Ethics involved in crucial balance

The public good is advanced when we are vigilant about bringing to light practices in business, investing and climate change mitigation that may be in conflict with ethical values of truth telling, transparency, care for others, and care for the planet.

Consider the balance

When brought to light, these practices may be factually assessed to form the basis for our individual and communal response to ethical missteps. The Economist reports that even as concerns about global warming grow, energy firms are planning to increase fossil-fuel production. None more than ExxonMobil. The major oil companies are responding to incentives set by society. The financial returns from oil are higher than those from renewables.

 It would be wrong to conclude that the energy firms must therefore be evil. They are responding to incentives set by society. The financial returns from oil are higher than those from renewables. For now, worldwide demand for oil is growing by 1-2% a year, similar to the average over the past five decades—and the typical major derives a minority of its stockmarket value from profits it will make after 2030. However much the majors are vilified by climate warriors, many of whom drive cars and take planes, it is not just legal for them to maximise profits, it is also a requirement that shareholders can enforce.
Some hope that the oil companies will gradually head in a new direction, but that looks optimistic. It would be rash to rely on brilliant innovations to save the day. Global investment in renewables, at $300bn a year, is dwarfed by what is being committed to fossil fuels. Even in the car industry, where scores of electric models are being launched, around 85% of vehicles are still expected to use internal-combustion engines in 2030.
So, too, the boom in ethical investing. Funds with $32trn of assets have joined to put pressure on the world’s biggest emitters. Fund managers, facing a collapse in their traditional business, are glad to sell green products which, helpfully, come with higher fees. But few big investment groups have dumped the shares of big energy firms. Despite much publicity, oil companies’ recent commitments to green investors remain modest.1

Asher Schechter, writer and editor of ProMarket, the blog of Chicago Booth’s George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, writes that it is time to rethink Milton Friedman’s argument that corporate managers should “conduct the business in accordance with [shareholders’] desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”

 While agreeing with Milton Friedman’s premise that managers should care only about shareholders’ interests, Nobel Laureate Oliver Hart of Harvard and Chicago Booth’s Luigi Zingales reject the view that shareholders care only about money. A company’s ultimate shareholders are ordinary people who, in addition to caring about money, are also concerned about a myriad of ethical and social issues: they purchase electric cars to lower their carbon footprint; they buy free-range chicken or fair-trade coffee because they view this as the ethical—albeit more expensive—choice. They are, in other words, prosocial in their day-to-day life—at least to some extent. “If consumers and owners of private companies take social factors into account and internalize externalities in their own behavior, why would they not want the public companies they invest in to do the same?” Hart and Zingales ask.2

The graphic below demonstrates some compatibility between conservative ethics democracy and carbon tax.

Conservative carbon tax

On Earth Day 2019, faith leaders from across Canada came together to issue an urgent call to climate action.

 “In October 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report indicating that our global community has until 2030 to dramatically change course and avoid serious climate consequences,” says Willard Metzger, Executive Director of Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ). “Now, more than ever, we believe that it is important to amplify our shared laments and shared commitments, as people of faith, to work towards climate justice.”
“Throughout scripture we read of repentance, community, compassion, and renewal: from the Genesis call ‘to work and take care of [the Earth]’ through to the Psalmist’s celebration of ‘God’s handiwork’ and the rejoicing too of the trees; recalling the prophets’ devastation at the destruction of the land, but also the Epistle message of renewal and life eternal,” continues Peter Noteboom, General Secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches. “Ever-present in the Gospels, and central to our faith is Jesus’ resurrection and promise of new life.”
“Young people from all over the world are leading the way, speaking passionately from their hearts about the state of emergency created by climate change and the need for immediate action,” says Jennifer Henry, Executive Director of KAIROS. “Inspired and challenged by their commitment, we add our voices and we commit our action, deeply aware of the spiritual crisis we face.”3

Their collective message is clear: the global climate crisis has reached a critical stage and requires an urgent moral and spiritual response.

A new peer-reviewed study by government scientists and others was published in April in the journal, Nature Communications. Based on airplane measurements of emissions, the research suggests that government officials need to revise guidelines currently used to measure carbon dioxide emissions from the oil and gas (O&G) sector. In their research, scientists collected data showing that four major oil sands facilities in northern Alberta emitted far more pollution than what they actually reported.

