Deconstructing Federal Conservative Climate Policy

Andrew Scheer recently rolled out the federal climate change policy---the one that his party is going to run one in this fall's election. With regard to the climate emergency, it's total flaming nonsense. But I do think it's useful to read because it tells a lot about the Conservative party and how it's leadership thinks.

When I Googled "Conservative party Canada climate plan" the first page that showed up wasn't the plan, but rather a "sign up page" designed to grow the Conservative database.

If you want to actually look at the plan, you have to click on another (quite tiny) URL that's in the middle of the request to sign up so you can be constantly bombarded with requests for money. Seeing this, I couldn't help but think that the party really doesn't want anyone to actually read their policy paper---it's just enough to have a press conference so you can say you have one. But anyone who might be interested in it should be snapped up as quickly as possible.

Foolish me, I followed that teeny, tiny lettering and actually found the pdf in question. There was a lot of baffle gab about how great previous Conservative governments have been for the environment, but the first thing that caught my eye was this graph. It purports to show how Canada is pretty much irrelevant in the whole climate emergency.

From the introduction of A Real Plan to Protect Our Environment

Wow, it looks like Canada is pretty small potatoes when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. But it all comes down to what you want to show, and what you want to hide. Canada has a small population compared to China, India, the US, and, Europe. How about we show a more relevant number, such as how much CO2 gets emitted per person?

From the Economics Help website. Fair Use provision.
(Yeah, I'd suggest the Conservative Party could use some
help with its economics home work.)

It turns out that we aren't modest little guys with no responsibility for frying the planet. Instead, we're the sloppy ass, ignorant jerks that waste far more than almost everyone else in the neighbourhood.

I'd suggest that a modern nation, which is a leader in developing high-tech industry, with one of the highest standards of living, could do more to cut it's greenhouse gas emissions per capita than countries like China or India, which are still trying to make sure that all their citizens have enough to eat. Frankly, trotting out the old "but China and the US emit more" canard means to me that the Conservatives have decided that they just don't have to make sense. Instead, they are just trying to parse out the fraction of the population who simply don't care about either the climate, other people---or even making any sense for that matter---so they can sign them up on their database and whip them into a frenzy by voting day.

&&&&

I'm getting sick of writing post after post about how awful the Conservatives are right now. It makes me feel that somehow I'm not being "fair" or "balanced". But the fact of the matter is that currently they have their heads shoved up their butts in a truly spectacular way. These are not ordinary times. I have always tried to be as honest and objective as possible in everything I write---and it is just a fact that there is something really wrong right now with conservatives all over the planet. 

Anyway, if you like this tedious cataloging of how far the right wing has gone down the toilet, consider subscribing through either Patreon or Pay Pal. 

&&&&

After this, the plan spends a great deal of space complaining bitterly about the Liberals and then goes on about a report created by the Parliamentary Budget Office report that states that if a carbon tax ALONE WITH NOTHING ELSE BEING DONE BY ANY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT IN CANADA (something the Conservatives routinely fail to mention) was used to reduce Canada's carbon emissions to the Paris Agreement targets, it would have to rise to $102/ton. And they say themselves that this would translate into an increase of 23 cents per litre on gasoline and cost the average family $1,000 per year.

Let's look at those two numbers. First, according to Statistics Canada the highest monthly average retail gasoline price for May of 2019 was in Vancouver and was $1.69/litre. So add 23 cents, and you get $1.92/litre. How does that compare to prices in other countries? It turns out that there are something like 40 nations across the world that already pay that much---or more---for a litre of gasoline. And some of them are pretty nice countries: Spain, New Zealand, Switzerland, U. K., Ireland, Germany, Sweden, France, Finland, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Iceland, Norway, and, a whole lot of other places.    

As for that average figure of $1,000/year for the average family, I couldn't quickly find a number that averages household income (averages are pretty much useless in an age where the top 87 Canadian families own as much as the lowest 12 million individuals). But I did find a Statistics Canada number for median (that is the number where half the population make less, and, half more) household income:  $76,600.

Just to put that $1000 into a context, I went to a travel cost estimator site and it asked it to estimate a modest trip for two from Guelph to New Orleans for one week in January. That came in at a little over $2600. $1,000 to prevent runaway climate change, a decent future for our children, and, preventing the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of millions of people seems like a real bargain! And don't forget that this number of $1,000/household is an average. People who are wealthy do things that create a lot more carbon emissions (like flying to New Orleans for a week) than lower income people. And, there is no reason at all why a government cannot come up with progressive programs that help the poor deal with the increased costs that come from a carbon tax. (Although I wouldn't hold my breath if the Conservatives get elected.) Yet this is the worst case scenario that the Conservatives could come up with their attack on the Liberal carbon tax?????? Where's the commie hordes coming for your house? Or the scorched earth? (Oh---wait, that's what's going to happen if climate change isn't dealt with.)

If you don't already know, this gif comes from the movie Apocalypse Now, which was
based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness.

You have to wonder if Scheer and his crew have just given up on trying to make any sense at all. Maybe they've assumed that they've lost the entire "pay attention to what's going on" fraction of the population and have invested their whole campaign into "angry idiots who couldn't figure out the details if their life depended on it" contingent.

&&&&

One last thing that really bugged me about the Conservative plan is the way it relies upon "cornucopianism". That's the goofy idea that whatever problem comes along, those marvelous scientists will be able to invent something to fix it.

A cornucopia. Line drawing by Scott Foresman.
Public Domain image c/o the Wiki Commons.

The cornucopia was an ancient symbolic representation of "plenty". When you see it in art the idea is that it suggests that you needn't worry about not having enough to eat---because for some reason you have access to endless bounty. 

In a similar way, the Conservative climate change policy is that no one needs to learn to live more frugally, or, make any changes in how they live at all. They have unbounded faith that the scientists---ie: the same guys who are screaming and wailing that we have to do something fast about climate change---will invent something that will magically solve the problem without anyone having make the slightest effort. Here's how the brain trust behind Andrew Scheer describe the situation:

Green Technology, Not Taxes is the best way to lower Canada’s emissions. A Real Plan to Protect Our Environment supports green technology innovation, development, and adoption here in Canada, without making life more
expensive with new taxes.

The Trudeau Liberals put a carbon tax in place to make driving your car and heating your home more expensive, hoping that you, the consumer, will seek different, cleaner alternatives. Here is the catch: cleaner, more affordable alternatives don’t always exist. Many commuters in the GTA often do not have another option but to drive their car to work and back home to Penticton, BC their families. Seniors in rural British Columbia often have no other option but to heat their homes with affordable and reliable natural gas or propane. Middle-class families just trying to pay their bills do not always have the flexibility to make different choices, and sometimes, those choices simply aren’t available to them. In the end, Trudeau’s Carbon Tax takes money out of your pockets and puts it into the government’s coffers.

