Archive for the ‘Transportation’ Category
Green
WordPress has started a new monthly prompt to encourage posts. “WordPrompt, a single-word monthly exercise that aims to inspire you to create new posts, regardless of what or how you publish.”
This month’s WordPrompt is:
GREEN
As it happens I recently took a picture of the grass at Trafalgar Park – one of our neighbourhood parks. I was thinking mostly of getting pictures of the sakura (tree blossoms) but I was struck by the quality of the lawn which will once again be our nearest cricket pitch. We have had a great deal of rain – and the grass has greatly benefitted. Actually out of shot in the image is the very large puddle the ducks were enjoying.
“Four Lost Cities”
A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz
This book showed up on my library hold list much faster than usual. It is not classed as a Fast Read by VPL but that is what it turned out to be. That is because it is very well written and engaging and it spends quite a bit of effort in debunking favourite interpretations of history and pre-history.
It is also written with an eye to the current market for books. As the jacket blurb says “it may also reveal something of our own fate”. Annalee Newitz strikes an optimistic note at the end of her book. Cities have always risen and fallen, and structures may survive but customs and practices adapt and in the long run humanity has managed to survive and thrive. So there have been major disasters – like the eruption of Vesuvius that ended old Pompeii – and administrative cock-ups and misdirections due to following false prophets – but somehow we manage to reorganize and keep going. There have been pandemics, and tidal waves, explosions natural and contrived and human spirit just keeps on going.
The reason I am writing this is that I do not share her optimism. We have never before lived through a time when we exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 400 parts per million (ppm) and we did that in 2013. And kept on going. The dramatic weather events we saw in 2021 were the result of the CO2 emitted years ago. What we are emitting now is going to have impacts in the next century. We are almost certainly going to exceed the 1.5℃ average warming – the current “target” – and, as we are seeing, that is bad enough. The fires and floods were unprecedented but will not be unusual – and will get worse. And it is unlikely to be a steady decline but one that gets bad rapidly as the tipping points are passed.
We have already extirpated more kinds of plants and animals than ever before. We have comprehensively wrecked ecosystems – coral reefs and temperate coastal rainforests being the most noticeable. It is not just humans that are suffering. And that also applies to the pandemic – which is not just a problem for our species.
The people displaced by the volcanoes, earthquakes and flash floods of the past simply moved on to somewhere else. We are currently organised on the principal that we will no longer accept refugees, except in very limited numbers and special cases. There are some who think that we might be able to get off this planet and go to another one. I think they are deluded.
And all of this is before we take into account the risks that have always been there but were, by their very nature, unpredictable. We have just refreshed the grab bag of emergency supplies that lives in the front hall, just by the door. But if the Big One hits … We ought be learning just how fragile our survival systems are in reality. The barge on the beach is not a comedy show – any more than the increasing number of abandoned boats in the harbour are. The day that was lost to the AWS failure is nothing in comparison to what is inevitable but impossible to predict accurately enough.
Worse than all of that is a political system that willfully ignores events. That does not understand the sunk cost fallacy. That thinks we can always build another freeway if we lose bits of one. That has no interest in even debating the need for change from business as usual. That ignores the solutions to the problems we have been refusing to deal with for many years. Homelessness isn’t new – it requires that we provide homes. We don’t want to do that, but we will open more temporary shelters if there is bad weather. Drug addictions and their commitment health issues have been dealt with effectively elsewhere – but we won’t do that either. Anymore that we will end the carnage of death and injuries on our roads that other places no longer face. We know what we must do to reduce fossil fuel use – but our emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are increasing and show no signs of stopping.
And none of these problems are confined to one city. They are more or less common to all the “advanced economies”. And we haven’t even touched on the troubles of most of the rest of the world. Most of which are driven by the same crises that we are failing to tackle.
The next book on my hold list has shown up as I write. It is fiction. Good. I have had enough of reality.
British Water
This morning I got an email from The Guardian, a British newspaper that I subscribe to. This is a lightly edited extract from their newsletter – about how they get “scoops”.
<blockquote>… reporter Sandra Laville came across something rather curious that made her think ‘that’s funny’. In her case, it was a statistic.
“I came across this figure that only 14 percent of waters in English rivers were of good ecological standard,” she recalls. “I thought ‘that’s really low’.”
She started asking questions – of officials, scientists at the Environment Agency, and crucially of campaigners determined to improve the quality of their local environment.
The big breakthrough came when she secured data from water companies on when and where sewage had been released into rivers. When she totted up the answers it came to a total of 1.5m hours of dumping in a single year.
“I remember swimming in the sea 25 years ago when there was a big scandal about sewage being poured into the ocean,” Sandra tells me. “I couldn’t believe this was happening in rivers too.”
The revelations have put pressure on the authorities to come clean on the locations and instances of sewage discharge; on the water companies to take action and invest; and on the regulator to ensure that everyone improves their game. “Nothing will change overnight – this is a massive underinvestment in infrastructure,” Sandra says. “But this has really exposed what they have been doing.”
