from our conversation is how much of it is already locked in.

Until we find some mechanism to extract atmospheric greenhouse gases, not just a lot of CO2 but a big percentage of it, most of it, a massive amount of CO2, those persistent gases will continue to warm Earth's climate well into future centuries. At present we're still adding to it.

One certain victim will be the glaciers of the Himalayas. A new report warns that one third of those glaciers is doomed even if we miraculously adopted radical emissions cuts. Glaciers, so what? Well those glaciers are the source of the Himalayan headwaters, a main source of fresh water for three nuclear powers - China, India and Pakistan.

China, of course, occupies Tibet. That gives Beijing the whip hand over future access to a lot of that vital Himalayan water. That's more critical than ever now that climate change has made the annual Monsoon rains unreliable and unpredictable.

Even if carbon emissions are dramatically and rapidly cut and succeed in limiting global warming to 1.5C, 36% of the glaciers along in the Hindu Kush and Himalaya range will have gone by 2100. If emissions are not cut, the loss soars to two-thirds, the report found. 

The glaciers are a critical water store for the 250 million people who live in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region, and 1.65 billion people rely on the great rivers that flow from the peaks into India, Pakistan, China and other nations.

The graphic at the top shows the great rivers of south and east Asia fed by the Himalayas - among them the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and Irrawaddy, the Mekong, and the Yellow and Yangtze. What could possibly go wrong?

This Vote, This Year, Is Different. It Matters Like It Never Mattered Before.

For many millennials and their parents, this election will be like no other.

Many of those millennials now have infants, toddlers, newborns and their parents have grandbabies. This year it is morally imperative that those new parents and grandparents do what they're supposed to do, protect their young and all the young Canadians.

Those children won't be voting themselves in time to have any meaningful say in the future they will face.  We are writing their future today, indelibly, and what we have in mind for them is not looking good.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change threw down the gauntlet last year when they warned that we had to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent, a full half, by 2030 if those children were to have a reasonable chance of escaping catastrophic climate change.

For those kids it is indeed a question of escaping and they have no power over that. For us, their parents and grandparents, it's a question of averting catastrophic climate change so today's children can have a livable future.

Is there any more solemn and compelling obligation on their parents and grandparents than to do their utmost to protect those kids who cannot protect themselves? Of course not.

Government can't be trusted to protect those kids. They have other priorities such as the petro-economy, and high-carbon fossil fuels and pipelines. Have they heard the warning of 50 per cent by 2030? Of course they have. Are they doing anything to realistically meet that call? Absolutely not.

For most of today's toddlers that 2030 deadline will be long gone before they get a chance to vote for their interest, their mortal interest.

The newborns and toddlers aren't the end of the story. According to StatsCan some 7-million Canadians will be too young to vote this year.

Cutting emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 is a Herculean challenge. The whole process - evaluation, analysis, planning and implementation - would take years even if we gave it our all. It would mean a major restructuring of our economy and a diversion of money and resources. Have you heard any political leader talking about that - Mr.Trudeau, Mr. Scheer? No their message is essentially, don't worry, be happy.  Mr. Trudeau says he'll continue multi-billion dollar annual fossil fuel subsidies into 2025 which pretty much rubbishes any hope of "50 by 2030."

Perhaps, like Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Scheer you don't take this "50 by 2030" seriously. Like Trump you simply don't believe it. Do you think those children will take it seriously 20 or 30 or 40 years from now?

This time, this vote is different. Those children, so precious to you, are not your government's priority whether that be Liberal or Conservative. So why would you give them your vote? Why would you vote against your children's interest, their future?

We're in a strange place at a strange time. In the context of children and grandchildren we've never faced this urgency before. When I was born, the future looked good and it was. When my kids were born, theirs was not a precarious existence. We saw good things ahead for them. That's all over now. Those days are gone.

When you go to cast your vote this year, the future of those kids is very much in the balance. Four years hence will probably be too late, their future ordained. This may be our last chance to turn those petro-pols around.

Our political caste needs to be shaken to its core. The pols need to be told, powerfully told, that if they won't fight for our kids, we won't vote for them. If they won't protect these children, run them out of office. No more false majorities.

The clock is running.

Canada's Auditor General Dead

Michael Ferguson has succumbed to cancer.

Jeremy, Careful What You Ask For.

Britain is caught in a holy hell of a Brexit quagmire.  Among British MPs, everyone has an idea and no one can get traction.

Some want a second referendum on the EU. Some want an easy-exit deal. Some want Theresa May to go back to Brussels, cap in hand, begging for a better deal. Some just want out, even without a deal.

Opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, he wants a snap election, at least until today that is. Now the polls show it's not May's Conservatives in trouble but Corbyn's Labour Party. Seems Corbyn's lacklustre performance in the Brexit debates have sent Labour's support plummeting.  Labour has dropped six points giving the Tories a seven point edge.  And that can't be good news for the Tory insurgency led by Boris Johnson either.

Approval for May’s handling of Brexit had increased slightly, while support for Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the issue has slumped to an all-time low. May’s approval ratings on Brexit edged up slightly to -30%, with 25% approving and 55% disapproving. Her rating had been -33% a fortnight ago. 

Meanwhile, Corbyn’s net rating on the issue is now -44%, with 16% approving and 61% disapproving. His rating was -40% in the last poll a fortnight ago. Only 42% of current Labour voters approve of the way Corbyn has responded to the government on Brexit, while a quarter (26%) disapprove.

The Tories have gained an edge on Labour but that's not to say the British voter likes May's plan very much, or at all.