There is a better way to fight climate change and reduce our emissions. We can encourage and support the development of green technology to make environmentally friendly alternatives available. We can do this without making the lives of Canadians harder and more expensive.

(p-12 of A REAL PLAN to Protect Our Environment)

Oh those poor conservatives. They've never heard of insulation, public transit, heat pumps, etc, so they just don't have a clue about how people---ordinary, hard-working Canadians---could possible figure out how to cut down on the amount of energy they use driving cars and heating their homes.

Tell your Conservative friends. This is a "bus". It's an alternative to having to buy a car. It
can take you to work, shopping, etc. And it costs a whole lot less than a car.
Original TTC picture, cited in CBC News story. 

Paying too much money for heating? There's this new, high-tech technique known as "insulation". Here's a Liberal, commie, hippie, bastard undermining the free enterprise system by trying to cut the amount of groovy, clean, Albertan-friendly natural gas he burns. Image used under Fair Use provision, from that notorious commie rag, Canadian Woodworking and Home Improvement. 

&&&&

Furthermore, I say to you---the climate emergency must be dealt with!

Living in a World All Our Own

I had a conversation this morning with an old friend who talked about how much he enjoys not being on social media. I often hear this from my friends. I understand why they say this---I pretty much loathe what it does to me too. But part of me feels really annoyed when I hear this. I couldn't quite articulate what it makes me feel this way until today, but now I think I understand.

The ancient Greeks were very odd ducks compared to most of the other world civilizations. During what historians call "the Axial Age", most of the world's great religions and philosophies came into existence. This was when the monotheistic religions that we tend to call "Abrahamic" (first Judaism, then Christianity, and, later Islam) first came into existence with the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism (this connection is given lipservice in the Gospels when the "three Magi"---Zoroastrians---came to the manger bearing gifts). It was also when Buddhism and Hinduism arose in India, and, Daoism and Confucianism in China. (If you are a religious scholar, don't get your knickers in a knot---I know that this is a gross overstatement. But this blog is for public consumption, not your grad seminar!)

While all this was going on, the Greeks were experimenting with something

Socrates was a really annoying participant in the
ancient Greek version of social media. Public
domain image from the Louvre, c/o Wiki Commons.

completely different: philosophy and democracy. Philosophy is different from religion because it is based on critical thinking and direct experience instead of following a revealed authority. And democracy is not about finding and training the perfect ruler, but rather that of developing a culture where the general public manage their own affairs. And both these two different things were based on the idea of the "dialectic", or an argument within the public square.

This is an important point because the thing that I find that most people hate about social media is the arguing that goes on within it. That's understandable in a world where people are paid money to derail intelligent discussions by being "trolls". But unfortunately I find that a great many people learn the false lesson that there is no value at all in any form of dialectic. People like this not only won't argue, they won't even let anyone know what they really think. They just "disengage". Moreover, they often just walk away from any venue where the people they are with are not in fundamental agreement with them.

I can certainly understand if someone is so weak-minded that they cannot handle this sort of dissent. I can also understand getting burnt out and taking a vacation from social media idiocy. But what my friends are saying is very different. They are taking pride in disengaging from this conversation. They see it as an act of self-discipline that they no longer have a FaceBook, Twitter, or, Reddit account. They are looking down on me for my participation because they think that they are better than I am---since I obviously lack their superior self control.  

There is an apocryphal story to the effect that the ancient Athenians called people who weren't engaged in their social life "idiots", and that's why it is a pejorative term to this day. From what I've read, this isn't true.

Many political commentators have interpreted the word "idiot" as reflecting the Ancient Greeks' attitudes to civic participation and private life, combining the ancient meaning of 'private citizen' with the modern meaning 'fool' to conclude that the Greeks used the word to say that it is selfish and foolish not to participate in public life. But this is not how the Greeks used the word.

It is certainly true that the Greeks valued civic participation and criticized non-participation. Thucydides quotes Pericles' Funeral Oration as saying: "[we] regard... him who takes no part in these [public] duties not as unambitious but as useless" (τόν τε μηδὲν τῶνδε μετέχοντα οὐκ ἀπράγμονα, ἀλλ᾽ ἀχρεῖον νομίζομεν). However, neither he nor any other ancient author uses the word "idiot" to describe non-participants, or in a derogatory sense; its most common use was simply a private citizen or amateur as opposed to a government official, professional, or expert. The derogatory sense came centuries later, and was unrelated to the political meaning.

From the Wikipedia entry on "Idiot" 

My sense of annoyance is that what I consider a vice (not being engaged with the society we live in), they consider a virtue. 

&&&&

In this article I talk about the ancient Greek's participating in civically engaged arguments. The best example of this was Socrates---who ended up being executed after the Athenian state lost it's war with Sparta and its democracy was replaced by an oligarchy. He described himself as being like what we would call a "deer-fly" who's job is to bite the comfortable and force them out of their complacency. 

That's sort of what a journalist should do, IMHO. And that's at least part of why I write this blog. If you think that it serves a useful purpose, why not subscribe? Most folks pony up $5/month, but as little as $1/month is really helpful. (I support a couple YouTube channels by that much---so it isn't an insult.) It's not hard to do through PayPal or Patreon.  

&&&&

The fact of the matter is that people have a choice about how much they choose or do not choose to engage in the world around them. Moreover, they also get to choose who they engage with, and who they do not. This issue came home to me recently when I heard about Lisa Raitt's recent little "kerfuffle" on Twitter. 

For those of you who don't know, she posted a link to an article in the Financial Post (ie: the National Post) by Ross McKitrick (who happens to be an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph). This article suggested that the climate emergency hasn't resulted in more and worse extreme weather events, and, moreover there appears to be a world-wide conspiracy aimed at keeping this "fact" out of public discourse. McKitrick ends his piece with the following statement: 

The continual claim of such links is misinformation employed for political and rhetorical purposes. Powerful people get away with it because so few people know what the numbers show. Many scientists who know better remain silent. And the few who push back against the propaganda, such as Roger Pielke Jr., find themselves on the receiving end of abuse and career-threatening attacks, even though they have all the science in their corner. Something has gotten scary and extreme, but it isn’t the weather.

Ross McKitrick, U. of Guelph Economics prof, who purports to know a great deal about 

climate change. Public domain image by the U. of Guelph c/o the Wiki Commons.

I won't try to get into the "nitty gritty" of the science behind "heroic" economists pushing back against a conspiracy of climate scientists on the pages of the Post-Media flagship. Instead, I want to talk about a "Twitter Storm" that erupted when Raitt posted a link to the latest McKitrick eruption.

It appears that Raitt was absolutely inundated by people who attacked her for spreading misinformation. Interestingly enough, this resulted in an invitation by an actual climate scientist (ie: not an economist) to re-examine her opinion based on something like real evidence. Amazingly enough, Raitt seems to have changed her mind on the subject. But then she offered a quote that I found absolutely gob-smacking:

While Raitt said she can’t speak for Scheer, she believes “people are just getting their heads around this kind of stuff.” [My emphasis.]