</blockquote>
One of the leading reasons why I came to Canada was that I no longer wanted to be an Economic Adviser to the British Government. We were shared between the Department of Transport and the Department of the Environment, and I was going to be moved from looking at London Underground investments to Water Privatisation. And I did not want any part of it. In 1988 water in the UK was controlled by a network of Regional Water Authorities. They were very effective and a distinct improvement over the earlier patchwork quilt of Water Boards. In fact the reorganisation of those was also a significant factor in my earlier career at British Waterways Board in the early 1970s but that isn’t relevant.
Mostly I wanted to work on public transport issues. There did not seem to me to any justification for the privatisation of water. Indeed, it seemed to me that the only way it could be justified was that it would reduce “public spending” (i.e. using taxation revenues) and rely of private funding. For the private sector to make money they would need to find a way to create a profit margin in what was, at the time, absent as it was not needed by the public sector. It simply did not occur to me then that new water companies would seek to cut costs by dumping untreated wastewater in rivers and the sea – but that is what they have been doing.
One of the remarkable shifts in recent years has been the steady rejection of Hayek’s philosophy pursued by Margaret Thatcher and other right wing ideologues. Nearly every policy change introduced in the name conservatism has been shown to be fallacious. The claimed outcomes of better services at lower cost are never achieved in reality – though there has always been quite a bit of “clever” bookkeeping to make it look good. But it also seems that no matter how strong the evidence, when ostensibly left leaning, “progressive” parties get into power they fall into the same mire. Both BC NDP and federal Liberals are pursuing policies that are obviously designed to benefit the few over the broader public interest. This is most clearly true in the case of energy policies. Instead of picking the cleaner, more economically affordable renewable options, our governments are still choosing to support fossils – coal, oil and fracked gas. In transportation we still opt for more freeways and road expansions even though it is clear that this has never ever cured traffic congestion and can’t due to simple geometry. That we still have a mid twentieth century commitment to extending urban sprawl indefinitely which experience shows simply increases costs in general and “externalities” that we mostly try to ignore.
Today we heard the Throne Speech from Ottawa. What we needed to hear was that as a country we are going to change direction in view of the clear and present danger now posed by the climate crisis. For a long time governments at all levels have refused to face up to this challenge and pretend that business as usual can continue. We saw exactly that at COP26 in Glasgow. We got more of the same today from Justin Trudeau. The CG did not announce the end of fossil fuel subsidies and the cancellation of TMX. There was no mention of the export of US thermal coal through Canadian ports – which only happens because no local port community in the US will allow it. Canadian ports are only lightly managed – and that is a federal jurisdiction where local concerns account for nothing. There is a lot about cleaning up the most recent messes – but not very much about what needs to be done to cope with future issues which will inevitably be even worse, as the greenhouse gases that cause these disasters have already been emitted. Too many tipping points have already passed. Too little has been achieved through carbon capture and storage – except increasing the production of oil and gas. There are no offshore wind farms around here, very little geothermal power generation (despite huge potential) and not much in the way of energy storage or improvements to the grid to accommodate renewables. And there won’t be any time soon.
How bad does it have to get to see changes in policy? It has taken Britain 50 years to acknowledge that shutting down railway branch lines was short sighted and ineffective. The mess of water privatisation has also taken a similar amount of time to be acknowledged. In Canada our governments seem even more determined to refuse to change. But then we are still digging up asbestos to export – even though its use here is banned.(Even so, asbestos is still the number one cause of claims for worker compensation in BC.) We know what we are doing is not working. There was no major announcement about reductions of oil and gas extraction so now we know that big business is still calling the shots and humanity is doomed.
As Seth Klein just tweeted: “This #ThroneSpeech was an opportunity post-election, post-COP, post-floods to announce additional climate emergency initiatives & measures. The government took a pass. An exceptionally boring speech.”
High-performance rail service is a solid intercity solution for Canada
by Tony Turrittin. Originally published on Policy Options
August 16, 2021
Canada can have a network of modern, swift, affordable and efficient passenger trains, like virtually every other industrialized nation. Yet it doesn’t.
In the 1970s, both the American and Canadian passenger train systems were taken over by their federal governments. Since then, Canada has slowly dismantled most of the VIA Rail system while Amtrak, the U.S. national train system, has been improved and stabilized. Amtrak’s growing network of regional rail corridors has been especially remarkable.
Greg Gormick, an analyst and policy adviser, has suggested that high-performance rail (HPR) is the best means to improve and expand our skeletal network of deteriorating rail service. Canadian politicians and advocates at both federal and provincial levels have made calls for high-speed rail (HSR) like France’s TGV and Japan’s bullet trains.
High-speed rail operates on all-new electrified lines built from scratch at a very high cost because it operates on tracks with no grade-crossings and must be separated from freight. High-performance rail, in contrast, incrementally improves all aspects of the existing service and builds on what little public funds have already been invested in it. Operating at progressively higher speeds with modern trains on tracks shared with freight trains, high-performance rail offers increased frequency, reduced travel times, better on-time performance, all-weather reliability and enhanced comfort and onboard amenities.
High-performance rail delivers improvements each step along a phased pathway to vastly improved service. Because it isn’t a “big bang” approach that takes years to deliver any benefits, high-performance rail is a practical and affordable “higher speed” option for today that may lead the way to building the more costly high-speed rail in the future.
