France Has The Right Idea

I am a member of an increasingly endangered and probably peculiarly-regarded minority. I do not have a smartphone. While I am an avid user of the Internet via my laptop and generic tablet, the thought of constant connectivity has never appealed to me. I value the kind of focussed solitude that promotes true connectivity with the world around me far too much.

I therefore applaud the bold step that France has taken: it has banned phones from all state middle schools.

“I thought I would be freaked out, but it has been fine,” said one 13-year-old girl, who got an iPhone when she was 11. “I left my phone in my bag all day and I was surprised to find it didn’t bother me. Normally I’d be on Snapchat and Instagram. But my friends are here at school so it’s pretty easy to just talk instead.”

To prepare for the ban, Claude Debussy middle school in Paris started with Monday bans on phones. And one of the results I suspect they hoped for, increased social interaction, emerged early in the ban, according to principal Eric Lathière.

“About four or five weeks into our phone-free Monday experiment, we saw children bringing packs of cards into school to play in break time...We hadn’t seen cards at school for years. Children brought books in to read and pupils stood around chatting far more than they had before.”

The logic for the ban is compelling:

The French education minister has called the ban a detox law for the 21st century, saying teenagers should have the right to disconnect. Children’s phones were already banned in classrooms – except for teaching purposes – but under the new law they are banned everywhere inside the gates, including playgrounds and canteens. The French senate expanded this to allow high schools to ban phones if they choose, but few, if any, are expected to do so. Many suggest 18-year-old pupils with the right to vote can make their own decision on phones.

I doubt that the political will for such a ban exists in Canada. For example, going completely in the opposite direction is the Toronto District School Board which last week restored access to Netflix, Instagram and Snapchat. The blocking of access to those services had nothing to do with educational principles but was prompted by the high amount of bandwidth such services require.

The board's egregious vacuum of leadership is perhaps best reflected in this statement by board spokesperson Ryan Bird:

“We leave the decision up to individual schools and individual teachers to put in place guidelines that work best for them.”

It is heartening to know that at least in France, that kind of buck-passing has yielded to educational integrity that puts the real needs of students first.

A Verbal Tap Dance

Talk, as they say, is cheap. Watch the following clip to see Environment Minister Catherine McKenna further debase its value by her non-answer regarding the now-stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the threat West Coast oil tanker traffic poses:

The Vindication Of Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick is someone I admire. As previously noted in this blog, the former NFL player, whose decision to protest police brutality against blacks by taking a knee during the American national anthem, has paid dearly for his integrity. But vindication has finally arrived, vindication sure to end Donald Trump into new paroxysms of outrage:

Last week, an arbitrator ruled that Colin Kaepernick’s collusion grievance against the NFL can go forward. This week, Nike unveiled a new ad campaign starring the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who rose to prominence in 2016 when he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence against black Americans.

Given that Nike is the official uniform supplier for the NFL, this move is not without risk, but one the company believes is worth taking. And the backlash has already started. Take a look at the Twitter hashtag #JustBurnIt or #BoycottNike for some examples:

FVCK U NIKE THIS IS FOR SUPPORTING A MAN THAT DISRESPECTS OUR MEN IN BLUE #JustDolt #JustBurnIt



Ripping my Nike Air Max to own the libs #BoycottNike


Bloomberg News reports:

Nike shares slipped as much as 3.9 percent to $79 as of 9:31 a.m. Tuesday in New York -- the biggest intraday slide in five months.

They had climbed 31 percent this year through Friday’s close.

The fallout was no surprise but Nike may be betting that the upside of a Kaepernick endorsement is worth angering conservative Americans and supporters of President Donald Trump.

To its credit, this is not the first time Nike has waded into controversial waters:

Just a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration last year, the company launched a high-profile “Equality” campaign featuring LeBron James and Serena Williams. The campaign’s ambassadors included Ibtihaj Muhammad, a Muslim American fencer who wears a hijab when competing, and transgender triathlete Chris Mosier.

Now, all of this, of course, is about market share, but it is nonetheless refreshing to see a company taking a calculated risk while so many in Trump's America seem so keen on hewing to a very conservative, even reactionary, line.

