climate change policy, science, and activism; photography; cartography and mapmaking
Matters of money
To my knowledge, no society has ever existed in which ownership of capital can reasonably be described as “mildly” inegalitarian, by which I mean a distribution in which the poorest half of society would own a significant share (say, one-fifth to one-quarter) of total wealth.
Piketty, Thomas (Translated by Arthur Goldhammer). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 2014. p. 258 (hardcover)
[T]he upper 10 percent of the labor income distribution generally receives 25-30 percent of total labour income, whereas the top 10 percent of the capital income distribution always owns more than 50 percent of all wealth (and in some societies as much as 90 percent). Even more strikingly, perhaps, the bottom 50 percent of the wage distribution always receives a significant share of total labor income (generally between one-quarter and one-third, or approximately as much as the top 10 percent), whereas the bottom 50 percent of the wealth distribution owns nothing at all, or almost nothing (always less than 10 percent and generally less than 5 percent of total wealth, or one-tenth as much as the wealthiest 10 percent). Inequalities with respect to labor usually seem mild, moderate, and almost reasonable (to the extent that inequality can be reasonable – this point should not be overstated). In comparison, inequalities with respect to capital are always extreme.
Piketty, Thomas (Translated by Arthur Goldhammer). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 2014. p. 244 (hardcover)
A great set of speakers announced the July 5th March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate to the media at Bay and King this morning, across the street from the Toronto Stock Exchange.
We know that we are trapped within an economic system that has it backward; it behaves as if there is no end to what is actually finite (clean water, fossil fuels, and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions) while insisting that there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually quite flexible: the financial resources that human institutions manufacture, and that, if imagined differently, could build the kind of caring society we need.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. p. 347 (hardcover)
The power of this ferocious love [for places where people live and where they care about] is what the resource companies and their advocates in government inevitably underestimate, precisely because no amount of money can extinguish it. When what is being fought for is an identity, a culture, a beloved place that people are determined to pass on to their grandchildren, and that their ancestors may have paid for with great sacrifice, there is nothing companies can offer as a bargaining chip. No safety pledge will assuage; no bribe will be big enough. And though this kind of connection to place is surely strongest in Indigenous communities where the ties to the land go back thousands of years, it is in fact Blockadia’s defining feature.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. p. 342 (hardcover)
Too bad they have such a misguided climate and energy policy:
Party leader Rachel Notley has said on the campaign trail that she would withdraw support for the Northern Gateway pipeline, but the NDP is interested in proposals to expand the Trans Mountain line and build the Energy East pipeline to Atlantic Canada.
Of course, it would be hard to be worse than the Alberta PCs or Wildrose on this issue.
Planet Money has an interesting recent podcast: Episode 618: The Square Deal.
It’s about welfare capitalism, and the effort of a New York shoe company to provide comprehensive benefits to its employees.
Friday’s presentations to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuel went very well. A version of the text with citations is online.
As promised, Toronto350.org got the electronic version of our final fossil fuel divestment brief to the committee members a week before our presentation: The Fossil Fuel Industry and the Case for Divestment: Update.
My friend Anne designed a great cover, using a photo from our November 2014 divestment march. I also have a version of the cover which prints perfectly at 11×17″ to serve as a cover for a bound book.
We are having paperback versions of the brief with glossy colour covers printed for the committee members, our presenters, and to deposit with the U of T library system and Library and Archives Canada. We are required to provide a legal deposit copy to them, since the work has been issued an ISBN: 978-0-9947524-0-6. The book is being printed by the Asquith Press at the Toronto Reference Library.
The next step is to adapt the brief into a kit version that can be easily employed by other campaigns. Long parts of the brief are applicable to every fossil fuel divestment campaign, such as the parts on climate science and the economics of the fossil fuel industry. Other parts need to be tailored for each institution. Particularly given that Glasgow has already succeeded using our basic text, putting in some effort to make a kit seems worthwhile.
Tonight, we are proofreading the brief update for the final time.
On Friday, I am getting copies printed.