What upsets me is the fact that Raitt is the deputy leader of the Conservative party---which has built it's brand around attempting to sabotage any real attempt to deal with the climate emergency---and, she doesn't seem to have bothered to put much thought into the subject up until now.

Conservative MP, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Lisa Raitt.
Hasn't really thought very much about the Climate Emergency until last week.
Public Domain image from Wiki Commons by Tabercil.

At first glance this might sound surprising, as she has a Master's degree in chemistry from the University of Guelph. But she also has a law degree and has done extra training in the United Kingdom on international trade and commerce. This is a lot to have accomplished for someone who's only 51 years old. (Oh, and in addition, she has two sons---but there was a "stay-at-home" dad.) Plus, of course, all the political work that goes into rising to the deputy leadership position in the official opposition. And, being a child born out of wedlock who was raised by a dockworker's family, she probably didn't receive any "special favours" in her life either.

I suspect that like a lot of very successful people, Raitt has learned to be incredibly focused in where she puts her attention. Not only do I doubt if there are many nights where she kicks off her shoes and watches Neflix, I also suspect that she never reads anything unless it is specifically directed at the task in hand. Moreover, I also suspect that she rarely gets any time in face-to-face with lunatics like myself who have opinions totally outside of anything Conservative.

More's the pity.

I'm concerned that our society is being guided by more and more by people who's way of dealing with information overload and a general decline in civility in public discourse is to create their own little "walled gardens". Within these secluded enclaves they tend to thoughts that don't disrupt their view of the world and don't entertain visitors who talk too loud and stomp all over the primroses. Retirement can be more peaceful in these gardens. And a career can be carefully nurtured free from wasteful distractions. But society suffers when people cease rubbing up against the "other types" in the public square.

&&&&

Furthermore, I say to you---the climate emergency must be dealt with!

Mike Schreiner Talks About Housing

On January 11th I had the opportunity to sit down with Guelph's MPP Mike Schreiner. One of the things I try to do with this blog is to avoid asking superficial questions in order to get what Mike calls "ten second answers". To that end, I put in a couple hours with him to dig out the background to the decisions he makes as Guelph's rep at Queen's Park. What follows comes from the first fifteen minutes of our conversation. I'm planning to add more in future posts.

Mike Schreiner making a statement on Mental Health day.
From the party website, cropped by Bill Hulet.

&&&&

Hulet: What do you think should be done about the housing problem that Guelph is facing?

The two biggest issues at the door have been housing and water. What we need is a "housing first" strategy for people with mental health or addiction issues. That's because it's difficult to get someone stabilized when they don't have a place to live. It's hard to get someone into the workforce if they don't have housing. It's hard to get access to essential service like healthcare, addiction service, etc, if they don't have housing. 

Taking a housing first approach isn't just essential for dealing with the homeless---it's essential for a whole lot of other social issues. 

&&&&

Here's a short video from the "Homeless Hub" where an expert describes what a housing first strategy looks like, where it comes from, and, how well it works.


The main thing to remember when we are confronted by a homeless person in distress is to ask ourselves a simple, yet profound question: "are they homeless because they are dysfunctional?", or, "are they dysfunctional because they are homeless?"

I first realized this issue when I got to know someone who had a significant mental illness (I assumed schizophrenia---but I'm not a psychiatrist) but had a trust fund and wasn't destitute. She was "mad as a hatter", but she was always well-dressed, owned and drove a car (that took some getting used to---although she seemed safe enough), and, had an apartment near the beer store on Woolwich. That was when I realized that a lot of what I associated with mental illness was actually a product of poverty, not the illness itself.

&&&&

Housing affordability affects a lot of people who you wouldn't think of having issues---young, middle-class, professional couples, university or college grads. I'm hearing about housing affordability from people like that---and from folks who are living in tents and moving from place to place to place. 

So it's a problem that requires a multi-pronged approach.

First, I'm a big believer in inclusionary zoning laws. I feel the Liberal government screwed-up bringing in inclusionary zoning rules. That left a bad taste in people's mouths. 

If you look at examples in the United States and Europe inclusionary zoning has been a hugely effective tool in increasing the availability of affordable housing stock. 

So from my perspective any new housing stock in Guelph---condo, rental, subdivision, townhouse---should have a minimum of 20% "lower market housing". Most places fund that through the developer. And they do that by offering the developer certain incentives. One might be a density bonus, or through accelerated approvals. You figure out a way it's incorporated into the cost of doing business for the developer and put in some "bonusing" to incentivize that.  

Where the Liberals made a mistake was that they didn't mandate a minimum percentage and instead mandated a maximum percentage---that was just 10%. And they said the city had to cover 40% of the cost. So that meant it was never going to happen.  

But affordability all starts with inclusionary zoning because that allows you to accelerate the creation of a stock of affordable housing. Part of the challenge is we don't have enough supply to meet demand in Guelph. 

And that starts accommodating the needs particularly of people with modest and working class incomes, as we make more housing stock available. That has a "filtering down effect" on the rest of the marketplace---for people who are more marginally housed.  

That would be everything. Clair-Maltby, the York Road Innovation District, Baker Street, projects in the Ward, stuff happening out on Willow---everything, minimum 20%. 

&&&&

The phrase inclusionary zoning was created in opposition to the term exclusionary zoning---which is a very commonly understood concept. Zoning bylaws have been created for a very long time to create areas in the city where certain types of "undesirables" are kept out of the neighbourhood. Inclusionary zoning is designed to ensure that these "undesirables" actually have places to live.

The USA has a longer history of using inclusionary zoning (where it is often called "inclusionary housing") than Canada. It came about there in reaction to racist housing policies that excluded blacks from large areas of cities, which resulted in shortages and high housing costs for the people least able to afford them. In addition, post-war governments in the US had traditionally built significant amounts of social housing for lower income people, but this was cut back during the general retreat of the welfare state since the 1970s.

Europe, on the other hand, has only recently started using inclusionary zoning within the last couple decades. That's because social housing has always been a much larger part of the market there than in North America (much larger than even the US government during it's heyday). It was only because of the growth of the "neo-liberal consensus" that the private sector has recently become a major player in the European housing market. At the same time, Europe has a different attitude towards the price of land as a part of housing costs. The consensus there is that any increase in value comes about because of government action (infrastructure, roads, libraries, schools, museums, etc), so it has the right to extract and use the "windfall profits" of real estate development to force the creation of affordable housing (in economics, this is called "betterment"). (For a brief discussion of these and other issues, take a look at this paper from the 42nd International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP).)

When Schreiner talked about the provincial legislation that governs inclusionary zoning, it sounded like the provincial Liberal government had passed inclusionary zoning legislation that restricts cities to being able to use it for only up to 10% of the units and has to pay 40% of the cost. But I think instead he was making more of a comment about the process whereby the eventual legislation was created rather than the final result. The numbers he was referring to were in the initial version of the bill that was proposed by the Wynne government in early 2018. But there was tremendous push-back by both municipalities and housing advocacy groups during the consultation process, which resulted in these onerous elements of the proposed bill being removed by the time it was eventually passed. But from a "public relations" point of view, this "roll out" was a total disaster because of the long-lasting impression it left with city Councils and the general public.

