FROLITICKS

Satirical commentary on Canadian and American current political issues

Sep 19

We Need to Adjust to Climate Change Now, Not Later

by bcurry

There are very few areas that aren’t affected by the consequences of climate change.  There are the number of extreme weather events that cause immediate damage and casualties, ranging from tornados and hurricanes to extreme heat and drought conditions.  Whether we can adjust to dealing with their consequences is a major question on many people’s minds, including mine.  Trying to slow up climate change appears to be a long-term goal.  This includes the introduction of new technologies to reduce the use of fossil fuels to heat and cool our homes, produce our electricity and transport people and goods.  Some refer to the increased interest in electric vehicles and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and thermodynamics — all long-term in nature.  While this is all good and dandy, there appears to be a greater need for conservation and adjustment efforts on the part of all of us, especially in the short-term.

Increasingly, governments are being faced today with emerging issues resulting from the direct and indirect impacts on their citizens.  For example, it has been pointed out that Congress has helped cover Americans’ winter heating costs for decades.  But sweltering summers have made Americans’ energy bills soar, straining this key national safety net.  Under recent extreme heat events, Americans have died.  California has even recently introduced a new alert system designed to warn Californians of extreme heat forecasts.  In addition, these events place a great strain of the electricity infrastructure, forcing authorities to place embargos on the use of electricity, including that for air conditioning, during certain periods.  A significant proportion of the population, including the homeless, need to have access to cooling areas so as to avoid negative health impacts.  These health impacts in turn place a further burden on already strained health care facilities and emergency services.

The recent flooding of the Pearl River resulted in a temporary decrease in water production across the city of Jackson, the capital city of Mississippi.  According to state and local officials, the water system is failing.  Boil water alerts have become common place and can last for weeks.  Infrastructure from roads to water treatment is greatly in need of repair and many cases replacement.  During extreme heat events, roadways have even been known to buckle.  Bridges have been compromised and damaged due to flooding of local tributaries as a result of extreme rain events.  This in turn can cut communities off from emergency and support services, including access routes for supplies and people.  People are losing their homes.  Serious consideration must be given now to where homes are being constructed in known flood plains.

Of course, major droughts can lead to wildfires in many regions of the country, threatening towns, homes and agricultural lands.  Wildfires are unplanned and uncontrolled fires in natural areas, like forests and grasslands.  For example, the province of British Columbia (B.C.) has always experienced wildfires, but none as bad in recent years.  Evacuations of affected towns have become increasingly required.  One can’t forget the “out of control” wildfire that destroyed much of Lytton, B.C. during the summer of 2021.  Longer, hotter summers lead to more droughts and a longer wildfire season.  It is hoped that funding partnerships and community-led work, such as Firesmart, will reduce wildfire risks in B.C.  B.C. is also using climate information to set goals for resource management and to increase the resiliency of its forests.  Serious consideration must be given as to where homes are located in areas dominated by forests in particular, especially where access fire roads are few and far between.

In the area of conservation, there are a number of things that individuals and families can do.  For example, air conditioners (AC) and electric fans now account for about 10 % of electrical energy consumption all over the world.  Air conditioning can account for a whopping 60 to 70 percent of electrical power demand during peak hours.  Currently, there are companies that are in the process of developing new air conditioning technologies, thereby reducing the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are greenhouse gases.  Hopefully, these ACs will become affordable and available in the near future.  Apparently, they could be two to three times more productive than the most common ACs on the current market.  In the meantime, people should now use their ACs in a restrained and sensible manner.

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Sep 13

New Therapies Emerge To Deal With Climate Anxiety Symptoms

by bcurry

When I was a voluntary mentor to high school students as part of a community-based program, among the topics that young people wanted to discuss was that of climate change.  It was a topic for years that could not be avoided in light of existing discussion sites on the Internet and social media.  As we are seeing more and more severe weather events and their impact on people across the globe, but more importantly right here in North America, one cannot but help to wonder what the psychological impact is on youth.  Interestingly enough, there is now an emerging psychology field specializing in treating what has become referred to as ‘climate stress’ or ‘eco-anxiety’.

Recently, studies have indicated that eco-anxiety is particularly prevalent among college students.  For this reason, a number of college campuses have introduced group counselling sessions and individual therapy to allow students to talk through fears and frustrations of a world impacted by climate change.  However, it is recognized that many therapists and counsellors aren’t trained to provide students with this specific type of support, in part because of a lack of research about climate stress as a distinct phenomenon.  In addition, whether or not a therapist or counsellor believes in climate change, treating such anxiety must be done as in the case of any other anxieties.  Many leaders in mental health maintain that anxiety over climate change is no different, clinically, from anxiety caused by other societal threats, like terrorism or school shootings.  Interestingly, professional certification programs in climate psychology have recently begun to appear.  According to The New York Times, a group called the Climate Psychology Alliance now provides an online directory of climate-aware therapists.

