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Tag: canada
Wildfire Smoke

Denying Dangers Of Smoke Pollution, Republicans Mock Canada's Prime Minister

As smoke blanketed the East Coast, putting millions of people at risk, Republican lawmakers mocked its health impact and denied that climate change is in part to blame for the unprecedented situation.

The smoke came from more than 150 wildfires that are burning out of control in Canada. It is dangerous because wildfires burn everything in their wake, including materials that create toxic particles when combusted. It can cause wheezing, coughing, lung damage, heart attacks, and strokes — even in healthy people — but especially in older populations and those with preexisting conditions like asthma or cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, Republicans like Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany, both of Wisconsin, blamed the fires on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while using them as an opportunity to mock his support of LGBTQ rights.

“Can someone ask @justintrudeau what pronouns forest fires use? I would like them to stop polluting our air but do not want an HR complaint,” Van Orden tweeted.

“We need some answers from Prime Minister Trudeau rather than him diving into Pride month and doing all those woke things that really have no benefit to peoples’ lives,” Tiffany said in an interview on Newsmax.

Tiffany also spread a conspiracy theory that the fires in Canada were started by arson, even though there is no evidence that is the case. Experts instead say the fires are so bad because of the effects of climate change, which Tiffany has denied is real.

Other Republicans are criticizing Democrats for pointing out the connection between the fires and climate change or are denying it is related to climate change at all.

“This isn’t the moment to start lecturing people about the science of climate change,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) said on Fox News.

“Absolutely not,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said in an interview on Fox Business in response to a question about whether climate change is to blame for the wildfire smoke.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) poked fun at Canada for having leadership that recognizes that climate change poses a real threat to people’s health.

“New York has the worst air quality in history due to wild fires from Climate Cult Canada,” she tweeted, along with a video of orange smoke blocking views of the New York City skyline.

Meanwhile, personalities on Fox News are downplaying the risk of the smoke even though experts say breathing in the toxic fumes is dangerous for everyone.

“There’s just no health risk,” Fox News contributor Steve Milloy, a lobbyist for tobacco and oil companies who denies climate change is real, claimed on host Laura Ingraham’s program on Wednesday night. “This doesn’t kill anybody, this doesn’t make anybody cough. This is not a health event. It’s got nothing to do with climate.”

Democrats, for their part, are calling Republicans out for not taking the wildfires or climate change seriously.

“The most important thing you can do about climate change is beat Republicans electorally,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) tweeted. “That doesn’t exonerate me or anyone else for as much action as possible, but the fact is more aggressive action on the planetary crisis depends on the composition of the Congress.”

“Imagine being a Republican climate change denier in Congress – you show up to work at the Capitol today, see the skies filled with smoke… and you still don’t get that we need bold and immediate action to save our planet?” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) tweeted. “Ridiculous.”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Canadian Police Arrest Anti-Vax Protesters And Reopen Border Bridge

Canadian Police Arrest Anti-Vax Protesters And Reopen Border Bridge

Windsor (Canada) (AFP) - A Canadian mayor Sunday declared the standoff on a key US border bridge over after police moved in and arrested protesters, but the trucker-led movement against Covid-19 restrictions remained defiantly mobilized in the capital Ottawa and elsewhere.

A heavy contingent of officers backed by armored vehicles made their way to the demonstration near Windsor, Ontario, to clear the Ambassador Bridge, a major border crossing to the US city of Detroit, Michigan.

Authorities began their operation Saturday but several demonstrators had remained, extending the protracted standoff and preventing traffic from flowing.

Police took more forceful action Sunday, placing bridge protesters in handcuffs, towing vehicles and reclaiming clogged lanes, saying on Twitter that "there will be zero tolerance for illegal activity."

The road to the bridge was cleared, but cross-border traffic had yet to be restored by midday.

"Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end," Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said in a statement, referring to the heavy toll on trade and other business by a blockade that had been in place since Monday.

"Border crossings will reopen when it is safe to do so and I defer to police and border agencies to make that determination," the mayor added.

The demonstrations have inspired copycat protests around the globe, including in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia, and with some US truckers discussing a protest for March.