And of course, for students of human nature, the reactions to this campaign constitute a fascinating Rorschach test, yet another conduit into the tortured and fractured American psyche.

Not to mention another dog whistle for the increasingly beleaguered Trump to blow.

A Pattern We Cannot Ignore

As I write this on the morning of Labour Day, it is already 38 degrees Celsius with the humidex in Southern Ontario, another day of oppressive heat and humidity in a long line of them this summer. Scientific consensus points to the ever-increasing effects of climate change as the chief agent responsible for a summer that has seen extreme temperatures worldwide. The key, if there still is one, to mitigating this unfolding disaster, is to wean ourselves as quickly as possible, off of fossil fuels.

And yet ....



.... our government chooses to ignore reality by buying a stranded asset, the Trans Mountain pipeline, whose expansion has been stopped for the time being by a Federal Court of Appeal ruling. The Trudeau Liberals seem stalwart in their intention to soldier on with this project, but perhaps they need to listen to voices outside their own echo chamber for a more realistic assessment of the situation:

Pipeline ruling shockwaves felt across Canada, Aug. 31

Last week, the Federal Court of Appeal told the government what they should have already known about the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion — the National Energy Board vetting process was horribly flawed, and there was inadequate consultation with the Indigenous people who are affected by it.

The proposed pipeline expansion is simply unfathomable. Even without citizen protests, the financial community knows that investment in the oilsands has no future. Bankers are pulling out and current investors are looking simply to recover their existing investments.

Canada has wasted billions in subsidies to oil companies instead of building the infrastructure for a renewable energy industry. Even when the oil industry was viable, Alberta failed to recover the revenues it was entitled to with too low taxes and too low royalties.

Meanwhile, Norway has made its citizens millionaires by nationalizing its oil industry and undertaking development in an environmentally sustainable way. Canada has given its resources away for a song and now has little to show for it. Compounding the mistake by continuing to prop up a failing industry is a crime against future generations.

Canada and its citizens will have to make wrenching adaptations just to survive when the true cost of climate change hits us. I fear for my children and grandchildren.

Our resources should be directed to building renewable energy and transitioning the workers who will be affected. Those currently employed by the fossil fuel industry should not bear the brunt of the transition. They should be supported by all other Canadians through our tax dollars as they are retrained and find new jobs.

I implore the government to end the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project now, for the sake of our future generations.

Patricia E. McGrail, Brampton

Some Refreshing Leadership

Now that Canada's plan to increase its greenhouse gas emissions and further threaten coastal waters has been dealt a massive blow by the Federal Court of Appeal, I suggest it is time to adopt an approach that embraces the future, not the past.

Such an approach is to be found in California. With a population roughly equivalent to Canada's, the state has made a bold, visionary and necessary decision that serves to show all of us what is possible when leaders have vision and a concern for future generations:

California lawmakers approved a measure mandating that all electricity come from wind, solar and other clean-energy sources by 2045, marking the state’s biggest step yet in the fight against global warming.

The Assembly voted 43-32 in favor of the legislation Tuesday. It would eliminate the reliance on fossil fuels to power homes, businesses and factories in the world’s fifth-largest economy, accelerating a shift already under way. The state currently gets about 44 percent of its power from renewables and hydropower.

Unlike other jurisdictions, California has come to the realization that fossil fuels demand too dear a price, while alternative sources of energy are quickly becoming cost-competitive:

“It’s already happening for economic reasons,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James Financial Inc., who noted that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of electricity in some regions.

Bold state initiatives that buck the Trump-led efforts to role back environmental protections are also helping in this transition:

Earlier this year, California became the first U.S. state to mandate solar rooftop panels on almost all new homes. It would be the second state to require 100 percent carbon-free power after Hawaii.

Success, it would seem, rests on two related foundations: decreasing costs of batteries and increasing their prevalence. The following explains how this is likely to happen:


So Canada, like so many other countries, has a choice to make: continue to chase after white elephants or take a bold leap of faith and technology into the future.

This About Sums It Up

And it begs the question: Is our species really worth saving?

UPDATED: Please Watch This, Catherine McKenna

As Minister of Environment and Climate Change, I think it is important for you to see what the practice of real integrity, as opposed to the mouthing of inane platitudes, looks like.

