It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, September 18, 2021
'MAYBE' TECH
Project to Develop Europe’s First Large Scale Blue Ammonia Plant
Plans call for blue ammonia production using gas from the Barents Sea (Horisont Energi)
Efforts are moving forward for the development of Europe’s first large-scale production facility for blue ammonia. Horisont Energi announced that two of the largest offshore oil and gas producers in the Barents Sea region, Equinor and Vår Energi, have entered into a cooperation agreement for the development of Barents Blue.
To be located in Finnmark in northern Norway, the production plant is based on natural gas from the Barents Sea. Plans call for a production capacity of 3,000 tons of ammonia per day once operational.
“This agreement means that we are now moving forward in the Barents Blue project with two industrial partners with a strong local presence,” said Bjørgulf Haukelidsæter Eidesen, CEO of Horisont Energi. “They have a long-term perspective and bring extensive experience with large and complex technical projects. This is a major step forward for Barents Blue”
The Barents Blue project is based on using natural gas to produce ammonia. In addition to the traditional uses in industry and agriculture, the project targets supplying ammonia to the shipping industry as an alternative fuel.
“The Barents Blue ammonia plant is planned to consist of three process trains which may be developed simultaneously or sequentially including all required utilities for producing blue ammonia. Each train calls for a facility producing approximately 1 million tons of pure ammonia per year, potentially permanently storing 2 million tons of CO2 annually, making Barents Blue one of Norway’s largest environmental projects,” commented Eidesen
During the production process in the Barents Blue ammonia plant, more than 99 percent of the CO2 in the process gas will be captured and permanently stored in the offshore Polaris reservoir below the seabed near Finnmark. The Polaris reservoir may have a storage capacity of over 100 million tons, which is equivalent to twice Norway’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
The partners plan to make a final investment decision before the end of 2022, targeting 2025 for the start of production.
New England Fishermen File Suit Against BOEM Over Vineyard Wind
A coalition of fishing industry interests has filed a court challenge against the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's recent decision to green-light the Vineyard Wind project, America's first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. The group, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), says that BOEM failed to fully account for fishery impacts when it approved the wind farm's construction and operations plan (COP), the final federal permit granting permission for construction.
In a statement, RODA said that it engaged constructively with BOEM over the course of the back-to-back environmental impact statement (EIS) and COP reviews for Vineyard Wind. However, RODA said that despite its proactive efforts, BOEM "roundly ignored" its input and made no effort to "minimize unreasonable interference with traditional and well-managed seafood production and navigation."
“This is a precedent-setting decision by BOEM, and it is critical that they get it right so that future projects are following a trusted roadmap instead of a flawed and dangerous example,” says Anne Hawkins, Executive Director of RODA. “Unfortunately, this lawsuit is the only recourse fishermen have to ensure the fishing communities’ concerns are addressed.”
The group's concerns are centered on navigation and fishery productivity. According to RODA, the one-nm-square grid layout approved by BOEM would put the turbines too close together for fishing vessels to navigate safely in heavy seas. The group also asserts that BOEM has not taken a "holistic approach" to analyzing the impact of wind farm development on the local ocean ecosystem and on shoreside communities.
"The quality of oversight and regulatory due diligence that we see for other types of industries and other large projects just wasn't completed here,” Hawkins told WBUR.
In a recent letter to RODA, BOEM director Amanda Lefton noted that the agency has removed several New England areas from lease sale consideration because of their importance to fishermen, including potential sites near Nantucket Lightship, Cox Ledge and Cholera Bank. She also pointed to the gear-loss and revenue compensation fund established as part of the Vineyard Wind record of decision, an arrangement that will pay out local fishermen for some of the losses incurred due to the development. Regarding RODA's concerns with turbine spacing and transit lanes, she noted that the U.S. Coast Guard had studied the impact of one-nm-spaced turbines and had concluded that the arrangement was safe for navigation.
The agency has recently advanced several additional wind farm proposals, issuing a final environmental impact statement (EIS) for South Fork Wind off Long Island and a draft EIS for the New York Bight development area. The EIS analysis for South Fork Wind predicts that its construction will have "long-term, moderate to major adverse impacts on commercial fisheries" off Long Island, with financial implications for local fishermen.
Canadian Safety Regulator Reports Another Incident on Hebron Platform
ExxonMobil Canada has reported another potentially fatal incident on its Hebron Platform off the coast of Newfoundland.
On Tuesday, during preparations for an upcoming lift, a hook fell off an auxiliary hoist on the platform's south intervention deck and dropped about 30 feet. The hook weighed about eight pounds.
There were no injuries. The hoist operator was the only person nearby and was located about 20 feet away from the point of impact. However, the incident had the potential for a fatality, based on standard industry safety calculations, according to the Canada - Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.
ExxonMobil has stopped all auxiliary crane operations and initiated an investigation into the root cause of the incident. The C-NLOPB said that it will monitor Exxon's internal investigation.
The near-miss was the second incident in a month that C-NLOPB has reported at Hebron. In August, a crewmember aboard the offshore supply vessel Avalon Sea was injured during a routine test of Hebron's evacuation systems.
On August 20, the Avalon Sea was supporting a series of lifeboat winch load tests for Hebron's lifeboat deck, a routine maintenance activity. The platform's #3 lifeboat had been lowered to the deck of the OSV in preparation for a test.