While some will question the legitimacy of eco-anxiety, experts have come to recognize the range of feelings someone may have in response to climate change.  They point out that climate stress therapy is an effort to validate these emotions, help clients process their responses to climate change and provide coping strategies.  As for the causes of eco-anxiety, many individuals perceive that they are very real.  In January 2022, the publication Lancet in a 10-country survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 reportedly found startling rates of pessimism. Forty-five percent of respondents said worry about climate negatively affected their daily life. Three-quarters said they believed “the future is frightening,” and 56 percent said “humanity is doomed.”

There is little doubt in my mind that young people, in particular, are increasingly expressing concerns about the potential impacts of climate change on their lives.  For this reason, they need to be informed and educated about the issue.  Many of its elements are complicated and not always very evident in their localities.  Understanding why they feel the way they feel is very important.  They need avenues in which to express their trepidations and fears.  Understandably, some will push to change familial and peer consumption and conservation patterns.  They may need our help, whether in schools or in communities.  Parents have to be aware of any symptoms that may be related to eco-anxiety.  Moreover, they must appreciate that this anxiety is real.  The more awareness by parents about community-based resources and accessible health-based information can prove to be invaluable. 

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Aug 9

Would You Be Interested In A Four-Day Workweek?

by bcurry

Between 2015 and 2019, several large-scale trials in the public sector of a four-day workweek were carried out in Iceland.  The results showed that the trials turned out to be an “overwhelming success,” with many workers shifting to shorter hours without affecting their productivity.  Some of the trials’ key findings showed that a shorter week translated into increased well-being of employees among a range of indicators, from stress and burnout to health and work-life balance.  The idea of the four-day week has been gaining ground in countries like New Zealand, Spain and Germany.  In the U.S. and Canada, a small but growing number of firms are moving to a four-day workweek that runs from Monday to Thursday.  In addition, the pandemic created a situation where employers began to experiment with alternative working arrangements, ranging from remote work to a variety of hybrid work routines including a four-day workweek.  Employers are expected to continue offering alternative working arrangements as a means to retain existing employees and to recruit new workers, especially given the tight labour markets found in most countries.

Now, there is not really anything new about employers implementing a four-day workweek for interested employees.  Long before the pandemic, I can recall several employers, especially in the public sector, who instituted policies allowing for some employees, where applicable, to work for four days a week and with the same number of weekly hours and wages.  For certain employees, the additional day off meant that they could spend more time with their families and use the extra free time to improve work-life balance.

More recently, there are those that would argue that a four-day workweek would help to reduce our carbon footprint.  For example, one or more fewer commutes to and from work would be required each week.  Transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions, especially for vehicles using gas or diesel.  In 2020, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the transportation sector accounted for about 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  Commuting is a big part of that.  It’s noteworthy that global emissions plunged an unprecedented 17 percent during the coronavirus pandemic and the air quality in cities around the world showed a marked improvement.  In North America, the high cost of housing in urban cores has meant that many workers have bought more affordable homes in the outskirts, a trend increased during the pandemic by a significant percentage of workers working remotely from home.

In addition, Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College who researches work, consumption and climate change, noted that energy could also be conserved if less resources are needed to heat and cool large office buildings.  However, to reduce demands on electricity, buildings would have to be pretty well shut down entirely for a day.  According to Scientific American, when the Utah state government launched a four-day workweek trial among its employees in 2008, one report projected that shutting down buildings on Fridays would lead to a decrease of at least 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.  However, any potential energy-saving gains hinge on how companies and individuals use resources.  At a time when many companies are looking at ways to incur cost savings, the implementation of a four-day workweek might be appealing.

As more and more white-collar workers across the country settle into hybrid work routines, one thing is becoming clear: Nobody wants to be in the office on Fridays.  This premise came up time and time again in several related articles.  With hybrid working routines becoming more of a fixture in workplaces, it’s easy to see why employers are increasingly looking for more adaptable offices with more communal spaces and gathering areas instead of traditional cubicles or walled-in offices.  Issues surrounding work-life balance and healthy workplaces will continue to surface in the post-pandemic era.  Businesses and their workers will no doubt have to be more creative in developing appropriate alternative working arrangements, including possibly a four-day workweek.