 The study’s lead author, John Liggio, told National Observer that Environment and Climate Change Canada shared its findings with industry representatives over the course of several conference calls and they were receptive to working with the government to “get to the bottom of why there is this discrepancy."
The office of Environment and Climate Change Canada Minister Catherine McKenna said the federal government was working with emissions-intensive sectors like the oilsands to help them reduce pollution and operate more efficiently, while noting that the industry and government had previously been relying on internationally-accepted standards for measuring greenhouse gas emissions.
“While this is just one study, we are taking these findings seriously and will be reviewing them in light of Canada’s commitment to fight climate change and build a stronger economy,” McKenna’s spokeswoman Sabrina Kim told National Observer.
Kim added that Canada would continue to prepare its GHG inventory in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reporting guidelines in line with the international community.
While the oilsands industry — an economic driver for Canada — struggles to deal with selling a discounted product in an increasingly uneconomical landscape, it also faces stiff opposition from some Indigenous groups as well as municipalities, provinces and environmental groups to its efforts to promote the expansion of pipelines that would support growth.
Oilsands extraction is a costly process, requiring vast amounts of energy and water for each barrel of oil.
"The objective of limiting the increase in global temperature to <1.5 °C this century is dependent upon reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net zero," said the study. "The large contribution of the O&G sector to global GHG emissions underscores the need for accurate sectoral GHG emissions in national inventories."
Canada's pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 will require a significant shift in the operations of the industry, which has also seen the retreat of global majors and a retrenchment in investment from those that remain amid stagnant prices, particularly for the heavy, sour crude oil of which Alberta has a surplus.4

Ethical standards are embraced by serious liberals, conservatives, people affiliated with religious organizations and most citizens of our countries. These ethical standards need to drive our actions in business, investing, and infrastructure transformation due to climate change.

References

1	(2019, February 9). The truth about big oil and climate change - The Economist. Retrieved April 24, 2019, from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/09/the-truth-about-big-oil-and-climate-change
2	(2017, December 7). It's time to rethink Milton Friedman's 'shareholder value' argument .... Retrieved April 24, 2019, from http://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2017/article/it-s-time-rethink-milton-friedman-s-shareholder-value-argument
3	(2019, April 18). On Earth Day, Canadian faith leaders issue urgent plea for climate .... Retrieved April 23, 2019, from https://www.kairoscanada.org/canadian-faith-leaders-issue-urgent-plea-climate-action
4	(2019, April 23). Oilsands lobby speechless as government scientists point to higher .... Retrieved April 24, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/04/23/news/oilsands-lobby-speechless-government-scientists-point-higher-pollution

Populist politics and the Pope

The rise of populist politics has been connected by several reporters to attacks on Pope Francis.

Source: https://www.ncronline.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_full_width/public/web%20RNS-STEVE-BANNON-082517.jpg?itok=6V5bwrrN

Former advisor to President Trump, Steve Bannon is one of many interesting persons mentioned in these reports. Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist, comments that Mr Steve Bannon stands for a worldview that is antithetical to the liberal values The Economist has always espoused… Bannon helped propel Donald Trump to the White House and he is advising the populist far-right in several European countries where they are close to power or in government. Worryingly large numbers of people are drawn to nativist nationalism. And Mr Bannon is one of its chief proponents.

The future of open societies will not be secured by like-minded people speaking to each other in an echo chamber, but by subjecting ideas and individuals from all sides to rigorous questioning and debate. This will expose bigotry and prejudice, just as it will reaffirm and refresh liberalism. That is the premise The Economist was founded on. When James Wilson launched this newspaper in 1843, he said its mission was to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”1 

The Associated Press reports that Pope Francis is recommending a Christian kind of populism after being attacked by Italian politicians for defending migrants.

 Francis told a crowd of 100,000 at an outdoor Mass on Saturday that “the only possible populism” is a Christian one that “listens to and serves the people without shouting, accusing, stirring up quarrels.”
The pope spoke in Palermo, the capital of Sicily. Many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued at sea in recent years were taken to the Italian island’s ports.
Francis has staunchly championed the rights of migrants.
Italy’s new populist government is discouraging their arrival. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini insists people rescued at sea from human traffickers’ boats won’t be allowed in Italy.2

Michael Sean Winters, who covers the nexus of religion and politics for the National Catholic Register, reports recently that Richard Engel, of NBC news, began his show "On Assignment" with a segment on Steve Bannon's attack on Pope Francis.

