A Lifetime’s Consumption of Fossil Fuels, Visualized

VISUAL CAPITALIST on July 22, 2022


Visualizing the Fossil Fuels we Consume in a Lifetime

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From burning natural gas to heat our homes to the petroleum-based materials found in everyday products like pharmaceuticals and plastics, we all consume fossil fuels in one form or another.

In 2021, the world consumed nearly 490 exajoules of fossil fuels, an unfathomable figure of epic proportions.

To put fossil fuel consumption into perspective on a more individual basis, this graphic visualizes the average person’s fossil fuel use over a lifetime of 80 years using data from the National Mining Association and Worldometer.
How Many Fossil Fuels a Person Consumes Every Year

On a day-to-day basis, our fossil fuel consumption might seem minimal, however, in just a year the average American consumes more than 23 barrels of petroleum products like gasoline, propane, or jet fuel.

The cube of the average individual’s yearly petroleum product consumption reaches around 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) tall. When you consider varying transportation choices and lifestyles, from public transit to private jets, the yearly cube of petroleum product consumption for some people may easily overtake their height.



To calculate the volume needed to visualize the petroleum products and coal cubes (natural gas figures were already in volume format), we used the densities of bulk bituminous coal (833kg/m3) and petroleum products (800kg/m3) along with the weights of per capita consumption in the U.S. from the National Mining Association.

These figures are averages, and can differ per person depending on a region’s energy mix, transportation choices, and consumption habits, along with other factors.
Global Fossil Fuel Consumption Rebounds Post-Pandemic

When the global economy reopened post-pandemic, energy demand and consumption rebounded past 2019 levels with fossil fuels largely leading the way. While global primary energy demand grew 5.8% in 2021, coal consumption rose by 6% reaching highs not seen since 2014.

In 2021, renewables and hydroelectricity made up nearly 14% of the world’s primary energy use, with fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) accounting for 82% (down from 83% in 2020), and nuclear energy accounting for the remaining 4%.

Recent demand for fossil fuels has been underpinned by their reliability as generating energy from renewables in Germany has been inconsistent when it’s been needed most.

Now the country grapples with energy rations as it restarts coal-fired power plants in response to its overdependence on Russian fossil fuel energy as the potential permanence of the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline shutdown looms.
Growing Green Energy Amidst Geopolitical Instability

Domestic energy and material supply chain independence quickly became a top priority for many nations amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western trade sanctions, and increasingly unpredictable COVID-19 lockdowns in China.

Trade and energy dependence risks still remain a major concern as many nations transition towards renewable energy. For example, essential rare earth mineral production, and solar PV manufacturing supply chains remain dominated by China.

Despite looming storm clouds over global energy and materials trade, renewable energy’s green linings are growing on the global scale. The world’s renewable primary energy consumption reached an annual growth rate of 15%, outgrowing all other energy fuels as wind and solar provided a milestone 10% of global electricity in 2021.

If the global energy mix continues to get greener fast enough, the cubes of our personal fossil fuel consumption may manage to get smaller in the future.

SCIENCE FICTION;FUSION

Science Made Simple: Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology

By U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY JULY 25, 2022

The Central Solenoid is a five-story, 1,000-ton magnet, in the center of the ITER. It consists of 22 miles of superconducting cables and will drive 15 million amperes of electrical current (millions of times more than in a house) in ITER’s plasma. Credit: General Atomic

Fusion nuclear science and technology specializes in investigating the extreme nuclear fusion environment. This environment has very high temperatures, particle fluxes, neutron irradiation, and other harsh conditions.

Fusion science and technology research includes the examination of designs and materials for future fusion power devices. It also includes new technologies and integrated systems for generating electricity from fusion reactions, breeding tritium (the fuel needed for the fusion reaction), engineering high-temperature superconducting magnets, and exhausting the extremely hot gases that are released during fusion.

Additionally, fusion nuclear science addresses challenges related to the safety and security of fusion energy. For example, fusion nuclear science is studying how to ensure the supply of tritium fuel and how to build fusion power plants that can be operated safely despite their exceptionally high heat and pressure conditions.

Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology Quick Facts

• ITER’s magnets use cables of a superconducting material, niobium tin, that combined measure more than 100,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) long. That’s enough to stretch around Earth’s equator twice.
• The United States is developing key fusion nuclear technologies including methods of using magnets to contain fusion and specialized materials that can withstand long exposure to extreme fusion conditions.

DOE Office of Science & Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology

In the Office of Science, fusion nuclear science and technology is funded within the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program since R&D in these areas support the development of fusion as an energy source.  The program supports multiple research areas including the U.S. Fusion Blanket and Tritium Fuel Cycle program.  Research focuses on methods of extracting the fuel from the blanket, which requires expertise from national laboratories, universities, and private industry.

Within the FES program, researchers develop essential technologies for the ITER project, including the central solenoid, one of the world’s largest and most powerful superconducting magnets. Other activities supported within FES include fusion safety and system studies. Fusion energy system studies look at long-term areas, such as a future fusion power plant, and determine gaps in fusion nuclear science and technology. Identifying these gaps help programs prioritize research efforts over time. 

CFS, UKAEA to collaborate on fusion research

26 July 2022

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the USA's Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) have signed a five-year Collaboration Framework Agreement aimed at advancing commercial fusion energy.

Inside the JET fusion training facility (Image: UKAEA)

The agreement establishes the terms under which a series of work projects between CFS (a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spinout company) and UKAEA will support the development of fusion energy and related technologies.

In a joint statement CFS and UKAEA said the scope of the collaboration could include: operations teams sharing and learning best practices from fusion experiments; access to fusion-adjacent technology facilities, including robotics; collaboration on fuel cycle technologies, neutronics modelling, systems integration models, advanced manufacturing, diagnostics, remote handling and remote maintenance; and collaborative work to identify and answer emerging plasma physics questions.

"This agreement is the result of a shared mission of both organisations to leverage innovative research and the speed of the private sector to support the fastest path to low-carbon commercial fusion energy - based on the same processes that power the sun and stars," they said.

"Achieving our shared missions to deliver low-carbon and sustainable fusion energy involves working at the forefront of science, engineering, and technology," said UKAEA CEO Ian Chapman. "This new collaboration agreement with CFS will help push these developments and capabilities, drive innovation and accelerate progress.