I looked through the part of the Planning Act that deals with inclusionary zoning.  As near as I can tell, the province gives cities a great deal of latitude to use this concept when creating new subdivisions. All they have to do is add it to their Official Plan.

This in itself is a hurdle. As I pointed out in a previous post, Guelph's current official plan was appealed by a list of eight different groups (seven businesses and one community organization) to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). This went from October 2014 to March 2018---during which time the Liberal government dramatically weakened the ability of the OMB to change municipal Official Plans. Since then, the Conservatives have resurrected the Board and given it back it's own powers. This means that municipalities are back to the "good old days" where they feel that they have to self-censor themselves to avoid successful challenges by developers in costly OMB fights. The implication for me is that this will cause Councils and staff to think long and hard before they propose "bold moves" with inclusionary zoning.

In addition, the Act sets out rules that say a detailed "Assessment Report" needs to be filled out by the city that details the following:

• demographics and population;
• household incomes;
• housing supply by housing type that is both existing and planned for in the OP;
• housing types and sizes needed as IZ units;
• current average market price and rent for each housing type, taking into account location;
• potential impacts on the housing market and potential financial viability of development or redevelopment from IZ by-laws on unit set asides, affordability period, measures and incentives and price or rent of an affordable unit, taking into account value of land, cost of construction, market price, market rent and housing demand and supply. The analysis must also take into account provincial policies and plans and official plan policies related to growth and development;
• written opinion of the impact analysis from a person independent of the municipality.

The legislation says that an Assessment Report needs to be done before Inclusionary Zoning is added to the Official Plan and needs to be done over again every five years after the last one in order to ensure that no new changes are required. In addition, every two years the city is required to provide to the general public a report that outlines the following:

1. The number of affordable housing units.
2. The types of affordable housing units.
3. The location of the affordable housing units.
4. The range of household incomes for which the affordable housing units were provided.
5. The number of affordable housing units that were converted to units at market value.
6. The proceeds that were received by the municipality from the sale of affordable housing units.

In addition, there are other specific rules governing Inclusionary Zoning. Two tremendously important ones are that inclusionary zoning doesn't apply to any project that has ten or fewer units, and,

(c) on or before the day an official plan authorizing inclusionary zoning was adopted by the council of the municipality, a request for an amendment to an official plan, if required, and an application to amend a zoning by-law were made in respect of the development or redevelopment along with an application for either of the following:

(i) approval of a plan of subdivision under section 51 of the Act, or
(ii) approval of a description or an amendment to a description under section 9 of the Condominium Act, 1998; or

(d) on or before the day the inclusionary zoning by-law is passed, an application is made in respect of the development or redevelopment for a building permit, a development permit, a community planning permit, or approval of a site plan under subsection 41 (4) of the Act.

It appears to me that this second rule basically means that all land that developers already own is, in effect, "grandfathered" under the old rules and cannot be subject to inclusionary zoning---simply because they can easily apply for an change to the bylaw once they see Council moving towards inclusionary zoning.

This is doubly important because there are increasingly very few greenfield developments left in cities like Guelph because of the Places to Grow Act (which I discussed in a previous post). This means that a great deal of new housing stock needs to be created through infill and "repurposing". This is where the first rule applies---inclusionary zoning doesn't apply to anything with ten units or less.

Schreiner's point is well taken about the need to actually set aside a percentage of the units in any given area of the city so there is housing for middle to lower income individuals. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, it looks like the current legislation comes about 50 years too late to deal with the big housing problems that Guelph currently faces. What we need is some sort of regulatory framework that would allow cities to retroactively create inclusionary zoning. I have no idea how that would work, and I'm certainly not suggesting that Schreiner is proposing such a thing---even though as the leader of a provincial party that is theoretically in his area of responsibilities. But speaking from a strictly practical point of view his description has great merit---and might actually be the only thing that would really work. But I can't help but think that it could only be done on a large scale with enormous opposition from both developers and home owners.

Video still used by "Fair Use" provision, from the
You Can't Get There from Here website.

Having said that, there will be instances where inclusionary zoning will be a tool that Guelph can use---if the newly-resurrected OMB allows it. But unless there is some significant radical legislation from Queen's Park, it is easy to agree with Schreiner that a "multi-pronged" approach is needed.

&&&&

I'm hoping that some of you readers think about how much work I put into these blog posts and appreciate the effort. It is very hard to find the sorts of in-depth interviews with your elected officials that I try to do in the "Back-Grounder". Moreover, I try to research around their statements in order to see if what they are saying makes sense, and, to try to explain in detail a point that they may just be making in passing. If you like the results, spread the word. Also consider subscribing, either through Patreon or PayPal. I work very hard at this blog, and the indie media model is not going to work if people aren't willing to fund it. 

&&&&

The next thing for me is better utilization of our existing housing stock. That means laneway housing, secondary suites, granny suites, basement apartments, etc. We have a lot of "over-housed" people in Guelph. And we could quickly create a better utilization of our existing housing stock. 

I've talked to a number of realtors in Guelph just to get a feel of whether there is a demand for that. The feedback I've gotten is "yes". One day I actually walked around with a real estate agent. And she pointed out "that garage should be a granny suite", "that should be a laneway house", blah, blah, blah. 

It's a quicker way of "ramping up" the existing housing stock---which again has a filtering effect into the rest of the market, and it provides additional income for people---especially aging baby boomers, who maybe need less housing---but want to stay in their homes. 

There area a lot of people who are aging and facing housing affordability issues. This is a way to increase affordability for people who already own a home. And it increases the stock of housing on the market. 

&&&&

When Schreiner talks about "filtering", he's mentioning an important concept that tends to be ignored by most of the people interested in housing affordability. Basically, the idea is that existing housing stock declines in value as it ages, which makes it more affordable. To understand this, I think about all the rundown apartments and shared rented houses I lived in when I was a university student and poorly-paid janitor. These are also the "starter home", "handy-man specials" that my siblings and I bought and fixed-up using "sweat equity".

Unfortunately, if a housing market heats up too much---as it has in Guelph---housing stock doesn't decline in value anymore. This means that existing apartment owners will put money back into fixing up their units, because they know that they can keep raising the rents without ending up with empty spaces. It also means that people with a lot of money will buy up "fixer uppers" and either bulldoze the building to replace it with a "new build", or, hire expensive contractors to renovate the property. Both of these processes cut down the existing stock of cheap housing and prevent new filtering from taking place. This is the process known as "gentrification", which pushes low and medium income people out of neighbourhoods.