Engel, like the Guardian, shines a light on Bannon's allies. When Michael Voris, the head of Church Militant, talks about the need to "drain the swamp" at the Vatican because "there is a gay network running the Vatican," you felt for Engel: Was he trying to suppress a laugh or was he genuinely flummoxed? Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute admits he does not much care for Francis because the pope does not understand rich people, but he adds that Bannon is "not my cup of tea" and does not know him. Engel produces a letter from Acton's Rome office supporting Bannon's Dignitatis Humanae Institute and Sirico says that he has never seen this before. I believe him: Sirico is gullible about capitalism, but I do not think he is a liar.3 

Mark Townsend, Home affairs editor of the Guardian, writes that Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration, according to sources close to the Italian far right.

Bannon has steadily been building opposition to Francis through his Dignitatis Humanae Institute, based in a 13th-century mountaintop monastery not far from Rome.
In January 2017, Bannon became a patron of the institute, whose honorary president is Cardinal Raymond Burke, an ultra-conservative who believes organised networks of homosexuals are spreading a “gay agenda” in the Vatican.
The institute’s chairman is former Italian MP Luca Volontè, on trial for corruption for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan . He has denied all charges.
Among the institute’s trustees is one of the pope’s most outspoken critics, Austin Ruse, a former contributor to rightwing news website Breitbart. Ruse runs C-FAM, an anti-abortion group whose founder was prone to antisemitic rants about population control and which has been termed a hate group by human rights campaigners. Like Volontè, Ruse is an official of the World Congress of Families, a gathering of far-right, anti-gay Christian groups backed by Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.
Other trustees include Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Conservative thinktank the Bow Group, who met Bannon in London last summer, alongside Raheem Kassam, the former UK editor of Breitbart. Bannon was a founding member of Breitbart’s board.
Bannon was invited by the Observer to respond but at the time of publication had not yet replied.4 

The position of Pope Francis on migration, climate change, and the excesses of capitalism are in tension with the policy of right wing populist movements.

References

1	(2018, September 4). The Open Future Festival and Steve Bannon - A statement from our .... Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/04/the-open-future-festival-and-steve-bannon
2	(2018, September 15). Pope says populism should serve people, not stir up quarrels - AP News. Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.apnews.com/94ca83be880049fe8a6a8da701c04641
3	(2019, April 16). Bannon helps spread cancer of populist nationalism | National .... Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/bannon-helps-spread-cancer-populist-nationalism
4	(2019, April 13). Steve Bannon 'told Italy's populist leader: Pope Francis is the enemy .... Retrieved April 16, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/13/steve-bannon-matteo-salvini-pope-francis-is-the-enemy

Auditing progress with climate responsibility

Religious leadership is providing the moral case to take care of our planet and qualified climate experts are auditing the initiatives of government to assess their action.

Source: https://www.ncronline.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_full_width/public/Pilgrims%20CROP_0.jpg?itok=_cDFAI-5

Mallory McDuff wasn’t expecting to weep at a conference. Something about this gathering was different. Maybe it was the venue in the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., the sanctuary filled with 2,000 people — brown, black, white, indigenous, and immigrant. Maybe it was the Rev. William Barber II’s preaching that touched me with the moral call to climate justice, in partnership with Al Gore, whose organization Climate Reality Project brought this audience together for a three-day training.

Source https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/styles/hero_breakpoints_theme_sojod7_tablet_1x/public/blog/priscilla-du-preez-341138-unsplash_1.jpg?itok=KhOYqxhY&timestamp=1553864619

 “The right time to do good is right now,” Barber repeated, interspersing history lessons as a compass. He reminded us of the moral costs as fossil fuel industries have been allowed to poison people and places: “This is the wrong use of our humanity. It’s not good. It’s sin. It’s wrong, and we must challenge it, because the right time to do good is right now.” And everyone repeated that refrain with him, jumping to their feet with a public joy I’d never witnessed at any environmental meeting in the past 30 years. It might take the force of a revival to wake us to our present reality.

“Don’t you forget it’s always been about fusion,” he bellowed, leaning into the podium, elaborating on his theory of fusion politics that avoided labels like liberal and conservative, left or right. He urged us to reclaim the narrative and build a movement of solidarity in order to face the enormity of the climate crisis.
As I drove, I thought of the retired Lt. General Russel Honoré, founder of the GreenARMY in Louisiana, who told us, “Do you like drinking polluted water? Eating polluted fish? Nobody wants dirty water and air. That’s how you find common ground.”1

Carl Meyer asks: “Are you skeptical that the Trudeau government’s price on carbon pollution is the best way to lower emissions?”

Ontario Environment Minister Rod Phillips and Ontario Energy Minister Greg Rickford apply a "gasoline transparency sticker" to a gas pump in Oakville, Ont. on April 8, 2019. Rickford Twitter Photo

Blair Feltmate has a solution for you. The head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo is chairing an arm of a new independent watchdog that will hold Ottawa to account on its climate change commitments and policies.

