A breath-taking example, please forward to any Canadian who has doubts. /Sandra
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With thanks to Gordon Edwards:
like a bad dream . . .
NICE = Nuclear Innovation, Clean Energy
New posting on the NRCan web site:
(Department of Natural Resources, Canada)
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/20719
From Jim Carr, Minister of Natural Resources
Gordon Edwards
(Scroll down to the announcement from Tufts.)
ECONOMIC INDICATORS:
JUST ONE of the problems: The Accounting system defines what is included in “Operating Costs”. Then, (simplified): Revenue minus Expenses (costs) is Profit. Profits are available for distribution to Investors. The fewer costs you pay, the more that can be paid to investors (and Executives).
A business can create huge pollution costs with no consequence, because the business does not get charged for that cost. Therefore, it is not included in “Operating Costs”. It “externalizes” the costs – – passes it outside the business for someone else to pay. There is no “accountability” within the business (what Accounting is supposed to be about). There is DIS-incentive to change. Why would you? Large businesses transfer those costs to the public — You and I get to pay for them.
2007: First article I posted on economic indicators The Need for Helpful Economic Indicators. Includes a bit on GDP.
Year?: Robert F. Kennedy Jr, guest speaker at FSIN (Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations) Water Conference, Saskatoon, SK. He spelt it out – – the system allows big businesses to “externalize” pollution costs. Kennedy is an environmental lawyer known for his work to keep poisons out of our water supplies. I remember being excited and joyful – a large audience that included Government officials and Academics – – influential people – – were hearing what they needed to hear, through an excellent speech by a highly-respected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Maybe we could get the ball rolling, after all!
2008: I met with Grant Isaac when he was still Dean of the Business School, University of Saskatchewan. I wanted to understand whether, what is taught in Economics classes is still the same as it was when I was a student there (1967-71). Decades had passed. The answer was “yes”, with slight, minimal adjustments.
The Dean put it this way: “If there was a way to change it, it would have been done by now.” So, no problem teaching junk to students.
Grant went to Cameco (nuclear industry) in summer 2009. Would he have been selected for a million-dollar job, if he had been active in seeking changes to a flawed economic system that is taking the planet to the brink? (The revolving door between the University and Cameco, the conflicts-of-interest, are a sight to behold. There’s more on that in other postings.)
2016: I see Academia as a big part of the problem in bringing about necessary change. But good news! Some economists (professors) from Universities have been doing A LOT about the problem! Fellow-activist Dianne, and I attended the U.S. & Canada meeting in Vancouver of ISEE (International Society Environmental Economics), to learn more, and to contribute. It was great for learning WHO the big pushers have been, and are, for reform. Or, is it (r)evolution?!
2018: Hallelujah! GDAE Textbooks for Economics Courses
From: GDAE: Global Development And Environment Institute, Tufts University
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All the philosophers believed that this cycling was harmful.
As I understand, we are currently in a monumental effort to see if we can’t transition to the next stage in the life cycle of governance, and as much as possible, avoid some of the harm that accompanies the metamorphosis between stages. . . . Good heavens, NO, Sandra! the “next stage” in the literature (below) is oligarchy (looking at it from top down), or bondage (looking from bottom up). That is precisely what our monumental effort is trying to avoid!
Be careful with the ideas behind “life cycle of democracy”:
So there’s the challenge: if we can apply what those who have gone before us have learned, to lessen the pain, let’s do it! But CAN WE disrupt the cycle? The pain is going to be awful this time around, if we can’t.
A. There are the Greek masters, of course (below – – a nice synopsis from Wikipedia, with thanks).
B. Below, brief: the work of a Scottish historian, Alexander Tytler who died in 1813, is currently being used by different groups, to support different interpretations of political life cycle, some of which have merit, some of which I don’t subscribe to.
Step one. From bondage to spiritual faith. When people of a country are being repressed by their government, there is a spiritual wakening, or even a renaissance. The resistance of bondage and repressive government helps to unite the people.
C. I am an admirer of the work of Jane Jacobs (died 2006, Toronto). I often refer to her.
SO WE HAVE BELOW:
A. GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON “THE KYKLOS” (Life cycle of governance. Top down perspective)
B. HISTORIAN ALEXANDER TYTLER (DIED 1813) (Life cycle. Bottom up perspective)
C. JANE JACOBS, DARK AGE AHEAD (Symptoms we are experiencing of the transitional phase between democracy and oligarchy, as I interpret.)
Of necessity, this is not comprehensive. I am not a political scientist! Does not mean I cannot make some attempt to understand.
