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On Bad Things Getting Worse and Pitched Battles in the War on Science

Tea & Two Slices is a long-running local news round-up by NEEDS frontman and veteran dishwasher Sean Orr, who lives and works in Gastown, deeply aware of his privilege.

Oh dear. Ross McKitrick: Reality check — there is no ‘climate emergency’ in Vancouver.

This is an opinion piece…on science…written by an economics professor…who is a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute…which has been funded by the Koch Brothers…who made billions off the tar sands…using anecdotes about the weather…published by Vancouver’s major daily newspaper…in 2019. As if Vancouver isn’t surrounded by the ocean. As if our skies aren’t filled with wildfire smoke every summer. As if our forests aren’t ravaged by pine beetles. As if an influx of climate refugees won’t fuel even more xenophobia…

And yet, McKitrick inadvertently makes a good point. The people most responsible for climate change are the people who will be the least affected by it. The global south will suffer and we’ll be pretty much isolated. You have to think it’s another one of the many reasons why Vancouver has become such a Hedge City.

But make no mistake, articles like this are dangerous and part of a global strategy to downplay the coming catastrophe while the elites prepare their escape plan, leaving us behind to skirmish for squandering resources. June was the hottest month ever recorded and July is expected to be even hotter; the Arctic is on fire; a very loud minority of unapologetic petro-patriots are on the march; and we have about 18 months to save the planet.

And what better sums up the decades-long war on science than this comment on the above “opinion piece”:

So yeah, we’re pretty much fucked.

And while it’s noble and important for the City to plan ahead for the coming crisis, there’s really only one crisis, albeit intimately connected, that we can effectively do something about. Yup, it’s housing: Titanic Lack of Focus May Sink Vancouver’s Chance to Make Housing Affordable. I’m so sad this guy didn’t get to run for mayor:

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the things on this list are not important. I am just saying that to put the housing crisis on a long unprioritized list of laudable things is like the captain of the Titanic jotting down a to-do list that includes “clean scuppers, order canapés for New Year’s Eve party, avoid that iceberg up ahead.”

Planning cities to be socially as well as environmentally sustainable is a process I’m pretty up to speed on. You could even say I wrote the book on it. The number one rule in this book, and in this kind of planning, is this: ideally you start with one overarching goal, to which everything else is subordinate.

Indeed. Supplying at least 50 per cent of housing as permanently affordable is a goal that we can and should meet. And then you hear the chorus — a persistent, solemn, legion of singular purpose stating simply and in hushed tones, “but that’s not how the market works”: YIMBY, White Privilege, and the Soul of Our Cities. Holy shit, sound familiar?

But according to the YIMBY leaders, now we equity advocates are the problem too, little different from the NIMBYs, rabid progressives who are too naïve or ideological to understand how the market really works. In this story line, in the name of fighting evictions and displacement, we progressives, we communities of color, we poor people and immigrants, we working-class queers stupidly don’t realize that luxury development now will eventually become the affordable housing of the future! It’s simple supply-and-demand they say, Econ 101, and we obviously didn’t go to college if we don’t understand that simple truth.

It’s interesting that the YIMBY movement echoes the All Lives Matter movement in that any challenge to the status quo is met with reactionary scorn: All Housing Doesn’t Matter.

YIMBYs believe that they can solve the housing crisis by developing more housing. To them, it doesn’t matter what kind of housing is built, whether it’s market rate, luxury, or affordable. But the big problem is, as we’ve found—and not just us, a lot of other housing-justice organizations have found this too—unless you’re building at least around 60 percent below-market-rate and low-income housing, you’re not doing anything other than maintaining the status quo.

Still want to tell me its ok to give Neo-Nazis a platform? Teens Sought For Multiple BC Murders Have Far-Right Links: Report. This is a direct result of normalizing white supremacy. They weren’t flagged for making death threats at school. They weren’t flagged for flashing Nazi imagery on Steam. We’ve coddled the white male victim complex and this is how it manifests. It manifests when reporters describe the suspects as good and caring. And it manifests when the father of one of them says his son will go out in a ‘blaze of glory’.

Related: This is Going to Get Worse. It will get worse because “the stereotypical ‘white working class’ media caricature has lost his job and watched his city disintegrate. He has no future, so whiteness is his last remaining asset, and he likes the candidate who promises to protect it”.

OK. Now for some good news. First: Vancouver seeks safe drug supply, more federal funding to combat overdose crisis.

Second: Vancouver Public Library rejected from 2019 Pride parade for allowing controversial speaker to hold event. Great, but ‘controversial’ is a pretty weak word when ‘transphobic’ would be more to the point.

Third: Controversial West Kelowna anti-abortion billboard taken down. Again, instead of ‘controversial’ you could have just said ‘totally false and misleading’.

There are 2 comments

  1. Skies are NOT filled with wildfire smoke every summer. Go outside & play. Remember, just before social media emerged, the consensus was that we were all set to perish by global cooling.

    18 months? Pure hysteria, run through the streets screaming. Someone will hear.

    https://judithcurry.com

  2. Way to pick one of the 3% of scientists not in consensus on climate change. Fox and Friends would be proud. It’s ok, I know your scared. Stick your head back in the sand. We might need you later.

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