While the deal is still seen as bad, outright opposition has dropped off in the past weeks. Currently, 15% think May’s deal is good, while 45% think it is bad. In the last poll, only 12% thought it was a good deal and 50% thought it was bad. 

Most people would back staying in the EU over May’s deal. If a referendum were held with a choice between the two, 45% would vote to Remain, while 38% would vote for the deal. More than half (55%) of Conservative voters now think their MPs should back the deal, up from 48% last week.

To put it simply, this is a trainwreck in the making. There is no consensus emerging in Parliament even as Theresa May is packing an overnight bag for her next trip to Brussels. Hope she doesn't forget to pack her begging bowl.

A Coal Port Dies

It is a fight that lasted several years but the proposal to build a coal port to ship thermal (dirty) coal from the Fraser Surrey Docks is dead. From Dogwood:

After six long years of community pushback, the Port of Vancouver has cancelled its permit for the controversial U.S. thermal coal proposal. 1 

A port spokesperson told The Tyee today the company was required to show “substantial progress” on the project, and failed to do so. Fraser Surrey Docks was fighting an ongoing court battle with local residents represented by our friends at Ecojustice. 

This is a huge win for grassroots groups including Communities and Coal, Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, and all the Dogwood volunteers in Delta, White Rock, New Westminster, Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey who fought this filthy project over many years. Congratulations!

Organizers from B.C. to California have defeated a string of dirty thermal coal proposals up and down the coast. That’s good for the health and safety of people who live, work, or go to school near the train tracks. Coal dust is toxic, deadly stuff.

Plus it’s a win for the global climate.

“Burning coal for electricity really has no place in a world that is serious about fighting climate change,” said Ecojustice lawyer Fraser Thompson today in reaction to the news. “An end to this project is a step in that direction.”

In 2013, the Globe and Mail described the project:

The Fraser Surrey Docks coal port project, if approved by the authority, could see [thermal] coal exports in B.C. jump by nearly eight million tonnes a year. Coal – coming primarily from the northern United States – would be unloaded directly from rail cars onto receiving pits and transferred directly onto barges. The barges would carry the coal to Texada Island in the Straight of Georgia, where it would be stored at an existing storage yard and then transferred to deep-sea vessels for export to Asia.

Does this mean less thermal coal will be burned in Asia? Probably not. Australia can't ship enough of this climate-killing garbage. It does mean that they won't be getting their high-carbon fuel for their generating plants from this dock, from Canada. And that is a win.  The fight to end this disgraceful trade in thermal coal isn't over.

The Tale of the Tape

Recently PostMedia ran a petro-friendly article accusing British Columbians of being hypocritical when they point fingers at Alberta for greenhouse gas emissions. It was a pretty one-sided piece. I responded by linking to a report from the Conference Board of Canada that featured this graph of per capita emissions by province.

On household emissions we're all roughly equal. It's when you come to total emissions that the tape tells a pretty clear tale.  I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Alberta and Saskatchewan are recoiling in indignation at Trudeau's carbon tax initiative.

The Age of Chaos

In the opening years of this century, our new millennia, some historians predicted that the 21st century would be a "century of revolution."  Almost 20 years in, it's looking as though they were right.

We've already had our share of game changers. Among them were the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 that launched America and her allies into futile wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria with a war against Iran now a real possibility.

As this century opened we were talking about climate change in the context of horrible things that might happen, perhaps as soon as the end of the century, if we didn't mend our ways. Little did we know those end of the century estimates were out by 70 to 80 years.  We were caught unaware to the point where, in 2018, we were told that mankind had just 12 years in which to slash greenhouse gas emissions by fully half if we were to avert runaway global warming. We are not heeding that warning, just the opposite. Carbon emissions continue to grow and now the thawing permafrost is adding an as yet unknown volume of methane and CO2 to the mix. The fingerprints marking the arrival of climate change are everywhere now - severe weather events of increasing frequency, duration and intensity, droughts, floods, pest and species migration, on and on and on.

Social upheaval is spreading. There was the ill-fated Occupy movement in the US, the failure of which we may one day come to rue. We're witnessing the rise of authoritarianism from the Philippines to Hungary, Poland, Italy, Brazil and, of course, the United States and it is poised to spread even further. This flows out of the rise of right wing or negative populism driven by insecurity, paranoia, xenophobia and often outright racism. Left wing or progressive populism, positive populism (think Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt), fueled not by fear but by hope, confidence and aspiration has failed to respond and cannot capture the popular imagination. Democracy pays the price for that failure.

We do seem to be in the grip of an age of chaos.  The history of revolution and upheaval shows it's rarely a linear process and it won't be this time either. There are too many seismic forces at play - climate change, overpopulation, resource depletion and, in some cases, exhaustion.  There are no quick fixes for any of these things, no great plans in the works. We're going to have to ride this out as best we can.

What Canadians can do is finally realize the advantages that we have compared to the vast majority of countries.  We have land, resources, and a well-educated populace. The gaping wound, however, is our lack of social cohesion, this rift that has been cultivated in us, dividing us into hostile camps. Surely we have seen how that plays out in so many countries over the past decade. Why would we invite that contagion into our own nation?

If you want to make someone your enemy, you had better have a plan for defeating them and not just at the ballot box. There are hot heads on both sides of this horrible divide who don't see the self-defeating futility of their rancour. We will have differences. We will have lasting differences. Some differences are bigger than others. Some spring more from tribalism than anything else. Some squabbles can be settled and put behind us. When we do that we bring both sides closer together and bolster social cohesion.

In the 12,000 year history of human civilization, mankind has never been in the vexing situation that we face today.   Some of these threats may abate. Many, we're told, will worsen. If we're so distracted by frivolous squabbling, we're screwed.