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A. GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON “THE KYKLOS” (Life cycle of governance. Top down perspective)
Kyklos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos
The Kyklos (Ancient Greek: κύκλος, IPA: [kýklos], “cycle”) is a term used by some classical Greek authors to describe what they saw as the political cycle of governments in a society. It was roughly based on the history of Greek city-states in the same period. The concept of “The Kyklos” is first elaborated in Plato’s Republic, chapters VIII and IX. Polybius calls it the anakyklosis or “anacyclosis“.[1]
According to Polybius, who has the most fully developed version of the cycle, it rotates through the three basic forms of government, democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy and the three degenerate forms of each of these governments ochlocracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. Originally society is in anarchy but the strongest figure emerges and sets up a monarchy. The monarch’s descendants, who because of their family’s power lack virtue, become despots and the monarchy degenerates into a tyranny. Because of the excesses of the ruler the tyranny is overthrown by the leading citizens of the state who set up an aristocracy. They too quickly forget about virtue and the state becomes an oligarchy. These oligarchs are overthrown by the people who set up a democracy. Democracy soon becomes corrupt and degenerates into mob rule, beginning the cycle anew.
Plato and Aristotle have somewhat different beliefs. Plato only sees five forms of government. Aristotle believes the cycle begins with monarchy and ends in anarchy, but that it does not start anew. He also refers to democracy as the degenerate form of rule by the many and calls the virtuous form politeia, which is often translated as constitutional democracy. Cicero describes anacyclosis in his philosophical work De re publica.
Machiavelli, writing during the Renaissance, appears to have adopted Polybius’ version of the cycle. Machiavelli’s adoption of anacyclosis can be seen in Book I, Chapter II of his Discourses on Livy.
All the philosophers believed that this cycling was harmful. The transitions would often be accompanied by violence and turmoil, and a good part of the cycle would be spent with the degenerate forms of government. Aristotle gave a number of options as to how the cycle could be halted or slowed:
Polybius, by contrast, focuses on the idea of mixed government. The idea that the ideal government is one that blends elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Aristotle mentions this notion but pays little attention to it. To Polybius it is the most important and he saw the Roman Republic as the embodiment of this mixed constitution and that this explained its stability.
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B. HISTORIAN ALEXANDER TYTLER (DIED 1813) (Life cycle. Bottom up perspective)
Step one. From bondage to spiritual faith. When people of a country are being repressed by their government, there is a spiritual wakening, or even a renaissance. The resistance of bondage and repressive government helps to unite the people.
There are various applications of the work of Scottish historian Alexander Tytler (1747 – 1813). He was, among other things, a Professor of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.
I don’t know any of this in any depth and have not read Tytler’s work directly. So am wary in making any statements.
IF the following accurately represents Tytler’s work, it suggests to me that Tytler may have been looking at the Kyklos more from the perspective of the active role of Citizens, whereas the Greek thinkers were looking at the question more from a top-down perspective – – what is the role of the Leaders or rulers in the governance structure that causes the kyklos (cycles) to happen?
Roughly,
(That train of thought is how I got to C. JANE JACOBS (below).)
Scottish historian Alexander Tytler’s theory sets out a cycle that the governance of human society goes through. The cycle starts out with a society in bondage.
From wake up world it’s time to rise and shine, the stages are:
Copying from wake up world it’s time to rise and shine BUT starting with Where we are Today:
Step five. From abundance to complacency . . . There is no harm at the door and food comes easy, so our society complacently accepts everything as if it is normal.
Step six. Selfishness
Step six seven. From complacency to apathy. Once a nation hits complacency, then the move to apathy is quick. It is painstakingly obvious that there are gangsters running the governments of the western world, and their rackets are in plain sight. As Tacitus famously said, “The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws.” From paedophile cover ups, expense scandals, dangerous technologies being rolled out, massive conflicts of interest, the creation of our money supply by private corporations — all sanctioned in law — and politicians betraying the people by backtracking on their manifesto pledges, to mention but a few. There should be enormous public outcry, but all we see is a relatively few brave souls doing their best to get people to understand, acknowledge and most importantly, act. Apathy has taken hold of our society today. And this unfortunately is heading us very rapidly into the last two steps in the life cycle…
Step seven eight. From apathy to dependence. We are becoming more and more dependent on money. As the Dalai Lama recently stated, humanity “sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
Step eight nine. From dependency back to bondage. Once we become truly dependent on only money and lose all our other basic skills (such as food cultivation), which today are given away to government and big business, we truly become dependent on them for everything — and we fall back into bondage. The best way to describe this is by a native American Indian proverb: “Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can’t eat money.”
… and on it goes, back to.
Step one. From bondage to spiritual faith. When people of a country are being repressed by their government, there is a spiritual wakening, or even a renaissance. The resistance of bondage and repressive government helps to unite the people.
Step two. From spiritual faith to great courage. Once you begin to understand the nature of our reality and realise there is actually nothing to fear, then you can begin to exercise your courage against a repressive government — courage which all of us have.
Step three. From courage to liberty. Once you have found your courage, you can stand tall to demand your freedom from your bondage. For example, this has happened in history here in the UK with Magna Carta and in the United States with the Declaration of Independence. This is where true democracy begins to manifest.
Step four. From liberty to abundance. Once people begin to enjoy their new found freedom, they realise this can be good for all and not just few, and abundance is created. In liberty, working together can make life easier for all and everyone can contribute to a better world for all.
and so it goes . . . .
