The Biden administration has announced that most US forces will withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th. What have we learned since 2001 and what have the consequences of the war been? Could Al Qaeda have been expelled or destroyed without the invasion? How will the US / NATO / Canadian intervention affect Afghanistan’s long-term future? […]
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My winter thread is now behind the times, so this will be a new place to track COVID stories of interest and importance. One I saw today is not encouraging: More young Canadians getting severe COVID-19, being hospitalized: experts According to new modelling from the Public Health Agency of Canada, Canada is on track to […]
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During the U of T campaign, a validating source like this memo from the University of British Columbia’s Vice-President Finance and Operations would have been amazing for responding to the argument that divestment is financially irresponsible: Results of Mantle’s analysis (full report attached as Appendix A) indicate that the link between climate change and the […]
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Perhaps the hardest thing about doing a PhD in Toronto is finding decent housing and paying for it with the kind of income the university’s funding package and TA work provides. Since the 2008 financial crisis, governments around the world have undertaken exceptional monetary and fiscal stimulus to try to sustain employment and economic growth. […]
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Let’s begin with two simple premises: The amount of climate change the world experiences depends on the total quantity of fossil fuels that get burned. As such, there is little value in avoiding burning particular coal, oil, and gas reserves in one time period if we then burn them in another In Canada, the US, […]
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At a town hall tonight on a just transition away from fossil fuels — organized by 350.org and attended by Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May and NDP climate change critic Laurel Collins, but which environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson declined to attend — May repeatedly brought up the Task Force on Just Transition for Canadian […]
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This week’s Economist has a pretty solid middle-of-the-road editorial position on nuclear energy in a world with a climate crisis: Solar and wind power are now much cheaper, but they are intermittent. Providing a reliable grid is a lot easier if some of its generating capacity can be assumed to be available all the time. […]
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There’s already a thread on dams and climate change, but B.C.’s Site C project raises many different subjects of interest: how different climate-safe energy options compare, what purposes new generation will be serving, and who gets to make the decisions, with particular regard to Indigenous rights. Related: Keystone XL uncertainty and the environmental movement’s proficiency […]
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Writing for Maclean’s, Scott Gilmore suggests that Canada should “ban the buying of made-in-Canada warships” because politicians have a bad record of fiddling with the process for their own purposes, and shipyards have a poor record of delivering. He presents it as a job protection scheme rather than national security, and a shockingly expensive one: […]
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Divest Canada — a self-initiated, volunteer-run effort to support fossil fuel divestment campaigns at Canadian universities — recently hosted a webinar on lessons learned from recent successful campaigns: It is encouraging on several fronts. It’s great to see all these groups patiently implementing strategy on their own initiative and yet in parallel. It brings hope […]
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