"Fusion presents an exciting opportunity for the UK and we're proud our ground-breaking work here continues to support economic growth and attracts such leading international partners."

CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard added: "CFS and UKAEA have a mutual interest and strong belief that public-private collaborations such as this represent a way to accelerate advances in commercial fusion energy technology and support CFS' plans to deliver commercial fusion as quickly as possible.

"UKAEA is a leader in fusion energy research and CFS plans to establish a UK presence as we leverage the combined skills and talents of both organisations to develop the fastest path to commercial fusion power on the grid."

CFS is collaborating with MIT to leverage decades of research combined with new groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology. These magnets will enable compact fusion power plants that can be constructed faster and at lower cost.

In May, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) signed a new five-year agreement with CFS to expand its fusion energy research and education activities.

CFS is working to build the SPARC prototype fusion machine which it says will pave the way for a first commercially viable fusion power plant called ARC. SPARC is described by PSFC as a compact, high-field, net fusion energy device which would be the size of existing mid-sized fusion devices, but with a much stronger magnetic field. It is predicted to produce 50-100 MW of fusion power, achieving fusion gain greater than 10.

The UKAEA conducts out fusion energy research on behalf of the UK government. It oversees the UK's fusion programme, headed by the MAST Upgrade (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) experiment. It also hosts the world's largest fusion research facility, JET (Joint European Torus), which it operates for scientists from around Europe.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

The law professor who set out to dismantle Tunisia’s democracy

By Siobhán O'Grady and Mohamed Bliwa
Updated July 25, 2022

TUNIS — Soon after he was elected president of Tunisia in late 2019, Kais Saied strolled into his usual coffee shop in the capital as if nothing had changed.

Farouk Chihaoui, who serves shisha, or tobacco water pipes, at the cafe, could not believe his eyes. Here was the man who until recently taught university law courses, always parked outside in an old Peugeot, paid off his tabs, and “looked exactly like the people.”
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Except now, accompanied by security and greeted by a swarming crowd, he was their president. “I took a selfie like a friend would have. Frankly, it was pretty special.”

For Chihaoui, that encounter bolstered his belief, one shared among many of the president’s supporters, that Saied is one of them. He will vote “yes” Monday in a controversial referendum on a new constitution that Saied insists will lead Tunisia to a more prosperous future.

Resistance builds in Tunisia as populist leader seeks more power

Many other Tunisians believe the opposite will come true. They say Saied has spent the past year executing a drawn-out power grab and that his proposed constitution, published just weeks ago, was conceived through an illegitimate process. They say the referendum will only further cement his one-man rule and destroy the progress made since the country’s 2011 revolution overthrew dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and kicked off the Arab Spring across the Middle East.

With no minimum participation rate required and many of Saied’s opponents boycotting the process to avoid lending it credence, the referendum measure is widely expected to pass. His opponents criticized his decision to speak publicly about the referendum Monday in what they decried as a blatant violation of election silence rules. By late Monday night, election officials said turnout surpassed 27 percent, a higher showing than what many observers expected.

The vote comes one year to the day since Saied dismissed parliament and fired his prime minister, suddenly dividing the country between those who celebrated his decision as necessary to end an ongoing political crisis and those who decried it as a coup that threatened the survival of the only democracy to have come out of the Arab Spring.

The move, which came amid a deadly surge of coronavirus cases and political deadlock between the president and a divided parliament, was initially widely celebrated in Tunisia and threw Saied, a man who once seemed an unlikely candidate to wield such immense political power, into the spotlight.

His stilted manner of speech and insistence on using formal Arabic rather than the Tunisian dialect have earned him the nickname “RoboCop.” Even some of his supporters, including Chihaoui, acknowledge he lacks the typical charisma and gregariousness that so often accompanies a successful political figure.

Still, he ran for president at a moment when Tunisians, tired of a decade of failure to improve the economy and politicians who did not deliver on their promises, welcomed his status as a relative outsider in the political system and a perception of his trustworthiness. He won 73 percent of the vote.

He became immensely popular last summer with those who saw his drastic moves to suspend parliament as necessary to weed out corrupt or ineffectual officials, including in the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, once a dominant force in the government.

But for some of those supporters, the popularity was short-lived. Now the country, submerged in a worsening economic crisis and facing widespread political division, is grappling with what many of his onetime supporters see as the consequences of their earlier misconception.

Tunisia among nations with economic fallout from war in Ukraine

“He passed right under everyone’s nose,” said Abderraouf Betbaieb, a retired diplomat who has known Saied for decades and was part of his inner circle before quitting in 2020. “He plunged the country into crisis.”

Lawyer and politician Samia Abbou was never enthralled by Saied but was among those who applauded his unconventional intervention last July, hoping it would mark a fresh start for the country’s democracy.

But by September, when Saied announced an extension of the state of emergency and a further expansion of his powers, she felt he had veered too far off-script. Then, in December, he proclaimed that parliament would remain suspended until after a July referendum. Finally in March, he said parliament had been dissolved and has since replaced the members of the independent electoral commission with his appointees.

Now, she said, she feels certain the new constitution is just laying the groundwork for a “dictatorship.” “I cannot regret something that needed to happen,” she said of her support for his initial decision last July. But what came next “was done in bad faith. It was not honest.”

“He succeeded in dividing the people in two,” she said. “We have never lived through this, even under the regime of Ben Ali,” referring to the dictator ousted in 2011. “We have become fanatics, either for or against. People no longer smile together, even in a single family.”

Even the expert whom Saied tasked with writing the new constitution is among those now publicly decrying the president and boycotting the Monday vote, saying it would be an ethical “betrayal” for him to participate.

Sadok Belaid, the former dean of Tunis University’s law school who taught Saied as a young man, agreed this spring to lead the consultative commission responsible for crafting the new legal document. He had known Saied for decades, he said, and described him as having been “very affable, very nice, very modest.”

For weeks, Belaid recalled, he worked tirelessly on the project. The day after he submitted his completed version of the new constitution, he said, he checked into the hospital for an operation he had postponed to write the document.