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It reminds me of Jane Jacobs whose work I often cite.
(Use the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page. Enter Jacobs.)
Integrating her work with A and B:
Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics, in the life cycle context, is a description of mechanics. It tells one of the HOWs of the transition to oligarchy (what I call corporatocracy).
I have been uncomfortable with Jacobs’ assertion that the moral / ethical standards are set by the Leadership in a government (country, province, municipality, community) or institution or business:
Yes, and I can tell you good stories from my personal experience to support the assertion. BUT
No, because it is too much a cop-out – – it is what you expect from people who are disempowered. I operate from the premise that we can be empowered.
In life-cycle context, that is
Step one. From bondage to spiritual faith. When people of a country are being repressed by their government, there is a spiritual wakening, or even a renaissance. The resistance of bondage and repressive government helps to unite the people.
From there to Step two – – the empowerment offers courage (which all of us have).
From empowerment and courage to Step three, Liberty. Democracy again!
Jacobs (and others) have been warning us that we are getting too deep into the oligarchy / bondage stage in the cycle (her book, “Dark Age Ahead“, more below).
Her little book Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics. For those unfamiliar,
Go to THE PROBLEMS WE GET INTO WHEN WE DO NOT HAVE A SEPARATION OF POWERS BETWEEN THE STATE AND COMMERCE: JANE JACOBS
in the posting, 2010-02-11 Manipulators without conscience. This is your food. Bayer’s GM rice. Triffid (U of S) GM flax. Jane Jacobs on separation of commerce and governance.
(I tried to apply the idea that Information is to Inform our Actions. Which means taking the ideas in Jacobs’ book, Systems of Survival and applying them, in the preceding case, to actions around our food supply.)
2005-04-22 Jane Jacobs, “Dark Age Ahead”. A word of caution.
BP has been shut out of more off-shore drilling in the U.S., by American citizens along the Eastern Seaboard. (What a surprise, after the Gulf Oil Disaster!) So where does BP go next? . . Please help out these people in Nova Scotia by spreading the information. There’s an action item (petition), too:
a powerful oped featured in the Chronicle Herald, Halifax (copy appended) by Antonia Juhasz.
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With thanks to Andrea, the Council of Canadians:
It’s been a few weeks since Minister McKenna quietly approved BP to drill up to 7 exploratory wells off the coast of NS, wells up to twice the depth of Macondo well involved in the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Coast spill disaster.
Here is a blog I’ve written today about the tour, would be great if you could check it out, and share!
. . . (Town Halls) will feature Antonia Juhasz, investigative journalist, energy analyst and author of Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, Colin Sproul, a fifth generation lobster fisherman and spokesperson for the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fishermen’s Association and Michelle Paul, a Mi’kmaq activist and treaty rights holder.
Antonia recently wrote a powerful oped featured in the Chronicle Herald, Halifax, that I encourage you to check out, and share (I’ve copied the text of the oped below). There is also a great article on the subject featuring quotes from Antonia and Colin.
Our tour webpage is here. The tour itself is featuring knowledgeable voices on the risks of offshore drilling including the BP Gulf coast disaster as well as the importance of offshore waters to NS communities.
The Council of Canadians believes offshore drilling is not worth the risk, our campaign is highlighting the risks of spills to fisheries, tourism and economies, the lack of consultation and problems with the changes proposed under Bill C-69 and signalling that new fossil fuel projects like this are inconsistent with our Paris climate agreement commitments.
You can take action by signing our petition which states: We, the undersigned, call on Prime Minister Trudeau to stop BP from drilling up to seven exploratory wells and institute a moratorium on oil and gas exploration in offshore Nova Scotia. We further demand an end to proposed changes under Bill C-69 that would grant east coast petroleum boards more power in the environmental assessment process for Atlantic offshore drilling.
Cheers,
Andrea Harden-Donahue
Energy and Climate Campaigner, Council of Canadians
ANTONIA JUHASZ
fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in April 2010. (US COAST GUARD via AP) (Click on a powerful oped, for the photo)
As early as this year, BP plans to drill up to seven wells off the Nova Scotia coast in a hunt for oil and natural gas. As Nova Scotia residents and elected officials review both BP’s plans and the Canadian government’s ability to regulate them, it may be helpful to consider the view from your closest U.S. neighbours, who, barely one month ago, expressed virulent opposition to just such drilling in their own waters.
In January, the Trump administration proposed opening almost all U.S. federal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling. Currently, such drilling is limited almost exclusively to the Gulf of Mexico, with exceptions found off the Alaskan coast and a few sites that were “grandfathered-in” off southern California’s coast after the state banned all new offshore drilling following the massive 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. There is no drilling in the U.S. Atlantic.