Filtering ceases and gets replaced by gentrification when the demand for housing outpaces the supply. Schreiner is suggesting that in order to stop gentrification and start filtering again the city needs to find a fast way to move from a housing deficit to a slight surplus. And, he thinks the most practical option would be through increasing the number of "informal units" in low density neighbourhoods---lanehouses, tiny houses, basement apartments, coach houses, etc. Not only would this be the fastest approach, it is all within the legal power of the city---so no money or legislation from other levels of government would be necessary.

There is, however, a "600 lb gorilla in the living room". That is that a lot of people who already own their own homes don't want more people living in their neighbourhood. That's why we have all these zoning regulations in the first place. (That's the exclusionary zoning I mentioned above.) One of the key places where this arrives is with regards to parking.

When people rent out a room, basement apartment, granny flat, etc, to someone to help pay off their enormous mortgage, that renter usually wants a place to park her car. And when the city "trades off" required parking to get more affordable housing units (a common play in inclusionary zoning---because parking is astronomically expensive to build), there are invariably complaints from existing home owners about the increased levels of on-street parking and other owners paving their front yards to increase parking spaces.

You only have to be a casual observer of development in Guelph to see people's concerns. Take a look at this June 11th article by Graeme McNaughton in The Mercury/Tribune about a proposed townhouse development. It contains the following quote:

While delegates spoke to the impact this would have on the area’s greenery, another issue also saw a number of comments: where is everyone going to park?
“It is at maximum capacity,” resident Rubina Heddokheel said of the current on-street parking situation in the area.
“There's no parking available, ever.”

And here are a couple comments about another article by McNaughton on October 24th, 2018 about a proposed 800 unit townhouse complex proposed near the CostCo.

I spoke to three of the ward 4 candidates when they canvassed. Not one mentioned this development. And I did bring up both city expanding in this area as well as township use of there lands ( that potential for the glass plant raised a lot of eyebrows in this area). Here’s an idea. How about a developer submits a plan for single family dwellings in this area.

802 parking spaces for 800 units?

And, I know that once the condo tower at the old Marsh Tire site opened up, there were hordes of cars parking at the curb all through my neighbourhood. (I talked to a couple people about this, they said that the visitor parking at the complex is far too small for demand, so they have to park at places like the curb in front of my house instead.)

I think that any politician who really wants to help with housing needs to come up with some sort of strategy for changing public opinion about increased density. There also needs to be some appreciation of how absolutely devastating parking issues can be to creating a good housing strategy. Unfortunately, politicians who tell people things that they don't want to hear generally do not get elected, so I can understand why they try to "accentuate the positive". But somewhere, somehow, this parking issue needs to be dealt with. And, who better to do it than a Green Party MPP?

&&&&

The next idea is we need government to build more supported housing. We have a lot of people who face problems of poverty and mental health---even if we create a lot of housing stock and filtering lowers prices for a lot of people, there are still going to be people who for these reasons are going to need more supports around them. We haven't built enough supportive housing in Ontario. That is going to have to come from government funding.  

We need changes to our municipal bylaws, but also to the Planning Act to allow for alternate types of housing to be easier to build, develop and access. What I mean by that is co-housing, tiny homes, community shared housing, etc. As an example we have a 30 foot frontage bylaw in Guelph that prevents the creation of tiny homes. 

Guelph Architect, David McAuley.
Image c/o Bookshelf Cafe, used
under the Fair Use provision.

A lot of people in Guelph would like to have tiny homes. There are bureaucratic planning and bylaw barriers to building new types of housing. I know David McAuley is trying to build a co-housing project up on Speedvale for seniors and he's running into all kinds of planning and bylaw barriers to making it happen.  

If we removed some of the impediments to building new forms of housing and habitation, that would again build up supply, and that would have a filtering effect.

The final piece is a reinvestment---I see the federal government doing this because I don't see the province doing it. We need more co-op housing, more social housing, government supported housing as well. 

For me, if you take a multi-pronged effort we can go a long way towards solving the affordability crisis. 

&&&&

One final point. Most of what I've mentioned is medium to long term. We have some very short term things that need to be dealt with right now. One is shelter space, two is opening warming centres. (I don't know where---my office, City Hall, the Armouries.) We have people sleeping on the streets in the dead of winter. [This interview was recorded in January, remember.] 

The survey said 300 [Mike is referring to the Guelph Homeless Survey, which had recently been done when the interview was recorded] but that's probably under-estimated---people sleeping on the streets and they need some place warmer. I've gone to the Drop In Centre and sat and listened to people. Most of these folks are just desperate for a place to sleep---tonight! 

A lot of these folks seriously consider getting arrested, because at least a jail cell has heat. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. 

Hulet: It's also a huge waste of government money.

A huge waste of government money! 

[According to the John Howard Society, the annual average cost of keeping someone in a provincial jail is $67,000. That would cost about $184/day. Surely it's cheaper to provide a decent warming centre!]

Another one is to get creative about tent cities. Right now we waste a ton of government money, and do significant harm to people's lives---I think---by shutting down a tent city. People lose their home and then they move somewhere else. In Guelph and then months later we shut that tent city down, and then they move somewhere else. 

I don't know entirely what the solution is---but that's a problem that we need to tackle. And we need to do it in a way that provides supports and services to people without destroying their home every month. It might not be much, but it's something---and we're taking it away month to month to month.  

 &&&&

Reading through this transcript I'm struck by one thing that I hadn't noticed before. Mike Schreiner has a great deal of compassion towards the poor and distressed. He's obviously spent a great deal of time thinking about these issues and seems to be searching for the best solutions he can. This should dispel any idea that as a Green he doesn't care about anything but the environment.

I also think that it's important to recognize the breadth of ideas that he is dealing with. He's obviously spent a lot of time reading on the subject. He most definitely isn't just repeating some "talking points" that were prepared for him by some staffer. I think we could have done far worse when the city elected him to represent us at Queen's Park.

&&&&

Furthermore, I say to you---the climate emergency must be dealt with!

Fundraising is Making Us Angry

Politics is something of an arm's race. When you find one problem and bring in legislation fix it, it generally doesn't take long for the forces of chaos to find some way to pervert the thing into something new and horrible.

In this particular case, I'm thinking about our election financing rules. I used to take great pride in the idea that Canada had managed to effectively eliminate corporate and union donations in our elections. There seems to be some evidence that businesses have managed to by-pass this rule to some extent by having individual employees channel money to parties through their own personal donations, and, by supporting "third parties" who seek to influence elections but not by directly supporting a particular party. But that's not the issue that really concerns me. It's a question of "orders of magnitude", and I don't think the money that gets around the rules is anywhere near what it used to be.

What really bothers me is the way parties are using modern technology to raise money using small donations from ordinary people. This is a startling thing for me to realize, as I had always thought that this would be the best way to finance a political party.