When the crew began to hoist up a test weight on the lifeboat winch, they spotted a twist in the rigging and called "all stop" for safety. While they attempted to unhook the rigging and remove the twist, the line came under tension because of the Avalon Sea's movement relative to the platform. When the rigging released, it "made contact with a crew member’s face resulting in injuries requiring treatment," according to C-NLOPB. The injured seafarer was transferred over to the Hebron platform for medical attention, then airlifted off to a shoreside facility. The individual was treated and released, Exxon reported.
U.S. Shipowners Back Jones Act Penalties for "Canadian Rail" Scheme
A truck makes a "Third Proviso" compliance trip aboard the Bayside Canadian Railroad at Bayside, New Brunswick, 2015 (Brian Golding / U.S. CBP)
Four American shipowners are supporting a multi-million-dollar Jones Act enforcement action against affiliates of American Seafoods Company, a Washington-based fishing vessel operator with a leading position in the Alaska pollock fishery.
ASC and its logistics affiliate Alaska Reefer Management (ARM) have access to a 100-foot-long "railway" in New Brunswick, Canada, which they use as part of a foreign-flag shipping route between two U.S. markets. The on-site rail line takes advantage of an obscure grandfather clause in the Jones Act: This so-called "Third Proviso" allows foreign-flag ships to carry cargo in U.S. domestic trade if a properly registered Canadian railway is part of the shipment route.
Using this clause, ARM-chartered foreign vessels load ASC's pollock in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, then deliver it to a terminal in New Brunswick, Canada, passing through the Panama Canal. At the Bayside terminal in New Brunswick, the cargo is offloaded into truck trailers and processed through the on-site Bayside Canadian Railway.
The "BCR" consists of two flat-deck rail cars and a shunt engine on a short track. In operation, this railway carries each truckload of ASC's fish to the end of the track and back again, making a one-minute Canadian rail journey of about 200 feet (video above).
After this rail segment, trucks drive the product to the Maine border and deliver it to the Eastern United States, completing a foreign-flag shipment of cargo between two U.S. points. With the rail segment, ASC and ARM believe that the route complies with the Jones Act.
Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Jones Act enforcement office issued penalties totaling about $350 million dollars to the firms involved in this novel supply network, including tens of millions in fines for foreign-flag shipowners. The action has effectively halted ASC shipments of pollock to East Coast customers, and ASC says that the shutdown threatens to cause significant harm to its business - along with regional shortages of pollock, an affordable staple for schools, institutions and government nutrition programs. ARM and terminal subsidiary Kloosterboer have filed suit against CBP, seeking to block the penalties.
Impact on American shipping companies
On Friday, a group of four American shipping lines filed briefs in support of the CBP penalty action. According to Coastal Transportation, Matson Lines, Samson Tug and Barge and Alaska Marine Lines, ASC's Bayside program has cost them business and cut into the number of cargoes that are legally reserved for Jones Act vessel operators.
"Coastal has been harmed over many years by the scheme to ship cargoes on foreign-flag vessels from Alaska to destinations in the United States . . .via use of a contrived Canadian rail apparatus, abuses of through shipment and storage in a foreign cold storage," wrote Coastal founder and owner Peter Strong.
Strong welcomed CBP's enforcement action and said that it appears to be working: Alaskan fishing operators are now giving the Seattle-based shipping line "substantially" more cargo volume.
Coastal and the other lines said that they believe that U.S. Jones Act carriers "will be able to carry all future catches of Alaska seafood intended for the lower 48 states to Washington State" if CBP's penalty decision holds. From Washington, containers of seafood would be transported overland to their final destinations by U.S. railroads or trucking.
In a filing Thursday, ARM president Per Brautaset countered that Matson, Coastal, AML and Samson may not have the capability to move that much extra cargo from Dutch Harbor to Seattle in time. He told the court that two of these Jones Act carriers are already so backed up with current cargo volume that they are having a hard time picking up more fish from ASC's storage warehouses in Dutch Harbor.
"Even if these four companies, collectively, could timely move all of our shippers’ B-season pollock to the West Coast, none of these companies is in a position to move that product to the East Coast," warned Brautaset. "Cold storage availability and cross-country transportation options are not in their control. [Our] shipper-customers would be faced with frozen seafood arriving on the West Coast with nowhere to store all of it and no way to further transport it to the Eastern U.S."
ASC says the enforcement action is delaying the delivery of millions of pounds of American-caught fish, and it wants the court to block CBP's penalties until the appeals process is complete.
"Approximately 1.5 million pounds will be overdue for delivery to customers by end of September, approximately three million pounds likely at risk for October requirements; and several million pounds due in November and December, for which plans are unknown at present," wrote ASC President Inge Andreassen in a filing. "Unless we are able to resume the [foreign-flag] shipment of frozen seafood product to the Eastern U.S., ASC faces the likelihood of immediate irreparable harm."
Op-Ed: 10 Ways to Cut Shipping's Emissions Today
Alternative fuels are just one piece of the puzzle.
The four factors driving shipping emissions, with solutions to reduce those emissions below (Author provided)
In the middle of this summer’s shocking fires and floods came the grimmest climate science report yet from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning of a “code red for humanity” as our use of fossil fuels continues to drive up global temperatures.
