Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

The annex / U of T neighbourhood after seven years

When I lived at Massey College between September 2012 and spring 2015, I was grateful and often struck by the oddness of mostly surviving on U of T’s ungenerous funding while living a block from St George subway station, surrounded by million dollar condos.

I’m still grateful to be living near campus, letting me perform all life necessities on foot. At the same time, the memories that have been overlaid on this neighbourhood in the last few years have largely been those of stress, anxiety, and conflict. Friends who used to live nearby are now virtually all gone, and memories of people like my villainous ex-flatmate and the man who attacked me this summer across the street from my house have me always anxiously checking who is around.

I’m in one of the ‘beyond exhausted’ spans of the PhD, nicely matched with the cold and sore throat that have endured for about three weeks now. I very much hope there won’t be any new major upsets and it will simply be possible to do my data analysis, write my chapters, defend the dissertation, and find some new major project to move on to.

Ottawa bound

I’m pretty much focused now on spinning up preparations to go to Power Shift next week. That means preparing for my Wednesday morning tutorials on Quebec and Language Politics, and my Wednesday contentious politics seminar on framing and identity. I also have office hours with students who want to discuss essay drafts on Monday.

This time I will be taking the train, unlike all my previous Ottawa–Toronto journeys. I can’t remember how many years it has been since I took an intercity train (maybe to a climate conference in Montreal, from Ottawa, sometime around 2009?), but friends tell me it’s a whole lot nicer than the Greyhound, and in this case it was basically the same cost.

I went to a drop-in clinic about my enduring cold today and was told it’s not strep and that I should discontinue any medication other than ibuprofen and acetaminophen and try to get as much rest as possible. I’ll be staying in a large shared dorm with no privacy, so it would be quite a pain to be acutely ill while in Ottawa.

This will also be a good trial of my replacement for my nearly shredded Barbour Beaufort jacket. I’ve been testing it in various conditions in Toronto, including what passes for extreme cold here, but anticipating a fair bit of time outside and night-time walks in Ottawa I’m planning to bring a second pair of merino wool long underwear for layering.

Presenting at Power Shift

I am preparing to present a preliminary version of my research results at the Power Shift conference in Ottawa, which takes place from February 14th to 18th.

It’s an unusual venue for presenting academic research. The website says that it will “convene hundreds of young people from across this land to build a powerful and intersectional youth climate justice movement”. This speaks to both unusual features, including an audience comprised of young activists who in the case of my workshop will likely be divestment veterans, and a commitment to be intersectional and emphasize “climate justice”.

In my interviews I have made a particular effort to elicit the views of subjects on questions about which alliances the climate change activist movement should make and why. It’s not a natural match with my research — or with an analytical approach generally — to endorse or criticize particular approaches to allyship. Rather, I am trying to explain descriptively what people believe and what seems to have led to the development and reinforcement of those beliefs. To some extent, I am also trying to comment on what effects those views may have in the future.

Trying to come at the problem in a relatively disinterested way may be unfamiliar to many of the participants. It’s certainly at odds with a lot of the program, which seems to understandably emphasize energizing and exciting people over asking them to think over the strategies they have been using. Nonetheless, I think we’ll have an interesting and respectful discussion. It’s pretty easy to explain at the outset the logic for not assuming our current approach is correct, and being willing to consider deficiencies or limitations it may have. Maintaining morale and a sense that people have done good work is important, but surely actually doing good work must take precedence when the fate of the planet is at stake. It can be very comforting and motivating to see the movement you’re in as already in possession of all the answers and just needing to spread the word to everyone to succeed. Thinking critically about the real barriers to implementing a decarbonization project globally may require more unfamiliar thoughts and company, but there’s a strong case that it’s necessary.

mucinex

I’m still sick to the point of having no difficulty in sleeping 20 hours a day. On medical advice I discontinued all the sough suppressants I was taking and began taking extended release guafenesin bi-layer tablets to encourage the removal of fluid from my lungs as opposed to its accumulation.

