Higher electricity production and costs in pursuit of an AI delusion

If, like me, younare deeply suspicious of artificial intelligence (AI) and the current infatuation with it, you might have read the latest news from Ontario's power system operator with some alarm and despondency.

AI is the flavour of the year this year. It is an ingredient in pretty much everything, even things that might seem to have no relationship with information technology. I'm pretty sure that some of the things that claim to be "AI-enhanced" or whatever are actually just using regular old fashioned computer analysis, not actually machine learning, but still...

In fact, AI, in the face of all the claims and ambitions for it, seems to me to be somewhat underperforming. It hasn't revolutionized healthcare; it hasn't cured world poverty; it hasn't really done much at all in concrete terms. Like 5G cell service, AI is a technology that is being pursued at breakneck speed, without a whole lot of compelling reason, largely just because it's there and it's trendy.

As we have come to understand too, AI is also a huge power hog. All those data centres, all that computing power, all the cooling requirements, they require an unprecedented amount of electricity.

Now, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has issued a report saying that it expects electricity demand in the province to grow by 75% by 2050. Industrial electricity demand is predicted to rise by 58% by 2035. I'm not sure we should necessarily believe self-serving predictions from the supply industry itself, but it is clear that some level of demand increase is to be expected.

Now, to be fair, this is not just as a result of Ontario's AI ambitions. It is also a result of the general electrification of life, from electric cars to heat pumps. But AI considerations are front and centre of the report.

All that, in itself, is not necessarily such a bad thing. The problem arises in that Premier Doug Ford and his current crop of Conservative lackeys can not be relied on to make sensible decisions about energy production in the province. Ford has a record of favouring gas and nuclear plants, despite the fact that water, wind, solar and battery storage are much cheaper, faster, and cleaner options these days. But logic, clear thinking and progressive ideas are not Ford's strong suits. 

So, we, the taxpayers, could be saddled with decades of higher costs and polluted air as a result of AI pretensions that amount to little more than jumping on the bandwagon and a bad case of FOMO.

Supply management system is inherently wasteful

If, like me, Canada's dairy supply management system - which is designed to control output of dairy products, keep prices stable and, theoretically at least, protect Canadian farmers' jobs - makes little or no sense, then you might be further bewildered by the news, based on the Dairy Farmers of Canada's own figures, that 7% of all milk produced is dumped, unceremoniously thrown away, as a result of the system.

Since 2012, between 6.8 and 10 billion litres of raw milk, representing about 7% of total production, and worth at least $6.7 billion, has just been tipped down the drain, ostensibly to avoid "costly surpluses" as the Canadian Dairy Commission says. That would be enough to supply over 4 million people annually. 

The disposed milk, which is in fact a costly surplus however you slice it, also led to the release of 8.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (equivalent to the emissions of about 350,000 has-powered cars).

Part of the reason for this dumping is that quotas have not been properly adjusted to the changing diets of many Canadians today, who may drink less milk or prefer plant-based alternatives.

And yet, here we have Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet arm-twisting the Liberal government into protecting the controversial supply management system during international trade negotiations, effectively setting it in stone. Most of our trade partners, not to mention our own agricultural sector, hate the system, which they see as indefensible government meddling, possibly even illegal under international trade rules, and yet we still have it, and some are even looking to strengthen it.

Reflections on conservatism

A good part of the ideology of Conservatism revolves around resisting change. The name itself tells you that - it's nothing to do with  conserving nature or biodiversity or anything as positive as that; it's about conserving the past. 

A few snippets from current and recent political campaigns makes this painfully obvious, and gives an idea of what more thoughtful progressive parties are up against.

Take the Trump campaign in America, for instance. Here's a typical quote from a Trump supporter: "It's slowly slipping away from us. Anyone that's a Trump supporter wants an old America back, the best America back." Here's another (in reference to electic cars): "I don't trust them. I want it to be the way it always was, with a good old-fashioned car." As though nothing has improved over the life of this 82- year old Michigan voter...

Canada's Pierre Poilievre, with his particular penchant for overstatement and exaggeration (for political effect), is only evoking the conservative hankering for "the good old days" when he calls the country's carbon tax an "existential threat to our economy and our way of life", that will surely lead to "mass hunger and malnutrition", even, somehow, to "nuclear winter". I would assume that he doesn't actually believe this stuff, but he knows that it will appeal to his change-resistant political base.