Feltmate said in an interview that the new institute, which is being called the Pan-Canadian Expert Collaboration, will help Canadians see if their federal government is making decisions in their best interests when it comes to tackling global warming.
The institute will be a multimillion dollar organization, funded by government but expected to set its own agenda and operate independently. It will have three main areas of focus: clean energy, carbon pricing and adaptation...
The Trudeau government’s climate plan, the Pan-Canadian Framework “sets out the goals and the aspirations,” said Feltmate, and “what this organization will do, is apply the intellectual framework to execute on that commitment.”
“How do we actually proceed to put an optimal price on carbon, to minimize carbon emissions? How do we proceed to embrace energy efficiency and renewable power, electricity storage? How do we proceed on those fronts, in a manner that will collectively benefit the country well?”2 

Brian Roewe comments that so far, science alone has not been able to provide the spark to overcome political inertia that has resisted such massive change. More and more, a prevailing belief is that a moral force is needed.

 Despite all that energy, there's still a feeling, with scientific forecasts firmly in mind, that the church has the potential to do more in how the world responds to climate change.
Perhaps a lot more.
"There's a lot of education that needs to happen still," said Dan Misleh, executive director of Catholic Climate Covenant, which has driven much of the encyclical's implementation in the United States. "Laudato Si' has been out there for going on four years, but there's still not enough Catholics or Catholic leaders who are paying attention to this."
Francis himself offered somewhat of a stock take in remarks at an early March interreligious Vatican conference in support of the United Nations' sustainable development goals, adopted three months after his encyclical's release.
"After three and a half years since the adoption of the sustainable development goals, we must be even more acutely aware of the importance of accelerating and adapting our actions in responding adequately to both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor — they are connected," he said.3

Individual citizens make a significant contribution to mitigation of climate change effects by being knowledgeable of what has to be done and working to see that the people we elect to government are committed to implementing the measures recommended by climate experts and endorsed by the people.

References

1	(2019, March 29). Toward a New Conversation on Climate Justice | Sojourners. Retrieved March 30, 2019, from https://sojo.net/articles/toward-new-conversation-climate-justice
2	(2019, April 9). Skeptical of Trudeau's carbon pricing? There's an institute for that .... Retrieved April 9, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/04/09/news/skeptical-trudeaus-carbon-pricing-theres-institute
3	(2019, April 8). Where science warnings fail, can moral force push us out of climate .... Retrieved April 9, 2019, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/environment/where-science-warnings-fail-can-moral-force-push-us-out-climate-inertia

The progressive agenda and leadership

Leadership for the progressive political agenda is an issue in the United States as the 2020 election looms and in Canada, our progressive politicians may be reassessing the leadership of the Liberals.

Source: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2019/04/RTS2G7L0/lead_720_405.jpg?mod=1554692007

Two interesting political groups are millennials and evangelicals. Friedrich Hansen reports that millennials are most likely to finally become fed up with self-victimization.

 Millennials are less prone to addiction, psychic infirmities or drop out, than their predecessors the baby boomer, they seem less fragile at the price of many carried through life on the comfortable fiction of victim ideology. They actually seem to mistake the inevitable every day portion of self suppression as being state-enforced, which means they cannot discern between inner and outer person. In the same vain black Princeton Millennials recently announced self-pityingly: “We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired”. Well let’s skip the concept of student victimology all together and hand it back to the really disadvantaged and downtrodden. This is the challenge for enhancing resilience with Millennials: teaching them self-transcendence.1

Frank Furedi, for the time, recommends: “Unfortunately, most people who buy into this philosophy can’t be reasoned out of it. Our job is to dissuade people who might be considering that way of thinking.”

Furedi values

Evangelicals helped get Trump into the White House. Pete Buttigieg believes the religious left will get him out. Peter Buttigieg wants a “less dogmatic” religious left to counter the religious right, an unofficial coalition of religious conservatives that for decades has helped get mostly Republicans into office.

 “I think it’s unfortunate [the Democratic Party] has lost touch with a religious tradition that I think can help explain and relate our values,” he said. “At least in my interpretation, it helps to root [in religion] a lot of what it is we do believe in, when it comes to protecting the sick and the stranger and the poor, as well as skepticism of the wealthy and the powerful and the established.”2

David Frum writes there were always two cracks visible in the face Trudeau presented to the world, and over the past three weeks, those lines have widened.

