Taiaiake Alfred’s first scholarly book Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism is available as a free PDF through his blog.
Category: Writing
Anything on the process or results of writing as an activity and a passion
From Middle Cyclone
“Vengeance is Sleeping“, Neko Case
Divest McGill arguments rejected
A committee formed by the administration of McGill University has rejected the argument from Divest McGill that the school should sell its stock in “corporations involved with the production, refining, transport and sale of fossil fuels” and “financial institutions which have not adopted a policy of making no further loans to corporations that produce, refine, transport of sell fossil fuels”.
Rather startlingly, the committee concluded that: “Since the Committee is not satisfied that ‘social injury’ has occurred, no action was considered or is recommended.”
Given that climate change is the ‘greatest market failure the world has ever seen’ the case that fossil fuel companies are doing social harm is very strong. While the committee’s decision is disappointing, it is useful for Toronto350.org insofar as it shows what sort of things the committee that will eventually be formed here is likely to focus on. For instance, no discussion of science and a strong emphasis on law. Knowledge that we derive from this response will help us make our own brief stronger.
We are also calling for a different set of actions from the University of Toronto, which I think will make it easier to establish our case. Specifically:
- Make an immediate statement of principle, expressing its intention to divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies within five years,
- Immediately stop making new investments in the industry,
- Instruct its investment managers to wind down the university’s existing holdings in the fossil fuel industry over five years, and
- Divest from Royal Dutch Shell by the end of 2013.
This seems easier than asking a Canadian university to divest from all financial institutions which invest in fossil fuel companies, which probably includes all those in Canada.
The McGill committee never got to questions of practicality or financial impact on the university, since they rejected the basic claim that fossil fuel companies are doing social harm. If we are able to establish the second point to the satisfaction of the University of Toronto, we will still need to address concerns in the first two areas.
Our brief still requires a lot of work, so if you know anyone in Toronto who would be willing to help, please encourage them to get in touch with us. We could especially benefit from anyone with expertise in law or finance.
The Looking Glass War
I picked up a library copy of John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War because all my own books were in moving boxes, and to begin re-habituating myself to intensive reading in the lead-up to my comprehensive exam in August.
The novel is what you would expect from le Carré: not sensationalized, conveying a sense of awareness about realistic tradecraft. The characters aren’t much differentiated, but the writing is very good and the book seems like a nice counterweight to the sensationalism of the general espionage genre. For instance, there are a number of detailed passages about the inconveniences of operating a WWII-era radio using Morse code. The bureaucratic turf war that forms the primary motivation for the action in the novel seems depressingly realistic.
To sum up: it’s a reasonably interesting quick read which provides the sense of a brush with realism that distinguishes le Carré from other writers in the genre.
William James on war
“History is a bath of blood,” wrote William James, whose 1906 antiwar essay is arguably the best ever written on the subject. “Modern war is so expensive,” he continued, “that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.” (emphasis in original)
Wilson, E.O. The Social Conquest of Earth. (New York, Norton, 2012) (p.62 hardcover)
Different journalistic interpretations of the same scientific study
Here’s the actual abstract from “Acceleration of snow melt in an Antarctic Peninsula ice core during the twentieth century“, published in Nature Geoscience:
“Over the past 50 years, warming of the Antarctic Peninsula has been accompanied by accelerating glacier mass loss and the retreat and collapse of ice shelves. A key driver of ice loss is summer melting; however, it is not usually possible to specifically reconstruct the summer conditions that are critical for determining ice melt in Antarctic. Here we reconstruct changes in ice-melt intensity and mean temperature on the northern Antarctic Peninsula since AD 1000 based on the identification of visible melt layers in the James Ross Island ice core and local mean annual temperature estimates from the deuterium content of the ice. During the past millennium, the coolest conditions and lowest melt occurred from about AD 1410 to 1460, when mean temperature was 1.6 °C lower than that of 1981–2000. Since the late 1400s, there has been a nearly tenfold increase in melt intensity from 0.5 to 4.9%. The warming has occurred in progressive phases since about AD 1460, but intensification of melt is nonlinear, and has largely occurred since the mid-twentieth century. Summer melting is now at a level that is unprecedented over the past 1,000 years. We conclude that ice on the Antarctic Peninsula is now particularly susceptible to rapid increases in melting and loss in response to relatively small increases in mean temperature.”
