It will be lonely when the birds are gone

I live deep in the city yet I enjoy visits from a number of our feathered friends. In the winter I am occasionally honoured by the visit of a wee chickadee. A bashful fellow, he flits half-hidden among the branches of a tall spruce that towers over my apartment.

Frequently a magpie visits me on my balcony. He throws dirt out of my flower posts, scolds me fiercely to let me know who's boss, and then goes on his way. He’s a nuisance but I love the little rascal. I’d miss his visits if he were not there. And the way things are going, one day he, and all his kind, may not be.

According to a new study, "Decline of the North American avifauna," published in the journal Science, there are almost three billion fewer birds in Canada and the United States than there were 50 years ago, a decline of 29 per cent. Birds that migrate long distances have been particularly hard hit, but even species that do well in cities are disappearing. They face a variety of threats: increased pesticide use, domestic cats, collisions with windows, fragmentation of forests, and habitat degradation by intensifying agriculture, urban sprawl, and fragmentation of forests. In other words, it's all our doing.

Sometimes I think we are like a fungus upon the Earth, spreading across and devouring, and often ruining even for our own species, more and more space. When we exterminate large numbers of our own species, which we do regularly, we call it a holocaust. Should we not then call it a holocaust when we exterminate all of another species? If so, then we are committing holocaust after holocaust after holocaust—thousands of holocausts. According to a comprehensive UN report on biodiversity, one million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction, half of them due to "insufficient habitat for long-term survival."

There are things each of us can do to save the birds, including keeping kitty indoors (after habitat loss, cats are the biggest reason for the decline), replacing grass with native plants (native plants can provide shelter, nesting areas and food for birds—grass doesn't), avoiding pesticides, and watching birds and helping track them (there's even an app—eBird).

Perhaps we can still halt the decline, but being the rapacious species we are the odds are not good. Birds are our most delightful neighbours. How like us to repay them for the delight they provide by systematically driving them into extinction.

"For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard"

Accusing Justin Trudeau of being racist is ridiculous. This is a prime minister who formed the most ethnically diverse cabinet in history, welcomed 40,000 Syrian refugees, condemned a proposed niqab ban, supported a parliamentary study of Islamophobia, launched a federal anti-racism strategy, funded a new "Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics," and who has apologized for every historical slight against an ethnic group he can dredge up. The man doesn't have a racist bone in his body.

So what about the face painting? Well, he has a bit of his old man in him, the flamboyance. He's the life of the party, the guy who would go all out for an Arabian Nights theme—the costume, the makeup, the works. We saw this side of him during his infamous visit to India.

Nonetheless, this will go hard on Trudeau because he is so damn self-righteous. He tolerates no such faux pas from his MPs. His demotion of my MP, Kent Hehr, comes to mind. When he gets on the subject of human rights he turns pedantic; he lectures; the school teacher emerges. Remember him instructing the woman at one of his town hall meetings that she should say "personkind," not "mankind." If you are going to be self-righteous you had best be righteous. But if you get caught out, you must suffer the accusations of hypocrisy, and Trudeau's opponents will make sure he suffers.

Mind you, watching Andrew Scheer accuse Trudeau of racism is a bit much given the neanderthals he has lurking in his party. Yet Trudeau deserves it. The Liberals kicked off their campaign by denouncing Scheer for remarks he made about gay marriage years ago, so now Andrew gets his turn. Tit for tat. Sauce for the goose and all that.

Perhaps the former school teacher will take this as a teachable moment. He may learn a little humility. And he may learn to be a little less self-righteous with his candidates and MPs who sin along these lines. Now that his misdeeds have been exposed, perhaps he can be a little more forgiving of theirs.

And, oh, one more thing. A personal message, Justin. You have apologized profusely and sincerely for your antics. Good for you. Now when am I getting my apology for your betrayal on voting reform?

The ghost of Bible Bill Haunts us still

In the late '30s and early '40s Alberta's premier was the colourful William Aberhart, known as "Bible Bill" for his bible studies classes and radio sermons. Founder of the Social Credit Party, Bible Bill introduced a variety of legislation during his term, some good, some not so much. An example of the latter was his Accurate News and Information Act which would have forced newspapers to print government rebuttals to stories the provincial cabinet deemed inaccurate. Needless to say, the Supreme Court deemed the Act unconstitutional.