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Jul 29

How ‘Denial Syndrome’ Plays Out In COVID- 19 And Climate Change Debates

by bcurry

Just what is ‘denial syndrome’?  Psychologists define denial as the psychological process by which a painful truth is pushed out of an individual’s consciousness.  We use denial as a defense mechanism, to protect ourselves from the force of a truth we imagine will be too shattering for us to cope with.  Some current issues such as climate change and the global pandemic have made us feel deeply insecure about the present and the future.  This is where denial comes into its own as a way out.  It’s a lot easier than thinking up a series of individual excuses — just simply deny the whole problem exists.  Unfortunately, despite the best scientific evidence and explanation, there are health-care professionals who claimed the pandemic was all a hoax and environmentalists who deny that climate change exists.  This has led to a barrage of misinformation being put out and the emergence of conspiracy theories.

Take for example, the fact that several physicians in Canada have had their medical licences suspended by professional bodies for providing misinformation to patients about COVID vaccines, masking and available treatments.  Without any scientific evidence or studies, some have even made public assertions such as that COVID vaccines are more dangerous than the virus itself.  Some of these doctors taken to task by their regulator have challenged the discipline actions, arguing that they violate their right to free expression.  Earlier this month, the head the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), one of the biggest U.S. licensing bodies, commented on the free speech argument for doctors.  He stressed that if physicians want to keep their credentials, the concept of free speech does not extend to communicating misinformation, especially when such information can potentially harm their patients or pose a potential risk to public health.

When it comes to climate change, despite all of the scientific evidence that climatologists and other experts have gathered over decades, there are still some who would deny that it is an actual global issue.  Climate change science has been settled for decades, yet policymakers have yet to take sweeping action, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb to record highs.  There are some politicians who still believe that humans have nothing to do with what is happening to our climate.  The resulting inaction is driving some scientists to engage in civil disobedience.  A global campaign by Scientist Rebellion (SR) has begun.  SR is a climate network of scientists of all stripes and degrees aimed at partaking in non-violent civil disobedience and demanding climate action.  This past April, the group mobilized an estimated 1,000 scientists in 26 countries in protest.

Climate change denial is all around us.  Just today, I read a letter to the local newspaper by someone commenting on the recent U.K. heat wave which got a lot of attention for reaching a “record-breaking” 40 C in July.  The writer even had to go back as far as 1936 to note that London had reached 43.7 degrees centigrade during a two-day heat wave.  On top of which, he claims that so-called ‘eco-anxiety’ is rising because of the number of media stories that focus on extreme weather and blame it on climate change.  It certainly appeared to be the use of unsubstantiated arguments about biased reporting and ‘fake news’ as a denial tool.

Among conservative groups and political parties in both the U.S. and Canada, there are plenty of deniers to go around when it comes to these two issues.  Amazingly, they can produce their own experts and conspiracy theories in defence of their positions.  Why not just ignore the facts, much as former U.S. president Donald Trump did!  Incredibly, in the name of freedom of expression, some Republican politicians in the U.S., such as in Tennessee, have even gone further by introducing legislation to prohibit state medical boards from disciplining doctors who spread COVID falsehoods or prescribe unproven treatments.  Interestingly, with just 55 percent of its population double-vaccinated, Tennessee has suffered more than four times as many COVID deaths per 100,000 as the province of Ontario.

Whether personal or organizational, denial has real consequences.  No better examples are applicable to those related to climate change and the pandemic.

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Dec 6

With More Extreme Weather Occurrences, Governments Will Have To Act Faster

by bcurry

With the recent forest fires, hurricanes and severe floods, both Canada and the U.S. are being forced to increasingly provide support to provinces and states for immediate assistance and longer-term recovery initiatives.  However, Canada does not have any federal agency equivalent to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the U.S.  However, recently there has been more interest in Canada to potentially creating a similar federal agency to FEMA given the recent destructive and massive flooding of regions in British Columbia.

FEMA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders in 1979.  FEMA’s primary purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the U.S. and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. The governor of the state in which the disaster occurs must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the President that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster.  FEMA also provides funds for training of response personnel throughout the U.S. and its territories as part of the agency’s preparedness effort.  While on-the-ground support of disaster recovery efforts is a major part of FEMA’s charter, the agency provides state and local governments with experts in specialized fields and funding for rebuilding efforts and relief funds for infrastructure repair.

However, even FEMA has incurred criticism in recent years, particularly in relation to the impact of hurricanes Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005, Harvey that hit the Houston area in 2017, Laura that hit Louisiana in 2020, and Ida that hit Louisiana this past summer.  Among the criticism about FEMA is that it takes an inordinately long time to place every displaced resident in temporary housing, sometimes months and sometimes years as in the case of Katrina.  More than three months after Hurricane Ida tore through coastal Louisiana, thousands of residents of the hardest hit bayou communities remain displaced.  This raises the question as the whether supplying temporary or replacement housing for disaster victims is an appropriate role for government?  Most people would agree that it is.

