It Makes Perfect Sense

While many bemoan the fate of the Teck Resources Frontier tarsands project as yet another example of restrictive regulatory measures, others, as the following letter from the print edition of the Toronto Star suggests, say its death makes perfect corporate sense.

Free market now realizes carbon reserves best left alone

Re Regulatory process blamed for oilsands mine’s end, Feb. 28

Canadians who haven’t followed B.C. Premier John Horgan, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau down the rabbit hole understand that the collapse of the Teck Frontier proposal is a positive indication that the “free market” is functioning as it should.

Corporations, investors and shareholders are belatedly coming to realize that it is in everyone’s best interest that most of the world’s carbon reserves — include Alberta’s oilsands — be left in the ground.

Only in Wonderland would politicians employ massive taxpayer subsidies to subvert the marketplace and promote uneconomical, climate-destroying fossil-fuel projects; $16 billion to buy and build the Trans Mountain pipelines, plus $6 billion to construct Coastal GasLink.

The truth is, pipelines don’t end at a terminal. Every pipeline is a conduit to the sky, ultimately dumping its carbon into a dangerously overheated atmosphere.

Only by changing the ways that we produce and consume energy can we hope to avert climate catastrophe.

Mike Ward, Duncan, B.C.

The Silver Lining

While the world's unease continues to grow over the spread of coronavirus Covid-19, there is a kind of silver lining for that same world. In China, where the bug originated, air pollution is vanishing in its industrial heartland.
Satellites operated by NASA and the European Space Agency have detected significant drops of major airborne pollutants above vast swathes of the country.

Before-and-after images show how nitrogen dioxide levels plummeted in February compared to pre-lockdown January of this year. Nitrogen dioxide is a noxious gas emitted by factories, motor vehicles and fossil fuel-powered electricity generation stations.



The country's strong corona containment measures are largely responsible for this dramatic drop:

Researchers say China’s pollutant levels normally decline in February as factories pause for Lunar New Year celebrations, when the world’s largest annual mass migration occurs. But the usual rebound in pollutant levels did not occur last month, helping to illustrate the vast scale of shutdowns in the world’s second biggest economy.

“This year, the reduction rate is more significant than in past years and it has lasted longer,” Liu said. “I am not surprised because many cities nationwide have taken measures to minimize spread of the virus.”

Although such measures are taking an economic toll, not only in China but throughout the world (cancelled flights, reluctance to 'shop til you drop', stock market corrections, etc.), the natural world is in fact benefiting.

Homeostasis is a self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival.

I can't help but wonder if Covid-19 is part of nature's efforts toward that end.

Maybe We Need It After All, Eh?

In traditional conservative thought, the role of government is pretty narrowly defined; with the emphasis placed on individual liberty, government must minimize its intrusion into that liberty, providing only the necessities that promote security such as armies, police forces, and prisons. Taxes are bad, except as they support that security. The rest of life's activities should be largely self-regulating, the wisdom of the market prevailing in the bulk of those activities.

In her column today, Susan Delacourt says the times we live in challenge that notion.

If there is any upside to the ongoing blockades, strangled rail lines, the threat of a virus pandemic, even the struggle between environment and economy in Canada these days, it is this — very few people are arguing for the government to get out of the way.

Smaller government hasn’t looked like the answer to any of the problems besetting Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in early 2020. Less politics, maybe, but not less government.

Even that ardent Conservative, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, was musing this week about getting the government involved in financing the oil industry.

We have been hit hard lately, with crises ranging from the Iranian downing of a passenger jet killing many Canadians to the corona virus spread to rail blockades. None of those situations evoke cries for the government to mind its own business. Indeed, we look to government to address these issues and protect us from the vagaries of the world.

...the federal government has been very active this year in countries outside its jurisdiction — flying Canadians out of virus-affected spots in China and elsewhere, assisting families of the air-crash victims on the ground in Iran.

As well,

[i]t turns out ... that we do need the federal government to keep the rails running, or so Trudeau’s critics have been saying.

This past week, we learned that the federal government had been working quietly behind the scenes to get CN trains running on rival CP tracks, in a bid to avert total paralysis of train transportation. It would have been interesting to see the reaction if Transport Minister Marc Garneau had simply shrugged in the face of the blockades and said this was a matter for the private sector to settle.