The Trump drilling proposal was immediately met with angry public protests at state capitals from California to South Carolina, and within a matter of weeks, Republican and Democratic attorneys general of 12 coastal states — including almost every single one of Nova Scotia’s closest American neighbours: Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina — wrote a scathing letter to the administration demanding withdrawal of the proposal and asserting firm opposition to oil and gas drilling off of their coasts.
The lawyers asserted not only their states’ opposition to drilling, but also their intention to sue if the administration proceeds with its plan.
The reasons for such extreme opposition will likely raise many red flags for Nova Scotia’s residents. Calling the risks from offshore oil and gas drilling “severe” and “an unacceptable threat,” the attorneys general cite critical jobs in tourism and fisheries, the prosperity of their states, and the dangers posed to “the unique ecologies of our shores and state ocean waters.” They declare, “Our oceans are not only an irreplaceable natural resource, but also a vital engine of economic growth.”
They assert that “offshore oil and gas drilling carries a significant risk of widespread damage, without regard to state borders,” and point specifically to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which “caused economic and ecological devastation across multiple states” estimated at $17.2 billion in damage to natural resources alone.
“Even without a disaster on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, offshore oil and gas drilling would threaten our coastal areas. Even a small spill has the potential to devastate sensitive marine and coastal resources and the communities and businesses that depend on them. Risks are especially high in frontier areas such as the Atlantic, which have virtually no spill-response infrastructure or capacity,” the attorneys general warn.
Maine, Nova Scotia’s closest U.S. neighbour, cites, in particular, the risk to the state’s “world famous” lobster industry; stating, “A major oil spill in these waters would cause a unique and unprecedented disaster.”
Within this context, Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna’s rather bizarre statement that BP’s Nova Scotia drilling project “is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects,” is somewhat shocking. BP, for example, dares not make such a claim, writing only that “BP aims to manage and mitigate environmental impacts.”
William K. Reilly, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush and the co-chair of the president’s National Oil Spill Commission investigating the BP spill, warns that even good regulation and oversight cannot prevent another disaster from happening. “Drilling in very deep water is a highly challenging affair that involves highly complex technologies, and they sometimes fail,” he told me. “One should not suffer the delusion that it can be done risk-free.”
My extensive offshore oil drilling investigations support the concerns of the U.S. public and its leaders. At its onset, I immediately began and continued to investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 men and caused the largest offshore drilling oil spill in world history.
In 2014, I spent 13 days aboard the Atlantis scientific research vessel and dove to the bottom of the ocean in the Alvin submarine, getting closer to BP’s Macondo well than anyone had since the blowout. My Harper’s Magazine article revealed that an estimated 30 million gallons of oil from the BP spill remain in the Gulf — the equivalent of nearly three Exxon Valdez spills — and that about half of this amount has settled on the ocean floor. It is the most toxic parts of the oil which remain and will likely stay there forever, with ecological effects that could be devastating.
As I reported two years later, though many lessons have been learned from the disaster, few have been acted upon. Instead, it is “business as usual” in offshore drilling, David Pritchard, a petroleum engineer who consults for major oil companies, including BP, Mobil, Chevron and Halliburton, told me.
“(A) culture of minimal regulatory compliance continues to exist in the Gulf of Mexico and risk reduction continues to prove elusive,” wrote the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates industrial accidents.
BP’s plans for Nova Scotia include ultra-deepwater wells at depths of as great as over 3,000 metres below the ocean surface, or nearly twice the depth at which BP was drilling the Macondo well. BP will drill within a mere 48 kilometres of Sable Island National Park Reserve in an “Offshore Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area,” near to critical fisheries, whale habitats, and marine protected areas. This is more than 30 kilometres closer than the nearest shoreline to BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig; which means the damage could be much more severe. Yet, the drilling will also take place at nearly twice the distance from the closest major supply port; potentially making access to safety and spill mitigation equipment far more difficult and time-consuming to access.
BP’s current plans involve exploratory drilling, which includes virtually all of the risks which led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster: specifically, a loss of well control and the risk of escaping gas reaching the drilling rig. The BP Macondo blowout also occurred in the pre-production phase.
BP’s assertions of safety should be taken within the framework of U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier’s final rulings in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Judge Barbier did not mince words in his uniquely harsh ruling, finding BP “grossly negligent” and guilty of making decisions “primarily driven by a desire to save time and money” which were “dangerous” and “motivated by profit.”
As I detailed in Rolling Stone, these decisions include allowing the blowout preventer — the most critical device in offshore drilling and the last line of defence against a blowout — to run out of batteries, such that it failed to deploy when needed to stop the Macondo blowout. Even if it had deployed, however, blowout preventers only have about a 50 per cent success rate. The only proven way to permanently shut in a deepwater blowout is by drilling a second “relief well,” which took 152 days in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP had extensive plans for how to address a spill even twice the size of the Deepwater Horizonspill — it just didn’t, and in many instances couldn’t implement them. For example, though BP’s federally submitted oil spill response plan correctly predicted that oil from a blowout could reach the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, BP failed to have ready the necessary boom or skimmers to collect oil and stop it from hitting shore.