Public Safety Canada helps Canadians and their communities protect themselves from emergencies and disasters related to all kinds of hazards – natural, human-induced and technological – through national leadership in the development and implementation of policies, plans and a range of programs.  The Department maintains a loose network of partnerships with other federal government institutions, provincial and territorial emergency management organizations, first responders and voluntary organizations, and other stakeholders and communities, supporting a whole-of-society approach to emergency management that leverages resources and capacities at all levels across the country.  However, the federal government relies heavily on providing immediate assistance through the Department of National Defence and non-profit organizations such as the Canadian Red Cross as requested.

Given the nature of recent disasters often associated with the impact of climate change, the Canadian government needs to seriously rethink how it handles such future disasters in an efficient, timely and effective manner.  There is a real need for a central agency to do pre-planning in order to prepare for future emergencies.  Preventative measures to deal with climate and environmental related causes will have to be developed and implemented on a long-term basis.  National coordination of such initiatives is a must, and more than sufficient funding needs to be allotted as soon as possible.  After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  National, provincial and local infrastructure needs to be immediately assessed to determine its capacity to withstand imminent future natural disasters.  Providing the means to immediately support displaced individuals and quickly provide temporary housing is essential to the well-being of both Canadians and Americans.

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Dec 5

Two Top News Topics in 2021: The Global Pandemic and Climate Change

by bcurry

Anyone who has been closely following the main street news media will highlight the fact that the two most written about news topics during the past year were the global pandemic and climate change.  The main difference between these two topics is that the impact of climate change was foreseen for some time, and the global pandemic came out of nowhere.  On the one hand, the impact of COVID-19 was immediate and introduced serious economic consequences in the short-term.  On the other hand, the impact of climate change is expected to be more long-term and will affect different regions in different ways at different times.

The big news was that several vaccines were quickly developed for COVID-19 and appeared to offer an effective means to ending the pandemic, especially in the more industrialized countries.  There is however no short-term fix to tackle the consequences of climate change, including the needed reduction in greenhouse gases.  The World Health Organization (WHO) is the one primary body that can address pandemic issues for both industrialized and emerging countries.  The WHO is leading the charge to get vaccination rates up in the emerging and poorer countries.  There really is no primary international body that can speak to climate change, with individual countries having to develop their own initiatives.  The agreement coming out of the COP26 conference in November does not achieve the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris accord — to limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.  Instead, delegations left Glasgow with the Earth still on track to blow past that threshold, pushing toward a future of escalating weather crises and irreversible damage to the natural world.

However, the differences between industrialized and emerging countries are quite stark for the socio-economic impact of both the pandemic and climate change.  In both cases, the lesser developed countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas will suffer greater consequences from any failure to adequately address both issues.  What is common about both topics has been the extensive use of statistics by news outlets and government bodies to track such consequences, including fatalities and economic impacts.  Moreover, politicians and heads of state have had to take a back seat to climate scientists and epidemiologists when it came to the development and implementation of policies and initiatives.  For the most part, science took the lead over current and future efforts.  Repeatedly, politicians were forced to rely on the results of scientific study and research, a novelty in some countries. 

Of course, there are always the deniers and conspiracists who oppose the conclusions of scientific research as it applies to COVID-19 and climate change.  Unfortunately, among the first deniers on both issues were such political leaders as U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.  Initially, both the U.S. and Brazil had had what was arguably the worst pandemic policy response in the industrialized world.  Under both administrations, environmental laws and initiatives were negatively affected.  President Bolsonaro, who has pushed to open more of the Amazon rainforest to mining and agriculture since taking office in 2019, has been criticized at home and abroad for increased deforestation under his government.  Interestingly enough and ironically, both Presidents became sick with COVID-19 while in office.

Something tells me that by this time next year, both of these major issues will continue to dominate the global news.  There are still further economic, social and political consequences that will attributed to these two issues.  The pandemic most likely and hopefully will evolve into a more localized endemic problem.  More extreme weather will continue to plague several regions of the world, including in the U.S. and Canada.  Unless there is the unleashing of a Third World War, the headlines will no doubt continue to focus on the issues surrounding climate change and COVID-19.

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Nov 17

COP26 on Climate Change Resulted in just a Lot More Hot Air

by bcurry

Nearly 200 nations gathered at a conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow, known as COP26, and struck a deal intended to propel the world towardmore urgent climate action.  Proposals aimed at reducing methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming, and to end deforestation in the coming decade were considered big achievements of COP26.  However, climate change experts noted that such promises have been made and broken before.

