The Lethal Dysfunction Of The Far Right: A Mound of Sound Guest Post

Problem: you're already getting hammered by early-onset climate change. Solution: deny it's happening, look the other way, think happy thoughts.

It sounds ridiculously dysfunctional and it is but that is the approach being taken by governments, state and municipal, in parts of the American south.

Take North Carolina, for example, where the uber-rightwing state legislature has found a solution to scientific projections of at least a metre of sea-level rise this century - pass legislation banning any mention of that.

And then there's posh Miami, Florida where real estate prices are sky high and still climbing. Miami now floods regularly and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The problem is that the city is very low-lying and it sits atop a dome of porous limestone through which rising sea water passes virtually unobstructed. Seawalls and dikes don't work here because sea water simply comes up from underneath. The city already stands defenceless against seasonal high tides and regular storm surges.

Philip Stoddard is particularly well-placed to judge what is happening in Miami. Tall, thin, with a dry sense of humour, he is a politician, having won two successive elections to be mayor of South Miami, and a scientist, a biology professor at Florida International University.

"The thing about Miami is that, when it goes, it will all be gone," says Stoddard. Nor will south Florida have to wait that long for the devastation to come. Long before the seas have risen a further three or four feet, there will be irreversible breakdowns in society, he says. "Another foot of sea level rise will be enough to bring salt water into our freshwater supplies and our sewage system. Those services will be lost when that happens."

"You won't be able to flush away your sewage and taps will no longer provide homes with fresh water. Then you will find you will no longer be able to get flood insurance for your home. Land and property values will plummet and people will start to leave. Places like South Miami will no longer be able to raise enough taxes to run our neighbourhoods. Where will we find the money to fund police to protect us or fire services to tackle house fires? Will there even be enough water pressure for their fire hoses? It takes us into all sorts of post-apocalyptic scenarios. It makes one thing clear though: mayhem is coming."

Yes, mayhem is coming. So how are Florida's rightwing leaders responding?

"...what really surprises visitors and observers is the city's response, or to be more accurate, its almost total lack of reaction. The local population is steadily increasing; land prices continue to surge; and building is progressing at a generous pace. ...signs of construction - new shopping malls, cranes towering over new condominiums and scaffolding enclosing freshly built apartment blocks - could be seen across the city, its backers apparently oblivious of scientists' warnings that the foundations of their buildings may be awash very soon.

"Not that they're alone. Most of Florida's senior politicians - in particular Senator Marco Rubio, former governor Jeb Bush and current governor, Rick Scott, all Republican climate-change deniers - have refused to act or respond to warnings ...or to give media interviews to explain their stance, though Rubio, a Republican party star and possible 2016 presidential contender, has made his views clear in speeches. 'I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. I do not believe the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.'"

Miami, in fact the entire state of Florida, is an invaluable object lesson, a miners' canary to demonstrate rightwing dysfunction at work in the fight against climate change. It's one but just one of several spots in the US expected to be particularly hard hit by global warming. Another is the American southwest from California through to Texas.

In already hot and dry Phoenix, Arizona, they're being warned to expect 10-degrees Fahrenheit warming this century. That translates from an average summer high temperature of 104 soaring to Kuwait City temperatures of 114F. In a region already severely water stressed, heating on this scale could undermine the major cities.

"Climate Central used the IPCC predictions - which generally estimate that summer high temperatures will be seven to ten degrees higher by 2100 - to make an interactive map to compare the current temperatures with cities that already experience those temperatures. For example, Sacramento will feel more like Tucson in the summer. Boston will feel like Miami. And Austin, where the average summer high is currently about 94 degrees, is projected to be more like Gilbert, which has an average summer high of nearly 104 degrees.

Meanwhile, on the clean, renewable energy front, Aviation Week has recently published several articles about space solar power (SSP). The idea is to capture solar energy in near-Earth space, convert it to microwaves and them beam the energy down to power grids on the surface.

“Space solar power has as a concept never been more appealing and more promising than it is right now,” says John Mankins, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory veteran who spent a decade as manager of advanced concepts studies at NASA headquarters. “The new technical architecture, which exploits all of the technological advances of the past 30 years in terrestrial technology—electronics, robotics, materials—makes the approach to space solar power both affordable and scalable.”


Maybe, maybe not. At the very least, though, it's a technology worth exploring.