From the full text: “The nonlinearity of melt observed in the JRI ice-core record also highlights the particular vulnerability of areas in the polar regions where daily maximum temperatures in summer are close to 0˚C and/or where summer isotherms are widely spaced, such as along the east and west coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula. In these places even modest future increases in mean atmospheric temperature could translate into rapid increases in the intensity of summer melt and in the poleward extension of areas where glaciers and ice shelves are undergoing decay caused by atmospheric-driven melting.”
Toronto350.org bibliography party
One element of developing Toronto350.org has been learning how to do complex cooperative work using a devoted group of volunteers.
This afternoon, we are having a ‘bibliography party’ for our University of Toronto divestment brief.
We will be taking all the sources people have collected and putting them into biblatex format. It will then be easy to incorporate them into our LaTeX document and produce nicely formatted footnotes and a good bibliography.
Then it will just be a matter of finishing each section of the brief and sending it out to experts for comment. It will need to be run by some people who can comment on the science, others who can comment on the law, and others who are familiar with the U of T administration.
In the end, we should have an authoritative and meticulously cited document explaining why divestment makes ethical and financial sense, and why it is in keeping with the university’s existing divestment policy.
In which I continue to have no time for fun
An extremely preliminary version of the Toronto 350.org divestment brief has been pulled together.
Now to work on the second version of my self deception paper (due Tuesday), a new paper on globalization for my Canadian politics core seminar (due Thursday), my forthcoming presentation on the patriation of Canada’s constitution (the 26th), and my two term papers.
I also need to sort out the details of moving out of Massey and into cheaper accommodation for the summer.
38 more days
I am entering the final long run of work for this term.
For Toronto350.org, the big thing is the brief we are preparing explaining why the University of Toronto should divest from fossil fuels.
For my coursework, I have three major papers to complete. The final paper for my Incomplete Conquests course – which can be up to 8,000 words – is due on April 5th. I have a meeting with the professor tomorrow to talk about possible topics. Given that I need to give a presentation on the patriation of Canada’s constitution for that class on March 26th, it will probably be a good idea to incorporate that material into my essay. I also need to write the major paper for my year-long Canadian politics core seminar (20-25 pages). It’s meant to be something suitable for submission to a conference or a journal, and it may end up being about climate change and federalism, extending on the short paper on that topic I already wrote for that class. The first draft of my paper for my Self Deception class was not well received. Apparently, a lot more engagement with the literature was expected. Given that I am not actually enrolled in the course, I will need to decide how much time to allocate to the next two drafts, given competing commitments. In addition to all that, I have two more short papers due on the 21st and 28th of this month as well as all the ordinary assigned reading for my three weekly seminars.
For my teaching assistant work, I have a few more tutorials to teach and essays to discuss – then a second midterm to invigilate and grade, as well as final grades to prepare.
At this stage, my own research work (the ostensible purpose of a PhD) is completely on hold while I deal with coursework and teaching obligations and try to keep things moving with 350.org.
This week, I should learn whether I have been accepted to the Global Power Shift conference in Istanbul from June 24th to 30th. That will influence what sort of paid work I end up looking for for the summer.
Finally, for this Friday I need to decide whether to stay in Massey College for the summer. Rent rises to $1,000 per month, and the only meals provided are breakfasts. I could save money by moving somewhere cheaper, but there would be the inconvenience of moving twice. I also need to bear in mind my forthcoming comprehensive examination in Canadian politics. I need to write it on either May 23rd (71 days from now) or August 22nd (162 days).
It’s probably for the best that my camera is still broken.
Mark Jaccard on the Harper government’s climate legacy
“The Harper government supports accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels from our soil, which will send more carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, that same government brazenly assures Canadians that it will keep its 2020 and 2050 emission reduction promises. But I know these assurances are worthless, for the very reason that Chrétien’s Kyoto promise was worthless. The 2020 target is only seven years away. Emissions have fallen slightly because of the global recession. However, the combination of economic growth and oil sands expansion will increase emissions. In a chapter of the Auditor General’s spring 2012 report, “Meeting Canada’s 2020 Climate Change Commitments,” his commissioner on environment and sustainability, Scott Vaughan, noted, “It is unlikely that enough time is left to develop and establish greenhouse gas regulations… to meet the 2020 target.” Instead, Canada is on a path to be “7.4 percent above its 2005 level instead of 17 percent below.””
Strongs word from the author of Sustainable Fossil Fuels.