Covid 19 Fossil Fuel and Climate Action

Recent action by the government to support the economy during the Covid 19 pandemic crisis has generated some advice about wisdom in investment that supports our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Coastal erosion

Shawn McCarthy writes on energy & climate change, and is a senior counsel at Sussex Strategy Group. He is also the president of the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom. McCarthy writes "Sustainable finance principles are moving out of the fringe and into the mainstream. As a result, companies that fail to adequately plan for the longer-term environmental crisis do so at their peril."

 The stark message came from two sources: the Liberal government which imposed climate-related conditions on its financial assistance to large corporations, and from Norway’s $1-trillion sovereign wealth fund which announced it will divest its holdings in Canada’s carbon-intensive oil sands companies.
The decisions announced in Ottawa and Oslo may appear un-related but they are part of a growing “sustainable finance” agenda that aims to re-allocate capital away from firms that are part of the climate change problem, and to plow money into companies and technologies that offer solutions1

Tzeporah Berman is an adjunct professor at York University, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and the international program director at Stand.Earth. Now with COVID-19, fossil fuel majors are lobbying hard for bailouts, investors are desperate to salvage capital while workers and fossil-fuel dependent communities are often being left behind. This is not an “all of the above” moment. It’s time for governments to acknowledge a more ambitious international effort is needed to provide certainty for investment, stimulate low carbon solutions at scale and constrain growing emissions and production fast enough to keep us safe. That’s why a team of climate, policy and legal experts from around the world is proposing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to be developed along with a strengthened Paris accord.

 The three pillars of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — non-proliferation, global disarmament and peaceful use — provide a framework for an equitable wind down of fossil fuels: 

• Don’t add to the problem (non-proliferation). End new exploration and expansion into new reserves.
• Get rid of the existing threat (global disarmament). Phase out existing stockpiles and production in line with 1.5°C.
• Accelerate an equitable transition (peaceful use). Increase access to renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions and manage a global just transition.

History teaches us rapid, dramatic transformation is possible when a handful of countries committed to high ambition decide to lead. There are many other examples beyond the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty including the Montreal Protocol which phased out ozone-depleting chemicals, bans on asbestos, and restrictions on tobacco. 
As we work to respond to the global health pandemic over the next months, let’s not aim for getting ‘back to normal’. Normal was driving us straight into another catastrophe.  It’s going to take big ideas like a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to generate the resilience, equity and new opportunities the world needs now and for our children’s future.2

Brooks DeCillia reports a CBC News poll, taken just before the economic implications of the coronavirus were becoming clear, that suggests 79 percent of Albertans already thought that the province should transition toward renewable energy. More than nine in 10 Albertans also think the province should do more to encourage the development of the technology sector and 51 per cent think that the province should transition away from oil and gas.

 While support for transitioning away from oil and gas is highest in Edmonton (58 per cent), it has similar levels of support in Calgary (55 per cent). Outside the province's two major cities, only about a third of Albertans (37 per cent) support moving away from oil and gas.3

The economic argument for support of a return to business as before in Canada’s oil and gas sector is weakening. Political decisions need to focus on employment support for workers rather than risky investment in an industry in trouble.

References

1	(n.d.). COVID-19 provides stark reminder on need to act on climate .... Retrieved May 19, 2020, from https://ipolitics.ca/2020/05/19/covid-19-provides-stark-reminder-on-need-to-act-on-climate-change/
2	(2020, May 4). It's time for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Retrieved May 4, 2020, from https://news.trust.org/item/20200504090700-pblc5
3	(2020, April 16). CBC News poll: Why the economic crisis could speed up .... Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cbc-news-poll-energy-transition-support-1.5533036

Participate in “beta” testing

American legal scholar Brett Frischmann presented the 2019 Sir Graham Day Lecture in Ethics, Morality and the Law at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Remember when?

Brett Frischmann says our increasing dependence on technology is putting our very humanity at risk. He warns humans are heading down an ill-advised path that is making us behave like "perfectly predictable and in some cases programmable" simple machines. How we engineer ourselves, or are engineered by others, is one of the most important questions of the 21st century, according to Frischmann.

As part of his talk, he asked the audience to set their smartphones to use gps tracking. Then he asked them to cancel gps tracking on the same phones. Setting gps tracking on many smartphones is a one step “settings” option that is confirmed by a green screen! Cancelling gps tracking often requires 3 steps with a red background screen warning the user about reduced functionality if they cancel the tracking. This subtle programming difference is a nudge to accepting the preferences of the owners of digital technology on our gps tracking option.

A recent article by Hillary Hartley, Ontario’s Chief Digital and Data Officer, and Alex Benay, the former Chief Information Officer of Canada and partner at KPMG responsible for digital and government solutions, comments that “Attitudes are shifting,”Hillary Hartley said. “It’s a moment where we really need to ask ourselves and ask the public how we should proceed.” It comes down to two core pillars.

One is ensuring policies and regulations adapt quickly to enable proper sharing of information.

The other is having the right digital infrastructure to support a new model of service delivery. At the heart of the two is balancing a digital first mindset with appropriate privacy protections.

Perhaps there’s no better example of a digital-first government than Estonia.

Estonian parliament

Both Hartley and Benay point to two specific innovations that paint a picture of what a future Canadian digital infrastructure could strive for.

