Why has US banned Red 3 and Canada hasn't

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just banned a food additive known as Red 3, on the grounds that it has been shown in animals studies to cause cancer. The synthetic food dye, which colours candies, drinks and cosmetics a lurid cherry-red colour, has also been banned in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It was banned in cosmetics in the US as long ago as 1990.

And yet, FD&C Red No. 3, or is perfectly legal in Canada. So, what gives?

It turns out it's all about legal niceties. There is a legal provision in the USA that obliges the FDA to ban food additives found to cause cancer in either humans or animals. The Canadian equivalent law only operates if a substance is found to cause cancer in humans.

You might think the American law is superior and we, here in Canada, should just ban the stuff anyway. But the two US rat studies that led to the ban found that Red 3 caused cancer in lab rats with a "rat-specific hormonal mechanism" that does not exist in humans. So, the effect of the additive on rats would almost certainly not translate into humans.

Canadian scientists agree that "evidence demonstrating human safety concern is lacking", and that "there is actually no evidence at all that it would be a danger in cosmetics". Moreover, a joint UN/WHO committee in 2018 looked at studies involving both humans and animals and found no safety concerns for the dye as a food additive.

That's not to say candies containing Red 3 will do you any good. Personally, I would steer well clear of anything coloured radioactive scarlet. And, a note to manufacturers, there are perfectly good natural dyes out there (beet juice extracts, anthocyanins extracted from berries, etc) without having to resort to synthetic crap just to sell a few more units.

Doug Ford looks to beat the Underhill Balance Theory

I hadn't really noticed it, but apparently there is an unwritten rule in Canadian politics that whatever Camada votes federally, the province of Ontario votes the opposite. It even has a name, the Underhill Balance Theory, after Frank Underhill, a political scientist who noticed the phenomenon way back in the 1940s.

And it does seem to work. In the heyday of the federal Liberal Party after the Second World War - Mackenzie King, Louis St Laurent, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Elliott Trudeau - Ontario elected a series of Conservative Premiers - George Drew, Leslie Frost, John Robarts, Bill Davis - as a kind of balance.

When Conservative Brian Mulroney came to power in Ottawa in 1984, Ontario responded by voting in first Liberal David Peterson, and then NDP Bob Rae. With federal Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien came Conservative Ontario Premier Mike Harris. When Conservative Stephen Harper replaced Chrétien federally, Ontario turned back to the Liberals with Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne. And with Justin Trudeau in Ottawa, of course, came Doug Ford in Toronto.

So now, as a new federal election looms, which the Conservatives are widely expected to win handily, Doug Ford - who is apparently also considering calling an Ontario election, even though he has a strong majority, good polling results, and more than 16 months before the next scheduled election! - must have the Underhill Balance Theory at the back of his mind. 

Indeed, it could well be a major reason why Ford wants to bring an Ontario election so far forward: to lock in the Conservative administration in Ontario notwithstanding a potential Conservative federal government, to break the Underhill jinx (as Ford might see it).

Top Liberals distance themselves from the carbon tax

We know that the Conservative Party of Canada opposes carbon taxes, and intends to end them the moment they get their hands on some power. God knows, Pierre Poilievre says "Axe the Tax!" at the start of every sentence he utters. You feel like saying "Gezundheit!" back to him each time.

It now looks like the Liberal Party of Canada, which brought the tax in, is going the same way. Both of the likely Liberal leadership candidates are now making noises along those lines. Chrystia Freeland, long a staunch Liberal climate warrior, is standing on a platform that specifically calls for the scrapping of the consumer carbon tax (although not the industry one). Even Mark Carney, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, is starting to distance himself from the Liberals' carbon tax policy.

I guess climate change measures don't win votes any more. The Liberals (and, I'm guessing, even the NDP, as we will probably see when election platforms are unveiled later this year) are trying to out-Tory the Tories. Sad.

A moth that build a log cabin

There are some pretty strange critters out there with some pretty bizarre habits. But a new one to me is the Bagworm Moth (Psychidae), whose caterpillar saws little twigs and sticks and builds them into miniature log cabins for themselves.

Neat, huh? The log cabins are even mobile and move around with the caterpillars. The logs are held together with silk that the caterpillars produce, and they actually build the edifice on their own backs.

Interestingly, only the males of the species transform into adult moths. The females stay in a mature larval state, and never grow wings and legs like the males. The males only live for a few days after mating, although the females live longer while her duties call. The eggs stay safe and warn in the log cabin, while the females tend them. 

Cool.

Is Marco Rubio an elf?

I've never really noticed before but, hey, is Marco Rubio, likely Secretary of State-to-be, is he an elf? A goblin, perhaps?

I've never noticed those ears, but they are huge, and yes, distinctly pointy.

Stephen Harper stands up for Canada

It's pretty rare that I agree with anything that Conservative ex-Prime Minister Stephen Harper says. But strange times make for strange bedfellows, as they probably say.

In comparison to some of the garbage spewing from Donald Trump's mouth, Harper sounds eminently sensible and positively statesmanlike. In particular, his responses to Trump's recent drivel concerning US-Canadian relations on an American podcast were right on the nail.

He started off thumping the tub a bit in response to Trump's threats to use "economic force" to make Canada into the 51st state: " We are Canadian, not American, and we want to be friends, not, as they say, annexed."

But some of his responses to Trump's more specific grouses were better. To Trump's assertions that the US is subsidizing Canada and that it does not need Canada's exports anyway, Harper pointed out that, "It's true that Canada presently has a modest trade surplus with the United States. The reason we do is because you buy so much of our oil and gas." Well, duh!

