- Canada’s Environment Ministry spent nearly $80,000 on focus groups to discover that people who think there’s a climate crisis like the phrase “climate crisis” and people who don’t prefer “climate change”. We’re going with “waste of money”.
- From the “Oh no, not spring” department, Bloomberg announces that “Climate Change Is Making Allergy Season Last Longer”.
- Trade War III rages on and so do the clueless mercantilists: at the World Bank/IMF meetings in Washington “Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland warned a U.S. audience Wednesday about the potential dangers of a global subsidy ‘race to the bottom’ as government largesse fuels the growth of the new green economy.” But don’t think she meant it as a criticism: “Freeland… framed the warning with effusive praise for its principal catalyst: the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. The controversial new law, rich with more than $369 billion in climate spending, is a ‘historic and transformative’ bill that will ‘change the world for the better,’ Freeland said.” Apart from the bit where it bankrupts everyone and rips up the global trading order, that is.
- The herd of independent minds is coming for your car. National Geographic reprints a 2019 piece saying “In the 20th century… We fell so hard for them [cars] that we redesigned our cities around them…. It’s a landscape that, as Atlanta urban designer Ryan Gravel put it to me recently, “is so not what the future wants.” Sprawl is bad for climate, bad for our health, bad for our sanity, and bad for our wallets.” And it quoted “a pioneer of the New Urbanism” that “You know what cities are in essence? They’re about shared space. You know, instead of a private yard, you have a great park. Instead of spending all your time in your living room, you spend time at the pub or the café. Instead of driving your own car, you use transit.” Told you so.
Those accused of engaging in conspiracy theories about the world's elites wanting the masses in piled high urban concrete boxes free from ownership of property and transportation and consuming the more healthy, nutritious bugs are actually spoiler alert spreaders.
"you spend time at the pub". I'll drink to that!