"Traditional family values" is also a recurrent conservative article of faith, although many conservatives might be hard-pressed  to say what exactly that means. In practice, it seems to mean opposition to expressions of individuality in sexuality (even though individualism is supposed to another core conservative tenet) and to anything vaguely connected to LGBTQ issues, trans rights, a liberal sex education, and support for what have become known recently as "parents' rights" or "parental rights" (the right to force kids to follow parent's rules and values).

The largely Conservative-led Brexit movement in the UK also relied on a hankering for a return to the old glory days of a resplendant British Empire (like cutting ties with all of Europe was somehow going to achieve that!), with slogans like "we want our country back", "take back control", "make Britain white again", etc. Most of it was disingenuous, misleading and hopelessly idealistic, but it deliberately and shamelessly leveraged a (largely spurious) nostalgia for better past times. It also demonstrated how Conservatives ARE actually willing to change things, but only in the service of undoing progressive advances and returning to more old-fashioned ways of doing things.

Anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe is just another example of this denial of change. White Europeans in France Germany, Austria, Italy and many other places see their countries changing, and one of the most obvious manifestations of that is the colour of people's faces and the language they speak. Thus, the burgeoning hard- right parties are openly (and quite successfully) running on platforms of drastic immigration reforms and even the repatriation of existing immigrants. This, regardless of the fact that much of their economies, and much of their ability to weather turbulent economic times, relies on immigrant labour, particularly as birth rates in western countries continues to tank and populations skew ever older. *Sigh*

Change is sometimes hard, granted. But burying your head in the sand and pretending that the past was better than the present, or some envisioned future, is surely a poor response. That way, we would still have slavery, capital punishment, hymns instead of pop music, a coal-dominated power system, and unadulterated patriarchy. Change - constant change, even - is hard but necessary. Just don't expect a Conservative government of any stripe to provide that.

Chronic medical conditions set to explode in coming years

There's a rather extraordinary chart in today's paper showing the expected growth of chronic medical conditions in Ontario over the next 20 years.

So, everything is going up. But over twenty years, with the population expected to continue increasing dramatically and the average age of the population also continuing its upward trend, maybe you would expect everything to go up. What's extraordinary is the AMOUNT certain conditions are expected to increase by. 

According to forecasts, Ontario's population is expected to increase by about 39% over the next 23 years, which gives us a pretty good benchmarks against which to compare other forecasts. According to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health report, though, Renal Failure is expected to increase by an astounding 361.5%, Hearing Loss by 224.1%, Osteoporosis by 123.5%, Cancer by 120.6%, Dementia by 119.4%, Diabetes by 119.7%, etc, etc. 

These are huge increases which will put our already ailing healthcare system into a cardiac arrest of its own. These figures are just for Ontario, but you can expect the rest of the country to go along the same lines. 

And what's with the Renal Failure stat? What are we doing to our kidneys that will lead to such an explosion of failures in the next twenty years? Well, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is apparently largely caused by other chronic contitions, like diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, all of which are also on the increase. But 361.5%? Yow!

Is the end of truth the end of democracy?

Here's just one example among very many of the post-truth world we live in today.

At a boat parade in Jupiter, Florida, in support of Donald Trump (yes, I know, a boat parade!), some of the boats were openly displaying swastikas and neo-Nazi insignia and changing racist slogans. When there was an outcry from Democrats about it, Trump campaign officials merely claimed, with no evidence offered or attempted, that it was a "false flag event" by "liberal activists". 

This, in spite of the positive identifications of known members of the Order of the Black Sun and the Goyim Defense League (yes, these are the names of real neo-Nazi organizations!)

This kind of spurious but effective shut-down has now become the first line of defence and attack, almost a knee-jerk reaction to any potential set-back. There is no longer any attempt at making the argument convincing, or at least partially true. It is enough to provide social media with an alternative talking point, and to parry and negate any potential political damage.

So, if all that's needed to shut down a legitimate protest is a barefaced, unfounded lie, then what is the value - what is the point - of any protest, any debate? Given that the majority of Trump's election campaign at this point is based on random unsubstantiated claims and outright lies, often, it seems, conjured on the spur of the moment, what is the point of even trying to refute them?

Trump's supporters will apparently believe pretty much anything he tells them, either out of ignorance or out of willful suspension of disbelief, there seems to be no legitimate way he can be stopped from lying. Many other populists, from Netanyahu to Orbán to Erdoğan to Modi to Poilievre, have taken this approach, often with great success. Most of them have taken their lead from Trump, who has single-handledly moved the Oveton window on what is considered politically acceptable. 

Is this, then, the end of democracy as we know it?