To keep below the threshold of 1.5 degrees C of warming – the goal of the Paris climate agreement – immediate reductions in carbon emissions are needed. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the UN shipping regulator, has put issues surrounding shipping and climate change high on its agenda.
Shipping emissions can be calculated using four principal factors: the weight of products transported, the distance they’re sent, the amount of fuel it takes to move one tonne of products one kilometer, and the amount of carbon released by making and using that fuel – known as the fuel’s carbon-intensity.
The overwhelming focus of political attention is mainly on that last point – which fuel is used, and how carbon intensive it is. But it will be beyond 2030 before low-carbon fuels, like hydrogen or ammonia, grow past a single-digit percentage of all shipping fuel used. This is a problem: if we are to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goals, emissions need to see dramatic reductions in the short term.
That means we need to think about the wide range of other ways to cut shipping emissions in the coming decade. Here are ten areas to look at:
1. Reduce the amount of fuel needed for shipping by transporting less stuff…
In a world of finite resources, we need to think critically about consuming less – for example, whether we need to import containers of garden gnomes from China to the UK, or whether high street clothes retailers should continue to prioritise fast fashion models where clothes are shipped halfway around the world yet only designed to last for several uses.
2. …over shorter distances…
It’s possible that long distance transport might become less necessary in the future, as the rise of 3D printing could see goods printed locally and on demand. The new generation of shipping fuels could also be produced nearer to where they’re needed, so they only have to be transported by ship over hundreds, rather than thousands of miles.
3. …at slower speeds.
The faster ships move, the more energy they need. The bottom line is that going slower is one of the most effective and immediate ways to cut ships’ fuel use. This can happen naturally due to high fuel prices, but locking in these benefits needs action from the IMO, such as regulation on ship speed limits.
4. Retrofit ships.
There are multiple ways to retrofit ships so they use less fuel, like upgrading ship propellers and hulls to improve fuel efficiency.
5. Make use of the wind…
Spinning cylinders called Flettner rotors and huge kite sails are just two technologies that harness the power of the wind to help propel vessels. This can cut fuel consumption by 10 percent. Coupling this with computer programs that model wind speed and direction allows ships to optimise their routes, saving ships a further 10 percent of fuel.
6. …and shore power.
Ships can use less fuel when in port by switching off their engines and connecting to local electricity grids instead. This technique, which also reduces air pollution in coastal cities, is called “shore-power”. Norway, the USA and China lead in implementing shore-power thanks to government support.
Next steps
7. Carbon accounting
Many alternative fuels produce low levels of carbon dioxide when burned. But the emissions arising from their production need to be properly accounted for, or we’ll just be shifting pollution from one source to another. Hydrogen can, for example, be produced in different ways that lead to very high or very low carbon emissions.
8. Carbon taxes
Attempts to cut carbon in the shipping industry tend to flounder because standard marine fuels like diesel are globally untaxed and therefore cheap. It’s time for the IMO to levy charges on carbon pollution, to allow alternative fuels to compete with traditional carbon-based ones. Revenues from this can fund research and development into new fuels, and support developing nations to decarbonise their shipping sectors.
9. Green policymaking
The UK could prioritize building zero-emission vessels in its forthcoming National Shipbuilding Strategy, and run more innovative contests like the already oversubscribed Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition to provide greater support for greener shipping tech.
10. Stronger framework
All of the above methods need to operate within a clear framework for reducing overall shipping emissions if the sector is to play its part in meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement. The IMO needs to commit to more stringent climate targets to deliver major reductions in the coming decades. In shipping, as in every sector, we need to use every way we can to cut emissions as fast as possible.
Simon Bullock is a PhD Candidate in Shipping and Climate Change at University of Manchester. His PhD focuses on ascertaining the potential for UK shore power, identifying the barriers to its implementation, and assessing solutions to overcome these barriers.
This article appears courtesy of The Conversation and may be found in its original form here.
'Abdication of government responsibility': Edmonton businesses exasperated over Alberta's vaccine passport rollout Blair McBride
Edmonton business owners are accusing the provincial government of passing the buck on vaccine passports, with some concerned about potential blowback from those opposed to the measure.
On Wednesday, the government gave non-essential businesses a choice : adopt the restrictions exemption program (REP), under which people must show proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 tests to gain entry as of Monday, and operate as usual; or follow restrictions.
For gyms, that would mean a ban on indoor group classes and activities.
Zita Dube-Lockhart, owner of Action Potential Fitness, supports COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine passports, but said she’s put off by the way the government presented them.
“(The REP) is a false choice,” Dube-Lockhart said. “It’s either (do) vaccine passports or go out of operation. We not only have to administer them but we have to make the decision whether or not we’ll ask members to give private information that is probably outside of what we should be asking. There’s an abdication of government responsibility here.”
Indoor dining is off the table for restaurants and bars that choose not to require proof of vaccination. They will also have to follow limits on patio service, and curfews on liquor sales and consumption.
For Arcadia Brewing owner Darren Gowan, the omission of the words “vaccine passport” in the government’s announcement was frustrating.
“It’s like, ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ except it’s, ‘I can’t believe it’s not a passport!’ ” he said. “It’s a passport! The government are cowards. They’ve put everything on the shoulders of business owners and frontline workers. They seem to be delaying on the QR codes. They say it’s coming out but they’re not giving a timeline.”