In Ontario, where authorities have declared a state of emergency, the provincial supreme court had ordered truckers late in the week to end their blockade of the Ambassador Bridge.

The protest has forced major automakers in both countries to halt or scale back production.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who blasted the blockades as "illegal," promised that "this conflict must end," but he has faced mounting criticism for failing to act more decisively.

Initially, no arrests were made at the bridge; but drivers were warned that they potentially faced major fines, jail time and loss of their driver's licenses if they continued blocking traffic.

Mayor Dilkens, apparently mindful of the division caused by the protests, urged tolerance and respect moving forward.

"I strongly urge all provincial and federal leaders to refrain from any divisive political rhetoric and redouble efforts to help all Canadians heal, as we emerge from almost two years of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions," he said.

4,000 protesters

The Ambassador Bridge is vital to the US and Canadian auto industries, carrying more than 25 percent of merchandise exported by both countries.

Truckers originally converged on Ottawa to press their demand for an end to a vaccination requirement affecting truckers crossing the international border.

But the movement has spread, as the protesters now seek an end to all vaccine mandates, whether imposed by the federal or provincial governments.

Ottawa has been the epicenter of protests. Police on Saturday estimated that some 4,000 demonstrators were still occupying the center city, in the third weekend of the movement.

The atmosphere among protesters has been festive, with music, dancing and constant sounding of air horns -- but the noise, obstruction and sometimes rude and aggressive behavior of demonstrators has harmed area businesses and infuriated many locals.

The truckers' message, however, has resonated more widely than authorities expected.

One opinion survey found that a third of Canadians support the protest movement.

The truckers have also found support among conservatives and vaccine mandate opponents in other countries, even as Covid measures are being rolled back in many places.

In Paris on Saturday, police fired tear gas and arrested nearly 100 people in an effort to break up convoys of vehicles coming from across France.

By Sunday hundreds of them drove their self-proclaimed "freedom convoy" of cars and trucks northward to Lille, en route to Brussels, where Belgian officials have already banned a demonstration called for Monday.

A vehicle convoy in the Netherlands brought The Hague's city center to a standstill in another Canada-style protest.

In Switzerland, hundreds of protesters marched in Zurich to protest Covid-19 restrictions, while several thousand others rallied against them, Swiss media reported. Police used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

An estimated 10,000 Australian protesters marched through the capital Canberra to decry vaccine mandates.

Goodbye To The (Unneeded) Keystone XL Pipeline

Little passion greeted President Joe Biden's decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Remarkably little.

Sure, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called the move an "insult." His Canadian province had sunk $1.1 billion into the project, designed to transport dirty oil from Alberta's tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

But the Keystone XL pipeline was an artifact from an earlier time. When it was proposed in 2008, the price of crude had jumped to over $120 a barrel, causing some to fret that the energy supply would fall short of demand.

Oil is now down to about $50 a barrel, thanks in large part to the shale-oil boom. Thus, American oil producers won't be losing much sleep over the loss of a venture that would have added to supply, possibly depressing their prices even more. By the way, energy economists say that producing petroleum from Canadian tar sands could not turn a profit until the global oil price passes $65 a barrel.

The earliest objections to the pipeline were mostly environmental. Ranchers, farmers, and Native Americans in Nebraska worried that pipeline leaks would foul groundwater, an especially precious commodity in their part of the world. Its demise also ended ugly eminent domain fights, as the Canadian pipeline builder, TC Energy, tried to force landowners to give it right of way across their farms.

"Thank you President Biden and all the thousands of voices who have stood strong these many years," Jeanne Crumly told the Omaha World-Herald. Her ranch was right in the pipeline's path.

Not only is tar sands oil a dirty fossil fuel; it is the dirtiest . A spill rapidly sinks to the bottom of waterways, making any cleanup harder than it would be with conventional crude.

Of course, 2008 was before climate change jumped to the top of our list of existential crises. Extracting and processing tar sands oil creates up to four times the carbon pollution emitted in other crude production.

But what about the arguments in the pipeline's favor? They are yesterday's talking points, though some politicians are still making them.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts issued a short statement criticizing the cancellation as follows: "Failure to construct the pipeline would mean more dependence on overseas energy sources as well as fewer jobs."

