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The CBC Reports:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet colleagues signed off on two major pipelines today, projects that will pump nearly a million more barrels of oil a day from Alberta's oilsands to global markets, if they are constructed.
Ottawa gave the green light to Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline and Enbridge's Line 3, while it rejected Northern Gateway.
Trudeau also announced that the government would ban crude oil tankers along B.C.'s North Coast, promising legislation in the new year to implement a moratorium.
[...] The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency estimates that the new capacity will result in roughly 13.5 to 17 megatonnes of additional upstream greenhouse gas emissions each year.
Kinder-Morgan's Trans Mountain project is an expansion of an existing pipeline that runs between Edmonton, Alberta, and Burnaby (part of Greater Vancouver), British Columbia. The expansion will nearly triple the amount of product that can be shipped to just under 900,000 barrels/day.
Line 3 is a 1,660km pipeline that runs between Hardisty, Alberta and Superior, Wisconsin. The proposal by Enbridge is to replace the 34" pipeline with a 36" pipeline. Enbridge expects 760,000 barrels/day of light, medium and heavy crude to flow through the upgraded pipeline
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 01 2016, @04:58PM
I'm not sure if you're referring to my comments as complaining, or if you're indirectly insinuating that in your opinion I "have no notable proficiency for thinking into the future or dealing with capitalism."
Let me put it this way. By complaining (and yes, that is complaining) about "to value anything that can't be quantified with a dollar sign", you demonstrate that you are rather ignorant about capitalism. Anything real or imagined can be valued with a dollar sign. It might not be even remotely close to what you think it should be valued, but it can be valued.
It also assumes that we as humans are the ultimate arbiters of value, and that nothing has inherent value.
Inherent value doesn't exist. Value is always subjective. And I haven't said that humans are the only source of valuation. Other animals have their own ways to impose valuation for what they want.
This sociological outlook has little basis in reality. Game theory explains these phenomena quite well. One does not have to look very far to see situations most of us would value that aren't adequately handled by capitalism: traffic, clean parks, high-quality education, elderly care, etc. Most of us could list things that we feel have value to us, that are not adequately internalised by our current version of capitalism.
There are a couple of things to note here. First, many of these problems are completely irrelevant to capitalism's alleged efficacy. Everyone has trouble with traffic, clean parks, high quality education, elderly care, etc. And as usual with this sort of thing, even if capitalist systems aren't quite as adequate as you'd like, they're better than the systems without capitalism.
Have you read the Leap Manifesto?
Yes, and the first thing I noticed was paragraph after paragraph about the supposed evils of fossil fuels and global warming. It looks to me like at least half the Manifesto is about that thing. And the outlook is remarkably skewed, such as complaining about "austerity" because of its alleged negative effect on fossil fuel use or calling for public infrastructure investment because "extreme weather events" will supposedly become more likely. The paragraph on austerity is notable for its tunnel vision:
We declare that “austerity” – which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and healthcare, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.
Not a word about Canada's publicly held debt to GDP. A high ratio is a trigger for austerity, not fossilized thinking. As of 2013, Canada's ration was 66% publicly held debt to GDP. That's high, but not quite high enough to trigger austerity (I'd consider anything over 70% to be risking austerity during some future recession). I note that the Manifesto is very delusional about where it thinks money will come from, for in the very next paragraph:
The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. Like an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending. All of these are based on a simple “polluter pays” principle and hold enormous promise.
Canada's fossil fuel subsidies aren't particularly large and you're not going to get even a little back from ending Iran or Russia's oil subsidies (most oil subsidies are in countries like those). Financial transaction taxes and those income taxes are notably unjustified here. There is no "polluter" to justify the so-called "polluter pays" principle. There's also considerable blowback since financial transactions in particular are as "low carbon" as you can get.
It's hard to sort out overpopulation without looking at habitat destruction.
Not at all. Habitat destruction is completely subordinate to overpopulation. You don't get overpopulation due to habitat destruction.
One can't deal with global warming without a sane hydrocarbon policy.
Canada's current policy is sane too.
Taking these issues one at a time isn't working.
Who's doing that? Even the ideologies that obsessively focus on climate change claim that fixing it will improve all the other problems.
The concept is to look holistically at the issues and opportunities, and make a "leap" that would be impossible as a series of small, politically hampered changes without an over-arching master plan.
The huge problem here is that your plan is probably worse than having no plan at all. The Manifesto merely assumes that switching to a renewable energy, local production economy is going to be better. But we wouldn't have so much fossil fuel use and global trade in the first place, if that were true. Our economic systems just aren't that deficit that we would ignore some immense value like that for decade after decade.
Similarly, the Manifesto makes broad, unjustified assumptions about the efficacy of mass transit, the revenue stream they'll get from fossil fuel taxes and taxes on rich people activities, or opening Canada's borders to immigrants while simultaneously creating costly social services that will encourage tragedy of the commons situations.
Finally, while the plan deals with poverty in Canada, it does the opposite for poverty outside of Canada (reversal of trade treaties, emphasis on local production, etc).