French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot has resigned on live radio, in a dramatic announcement that caught even President Emmanuel Macron by surprise.

The former TV presenter and green activist said he had quit after a series of disappointments in attempts to address climate change and other environmental threats.

Mr Hulot said he felt "all alone" in government.

The decision was taken on the spot and, he added, even his wife did not know.

"I am going to take... the most difficult decision of my life," the minister said in an interview on France Inter radio.

"I am taking the decision to leave the government."

UPDATE: Meanwhile, 'Minister' McKenna, I guess you have more important things to do with your time.

Pray For Jimbo

Apparently, crazed televangelist evangelical Jim Bakker has enemies that are legion.

“I don’t dare wear a Trump hat. The evil in this country is so bad if I was a Republican — which I have been my whole life — I couldn’t wear a hat with my candidate on it without concern about being murdered in the street,” Bakker said.

These Are Brave Ladies

When you are young, it is easy to find heroes, people whose daring exploits elicit awe and wonder. When I was a kid, Superman was my comic book hero. Although fictitious, he was an exemplar people could admire. Indefatigable, strong and incorruptible, Superman, although an alien, showed the best qualities humanity is capable of.

And that, to me, is the essence of a hero.

In my adult life, Nelson Mandela, about whom I have written on this blog, was my hero. His grace, dignity and refusal to compromise during all his years of imprisonment showed us the best that human nature has to offer.

Now that Mandela is gone, it is hard to find real inspiration in this fractured world, a world in which avarice, dissension, hatred and pettiness have seized centre stage, a world in which real leadership seems absent.

In Canada, our politics is one of opportunism and hypocrisy, something we were all reminded of during this past weekend's Conservative Party convention in Halifax. And the Liberal Party, despite the bright promise they seemed to present during the last election, have proven they learned nothing during their years in the wilderness. Justin Trudeau's betrayal of his environmental promise, in my view, was the coup de grâce to optimism about the future.

And yet ....

There are those brave and principled souls who refuse to be consumed by despair and yield to forces much bigger than themselves. People who know that their obligation goes beyond themselves and their immediate families. People who care about the generations that will come along after they are gone. People like the 'sinister seniors'. People like Charlotte Gyoba:

Gyoba was one of the protesters who broke a court injunction filed by Kinder Morgan that set limits on how close people could be from the gates. The protesters stood right in front of the gates at one of the Kinder Morgan facilities at the Burnaby Mountain tank farm.

Of the group of nine that faced initial jail time for convictions on July 31, the first to be sentenced was 70-year-old grandmother Laurie Embree. Indigenous elders have also been arrested at the gates.

Meanwhile, the penalties for defying the injunction continue to increase, with the people arrested this week facing a sentence of 14 days in custody from the B.C. Supreme Court.

Gyoba herself wound up spending four days behind bars with four other protesters, all over the age of 65, and she has no regrets:

“I won’t be here much longer, but I worry about what kind of planet the next generation will inherit from us,” the 74-year-old said. “People have to stand up when they see an injustice. If they don’t, then democracy doesn’t work for anybody.”

The thought of incarceration frightens the hell out of me. Am I capable of such courage? I don't know. But as long as there are people like Gyoba and the others profiled in the above-linked article, it is clear that heroism is not dead, and there is still some hope for humanity.

Memo To The Press

As usual, Robert Reich is spot-on in his insights. Here, he offers some solid advice to real journalists on how they should cover Trump:

About That Odour In The Air

While The Great Pretender and his faux Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, continue to utter platitudes about climate-change action while visiting formerly Beautiful British Columbia, smoke is not the only pollutant in the air. The unmistakable stench of a steaming pile of bovine excrement is also becoming decidedly pronounced, its source not hard to detect for anyone not blinded by unthinking allegiance to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Letter-writer Mike Ward, of Duncan B.C., believes he has found its source and offers up a solution to the miasma:

B.C. and Alberta are engaged in a carbon trading scheme of sorts, and it is to no one’s advantage.

Alberta sends carbon-rich bitumen to British Columbia, which, when added to the atmosphere, contributes to global warming.

Global warming in turn produces the warmer winters that allow pine beetles to thrive, together with the longer, hotter, drier summers during which B.C.’s disease-stricken forests ignite.