Canada has not participated in the global move to high-performance rail. This failure is largely due to government interference and lack of political will. Passenger rail the world over requires subsidies for operating costs and capital improvements, but Canadian governments have cut back VIA since its founding in 1977. The Mulroney cuts of 1989 eliminated most trains in Western Canada and Atlantic Canada, and removed passenger service from the historic and well-used transcontinental route over the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). These cuts were decided in the Privy Council Office, not by VIA. In other countries, it was government commitment as much as technology and funding that helped to develop the high-performance rail networks.
In the U.S., high-performance rail is now at work on 15 corridors (see Table 1). Extensions are underway on several of these routes, and more are under construction or being planned.
https://infogram.com/turrittin-table-1-1hd12yxn0vxwx6k
The opportunities for high-performance rail in Canada are illustrated in Table 2, demonstrating its potential from coast to coast. High-performance rail trip times assume substantially upgraded track and signaling. Given its positive attributes, high-performance rail as solid conventional railroading should be a major form of interurban mobility in Canada.
https://infogram.com/turrittin-table-2-1h7g6k09300go2o
Ironically, the first wave of equipment to implement a Canadian high-performance rail solution is on order for a wildly improbable scheme cooked up by a politically manipulated VIA. In 2011, the later-defrocked Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro proposed to return trains between Toronto and Peterborough. The plan morphed into using a long-abandoned CPR backwoods line and extending it to Smiths Falls and to Ottawa, which bypasses the heavily populated Lake Ontario shoreline. The plan changed again when a former VIA Rail CEO made this impractical route the centrepiece of what VIA calls 160-km/hour high-frequency rail (HFR) for the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle. To increase its political attractiveness, VIA extended the HFR plan to Quebec City without increasing its cost estimate.
The stated objective of VIA’s proposal is separating passenger and freight traffic to eliminate conflicts that arise because of competition for track time and capacity, as well as differences in operating speeds. This is good in theory; however, implementing this would be expensive, time consuming and largely unnecessary. The key is to add capacity to existing lines incrementally and economically for both types of traffic. On high-performance rail routes around the world, freight and passenger trains share tracks at speeds of more than 200-km/hour.
Given constantly evolving estimates for California’s all-electric high-speed rail project and another linking Vancouver with Seattle, Portland and Eugene, and taking the lowest cost-estimates, a new passenger-only route for the Quebec-Windsor Corridor alone would cost more than $135 billion. Even applying VIA’s proposal to build only a single-track line with passing sidings instead of a double-track line that is standard for these types of projects, the cost wouldn’t decrease by much.
VIA wisely placed an order in 2018 with Germany’s Siemens Mobility for 32 five-car Venture trains each powered by a state-of-the-art Siemens Charger locomotive. Delivery starts in 2022. This $1.5 billion contract is part of a wave of North American orders for these 200-km/hour diesel-electric trains, 10 of which are already operating between Miami and West Palm Beach. Amtrak will use these train sets for high-performance rail routes in California, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Venture#/media/File:Venture_test_train_at_Oakland_Maintenance_Facility_(2),_July_2020.JPG
In the end, it’s governance, not hardware or software, that’s the roadblock to improved high-performance rail service in Canada. Here, too, the proven approach is on display in daily service in the U.S., particularly California. Using a combination of federal and state funding to fuel locally managed, cross-jurisdictional projects, the joint powers authorities (JPAs) employed on three routes in the Golden State are incrementally revolutionizing rail transportation in one of the most car-centric regions of America.
The Capitol Corridor JPA describes this governance structure’s application on the San Jose-Oakland-Sacramento route as “a partnership among the six local transit agencies in the eight-county service area, which shares the administration and management of the Capitol Corridor.” The Capitol Corridor offers hourly daytime trains serving all stops on its 213-km route. This allows for convenient travel between all city pairs. The route has a high concentration of universities and colleges. Amtrak operates the trains on Union Pacific track that also carries numerous freights.
It’s time for Canadians to cease being taken in by rail schemes politicians dangle in front of voters and then drop. In its top-down, politically dominated form, VIA hasn’t worked out and never will. New JPA-style governance, new equipment, a new high-performance rail approach and political will are required to give Canada a network of modern, efficient and effective rail passenger services.
How likely is this to occur?
The Trudeau government’s 2020 speech from the throne announced that “to further link our communities together, the Government will work with partners to support regional routes for airlines. It is essential that Canadians have access to reliable and affordable regional air services. This is an issue of equity, of jobs, and of economic development. The Government will work to support this.”
On the subject of rail passenger service – high-performance rail or otherwise – there was not a word.
Meanwhile, high-performance rail investment and growth strategy continues south of the border. One month after Ottawa was mute about rail’s role in a post-pandemic Canada, the U.S. Federal Transit Administration awarded the Michigan Department of Transportation funding for further improvements to its diesel-powered, 176-km/hour Pontiac-Detroit-Chicago Wolverine Corridor.
The upgrade for faster more frequent train service is now approaching completion.
Amtrak’s 15-year growth proposal unveiled early this year would expand its regional routes substantially, adding about 160 communities to its system. Gormick has suggested that high-performance rail can be applied to an Ontario region with very poor public transportation as well. Given an approaching federal election, expect government announcements of more rail projects to come, but they will still be missing the mark.