Indeed, I was something of a pioneer in doing this. I was first exposed to it by our past mayor, Karen Farbridge, who told me how she used contact tracking software designed for salespeople (freeware based on DOS---which should give you an idea of how far back this happened) to help with her municipal election campaigns. I set up a system for the local Green Party riding association and used it for things like fundraising and organizing around neighbourhoods by sorting supporters by their postal code. After a while, I came to a Green Party convention to suggest that the party-as-a-whole should be working with something like this. It being the Greens, I got angry complaints about "big brother", the need to create our own system instead of just buying something off the shelf, etc. But eventually, years later it too adopted the idea---just like all the other parties.

&&&&

The party that really became masters at fundraising through the use of targeted databases was the Conservatives. It seems obvious to me that this is the reason why the Steven Harper government eliminated corporate donations in 2006. Since the Liberals tended to raise their money through a small number of large donations---often from corporations, and the Conservatives raised their's through a large number of small ones from private individuals, eliminating corporate money gave them a fundraising advantage.

This didn't bother me much, as I thought the others would soon catch up. What I didn't realize was that the Conservatives were good at raising money not because of their computer database, but rather because of the message that they were marketing. It is easy to not know this, simply because you won't get any fundraising letters from Conservatives unless you are willing to sign up for them by buying a membership or asking for them. But I recently asked around and found someone who does have a federal Conservative membership and asked her to forward all the begging emails she gets to me. I won't say the results were "fascinating" or even "interesting", but they were enlightening. Let's look at the latest letter I've received.

&&&&

"World's Most Competitive Economies: Canada Falls To Lowest Spot Ever In Rankings" - Yahoo Finance

[Name withheld to protect identity of my informant], despite all our incredible potential, despite our brilliant workforce, and despite our natural wealth, we are falling behind as a country.

And the economic storm clouds are only growing darker and darker under this Liberal government.

Protectionism threatens free trade.
Our natural resources are trapped.
Investment is fleeing the country.
Consumer debt and affordability concerns are ballooning.
Getting anything done is almost impossible.
Canadians have less in their pockets.
And, of course, there is the carbon tax.
Canadians cannot afford for Justin Trudeau to captain the ship any longer.
His government has been a parade of new taxes, red-tape, bureaucracy, incompetence, and corruption.

Enough is enough!

Andrew Scheer will put Canada’s national interests first by championing Canadian resources, lowering taxes, and breaking down internal trade barriers.

Please chip in and support our efforts to reset the course of the Canadian economy!

Let's get Canada back on track.

Sincerely,

The Conservative Party of Canada

&&&&

I have about a dozen letters from the Conservatives that came out in one month. A few of them contain links to a speech by Andrew Scheer or a new advertisement by the party. But most are like the one above:  a list of bold, unsupported assertions about how the Liberals are destroying the country, and, a plea for money.

Since the letter doesn't offer a link to check the headline attributed to "Yahoo Finance" I tried to find the exact story the letter was referring to. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it, but I did see references to other sites with the same title. The nearest thing I could find was in the Huffington Post, "World's Most Competitive Economies: Canada Falls To Lowest Spot Ever In Rankings". It included the following chart.

From the Huffington Post. Used under the "Fair Use" copyright provision.

This would suggest that Canada has dropped in this ranking from number ten to thirteen in one year. That sounds bad, doesn't it? But look at the way all the other numbers are fluctuating in the same year. There are 14 countries that have a number for both years, and added together there was a fluctuation of 30 pts---some up, and, some down. Divide that by 14, and you get a little over 2 pts as being the average movement. That would be what a statistician would call "background noise". And in any statistical average, the noise is going to be composed of numbers above and below. So in this case the fact that Canada's index number changed less than one point above the statistical average, would indicate that it isn't really a significant change at all.

Moreover, if you read the text that goes with the article, it includes nuggets like "this problem can’t be pinned on Trudeau’s Liberals or any one previous government ― it’s a long-term trend in Canada’s economy". 

&&&&

I suppose that if I was primarily concerned about raising money, I'd do some of the things I mention in this post. I'd pander to people's emotions and consciously try to confirm their pre-existing biases. But that's not what this blog is supposed to be about. The thing is that what the "professionals" do is try to appeal to people's subconscious, whereas what I'm trying to do is get people to become more aware. That means that in the road race of commerce I'm starting with concrete blocks tied to both of my feet.  

That's OK. I've always been a pretty silly person. But I want more responsible, sensible people to get involved in doing this sort of thing. And they will only take over (so they can make fun of me later) if I can "prove the concept". And that's only going to happen if people subscribe to "the Guelph-Back-Grounder". I've been down this road before. I worked for years building the Green Party to the point where good people with careers would be willing to put their asses on the line and run for it. It's the same thing with independent, fact-based, investigative journalism. No "good people" will make it a career until the flakes like me can make some money at it. 

I'm now 60 years old, so I don't have as much time to invest in rejuvenating journalism as I did in politics. Will you subscribe to the Back-Grounder (you can use either Patreon or directly with PayPal) before I get too old to do this anymore? Some smart, young person is waiting in the wings to see if I can make a success of it before he commits, and it's up to you whether he does or not. 

&&&&

I could go on and write a whole article about this citation, but that's not what this editorial is supposed to be about. Instead, it's about getting people who have already "drunk the Kool-Aid" to send the Conservatives some money. 

There is something known as "confirmation bias" that philosophers of science fret about. That is, human beings have a "built-in" tendency to start off with a given hypothesis and then look selectively for evidence to support it. There's a really good evolutionary reason for this way of looking at the world. When you are a hunter walking across a field you need to be constantly aware of threats that might be lurking near you. That rustling in the bushes might be a leopard stalking up on you, or, it could be something totally benign---like the wind. But if you wait to see if it is the wind versus a leopard, and it turns out to be the leopard, you end up dead. On the other hand, if you run from a supposed leopard and it was just the wind---no problem, you still get to father children.

The problem is that the biggest threat facing us right now isn't leopards, but rather things like the climate emergency. And confirmation bias has ceased to be an evolutionary asset and instead become a liability. And, I would argue that this fundraising letter is designed to take advantage of that liability in order support a party who's current election strategy is based on ensuring that Canadians do nothing to prevent runaway climate change.

&&&&

It would be bad enough if the only real issue I have with this method of fundraising was that it put money in the hands of people trying to sabotage efforts to create a functional response to the climate emergency. But what makes it much worse is that this method of raising money has the side effect of making people more angry and tribal.

The big problem with directed marketing---it doesn't matter if it's done through social media like FaceBook or letters sent out by a political party---is that it cuts down on the information that people can access. It used to be that people would often dismiss a computer projection with the saying "garbage in, garbage out". That's to say that it doesn't matter how good the program is that you use to analyze a problem if it's using an incomplete or corrupted set of data. Human beings are also information processing machines, and we access the information we work with through a repository of data known as "culture". If we restrict our access to the world around us by only paying attention to a one-sided information "silo", we aren't going to have an accurate understanding of the world around us. The result can be what's described in this YouTube clip.

