Category: Uncategorized

Housing – a wealth extraction tool

With commodification of housing in Canada, homes are treated as investment assets, not just shelter. Investor-led speculation has led to soaring prices, rental increases, and rising homelessness. Housing has been turned into a wealth-extraction tool, impacting low-income families and essential workers most severely…

Global Peace Index

The 19th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI) ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. It covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population. Produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), the GPI is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness…

A Reader asks…

Regarding Hydro boss Mr Clark’s odd and unsubstantiated assertions that geothermal is just “too expensive”? Says who? Where? In what scientific context? Enhanced geothermal systems: An underground tech surfaces as a serious […]

Lew Edwardson on BC Hydro

Always articulate and thoughtful reader Lew Edwardson left a comment on the IN-SIGHTS article THE HEAT BENEATH OUR FEET. I think it needs to be amplified. Drought in northeast BC continues to be a problem. If the situation of FY 2024 continues, Site C will produce about 3,350 GWh, not the promised 5,100. These numbers suggest the dam’s capital cost for each MWh of electricity produced would fall between $142 and $215. Of course, the utility incurs operating and overhead costs as well. Those would be around $30 per MWh. At the midpoint between those numbers, BC Hydro would be paying over 20 cents per KWh for Site C electricity, far more than the utility is willing to admit.

Geothermal, Eavor present energy

Months ago, I wrote Geothermal — clean, non-destructive renewable energy. It was about Calgary-based Eavor and the company’s use of unique drilling technology to realize geothermal energy. I have followed Eavor’s activities and noted recent developments, particularly in the Bavarian town of Geretsried…

July update

After being focused on personal issues for a while, I will resume publishing a few pieces each week. Thank you to the people who have continued to support IN-SIGHTS. Please check here regularly.

Bias

Almost everything that Musk communicates or amplifies on X—and he posts and reposts a staggering quantity of content to a vast audience—is an outright lie, half-truth, or flagrant propaganda. And, of course, the only reason he can do this is that he inhabits a right-wing ecosystem in America which has wholly abandoned even the pretense of caring about truth, reality, or objectivity. …Musk is the most prolific source of misinformation on his own platform. When confronted with this behavior, the observation that everyone is biased obscures more than it illuminates.

Patrimonialism

Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at Brooking’s Center for Effective Public Managment wrote in the Atlantic about the USA’s regime change. Rauch says that even those who expected the worst from Trump’s reelection expected more rationality. Instead, they got an administration that operates like a crime family, “divvying up the spoils, sometimes quarreling, but helping each other when needed.”