Later that day, in his hospital bed and still under the effects of anesthesia, he said Saied visited him and handed him a pile of papers he described as a modified version of his work.

It was not until the president left that Belaid, who is in his 80s, realized he was holding an entirely different version of the constitution, one that Saied appeared to have largely written himself. The new version hands Saied further powers and reduces the influence of parliament, among other changes widely condemned by his opponents.

Tunisians attend a protest against the referendum on a new constitution. (Mohamed Messara/Shutterstock)

“It is a true comedy” that “ends badly,” Belaid said. “The reality is that the president used this prestige he has in the eyes of the population to pass a text that does not respond to the needs or demands of the people but to his own intentions.”

Back at the cafe, Chihaoui, said it was indeed Saied’s reputation as someone “cultivated” that drew him toward his candidacy. Still, in a Tunisia racked by political infighting, “I thought it was a dream.” He said, “A man of the people becoming president? It was not too logical.” Now that Saied is in power, he said, he supports any decision the president may make. “Everything he does is for the people.”

Just outside the cafe, Sami bin Mohamed, 42, a salesman, expressed a much less optimistic opinion. Smoking a cigarette, he bemoaned the worsening economic situation and said he will boycott the referendum. “Any president works for his own good,” he said. In poorer neighborhoods, he added, “everyone is planning to leave illegally. I don’t think it is possible to fix stuff around here.”

Downtown on Saturday, a small crowd gathered to protest the referendum and voice their support for the Ennahda party. “We are here because Mr. Kais Saied is doing a coup in Tunisia,” said Fathia Azaiz, 63. “He is changing everything,” she said. “The president is isolating himself and not being democratic.”

Nearby, Kawthar Guettiti, 36, a graphic designer, was walking with her 6-year-old daughter, who held a small Tunisian flag. She will be voting “yes” on Monday, she said, because she trusts that Saied intends to put the country on a sturdier path for her daughter’s future. “He has a background in law. He knows very well what he is doing. He won’t be a dictator any more than the others,” she said.



By Siobhán O'GradySiobhán O’Grady is The Washington Post's Cairo bureau chief, covering North Africa and Yemen. Twitter

'Impossible to track' climate action of Canada's $2T pension industry: study

Jeff Lagerquist
Fri, July 22, 2022 

The Ontario-based think tanks say Canadians are increasingly concerned about how climate risk is being managed by those overseeing their pensions.

Climate progress at Canada's largest pension funds is "impossible to track," according to a new study calling for greater transparency from an industry that manages more than $2 trillion in assets on behalf of millions of Canadians.

Many of the largest funds have committed to making their portfolios greener, and adopted net-zero targets in response to mounting pressure to address climate change. However, the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Global Risk Institute in Financial Services note in their study that there is no binding requirement to track these voluntary commitments, and no standardized climate-related disclosure for pension funds.

"There is a significant transparency gap in determining what type of progress is being made, and whether these pledges will ring hollow," the study's authors wrote.

"Beneficiaries, researchers, and other stakeholders . . . will currently find it impossible to track progress on these commitments, given the opaque nature of disclosure on related metrics and lack of mandatory requirements to deliver on the promises."

The Ontario-based think tanks say Canadians are increasingly concerned about how climate risk is being managed by those overseeing their retirement incomes. At the same time, the study highlights the potential for pension funds to shape global markets, and hasten the transition to a lower-emission economy through their massive balance sheets.

Pension funds reached by Yahoo Finance Canada referred to frameworks and disclosure practices currently in place when asked about the study's claim that tracking progress on climate commitments by the general public is "impossible."

"CDPQ is a leader in terms of climate targets and transparency," a spokesperson for Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, manager of nearly $420 billion in assets, told Yahoo Finance Canada in an email on Thursday. "We have been reporting our carbon intensity annually since 2017, and the value of our green assets in our portfolio."

CDPQ says it followed recommendations outlined by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in its latest Sustainable Investing Report.

TCFD is a framework developed by the Basel-based Financial Stability Board that's become recognized as the global standard. Its disclosures span board-level responsibility for climate risks, tallies of greenhouse gas emissions, and analysis of business prospects under a range of temperature scenarios. The task force recommends that such climate-related financial disclosures be voluntarily included in public financial filings.

A spokesperson for the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSPIB), a pension investment manager with $230.5 billion in net assets, says it also voluntarily discloses the carbon intensity of its portfolio in its public reports, in accordance with TCFD recommendations. Maria Constantinescu adds that the fund's climate strategy roadmap is designed to be updated with new metrics and data as they become available.

Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health is a group that monitors the fossil fuel and climate-related investments of Canadian pension funds. It called PSPIB's climate strategy a "notable step forward" when it was released in April. However, it raised concerns, including language that could be used to ignore Scope 3 emissions. For example, the pollution from the tailpipes of cars built by an automaker, and the end-of-life treatment of the vehicle.

"The strategy's commitments and implementation plans are lacking in clarity, but it's clear that PSP is listening to the growing concerns of beneficiaries and beginning to recognize the scale and urgency of the climate crisis," Shift Action said in a statement.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the country's largest pension plan with more than $539 billion in assets under management, declined to comment on the report's findings. Five other major pension plans did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) released draft rules intended to force banks and the other institutions to assess and manage potential weak spots from physical climate risks, as well as those stemming from economic and policy changes. OSFI also intends to roll out mandatory climate-related financial disclosures aligned with the TCFD.

"These disclosures will incentivize improvements in the quality of the institutions' governance and risk management practices related to climate," the regulator stated on May 26. "In doing so, this contributes to public confidence in the Canadian financial system by increasing transparency."

Other countries are moving towards mandatory disclosures for corporations and financial institutions, including the EU, U.K., and the United States.

Among its recommendations, the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Global Risk Institute report calls for "a coordinated approach across federal and provincial bodies—including to ensure that pension funds' disclosure keeps up with the dynamic nature of climate information."

Sport Canada knew of 2018 sexual assault allegations involving hockey players

The Minister of Sport said on Tuesday that Sport Canada can do better. 

An NDP MP says the federal bureaucracy ‘failed to protect victims.’