This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Tony Turrittin is a retired York University sociology professor. His research centred on social inequality, social mobility and their links to education. For four decades he has actively participated in national, regional and local citizen groups advocating for public transportation.
We missed two-thirds of the COVID19 deaths
“The pandemic has exposed many uncomfortable truths about Canadian society, among them, the limits of our healthcare system, tragic flaws in long-term care, our systemic racism, and our inability to protect the most at risk when an infectious threat arrives in our midst. As our multi-faceted study finds, it appears that we failed to notice two-thirds of all those who died of COVID-19 outside of the long-term care sector, most likely in financially precarious, racialized communities. It’s critical that we now work urgently to protect those most at risk with intensive, frequent, and accessible testing, public health outreach and information, and ensuring these communities are among the highest priority recipients for both doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Too many lives are at stake to delay action, as our report raises the possibility that at this moment there may be twice as many people dying than we know.”
Excess All-Cause Mortality During the COVID-19 Epidemic in Canada
How is it possible to miss so many deaths? There are of course multiple reasons, but the one that stands out is a failure to recognize that deaths for other reasons than COVID declined during the pandemic. For instance, when a lot of travel is avoided there is less traffic and thus fewer collisions. There is also the difficulty of recognising symptoms correctly, especially when you not do anything like the number of tests that other countries did/do. But the one that stands out for me is “the country’s slow system for reporting causes of death, [which] left Canada without a crucial warning system to alert officials to the worrisome number of deaths happening outside of long-term care.”
It turns out that other countries are much better at tracking causes of death. They also suffer from the current constant attacks on government bureaucracy as unnecessary, expensive and meddlesome when in fact regulations and their enforcement came into being because the lack of them, which caused issues, like death. As long as the politicians in charge of the system insist that the only policies that they will adopt reduce the size of government and its “burden” on the people then we will be plagued. The recent building collapse in Florida, which so far appears to have killed ten people, has yet to be allocated a determined cause. But at the same time as that investigation is going on you can bet that developers are bleating about the delays of their profits due to the need for inspections and permits on construction and renovation.
A similar problem is evident right now. People are dying due to the heat wave. Some police forces were a bit quicker off the mark of reporting these deaths than others. ‘The province’s chief coroner says there have been 233 sudden deaths during the “heat dome.”’
But that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that we have known for a certainty that this was going to happen. Anthropogenic climate change due to trapped gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides and methane in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels has been an established scientific fact for a long time. Not that you would have noticed that at the time thanks to the oil, gas and coal industries and their tame politicians and mass media companies.
In exactly the same way Public Health and Statistics Canada – and lots of other agencies – have been under constant pressure to cut costs and reduce the “burden of taxation”. The people making the most noise being those who long decided that they weren’t going to pay any tax at all.
So end of my rant. Return to the report in question – which you can download for free as a full report or summary.
“Established by the President of the Royal Society of Canada in April 2020, the RSC Task Force on COVID-19 was mandated to provide evidence-informed perspectives on major societal challenges in response to and recovery from COVID-19.
“The Task Force established a series of Working Groups to rapidly develop Policy Briefings, with the objective of supporting policy makers with evidence to inform their decisions.
“It is widely assumed that 80 per cent of Canada’s deaths due to COVID-19 occurred among older adult residents of long-term care homes, a proportion double the 40-per-cent average of peer countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). But an indepth analysis of all deaths that have so far been reported across Canada during the pandemic casts doubt on this estimate. It reveals evidence that at least two thirds of the deaths caused by COVID-19 in communities outside of the long-term care sector may have been missed.”
Authors of the Report
Tara J. Moriarty (Chair), Faculties of Dentistry and Medicine Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto
Anna E. Boczula, Faculties of Dentistry and Medicine Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto
Eemaan Kaur Thind, Independent public health professional
Janet E. McElhaney, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Health Sciences North Research Institute
Nora Loreto, Independent journalist
Trip Planning
I have to go get my second vaccine shot today at the Vancouver Convention Centre at Canada Place. So I used Translink’s trip planner to examine the alternatives.
So it would appear that the quickest way to get a bus to the Canada Line. But the comparison is flawed. When you look at the diagram the walking route from our buidling’s front door to the nearest #16 bus stop is remarkably indirect on this map. That is because a footpath, shown on this map as a very thin green line, is missing. The reality looks more like this.
I estimate that the direct walk out to Arbutus at Nanton NB bus stop is at least 3 minutes less than the trip planner shows. And actually the only really awkward thing is that I have to get across Arbutus at a push button activated crosswalk. It is remarkable how often I am still waiting for that to show the white walking figure as the bus I want to get on blasts by.
Actually that happened again today. As I got to the crosswalk the bus was in the intersection. Fortunately traffic was light so I ran for the bus and the operator waited for me. I was downtown in 30 minutes.
More about flickr
This is not about flickr as an organisation, it is about my experience of it. I saw the tweet I have copied above this and it moved me to write a blog post. I can’t do this in a tweet. I may not even be able to do it in a blog post.
