By Paige Raibmon, The Tyee
The “rule of law” to which Garneau refers is not a singular, universal given. He is not talking about “the” rule of law, but about the settler-colonial rule of law, the legal and constitutional order that undergirds the Canadian state. A legal order that is a newcomer on the scene.
By Stephen Buranyi, The Guardian blog
For a long time it has been assumed that public opinion is a barrier to climate action. But the climate assembly will likely confirm what the polls have been indicating for the past year: that people are now ready to move further and faster on climate action than the minimal effort shown by the government. If their advice is ignored or diluted beyond recognition, then maybe citizens’ assemblies are an imperfect mechanism for the scale of change needed to tackle the climate crisis. Only a green new deal for the UK will do.
By Miguel Calmon, Rafael Feltran-Barbieri, World Resources Institute
Climate change poses a real threat to farmers around the world. Agriculture is highly dependent on good weather, including high and low temperatures, rainfall, wind intensity, and many other variables. Estimates show that climate change might reduce global agriculture productivity by 17% by 2050.
By Laurie Macfarlane, Open Democracy
In the age of the ‘self-made’ millionaire, the lottery of birth is more important than ever. As George Monbiot once said: “If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”
By David Holmgren, Holmgren Design
Fire is an intrinsic part of the Australian landscape. It has become more destructive since European colonisation, and over recent decades, we have experienced even greater destruction due to accelerating climate change and changes in land use. Australia could, and should, be leading the world in transitioning to a renewable energy base to reduce the root cause of the crisis.
By Patrick Noble, Feasta
Here, surrounded by fellow mobsters, John Ball, Gerrard Winstanley, Martin Luther King… we appeal across the fences – by all that’s holy think about what you do! But we speak from the heart, from the ancestors, from the secret commonwealth and loved ones at home – without reason; without peer review…
By Riccardo Mastini, Uneven Earth
A truly transformative Green New Deal cannot simply be about returning to a welfare capitalist order of days of yore. It must move beyond capitalism’s growth imperative. This is not only because there is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures anywhere near the scale needed to deal with the ecological crisis, but also because such decoupling appears unlikely to happen in the future.
By Shiri Pasternak, The Conversation
An unsigned agreement between a Wet’suwet’en First Nation and Coastal GasLink along with financial documents, obtained by Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research centre, provide reinforcement to Yellowhead’s assessment of the ways these private contracts can dramatically undermine First Nation rights and jurisdiction.
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org
Oil prices rebounded last week as traders decided that the coronavirus was not going to expand much further outside of China and that control measures were starting to work. WTI closed out the week at $52 a barrel and London at $57.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
House Minority Leader McCarthy (R-CA) announced the first tranche of Republican initiatives intended to combat climate change. Although modest by comparison to the magnitude of the problem or the Democrats’ CLEAN Future Act, the mere mention that Earth’s warming poses a problem is extraordinary given the denialist position of McCarthy and other Congressional conservatives a few short months ago.
By Kara Stiff, Low-Carbon Life
We built our little house using light straw clay and lots of reclaimed wood, which both saved us money and reduced the environmental impact of building. Alternative materials alone don’t make a house green, though, because even the eco-friendliest house is still far more impactful than it has to be if it is bigger than it has to be.
By Katharine Hayhoe, Green European Journal
Maybe that’s the most important thing that I’ve learnt in the past fifteen years: material things don’t make us happy. People need one another. Experiences, building something together, meeting each other – that’s happiness. And we’re being robbed of that because other stuff has taken its place. So yes, I envision a much happier world.