Managed dog hunts of coyotes making a comeback

I had no idea that coyote hunting as a "sport" even existed, but apparently the government of Ontario (yes, them again!) has seen fit to expand a licensing regime that allows such things.

The so-called "train and trial" licenses are for dog hunting clubs where coyotes are caught in the wild and enclosed in a fenced area, and where hunting dogs are let loose on them, supposedly so they can learn to hunt such wild animals (why?) and to hone their hunting skills. Judges score the dogs on their hunting prowess, award points, and crown champions at meets. 

It sound to me like the next thing to dog-fighting and bear-baiting, but apparently it's legal, and the Ford Conservative government is even encouraging it, after previous administrations have played it down somewhat. 

The Ontario Sporting Dog Association insists that no animal is hurt in the sport - well, of course they do! - and the government obviously prefers this line. Others, though, beg to differ, claiming that coyotes have been hurt and killed by dogs, and that a coyote trade ring exists where coyotes are captured, kept in inhumane conditions, and then sold off to these train and trial clubs.

Doesn't seem like the kind of thing our elected representatives should be condoning or encouraging.

Is hydroelectricity contributing to climate change?

Hydroelectric power stations as a source of greenhouse gases (GHGs)? Really? Well, nothing about climate change is easy or straightforward, so it shouldn't really surprise us.

Methane is a potent GHG (an estimated 80 tonnes more potent than carbon dioxide, although much shorter-lived in the atmosphere). About 40% of it comes from oil and gas production, and 32% comes from agriculture (principally cow burps). But it turns out that a not insignificant amount of methane is created by hydroelectricity power generation - some 3 million tonnes of the 51 billion tonnes of GHGs emitted by people each year, or about 6%. So, a lot less than fossil fuels or even cows, but perhaps more than you might have thought.

The reason? There is a lot of carbon-rich organic matter captured in tropical swamps, peat bogs and waterlogged soils, but also in the sediment of (particularly tropical) freshwater. Waste-water treatment plants and rice paddies are other (man-made) water sources that store up potentially polluting organic matter. 

Whether naturally-occurring or man-made, this organic matter is decomposed by microbes, releasing methane. When it is agitated, this methane is released into the air, much like shaking up a soda bottle. So, when reservoir water is churned up in a hydroelectricity plant, this is exactly what happens.

Now, in the scheme of things, this is still a relatively minor source of GHGs, and hydro is still a good, relatively non-polluting source of power. But we should recognize that hardly anything we do is completely pollution-free. There are schemes afoot to capture and use the methane produced by hydroelectricity plants (methane is the primary component of natural gas, and a good power source in itself). These schemes are still in their infancy, but are showing promise. It certainly seems a lot more practical than capturing cow burps!

Israeli settlers move in on Gaza's "golden sands"

It's good to know that someone is finding a silver lining in Israel's invasion and decimation of Palestine's Gaza Strip.

Israeli settlers like Daniella Weiss (sometimes referred to as the "grandmother of Israel's settler movement"), and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has also lived in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank for years, have been very upfront about the prospect of Israelis moving "back" to settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli ultra-nationalists are already taking "bookings" for new settlements in Gaza, particularly on the "beautiful golden sand" of Gaza's beach area. The whole area is ripe for "re-settlement" according to some hawks, especially now, given that "the area is empty now" as one woman put it. The fact that Gaza is "the greatest open-air graveyard" in the world (this from a senior EU commentator), does not seem to faze these people in the least.

And Israelis wonder why they are not very popular people these days. "Cynical" doesn't even come close.

Why would ISIS be bombing Moscow?

The death toll in the gun attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue in suburban Moscow has now risen to 133 and counting. It might seem improbable, but Islamic State (ISIS), or, more specifically, ISIS-K (aka ISKP), the Afghan offshoot of ISIS, has claimed responsibility for it.

Now, ISIS and al-Qaeda and other similar terrorist groups are not above claiming responsibility for heinous attacks that they actually had nothing to do with. We may not have heard much about them for quite a while, but they do like to be associated with anything that destabilizes the West and the "Christian" hegemony.

Ignore anything Putin says about the gunmen heading back to Ukraine, or ex-President Medvedev openly blaming Ukraine for the attack; obviously, they look for anything that might even slightly legitimize their illegal war in Ukraine. But it is possible that ISIS-K may have been responsible for this one (see the video about halfway down this page).