By Kieran Leavitt

Edmonton Bureau
Tue., July 26,2022

The federal agency in charge of Canadian sports policies knew about the sexual assault allegations involving members of Canada’s 2018 world junior team back but didn’t tell the minister at the time, a parliamentary committee was told on Tuesday.

Michel Ruest, a senior director at Sport Canada, told MPs on the Canadian Heritage standing committee that his organization was made aware of the allegations, connected to a Hockey Canada event in 2018, but did not follow up with the national governing body or tell the minister’s office.

Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge told MPs later in the day that “procedures absolutely need to be improved so that there can be better monitoring of the cases that are signalled to Sport Canada,” a branch of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

The testimony on Tuesday marks the first of two days of hearings being held in the wake of a scandal that has rocked the world of hockey. Hockey Canada’s top officials are to testify before the same all-party committee of MPs on Wednesday.

Members of Canada’s world junior hockey team from 2018 are facing allegations of a group sexual assault and a criminal investigation reopened by police in London, Ont. Meanwhile, reports emerged last week of separate allegations about another group sexual assault involving members of the 2003 world junior team. Halifax police have said they opened an investigation into that incident as well.

MPs on the heritage committee questioned officials from Sport Canada and Sport Minister Pascale StOnge allegations of sexual assault against members of the 2018 world junior team. Speaking via translator, St-Onge said she hopes Hockey Canada's leadership team will ask itself whether they are the right people to make cultural change. 

Ruest, the senior official from Sport Canada, said that he was notified of the 2018 allegations on June 26 of that year.

“At that time, we did the verifications to find out whether competent authorities had been informed and whether a third party had been made available to the alleged victim,” he said in French through a translator. “Hockey Canada had provided that information, and so that was what we did.”

St-Onge became the minister years after the allegations came into the department.

Peter Julian, an NDP MP on the committee, said that while “it’s true that Hockey Canada failed” it’s “also true that Sport Canada failed to protect victims.

“Sport Canada should have taken action years ago,” he said.

At issue for the minister was funding. Hockey Canada receives cash from the federal government and saw that money suspended in the wake of revelations that they’d settled a lawsuit with a complainant in the 2018 incident. The organization also saw corporate sponsors flee amid the fallout from those reports.

St-Onge said that the organization must show signs it is changing its culture before she restores funding to it. Hockey Canada has announced some steps in the wake of the scandal, including a new complaint process.

“I had to make them understand that they had passed the point of no return,” St-Onge said in French.

Julien asked if the minister had made some inquiries about putting Hockey Canada into a trusteeship and she said she hadn’t done so yet. St-Onge said in French that she would use any tools at her disposal “to change the culture at Hockey Canada.”

Prior to testimony from government officials, the committee heard from lawyer Danielle Robitaille with Henein Hutchison LLP. She carried out an investigation ordered by Hockey Canada back in 2018 into the allegations. Ultimately, Robitaille said, she only spoke with 10 out of the 19 players who were at the London event because she wasn’t able to get the complainant’s version of events; she said she felt it was necessary to have that before interviewing the remaining nine players.

She also said that some of those remaining players now believe the case has been prejudged.

Robitaille told the committee that she was not able to answer some of the MPs’ questions because since the complainant has come forward with their version of events, the investigation continues, and she’s prohibited from speaking on some information due to attorney client privilege.

“I am laser focused on my conduct investigation,” Robitaille told MPs on Tuesday.

The standing committee heard testimony from top Hockey Canada executives in June, but since then more details have emerged regarding how money is used by the organization to settle sexual assault claims, and the Halifax allegations that have emerged.

On Wednesday, executives at Hockey Canada will testify once again, including president Scott Smith, chief financial officer Brian Cairo, chair of the Hockey Canada Foundation Dave Andrews, and retired CEO Tom Renney.

On Monday, Hockey Canada released a plan to address abuse in the sport and “shatter the code of silence and eliminate toxic behaviour in and around Canada’s game,” a news release said.

Former NHLer Sheldon Kennedy, an abuse survivor as well as a member of the world junior team in 1988 and 1989, responded on Tuesday to Hockey Canada’s stated plans by calling for Smith and the board of directors to resign, stating on Twitter, “The same people with a new plan expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

With files from The Canadian Press

Kieran Leavitt is an Edmonton-based political reporter for the Toronto Star. Follow him on Twitter: @kieranleavitt

Berating climate sceptics isn’t enough – disruptive protest now seems the only way forward

        
The time has come to choose: do you trust the people in suits downplaying this emergency, or the activists lying in roads in an attempt to ward off catastrophe?

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

John Harris
Sun 24 Jul 2022

For the past year or so, I have been repeatedly listening to a critically acclaimed album, Ignorance, released in 2021 by the Canadian band the Weather Station. Its music is graceful, poised and smooth, but it is also an almost conceptual set of songs about the urgency of the climate crisis and the disorientation of living in a culture that still refuses to acknowledge it. According to its chief creator, the singer-songwriter and former actor Tamara Lindeman, many of its songs evoke what happens when “this veneer of ‘everything will be OK’ disappears”. That moment of revelation is perfectly captured in one song I have played over and over again – which is simply called Loss, and finds Lindeman recalling a conversation: “What was it last night she said? At some point you’d have to live as if the truth was true.”

Amid unprecedented temperatures, fires and the grim pantomime that will eventually end with the selection of our next prime minister, I suspect more people than ever would now understand those words as a matter of direct emotional experience. For millions of us, this summer’s heat is synonymous with an anxiety that is now impossible to shake off, and a renewed awareness of the small transgressions and outright hypocrisies that are required to get through each day. We perform them because of something that Lindeman’s lyrics consummately describe: that very human talent for just about averting our eyes from what is directly in front of us, so as to live a quiet life; and a political culture that just about keeps the “everything will be OK” veneer in place.

These are things evident across the planet, and the UK has its own grim versions of them. One of the two remaining Tory leadership candidates has pledged to retain the current de facto ban on onshore windfarms; the other wants to reconsider some of the key policies built into the government’s milquetoast 2050 net zero target (the positions of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, respectively). The Labour party has one big climate policy – its £28bn-a-year climate investment pledge – but is still not putting global heating anywhere near the centre of its basic message, and is thereby failing to acquire much consent for action on it.