Prevailing winds spread this suffocating carbon smoke throughout both provinces, choking the tourism industry, impacting people’s health, threatening towns and destroying the livelihood of communities dependant on forestry and fishing.

It hurts to think that the new normal for our children may be smoky white summer skies, breathing masks and the eerie light of an orange sun.

Further investment in this perverse carbon trading scheme, such as in the proposed Trans Mountain expansion, defies reason as it can only accelerate global warming and amplify the enormous economic, social and health consequences we are already experiencing.

Clearly, it’s time for change. The cost of our stubborn reliance on fossil fuels has simply become too great a price to pay.

Also, your mendacious self-congratulatory rhetoric notwithstanding, this is no time to take a victory lap, Catherine.

It's All Connected

Humans are a lamentably short-sighted species. Sure, we understand some of the basic underlying principles that govern our existence, but that knowledge seems to have little overall impact on the way we conduct ourselves.

Take, for example, cause and effect. We understand that if we hit our hand with a hammer, pain and possible fractures will ensue. Similarly, we know that if we toss a match into flammable material, a fire will follow. Ergo, unless there is something really wrong with us or our intent is to build a bonfire, we tend to avoid such behaviours. Beyond understanding such immediate consequences, however, our thinking tends to get a tad fuzzy.

Take, for example, the ever-increasing occurrences of forest fires. We know beyond a doubt that climate change is greatly exacerbating their threat, the fire season starting earlier and, in some cases becoming a year-round phenomenon. Yet when we think of the consequences of forest fires, we tend to think only of their relatively short-term effects: property destruction, carbon release and future mudslides, the absorption capacity of the land having severely been compromised.

As the following report shows, however, there are much more insidious cnsequences, ones that remind us that when we talk of ecological systems, everything is interconnected.

Days Of Outrage

The expression of outrage can serve a useful purpose, no doubt. It can promote new awareness that facilitates change; it can lead to levels of engagement that ultimately may improve the lives of many; it can change how we look at the world.

Or it can simply be an exercise that begins and ends on social media, a self-limiting foray that may make the participant feel virtuous but accomplishes little or nothing in the real world.

Today, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is no doubt celebrating what it must see as a massive victory:

After more than a century behind bars, the beasts on boxes of animal crackers are roaming free.

Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco, has redesigned the packaging of its Barnum's Animals crackers after relenting to pressure from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The redesign of the boxes, now on U.S. store shelves, retains the familiar red and yellow coloring and prominent "Barnum's Animals" lettering. But instead of showing the animals in cages - implying that they're traveling in boxcars for the circus - the new boxes feature a zebra, elephant, lion, giraffe and gorilla wandering side-by-side in a grassland. The outline of acacia trees can be seen in the distance.

This change has come about as a result of pressure by the animal rights' organization. Forgive my cynicism, but this changes virtually nothing. It is cosmetic and, as most efforts at spin are, profoundly shallow. We continue to eat animals; big-game hunters, although under significant pressure, seem indefatigable in their bloodlust; homeless animals still abound. In other words, while people may feel virtuous over PETA's 'victory,' the status quo continues.

And that gets to the crux of the matter, in my view. We have entered an age where remote participation in causes has become a substitute for real involvement. Instead of people going out in the streets to protest, making principled boycotts of businesses, writing actual letters to CEOs, they instead merely sign online petitions, send out heartfelt tweets, post on Facebook, etc. (all of which I am guilty of, I might add.) While such 'spooky action at a distance' may promote short-term feelings of virtue, for far too many, they become ends in themselves.

The thoughtful reader may object. Isn't some involvement, however transitory or shallow, better than none? In my view, it is far too late for such gestures. The natural world is collapsing while we tweet our outrage. Temperatures around the world are rising; Arctic ice is rapidly melting; floodwaters are rising; drought is widespread; forests are aflame, and feedback loops are fully operational. Yet we still drive our cars everywhere and idle them with abandon in parking lots so we can have our air-conditioning to insulate us from some inconvenient truths.

Taking real action is hard, demanding time, commitment and real resolve. Expressing outrage is easy, and serves, if anything, as a powerful distraction from the real problems confronting our sorry world.