But perhaps the most important words come from the people who make, or in many cases, made their livelihoods from sea life that has yet to return as a result of the oil spill. “They’re basically ruined,” Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association told me. Encalade, like his family for generations before him, is an oysterman in the small, mostly African-American community of Point a la Hache, Louisiana. “We’re doing bad,” Encalade says. “We keep saying it can’t get any worse, and it keeps getting worse. There’s no oysters on the east bank of the river. None.” Now-former oystermen are supported by parents and grandparents; their hopes of sending their own children to college have been dashed.
“So, it’s a domino effect,” Encalade says. “In simple words: we still haven’t begun to recover.”
Antonia Juhasz is an award-winning policy analyst, author, and investigative journalist specializing in oil. She is the author of three books, including: Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill. She has written dozens of articles investigating the oil industry for outlets including, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and CNN.com. She lives in San Francisco, Calif. http://www.AntoniaJuhasz.net
Juhasz will be speaking in Nova Scotia March 20-22 in a series of public forums organized by the Council of Canadians. https://canadians.org/NS-offshore-tour
Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna says the Kinder Morgan pipeline can be part of the transition from fossil fuels to a low-carbon economy. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
Oil pipelines have been touted as nation-building projects in Canada, a term that evokes bold feats of nation-spanning infrastructure, such as the Canadian Pacific Railway or the St. Lawrence Seaway.
But pipeline proposals to connect Alberta’s oil sands with the British Columbia coast or Atlantic Canada have also done much to tear the nation apart. The now defunct Energy East and Northern Gateway pipeline proposals — and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion project — pitted province against province, Canadians against Canadians.
Pipelines are just the most vivid example of how divisive energy and environmental policy can be in this country.
There does seem to be broad consensus in this country that climate change is real, that it’s a problem, and that governments should do something about it.
And the federal government has made commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 per cent below its 2005 levels by 2030.
The government is, however, well behind on meeting those targets. In fact, the only time in the past 30 years when Canada’s carbon emissions have gone down much to speak of was after the financial crash of 2008. And that was only because the economy shrank.
The government insists it will meet its commitments, in large part through the introduction of a carbon tax. And yes, carbon taxes are also plenty divisive, too. No one ever called a tax a nation-building project.
The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which connects Alberta’s oil sands with the west coast of British Columbia, has been as example of how divisive energy and environmental policy can be in this country. (Trans Mountain)
At the same time, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is committed to seeing the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C. go ahead — over the fierce objections of British Columbia.
That pipeline would enable further expansion of the oil sands industry — at a time when the oil and gas sector is already the biggest source of carbon emissions in Canada, and the oil sands are the fastest-growing source of emissions.
Energy and environmental policy are not just divisive. They appear to be fundamentally at odds with each other, even as the Trudeau government argues that they’re mutually dependent.
Catherine McKenna is the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change. She spoke to The Sunday Edition‘s Michael Enright about the contradictions at the heart of Canada’s energy policy.
Below are excerpts from their conversation.
The Federal Government is committed very much so to reducing emissions, at the same time as promoting the Alberta oil sands. The province of Alberta wants to double the expansion of the oil sands. Do you see the contradiction?
We are in a transition. So transitions don’t happen overnight. We know we need to be ambitious, but you need to get people on board and in the case of Alberta, you have a province that has taken really credible serious action while still trying to ensure that people have jobs. They’re making investments in a cleaner future. They understand they need to diversify the economy and they need to make sure that they’re bringing people along and they’re doing a very good job. And that’s the same in most provinces — we’re all working to figure this out together.
And we’re not the only country that’s doing this. Every country is trying to figure this out. Take a country like Germany that relies significantly on coal. The big discussion there is they’ve decided to get off nuclear. They’re relying on coal. How do they do that? Every country has their own challenges in a transition. But we all know we need to be doing this and you need Canadians to understand that we care greatly about climate change.That’s why we’re doing hard things, putting a price on what you don’t want — pollution — so you get what you do want — innovation. Lower emissions. Phasing out coal. Making sure we have cleaner fuels. Making sure that how we build is as energy efficient as possible. Making sure that people have clean transportation. At the same time making sure you’re doing this in a way that’s not going to cause economic dislocation and that you still have jobs in this transition. You’re figuring out what are the opportunities for workers of the future.
Catherine McKenna says Canada’s climate change needs to include plans for making sure jobs will still exist for workers. (Norm Betts/Bloomberg)
Saskatchewan has already said they’re not going to be part of a carbon pricing program. If Doug Ford and his Tories win this spring’s Ontario election, he says he’s going to scrap Ontario’s plans for a carbon tax. If Jason Kennedy wins the Alberta election next year, he says he’s going to get rid of Alberta’s carbon tax. What are you prepared to do to bring the provinces into line?
So we spent a whole year negotiating a climate plan with provinces and territories and Indigenous peoples, and everyone understood that you have to have a credible plan. A lot of focus is on what is the federal government doing, but it’s actually what the provinces are doing.