I thought of Bible Bill when reading about Jason Kenney's Public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns. Premier Kenney and his colleagues are mighty angry about Canadian environmental groups receiving donations from Americans. The inquiry has come as a surprise to many. In a democracy one does not expect the government to use the powers of the state to harass those citizens who challenge its policies. But this is Alberta, Bible Bill country even today.

Many may also wonder just what the issue is. So some Americans are donating to some Canadian charities. So? The donations are legal and quite appropriate—after all, greenhouse gasses produced from Alberta fossil fuels don't stay in Alberta. They affect the lives of Americans and everyone else, so all have a right to be involved.

Both donors and charities are environmentalists so naturally they support dramatically reducing the burning of fossil fuels, as do all people with good sense in the face of global warming. And, needless to say, the country's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, the tar sands, catches their particular attention, as it should.

It's not as if the anti-fossil fuel groups are alone in enjoying American largesse. Pro-fossil fuel organizations such as the Fraser Institute are heavily funded by American companies, including oil interests. Not that I'm creating an equivalence. The Tides Foundation's  donations to the Pembina Institute promote its interest in a cleaner, greener world. Koch Industries' donations to the Fraser Institute promote its interest in an industry that's fouling the planet but which makes Koch large sums of money.

And then there's the oil industry itself. In an act of monumental hypocrisy, Premier Kenney attacks environmentalists for accepting foreign money while actively encouraging foreign investment in the industry.

The commissioner of the inquiry, Steve Allen, is a man of substantial achievement and integrity. Why he has chosen to chair this folly is a puzzle. Perhaps he simply believes in public service and when the premier calls it his duty to serve. I only hope his reputation survives the witch hunt.

Ed Whittingham seeks energy/environment middle ground

Alberta lives with two conflicting facts: first, humanity is faced with its greatest crisis ever—global warming—caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels; and second, humanity will have to rely on fossil fuels for the indefinite future and production of fossil fuels just happens to be Alberta's major industry.

The question for political moderates is how to reconcile those two facts into practical policy. One organization that wrestles with that question is the Pembina Institute. The institute, an environmental think tank, presents its mission as reducing the negative impacts of fossil fuels while supporting the transition to a clean energy system by advancing solutions from various approaches.

Earlier this year, a former executive director of Pembina, Ed Whittingham, was appointed by the then NDP government to the Board of Directors of the Alberta Energy Regulator. The regulator's mandate is to ensure the "safe, efficient, orderly, and environmentally responsible development of oil, oil sands, natural gas, and coal resources ... This includes allocating and conserving water resources, managing public lands, and protecting the environment while providing economic benefits for all Albertans." Having an experienced environmentalist on the board would seem appropriate, particularly one of Whittingham's calibre. The New York Times once referred to him as "one of the country’s most prominent environmentalists."

Some Albertans vigorously disagreed. The Calgary Herald referred to him as an "enemy of Alberta’s oil and gas industry" and at least one Calgary businessman labelled him an eco-terrorist. The United Conservative Party (UCP) called a press conference slamming the appointment and accusing Whittingham, falsely, of opposing pipelines. One UCP notable claimed he was unfit to be on the board because he rode a bicycle to work. The party's election platform referred to only one private citizen by name and that was Ed in a promise to fire him. When they won the election, Whittingham immediately resigned prompting a catty message from new Premier Jason Kenney who tweeted, "It was gracious of Ed Whittingham to resign a day before we could fire him. Our government will never appoint people like him who are avowed opponents of Alberta jobs." In fact, Whittingham supports the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

In any case, he also had his supporters, including in the oil industry. Michael Crothers, president of Shell Canada, said Whittingham "provided a balanced voice to help bridge the divide in the economy versus environment debate." As for the Pembina Institute, a spokesperson for Cenovus Energy said his company had "a strong and constructive relationship with the Pembina Institute." The Financial Post concurred, saying Pembina had "deep knowledge of the [energy] business based on science, and knew its way around executive offices." It added, Pembina "collaborated with industry for decades to improve environmental practices rather than demand its demise."

Whittingham has also had his detractors on the environmental side where, like Rachel Notley, he has been criticized for his proximity to industry. In his words, "The hard left never likes the fact that I proactively work with Fortune 500 companies, including those in resource extraction, on market-based solutions to environmental challenges. The hard right doesn't like the fact that I've also sued some of those very same Fortune 500 companies."