What I really need to be able to do is to reach out to someone. Someone I do not know in real life. But he comes from the same part of the world I do and shares at least some of the same enthusiasms. But on flickr he has decided to block me. When that happens flickr doesn’t tell you right away. You get “Contact Notifications” when someone follows you, but not when they block you. You find that out when you try to comment on their post. Or when you want to add one of their images to your gallery.
I blocked someone because they accused me of being creepy, and frankly I don’t see anything to be gained by arguing with someone who does that. I wasn’t expecting the subsequent “revenge”. But then no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
So why did I get blocked by someone else? Interesting that, so I have to explain a bit. I wasn’t fighting with him. I just thought the word he used to describe a municipal transportation service to be inappropriate. East Ham Trams were not a company.
Now the person I am talking about actually encourages this kind of communication. Under every picture he posts to flickr it says “If there are any errors in the above description please let me know. Thanks”
So yes, calling the Tramways Department of the County Borough Council of East Ham a “company” is an error.
So I let him know. And he blocked me!
I happen to be the Administrator of the flickr Transportation group. There are other groups on flickr where I have seen the clear message “Block the Administrator and you will be removed from the Group”. Mine don’t say that. As long as the pictures meet the definition of Transportation then I have no concerns. But, for goodness sake, say you want to know about errors and then block the people who tell you …
One other thing. Not especially relevant or important. But he didn’t take the pictures. He has been buying old photographs and then – because they are in black and white, almost inevitably – he colorises them. And does a pretty credible job. And then puts his copyright on the colorised version.
“(if you want to use it, at least credit me and link to this description!) “
So would you like to see one of his pictures now?
No?
Didn’t think so.
Who decides what is “creepy”
Someone recently added this label to a picture of mine on Flickr. I did not like that comment so I deleted it. It was quickly replaced so I blocked that user.
Today I got this message by email
Hi Stephen Rees, Your account was brought to our attention and upon review, we determined that your voyeur content is in violation of the Guidelines and Terms of Service. You can also read the following help forum discussion about voyeur content on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/ Specifically this comment from staff: https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/#reply625343 Please delete all content in violation immediately. You have 3 days to remove the content or your account may be terminated without further warning. Note: Since these images are not allowed on Flickr marking them as private is not enough, they need to be deleted. Regards, Flickr Staff
No reply to this message is permitted. No further discussion of the subject in the forum is permitted either.
I have to assume that if I delete every picture taken at a public place of a woman or women wearing a bikini that I may be allowed to continue to have an account on Flickr. Flickr staff do not provide any information as to which pictures they decide are “creepy”. There are currently over two million pictures on Flickr which are found by using the search term “bikini”.
Apparently from looking at the comments thread 95223 cited about what is problematic is that the pictures are said to be taken “secretly”. Well I use a pretty large point and shoot camera
This is my current camera. I like it because I can literally slip it in my pocket. But as you can see “secret” isn’t really an option. And I do like “street photography” or as it is sometimes called “candid”. This is one of my favorites
The subject was unaware, as were these people
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_rees/5721082544/
No I don’t know why that shows up as a clickable link and not a picture – but when looking for that I found this
Now she is well aware that I took her picture – but am I also cleared of the accusation of posting “voyeur content”?
I did not delete this one either
There’s not a lot of skin on show – but there are some people who have a thing about wetsuits. Rubber fetishists who slaver over swimming hats. No, really. And then there is this comment on the thread that is picked up approvingly by the member of Flackr’s staff who then closes discussion
“posting them to Flickr for the purposes of sexual gratification“
Exactly how is that determined? Especially when there are swathes of images which are overtly sexual but are hidden through various devices but are allowed to remain, however for “voyeur content” the standard shifts “these images are not allowed on Flickr marking them as private is not enough”
No I don’t understand, but then flickr also got excited about
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_rees/51039299698/
But backed down when I told them it was in the sculpture garden of the New Orleans Museum of Art and was publicly available for free – including groups of schoolchildren.
Since Flickr did not provide any list of what they thought was objectionable I made a link between what someone else had labelled “creepy” and what prompted their message. “Your account was brought to our attention” again, no mention of who did that but dollars to donuts it’s the ill mannered lout I blocked.
When Renoir made this sculpture – from the same collection referred to above – can we be absolutely assured that he got no sexual gratification from it? Or was the fact that he probably paid his models enough to escape censure by Flickr’s anonymous staff? No one could accuse him of secrecy. But then I have always felt that photography was not a crime, and that if you were in a public place you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. If I can see something, I can take a photograph of it. That does not mean I am a voyeur, nor that I am seeking to satisfy the sexual tastes of voyeurs. But then when Ira Levin produced his novel “Sliver” it was promoted with the tag line “You like to watch, don’t you?” Which is another way of saying that all humans share the same pleasure from people watching.
Is it at all reasonable to demand that no one must ever take pictures where there are people sunbathing? Or rather they can take them but they mustn’t post them to flickr even if they are marked private.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_rees/13905505416/
I didn’t delete this one. Was I supposed to? If it only included the figure at the right end of the row, would that be sexually gratifying anyone?
This is a cut and paste from Flickr’s “Community Guidelines”
- Don’t be creepy.You know the guy. Don’t be that guy. If you are that guy, your account will be deleted.
If you think that is an adequate explanation please leave me an explanation in the comments below.
