“If You’re A Liberal, You’ve Got To Be Very Nervous”

So says pollster Nik Nanos, after a poll showing young people's support for Justin Trudeau dropping dramatically after his recent chat with Greta Thunberg during her visit to Canada.

Polling data from Nanos Research shows that the proportion of voters aged 18 to 29 who cite Trudeau as their preferred prime minister fell from nearly 35 per cent to a little more than 24 per cent within 24 hours.

The Liberal leader met with Thunberg on Friday while the prominent activist was in Montreal for a climate-change march that was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

The 16-year-old Swede took Trudeau to task, telling him he wasn’t doing enough to fight climate change. Though that is her standard message for any world leader, Nanos said he still saw it as a risk for Trudeau to agree to the meeting.

The results seem to indicate a narrowing of the gap between Trudeau and Scheer (a climate-change denier in all but name), and a small uptick of support for the Green Party.

While those two parties appear to be battling to win the most seats on Oct. 21, another fight is underway further down in the polls.

The NDP are polling at 13.18 per cent and the Greens at 12.63 per cent, likely bringing the two parties into fierce competition.

“It’s like a double horse race … the horse race to win and the horse race to place third,” Nanos said.

The Greens have been hovering around 13 per cent for several days now – their highest level ever, and approximately double the support they were pulling during the early days of the campaign.

“The last week has been very good for the Green Party,” Nanos said.

While I am long past the stage of holding out much hope for our collective future, whatever sliver there is resides in the awakening consciousness of young people, who seem to see with a perspicacity denied to many who, blinded by ideology and past practices, keep voting the same way but hoping for different results.

And that, of course, is a mere variant of a famous definition:

"It Is Not Fair"

H/t Greg Perry

I suspect the following letter by a young person expresses the angst of an entire generation:

I had hoped my final years in high school would go smoothly. But instead of stressing over university applications, I worry if it is even worth it to go through all this trouble.

Why should I study more and look for future career options when the world will crumble soon? When I receive my diploma and prepare for interviews, my window’s view will be of dying trees and collapsed houses.

It is not fair that I am compelled to strike for my time on Earth. It is not fair that I cannot even dream of a future without images of a dying home. It is not fair that my parents had the chance to bring me to this Earth, only to say goodbye together in a few year's time. I do not want to strike continuously for some higher official to just acknowledge the problem. I want them to see it and fix it.

Give me a chance. A chance to live and dream, without vivid images of organisms dying. No more is school my priority. My priority is just to have a chance to live until I reach my final years in life. That is all I want and that is not fair.

Zainab Muneer, Ajax

Greta And Justin

H/t Graeme McKay

Given the massive turnout for yesterday's climate strike, one can perhaps be forgiven for questioning the motives of Justin Trudeau marching in the Montreal rally. While the pipeline purchaser continues to insist twinning the Trans Mountain conduit is vital to his plan for saving the planet, some are not so easily fooled.

Greta Thunberg is one of them:

The 16-year-old Swede met privately with the Canadian prime minister but later told a news conference with local indigenous leaders that he was “not doing enough” to curb greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

“My message to all the politicians around the world is the same. Just listen and act on the current best available science,” she said.

But Mr. Trudeau is nothing if not relentless in his rhetoric:

The prime minister said after meeting Thunberg and pledging to fund the planting of 2bn trees: “I agree with her entirely. We need to do more.”

Platitudes and posturing will not save the planet. Only earnest, sustained and concerted action hold out a modicum of hope.

Fat chance of that happening, eh?

Campaign 2019 - Where Is The Truth To Be Found?

It is perhaps to state the obvious that political campaigns are a kind of Rorschach Test. We respond to candidates' claims, promises and outright lies to a large extent through the filter of our values, our biases, our philosophy and our experiences. That is us just being human. Sadly, however, whatever intellectual capacities we may possess often are cast aside as we make impassioned choices based upon the above.

Critical thinking is the main casualty here.

A case in point is the carbon tax. All of the disinformation about the levy, from Doug Ford claiming it will lead to recession to Andrew Scheer averring it will make everyone poorer, often finds a ready, even Pavlovian, audience. The following brief news item from Global News attempts to set the record straight.



Our democracy demands that each person has the right to vote. There is nothing within our system that can make that vote an intelligent, informed one.

Connecting The Dots

While concern grows daily about the increasing toll climate change is exacting, people still have a hard time connecting it with their daily practices. Sadly, this cognitive dissonance is being facilitated by poor media coverage of the primary cause of our many natural disasters. The following Global News report addresses this pressing issue.



Additional communication resources can be found here and here.

Fool Me Once

It would be nice to believe that Team Trudeau's newly-announced commitment to climate change mitigation in the form of net-zero emissions by 2050 were a heart-felt response to the latest reports about the peril the world is in, or the result of being deeply moved by the impassioned declarations of Greta Thunberg, the brave lass who has become the conscience of the world.

Doubtlessly, Trudeau's fan clubs throughout the land will hail the leader's proclamation as yet another reason to vote Liberal in the upcoming election. Those given to less emotion and more critical thinking will remember the old adage, Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And there is much basis to be skeptical rather than rhapsodic on this issue.

First, voters will remember Justin's betrayal of his avowal that 2015 would be the last election under the fiat past the post system, an oath quickly abandoned after a brief period of inadequate consultation with the public.

Then, of course, there was his purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline to double the capacity to ship the world's dirtiest oil to the West Coast. It was also a massive corporate bailout of Kinder Morgan Canada, part of an ongoing pattern of neoliberal policies of this government.

Finally, there is the whiff of deathbed desperation in Trudeau's announcement, given the polling numbers that show the Liberals and the Conservatives very close, with some support bleeding off to the NDP and the Green Party, the latter of which has a long-history of policy purity when it comes to environmental issues.

However, probably one of the greatest reasons to be suspicious of the liberals new 'policy' is its lack of detail, as reported by Alex Ballingall:

...even as he declined to outline specific policies to slash emissions in an unprecedented way, Trudeau was adamant that a re-elected Liberal government would break with Canada’s track record of failure to meet climate targets by “exceeding” its commitment under the international Paris Agreement and achieving “net zero emissions” by the middle of the century.

“This will be a huge opportunity for Canadians,” he said, pointing to the possibilities for economic growth in the renewable energy and clean tech sectors.

“It will require us to slash our emissions, transform our economy and use the power of nature — like planting trees and protecting ecosystems — to bring us to net zero.

“It’s an ambitious target, but it’s doable.”

The new “net zero” target brings the Liberals in line with what the New Democrats and Greens have already pledged if they form government after the Oct. 21 election.

Sound public policy is not made on the back of an envelop. Credible policy is not an emergency response in the middle of a political campaign because someone has detected what way the proverbial winds are blowing. And good policy cannot emerge from an attempt to cynically manipulate the public into voting for your party.

Our country and our planet deserve much, much better.

Some Heavy Lifting

H/t Theo Moudakis