Premier Jason Kenney said in a Facebook Live session on Thursday night that Oct. 1 is the target date for digital QR codes to become available.
Alberta Health spokesman Tom McMillan said the restriction exemption program has two goals: to encourage vaccine uptake and to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
“We’re already seeing very strong results, with more than 28,000 doses administered yesterday. That’s the most since July 23,” he said. “Previous measures have had almost all their impact through voluntary compliance, and we believe the same will be true of the exemption program.”
Because the decision to enforce proof of vaccination is left up to businesses, not ordered by the government as in other provinces, some business owners, like Brian Launier of Analog Brewing, fear repercussions.
“I’ve seen other businesses start up their own vaccine passports and they got a lot of hate for it. They got phone calls, death threats, people calling them communists and Google review bombs. It was terrible. I’m afraid to do anything because people will attack us for the decisions we make,” he said.
Even so, he has decided to adopt the program.
Dube-Lockhart is confident her clients will comply with the passports because since the pandemic began her facility rigorously followed health measures and saw membership increase by about 60 per cent.
Gowan already told his customers two weeks ago he would introduce vaccine passports on Monday so they could get prepared. He said it was his own decision and he didn’t know the government would eventually roll out the program.
“I felt our clientele would be on board with it. I’ve already had people ready to show me their proofs. I don’t think there’s going to be much pushback on it,” Gowan said.
Still, the restaurateur expects there will be hitches in the coming weeks, such as customers forgetting to bring proof, neglecting to download it to their phones or having issues accessing the MyHealth Records website, which has seen hours-long wait times this week .
Meanwhile, Edmonton Chamber of Commerce CEO Jeffrey Sundquist urged the provincial government to quickly provide more clarity on the REP.
“There are many questions about how the new program will be applied. The program needs to be relatively simple for businesses to implement at their various workplaces in order to protect their staff and customers. Local businesses need a vaccine passport with a QR code to be developed as quickly as possible,” he said in a statement Thursday.
'Here we go again:' Albertans react to latest slate of COVID-19 health rules
CALGARY — As an emergency alert blared across the province notifying Albertans of another round of public health restrictions, some felt a range of emotions: anger, confusion, exhaustion.
Edmonton mother Amanah Khursheed remembers looking at her husband.
"Here we go again," she said as her phone lit up Wednesday evening.
The notification told her that Alberta has declared a state of public health emergency to protect the health-care system.
New restrictions — including gathering limits and a proof of vaccination program for non-essential businesses — began Thursday, as Alberta's health system nears collapse during a fourth wave of the pandemic.
"Every few months we go into lockdown and we're hearing false promises from our leaders," Khursheed said in an interview.
"The whole pandemic ... I don't think, from the beginning, was managed right."
Medical experts had warned the United Conservative government about potential for the Delta variant to spread exponentially, when Premier Jason Kenney celebrated his "Open For Summer" plan.
Since the reopening on July 1, COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased more than fivefold, with intensive care admissions reaching record highs.
Khursheed said a close friend contracted COVID-19 and was put on a ventilator.
"It's nerve-racking every single day when you're sending your children to school, and then you're hearing a close friend was in (intensive care)." Calgarian Jake Hughes, a 28-year-old business development representative, said he's "exhausted and demoralized" after 19 months of poor provincial leadership.
He has thought about leaving Alberta for another province.
"It's kind of sad that we're — I wouldn't say the laughingstock, but look how bad Alberta is doing compared to the rest of the country," said Hughes. "It feels like everyone prioritizes business and money over people's lives."
While he's supportive of the new restrictions, Hughes said he's worried they will affect his job stability and income, considering he works with many small businesses.
"If we just kept the restrictions going forward in the summer, where minimal interactions were allowed, we probably could have gotten through this fourth wave with a lot less of a spike," said Hughes. "Since the beginning of this pandemic, it's been fumble after fumble."
Retiree Desmond Clark of Calgary said the array of measures announced Wednesday were confusing. And Alberta's version of a vaccine passport system, which Kenney calls a "restriction exemption program," is littered with contradictions.
He said it should be simple: you prove you're vaccinated, or you're not allowed entry. Instead, there are varied restrictions depending on an individual’s immunization status.
Clark said he has lost any respect for Kenney's United Conservative government.
"When it comes to leadership, I've always been of the opinion that while I may not agree with something, I can respect the fact that something is being done," he said.
"But when they don't seem to be sure what the heck they want to do, you can't think a whole lot of them."
Edmonton grandmother Sharon Morin said the reintroduction of restrictions came as no surprise but they're disappointing nonetheless. "We didn't take advantage of the 'Open For Summer.' We stay close to home. We don't go out to restaurants. We still mask up. So it's really frustrating when you're put in this position because of others," said Morin, pointing to unvaccinated Albertans and a lack of provincial leadership. She said Kenney needs to take accountability for mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis and resign. "There has been no leadership here at all," she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2021.
— With files from Fakiha Baig in Edmonton
Alanna Smith, The Canadian Press
Vaccination uptake triples after Alberta announces its version of a vaccine passport
After weeks of resisting, the Alberta government announced this week that its version of a vaccine passport would take effect on Monday. Vaccinations have tripled in the province since the announcement was made.
