What Fools These Mortals Be!

We humans are a strange species. Despite access to almost unlimited information and data, far too many prefer to notice only what is front of them at the present moment, simply reacting rather than anticipating and planning. Probably the best illustration of this is the fact that the majority of countries, and this certainly includes Canada, wring their hands when disaster strikes and pay the upfront costs of many billions of dollars instead of putting that money to better use: mitigating climate change and adapting to it. Interestingly, at least in Canada, that shortsightedness breaks down somewhat along gender lines, as you will see shortly.

If you have five minutes to spare, three stories, beginning at the four-minute mark, amply illustrate the above:

There Is A Lesson Here For All Of Us

While no rational person could fail to see ever-worsening climate change as a major contributor to the Houston flooding, there is a compounding problem, as the following report makes clear.

Surely there is a lesson here for all of us.



As to how urban engineering can help address this problem, my thanks to Things Are Good for this:

Climate Change And Cities

This is a time when the credibility of national governments is at an all-time low. In the United States, Donald Trump openly denies climate science. Indeed, he has declared his intention to revive the coal industry and boost fracking, two very dangerous sources of environmental disruption. He is even musing about withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement Climate.

Here at home, things are not much better. While avoiding the harsh rhetoric of a climate-change denier, Justin Trudeau, by some feat of rhetorical legerdemain, insists that developing the tarsands is not incompatible with a cleaner environment. Such may sound good to the untutored mind, but for the critical thinker demanding specifics, the prime minister offers pretty thin gruel.

So where are we to look for real leadership? Even though they are at best very junior partners, because they have the most to lose as recent events have made very clear, cities may have far more ability to exert substantial influence on the climate change file than most people might think.

The late Benjamin Barber wrote a book, recently published, called Cool Cities: Urban Sovereignty and the Fix for Global Warming arguing that cities, not national governments, hold the key to real progress on the climate change file. An excerpt in The Guardian offers some of his thinking:

The list [of what municipalities can do] includes divestment of public funds from carbon energy companies; investment to encourage renewable energy and green infrastructure; municipal carbon taxes; fracking and drilling bans; new waste incineration technologies; regulation of the use of plastic bottles and bags; policies to improve public transport and reduce car use; and recycling.

Barber cites the city of Oslo, which is pursuing a zero-emissions campaign, as an exemplar:

The city is applying the goal with particular efficiency to transportation, and electric vehicle charging stations are plentiful. The plan is to make Oslo the most electric vehicle-friendly city in the world – one in four new cars sold in Norway are electric – and a champion of green housing and architecture: its new opera house is set in a neighbourhood that gleams with green infrastructure.

And cities in Asia are embracing some surprising initiatives as well:

The greater Seoul region has a population of almost 25 million, and in 2015 it was ranked the continent’s most sustainable city. Seoul has made a massive investment in electric-powered buses. It already has the world’s third largest subway system, but its carbon fuel bus fleet of 120,000 vehicles has been a massive source of pollution. Current plans are to convert half this fleet to electric by 2020, which would be the world’s most ambitious achievement of this kind.

One of the main impediments to a wider application of municipal green projects is the constraint on the power of local government:

There are two formidable obstacles blocking a larger role for cities: a paucity of resources and the absence of autonomy and jurisdiction. The European Union favours regions over cities, and works more on agricultural subsidies than affordable urban housing. In the United States, the structure of congressional representation means a suburban and rural minority rules over the urban majority.

Here in Canada, at least in Ontario, what a local government can do, as Toronto mayor John Tory found out to his great disgruntlement, is only what the provincial government will permit it to do. Road tolls in Toronto, as had been proposed and initially approved by the Wynne government, was ultimately vetoed, given that a provincial election is pending next year, and motorists have long memories.

There is only one answer, according to Barber:

If cities are to get the power they need, they will have to demand the right of self-governance...

Because urban citizens are the planet’s majority, their natural rights are endowed with democratic urgency. They carry the noble name of “citizen”, associated with the word “city”. But the aim is not to set urban against rural: it is to restore a more judicious balance between them. Today it is cities that look forward, speaking to global common goods, while fearful nations look back.

We, as a species, have a clear choice: continue on our present heedless course to planetary destruction, or start to make the hard, painful and expensive choices in order to live to fight another day.

Will The Harper Promise Of Tax Breaks Continue To Seduce Canadians?

Recently, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne called upon the Harper regime to commit $12 billion annually in infrastructure funding. This request takes on even greater urgency in light of the challenges we are and will be facing as we reap the consequences of climate change.

Fiance Minister Joe Oliver's response:

Wynne’s request is “divorced from fiscal reality.”

“We are not going to engage in a wild spending spree, which will create massive deficits and increase the debt. . . . We will also not jeopardize our top credit rating and we will not add to the intergenerational burden,” he said.