Right now 80 per cent of Canadians live in a jurisdiction where there’s a price on pollution and it’s a clean economy incentive because it’s an incentive for the behaviour you want. You reduce emissions, you pay less. Businesses are good at figuring out solutions that will save them money. And so we’ve said that you need to have that measure in place.
And I mean, I think what’s very disappointing is that you had the Ontario (Progressive Conservative) leadership contenders that didn’t believe in taking action on climate change. All four of them. I mean, how is that possible? How was that responsible to us, to our kids and grand kids, just saying that, you know, it’s too expensive. It’s like a tax on future generations, not acting on climate change.
Why carbon taxes in the first place? Why not just regulate carbon emissions the way you would with every other pollutant — put limits on them and find the lawbreakers?
Because you need a variety of different tools. And it’s actually interesting because I speak a lot to conservatives who support putting a price on pollution because it doesn’t tell you how to do it. It just says, okay, we don’t want pollution and we want a clean incentive, so it fosters innovation. It’s the cheapest way of doing. For provinces, we’ve said do your own system; you figure out what you think is right. And in British Columbia they’ve been giving the revenues directly back to residents.
In Quebec and in Ontario, they’re in a cap and trade system with California. So it’s great to see markets linked and they’ve decided money should go back to the most vulnerable but also they’re going to invest in energy efficiency. They’re going to invest in electric vehicles.
Protesters of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project blocked access to workers at the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby earlier this month. (Cory Correia/CBC News)
Just to be clear, though, it’s your position that we can do both. That even with oil sands production projected to double in the next decade, we can invest in long-term infrastructure to support a carbon-intensive industry and at the same time hit our emissions targets?
So I mean in this context we’re talking about this twinning of one pipeline. We’re talking about the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and people are still using fossil fuels. And we’re working with Alberta, and I’m very concerned right now that we’re at risk of losing our climate plan. You have two progressive NDP governments in Alberta and B.C. who are absolutely committed to climate action. But in one province they’re trying to figure out the transition and we might lose this climate plan weirdly because progressives are fighting.That’s not a good place to be, because on the other side, I have other folks — you can go visit my trolls on Twitter — attacking us for doing anything on climate change. And that’s where the role of the federal government is: to try to be calmer and try to figure out what is the path forward. Working with provinces and territories, working with cities who have been real leaders on climate action, working with businesses, working with environmentalists to figure out the way forward, to try to ratchet down the politics and the overheated rhetoric, which is completely unhelpful on on both sides. And get us to where we need to go, which is ensure a more sustainable future and also have a strong economy and good jobs.
The keyword that you’ve used about three or four times in our conversation is transition. ‘We’re going through a period of transition. Yes some people will get hurt. Some things will happen, but it won’t last.’
Transitions make people uncomfortable. We’ve gone through many many transitions. You know, the Stone Age didn’t end because we didn’t have stones. We just figured out a better way of doing things.
We have a way of moving to a cleaner future. And it’s a huge economic opportunity. And quite frankly, a huge risk if we don’t act. That’s why it’s really hard and you can see how hard it is because politicians think there’s a huge advantage by saying they’re not going to do anything on climate change. They say they care about people’s bottom lines.
The problem is the bottom line is going to mean that we’re going to have to spend more on reacting to impacts of climate change. And countries are going to leapfrog us. I spend time in China. I spend time in the European Union and across the globe. Everyone’s competing to be cleaner, to have the cleaner solutions, and those solutions will include solutions for cleaner production of oil and gas in the shorter term, for sure.
People rallied in support of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in Vancouver, B.C., on March 10. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)
You have been around the world talking to people in China and India, trying to get them to fight climate change. And at the same time, we’re building pipelines to sell them bitumen, which it isn’t as dirty as coal but it’s worse than conventional oil. How do you reconcile that?
Whether or not it comes through our pipeline, people are still using fossil fuels. I know I’m repeating the transition piece, but we need to fund this transition.Canada standing alone and saying ‘okay, we’re going to take a stance, we’re not going to go ahead with this pipeline that was approved,’ that’s not going to change the world. What’s going to change the world is if we get Canadians on board so they understand that we need to put a price on pollution, that there’s a huge economic opportunity and that we’re going to take advantage of that. And that takes time.
And I worry that we’re going to lose the opportunity if we’re not focused and we just put all our attention on one project. We’ve got to change the world, and the world is changing. Who would have thought that we would be talking about the end of the internal combustion engine? That we won’t be using gas in cars? We are moving — it’s moving really really quickly. Everyone’s part of this, and I think we just have to make sure everyone feels part of this.
Catherine McKenna’s comments have been edited and condensed. Click ‘listen’ above to hear the full interview.