Furthermore, "Maybe Canadians, if Mr. Trump feels this way, should be looking at selling their oil and gas to other people. We certainly have always wanted to do some of that - maybe now's the time to do it." And because we sell to the US at discounted prices, "In fact, you buy it at a discount to world markets. It's actually Canada that subsidizes the United States in this regard".

On illegal immigration from Canada to the US, Harper say, "There is no migrant flow happening from Canada to the United States of any significant numbers, and I'm going to tell you right now, drugs, guns, crime, most of those things flow north, not south. A lot more flows into Canada from the United States than flows out of it." Quite.

Canada's reliance on US military protection? "When we talk about subsidizing Canadian defense, I don't know what he's talking about. We have a shared defense of North America, and the United States does that because it's in the vital interest of the United States." Pow!

Trump's claim that he helped push out Justin Trudeau? "Whether or not we have Mr. Trudeau as our prime minister is our choice as Canadians. You know, we don't tell you whom to elect as president of the United States ... This is not Mr. Trump's decision. It's the decision of Canadians." 

And finally, if Pierre Poilievre is elected as Prime Minister: "If the United States actually threatens the sovereignty and independence of Canada, Mr. Poilievre will be forced to take a very different approach to Canada's place in the world." Right on!

I never liked Stephen Harper, either the man or his politics. But there he was, in Trump's own house, doing a pretty good job of standing up for Canada. Granted, it's easier because he is no longer in government, and can afford to make himself objectionable. But good job, I say.

Musings on the state of the world (and my place in it)

I was just thinking - in an absent, abstract sort of a way, during one of my many sleepless nights - about the state of the world. And it's not good, obvo.

The Four Horsemen are abroad (conquest, war, famine and death, if you are counting), and quite possibly the Antichrist. Perhaps the Four Horsemen could be re-cast slightly for the modern day as War, Plague, Ignorance and Right-Wing Populism, but you get the idea. And the Antichrist? That would be Donald Trump, enabler-in-chief of many of the ills besetting the world today. The Gates of Hell are open, and the demons are loose.

As we register the hottest year ever (yet again!) and swathes of America are burning in the middle of winter, political leaders - and a frightening number of regular folks who sleepwalk along with them like rats with the Pied Piper - are assuring us that we don't need to do anything about it. Even as we speak, climate change policies are being dismantled, subsidies for clean energy and sustainable tech disbanded, fossil fuels given a new lease on life.

Companies are rewriting their rules on diversity, equity and inclusion, even on telling the truth, because, with Trump in charge, they don't need to think about such things. Hard-fought rights, achieved through decades of slow, painstaking effort, are being abandoned overnight. Truth, respect and common sense have never been so imperilled and devalued. 

It seems like Trump, Musk and the MAGA crowd are redefining social more and economic expectations everywhere, and right-wing populist acolytes in other countries (Poilievre, Farage, Meloni, Orban, Wilder, Le Pen, Modi, many others) are calling the shots, suddenly lent legitimacy by the hateful rhetoric and thoughtless policy-making of Trump and his lackeys.

The Overton window has lurched to the right in an unprecedented manner (unprecedented since the 1930s anyway). For the right wing, almost nothing is off the table, nothing considered too extreme. Even progressives are making pronouncements that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago, walking back policies they once saw as essential, incontrovertible, in the face of the anti-woke backlash. And it has happened so fast, it has almost happened while no-one was looking.

All of this is going on at the same time as power-mad war-mongers like Putin and Netanyahu hold sway, and autocratics like Xi make their subtler moves to mould the world in their favour. Coincidence? I guess so, or maybe each leads the others on, in a kind of feedback loop.

Maybe it is the inexorable back-and-forth swing of history. Maybe it is merely the influence of one particularly forceful demagogue, who will fade into senescence and obscurity in just a few short years. Or maybe it is the new paradigm that we need to come to terms with and accommodate. 

I would hate for the latter to be true, though. I'm an older guy, and I feel pretty powerless and discouraged. I just feel like crawling into a shell and waiting it out. The older I get the more cynical I become about the world and the people in it. 

But I have to believe that a new generation of idealists is growing up, incensed at the direction the world is going, and the alarming way it is wobbling on it axis. I was once that idealist, although it seems like a very long time ago that I had the energy. 

Maybe this is just me capitulating and throwing in the towel. But I feel like all I am able to do nowadays is to just live as exemplary a life as I can, in my own middle-class white-guy way - drive my electric car, keep my solar panels clean, buy carbon offsets when I fly, donate to charity, try to be nice to all people most of the time, follow the rules if they seem sensible. I know it's not really enough, but I live in hope that some saviour, some anti-Trump, will lead us out of this soon.

The 1.5°C global temperature threshold has officially been exceeded

Well, we all knew it, but now it's official: 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (which is usually taken as 1850-1900). The dreaded 1.5°C threshold enshrined in the Paris Accord has therefore been passed, and it continues to increase with no sign of a slow-down. Paris Climate Agreement bye-bye.

A couple of graphs from Europe's Copernicus Project paint a stark picture. The first one shows the not-so-slow-and-steady increase of global average surface temperatures over and above pre-industrial levels for every year since 1967. The second one shows five year averages all the way back to 1850.

It makes sobering viewing. Unless, of course, you just don't care, which seems to be the position taken by an increasing umber of populist governments, and the people who vote for them.