The hard-fought agreement doesn’t go nearly far enough.  The agreement does not achieve the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris accord — to limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.  Instead, delegations left Glasgow with the Earth still on track to blow past that threshold, pushing toward a future of escalating weather crises and irreversible damage to the natural world.

In the streets of Glasgow, over an estimated 100,000 protesters marched to get the conference’s delegates to walk the talk and come to an agreement that included more concrete targets and specific funds to combat climate change.  Due to the objections of countries such as India, Australia and China, the agreement could not even target a phasing out of coal burning and fossil fuel subsidies.  Instead, the agreement only proposed to “phase down unabated coal”, most likely over the next fifty years.  Too little, too late.

Yes, the industrialized countries, such as the U.S., Britain and Germany, pledged funds to help the poorer, lesser developed countries cope with the environmental and economic consequences of climate change given that natural disasters are expected to escalate.  For example, President Biden has pledged to boost U.S. climate aid to poor nations to more than $11 billion a year — a promise that will require help from Congress.  However, the proposed funding amounts are nowhere near enough to effectively reduce the real impact on these developing countries, particularly from severe droughts and crop-destroying floods which could put millions of people at risk of starvation.  Then there are the environmental migrants, people who are forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local environment.  For example, there is the devastating drought that has gripped Syria since 2006 and reportedly has driven more than 1.5 million people from the countryside to cities in search for food and economic normality.  The International Organisation for Migration estimates that there are now several million “environmental migrants”, and that this “number will rise to tens of millions within the next 20 years, or hundreds of millions within the next 50 years”.

The protesters, many of them representing today’s youth, shouted: “Hurry up please. It’s time.”  Unfortunately, all one what got was more “blah, blah, blah”.  Cautious optimism about the potential outcome of the talks gradually turned into overt pessimism.  Clearly, many participants, including delegates, left Glasgow with feelings of dismay and regret.  Once again, it’s now up to each individual country to sort out its “climate change” policies and the allocation of its resources.  No doubt, President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau will be discussing their plans at a joint meeting today in Washington.  It will be interesting to see if anything concrete comes out of the discussions given their shared mutual political and economic concerns about the impacts associated with climate change and fossil fuels.  We’ll just have to wait and see, but I wouldn’t hold my breath!  I’m expecting a lot more “hot air”.

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Oct 30

Student-led Movements Urging Canadian Universities to Divest from Fossil Fuels an Inspiration

by bcurry

In the late sixties, I can remember as a student a number of protest movements on university campuses, one being a campaign by students to increase their voice on university boards and policy bodies.  Marches on campus and sit-downs outside administrators’ offices occurred, until eventually student bodies were granted more access to administrative boards.  The student initiatives were in line with several active movements which attacked the absolute power of the authorities during this period and expressed a desire for greater decision-making powers and representation by citizens in general.  Since then, universities have conceded greater input by student unions and representatives in the operation and administrative policies on campuses across the country.

Frustrated by the slow pace of halting dangerous climate change, in the last few years we have the student divestment effort, demanding that post-secondary institutions across the country fully divest all investment funds from the fossil fuel industry.  This movement in Canada has been around for almost a decade.  Several major Canadian universities, including the University of Victoria, Carleton University, the University of British Columbia, Laval University, the University of Waterloo and Canada’s largest university, the University of Toronto, have been significantly influenced by the students’ divestment movement.  In September 2020, a movement called the Divestment Canada Coalition (DCC) was launched.  DCC is made up of 30 groups from institutions across the country, making it Canada’s largest group of students calling for divestment from fossil fuels.

The students’ movement has met with some noteworthy success.  In just over a year, at least five schools in Canada pledged to at least partially divest from capital funds primarily comprised of fossil fuels.  There have also been pledges to reinvest funds supporting sustainable alternatives and renewable energy.  Consideration of environmental, social and governance factors have increasingly become integral to their investment processes.  The DCC emphasizes the importance of giving people of colour, low-income people, Indigenous communities and others a seat at the table, given how the fossil fuel industry disproportionately affects these particular groups.

It is encouraging that the students’ divestment effort has generally been met so far with a positive reception by most university administrators, who understand that the issue of climate change is one which has a great deal of potential impact on future generations.  Hopefully, as institutions responsible for developing Canada’s future political and business leaders, they will continue to be receptive to this important cause.  In order to sustain the effort’s current momentum, they should help to encourage future students who are passionate about divestment to run for their student union board.  These institutions owe it to their students, staff and alumni to support this important and inspirational student driven initiative.  After all, their futures are in the balance.

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