In the past the mass media---like the big newspapers---had to create a generalized type of "news" that was accepted by readers who had a variety of different worldviews. This made things bland, but it did mean that people got exposed to a lot of information and ideas that contradicted their preconceived notions. But nowadays people can live in an information bubble where they only hear and read things that reinforce those preconceptions. This makes people less and less willing to think that there might actually be some value in those other opinions. This makes them more willing to open their wallets---but it also makes them more angry with and intolerant towards people who don't share their opinions.

&&&&

You probably aren't going to find much information on line about how political parties harness confirmation bias and anger to raise money. That's tremendously lucrative information and the people who know how to do it hide their information behind very expensive pay walls and charge very high consulting fees to discuss it. But luckily, since the rise of Donald Trump in the USA we've seen a parallel phenomenon with non-conservatives that gives us a window onto this world that simply didn't exist before.

The election of Donald Trump has been a gold mine for some non-profit charities. One key example is the America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which protects American constitutional rights by launching lawsuits against government attempts to weaken them. As an article in Forbes magazine states in a July 5th, 2018 article:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has seen a spike in membership in the Trump era. ACLU membership grew from 400,000 to 1.84 million in the 15 months following President Donald Trump’s election, according to the New York Times. The group’s online donations used to run between $3 to $5 million annually, but in the year after Trump took office, it raised $120 million online.

This phenomenon is called "rage giving" or "rage donations". That is, people see some sort of assault on civil liberties or simple decency, and get angry. This causes them to seek out some group that they feel is doing good work pushing back against this---Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, etc---and immediately make a donation. This hasn't been lost on people who make a living doing fundraising for charities, as these articles in Non-Profit Quarterly and Inside Philanthropy show. (I suspect the people at these two publications are less concerned than political consultants would be about people reading their papers without paying hard currency first.)

&&&&

I'm not about to suggest that other parties don't also send out fundraising missives to members. I get a lot from the Green Party, even though I'm no longer a member (because I'm now a journalist and as such I don't think that I should be directly involved in party politics.) But I do think that there is a quantifiable difference between the different parties and the content of their fundraising appeals. I am afraid, however, that the others will eventually decide that if they are going to raise enough money to fund competitive campaigns they will have to start actively soliciting "rage donations". This would be a catastrophe from democracy.

Instead, I think one thing we could do is dramatically reduce the amount that any party can spend on a campaign. I did a quick search for how much each federal candidate spent on running in Guelph. The earliest financial numbers I could find said that the most spent 1993 was about $58,000 by Bill Scott for the Conservatives. In 2015 this had ballooned to $222,000 by Gord Miller for the Greens. That's an astonishing 383% difference! And remember, this doesn't take into effect the "air game" that comes from the head office and is spent on things like advertising, polling, etc. I can't help but think that if the "financial throttle" was eased back a bit, there'd be less pressure to get the money needed to keep a party functioning. That might tone down a bit of the propaganda that get pushed at ordinary people.

&&&&


Furthermore, I say to you---climate emergency must be dealt with!

   

Post-Denialism, or, Can There Be an Environmental Morality?

During this Spring's floods I noticed something really quite remarkable about our dear Premier. Unlike other Conservatives, he's simply given up on trying to deny the existence of the climate emergency.

Instead, what he does is confuse people about what policies his government is pursuing. That means that he can cut provincial funding that is designed to deal with flooding, while at the same time looking like he really cares in photo ops. He can also say that Ontario is doing a great job in reducing carbon emissions but without pointing out that he rode to power by smearing the Liberal electricity policy. (You know, the policy that actually allowed Ontario to become the first major jurisdiction in North America to eliminate their coal-fired generators.)  He also ignores the fact that he has eliminated Ontario's participation in the cap-and-trade system designed to further cut emissions.

This is an interesting development because it's an example of something sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris calls "post-denialism".

You may have heard the famous quote that says "Hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue". This means that one only feels the need to be a hypocrite if one feels ashamed---or at least believes that one is expected to feel ashamed---to do a particular bad thing. For Kahn-Harris, he would paraphrase that quote from Francois de La Rochefoucauld as "denialism is the homage people pay to whatever they are denying".

Keith Kahn-Harris, image from his Twitter Feed.
Used under the "Fair-Use" copyright provision. 

As Kahn-Harris says, the key to understanding something like Holocaust denial is that the person doesn't really believe that the mass murder of Jews never happened. What he really wants to say is that their murder was a good thing and that the Third Reich was a great idea. The denier doesn't say this, however, because that is a profoundly unpopular point of view. So instead, he creates some sort of convoluted and lame argument that the Holocaust never happened. This creates a semblance of intellectual legitimacy that he and his fellow apologists for the NAZIs can hide behind.

In much the same way, people have traditionally attempted to deny the reality of the climate emergency because they had to "pay homage" to the fact that most people would admit that runaway climate change would be a very bad thing. But Doug Ford seems to have gotten to the point where he can admit that climate change exists and is "a thing"---but he just doesn't care. If he was alone in this, I wouldn't really care all that much. But he is surrounded by a political party filled with "enablers" who allow him to continue with his policies. And beneath them, there are lots of voters who supported him and gave him a majority government. What's going on here? Don't these people actually care about their children's future?

&&&&

I found out something this week. It turns out that you don't have to go through Patreon in order to make a monthly payment to "The Guelph-Back-Grounder", instead you can also do it directly through PayPal. (Thanks to Kathleen for not only being so awesome, but finding a new way to do it!) This means that you can pay directly in Canadian currency. Whatever way you choose to subscribe, however, it is much appreciated.

&&&&

The important thing to understand is that morality---what we call "right" or "wrong"---is an enormously complex issue. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know this if your only experience with moral decision-making was based on the institutions that govern our lives. Let me illustrate with an example.

Our criminal justice system is based on the notion that each individual goes through life freely choosing all their behaviours using a totally dispassionate cost-benefit analysis. Everyone---no matter what their personal history or genetic make-up---has exactly the same ability to rationally do a cost-benefit analysis of all their actions, all the time. This means that if someone does a criminal act, they do so fully aware of the consequences of being caught and freely chooses to do it. That means, that if someone chooses to break the law they can be deterred from doing so in future by punishing them with a jail term. And after they have received that sentence, they will realize that the price of getting caught and punished outweighs the benefit of committing the crime. This means that everyone who is caught and punished never commits a crime ever again.

Of course, the reality is totally different. But why?

To understand that, I'd suggest that people look at the history of criminal justice in our culture. Let's start with the gladiatorial combats in the Roman Arena. Most of the people who fought and died there were convicted criminals or prisoners of war. And the most common sorts of fights were ritual reenactments of early battles between the Romans and other cultures. As such, they were theatrical attempts to get the audience to feel what it means to be a member of Roman society. Because people are actually fighting for their lives, and, participants are going to actually die, it was very easy to become emotionally engaged with the spectacle. (Incidentally, this is why popular movies have lots of sex and violence---it's a short cut for directors to get audiences to pay attention.)