The demand for COVID-19 vaccinations tripled in Alberta on Thursday, the day after Premier Jason Kenney announced the province's version of a vaccine passport.
Alberta Health reported 28,158 doses were administered at Alberta Health Services clinics and pharmacies on Thursday compared to 9,750 on Wednesday.
Kenney announced the new restriction exemption program Wednesday night.
The new program will allow non-essential businesses like restaurants, pubs and fitness centres to operate normally if they require patrons to show proof of vaccination or a privately-paid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test from the previous 72 hours with a negative result.
Businesses that choose not to screen for vaccination status will continue to be subject to restrictions.
For example, a restaurant that doesn't screen patrons for proof of vaccination would be closed to indoor dining and would have to end liquor service at 10 p.m.
The new program starts Monday.
Shivali Sharma, a pharmacist who owns two Shoppers Drug Marts in Edmonton, said people seeking walk-in vaccinations were lined up outside her south Edmonton store on Thursday morning.
Normally, staff at the MacTaggart Shoppers Drug Mart handle about five to 10 walk-in appointments each day.
On Thursday, they administered 60 injections, an "extremely large proportion" of them first doses, she said.
Sharma credits Alberta's new proof of vaccination program.
"That announcement was the push that we needed to get those fence-sitters, those that were potentially a little bit hesitant about getting the vaccine," she said. "That definitely gave people the push to come in and get that first dose done and start their series."
Pharmacists saw an uptick of interest in areas of the province that have some of the lowest vaccination rates.
In the High Level region, located in the northwestern corner of the province, only 17.2 per cent of eligible Albertans have received at least a first dose.
The Pharmasave drug store in Fort Vermilion, about 80 kilometres east of High Level, now has about 20 to 25 people on a waiting list. The pharmacy is out of vaccine due to a temporary shipping issue. Kenney and his UCP government resisted implementing a vaccine passport for weeks, even offering a $100 gift card to anyone who received their first or second dose.
That measure resulted only in a modest increase in vaccinations.
The Return of the Red Tories?
Canada’s upcoming election could spell the renewal of a long-dormant brand of blue-collar conservatism.
Canada’s opposition Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole speaks during an election campaign tour in London, Ontario, Canada, September 17, 2021. (Blair Gable/Reuters)
O'TOOLE ROLLED OUT EX PM BRIAN MULRONEY HIMSELF A RED TORY OR AS THE ECONOMIST CALLED HIM; A BLEEDING HEART CONSERVATIVE FOR HIS ENDORSEMENT
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
Could this Monday be the end of the road for Justin Trudeau? While Canada’s snap federal election was originally called by the prime minister himself in a bid to regain a majority in the Canadian parliament, the incumbent’s Liberal Party has quickly found itself playing defense instead. Trudeau’s decision to call the Monday election amid a surge of coronavirus-related hospitalizations was met with widespread anger in Canada and derided as an irresponsible political stunt that put the prime minister’s “own political interests ahead of the well-being of thousands of people,” in the words of his Conservative Party challenger, Erin O’Toole. As it stands today, polls show Trudeau and O’Toole in a dead heat — and many observers say it’s still anyone’s race to win
“They’re both just hovering right around each other right now,” says Adam Harmes, a political-science professor at Western University in London, Ontario, in an interview with National Review. “We’ll have to see if there are any sort of late-breaking things that shove things one way or the other, but I wouldn’t bet a lot of money either way right now. It’s entirely possible the Liberals pull it out with another minority, but it’s equally possible O’Toole takes it.”
That toss-up is partially owing to the backlash to Trudeau’s decision to call the election in the first place, which now looks highly unlikely to produce the majority that the Liberals had hoped for. But the race’s uncertainty is also the result of an exceptionally well-run Conservative insurgency, led by what many say is the most competitive Tory candidate since the party’s last prime minister, Stephen Harper, was unseated by Trudeau in 2015.
The surprise surge of O’Toole, a 48-year-old former Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter navigator, in the early weeks of the 36-day race revealed an unexpectedly canny political shrewdness beneath the candidate’s affable, easygoing exterior. Perhaps most notably, his campaign has been one of the farthest-reaching efforts to date at formulating a coherent policy platform for the kind of populist, pro-worker “realignment” that is sweeping right-wing parties across the West. Were the Tories to triumph on Monday, that could prove to be instructive for like-minded conservatives south of the Canada–U.S. border.
On economics, O’Toole’s rhetoric is not too dissimilar from that of Donald Trump. But unlike his American counterpart, O’Toole has a meticulously written, 48-page policy agenda to match his worker-friendly rhetoric: The Conservative leader’s “Canada First economic strategy” includes mandatory worker representation on the boards of large corporations, a ban on executives’ paying themselves bonuses while managing a company going through restructuring unless company workers’ pensions are fully paid, and a skeptical, protectionist stance on international trade. He has also made explicit overtures to private-sector labor unions — and staunch critiques of big business.
“I believe that GDP alone should not be the be-all end-all of politics,” he told viewers in a Labor Day video message. “The goal of economic policy should be more than just wealth creation, it should be solidarity and the wellness of families — and includes higher wages.”