I do not want to lose my flickr account. I am doing my best to comply, but frankly the way that the policy is worded is worthy of Humpty Dumpty. “When I use a word it means what I want it to mean, no more or no less.”
Please, do not go to flickr and enter the search term “naked” or “sildenafil” – and of course before you do that you will need to turn off “safe search”
UPDATE June 11, 2021
I have now created a 20 page softcover book. When I deleted what I thought were offending pictures, I did not keep track of them and my memory is not what it was once. But I think I probably got them. I still have a flickr account so it seems I must have guessed right. None of the offending pictures are in this post.
If you would like a copy of the book please write to me at rees dot stephen (a) gmail dot com
I only ordered one copy for myself as a proof and, of course, found a typo as soon as opened it. The price varies quite a bit based on the numbers ordered. It can also be made available as a pdf file or a proper ebook. Both would be considerably cheaper than an actual paper book. If you express an interest I will be able to quote a price based on volume – and then I would have to add something for post and packing.
Afterword: If you actually care about what really constitutes “voyeurism” check out this article in the Gaurdian
Civil society reacts to Trudeau’s new Climate Target
The following content was provided by the Climate Action Network. Some of these quotes from activists may get into the mainstream coverage, but I am willing to bet that most of it will be “balanced” to meet the preferences of corporations.
_______________
This morning during the opening plenary of President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate, Prime Minister Trudeau announced Canada’s new 40 – 45% climate target range. This target marks an increase in ambition, up from the nation’s previously stated target window of 31 – 40% as announced in December 2020’s Healthy Environment Healthy Economy Plan.
This announcement confirms Canada’s intended level of commitment, which fell under swift scrutiny earlier this week when a number (36%), released as part of the federal budget, was widely mistaken for a new greenhouse gas reduction target.
Canada’s target announcement this morning was made alongside that of several other nations in attendance at the Leader’s Summit on Climate, and comes on the heels of ambitious targets announced just days ago by other Paris signatory nations including the UK, who has brought forward a new 78% by 2035 target, and the Biden administration’ commitment to reducing emissions by half by the end of the decade.
“It’s good to see Canada driving up ambition and it’s not enough. The new target is not aligned with 1.5C – that would require a 60% emissions reduction goal. We hope to see Canada continue to ramp up ambition, both in future years and as NDC consultations occur in coming months on the road to Glasgow. Canada not only needs to improve its climate targets, but also pass strong legislation to meet those targets. Canada’s proposed Net-Zero Accountability Act, currently stalled in the House, must be strengthened as it contains more of a duty to report than a duty to achieve. As Prime Minister Trudeau noted, Canada is an energy exporting nation and that is one of the country’s main barriers to climate ambition. Canada’s new NDC should address emissions from oil and gas production, ban fossil fuel subsidies, and enshrine Just Transition legislation.” Catherine Abreu, Executive Director, Climate Action Network Canada
“If Trudeau’s government is serious about fighting climate change, his administration needs to stand up to big oil, starting with the cancelation of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, and bringing in strong regulations to limit climate pollution,” Sven Biggs, Canadian Oil and Gas Program Director
“Canada was once a climate leader. We can be again, but only if this government has the courage to acknowledge that we cannot reach our climate commitments so long as we rely on fossil fuels for jobs and our energy needs. Any successful climate plan must include massive investment in supporting oil and gas workers to transition to a clean energy economy,” Sonia Theroux, Executive Director, Leadnow
“The problem with Justin Trudeau’s new climate pledge can be summed up in two words – fossil fuels. Neither Trudeau’s new climate plan, nor his budget, nor this new climate promise include a plan to tackle soaring emissions from tar sands, fracking and other fossil fuel expansion that makes Canada the only G7 country whose emissions have gone up since signing the Paris Agreement. Canada needs to cut our emissions at least 60% by 2030 and pass legislation like a Just Transition Act to make sure we meet our Paris commitment and leave no one behind,” Amara Possian, Canada Campaigns Director, 350.org
“The ambition has certainly been raised, but it doesn’t match the climate emergency. To make a difference and positions itself as a leader, Canada needs to set targets of at least 60% by 2030 and help other countries decarbonize. The longer we wait to put in place the policies and regulations that will take us to carbon neutrality by 2050, the steeper the slope towards that goal will be,” Émile Boisseau-Bouvier, climate policy analyst at Équiterre
“Trudeau’s proposed target is less ambitious than what climate science requires, with no commitment to phasing out fossil fuels at home or abroad. Canada is a rich country yet its target is less than Canada’s fair share of the global effort and less than what the U.S. is proposing. We should be proposing at least a 60% reduction in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels, alongside a plan for a just transition for workers as we phase out fossil fuels. We must start with eliminating fossil fuel subsidies immediately. After more than five years in office, the Trudeau government is still incapable of proposing a target as ambitious as that of Joe Biden who took office just three months ago. Despite recent positive commitments on climate, Canada remains under the influence of the oil and gas industry, which prioritizes private profits over the wellbeing of communities and the environment. The costs of inaction will be greater than the cost of acting quickly and decisively.” Keith Stewart, Senior Energy Strategist, Greenpeace Canada