Meanwhile, for a certain kind of media voice, the past week has been all about raging against climate sceptics and deniers and their influence on politics, as if pointing out that they are mendacious and dangerous is an act of bravery. The former BBC presenter Andrew Marr provided a good example in a monologue broadcast on his new show on LBC: “I for one have had enough of being told by pallid, shadowy, old businessmen and lazy ignorant hacks and sleazy lobbyists – who aren’t real scientists, any of them – that the science is wrong and that what is happening isn’t happening,” he said. “Enough!”

The key question of 2022 is not whether those people are wrong, both factually and morally: we know the answer to that. For the moment, I don’t think many people need to be thinking very much about particular parties or politicians. What we surely need to focus on is the deep attachment to fossil fuels still locked into our economy and political system, and how to help the movements that definitely want to end it: Extinction Rebellion (XR), Insulate Britain, Just Stop Oil and the other forces that clearly understand the unspeakable gravity of the moment. This comes down to a question that still does not intrude on politics nearly enough: as these groups take the most direct kind of action, do you support them? And if – or, rather, as – the climate emergency deepens and the awful gap between politics and the sheer scale of what we are faced with only widens, what will you think if their actions take new, ever-more disruptive forms?
 
To some extent, the way our media and politicians fend off the climate crisis accidentally confronts people with exactly those arguments. In one of our most regular national rituals, mainstream politics barely intrudes and instead, a protester fresh from some or other climate action is berated by Piers Morgan, Richard Madeley or one of the presenters from GB News or TalkRadio, and the only real options become clear: meaningful and radical action or nothing at all. An editorial last week in the Sun insisted that “we need a sober debate, free from the extremists’ juvenile panic, on how we inch towards Net Zero in decades to come”, which made panic look like much the more sensible option. In April, the Labour party demanded that the government take legal action to effectively ban climate protests that disrupt traffic and oil production. When he stood to be his party’s leader, Keir Starmer took donations from a former boss of the RAC and AA, and the latter company-cum-lobby group’s former chief financial officer. The people he apparently thinks should be locked up, by contrast, are motivated by a comparatively pure mission to confront the car industry and quickly finish the hydrocarbon era, and thereby avoid catastrophe. So who do you choose?

In some cases – Occupy is a good example here – sustained support for protesters and activists has bumped up against their lack of a coherent agenda. But the modern climate movement is not like that. The basic position shared by the central handful of groups is clear enough: net zero by a much earlier date than 2050. XR and the people backing the climate and ecology bill – including such politicians as the Greens’ Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Clive Lewis – envisage that change being driven by citizens’ assemblies, set up to decide how such an aim will be reached. In the context of Westminster politics, such ideas may seem so unlikely as to be barely worth considering. But remember: Brexit is a madcap, massively disruptive project that defies just about every element of political and economic sense, but was until recently the preserve of cranks and obsessives and only became a reality when David Cameron decided to bypass MPs and ask the rest of us to decide. Less than a decade after it decisively burst into the political foreground, moreover, we are locked into it for keeps, with the support of both main parties. By comparison, is trying to set an example to other countries by doing exactly what the climate demands really so fanciful?

Activism and protest often trigger a kneejerk suspicion that they will alienate people and kill whatever cause they advocate. But experience suggests the exact opposite: just as successive waves of social reformers, the suffragettes and the anti-apartheid movement were stubborn, daring and creative enough to make their demands irresistible, so the people now lying in roads and charging into airports and refineries have conveyed the urgency of climate breakdown more successfully than anyone in a suit. There is a very good reason for that: it is only well outside centres of power that you can find the answer to a question that power and politics are dodging more than ever – how to live as if the truth is actually true.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

This Extremely Rare Jellyfish Has Only Been Caught on Camera Once

The jellyfish only has two recorded sightings, and this is the first video captured of it.

By Jules Roscoe
NEW YORK, US
July 25, 2022

SCREENGRAB FROM VIDEO POSTED TO THE SCUBA VENTURES - KAVIENG FACEBOOK PAGE.

A diver off the coast of Papua New Guinea recorded a huge jellyfish swimming alongside them, and posted the video to their Facebook page. They said the jellyfish was around soccer ball size, and swam “quite fast.”

Four groups of striped tentacles trail behind the jellyfish’s translucent body, which is spotted with rings of varying size. Inside the bell is a bright red organ that is most likely the animal’s gastrovascular cavity.

This jellyfish is so rare that it only has two recorded sightings, ever. And this video is one of them.

It’s called Chirodectes maculatus (from the Latin for “spotted”), and it’s an extremely uncommon species of box jelly found off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Box jellies, distinguished for their boxy shape, are often venomous to humans—some are even potentially fatal. But C. maculatus isn’t known to be.

“It is not possible to make out all of the characters of the species Chirodectes maculatus from the video (some are internal), but it certainly fits very well based on what one can observe,” said Dr. Allen Collins, a zoologist and curator for the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History, in an email to Motherboard.

C. maculatus was first described in 2005, by a team of Australian scientists led by Paul Cornelius. They had caught the specimen in 1997 and preserved it. In the paper, they write that they were “reluctant” to dissect it, so they made only external observations. The scientists initially described the species as Chiropsalmus. A year later, another scientist, Lisa-Ann Gershwin, published comments on the organism’s classification, and officially moved it to the genus Chirodectes, where it was accepted.

A DRAWING FROM THE PAPER FIRST DESCRIBING C. MACULATUS. IMAGE CREDIT: CORNELIUS, P.F.S., FENNER, P.J., & HORE, R. 2005 / MEMOIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM.

Collins noted that the color pattern on the bell of the organism in the video was different from that described by the original scientists. The jellyfish from 2005 had solid spots, while the one in the video had rings. “I suppose there is always a chance that this specimen is from a closely related but as yet undescribed species of Chirodectes, but I would lean toward it being C. maculatus,” he said.

Collins said the video was striking because it was only the second sighting of the jellyfish, despite its size. “That something so large and conspicuous in appearance would only be seen twice is pretty surprising,” he said. “But that said, a lot of diversity is rare. It tells me that we still have a lot of exploration to undertake.”