That campaign message has been widely hailed as the return of “Red Toryism,” as it is often called in Canada and the United Kingdom. While usually stopping short of the transformative central-planning schemes favored by today’s progressives, Red Tories are more skeptical of big business — and more comfortable with communitarian-oriented economic policies — than has been the norm in conservative circles for decades. At the same time, this heterodox brand of small-c conservatism — which traces its roots to Benjamin Disraeli’s “one nation” conservatism in the latter half of the 19th century — is far more traditionalist in its cultural philosophy than the modern Left, emphasizing patriotic attachments, religious traditions, and social order over radicalism and upheaval.
Those themes, which have been largely dormant in Canada and the United Kingdom since at least the 1980s, sit at the forefront of O’Toole’s candidacy. “In terms of the substance of O’Toole’s policy platform, it’s very much a blue-collar conservative vision,” as Ben Woodfinden, a Montreal-based Red Tory writer and political theorist, told NR. “There’s all sorts of stuff that kind of points to the fact that he’s trying to move the policy agenda in that direction.”
There are important differences, too. By American standards, O’Toole is no social conservative: Although he has courted pro-life voters by promising to allow free votes for members of his caucus on life issues and backing conscience rights for doctors and nurses who do not want to “refer or participate in an abortion or euthanasia,” he describes himself as “pro-choice.” And he made an explicit appeal to LGBT voters in his acceptance speech for Conservative Party leader. But he is a kind of cultural conservative, in line with the Red Tory tradition: His political rhetoric is shot through with an affirmation of Canada’s essential goodness — a more soft-edged and less assertive kind of patriotism than its Trumpian alternative, to be sure, but still a firm rejection of the unending national self-flagellation prescribed by woke progressives, in both Canada and the U.S.
There are few better foils for this brand of blue-collar conservative politics than Justin Trudeau. A child of opulent privilege, the silver-spoon-fed son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau epitomizes the hypocritical, schoolmarmish brand of elite progressivism that has come to define left-leaning parties throughout the Anglosphere. “He’s a very polarizing figure,” says Woodfinden. “A lot of people have a visceral dislike and disdain for him here.”
That visceral dislike has as much to do with the class of people that Trudeau represents as it does with the prime minister himself. The “realignment” goes both ways: Even as Canada’s Conservatives make a bid for their country’s working class, Trudeau’s Liberal Party has come to represent the worldview and interests of the highly educated, upwardly mobile urbanites that increasingly make up its voter base. This demographic is more comfortable with neoliberal market-friendly economic policy than older left-wing worker parties, but is simultaneously committed to a far more radical kind of cultural leftism, replete with all the symbols and performative pieties of campus wokeness.
To many working-class voters who feel increasingly alienated from the parties that traditionally served as their home, this brand of politics looks laughably disingenuous. In Canada, Trudeau waxes indignant about the horrors of racism and then is pictured in blackface in a 2001 yearbook; in the U.S., Democrats style themselves the defenders of the marginalized and oppressed and then make repealing the SALT-cap deduction — a state-based tax write-off that almost exclusively benefits the top quintile of earners — a top legislative priority. For all the talk of social justice — and the subsequent demands for sweeping changes to the social contract — the progressive ruling class seems unwilling to sacrifice any of its status or privilege for the common good.
This presents a significant political opportunity for conservative parties throughout the English-speaking world. To his credit, that seems to be something that O’Toole recognizes. Both his economic and cultural agenda are predicated on a recognition of the working class as the Right’s natural ally in the current political moment. A conservatism that recognizes this alliance is committed to advocating in behalf of the interests of workers, just as it defines itself in opposition to what James Burnham called the “managerial elite” — i.e., the credentialed beneficiaries of society’s bureaucratization who “exploit the rest of society as a corporate body,” both in the bureaus of big government and the boardrooms of big business. It is a distinct brand of politics that shares the Reagan-era Right’s suspicion of government bureaucracy but is far less friendly to corporate power than its older counterparts.
Whether it works, of course, remains to be seen. In spite of the polls, Monday’s election could still prove to be an uphill battle for O’Toole’s Tories. “The weird dynamic you get in Canada is that when it looks like the Conservatives are about to win, a lot of the voters for the further-left party, the NDP — kind of the equivalent of Bernie or AOC in the U.S. — start to get worried, and shift their vote to the Liberals,” Harmes tells NR. “That always happens when elections look really close. It’s a constant phenomenon.”
But regardless of whether O’Toole perseveres, his brand of conservatism will likely be a potent force — both in Canada and in the rest of the Anglosphere — for the foreseeable future. “In some ways, the Conservative Party in Canada is ahead of the curve,” says Woodfinden. “The base for the Conservatives here is very much blue-collar workers these days.”
September 17th 2021 #115 of 125 articles from the Special Report:Election 2021 “Highly insufficient” means that as it stands, Canada is on track for 4 C warming
–– far higher than the Paris Agreement goal of as close to 1.5 C as possible.
Photo by Pixabay / Pexels
The independent Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has crunched the numbers on countries' updated 2030 Paris Agreement targets and found Canada’s “highly insufficient,” pouring cold water on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign emphasis on expert endorsements.
“Highly insufficient” means that as it stands, Canada is on track for 4 C warming –– far higher than the Paris Agreement goal of as close to 1.5 C as possible. To put that in context, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report from last month estimated five scenarios ranging from very low to very high emission growth; in the highest emission scenario, it estimated global warming at 4.4 C by the end of the century.