“This is not a climate emergency target. Canada is one of the very worst emitters and needs to do more. This target will not halt the 2 degrees of warming that puts the future of the Earth in danger. A global fair share target is 60% – and it is doable. Anything less is just not acceptable – it is a recipe for ecocide. Canada’s target as announced fails future generations and must change; as must the Climate Plan. We must tackle the need to phase out fossil fuels 100% and transition to a renewable energy future.” Lyn Adamson, Co-Chair, ClimateFast
“Canada could be a climate leader, but climate leaders do not deal in empty promises or half-measures. Climate leaders do not build pipelines through stolen land or sign off on enormous fossil fuel subsidies with the same pen they use to legislate net-zero by 2050 targets. Canada is the only G7 country whose emissions have increased since the Paris Agreement. But this is not only a crisis of emissions, it is a crisis of equality. Canada’s inaction on climate is a betrayal of the people and areas most affected by this crisis. Anything less than a commitment to reduce our own emissions by 60% by 2030 is an insult to those we continue to hurt with our inaction. It is time for Canada to get serious on climate, to wind down the oil and gas industry and support workers through the transition rather than continue delaying the inevitable.” Alyssa Scanga, Youth Organizer, Climate Strike Canada
“Canada is a wealthy nation that has been among the top 10 emitters of greenhouse gases for decades. We helped create the climate crisis that threatens the future of our children. We must make a deeper commitment to fight climate change and we must have a realistic plan for keeping that commitment. We must stop investing in the oil and gas sector. We must invest deeply in energy efficiency and renewable energies; in walkable, bike-able and transit-supportive communities. These investments will reduce air pollution and improve health, while creating new jobs and fuel savings.” Kim Perrotta, Executive Director, Canadian Health Association for Sustainability and Equity (CHASE)
“Canada has increased its ambition on climate change, but reductions of 60 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 are needed to limit climate-related risks and impacts that are disproportionately affecting women and marginalized communities. We call on Prime Minister Trudeau to ensure environmental justice and gender justice are central to Canada’s climate actions. In addition to domestic actions, this will require Canada to commit at least $1.8 billion a year of public investments in climate finance in order to support women and other vulnerable people in developing countries to respond and adapt to climate change.” Anya Knechtel, Policy Specialist, Oxfam Canada
“New Brunswick risks undermining the province’s capacity to protect its citizens and compete in a decarbonized global economy if it fails to develop its own electrification and decarbonisation plan to reach near zero by 2050 and 60 per cent by 2030, a level that would see the province’s emissions fall to 5 million tonnes in 10 years. While the province’s emissions currently are in line with the new proposed federal target of 40 to 45% below 2005 by 2030, other federal requirements apply regardless of where our province’s emissions are, including the need to phase out coal from electricity generation by 2030, meet the requirements of a clean fuel standard, and a rising carbon price reaching $170/tonne by 2030.
New Brunswick has a hard work to do, just like all provinces, and every country in the world to ensure we get on a path that avoids 1.5 degrees warming. We can’t negotiate with the atmosphere. The global carbon budget is small and rapidly declining. The province needs to comply based on the laws of physics, not politics,” Louise Comeau, Director of Climate Change and Energy, Conservation Council of New Brunswick
“Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement today that Canada will reduce emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 represents a big step forward. Still, we absolutely must go further. Under the banner of For the Love of Creation, people of faith, national churches, and faith-based organizations have been active in the call for Canada to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and invest in a just transition to a fair, inclusive, green economy that creates good secure jobs, and promotes the well-being of everyone in Canada. Canadian climate ambition continues to be undermined by federal support to the oil and gas sector and a failure to embrace transformational change to ensure the liveability of the planet and the flourishing of all creation.” Karri Munn-Venn, Senior Policy Analyst, Citizens for Public Justice
“Today’s announcement of Canada’s new climate target does not deserve much celebration. While an improvement over from its previous, even more inadequate, pledge, this target does not represent what Canada could and should do to reduce emissions at a pace necessary to prevent a climate catastrophe and human rights disaster. It also places an excessive burden on developing countries. With such a weak target, Canada is effectively saying that poorer countries, who are less responsible for climate change, must also halve their emissions by 2030. It’s time the Government of Canada started treating climate change like the global emergency it is by acting in a manner proportional to the scale of the crisis and in line with its full capacity and responsibility.” Fiona Koza, Business and Human Rights Campaigner, Amnesty International Canada
“As part of the Arctic, the Yukon is already experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis. While we applaud the increase from Prime Minister Trudeau’s recent budget announcement of 36% emissions reduction to a murky number between 40 to 45%, sadly this goal does not account for the increasing emissions in Canada. Considering that Canada is one of the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions, our minimum Fair Share would be a 60% emission reduction by 2030. We call on the Federal Government to reassess their target.” Coral Voss, Executive Director, Yukon Conservation Society
“In its latest report on the State of the Global Climate, the World Meteorological Organization stated that we need deep reductions and immediate action on the climate crisis. However, Canada’s carbon emissions reduction target is not adequate and does not include emissions from the military. The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are the biggest emitters in the federal government. The Trudeau government continues to make massive investments in fossil-fuel powered militarism like new tanks and fighter jets. To stop global warming, we need to stop war.” Tamara Lorincz, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