Cross-pollination among neuroscience, psychology and AI research yields a foundational understanding of thinking

If you want to build a true artificial mind, start with a model of human cognition. DrAfter123/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images


 CONVERSATION
Published: July 25, 2022 9.07am EDT

Progress in artificial intelligence has enabled the creation of AIs that perform tasks previously thought only possible for humans, such as translating languages, driving cars, playing board games at world-champion level and extracting the structure of proteins. However, each of these AIs has been designed and exhaustively trained for a single task and has the ability to learn only what’s needed for that specific task.

Recent AIs that produce fluent text, including in conversation with humans, and generate impressive and unique art can give the false impression of a mind at work. But even these are specialized systems that carry out narrowly defined tasks and require massive amounts of training.

It still remains a daunting challenge to combine multiple AIs into one that can learn and perform many different tasks, much less pursue the full breadth of tasks performed by humans or leverage the range of experiences available to humans that reduce the amount of data otherwise required to learn how to perform these tasks. The best current AIs in this respect, such as AlphaZero and Gato, can handle a variety of tasks that fit a single mold, like game-playing. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is capable of a breadth of tasks remains elusive.

Ultimately, AGIs need to be able to interact effectively with each other and people in various physical environments and social contexts, integrate the wide varieties of skill and knowledge needed to do so, and learn flexibly and efficiently from these interactions.

Building AGIs comes down to building artificial minds, albeit greatly simplified compared to human minds. And to build an artificial mind, you need to start with a model of cognition

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This robot, powered by an AI called Rosie, learned how to solve this puzzle from a human who communicated to the robot using natural language. James Kirk, CC BY-ND

From human to Artificial General Intelligence

Humans have an almost unbounded set of skills and knowledge, and quickly learn new information without needing to be re-engineered to do so. It is conceivable that an AGI can be built using an approach that is fundamentally different from human intelligence. However, as three longtime researchers in AI and cognitive science, our approach is to draw inspiration and insights from the structure of the human mind. We are working toward AGI by trying to better understand the human mind, and better understand the human mind by working toward AGI.

From research in neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology, we know that the human brain is neither a huge homogeneous set of neurons nor a massive set of task-specific programs that each solves a single problem. Instead, it is a set of regions with different properties that support the basic cognitive capabilities that together form the human mind.

These capabilities include perception and action; short-term memory for what is relevant in the current situation; long-term memories for skills, experience and knowledge; reasoning and decision making; emotion and motivation; and learning new skills and knowledge from the full range of what a person perceives and experiences.

Instead of focusing on specific capabilities in isolation, AI pioneer Allen Newell in 1990 suggested developing Unified Theories of Cognition that integrate all aspects of human thought. Researchers have been able to build software programs called cognitive architectures that embody such theories, making it possible to test and refine them.

Cognitive architectures are grounded in multiple scientific fields with distinct perspectives. Neuroscience focuses on the organization of the human brain, cognitive psychology on human behavior in controlled experiments, and artificial intelligence on useful capabilities.

The Common Model of Cognition

We have been involved in the development of three cognitive architectures: ACT-R, Soar and Sigma. Other researchers have also been busy on alternative approaches. One paper identified nearly 50 active cognitive architectures. This proliferation of architectures is partly a direct reflection of the multiple perspectives involved, and partly an exploration of a wide array of potential solutions. Yet, whatever the cause, it raises awkward questions both scientifically and with respect to finding a coherent path to AGI.

Fortunately, this proliferation has brought the field to a major inflection point. The three of us have identified a striking convergence among architectures, reflecting a combination of neural, behavioral and computational studies. In response, we initiated a communitywide effort to capture this convergence in a manner akin to the Standard Model of Particle Physics that emerged in the second half of the 20th century.

This basic model of cognition both explains human thinking and provides a blueprint for true artificial intelligence. Andrea Stocco, CC BY-ND

This Common Model of Cognition divides humanlike thought into multiple modules, with a short-term memory module at the center of the model. The other modules – perception, action, skills and knowledge – interact through it.

Learning, rather than occurring intentionally, happens automatically as a side effect of processing. In other words, you don’t decide what is stored in long-term memory. Instead, the architecture determines what is learned based on whatever you do think about. This can yield learning of new facts you are exposed to or new skills that you attempt. It can also yield refinements to existing facts and skills.

The modules themselves operate in parallel; for example, allowing you to remember something while listening and looking around your environment. Each module’s computations are massively parallel, meaning many small computational steps happening at the same time. For example, in retrieving a relevant fact from a vast trove of prior experiences, the long-term memory module can determine the relevance of all known facts simultaneously, in a single step.

Guiding the way to Artificial General Intelligence

The Common Model is based on the current consensus in research in cognitive architectures and has the potential to guide research on both natural and artificial general intelligence. When used to model communication patterns in the brain, the Common Model yields more accurate results than leading models from neuroscience. This extends its ability to model humans – the one system proven capable of general intelligence – beyond cognitive considerations to include the organization of the brain itself.

We are starting to see efforts to relate existing cognitive architectures to the Common Model and to use it as a baseline for new work – for example, an interactive AI designed to coach people toward better health behavior. One of us was involved in developing an AI based on Soar, dubbed Rosie, that learns new tasks via instructions in English from human teachers. It learns 60 different puzzles and games and can transfer what it learns from one game to another. It also learns to control a mobile robot for tasks such as fetching and delivering packages and patrolling buildings.

Rosie is just one example of how to build an AI that approaches AGI via a cognitive architecture that is well characterized by the Common Model. In this case, the AI automatically learns new skills and knowledge during general reasoning that combines natural language instruction from humans and a minimal amount of experience – in other words, an AI that functions more like a human mind than today’s AIs, which learn via brute computing force and massive amounts of data.

From a broader AGI perspective, we look to the Common Model both as a guide in developing such architectures and AIs, and as a means for integrating the insights derived from those attempts into a consensus that ultimately leads to AGI.

Authors

Paul S. Rosenbloom
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of Southern California

Christian Lebiere
Research Psychologist, Carnegie Mellon University

John E. Laird
John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering, University of Michigan

Disclosure statement

Paul S. Rosenbloom currently receives no funding.

Christian Lebiere receives funding from AFOSR, ARL, DARPA, IARPA and the Department of Defense Basic Research Office.