 The first is Estonia’s X-Road or as Benay describes it, “their railroad of the Industrial Age, but for the digital age.” It’s a decentralized server that allows thousands of businesses, governments and people to connect and exchange information. The other is a secure digital identity issued to every Estonian, which might arguably provide better privacy protections than what’s available in Canada today…2

Wolfgang Drechsler, professor of governance at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia warns countries should be careful not to emulate Estonia's approach too closely, says Drechsler, due to the country's unique nature, with its small size and trusting relationship between the citizens and government.

https://www.ttu.ee/extensions/ttu/frontpage/200056-3.jpg

"It's very interesting for European countries to look at Estonia, but it's very hard to transfer things from Estonia because Estonia is a very specific environment. You can learn a lot from Estonia on a very technical level, how to do certain things, but it's just not feasible to just take the same approach of [government] doing what the engineers tell them to do."Estonia's success in reinventing itself as an e-government powerhouse is testament to the work it did putting the building blocks in place in the late 1990s and early 2000s, says Arthur Mickoleit, senior principal analyst at Gartner who specializes in digital government."Countries like France and Italy were inspired by what the UK and the Nordics have been doing in bringing design thinking into the public sector."Mickoleit describes this design thinking as "inviting users to give their views on how a service is functioning", combined with experimentation and iterating on prototypes to improve that service.

"It's about embracing the data culture of innovation and experimentation, that's a big thing in public administrations at the moment and it's showing good results," he says, referring to Germany recently launching its government portal in beta.3

Should the world’s problems be solved by unelected elites? Surely these are decisions we all need to be part of. Anand Giridharadas argues if we don’t trust the institutions we have for fixing the world, then it's time to build better institutions — from the bottom up. He describes the problem in a CBC Ideas Podcast that was originally aired on January 27, 2020, How elite do-gooders 'fixing' the world are part of the problem: Anand Giridharadas This article sheds some light on the possible motives of the “lords” of high technology who are “on the case” to deal with the world's problems.

We may debate the wisdom of allowing engineers to decide on the design of the increasing number of “aps” that have a role in small and large digital systems in our everyday life. Did “smartphone engineers” design the code for the deactivation of gps location or were they following the instructions of others controlling the technology. Did Volkswagen engineers “design” the software to cheat emission measuring or were they being directed by financial bosses within the organization. Did Boeing engineers “design” software to compensate for the change in weight distribution on the “Max-8” or were they being directed by bosses concerned with losing business to Airbus? If the ethics of engineers is to design according to the parameters set by their employers, we need to create systems to allow “user” input to the design process as part of the “beta test”. Failure to test the effect of “digital aps” on users is to take another step toward the subtle and not so subtle control of our decisions as we face the danger of becoming “wards” of digital technology.

References

1	(2020, April 22). Free will under threat: How humans are at risk of ... - CBC.ca. Retrieved April 23, 2020, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/free-will-under-threat-how-humans-are-at-risk-of-becoming-wards-of-technologists-1.5540390
2	(2020, April 28). Never Waste a Crisis: How Canada Can Build the Digital .... Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/never-waste-a-crisis-how-canada-can-build-the-digital-government-of-the-future/
3	(2019, February 19). How Estonia became an e-government powerhouse .... Retrieved May 6, 2020, from https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-estonia-became-an-e-government-powerhouse/
4	(2020, January 27). How elite do-gooders 'fixing' the world are part of the problem .... Retrieved May 8, 2020, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-elite-do-gooders-fixing-the-world-are-part-of-the-problem-anand-giridharadas-1.5441573

Rebuild the economy through community ownership

As we rebuild the economy after the Covid-19 crisis, the deficiencies in our response to the crisis may be deliberately underplayed by those few who have built up great capital wealth in the decades since 1980. In the call for resilience in the United States, some basic changes have been advocated,

resilience in the United States

The free market neoliberalism that has built large personal wealth for the few has shown North Americans that those marginalized wage earners, deemed “essential” by governments in health care, food distribution, and transportation also bear the heaviest toll in sickness and death in the pandemic. Unfortunately, when we look in society for organizations in support of marginalized wage earners, we find the influence of trade unions to provide living wages, job security, health benefits, work safety, work-life balance, and just hours of work has waned greatly since the 60’s and 70’s.




The “progressive agenda” for the renewed economy in Canada has been publicized. 

progressive agenda

To be sure, a couple of items in the list will light fires under the well funded neoliberal globalists. Ironically, a modification of capitalism focuses on ownership of property by those who have been eliminated from access to private capital since the 19th Century times of Charles Dickens to become wage slaves to the Industrial Revolution and, in our time, to the service economy. The Antigonish Movement originated in the St.F.X. Extension Department. They organized and led a series of actions intended to produce a particular end, namely a self-sustaining cooperative system in eastern Nova Scotia rooted in the community and supported by a citizenry enlightened by adult education. Adult education was learning brought directly to the workplaces and homes of the people. This teaching method, organized by intensive fieldwork, became a technique for mobilizing adults for continuous study, by means of small and serious social action study groups. The end result was the generation of new economic cooperation for the common good. What ensued in Antigonish in the 1930’s and 1940’s can be thought of as a ‘movement’.




The concept of the “ownership of the means of production” is frequently associated with Marxist economics. In the Maritimes, co-operative fish plants owned by the fishers loosened the control of traditional plant owners on the compensation for their food production. In a similar manner, co-operative farming ventures supplying food directly to the people of the local communities, improved the return to farmers for their efforts. In the United Kingdom and the United States, at about the same time, G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Day worked on an economic model that was neither monopoly capitalism nor Marxist socialism. The method of Distributism, advocated by G.K. Chesterton, was based on the wide distribution of the ownership of property, particularly to those who are currently wage slaves of monopoly capitalism. Co-operative ownership in resource communities is also a form of small scale local capitalism appropriate for larger developments.



What can advocates for social justice and greater economic equity draw from these earlier ideas? The Antigonish Movement certainly puts emphasis on adult education in how to manage local economic activity. A land base for economic development has been a demand for indigenous reconciliation in Canada. Many examples of successful indigenous enterprises have been started when this “land base” is available. The return to local management of economic resources through small scale private ownership and co-operative ventures is another “take away” worth studying.