“Human bodies do not tolerate half-measures in resuscitation–we crash and die. COVID-19 does not tolerate half-measures in its management–cases skyrocket. Similarly, keeping the climate from trespassing across tipping points of no return is not a situation where half-measures constitute a healthy response to climate change. A 40-45% reduction in emissions below 2005 levels by 2030 does not represent Canada’s fair share of emissions reductions. So our job is to over-deliver. Our ambition heading forward must be to push hard, push fast, and not stop until we create the governance frameworks, through a strengthened Bill C-12, the resources, via a reallocation of fossil fuel subsidies, and the political will necessary for us to wake up in 2030 and find that we have done our part in stabilizing the Earth’s climate and providing a healthy future for our children.” Dr Courtney Howard, Emergency Physician, Past-President, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
“Canada needs to sharply ramp up its climate action. Our country is now officially a climate laggard. We have the weakest 2030 carbon reduction target of G7 countries, the lowest level of financial assistance in the G7 for developing countries to address climate impacts, and second in the G20 in fossil fuel subsidies. Setting low goals means getting weak action. Today, Prime Minister Trudeau explicitly named the biggest barrier to Canada being a climate leader: the production and export of dirty oil. Now he needs to address that problem by phasing out all fossil fuel production and use.” Dale Marshall, National Climate Program Manager, Environmental Defence
“The Road to Net Zero needs all hands on deck. We have a very good made-in Canada Just Transition model to work from: the 2019 National Task Force on Just Transition for Canadians. Coal Power Workers and Communities set out strong principles and recommendations to guide Just Transition. Let’s implement them! Getting it right is about good sustainable jobs and strong Communities. Just Transition is the bridge that takes us there.” Joie Warnock, Assistant to the President, Unifor.
Film Review “Everybody Flies”
I have not flown for nearly a year. My last trip was to New Orleans, in January last year. Looking back my usual pattern seems to be about 3 or 4 air trips a year, though in 2019 there was also only one flight as we had resolved to see more of our own province. But I have been on flights when there were odd smells in the cabin. I have not personally experienced a fume event but there are many.
The air in nearly every modern jet plane comes from the engines “bleed air”. The only exception is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which has a separate, electric powered compressor for cabin air. The air is also recirculated through a HEPA filter which removes things like germs. Unfortunately it is not fine enough to remove smaller particles and that is where the trouble starts. Every jet engine needs lubricant and every can of that lubricant carries a health warning. It contains Tricresyl Phosphate a mixture of three isomeric organophosphate compounds. The “fume events” occur when the bleed air gets contaminated by the leaking lubricant. It can also be contaminated by other fluids. The aircraft industry has known about the issue since the 1950s and has always downplayed it.
Pilots and other aircrew, flying all the time, are much more likely to experience a fume event than passengers – but there are now records of large numbers of events affecting both. Former BA pilot Tristan Lorraine had to give up flying due to ill health and retrained as a filmmaker. “Everybody Flies” is his examination of the increasing amount of evidence that the air in most aircraft is nothing like as safe as the aircraft makers and airlines would have you believe. What he presents in his documentary are the first hand experiences of crew and passengers and their subsequent health issues. There is also quite a lot of independent research now and academics saying things like “if you don’t know what the safe level of exposure is, then it should be zero”. Captain Lorraine is also spokesman for the leading global organisation dealing with the issue of contaminated aircraft cabin air: The Global Cabin Air Quality Executive (GCAQE).
The movie is gripping and the story has an eerie air of familiarity. The aviation industry is following the same playbook as the tobacco and asbestos industries used. Indeed one of the interviewees sounded like me. She had been trying to get her case into a courtroom. After 15 years she had to give up and declare bankruptcy. “They have far more money than I had” so they could spend more on delaying the process. Exactly the same message that lawyers gave me, more than once, when I felt I had a good case and a strong sense of injustice. The lawyers tended to agree that I had a strong case but “they have more money than you do.” Indeed one case was settled against me simply because that was cheaper than fighting it. There are also regulators. Usually government appointed bodies tasked with protecting the public and employees, but who have become entirely captive to the industry they are supposed to regulate. The National Energy Board protects the oil and gas industry and advances its interests, not those of society in general and certainly not the natural environment.
But the aviation industry also has to guard jealously its reputation for promoting safety. That has taken a big hit thanks to Boeing’s handling of the 737 MAX mess. Just as the automobile industry suffered from the VW cheating emissions systems – and the more recent Toyota scandal. Currently they are doing that by pretending that there is not a problem. This position is becoming untenable but has lasted 50+ years so far.
“Everybody Flies” is “under consideration” for an Oscar and BAFTA. It already had a standing ovation at the Sundance Festival. Its release to theatres is delayed by COVID. I hope that it shows up on streaming services too. I feel very privileged to have been offered a review link – which, of course, I cannot share. But I do hope that you will get to see it soon. I also hope that you will click on the links I have provided for I am sure that there will be much more bafflegab and distraction before the industry as a whole moves towards acknowledging the problem and installing better air filters. Making a start on that now, while so many commercial aircraft are grounded makes a great deal of sense, but then that is never going to be the industry’s first concern.
Stephen Rees's blog 
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