Another bizarre Trump town hall

Donald Trump's presidential campaign just jeeps getting weirder. At a town hall event in Oaks, Pennsylvania (no, I've never heard of it either), a couple of audience members fainted due to excessive heat in the hall. Trump too was clearly feeling the heat but, rather than cancelling the whole thing, he decided to turn it into a rather listless dance party, calling for music to be played for the final 40 minutes of the meeting.

"Who the hell wants more questions?", he quipped, "Let's just listen to music". And he proceeded to do just that, requesting a bizarre mix of music to be played instead, ranging from "Ave Maria" to a medley of songs by artists who have specifically called him out for using their music for his own political purposes, including Sinéad O'Connor and Guns n Roses.

Throughout, Trump stood there, bobbing his head, swaying gently, occasionally doing his familiar grandad dance. Many among the bemused audience started to leave, but the old guy seemed to be enjoying himself.

A Trump spokesperson commented on Twitter (sorry, X) that "something very special is happening in Pennsylvania". Well, he certainly got that right.

Support for Trump increases in Canada - wait, what?

Canadians regularly poo-poo Americans and their creepy love affair with Donald Trump. We often smugly assure ourselves that it could never happen here. I do it regularly in these very posts.

But then Trump-Lite, in the form of Pierre Poilievre, turns up, and all bets are off. And now, an Environics poll has looked at Canadians' attitudes to Trump, and it is shocking to see just how those attitudes have changed in the four years since 2020.

Canadians are still MUCH more likely to prefer Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to Donald Trump, by a landslide margin of 60% to 21%. So, things haven't got THAT bad. But that 21% was 15% back in 2020, and the support for the Democrats was 67% not 60% (with Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee). So, there has been a significant shift.

Perhaps even more worrying is the breakdown of that Canadian support for Trump. It's no surprise that Conservatives are much more likely to prefer Trump than Liberals, NDP or Bloc Québécois (44%, compared to 8%, 6% and 7% respectively), and support for Kamala Harris is, unexpectedly, centred on progressive Canadians (Bloc 89%, Liberals 85%, NDP 82%, compared to a measly 36% among Conservatives).

But it is notable that support for Trump is much higher among younger Canadians: 28% for 18-34 year olds and 27% among 35-54 years olds, compared to just 13% among those over 55 (the cohort in which I am proud to number myself). I don't know any of these people, and neither does my 29-year old university-educated daughter, but clearly they exist.

Even more stark is the gender split, with 36% of Canadian men between 18-34 years old preferring Trump to Harris. That 36% was just 24% among the same demographic (young men) in 2020. Combine that with Canadian party affiliation, and we see that 48% of young male Conservatives would support Donald Trump, a truly scary statistic.

Call it the Poilievre Effect, put it down to discontent with prices and the housing situation. Explain it however you like, but it is a real thing. If Donald Trump were running in Canada today, he would still lose embarrassingly, but his star would appear to be in the ascendancy.

What really caused the Liberals' slide from grace?

Jeffrey Simpson's analysis of "the long slide of the Trudeau Liberals", which he neatly categorizes under "the four i's" - incumbency, inflation, immigration and identity - is interesting enough as far as it goes, but simplistic and insufficient.

A simple thought experiment suffices to refute much of it. Imagine if, instead of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives had been in power for the last nine years.

They would still be suffering from the incumbency curse - few governments survive more than three consecutive elections, and none since the very different world of more than a century ago. The longer you stay in power, the more people you upset: that's just the way it is, across the globe.

The spike in inflation is not a specifically Canadian thing, and not controllable by individal governments. Pretty much every country in the world has been affected by inflation in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other geopolitical vagaries. Poilievre and the Conservatives would have been affected by it too, and any protestations that the Liberals made it worse than it should have been is little more than political grandstanding.

Immigration is a big one in the list of four factors, and who would have expected that just a few short years ago, when Canadians were unreservedly pro-immigration (I have my own views on that too). Inflation has also been a strong determinant on this issue, and it can be argued that the Liberals dropped the ball to some extent by poor regulation of immigration policies. But if Poilievre had been in charge, it's quite possible that he would have pushed things too far in the other direction: we NEED immigration to keep our economy afloat, that much is incontrovertible, although the exact level needed is a tough call.

And finally, by "identity", Mr. Simpson means that the Liberals used to be the party of patriotism. I think it's many years since the Conservatives donned that mantle. But, anyway, I'm not wholly convinced that patriotism is a huge vote-winner in Canada, nor that the Trudeau Liberals have been specifically instrumental in abandoning it.

Anyway, an interesting piece. I'm just not sure I go along with most of it.