Partly, this kind of outrageous mass shooting is recognizably the modus operandi of ISIS. But there are other clues: this attack occurred on the anniversary of the 2016 Brussels attacks, also claimed by ISIS, that killed 32 people; Russia was a close ally of Syrian president Bashir al-Assad in the civil war there, and bombed ISIS regularly; there was another foiled attack on a Moscow synagogue just a few weeks ago, also claimed by ISIS; the USA had warned Russia that its intelligence had heard of plans by ISIS to attack Russia; and ISIS-K is currently at war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Russia is one of the Taliban's few supporters.

So, it may seem like an unlikely scenario at first blush, but there are actually good reasons why ISIS (and ISIS-K in particular) might want to attack Russia, while its attention is elsewhere.

Why attack a concert by Russian rock band Picnic at Crocus City Hall deep in the suburbs of Moscow? Well, you've got me there. But then, why Bataclan in Paris in 2015? Why a random metro station Brussels? Why many of the other places ISIS and al-Qaeda have attacked over the years? Who can really understand the mind of a fundamentalist religious terrorist?

Doug Ford goes NITBY

Doug Ford has gone full NITBY (Not In Their Back Yard) on housing. The Ontario Premier, who never wastes an opportunity to remind us how focussed he is on increasing the province's housing supply, apparently doesn't like the idea of increasing it by allowing fourplexes (four apartments within a single house structure). That wouldn't be because it's a Liberal suggestion, would it?

In his usual slightly apoplectic outraged manner, Ford waxed scathing about builders who want to "throw a four-storey tower up", upping the ante by saying, "You don't put four-, six-, eight-storey buildings in the middle of a community of single dwelling homes. Don't build it in people's backyards, they will lose their minds."

Well, sorry, Dougie, but that's exactly what you do if you are serious about increasing the supply of housing (and especially affordable housing) without contributing to urban sprawl. And, hold on, nobody mentioned anything about "four-, six-, eight-storey buildings". Most fourplexes are actually in two- and two-and-a-half-storey houses. 

The government's own housing task force has concluded that it would be the quickest way to boost housing in existing neighbourhoods. But Mr. "Housing" Ford seems not to like the idea. I guess he doesn't want them popping up in his own neighbourhood. So, maybe NIMBY rather than NITBY.

Surely this is a good reason to leave the Royal Family alone

I'm no fan of the Royal Family but, as both Princess Kate and King Charles announce cancer diagnoses, can we not all agree to just leave the poor buggers alone?

Is the carbon tax really hurting us economically?

Confused by all the contradictory claims by proponents and opponents of Canada's federal price on carbon (or "carbon tax", depending on your political affiliation)? You're not alone.

The price on carbon was brought in by Justin Trudeau's Liberal government to incentivize Canadians to change their habits away from carbon-intensive activities and products in favour of more environmentally-friendly options like heat pumps, public transit and electric vehicles. The idea is to gradually ramp up that price over time so that its impact is increasingly felt. 

It is still widely agreed worldwide that a carbon tax is the most efficient and cheapest way of combatting greenhouse gas emissions, although it is by no means the only one. An independent analysis by the Canadian Climate Institute has highlighted the fact that other methods need to be employed alongside a carbon tax, particularly industrial carbon pricing, a cap on oil and gas emissions, and methane regulations (the consumer carbon tax is described as "fuel charge" in this analysis).

It has been badly promoted and explained but, in return for the carbon taxes they pay, Canadians receive a Climate Action Initiative Payment (recently renamed the Canada Carbon Rebate in an attempt at more clarity) through their income tax returns so as to make the initiative largely revenue neutral, and to ensure that, broadly, consumers are not actually out of pocket. In practice, this rebate works in a progressive fashion so that lower income Canadians are more likely to benefit overall, while higher income Canadians, leading a more polluting lifestyle with bigger homes and cars, are more likely to find themselves out of pocket. People in rural areas also get an additional top-up on the grounds that they probably use more energy and don't have so much access to public transit options. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

In the last year or two, though, Conservative populist Pierre Poilievre had been on a crusade against the carbon tax during a time of high inflation and belt-tightening ("axe the tax", and all that). His fiery rhetoric (at least in comparison to Trudeau's rather tepid and lacklustre response) has been remarkably successful in turning large segments of the population away from the erstwhile broad support for the carbon tax to opposition. And the main way he has done that is by insisting that it makes everything more expensive, mainly by pretending that Canadians don't receive a rebate, but sometimes by arguing that the tax is not revenue neutral for most people.

