
H/t Greg Perry
Reflections, Observations, and Analyses Pertaining to the Canadian Political Scene
This year, for example, Missouri Republicans allowed people to carry guns without obtaining a permit. Georgia Republicans allowed permit-holders to carry on college campuses. Ohio Republicans allowed gun licence holders to carry their guns at daycares that don’t put up No Guns signs and to store their guns in their cars on school property.While a few states have slightly tighted rules, most are embracing, even extolling, looser restriction:
Before the Las Vegas shooting, House Republicans had been pushing a bill to make it easier to buy gun silencers [the euphemistically-titled Hearing Protection Act] . They have now delayed that effort a second time. The first delay came after a shooter attacked party congressmen on a baseball field in nearby Virginia — which, tellingly, prompted some to talk about loosening gun laws, for self-defence.
Charles Heller, a spokesperson for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group, said Arizona has passed “58 positive bills, signed by three governors, over 13 years.” He is pushing for more — such as a law allowing people with gun licences to bypass metal detectors at government buildings, as at the Texas state capitol, and a law making it legal to brandish a gun against assailants who have not yet caused physical harm.Americans, it seems, have become inured to statistical evidence of the carnage caused by guns:
More than 33,000 Americans were killed by guns in 2014 — more than 90 per day. In 2015, the Washington Post found, 23 children were shot every day. Almost two-thirds of the gun deaths were suicides, which tend to receive the least attention.One always reads that the main obstacle to passing laws controlling and restricting these weapons of mass destruction is the NRA. Of that I am not so certain. Sure, that dark organization has an almost unlimited war chest when it comes to influencing and buying legislators, but I doubt its agenda could reign supreme without one other element: a citizenry so deeply flawed, so deeply divided and so deeply fearful of their neigbours that only brute force and personal arsenals can offer a balm to their deeply, deeply debased psyches.
Jeff Sessions' Religious Freedom order to undercut #LGBT rights allowed me to remind The Real Housewives of ISIS how much we have in common! pic.twitter.com/GRxZox1hxT
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) October 6, 2017
The electric vehicle revolution has been supercharged by plummeting lithium-ion prices, which are half of what they were in 2014. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts EVs will be as cheap as gasoline cars by 2025 and keep dropping in price until EVs overtake them in yearly sales, by which time EVs will be displacing 8 million barrels of oil a day — more than Saudi Arabia exports today.
... when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington.Ross Belot, writing about Trudeau's recent UN address, echoed similar sentiments:
Not rhetorically: Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialize in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister, Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5C (2.7F).
But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing.
”There is no country on the planet that can walk away from the challenge and reality of climate change. And for our part, Canada will continue to fight for the global plan that has a realistic chance of countering it,” Trudeau told the UN. “We have a responsibility to future generations and we will uphold it.”The most damning indictment of federal inaction comes from Canada's Environment Commissioner, Julie Gelfand, who leaves no doubt that the Trudeau government is whistling past the graveyard when it comes to mitigation efforts and preparations for an increasingly inhospitable climate:
Good words — until you notice what they’re not saying. Nowhere in his speech does Trudeau say Canada will hit its commitments under the Paris climate change accord. He says that Canada will “fight for the global plan.” He can’t say he’ll fight for the Canadian plan since … there isn’t one. Not one that suggests Canada can actually meet its targets, at any rate.
In a blunt fall audit report tabled in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Julie Gelfand said the government has failed to implement successive emissions-reduction plans, and is not prepared to adapt to the life-threatening, economically devastating impacts of a changing climate.This is a damning audit, one that puts to the lie all of the social media and other propaganda efforts our government has engaged in to give us a sense of false security as disaster comes barreling toward us. It is a catastrophe that our increasingly vulnerable infrastructure will not be able to withstand:
The government released the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change in December 2016, which was endorsed by all provinces and territories except Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
But instead of presenting a detailed action plan to reach the 2020 target for reducing emissions, Gelfand said the government changed its focus to a new 2030 target.
The government has also failed to adopt regulations to reduce greenhouse gases that could help limit the risks of pollution, natural disasters, forest fires and floods, the audit finds.
In her report, Gelfand said measures to adapt to climate change can save lives, minimize damage and strengthen the economy, yet a 2011 adaptation policy framework was never implemented.The following interview with Julie Gelfand is most instructive:
The federal government has not provided its departments and agencies with the critical tools and guidance to identify and respond to risks.
Only five of 19 departments and agencies examined by Gelfand's audit team had fully assessed risks and taken steps to address climate change. The other 14, including Environment and Climate Change Canada, Public Safety and National Defence, had taken "little or no action" to address the risks.
.. I'm left wondering what happens when politicians allow keychain species such as wild salmon or boreal caribou to be extirpated..
.. yes.. yes .. jobs jobs jobs.. the economy stupid.. we must grow the economy.. but what happens (forever) to the land, the water, the air ?