The fact is, we do look to government not only for protection, but also reassurance:

...as the virus in China has been morphing into the threat of a global pandemic, pressure is building on the federal government to protect citizens. The markets may be freaking out, but the state is expected to be calm and non-panicky — and watching out for us. Rugged individualism is all well and good when we’re faced with paying our taxes, but perhaps not entirely our approach when it comes to safeguarding our health and lives. Questions are beginning to be asked as well about how the government will act to shore up any economic havoc wreaked by the virus scare

Delacourt's conclusion?

Government is based on the premises that citizens need the state. Sometimes it takes a crisis or two to remind us of that simple idea.

A Tonic For The Spirit

The older and more resigned about the world I get, the more I need this kind of story.

I posted recently about Quaden Bayles, the young Australian lad who has dwarfism. At nine years old, he wanted to die due to the relentless bullying he has experienced in his young life. After his mother posted a deeply disturbing video about the bullying, the better angels of the world descended in full force, starting a gofundme page to send Quaden and his mother to Disneyland.

But the story doesn't end there.

The family of Quaden Bayles, an Australian boy with dwarfism seen crying and expressing a desire to kill himself in a social media video last week, has declined a trip to Disneyland following a GoFundMe campaign, saying it will donate the funds to charity instead.

"What kid wouldn't want to go to Disneyland, especially if you have lived Quaden's life. To escape to anywhere that is fun that doesn't remind him of his day to day challenges," Bayles' aunt Mundanara Bayles told Australia's NITV News on Thursday.

"But my sister said 'you know what, let's get back to the real issue'. This little fella has been bullied. How many suicides, black or white, in our society have happened due to bullying?" she added. "We want the money to go to community organizations that really need it. They know what the money should be spent on, so as much as we want to go to Disneyland, I think our community would far off benefit from that."

While I really think they should use a bit of the money to take the boy to Disneyland, his mother's heart is in the right, life-affirming place.

The family noted Dwarfism Awareness Australia and Balunu Healing Foundation as two organizations they would like to see benefit from the fund.

"We need to come together and work out how to make sure young people like Quaden don't have to deal with what they have been dealing with," Bayles said. "We've had seven kids at the Murri School in Brisbane, where I am on the board, take their lives in the last ten years."

In these dark days, I appreciate whatever rays of light I can catch.

A Vile Image

It is good that this pathetic, disturbing attempt by Alberta energy company X-Site to incite hatred and sexual violence against Greta Thunerg is being widely denounced within Alberta. Surely, there is no place in our country or anywhere else for this kind of violent, misogynistic backlash against someone corporate Canada feels threatened by.



Rocky Mountain House, Alta., Councillor Michelle Narang summed up the revulsion all right-thinking people should feel this way:

“This company represents everything that the oil and gas industry needs to fight against,” Narang said to Global News while reading what she had posted online.

“I am absolutely sickened that X-Site Energy Services would think that the hard-working men and women in the energy industry would condone this representation of a child clearly being raped.”

“We do not rape women and girls to teach them a lesson. This is not our oilpatch,” Narang said to Global News. “We can’t have this representation of the oil patch and the oil companies and of our industry be accepted as normal. People need to start speaking out about it.

“It’s not OK.”

I guess X-Site just didn't get the memo, eh?

This Is Unbelievable

I've seen a lot in my life, but I am still trying to process this story:

At a carnival procession in Spain, participants dressed like Nazis and Jewish concentration camp prisoners while dancing next to a float evoking crematoria.

A video of the procession shows the participants marching in their fake Nazi uniforms. Behind them, dancers wearing striped outfits evoking concentration camp uniforms followed while waving flags of Israel. They were followed by the float shaped like a train locomotive with two large chimneys.

On Sunday, a carnival procession in Aalst, Belgium, featured costumes of ultra-Orthodox Jews depicted as ants. Dozens of other participants wore fake hooked noses based on Jewish stereotypes.

And here's the kicker:

The group that created the float said it was meant to protest the rising cost of living.

This Is Heartbreaking

... and believe me, I am not one easily moved. It is must-viewing for anyone who has ever bullied or been bullied, but it is very, very hard to watch:

Bullied boy's heartbreaking video sparks support - and suspicion

Hearts have been breaking across the internet over a viral Facebook Live video of Quaden Bayles, a nine-year-old Australian boy with dwarfism who tells his mother he'd rather die than endure the bullying he faces at school. "I want someone to kill me," Quaden says in the video, as he sits and cries out of an open car door.