With thanks to Dan:
Time is one of the most difficult properties of the universe to understand. . . . I often contemplate how my life has unfolded and some of the events and people that came my way at seemingly exactly the right time. I know I’m not smart enough to have put it all together. No doubt we are all threads in a greater fabric. A very mysterious place we find our selves in. This is ten minutes, but an interesting clip about the physics of time. https://youtu.be/VYZQxMowBsw
The video was posted in 2014.
provides readers with an analysis of the legal justifications used to replace moral and ethical values with the crimes of corporate capitalism
I have not yet read.
With thanks to Janet E.
Harry Glasbeek is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has also taught at the universities of Melbourne and Monash in Australia, and the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of ten books including “Wealth by Stealth: Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy“.
Capitalism: A Crime Story
$19.95
A mugger to a stranger, “Give me your wallet or I will beat you to pulp!” It is a crime.
An employer says to a worker: “Adding lung-saving ventilation will reduce my profit. Give me back some of your wages and I will let you keep your lungs!” This is not a crime.
Our assumptions about the world condition us to see these situations as legally different from one another. But what if we, the critics of corporate capitalism, instead insisted on taking the spirit of law, rather than its letter, seriously? It would then be possible to describe many of the daily practices of capitalists and their corporations as criminal in nature, even if not always criminal by the letter and formality of law.
In Capitalism: A Crime Story, Harry Glasbeek makes the case that if the rules and doctrines of liberal law were applied as they should be according to law’s own pronouncements and methodology, corporate capitalism would be much harder to defend.
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Harry Glasbeek has been a fearless, daunting crusader for the public interest in the face of corporate greed, corruption, and criminality. This powerful, readable book proves the problem does not originate with a few bad apples: it’s programmed into the DNA of a system that privileges accumulation over human life.
– Jim Stanford, economist, McMaster University
Harry Glasbeek forensically strips away the layers of legal protection accorded to corporations in their pursuit of private profit to reveal the harm inflicted on individuals and institutions that challenge corporate legal privilege. With his revelation of how capitalism has become embedded in law Glasbeek provides a road map to reverse the imbalance within the legal system.
– Margaret Wilson, DCNZM, professor of law and public policy, University of Waikato
Capitalism: A Crime Story contests the stories about law told by a wide gamut of capitalist fanatics, from corporate law professionals to legal academics, apologists who incredulously avert their eyes from the deceptive and deviant conduct of corporate capital. Glasbeek illustrates how law’s tangled web shrouds the corporate form, masking the ways corporate capitalist coercion receives privileged treatment under law. Not satisfied to merely pierce the corporate veil, Glasbeek annihilates apologist narratives by rebuking the entrenched techniques of corporate profiteering and refuting the notion that capitalist business behaviour is distinct from the notion of a crime. Corporate capitalist wrongdoing is no mere aberration, it is the norm.
– Adrian A. Smith, Department of Law & Legal Studies, Carleton University
In this enthralling and eminently readable book, Harry Glasbeek explains how liberal law strives to reconcile capitalism with liberalism. Thanks to law’s burnishing, capitalism acquires a liberal-hued patina of legitimacy. However, beneath the surface, cherished liberal principles are contorted or simply sacrificed for the sake of capitalism’s ideological needs. In clear and powerful prose, Glasbeek offers us a piercing lens and a transformed language through which to see and to condemn capitalist power. This book is essential reading for those who wish to understand the world in order change it.
– Julian Sempill, senior lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne and author of Power and the Law
Harry Glasbeek has done it again: another eloquent and accessible book for non-lawyers and lawyers alike, exposing capitalism’s betrayal of basic liberal values and law’s role as an accessory. From the Westray disaster to the devastation at Lac Mégantic, he shows how the lawlessness of corporations stands in sharp contrast to our expectations that individuals be both free of coercion and responsible for the harms caused by their actions. At this critical juncture we face the imminent loss of a habitable planet, yet Glasbeek shows a way forward to confronting the inherent criminality of capitalism.
– Elizabeth Sheehy, professor of law, University of Ottawa
Glasbeek eloquently demonstrates that the theory and application of corporate law is antithetical to our norms and values of individual liberty and autonomy. By exposing the unequal power relationships prevailing under contemporary capitalism he challenges others to view the law as it is, and not as it has been sold to us.
– Peter Grabosky, RegNet: Centre for Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University
Harry Glasbeek outlines the bias that is built into our laws and regulatory regimes, which favour capitalism and render it legitimate. The lofty sounding ‘rule of law’ and the status granted to lawyers and legal reasoning drives a belief system in which the logic of a layperson loses all credibility. Capitalism: A Crime Story provides readers with an analysis of the legal justifications used to replace moral and ethical values with the crimes of corporate capitalism.
– Margaret Beare, professor of law and sociology, York University and author of Criminal Conspiracies: Organized Crime in Canada
Just checking the progress of the CRA (Revenue Canada) case against Cameco.
Related: 2013-05-01 Cameco’s $800-million tax battle, Globe & Mail
The uranium producer estimates it has avoided declaring $4.9-billion in Canadian income, saving it $1.4-billion in taxes, over the last 10 years.