Oh, And One More Thing

It seems I, Martin Regg Cohn and Cheri DiNovo aren't the only ones to take issue with Andrea Horwath's leadership these days:

Re:Horwath admits ‘bittersweet’ election result, July 9

I wonder what Robin Sears has to say about Cheri DiNovo. The day Andrea Horwath walked away from the Liberal budget I cancelled my membership in the Ontario NDP. This decision was not taken lightly. I worked in my first election in Grade 9 and was a member of the party for decades. When the famous letter of “the 34” was made public, I felt better. Others were also disappointed at the move away from core NDP values to populist austerity rhetoric.

Then, enter Robin Sears. He dismissed all of us as over-the-hill, negative and anti-party. And now we have Cheri DiNovo saying “we can’t ever give up our core values and principles.” I hope there are more like DiNovo and fewer like Sears in the party. If that proves to be the case I will return to the fold. I voted Liberal and I respect Kathleen Wynne but I am not a Liberal because I don’t share their core values and principles.

Peggy Stevens, Newmarket

Andrea Comes Down From Her Perch

But only a little bit. And only because her campaign is being criticized from within.

As I noted in a recent post, Ontario NDP leader Andrea's Horwath's hubris following what almost everyone else would call a failed Ontario election campaign has been both unseemly and wholly unjustified. She initially avowed that she had no regrets about causing the election, terming it a success despite the fact her party lost key Toronto ridings and, more importantly, the balance of power. However, now that she is being publicly taken to task by both Peter Julian and Cheri DiNovo, Horwath seems to be tempering her pridefulness:

After weeks of downplaying the defeat at the hands of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals on June 12, which saw the New Democrats lose the balance of power in a minority legislature, Horwath on Tuesday conceded “the result of this election campaign was bittersweet.”

“We lost some seats in Toronto, which is very concerning to us. All three of those MPPs were good and it’s troubling that all three lost their seats,” she told reporters at Queen’s Park.

Her admission of error came after DiNovo granted an interview to The Torontoist, in which she described the results for the party as "a debacle from the beginning, from day one”.

DiNovo blamed those results on a wholesale drift from traditional NDP progressive values: poverty, child care, housing, and education.

Pointedly, she observed that "at the end of the day it’s about who we are as a party and what we stand for that we need to look at as New Democrats.”

Showing more understanding of what true leadership entails than Horwath does, DiNovo says the NDP will not regain frustrated supporters by portraying the recent election as progress, which has been the official line—focusing on the fact that the party improved its share of the popular vote by one per cent, and that efforts to attract voters outside of Toronto yielded gains. “It’s important for our voters in Toronto to know that we did not see that campaign as a success” because “I think voters appreciate honesty.”

It appears that, belatedly, Andrea Horwath may be realizing the wisdom of her colleague's insights, but not with any real grace. In today's Star, Martin Regg Cohn says that when the caucus finally met on Tuesday, DiNovo, a United Church minister, was told to take another vow of silence.

Nonetheless, as a response to those criticisms,

... a more contrite Horwath confirmed this week that she is changing her staff — and changed her tone. Where last month she was “proud of the achievements,” this week she scaled back the bravado by acknowledging the “bittersweet” reality in Toronto.

The political reality for all caucus members is sinking in. The spring election they triggered has deprived them of the balance of power, leaving the party destabilized and demoralized.

With the Liberals enjoying a majority for the next four years, the NDP leader has lost her leverage in the legislature. Over the next four months, she must regain her legitimacy within the party.

It is clear that Ms. Horwath has her work cut out for her.

Has Harper Betrayed The West? A Mound Of Sound Guest Post

Recent summer flooding across southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba seems to be bringing the reality of climate change home to the people of the prairies and it’s drawing some unwelcome attention to prime minister Harper.

Look, it was bound to happen. You can’t have once-a-century weather disasters arriving every two or three years for very long before even the doubters stop listening to climate change deniers. That, from a glance at some prairie newspapers, seems to be happening at the moment. Postmedia science scribe, Margaret Munro, writes that these summer floods are the new reality for much of western Canada. Reginal Leader-Post columnist, Murray Mandryk, writes that Saskatchewan has to catch up to the fact of climate change.