Ed Whittingham is a true moderate. He seeks the middle ground. But is the middle ground enough? Many environmentalists would say that compromising with fossil fuels today is like compromising with the Nazis in the 1930s. Chamberlain tried that and we all know how it turned out. They are probably right. But the extraordinary action they advise isn't going to happen. Forget it. Some kind of compromise is the best we are going to get. If it isn't enough, we fry. So I wish Ed and his fellow moderates all the best.

Meanwhile, in Alberta we are doubling down on oil. Under Premier Kenney, like the U.S. under Trump or Brazil under Bolsonaro, we have decided to give the world the finger.

Are U.S. capitalists going soft?

The aristocracy of American capitalism can be found on the membership list of the Business Roundtable. The Roundtable, one of Washington's top lobbyists, includes among its 193 members the chief executives of the cream of the country's corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Fox, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Goldman Sachs and dozens of others. The organization has for many years declared in its “statement on the purpose of a corporation” that corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders.

They have now issued a new statement that renounces the concept of shareholder primacy. It includes their responsibilities to their customers, employees, suppliers and communities equally to those to their shareholders. The statement concludes, "Each of our stakeholders is essential. We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country." Sounds almost noble.

Milton Friedman must be rolling in his grave. The Nobel prize-winning economist preached that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” and American business faithfully followed their guru. It seems they are now discovering, as have others, that Friedman's single-minded devotion to the free market was misguided. "The American dream is alive, but fraying," said Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and Chairman of the Roundtable.

Not surprisingly, the organization's statement has its cynics. As a columnist in the Washington Post points out, "There are no specific targets nor ways of meeting, measuring or enforcing them. There is nothing on over-the-top executive compensation, which is the source of much public outrage." He concludes, "This is mostly a public relations exercise, designed to preempt more federal regulation."

And he may be right. Perhaps the CEOs are suffering a bout of nerves with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats snapping at their heels. But let's be optimistic. Given the immense influence of business interest in U.S. government, this could be a big deal if it results in action. If they commit to raising the pay and working conditions of service sector workers; if they commit to the fight against global warming; if they commit to high environmental standards ... If. We must wait and see.

Trump/Netanyahu vs. Omar/Tlaib

Why are these two

so frightening to these two?

Waeza Shamsia Afzal, U.S. Evangelicals, and the corruption of dogma

Reading about the courageous young Canadian woman Waeza Shamsia Afzal carried my thoughts to American evangelical Christians and their worship of Donald Trump. The connection is religion. Ms. Afzal is an observant Muslim who has decided to boycott the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Her reason: "The hajj is governed by the Saudi regime and I do not agree at all with the atrocities they've committed and continue to commit."

This is no small sacrifice. The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and Muslims are required to perform it at least once in their lifetime. She has said she would like to go on the pilgrimage if it was governed by an independent body rather than the Sauds who make about $12-billion a year from the event.

Her sacrifice of devotion to a pillar of her faith because it has been tainted by evil is inspiring, an example that could well be followed by the aforementioned Christians.

Not that all white American evangelicals love Trump. Only 81 per cent do. At least that's the proportion who voted for Trump in the 2016 election. And their support counts. Although they make up only 15 per cent of Americans, they made up 26 per cent of the voters.

Why they support a man who disrespects women, separates children from their mothers, is devoted to mammon, who insults people of colour, and who lies with every breath, is a mystery to many. Particularly when the fortress of evangelical Christianity, the Southern Baptist Convention, issued a "Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials" in 1998, the key statement of which reads "Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment."

Apparently they are no longer concerned about searing the American conscience or spawning unrestrained immorality, or even God's judgment. According to Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the country’s largest organization of evangelical Christians, "There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump."

The reason for the adoration is no mystery. Trump, like white evangelicals, is opposed to abortion and gays (and not overly fond of non-whites). And he has obliged the faithful. He has, for example, nominated conservative judges to the courts, supported abortion bans and groups that oppose same-sex marriage, and moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

In other words, he promotes certain elements of evangelical dogma. For this they pander to a man who betrays much of what Christ taught, particularly in regard to loving your fellow men. Just as the Sauds, guardians of Islam's holy cities, betray the best of Islam. Ms. Afzal chose not to accept the betrayal. America's white evangelicals have chosen to sell their souls.

The state, not the private sector, invented the modern economy

I read an article in The Economist a while ago that insisted the state should constrain itself to providing basic services and otherwise stay out of the economy. That is, of course, a common belief on the right. The Economist, however, ought to know better.