The first flaw: When frustrated or disappointed, he loses his cool. As one person on the receiving end of his ill temper put it to me, “He yells when he does not get his way, then gloats when he does.” The second? Trudeau does not always accurately think through ultimate consequences of his actions.
Together, those two fault lines create a dangerous formula for bad decision making in times of crisis.3 

The search for leadership in for the progressive agenda in Canada needs to focus on the ability to seek common ground and makes progress with (1) climate change leadership, (2) indigenous reconciliation, and (3) transfer of jobs to the green economy of alternate energy and non carbon transportation.

References

1	(n.d.). Populism Rejuvenated: “Woke” Millennials - geopolitica.ru. Retrieved April 1, 2019, from https://www.geopolitica.ru/sites/default/files/woke_millennials.pdf
2	(2019, March 29). Pete Buttigieg says Trump got into the White House in 'bad faith.' He .... Retrieved April 3, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/03/29/evangelicals-helped-get-trump-into-white-house-pete-buttigieg-believes-religious-left-will-get-him-out/
3	(2019, April 8). SNC-Lavalin: Justin Trudeau's Fall From Grace - The Atlantic. Retrieved April 8, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/snc-lavalin-justin-trudeaus-fall-grace/586645/

Common ground and conservatives on carbon tax

A short review of the challenges facing Canada to find a way to encourage reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) production show that common ground between “green” political strategists and conservatives may be found in some policies that both parties can accept.

Common ground on coastal erosion

Thomas Walkom, National Affairs Columnist for the Star, writes that the climate apocalypse is fast approaching. That’s the word from federal government scientists who issued an alarming report on climate change in Canada. They say that even in the unlikely event that the world meets its global carbon emission targets Canada is at high risk of extreme temperatures, drought and flooding.

The opposition Conservatives, joined by like-minded governments in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick, attack Justin Trudeau’s Liberals for imposing a carbon tax to deal with the global warming problem.
But they offer nothing plausible in its stead. Ontario Premier Doug Ford argues that he doesn’t need to do anything to reduce carbon emissions — that the decision of a previous government to shut down the province’s coal-fired electricity generating plants was sufficient.1 

The American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world declares that carbon tax most efficient in tackling climate change.

 A tax on carbon emissions, however, does not suffer from these failings. It is efficient because it puts an explicit price on all carbon emissions, which unlike the hidden cost of regulations, is designed for firms and consumers to avoid. And while this initiates a reduction in emissions, it also raises revenue that can be utilized to counteract any drag on the economy arising from the tax—say, through an offsetting reduction in income tax rates that encourage work and investment.
A carbon tax also creates an unhampered incentive for innovation, which could dramatically lower the cost of reducing carbon emissions in the future. With the cost of emitting carbon uniformly higher, consumers and producers will make a broad set of adjustments. Some changes will occur quickly, such as fewer miles driven, while others will occur over time, such as more energy-efficient homes and buildings. All along, producers will pursue newer technologies to supply our electricity demand in a low-carbon fashion. This is in stark contrast to targeted subsidies or grants that narrowly encourage just one type of technology, research, or innovation.2

 Jim Farney, Associate Professor University of Regina, writes that it is inescapable that the 'what should be done,' if it were to be done by conservatives, would have to look remarkably like a carbon tax.

conservative principles and carbon tax

The harmony of a carbon tax to reduce GHG toward IPCC recommended levels with some principles espoused by traditional, religious, populist, and free market conservatives is hopeful as common ground in our efforts to mitigate floods, fires, and coastal erosion in a warmer Canada.

References

1	(2019, April 2). Canadian politicians are obsessed with the wrong crisis | The Star. Retrieved April 2, 2019, from https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2019/04/02/canadian-politicians-are-obsessed-with-the-wrong-crisis.html
2	(2019, March 1). Carbon tax most efficient in tackling climate change - AEI. Retrieved April 4, 2019, from http://www.aei.org/publication/comment-carbon-tax-most-efficient-in-tackling-climate-change/
3	(2018, November 12). Is there a conservative case against the carbon tax? Not really - The .... Retrieved April 6, 2019, from https://www.hilltimes.com/2018/11/12/conservative-case-carbon-tax-not-really/175171

The Intelligence Canada guns

AFTER TWO decades as Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has resigned. But the cabal that has been running the country doesn’t want to give up power, and the opposition is disorganised. Will anything change?




Canada's debate over gun ownership is intensifying, with medical professionals staging protests calling for stricter gun laws. And the gender pay gap in many countries is exacerbated by parenthood—you can hear it in the data. Runtime 20 min.