Canada not only ranks as the country with the worst climate performance in the G7, it’s also the only G7 country CAT ranked that falls in the “highly insufficient” category. Italy and France were not ranked, but the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and the European Union all perform better, according to the tracker.
While a step above countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, which the CAT ranks as “critically insufficient,” the highly insufficient club is the second-worst ranking, leaving Canada mingling with China, India, Brazil, Australia, and other major polluters.
“We've been patting ourselves on the back a fair bit about the action we're taking on climate change, and I think in Canada there's this thought that we're doing a lot,” said Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada.
“The Climate Action Tracker helps remind us that, in fact, we're not doing nearly enough.”
The tracker, run by non-profits Climate Analytics and New Climate Institute, calls Canada’s revised 2030 target “not quite Paris compatible,” but does acknowledge Ottawa’s revised climate plan from December, and new measures announced in Budget 2021.
“If Canada can successfully implement all of these announced plans, it would go a long way to closing the ambition gap and its rating would improve to ‘almost sufficient,’” according to the tracker.
The NDP’s environment critic and candidate for Victoria Laurel Collins called that “a very big if.”
“Everything we've seen so far from the Liberals is that they do not follow through on their promises,” she said. “We have seen them make commitments over the past six years to take climate action, and then do the opposite.”
CAT says a Paris Agreement-aligned target for Canada is a 54 per cent reduction from 2005 levels by 2030. Conservatives are pledging 30 per cent, Liberals 40 to 45 per cent, NDP 50 per cent, and the Green Party 60 per cent.
Canada is the only G7 country @climateactiontr ranked as having “highly insufficient” action to meet the Paris Agreement goal of holding warming to 1.5 C. #cdnpoli #elxn44
While the tracker acknowledges some steps like increasing the carbon price and moving the 100 per cent zero-emission vehicle target date from 2040 to 2035, CAT says Canada seems to take one step forward and two steps back.
“It continues to expand its pipeline capacity for fossil fuels, even though modelling by its own energy regulator shows that the additional capacity exceeds available supply under even relatively unambitious climate policy,” the tracker reads, adding the decision also comes at a time when there is major divestment from the oilsands.
Borrowing from former U.S. president Barack Obama’s science adviser John Holdren, Stewart said the choices before policymakers are to either reduce emissions, adapt to a changing world, or suffer the consequences.
“The less we choose to do of the first two, the more we are choosing to increase suffering,” he said. “And I think we really have to look at weak climate plans as essentially a plan to maximize suffering.”
Amara Possian, with climate advocacy group 350, says Canadians should be cautious of ambitious promises from an incumbent government.
“When people show you who they are, you need to believe them. And time and again over the past few years, the Liberals have focused on propping up the fossil fuel industry instead of transforming our economy to meet this moment,” she said.
“They've made promises, but they've also shown us they need to be pushed on climate.”
The Liberal Party did not return a request for comment by deadline.
John Woodside / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer
Teetering property developer Evergrande sparks contagion fears for China's economy Pete Evans
Property developer China Evergrande Group is teetering on the brink of collapse, weighed down by a giant debt load and billions of dollars of real estate it can't sell as quickly or as profitably as anticipated.
While trouble has been brewing for a year, it's coming to a head now, as the conglomerate missed one loan payment in June and more are expected. The company's offices were the site of angry protests this week, and things could get even uglier on Monday when the company is likely to miss another key interest payment to its increasingly concerned financiers.
Evergrande's possible collapse is sparking fears that it could take other parts of China's housing market down with it — and impact business interests outside China, too.
Here's a brief explainer of what you need to know about the story.
What is Evergrande?
Founded in 1996 in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong, Evergrande is mostly a property developer, whose core business is buying up land and turning it into residential real estate. Company founder Hui Ka Yan is a former steel worker who rode China's 21st century real estate boom to a fortune that was at one point last year worth $30 billion US, good enough for the title of third-richest man in China.
The company has built more than 1,300 housing developments in 280 cities in China, with plans for another 3,000 projects underway in various cities across the country.
But like any good conglomerate, it has expanded into all sort of other businesses, including bottled water and food, electric vehicles, theme parks, a Netflix-like streaming service with almost 40 million customers — and even a professional soccer team.
Why are they in trouble?
Debt — and lots of it. The company has almost two trillion yuan of debt on its books, the equivalent of more than $300 billion US. The company aggressively borrowed money to buy more land to develop, and sold apartments quickly at low margins to raise enough cash to start the cycle up again. Which works fine as a business model — until it doesn't.
In late 2020, new rules brought more scrutiny to the company's finances, which revealed higher-than-expected debt loads. That, coupled with mounting construction delays spooked buyers, setting up a vicious cycle. The company began its descent to pariah status as lenders and buyers lost their nerve in lockstep with each other.
Every attempt by the company since then to distract from its problems only served to draw more attention to them. Lenders got more and more unsettled. Existing owners got upset. New sales slowed, which created a feedback loop that got lenders even more jittery.
In June, the company admitted it missed payment on a loan. The next month, a Chinese court froze a $20 million bank deposit at the request of one its lenders. At least one creditor, a paint supplier, is reportedly being paid in apartments that won't be ready until 2024.