I’m re-listening to an audiobook of The Martian during my brief forays into the ice world for necessary supplies. Went out to try to make prints for a batch of thank you cards, and found that my USB key had been rendered inoperable. Despite several efforts on different systems to format it, it could just never quite recover from being used as a MacOS installer disk. I was able to collect French bread and some decently reddish mini-tomatoes, as the vine-attached variants on offer in January are all rather pink and firm.

My brother Sasha is playing a concert tonight, which I am sure will be fantastic. I’ve been croaking my way through dissertation interviews and tutorials. The new regime is just advil and the guafenesin, with lemon and honey-laden tea PRN.

Cold warning in effect

I’ve been knocked out by a cold for the last couple of days which is unfortunate as I have tutorials on an unfamiliar topic (“political culture”) to prepare for, along with readings for my contentious politics course, and a great many thesis tasks and a fellowship application.

I’m operating on the logic that resting as much as possible to deal with it is the most productive approach, rather than trying to work while sick and prolonging it.

Gearing up for school to resume

I didn’t go anywhere over the break, aside from a one night Christmas bus trip to Hamilton, because I wanted to use the time to advance my dissertation project. Important progress has been made on that front, with my committee now in agreement about what the chapters should be, which questions each should seek to answer, what my hypotheses are, and what evidence supports them. I wish I had gotten more done in terms of booking more interviews and transcribing handwritten notes from the ones that already happened, but at least with only one TA position this term I will have more time to devote to those tasks.

I have a stack of exams to grade before the term begins, which will have to be a big focus during the next few days, as distasteful and tedious an activity as it always is.

I’m excited that I’ve been given permission to audit Professor Diana Fu’s “Contentious Politics and Social Movements” course. That’s the main scholarly literature I am drawing upon in my analysis of the campus fossil fuel divestment movement in Canada so it will be great to learn more about it from an expert, go through some important readings on the subject, and discuss it all with some fellow students.

Working through and thinking beyond the PhD

Lots on the go — I’ve had a sudden flurry of late year photo bookings, including a three day Canada-UK artificial intelligence conference at the Munk School.

I’m still working on the dissertation of course, continuing with interviews and the literature review while working with my committee to structure the final document.

I’ll be doing less TA work next term to free up time to finish the dissertation.

There’s certainly a lot that’s interesting happening in climate politics. The little-reported but somewhat tactically novel Extinction Rebellion in the UK; UN climate talks in Poland’s coal region; and Alberta getting bitumen sands producers to voluntarily cut back on production to try to raise prices. We’re still nowhere near a politics that integrates the risks arising from unmitigated climate change, or capable of driving emissions reductions fast enough to make something like a 1.5 ˚C or 2 ˚C ceiling remotely possible.

I’m starting to think ahead to work beyond the PhD. During my MPhil I came to understand that climate change is the defining political and civilizational fact of our era. I went to work for the government in hope that I could do some good, but realized that under the leadership of parties like Canada’s Conservatives and Liberals it’s not possible to do the right thing as a civil servant since, for all their platitudes, their policy choices show that they aren’t serious about preventing the worst effects of climate change. I chose to do the PhD because I thought the degree would be useful and that it would provide a freer platform for climate change activism, as it did with the founding of Toronto350.org and the organization of the fossil fuel divestment campaign at U of T.

I really don’t know what’s the best place to go next. It’s hard to judge who is really being effective in changing political conditions to make rapid and effective climate change action possible. It’s possible 350.org’s focus on 100% renewables and alliances with other progressive movements will be fruitful, but it also seems possible that they are making choices that will limit the political constituency they can appeal to. Many activist organizations seem at risk of over-reaching, choosing approaches which appeal to their staffers who are already personally committed to decarbonization, sometimes choosing tactics based on what’s emotionally satisfying rather than what’s part of a strategic plan leading to success. That said, I am ever mindful of the limits of my understanding and ability to foresee what will work. There’s no sense in dismissing emotions as a factor in political change, since our real problem is lack of sufficient motivation and motivation is ultimately emotionally driven.