Still Robarts-ing

After defending my dissertation in December and collecting my diploma in March, I have been watching my U of T benefits gets deactivated one by one. They cut off my dental insurance between when I defended and when I graduated. My campus wifi access was withdrawn several months ago. As of July, my T-card no longer provided access to Robarts or Gerstein libraries.

I feel it would be a shame to live in a city with a library system like U of T’s and be unable to access it. Luckily, as an alumnus I can get a borrower card for $70 per year. It comes with the very annoying restrictions of no campus wifi use, and no off-campus access to electronic databases — but it does provide access to all U of T libraries, allows you to withdraw fifty (50!) books, and allows access to services like research consultations. I now officially have permission to use U of T’s vast library resources to research anything of personal interest or importance. It’s also a great place to hide from summer heat if you don’t have AC at home.

Many Americans have paltry retirement savings

CBS News reports that many Americans (including members of “Generation X” born between 1965 and 1980) have paltry retirement savings:

The typical Gen-X household with a private retirement plan has $40,000 in savings, according to a report this week from the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS). The figures are even more more alarming for low-income Gen-Xers, who have managed to stash away no more than about $4,300, and often even less, the group found. Across all members of the generation, some 40% don’t have a penny saved for retirement.

“Gen-Xers are fast approaching retirement age, but the data indicate that the vast majority are not even close to having enough savings to retire,” NIRS Executive Director Dan Doonan said in a statement. “Most Gen-Xers don’t have a pension plan, they’ve lived through multiple economic crises, wages aren’t keeping up with inflation and costs are rising. The American Dream of retirement is going to be a nightmare for too many Gen-Xers.”

…

Members of Generation X — the roughly 64 million Americans sandwiched between Baby Boomers and Millennials — aren’t the only ones struggling to meet retirement goals. Although boomers say they need $1.1 million for retirement, the median retirement savings is $120,000 for that generation, according to a recent study from Natixis Investment Managers.

The implications are worrisome. Will these people end up in severe poverty without government or family support? Or will governments need to increase taxation to provide universal benefits to people who haven’t saved? What consequences will the stress of these unfunded retirement needs have for families and the social support net?

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Rocking a 3M N95 outdoors and in

Right now, I have three reasons to wear a mask:

First, getting COVID would be a nightmare while I am desperately seeking housing, and while I am in a place with no kitchen or bathroom to myself if I need to isolate. I would rapidly go crazy if fully confined to my hot, muggy, awkward temporary bedroom.

Second, the wildfire smoke ebbs between visibly hazy and not very perceptible, but the PM2.5 and other components are awful for your lungs whether you can perceive them or not.

Third, I have vulnerable relatives with pre-existing conditions which could make COVID very serious for them.

Open thread: The worldwide crisis for renters

When people hear about my miserable 4-month search for an afforadle, available, and non-awful room to rent in Toronto, the glib answer is often that I should leave the city. After all, Toronto’s housing market is notoriously punishing.

I call the answer glib because it doesn’t reflect much awareness of what is also happening in potential alternative cities. Vancouver is about 10% more expensive, and cities with far fewer employment options like Guelph, Hamilton, and Barrie are only marginally cheaper. The crisis for renters is both multi-causal and global.

For instance: The UK housing crisis isn’t just about mortgages – private renters desperately need help too (“Three-fifths of private renters cannot afford a decent standard of living”)

We are sliding toward geoengineering

Geoengineering is a very dangerous and ethically questionable response to climate change, but it feels increasingly inevitable.

Governments are simply not willing to do what is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, which is unsurprising because voters refuse to elect anyone who even gestures at the scale of change required.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that worsening climatic conditions make people more willing to support fossil fuel abolition. Instead, it seems to drive people toward false solutions or just inchoate anger. Even the ‘serious’ governments are still using taxpayer money to subsidize brand-new fossil fuel production. Everyone has a story about why their industry is the one that doesn’t need to shut down.

It is hard to believe that when climate disruption continues to get worse every year (with El Nino, people are predicting next year will be the hottest in history) the worst-hit places won’t start modifying the atmosphere to try to cancel it out — side-effects, impacts on others, and long-term risks be damned. We are a species that has always preferred monthly life-long $1500 injections with a mystery drug to be thinner, rather than changing our diets.

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Wildfires are doubling Canadian CO2 pollution this year

A popular argument among those who want Canada to ignore climate change and keep exploiting fossil fuels is: “But we have so many trees that our emissions must hardly matter! Maybe the world should pay us!”

The argument is deficient on several levels, not least because a tonne of carbon in a tree doesn’t negate a tonne of emissions from fossil fuel burning. The tree only holds the carbon while it is alive, whereas CO2 in the atmosphere will partly remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.

The argument also fails when our forests themselves become a cause of worsening climate change:

Hundreds of forest fires since early May have generated nearly 600m tonnes of CO2, equivalent to 88% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions from all sources in 2021, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported.

More than half of that carbon pollution went up in smoke in June alone.

If you think Canada should get extra permission to pollute because of our forests (questionable) then we also need to be responsible when those forests become net carbon sources.

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