More Cracks in the Conservative Monolith

Hannah Thibedeau's report gladdened my heart this morning as she detailed the events behind federal Conservative M.P. Brent Rathgeber's decision to leave the Harper caucus over changes to his private member's bill that would have required the public disclosure of all the expenses and salaries of highly paid public service workers. This, coupled with recent Conservative backbencher discontent over their muzzling, gives at least some faint hope for a brighter future on the Canadian political landscape.

This comes on the heels of a damning indictment from the right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation prompted by Harper's failure to meet its expectations of fiscal ruthlessness, as reported in today's Star by Thomas Walkon.

A Young Person Responds To Kevin O'Leary

It is young people like Rachel Parent who give me some reason to hope for the future:

Canada's Complicity In Torture

Thanks to alternative media, Canada's recent denigration of all things U.N. begins to make sense. Just another instance of how we have become a renegade nation under the Harper cabal.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Shelley)

I see that Shelley Glover, the Conservative M.P. for St. Boniface riding, is in a spot of trouble. It seems that the lady who practically levitates out of her House of Commons seat to lead a standing ovation each time her dear leader deigns to speak could be suspended from that seat should Elections Canada have its way.

Somewhat reminiscent of the campaign irregularities that forced the resignation of Peter Penashue and later led to his defeat in a byelection, Glover, along with fellow traveller James Bezan, the Conservative MP for Selkirk-Interlake, failed to file campaign documents from the 2011 election. Letters sent to the Speaker of the House advised "that an elected candidate shall not continue to sit or vote as members of the House of Commons pending the filing of complete and accurate returns”.

Glover has filed an appeal, explaining the problem this way:

“This is an accounting dispute between the campaign and Elections Canada.”

Predictably, party-loyalist-masquerading-as-impartial-Member-of-Parliament Andrew Scheer, the Speaker of the House, said he is awaiting the court decisions before taking any action.

Meanwhile, I thought readers might enjoy a 'greatest hits' compilation video of the 'honourable' member from St. Boniface:

A Word From The Mound Of Sound

The Mound of Sound (a.k.a. The Disaffected Lib) is back from his hiatus, and he left a comment on my earlier post suggesting how newspapers should deal with weather-related disasters. Because of the length of his response, and because I want to bring that response to a wider audience than those who normally read comments, I am taking the liberty, with thanks, of reproducing Mound's response below:

It is fascinating, in a depressing sort of way, how the subject of "tipping points" drifts in and (mainly) out of the public consciousness. It is, after all, these tipping points that ultimately matter - the point at which man-made warming is overtaken by much more powerful natural feedback mechanisms utterly beyond our control.

Researchers bore holes in Alaskan lake ice and set alight the escaping methane. Russians video streams of methane bubbles reaching the ocean surface from seabed clathrates that are thawing. In our own north, tundra thaws and dries leading to fires that expose the permafrost beneath, the massive greenhouse gas sponge that underlies the global Arctic. The loss of Arctic sea ice and the absorption of ever more solar energy further warming that region is a feedback mechanism. It transmits heat energy into the Arctic atmosphere creating this new, powerful Polar Jet Stream and meandering Rossby Waves that whipsaw the northern hemisphere with sustained droughts and devastating floods.

A tipping point in a canoe is where water begins spilling in over the gunwale. It usually ends poorly and very quickly. Rarely, however, is it fatal.

The sort of environmental tipping points that loom large today are unprecedented in human experience. There may be several of varying consequence. Some may be stand alone, others linked so that a worsening in one may be a catalyst for another.

It's entirely conceivable we have crossed or at the cusp of one or more tipping points that represent the point of critical mass of runaway climate change. Yet as Chomsky points out today in a piece from TomGram, the developed world, the U.S. and Canada in particular, are merely ramping up the effort to extract and burn hydrocarbons as never before.

David Letterman On Fracking

This was most gratifying to see, although I was puzzled by the laughter that periodically erupted from the audience:

A Modest Proposal

Kyle Farmer takes issue with The Star's failure to 'connect the dots' between increasingly destructive weather and climate change:

At a global warming tipping point

What will it take before the Star commits to covering the unfolding crisis of environmental sustainability?

The Star dutifully reports on droughts and floods when they are topical. When they afflict a rich country the news is generally on the front page. When they afflict a poor country we tend to find this news in the World section.

What we don’t get is any credible, informed connecting-of-the-dots, which is that the global increase in droughts and floods is just one of the smoking guns of progressing climate change.

Will it take a certain number of species extinctions before the Star takes notice? Populations of wild pollinators have already diminished by as much as 90 per cent, threatening the global food supply. World-renowned Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimates that by the end of this century half of all life on Earth will be extinct.

Dr. Anton Vaks of Oxford has a recently published work suggesting that we are already committed to passing an irreversible global warming tipping point. As such, the actions we take today, right now, will determine the climate of the world we are leaving for our children. By the time they inherit the world we are creating, it might be entirely out of their hands to avert or even slow self-sustaining global warming.

We get daily sections reporting on sports and entertainment. Lately Star readers could be forgiven for thinking that Rob Ford and the Senate are the only news items available. Meanwhile, the world around us is dying.

History will remember us as criminals and fools. They will be amazed that we were too busy guessing the gender of Will and Kate’s baby to report on a looming global warming tipping point. They will be amazed that we followed Justin Bieber’s tweets more closely than rising atmospheric carbon levels. They will wonder how we could have been so selfish and stupid.

Kevin Farmer, Toronto

While I realize that no given hurricane, tornado, drought or flood can be attributed to global warming, here is a simple addition that all papers could make to their reporting that would permit concerned and aware readers everywhere to draw their own inferences:

Each time a destructive weather event takes place, it could be ranked in relation to other such storms occurring, say, within the previous three decades in terms of property damage, loss of life, and economic costs.

Climate change may still be a contentious proposition for some; statistics are far less so.

A perfect illustration of what I am proposing is found in today's Star here, here, and here.