Archives 2017

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/canada-america-taxes/533847/ Maybe this is a bit of Canadian bragging here.  🙂 Whole article is worth reading (it is fairly short) – here are a few key quotes worth highlighting…

It’s really quite simple: When Canadian governments need more money, they raise taxes. Canadians are not thrilled when this happens. But as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, taxes are the price paid “for civilized society.” And one of the reasons Canada strikes many visitors as civilized is that the rules of arithmetic generally are understood and respected on both sides of the political spectrum.

And this..

Denmark, with a tax burden of 49.6 percent, stands atop the OECD index. It also happens to be a wonderful place to live, with a high standard of living funded by a diversified, high-tech, export-driven economy.

And…

Canadians tend not to talk about making their country great again. Canada never was particularly great—at least not in the sense that Trump uses the word. Unlike Americans, Canadians haven’t been conditioned to see history in epic, revolutionary terms. For them, it’s more transactional: You pay your taxes, you get your government. That might not be chanted at any political rallies or printed on any baseball hats. But it works for Canada. And it’d work for America too.

What a great initiative: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/16/timmins-ont-wants-to-normalize-breastfeeding-with-life-size-cu_a_23032743/ I’d love to see more projects like this! 🙂

Just came across this http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/canadas-food-guidelines-cut-dairy-and-meat/ so I did a quick check. Here is what I found…
Here is some info on the comsultations http://www.foodguideconsultation.ca/
Detailed summary of the Principles http://www.foodguideconsultation.ca/guiding-principles-detailed
And the quick summary http://www.foodguideconsultation.ca/guiding-principles-summary
I wasn’t able to quickly find clear evidence that the dairy category will be removed, but it does say this in the first principle:

Health Canada recommends regular intake of vegetables, fruit, whole grains and protein-rich foods, especially plant-based sources of protein…What is needed is a shift towards a high proportion of plant-based foods, without necessarily excluding animal foods altogether.

It will be interesting to see how this gets put together into the final consumer recommendations! 🙂

Doomsday narratives about climate change don’t work. But here’s what does
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/12/doomsday-narratives-climate-change-dangerous-wrong?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WordPress

I agree that denial is a problem at both the individual level and the systems level, and both need serious attention and effort.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/09/lets-expose-everyday-climate-denial-heres-how

Here’s a starting point:

“Do you believe?” is the wrong question to ask public officials about climate change http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwpYCr2Dk?oc=wa

I like the recommendation that, instead of asking if people believe in climate change (which implies that this is something optional that we can choose to accept or not), the questions should be focused on whether people understand the scientific consensus, and what they are going to do about it. 🙂

I’m always a fan of Naomi Klein’s work – and it is particularly critical in this era….
https://www-cbc-ca.cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4165886
And, on a related note…  “Victories against Trump are mounting. Here’s how we deal the final blow” from The Guardian.
https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/18/resistance-victories-trump-mounting-final-blow
All pointing to a critical and strong role for civil society. 🙂

https://medlineplus.gov/news/fullstory_166501.html
Someone passed this on to me, so I am passing it on here. 🙂 I am all in favour of anything that helps break the myth that food can be healthy or appealing. Not sure why that one has persisted for as long as it has, but hopefully things are changing for the better. I hope that school cafeterias and others all keep this kind of data in mind when they plan their menus etc. – to help nudge away from chicken fingers and hot dogs, and towards something that is both healthy and delicious. 🙂
 

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/13/greg-gianforte-immigrant-deported-congress
I don’t know the specifics of US policy, so I can’t respond to that, but his general point certainly seems to match what I have seen in some of my circles.  Ironically, at the same time as I have seen people hold newcomers to an unreasonably high bar, I have also seen them treated (sometimes by the same people) with an unusually low bar. For example, insisting that the newcomers house should only be set up with old, leftover bedding etc that others are finished with because “they are newcomers and it’s good enough for them… they shouldn’t be picky… etc etc.” Fortunately, those have been the exception in my experience – the norm has been to see newcomers welcomed with love and go on to do great things, with nobody expecting perfection, the same expectations we have for everyone else. 🙂

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/07/michael-moore-trumpileaks-whistleblowing-donald-trump
He also has a new documentary coming up soon:  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/16/michael-moore-donald-trump-documentary-fahrenheit-11-9

“No matter what you throw at him, it hasn’t worked,” Moore said. “No matter what is revealed, he remains standing. Facts, reality, brains cannot defeat him. Even when he commits a self-inflicted wound, he gets up the next morning and keeps going and tweeting. That all ends with this movie.”
Fahrenheit 9/11 made $222m worldwide and remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time.

Interesting point – not that I want anybody leaving the Paris Agreement (or other valuable international agreements), but at least others are stepping up to make up for the shortcomings that are risked by the US pulling out of Paris.
If a country as powerful as the US, with emissions and economy to match, can pull out of an agreement like this and have the agreement go on largely unchanged – due to the efforts of other state and non-state actors – what does this mean for global power balances? What does this mean for the relationship between state and non-state? What might this mean for future agreements? Will be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
….

US Embassy, Berlin, with a bit of help from Greenpeace Op-ed by Tim Gore, Head of Policy, Advocacy and Research of Oxfam’s GROW Campaign Oxfam began campaigning for a global climate agreement in 2007. We have sent teams to every COP and every single negotiating session ever since. Along with many partners and allies, we…

via There was never a better time for the US to leave global climate talks — From Poverty to Power