“But don’t take my word for it. Ask someone like hydrologist John Pomeroy – Canadian Research Chair for Water Resources and Climate Change at the University of Saskatchewan – who has studied the issue for years, including intensive study of the drainage of Smith Creek, which flows near Langenburg along the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border.

“’We have to stop doing what we are doing,’ Pomeroy said in an interview from Alberta, where he is currently studying the impact of mountain run-off into the South Saskatchewan River.

“’Things are happening and they are happening much faster than anyone imagined.’”

Munro highlighted Dr. Pomeroy’s remarks about how the pro-oil/anti-science Harper government has gutted federal hydrology, climate and flood management programmes, leaving the provinces to fend for themselves.

“By July, Smith Creek is usually ‘bone dry.’ Last week it hit a new high as 24.5 cubic metres of water a second roared down the stream.

“[Pomeroy] says heavy winter snow had saturated the soil, which was made even wetter by unusually heavy spring rains. Then the frontal system came up from the US, stalled over southeast Saskatchewan in late June, ‘and pushed it over the top.’ The system dropped more than 150 millimetres of rain in a few days – almost as much rain as normally falls in southeast Saskatchewan all year.

“He says the change in the past decade has been remarkable.

“’Everything we know about hydrology of the prairie appears to be different,’ he says. ‘We never have saturated spongy soils with flow running off farmers’ fields in the midsummer. Never.’

“The situation calls out for a national Canadian strategy and program to improve flood prediction and water management, Pomeroy says, pointing to the US which has more comprehensive systems.

“He says recent cutbacks and, in some cases, the ‘gutting’ of federal hydrology, climate and flood management programs have left the country ill-prepared.

“When it comes to the flood forecasting problem, he says, ‘every province is left on its own, with some doing better than others.’”

Coastal British Columbians know how Harper has betrayed us and left our environment defenceless. Harper has moved the west coast oil spill emergency centre to Montreal. He has shut down many of our Coast Guard stations. He has axed entire departments of Fisheries and Oceans once responsible for monitoring our coastal waters and the health of our marine species. He has stripped navigation regulations and done everything asked of him to facilitate hazardous oil tanker traffic. To us, the fact that Harper has gutted federal hydrology and flood management programmes, leaving the prairie provinces defenceless. is old hat. This is simply another illustration of Harper’s rank ideology at work in betraying the West for the sake of Big Oil only this time it’s Harper’s natural constituents caught in the crosshairs.

Reality is catching up with Harper and even the usually reliable, centre-right media are beginning to speak out. Doubters and deniers are beginning to sound utterly unconvincing, shrill, desperate. Pomeroy might have coined a suitable epitaph for Harper’s conservatism when he said, “Things are happening and they are happening much faster than anyone imagined.”

The Harper Regime Receives Another Judicial Rebuke

Things continue to go from bad to worse on the judicial front for the Harper regime. Funny how those pesky laws get in the way of government ideology, isn't it?

Omar Khadr should be serving his time in a provincial facility and must be transferred from federal prison, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday.

In a blistering assessment of the Harper cabal's tactics, Dennis Edney, Khadr's longtime lawyer, said that the federal government "chose to misinterpret" the international transfer of offenders law.

"We are pleased to get Omar Khadr out of the hands of the Harper government. This is a long series of judgments against this intractable, hostile government.

"It would rather pander to politics than to apply the rule of law fairly to each and every Canadian citizen," Edney said in a statement.

Canada's 'Newspaper Of Record' Further Debases Itself

Currently, The Globe and Mail, the hubristically self-proclaimed newspaper of record and Canada's national newspaper, is embroiled in an ugly labour dispute with its workers.

In a statement issued last week, Unifor, the union representing the workers,

recommended members reject the company’s offer because it would weaken job security, reduce base pay for advertising sales staff and require certain newsroom staff to work on “advertorial” articles paid for by advertisers.

The later concept forms the crux of this post. As explained by Wikipedia, an advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term "advertorial" is a blend of the words "advertisement" and "editorial."

Advertorials differ from traditional advertisements in that they are designed to look like the articles that appear in the publication.

For an excellent examination of this sad devolution in journalism, take a look at Alison's post the other day, with links to a variety of examples that amply demonstrate their insidious nature.