Let us assume that governments had stayed out of the economy after, say, the Second World War. We would be living in a very different world. We wouldn't, for example, have the Internet. Or the World Wide Web. And those iPhones so many people depend upon, we wouldn't have those either.

The reason we wouldn't have these things is because they are products largely developed by state agencies. The Internet resulted from research directed by the U.S. government agency DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The World Wide Web was invented by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee when he worked at CERN, the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, best known for its Large Hadron Collider. CERN is funded by its 23 member states.

The Apple iPhone is often considered the poster product of the Information Age, created by one of the age's heroes, Steve Jobs. Jobs packaged the product beautifully but almost everything in the package was developed by government agencies either directly or through state funding. This includes the Internet, of course, as well as GPS, touch screen and SIRI.

And governments fundamental contributions go well beyond electronics. Research by the American taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health originates most promising new drugs. The oil industry owes it recent explosion of reserves and profits from fracking to major investments by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Mines in the technologies that unleashed it. Governments are also heavily funding innovation in green energy, actually creating markets for electric cars and solar panels with tax credits and rebates. Even space travel, envisioned and massively funded by governments, is now being exploited by private interests. Governments also heavily subsidize the demand side. For example, by building roads and backing mortgages, they have enabled the suburban lifestyle.

All this is spelled out in great detail in a book by Mariana Mazzucato entitled The Entrepreneurial State. This is one of those books, like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene or Carl Safina's Beyond Words, that offers profound revelations about how the world works.

Mazzucato lays out a pattern for the development of breakthrough technologies. The state, not the private sector, envisions the technology. The state, not the private sector, then puts up the massive funding necessary to make the technology viable. And then the private sector enters the picture and commercializes it. And they do a wonderful job, but the institution that made it all possible, the government, is generally omitted from the credits.

I hate to recommend books to people (everybody's tastes differ), particularly books on economics, but some are irresistible, and this is one of them. So, if you're looking for a good read ...

The surreallity of life in Alberta

Living in Alberta, I sometimes get the feeling I live in a place shifted a few degrees off centre from reality. For example, in the real world we are faced with the overarching threat of global warming, a crisis we have brought down upon ourselves. But, despite near unanimous agreement of climatologists, including the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that global warming is real and presents an imminent threat, according to recent surveys barely half of Albertans even believe the Earth is heating up.

This is terrifying. The greatest threat humanity has ever faced and half the population doesn't recognize it. In a rational society, quite aside from immediately initiating urgent and forceful action to deal with the crisis, government would initiate a program to alert people to the danger and educate them about the issue. But that isn't what the government of Alberta is doing.

Quite the contrary. It is apparently indifferent to the rampant ignorance of its citizens and has something quite different in mind. It has set up a "war room" to attack any environmentally-concerned folk who speak ill of the oil industry, the major source of greenhouse gasses, the cause of global warming.

The government claims that Alberta's finances are not in good order and it intends to cut back in a number of areas, yet it has budgeted $30-million for the war room. And does the beleaguered oil industry need this taxpayer-funded PR? Hardly. One oil company alone, ExxonMobil, has gross revenue six times that of the Alberta government. The two major bitumen producers combined have revenues equal to the government. This is an industry with very deep pockets, clearly in no need of assistance in defending itself.

So this is my world. My government, while complaining about its debt problem, uses my tax dollars to do PR for one of the richest and most powerful institutions on the planet. And why do they waste my money? To promote the source of humanity's greatest threat. This is perverse. This is irrational. This is life in Alberta.

Is Andrew Scheer in the closet about Quebec sovereignty?

Not being a conservative, I disagree with most of Andrew Scheer's pronouncements, but they rarely surprise me. One, however, surprised me very much. Indeed, I was surprised that any Anglophone Canadian politician would express such an opinion. I refer to his extraordinary admission that he supports Brexit. He said his support for Britain's departure from the EU was based on the principle of sovereignty. I suspect he didn't appreciate at the time how many ears in Quebec perked up when they heard that.

I am flabbergasted that he would so foolishly support something that has turned out to be what any rational observer would have expected—a recipe for chaos. I can, however, offer a few reasons why he might have. One, he lacks the imagination to realize that by supporting Britain's exit from the EU he must logically support Quebec's exit from Canada. Two, he so loves mother Britain he can deny her nothing (conservatives, at least of the Anglophone variety, tend to be inordinately fond of the old girl). Three, he privately supports Quebec separation.

So which is it, Mr. Scheer?