There are two conflicting narratives at play here. The Liberals and NDP point to a Parliamentary Budget (PBO) report that concludes that 80% of Canadians are better off, in that their rebates are greater than the carbon tax they pay in day-to-day life. The breakdown of this by province and income level can be found in Figure 1 of the report.

Poilievre, on the other hand, focusses on Figure 2 of that same report, which attempts to include what it calls "economic impacts" (such as potential losses in employment and investment income) in addition to the direct "fiscal impact". (There are some serious questions about just why the PBO decided to add this additional, and very subjective, analysis.) This figure concludes that about 60% will pay slightly more in carbon taxes than they receive back in rebates. You can see why this is what Poilievre stresses in his parliamentary tirades and slick video advertising.

As so often, though, the devil is in the details. For one thing, the report looks at the fiscal and economic impact in 2030, when the carbon tax is planned to be at its highest level - $170 per tonne compared to $65 today - so any disparities are hugely magnified (although the rebate is planned to compensate proportionately). Plus, the 60% figure hides disparities between different provinces and income groups, with the lowest income groups still benefitting overall. Plus plus, the percentage increased cost to the average Canadian is actually pretty small, ranging from 1.2% to 1.9% (so pretty close to revenue-neutral, as advertised). And finally, it ignores completely the cost to Canadians of climate change if nothing is done (hard to assess, but palpable nonetheless).

Those are just a few points that occurred to me on a cursory look at the data (and I'm no analyst). But the bottom line, as I see it, is: nobody said this was going to be easy. People have been enjoying the benefits of heavily-subsidized oil and gas for decades, and now, when a government finally has the guts to make people pay for some of the externalities and pollution they have become so used to, there is a big fuss (well, to be fair almost entirely due to Poilievre power-hungry crusade and disingenuous arguments against it).

I get it that a lot of people are hurting financially at the moment, but the carbon tax is not the reason (it contributes 0.15% to the inflation rate, according to the Bank of Canada). This is just one individual politician's (and his coterie of hangers-on) campaign of disinformation and artful deceit. Poilievre sees this issue as his ticket to the top job, and he will pursue like a bulldog with a bone.

UPDATE

More recently, it has been revealed that the PBO analysis on which all these opinions and claims are based, was not even accurate. The PBO's Yves Giroux insists that it was just a small, unimportant error, but when so much is riding on it, and it is being used by all and sundry to prove their own self-serving points, any error is a big and possibly fundamental one. It certainly deserves more than the quiet admission of error that was published in a low-profile update on April 16th, and that is only coming to public light now, in early June.

The effect of the error is to overstate the negative impact of the consumer carbon price - it remains unclear by just how much - which goes to bolster Pierre Poilievre's contention tha consumers are out of pocket as a result of the carbon price.

The main error was that the alternative scenario it compared with the carbon tax was actually one with no carbon pricing at all, not even the industrial carbon price. Giroux calls this a mere "modelling tweak" (whatever that means) rather than a mistake, and insists that it would not affect the conclusions much, because the big cost driver is the consumer carbon price, not the industrial price.

But he seems to have that the wrong way around completely. The Canadian Climate  Institute estimates that the industrial carbon price is likely to be responsible for 48% of Canada's emissions reductions by 2030, as compared to 8 - 14% for the consumer carbon tax. Nevertheless,  Giroux says the PBO is not expecting to re-do the work until the fall. Why?

Paying taxes makes you happy: it's official

Once again, Scandinavian countries have swept the World Happiness Report's index of the world's happiest countries: Finland (1), Denmark (2), Iceland (3),Sweden (4), Netherlands (6), and Norway (7). Is it a coincidence that the highest-taxing, highest-spending countries are also the happiest? I think not.

But, wait, what's No. 5? Turns out it's Israel. No explanation there, sorry, but it's salutary that Palestine comes in at No. 103. 

Canada? Number 15. Not bad, although lower than in previous years. At least we beat out the UK (20) and USA (23), although we've got a lot of happy work to do to reach Australia and New Zealand (10 and 11), which we can reasonably consider our peers in the world.