According to data compiled by Bloomberg, on the 19th of July, presales at two projects in Hunan were halted. Three days later, Hong Kong banks stopped offering mortgages on any incomplete projects by the company in the city. On August 9, two more projects in Kunming stopped construction due to missed payments, followed by similar halts at projects in Nanjing and Chengdu. Things have snowballed ever since. The company's stock price has cratered by 90 per cent in the past year, and most of their bonds are in junk status. Evergrande's stock price has cratered
The company is behind on its obligations to more than 70,000 investors. More than one million buyers of unfinished projects are in limbo. And the pace of problems is picking up. "Sales could slump further as the developer may struggle to restore potential homebuyers' confidence," said Lisa Zhou, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.
Monday figures to be an inflection point for the company as Evergrande is supposed to make an $80 million interest payment on one of its many loans, and there's next to no chance it will pay that, which could start the clock ticking toward some undesirable outcomes.
So what could happen?
A number of bleak B words are on the table — bankruptcy, breakup, buyout, or bailout — and none of them are ideal.
The first option would be the most painful.
"If, as expected, Evergrande is defaulting on its debt and goes through a restructuring, I don't see why it would be contained," Michel Lowy of distressed debt investment firm SC Lowy, told Reuters.
But because of the Chinese government's long-standing desire for stability, that's also the least likely outcome. The company owes money to 128 different banks, and was behind almost one out of every 20 property sales in China in the past five years. Evergrande permanently employs almost 200,000 people, but hires almost four million people a year to work on various projects.
With a reach that wide, analysts who cover the sector are confident that Beijing won't let the company simply collapse. "Evergrande's escalating crisis may prompt government action to prevent social instability," Zhou said.
More likely is some version of the next two options, a breakup or buyout, where the company sells assets to raise cash and help is brought in to run things. "State-owned enterprises or other developers may also take over Evergrande's projects, after Chinese officials sent accounting and legal experts to examine the company's finances," Zhou said.
Economist Art Woo with Bank of Montreal said in a note on Friday that he also doubts a bailout is coming. "As for who could bear the losses, that's frankly tricky to predict, but we think it's reasonable to believe that the authorities are unlikely to bail out equity holders or creditors in an effort to prevent moral hazard from increasing and improve financial discipline," he said.
More likely is some sort of organized wind down, to keep damage to a minimum. "We do not believe the government has an incentive to bail out Evergrande (which is a private-owned enterprise)," Nomura analyst Iris Chen said in a note to clients.
"But they will also not actively push Evergrande down and will supervise a more orderly default, if any, in our view."
Is there an impact outside China?
Not much, directly, although the company does have assets in Europe and North America — including the ritzy Château Montebello resort in Quebec — but the company's woes are nonetheless a cautionary tale for people everywhere.
China has been in a housing boom for more than two decades now, as more and more people put money into residential real estate — almost regardless of the price and demand for the underlying asset.
Video went viral on social media this month of a 15-tower condo development in Kunming being dynamited to the ground because it was a ghost city with no actual residents, eight years after being built.
While that wasn't an Evergrande project, the worry is that there are many others out there like it.
China's Lehman Brothers moment?
The 2009 financial crisis was sparked by the failure of two investment banks, Bear Stearns and then Lehman Brothers, which exposed just how much bad debt there was in the system, and caused a chain reaction of worry down the line
That may be far fetched for the economy as a whole this time around, but it's certainly on the table for China's housing market at least.
"Lehman (was) very different as it went across the financial system, freezing activity," said Patrick Perret-Green, an independent London-based analyst.
"Millions of contracts with multiple counterparties, everyone was trying to work out their exposure," he said. "With Evergrande it depresses the entire real estate sector."
"There are other developers that are suffering from the same problem of no access to liquidity and have extended themselves too much," Lowy said.
Simon MacAdam, an economist with Capital Economics, says the Lehman parables are unwarranted.
"The China's Lehman moment narrative is wide of the mark," he said. "Even if it were the first of many property developers to go bust in China, we suspect it would take a policy misstep for this to cause a sharp slowdown in its economy."
Regardless, the Evergrande saga is a cautionary tale about the down side of unrestrained real estate speculation anywhere.
As Woo put it: "A default or bankruptcy does not pose a Lehman-type threat ... but it's still bad news for the economy."
Evergrande says six execs redeemed investment products in advance
BEIJING (Reuters) - Six executives of China's heavily indebted Evergrande had redeemed some of the company's investment products in advance earlier this year, the property group said on Saturday
An exterior view of China Evergrande Centre in Hong Kong
Between May 1 and Sept. 7, the six executives made early redemptions of 12 investment products, Evergrande said in a statement on its website, without identifying the executives or giving details on the nature of the products.
"Regarding the early redemption of Evergrande wealth investment products by some managers, the group company views the matter seriously," the company said.
Evergrande said it had requested that all the funds redeemed by the six managers in advance be returned within a certain time frame.
Severe penalties would also be imposed, it said.
Evergrande, with over $300 billion in liabilities, is in the throes of a liquidity crisis that has left it racing to raise funds to pay its many lenders and suppliers.
The company has epitomised China's freewheeling era of borrowing and building. Uncertainty about its ability to meet funding obligations - equal to 2% of China's gross domestic product - has sent jitters through markets.
The group has been hit by recent ratings downgrades, with both S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings warning of the risk of default.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; editing by Richard Pullin)