But the Trojan Horse of propaganda can take many forms, not all of which are obvious. Take, for example, an article appearing in yesterday's Globe, purportedly written by Mike Harris, arguably the worst and most divisive premier that Ontario has ever seen. Bearing all the earmarks of a public relations offensive carefully crafted by one of the many arms of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the piece, entitled Work together on Gateway, for prosperity’s sake, is eerily reminiscent of the advertorial written recently by Martha Hall Findlay, who, with a straight face, conflated the Northern Gateway with national-building.

And, like Findlay's, the Harris advertorial is clearly written with the assumption that the public is infinitely malleable and has a collective memory that is virtually non-existent.

Consider the first paragraph:

Canada is a resource nation. In every region, its natural resource sectors, including mining, forestry, energy and oil and gas, support vital social programs and provide stable, well-paying jobs.

Despite the fact that it evokes a nineteenth-century version of Canada as drawers of wood and hewers of water, it equates resource development with things most Canadians consider vital: jobs and social programs (the latter despite the egregious contempt Harris showed for the concept during his tenure as Premier).

The next part is even more redolent of the kind of revisionism the right-wing is addicted to:

Consider, as just one example, the Northern Gateway pipeline, recently approved by the federal government. Since being proposed more than a decade ago, the project’s journey hasn’t always been easy. It has faced tough criticism. But thoughtful debate has taken place and ideas have been exchanged that have resulted in a better pipeline proposal.

As a former premier, I know first-hand the experience of fighting for economic development for your province and its people, but not to the detriment of local communities and the environment. Receiving social licence for resource projects must be the leading objective for proponents; public input and consultations are paramount.

Yet another bald-faced lie, which this link will amply attest to.

The rest of Harris's encomium for 'prudent and thoughtful' development goes on in a similar vein, and to parse it in detail would make this post far too long. But I hope you will check it out for yourselves; as both an indictment of contemporary journalistic standards at the Globe and as a skillfully wrought propaganda piece that demonstrates what money will buy these days, it is a peerless example.

UPDATED: From The Mound Of Sound: A Basis For Optimism

The Mound writes:

Hi Lorne. I spotted this article in the ‘comments’ section of The Guardian. It’s been a while since I heard anything this encouraging on the climate change front:

It’s something akin to an epidemic. In the Australian state of Queensland, solar power has become cheaper than coal-generated electricity. In fact, solar power would be less expensive than burning coal if coal was somehow provided free. Writing in The Guardian, Giles Parkinson explains Australia’s rooftop solar revolution.

“Last week, for the first time in memory, the wholesale price of electricity in Queensland fell into negative territory – in the middle of the day.

“For several days the price, normally around $40-$50 a megawatt hour, hovered in and around zero. Prices were deflated throughout the week, largely because of the influence of one of the newest, biggest power stations in the state – rooftop solar.

“’Negative pricing’ moves, as they are known are not uncommon. But they are supposed to happen at night, when most of the population is mostly asleep, demand is down, and operators of coal fired generators are reluctant to switch off. So they pay others to pick up their output.

“That’s not supposed to happen at lunchtime. Daytime prices are supposed to reflect higher demand, when people are awake, office buildings are in use, factories are in production. That’s when fossil fuel generators would normally be making most of their money.

“The influx of rooftop solar has turned this model on its head. There is 1,100MW of it on more than 350,000 buildings in Queensland alone (3,400MW on 1.2m buildings across the country). It is producing electricity just at the time that coal generators used to make hay (while the sun shines).

“The impact has been so profound, and wholesale prices pushed down so low, that few coal generators in Australia made a profit last year. Hardly any are making a profit this year. State-owned generators like Stanwell are specifically blaming rooftop solar.”

Parkinson explains that even if coal was free, the energy providers would still have to charge 19 cents per kWh to cover grid costs and overhead whereas rooftop solar is achieving costs of 12-18 cents per kWh and is expected to come down as low as 10 cents per kWh. The forecast is for solar to be installed in 75 per cent of houses and 90 per cent of corporate buildings by 2023.

King Coal still has bags of influence with the neo-conservative Abbott Government and the industry is doing what it can to staunch the spread of solar rooftop power. Fortunately the fossil fuelers and their political minions are waging a battle that’s already lost.

UPDATE: I thought I should update this with an item I found at the Sydney Morning Herald discussing how Australia's rooftop solar dynamic is leaving conventional electricity providers facing a death spiral.