At the same time Herr Harper's henchman is preaching the virtues of fiscal discipline and ignoring the increasing costs of doing nothing in light of the above-stated peril, he is also pandering to our basest and most selfish instincts.

Yesterday, in a preview of the 2015 budget that will be designed to ensure the regime's re-election, 'Uncle Joe' offered this tease:

“I’m talking about reducing taxes for Canadian families and individuals”.

The words 'false economy' never escaped him ample lips.

In reference to a study done by the regime's ideological allies, The Fraser Institute, which just released a 'study' claiming we are grossly overtaxed and not getting good value in return, the finance minister had this to say:

Ottawa has reduced the federal tax burden and has urged other levels of government to reduce expenses and taxes.

It’s healthy for Canadians to understand the facts when it comes to taxes so the public can decide what’s fair and necessary.

So the Institute is just providing a public educational service, eh?

In that case, be sure to check out this piece, which points out some flaws in both the study's methodology and ideology.

After all, apparently Uncle Joe wants Canadians to be fully informed to decide 'what's fair and necessary.'

The final choice is up to us in 2015. Will we embrace the Harper ideology of selfishness and insularity and re-elect a corrupt and undemocratic government? Or will we rediscover our collectivist traditions and remember that our obligations are not only to ourselves but to each other?

A Guest Post From The Mound Of Sound

Steve Harper and his chums have transformed cognitive dissonance from an affliction into an art form. Harper’s prime directive, his overarching quest, is to get as much Athabasca bitumen as possible to foreign buyers as quickly as pipelines and tanker ports can be built. Now square that single-minded purpose with the report just released by Beelzebub’s own government that “Canada faces greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather as a result of climate change, as well as increased risks to human health from pollution and the spread of disease-carrying insects.”

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change, but additional impacts are unavoidable, even with aggressive global mitigation efforts, due to inertia in the climate system” the report said. “Therefore, we also need to adapt – make adjustments in our activities and decisions in order to reduce risks, moderate harm or take advantage of new opportunities.”

It may strike you as odd, this dire warning coming from a government intent on increasing Canadian emissions through a targeted five fold expansion of the Tar Sands while spending next to nothing on adaptation initiatives and risk reduction. As Calgary languished underwater last summer, the World Council on Disaster Management held its annual conference in Toronto. One speaker was Dr. Saeed Mirza, professor emeritus at McGill University. Focusing on what he called decades of neglect of Canadian infrastructure, Dr. Mirza said that Canada needs to invest hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly upwards of a trillion dollars, on repair and replacement of our essential infrastructure. Like most of these warnings, it comes with the added caution that, if we don’t overhaul our core infrastructure soon, we will pay dearly for our neglect later.

It’s important to bear in mind that, while early onset climate change is already here, as even the Harper government’s report admits, it is going to worsen through the remainder of this century and, quite probably, for a good era past that. The extreme weather we’re seeing today is expected to become more extreme – in frequency, duration and intensity – with each passing decade. A report released Tuesday by Risky Business, a climate change research initiative established by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer, put a physiological dimension on what we’re facing. “As temperatures rise, towards the end of the century, less than an hour of activity outdoors in the shade could cause a moderately fit individual to suffer heat stroke,” said climatologist Robert Kopp of Rutgers University, lead scientific author of the report. “That’s something that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world today.”

The body’s capacity to cool down in hot weather depends on the evaporation of sweat. That keeps skin temperature below 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius). Above that, core temperature rises past 98.6F. But if humidity is also high, sweat cannot evaporate and core temperatures can increase until the person collapses from heat stroke. “If it’s humid you can’t sweat, and if you can’t sweat you can’t maintain core body temperature in the heat, and you die,” said Dr. Al Sommer, dean emeritus of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins University and author of a chapter on health effects in the new report.

While climate change is plainly the greatest threat facing mankind this century, a genuinely existential threat, it’s one that triggers indifference, acquiescence or resignation in far too many of us. The potential enormity of climate change in all its dimensions – environmental, economic, political, societal, military – is almost too much to grasp. This saps us of the collective will needed for timely action on adaptation and mitigation initiatives. We are firmly immersed in the “boiling frog” syndrome. We don’t like to dwell on the future or hear accounts of what we have in store for our grandkids and their children. The burden of rising to the challenge, even if we don’t really know what that burden is, seems inconvenient, something that can surely be deferred for now. Yet if we don’t rise to this challenge, if we don’t begin to understand climate change in all its dimensions, we probably won’t be able to take advantage of the best remaining options available to us before they’re foreclosed. And that would be cowardice and an utter betrayal of our grandchildren and the generations to follow. We may have limited powers to make life better for them but we still have enormous powers to make their lives vastly worse.

Progress Or Politics?

If you start the following video at about the 5:30 mark, you will hear a surprising answer from Conservative MP Braid Braid when asked by Evan Solomon if the Harper government believes in climate change.


Progress or mere politics? You decide.