On energy independence, one of Ricketts' key points, the United States already has it. The U.S. has actually been a net exporter of refined petroleum products for 10 years. Starting two years ago, more crude oil was leaving for other countries than was coming in.

And employment? TC Energy said the pipeline would create 119,000 jobs. A State Department report came up with a somewhat smaller number. It said the project would require fewer than 2,000 construction jobs over two years. And once built, the pipeline would employ about 35.

Then-President Barack Obama nixed the project in 2015. Right after taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump revived it. Biden killed it moments after being sworn in.

In a short address, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shed half a tear over the pipeline's undoing and noted the many Canadian jobs tied to fossil fuel production. He then said he looks forward to working with Biden.

Our acceleration into a post-carbon world will not be stopped. In 2020 — even as the pandemic pushed down global car sales by a fifth — sales of electric cars rose 43 percent. Consider the optics of an electric Ford Mustang about to roll off the assembly line.

The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline had its day. Fortunately, it never advanced much beyond debate. It is dead — this time, we expect, for good.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

The NAFTA Report That Could Do More Damage Than Mueller

The NAFTA Report That Could Do More Damage Than Mueller

With all the coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigaiton and still-confidential report, President Donald Trump’s political future does not appear to be closely tied to the Russia investigation. Without ground-shaking conclusions that completely reframed his presidency for the Republican Party and is leadership, there’s never been much chance that the report could lead to him being removed from office.

But there’s another forthcoming report that really could do serious damage to the president, even if there’s been almost no coverage of it so far. It’s a report from the International Trade Commission on the future effects of Trump renegotiated version of NAFTA, which the president calls the USMCA

As the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale reported, the ITC report is set to come out on April 19. And few expect it to show much of an upside for the United States or Trump.

Dale wrote:

At best, experts say, the ITC report expected by April 19 is likely to show a very small positive impact.

‘“He’s been touting this as moving from the worst trade agreement ever to the biggest, best agreement, and there is no way the results of the USITC can be spun to say that the USMCA is anything other than a small change from the status quo,” said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown Law professor and a former senior official with the U.S. trade representative’s office.

“The debate in Congress is whether that small change is still worth doing

A negative or mediocre conclusion from the ITC could make it harder to convince skeptical Democrats that it is worth taking the political risk of voting for a top Trump priority. Such a conclusion could give members “cover” if they are already predisposed to vote no, said Robert Fisher, a U.S. negotiator for the original NAFTA and now managing director of Hills and Co.

If this is right, it could deal a significant blow to Trump’s support and become a drag on him in the run-up to the 2016 election.

It may seem a distant memory now, but trade was a major theme of Trump’s 2016 campaign. He insisted that the country was getting ripped off in its trade deals — none of which were worse than NAFTA, in his view. And this wasn’t a mere throw-away line at rallies. His central message was that American leaders had been stupid and reckless in agreeing to these deals, and that he was the only brilliant dealmaker who could storm into office and fix the problem.

How much this message really helped lead Trump to victory in 2016 is up for debate, but he clearly thought it was important, and it may have been key to his winning the crucial midwestern swing states that gave him an electoral college majority.

But if the pending report shows that Trump’s attempt to renegotiate NAFTA was a dud, he could likewise pay for it in 2020. The deal, already facing headwinds in the House of Representatives, will likely never be approved by Congress if the report is negative. Were the report to show the deal would be a resounding win for the United States and Congress rejected it anyway, Trump might be able to turn this to his advantaged. But if Democrats can rightly say that the most comprehensive report suggests the deal would be a loser for the United States, Trump’s support could take a hit where he can least afford to fall behind.

Dale noted that some observers are critical of the methodology the USITC is expected to use in crafting the report, arguing that it doesn’t necessarily account for all the agreement’s benefits. But these details may not matter much if Trump’s main goal is looking like a winner.

One sign that Trump’s allies are nervous about the issue is that supporters of the deal are already downplaying the report.

“It’s just a report,” Rick Dearborn, executive director of the Pass USMCA Coalition, told Dale.