John Laird receives funding from ONR and AFOSR. I'm Chairman of the Board and stock holder of Soar Technology a company that does AI research for the government. I'm also founder and co-Director of the Center for Integrated Cognition, a non-profit that does basic research on AI.
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Magnus Carlsen Is Giving Up The World Title. But The Carlsen Era Lives On.


By Jake Lourim
JUL. 26, 2022

In announcing he won’t defend his World Chess Championship title, five-time champion Magnus Carlsen joins the ranks of other greats who have stepped away from competition early.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY DAN DAO / GETTY IMAGES

The chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen announced last week that he will not defend his world championship next year. There are two ways to look at this news: One is with shock, given that Carlsen is maybe the greatest chess player of all time, at arguably the peak of his powers, with a good chance to win a sixth world title in 2023. But the other is without, given that Carlsen hinted several times that he had played his last world championship match in December.

Announcements like Carlsen’s aren’t uncommon across the sports world — see, for example, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps or Ashleigh Barty — but they always seem surprising. At this point, though, maybe they shouldn’t be, given the diminishing incentives for a great player to keep defending their place at the top.

Carlsen confirmed his intentions on Wednesday in the first episode of his podcast, “The Magnus Effect.” He said he had mulled his world championship future for more than a year, even before defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi for his fifth title, and that he was “pretty comfortable” with his decision to step aside. He confessed that he was “not motivated to play another match,” that “I don’t particularly like it” and that “I don’t have any inclination to play.” He added, “I don’t rule out a return [to world championship matches] in the future, but I wouldn’t particularly count on it, either.”

Carlsen’s legacy is largely secure: Many consider him the best player of all time. Chess has used the Elo rating system to rank players for more than a century, and by that metric, Carlsen is the GOAT. He surpassed Garry Kasparov’s record mark of 2851 after winning the London Chess Classic in December 2012, and he has stayed above that peak for most of the past decade.

But as in any other sport, comparing players of different eras is complicated. Robert Hess, a grandmaster and commentator for Chess.com, suggested that if you could pit today’s Carlsen — with today’s knowledge and today’s tools, having beaten today’s competition — against previous greats like Kasparov or Bobby Fischer, Carlsen would likely win.

“I’ve made this argument before, that essentially the high school physics teacher that you and I had knew more than Isaac Newton,” Hess said. “And that’s not to say that Isaac Newton wasn’t more talented. Isaac Newton just didn’t have the resources. Because of [their] predecessors, these players are better, and that’s true in most disciplines.”

Today’s chess champions study not only from books and historical games but also using the chess engine Stockfish and the neural network NNUE, which weren’t available to Kasparov and Fischer in their primes. But is Carlsen the best player of all time, adjusted for technological advancement? That’s impossible to say.

The arc of Carlsen’s world championships is the clearest proof of how his development has paralleled the advancements in how humans understand the game. In 2013, he wrested his first title from the reigning champ Viswanathan Anand. That was a best-of-12 series, but Carlsen only needed 10 games, winning 6.5 to 3.5. The next year, Anand challenged Carlsen for the title and even defeated him in one game, but Carlsen still won in 11 games, 6.5 to 4.5. In 2016, Carlsen appeared vulnerable, as challenger Sergey Karjakin earned the match’s first victory in Game 8. Carlsen evened the score in Game 10, though, and eventually won two rapid games as a tiebreaker. But the gap appeared to be narrowing.

Finally, in 2018, Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana completed one of the most impressive feats in chess history. The two grandmasters, ranked first and second in the world, played 12 straight draws before switching to the rapid format to break the tie. Carlsen won all three rapid games, but the match was otherwise a dead heat. On his podcast last week, Carlsen called his 2018 victory “the most fun” and “the most interesting.”

Carlsen’s 7.5 to 3.5 rout of Nepomniachtchi last fall was his most lopsided win yet, but Stockfish and NNUE told a fuller story of the skill on display. The match began with five straight draws, and Game 7 was, according to Stockfish, the most flawlessly played game in World Chess Championship history. Games 3 and 10 were tied for the second-most-accurate games played in championship history. The match shifted late in Game 6 when Carlsen won a record 136-move marathon that lasted nearly eight hours.

Training at that level is both mentally and physically draining; committing to another world championship would have meant six more months of that grind, followed by a rematch with Nepomniachtchi.1 That would have left Carlsen with something to lose and little to gain. “From a purely enjoyment perspective, I think that checks out,” Hess said. “I think from a competitive standpoint, it also makes a lot of sense.”

Elite competitors in Carlsen’s position have often found that there’s more to be lost than gained at the top — it’s even baked into the mathematical formula for Elo ratings. The system assigns each player a rating based on past results, and those ratings change based on players’ prematch win probabilities. Because Carlsen is the higher-ranked player in every game he plays, his wins only add a limited number of points to his rating, and his draws usually decrease his rating. Even after last year’s world championship, where he won 7.5 of 11 games against the fifth-ranked player in the world (rated 2782), Carlsen’s rating jumped by just 9 points, from 2856 to 2865.

When Carlsen reflected on his journey last week, he recalled playing in the Candidates Tournament on “a whim,” hoping only to win one world championship and lacking motivation to defend it as early as 2016. “I feel like I mostly played that match because other people sort of relied on it, expected me to,” he said. He admitted his next thought would sound strange to people who spend their lives trying to win one world championship. “[Going from] four championships to five, it didn’t mean anything to me. It was nothing. I was satisfied with the job that I’d done. I was happy not to have lost the match. But that was it.”

Even after abdicating his world championship, Carlsen will continue to occupy a unique space in the chess zeitgeist. The game has existed for centuries, contested often by little-known individuals who laid the foundation for much of modern strategy. It’s also experiencing a boom in popularity, driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and experienced by many people who have never played chess on a physical board. Carlsen is the link between chess’ past and its future. He earned the title of grandmaster at age 13, the same year he beat former world champion Anatoly Karpov and drew a game with Kasparov, almost beating the longtime world No. 1. He holds that connection to his predecessors — Kasparov was among those who wished him well last week — but he also resonates with the modern audience. He may be the biggest celebrity in chess since Fischer.

