DeBriefed

DeBriefed is a weekly newsletter from Carbon Brief, a UK based website that publishes the work of journalists and academics. The focus is on the effects of climate change and the science that ought to dictate energy policies. Each edition of DeBriefed provides information that ought to concern all of us, particularly since climate change deniers are soon to control the American and Canadian governments…

Democracy, taken for granted and less valued

While BC voters moved to the right in October, the voting pattern was not substantially different than in earlier times. The same cannot be said for the USA. More than half of American voters supported a misogynist, racist, criminal for President. The simplest explanations for the November result are a disdain for democracy and a willingness to embrace totalitarianism. Canada is experiencing its own shift to the far-right…

Recent readings

About poetry and essays from the November 2024 issue of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. The publication is useful for people at all levels of learning. Occasionally, it can make us smile.

Geothermal: unlimited, affordable, on-demand renewable energy

A decade ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a paper “How Geothermal Energy Works.” It reported that the heat within 10,000 meters of the Earth’s surface offers 50,000 times more energy than all the world’s oil and natural gas resources. The problem is making that energy available. There has been little commitment to geothermal energy but one Canadian company intends to change that…

Capturing fog

Not everything is doom and gloom at IN-SIGHTS. A story from The New Yorker’s Brave New World Department is about Pavels Hedström, a Swedish architect based in Denmark. In architecture school, Hedström was drawn to Japanese principles of design and how they applied to a world—and a profession—increasingly troubled by the climate crisis. Hedström believes that design often separates people from nature. His Fog-X is a design that aims to strengthen the human connection to nature by offering help to communities affected by the scarcity of safe drinking water…

Don’t axe the tax; fix the tax

In theory, governments use carbon taxes to shift the costs of climate degradation from the public to those responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. However, contaminators can avoid paying carbon tax. Many economists say carbon pricing is critical to scaling up climate action, so it should be effectively applied. There can be serious flaws in how carbon taxes are imposed, and how the revenue is disbursed…

Financialization of housing

New analysis from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis – and several common-sense measures to help expand permanently and deeply affordable housing stock…

Post election comments

The NDP holds one more seat in the Legislature than the BC Conservatives. David Eby will continue as Premier by depending on support from Rob Botterall and Jeremy Valeriote, two elected Green Party members. With all ballot boxes counted, material change is unlikely when the final count is released on October 26. John Rustad’s right-wing coalition will form the Official Opposition but it is an unstable group. Newly elected centre-right Conservatives are wary of far-right radicals and will fight them for control of the party.

Greenpeace message

By exploiting coal, oil and gas, fossil fuel companies are inflaming extreme weather, making climate disasters more frequent and more severe–from hotter heatwaves to more destructive wildfires and unsafe air quality. Greenpeace asks people to support their call for making fossil fuel companies pay into a Climate Recovery Fund because of the climate disasters they’re fuelling.

BC Conservatives tolerate bigotry

South Surrey Conservative candidate Brent Chapman was revealed to have called Palestinian children “inbred, walking, talking, breathing time bombs.” Additionally, he agreed with a podcast host from the fringe that what happened at residential schools was a “massive fraud.” Chapman joked about Indigenous kids dying after they’d been forced to leave their family homes. Rustad refused to eliminate Chapman or other Conservative candidates with records of bigotry. He said, “People sometimes make mistakes.”

An important week in British Columbia

Right-wing coalitions friendly to big business ruled this province for 52 of the last 72 years. Led by a man removed in 2022 from the Official Opposition caucus for denying established climate science, Conservatives have absorbed BC United, successor to the misnamed BC Liberal Party. After next Saturday, a new government will be formed by the centrist free-enterprise NDP, or the Conservatives, a party that welcomes far-right radicals, fascists, and bigots.