In much the same way, Anglo-Saxon "jurisprudence" often consisted of trial by combat or ordeal. The former consisted of a ritual duel where combatants representing two different sides would fight using a variety of weapons in a specified way. The idea was that "God" would reveal who was right according to who won. A trial by ordeal involved one person choosing to do some specifically painful act---such as grasping a hot piece of metal. The idea would be God would reveal guilt or innocence by whether or not the man could perform the task or would survive the consequences.

In both of these cases, the important issue is that a "combat" has been done and it was done theatrically to appeal to the emotions of an audience. We still have such a thing in our modern system. Instead of having two people going after each other with swords or pole axes, we have lawyers jousting with words. And instead of asking people to grab red hot metal bars, we expect them to dump all their wealth on the balance in the form of lawyer's fees and submit to years of litigation. If they have the "guts" and "stamina" to handle this ordeal, they may have been proved to be in-the-right.

In the past people enjoyed the theatrical event of executions. In our more modern era people are restricted to purging their emotions through dramatic recreations---witness the enormous number of crime-based television shows. In addition, our politicians use the punishment of the guilty to "whip" their followers into a frenzy of support, and, the media use the same spectacle to get maximum "clicks". (Check out this example of the Conservatives and CBC doing a ritual dance around the corpse of a little girl.)

  

In effect, our criminal justice system is not primarily about either morality or even changing human behaviour. Instead, it is a type of theatre designed primarily to arouse and channel people's emotions in ways that strengthen ordinary citizen's support for the various institutions of the state: the police, the government, political parties, and, the media. Criminals and victims are pretty much not more than sock puppets that these different "powers and principalities" manipulate to create the "passion-play" that keeps our society working.

&&&&

What has this got to do with the climate emergency? Well, I'd argue that whether or not we destroy the planet is a moral issue. Depending on how you construct your ethical worldview, it is either a crime against future human beings, or, it is a crime against the entire ecosystem. Either way, it is a very, very, bad thing to do. And yet, lots of people seem to be treating the whole issue as just another "ho hum" event. Why?

I'd suggest that it's because morality only "works" for most people if they can channel their emotions into it. And the way our society codifies and controls these emotions is through creating elaborate "passion plays"---just like our criminal justice system. And for many people, their emotions have already been "captured" by other things. It's like a type of love. We don't just love everyone, instead most of us have to love a specific person or persons: our partners, our children, our extended family. If we really stretch it, we can love an institution---like the church or the military, or, something more tribal, like our ethnic identity or country. But very few people can love everyone and everything. That sort of thing we may pay lip service to, but in practice it's reserved for "saints".

In our society I'd suggest that a lot of people who are interested in the conservative way of looking at the world have had their emotional attention "caught" by a specific definition of "freedom". This can be small "boutique" freedoms like the "right to bear arms", or, a strange type of religious freedom that involves inflicting your views on others. But more commonly, it boils down to an emotional attachment to "the free market" or a personal identification as "someone who pays their own way".

My experience with a lot of business people is that they often see what they are doing as some sort of "greater calling" that makes them feel like they are participating in something noble and good. I believe that this is related to why so many young people are so attached to the writings of Ayn Rand. As teenagers we are genetically programmed to separate ourselves from our parents and develop our own personalities and worldview. (Just like when kittens are weaned they go through a stage where they are programmed to wander great distances in order to find their own "territory".) For adolescents going through this phase, many of us feel that we are like the characters of her novels---great men and women who are working to create something good and noble by pursuing our own particular drives and ambitions, but who are thwarted by a society that keeps trying to keep them from doing what they want. Unfortunately, a significant fraction of the population never grows out of this adolescent phase and doesn't develop any sort of personal sense of responsibility towards others and the common good.

If you want to understand how these people view themselves and their ideals, take a look at the following YouTube clip from "The Fountain Head". If you think, as I do, that the dialogue sounds pretty lame, just remember that when I was younger I thought it was profound. And generations of idealistic young people have gone through a "phase" of also thinking that it's profound. (Heck, the "prog-rock" band Rush built a huge following with their albums praising Ayn Rand.)

If you have really bought into this ideal of total freedom divorced from any responsibility to other people, then the climate crisis sounds like an insane fever dream. Any program that involves everyone pulling together to learn to live more lightly on the earth sounds like a totalitarian nightmare that should be fought tooth and nail---no matter what the cost.

Another conservative "passion play" involves the glorification of self-reliance. This is the pride that right-wing conservatives feel when they are able to "get the job done" even though it is hard. Take a look at this truck advertisement and see how it glorifies the stoicism of "hard working American men" (I hadn't remembered the guy with the bandaged eye or the fellow in a wheelchair lifting himself up with a block and tackle before I looked at it again.)

If you've been raised to glorify self-reliance and stoic acceptance of "the way it is", then any attempt to suggest that society should give the disadvantaged "a leg up" or that there should be some attempt to right past wrongs, is just "queue jumping".  And adding environmental protection to the "design criteria" is just "making things needlessly harder". Both of these things are the ultimate sins in the stoic, self-reliant worldview.

From what I can see, people like Doug Ford and his supporters have their own set of morality that is "clogging" their ability to understand the moral imperative that we need to collectively do something about the climate emergency. That is what has fueled climate denialism for decades. That's why Ford can stand in the midst of terrible flooding, admit that it is probably the result of climate change, and, still work to sabotage any attempt to prevent future disasters. It's simply that he thinks it would be immoral (ie: opposed to Ayn Rand's understanding of "freedom" or a Chevvy truck commercial's vision of "self-reliance") to do so. 

&&&&

I would suggest that this is the real backdrop to climate denialism, just as support for the NAZI agenda is what really motivates Holocaust denial. And Dr. Kahn-Harris would argue that both groups have increasingly dropped denialism because they believe that the recent world-wide success of right-wing populism--Donald Trump in the USA, Brexit in the UK, and, Ford in Ontario---has destroyed the last vestiges of the post-WWII consensus about what is "decent and proper" in public discourse. This allows people to come out of the woodwork to declare that "the Jews will not replace us" and "climate change is causing flooding and forest fires---but we're not going to do anything to stop it because that would interfere with the free market".  That's what Kahn-Harris means when he says we are entering into the period of "post-denialism".

Oddly enough, Dr. Kahn-Harris thinks that post-denialism is a good thing. In his opinion once people really understand what is going on, a lot of "enablers" will gag and quickly drop their support. (After all, the moral universe of radical freedom and stoic self-reliance is pretty lame if you put even casual thought into them.) They want their children to actually have decent lives and for the climate not to go totally berzerk. Popular opinion in Ontario would seem to support this hypothesis. According to the latest poll numbers I see:

Among decided and leaning voters, the Liberals were at 39.9% support, the NDP at 24.2%, the PCs at 22.4% and the Greens at 12%.

I can only hope that this trend continues and that the entire political class learns a lesson from it.

&&&&

Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!