Drew Hasselback
Cameco Corp. has defeated the Canadian government’s attempt to force about 25 of the company’s senior executives to submit to questioning on how the company uses offshore entities to reduce its tax bill.
The Minister of National Revenue sought a federal court order that would have compelled a long list of the company executives, including current chief executive Tim Gitzel and former CEO Gerry Grandey, to be interviewed by Canada Revenue Agency staff.
The Minister’s request relates to audits of Cameco’s 2010, 2011 and 2012 tax returns. In particular, the CRA says it wants more information on how Cameco uses foreign subsidiaries to reduce its tax bills. The process is called “transfer pricing,” and Canada has rules on when and how it can be done.
Cameco and the Canadian government have already locked-horns over transfer pricing. In a separate and ongoing trial that has yet to be decided by a judge, Cameco is fighting its tax bills for the 2003, 2005 and 2006 tax years. Cameco denies the tax bills and says its dealings with foreign subsidiaries comply with Canadian law. Final arguments in the tax trial are expected in September, with a decision to follow 12 to 18 months after that.
The interview request decision, which was released August 10, is separate from the ongoing tax court trial, but still related to the transfer pricing issue.
In support of the motion for the order to question the executives, the Minister argued in the Federal Court of Canada that the CRA’s auditing power under the Income Tax Act includes the right to conduct on-the-record, oral interviews with all the executives it wants.
Cameco argued that while the CRA’s powers are broad, they’re not unlimited. The company was willing to accommodate the government’s requests in several ways. It was prepared to make a few executives available for interviews, and it offered to respond to written questions. But Cameco said it was unreasonable for the CRA to compel about 25 executives to answer questions in the presence of a court reporter. The judge agreed.
“If the Minister’s position is accepted, the CRA can compel oral interviews from as many persons as they see fit without any procedural limits,” wrote Justice Glennys McVeigh. “The time and cost involved in allowing the Minister to interview more than 25 Cameco personnel scattered across the world is not proportional to the information being sought.”
Financial Post
dhasselback at nationalpost.com
twitter.com/vonhasselbach
With thanks to The Vaccine Reaction
Steering pro-vaccine messaging away from values like care/harm and fairness and
instead focusing on values of purity and liberty might “provide a potential mechanism for vaccine attitude formation and change.”
A new article in Scientific America titled “How to Understand, and Help, the Vaccine Doubters” frames empathetic understanding of vaccine doubters as a new way to convince said doubters of the folly of their ways. It seeks to explain why parents who question such issues as school vaccine mandates, injection of myriad vaccine chemicals into children, and vaccine pushing by Big Pharma are not swayed by “facts countering these claims.”1
The authors—two epidemiologists and a professor of business ethics—point out that attempts at changing vaccine hesitancy into compliance have previously focused on “educational interventions, appeals to altruism, and statistics,” when the real issue may lay with individual values. They set out to see if people who question the wisdom of vaccines place greater emphasis on different values from those who accept the mainstream doctrine, and they determined that the answer is yes.1
A two-part study was conducted using a “Moral Foundations” questionnaire, a social psychology tool that evaluates how humans subconsciously use their attitudes towards principles like authority, care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, and purity to help them make decisions about what is right or wrong. Because people prioritize different values, the questionnaire highlights which ones are most influential in a person’s decision-making processes. 1
The first study included more than 1,000 parents evaluated for both vaccine attitudes and moral foundations. Results of that study showed that values were similar among all the parents except in the measure of “purity.” Comparing most hesitant to least hesitant parents, they also found a disparity in attitude toward “liberty.” The conclusion was that “hesitant parents are more likely to strongly emphasize values of purity and liberty, and less likely to strongly emphasize values of authority, than non-hesitant parents.”1
Suspecting that people with such leanings might be more susceptible to such “anti-vaccine claims as ‘Vaccines contain poisons/toxins/contaminants’ and ‘Vaccine mandates are excessive government control’,” the second part of the study looked at how the strength of vaccine beliefs—one way or the other—might compare specifically to those core values of purity and liberty. That study confirmed what they had found already, that the higher the score on importance of purity and liberty, the higher the belief in vaccine claims that spoke to those values, “even if the claims themselves are factually inaccurate.” 1
The authors admit that, “accurately identifying a phenomenon doesn’t automatically translate to successful interventions.” Still, their conclusion is that steering pro-vaccine messaging away from values like care/harm and fairness and instead focusing on values of purity and liberty might “provide a potential mechanism for vaccine attitude formation and change.”1
References:
Jo
March 17, 2018 at 11:18 am
would it be more kind to test all the vaccines required for infants, say, on politicians?
And since they’re adults, they wouldn’t have to wait for a year or so, for standard schedule on all those goodies.
I’m SURE Nancy “this wall is too tall” Pelosi & asso. would like to prove the vaccines are safe and effective, not merely profitable.
THAT WOULD HELP A LOT, IN CONVINCING ‘doubters,’ ‘deniers’ & other scientists the folly of believing doctors, et al., NOT paid-off/detailed/captured by Big Pharma.