Through his business and his sponsorships, Carlsen is the rare multimillionaire in chess. This summer, he played the World Series of Poker Main Event. He advised the Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson and made a cameo with Daryl Morey, the Philadelphia 76ers’ president of basketball operations. He played chess with Bill Gates on a Scandinavian talk show and won in nine moves. He cracked jokes on an episode of “The Simpsons.” He was a guest on “The Colbert Report.” He appeared in a Porsche commercial alongside Muhammad Ali and Maria Sharapova. He was one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2013, the year of his first world championship. “If he can rekindle the world’s fascination with the royal game,” Kasparov wrote at the time, “we will soon be living in the Carlsen Era.”

How prescient those words were. In the end, Carlsen’s true legacy will be the effect Kasparov described — he became a global ambassador to chess and, with his international renown, helped bring it into mainstream popular culture.

Perhaps Carlsen will be back on the world championship stage again someday, like Jordan and Phelps were. Either way, he has a busy schedule and has said his next goal is to become the first player to achieve a 2900 rating. If anyone can do it, it’s Carlsen — and there’s no better time than the present, given how much the realm of what’s possible in chess has expanded since Carlsen became the face of the sport.

Jake Lourim is a freelance writer in Washington. He most recently worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal. @jakelourim

Where have all the workers gone? Don't blame COVID, economists say

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Boomers are exiting the workforce in droves, leaving more

 job vacancies than there are people to fill them

Alistair Steele · CBC News · Posted: Jul 23, 2022 

According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment-to-job vacancy rate is at a historic low across the country, indicating there are currently more available jobs than there are workers to fill them. (Chris Wattie /Reuters)

Canada is in the throes of a serious labour shortage, but economists say it's not all the pandemic's fault — it's the inevitable culmination of a seismic demographic shift decades in the making.

"It's the slowest-moving train on the planet. It was predictable 60 to 65 years ago, and we have done nothing about it," said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. "We knew this transition was going to happen."

• The labour shortage isn't over — and employers are having to lower their hiring expectations

The numbers behind all those help wanted signs are startling.

According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio — a key measure comparing the number of Canadians looking for work to the number of available jobs — is currently hovering at a historic low in every province. In fact, the ratio is significantly lower now than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The reason isn't that there are fewer jobs opening up — remember the help wanted signs? It's that there are fewer workers available to fill them. And the reason for that, economists say, can be traced back to the post-war baby boom.

Construction workers prepare a form in downtown Toronto in May. According to Statistics Canada, their industry is the among the hardest-hit by the current labour shortage. (Alex Lupul/CBC)

Not enough replacements

While those 55 and older have been steadily exiting the Canadian workforce — an exodus that some economists believe was accelerated by the pandemic, as many older workers opted for early retirement — there simply aren't enough younger workers to replace them.

In fact, participation in the workforce among those ages 25-54 approached 88 per cent in May, up more than one percentage point from February 2020, before the pandemic had taken hold in Canada.

"That's what happens when a baby boom finally starts exiting from stage left, and there's not enough people entering from stage right," Yalnizyan said. "We've actually got a higher share of the working-age population working than ever."

Armine Yalnizyan is an economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. (Christopher Katsarov/The Atkinson Foundation)

That contradicts the theory that some sort of "great resignation" among working-age Canadians, many of whom took advantage of pandemic income supports, is to blame for all those job vacancies, according to Ian Lee, associate professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business.

"I just found that very suspicious because unless you're independently wealthy … most of us have to have income to survive," Lee said. "It just didn't make sense."

"Your first suspicion as a labour economist is, well, are people just not in the labour force anymore?" said Gordon Betcherman, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa's school of international development and global studies. "But that's not the case. It's back up to levels that we had before COVID."

An employees' market

Instead, economists say the data points to the emergence of an employees' market where workers are enjoying an enormous amount of leverage over employers.

"It's undeniable this trend we're in where the balance between job seekers and job vacancies has definitely shifted," Betcherman said.

According to Statistics Canada, that has led to virtually unprecedented labour shortages across nearly every employment sector.

There just aren't enough people willing to do poorly paid jobs that are marginal at best.- Armine Yalnizyan, economist

In particular, the construction and manufacturing sectors are having a difficult time recruiting skilled workers, followed closely by accommodation and food services, which includes hotels, restaurants and bars. 

"People are finding other places to work. There just aren't enough people willing to do poorly paid jobs that are marginal at best," Yalnizyan noted. 

"Workers have a lot more choices now," Lee agreed. "If you have more choices and you don't have to work in that industry, you'll go and work in an industry where there's a better career stream and where the wages are higher and the hours are more predictable."

That could force employers in certain industries to raise wages, Lee said.

"I'm not suggesting that the demand for these jobs is going to go away. It's not," he said. "It suggests to me that we're going to see some pretty serious wage inflation in these industries over the years ahead."

The restaurant sector is also struggling to attract new hires as many opt for higher-paying jobs with better working conditions. (Paige Parsons/CBC)

Wages predicted to rise

According to Yalnizyan, this competitive new environment means employers in certain sectors will need to raise wages if they hope to retain skilled workers.

"We are losing people who are trained as early childhood educators because we won't pay them more than we pay pet groomers. Well why would they stay if they can get a better job in some other sector?"

That's borne out by Statistics Canada data showing the reservation wage — the minimum hourly rate at which job seekers are willing to accept a position — surpassing the current offered wage in nearly every sector, whereas Canadian workers have historically been willing to settle for less.

Economists believe there are other possible outcomes — increasing automation to fill the vacuum left by the labour shortage, for one. Some industries could also bring in more temporary foreign workers to help fill gaps at the lower end of the labour market, potentially blunting the gains made by domestic workers.

Ian Lee is an associate professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business. (CBC)

But Yalnizyan said rising wages could help erase some of the inequalities caused by a labour market that has for years paid some workers well and the rest poorly.

"If we actually improve wages and working conditions, particularly at the bottom, we could be creating the conditions for making a more resilient middle class that can actually afford to buy stuff. That's what we've been missing out on for quite a while now," she said.

"Population aging can be our friend, not our enemy. But we have to treat it as something more than just a labour shortage for business. We have to treat it as an opportunity to make every job a good job."