While many Canadians are looking to the October 21st federal election for solutions to global climate disruption, the climate plans from the four major parties offer none.
Any genuine solution will require reining in an economic system that demands eternal growth in a finite ecosystem, mitigating or adapting to multiplying environmental and social disasters, and drastically reducing consumption. Deadline: yesterday!
Free public transport is not a pipe dream. It exists in over 100 cities across the world - and has transformative impacts.
If we are to believe transport experts and practitioners, abolishing fares for all passengers is the last thing public transport operators should be doing. For Alan Flausch, an ex-CEO of the Brussels public transport authority and current Secretary General of International Association of Public Transport, “in terms of mobility, free public transport is absurd.”
The New Deal and World War II are reminders of past transformative times, reverberating in current severe hardships and extreme dangers. Emergencies can bring clarity and reason about what to do, though at the opposite end, crises can elicit the worst outcomes, such as outlined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine.
Mining lithium and copper to supply the battery boom and fight climate change is wrecking a fragile ecosystem in Chile.
The oases that once interrupted the dusty slopes of the Atacama desert in northern Chile allowed humans and animals to survive for thousands of years in the world’s driest climate. That was before the mining started.