To the bottom
Re “COP28 raises the bar for climate action – but just how much depends where you look” (Dec. 14): Phasing out fossil fuels by 2050 implies a new urgency for graciously compliant energy companies.
Those sources of fuel that are falling out of favour now must be plundered and sold while they hold value. The so-called good intentions of oil-rich nations, paying disaster relief to other disproportionately affected nations, then salves over the guilt of today’s consumers with a voracious demand for these resources.
The economic incentive to produce fossil fuels was not slowed by COP28. Instead it seems to have declared a carbon-fuelled race with a 26-year finish line.
Derek Thorgeirson Burnaby, B.C.
On the map
Re “Population growth is the housing issue politicians can’t keep ducking” (Dec. 11): In coverage of immigration, it is possible that the issues are big-city issues.
In my small community, the family who arrived a year ago to stay with me had done better research than most on smaller places in Canada that offered opportunities. Their research paid off as they are settling in with jobs, homes and community resources.
Perhaps there is a need for more government information and media that covers all the areas of the country where new arrivals might go. It’s a big country and it’s more than just Toronto and Vancouver.
Glenda James Moose Jaw, Sask.
Political hindsight
Re “Harper highlights” (Letters, Dec. 9): A letter-writer chides Stephen Harper for his 2009 recommendation to invest in the stock market. Assuming someone was stupid enough to invest in the S&P 500 at its March 6, 2009, low of 666, its current value of 4,700-plus doesn’t look that stupid after all.
Furthermore, if Mr. Harper’s decision to lower the GST by two points was such a disaster, then why hasn’t Justin Trudeau done anything about it? After all, he’s had eight years.
Clive Whitlock Milton, Ont.
As a letter-writer attests, Stephen Harper told Canadians to buy stock in 2009, sold General Motors stock in 2014 and put $14-billion back into the pockets of Canadians by axing two points off the GST.
Since then, the TSX60 has almost tripled, GM stock has been relatively flat and Canadians, I’m sure, spent the $14-billion on things they needed.
What “egregious errors” the letter-writer refers to, I am still looking for.
Rob Graham Kingston
Yours to discover
Re “The Harris Legacy: how Mike Harris created today’s Ontario” (Dec. 9): To borrow the architect Sir Christopher Wren’s epitaph: “If you seek my monument, look around you.”
When assessing Mike Harris’s turbulent time in power in Ontario, think of the welfare cuts and the dismantling of much of the welfare state under his watch. And who can forget his cabinet minister’s classic neo-conservative advice that the newly poor haggle with merchants for dented cans of tuna.
Today’s homeless encampments, nonfunctioning nursing homes and challenged health care system all owe a fair bit to Mr. Harris. Should this ideological ascendancy be fondly recalled or mourned?
Toby Zanin Toronto
Not the other
Re “Ontario cautiously gets back into the green electricity game” (Report on Business, Dec. 11): Ontario now requires renewable energy developers to obtain support from municipal governments for their projects. Interestingly, the province doesn’t seem to require this support for gas-fired power expansion.
In May, Toronto passed a resolution opposing “any new power generation proposal involving increased burning of fossil fuels.” Despite this, the provincially owned Portlands Energy Centre in downtown Toronto is set to enlarge its gas-fired output capacity by 50 megawatts.
Why is local buy-in required for emissions-free solar and wind installations, but not the growth of gas-plant pollution?
Gideon Forman Climate change and transportation policy analyst, David Suzuki Foundation; Toronto
At large
Re “Canada’s last wild horses must be protected” (Opinion, Dec. 9): There is also the degradation and destruction of wildlife habitat in the passionate wild vs. feral horse debate.
The combination of unregulated horses and licensed livestock are wreaking havoc on the less than 1 per cent of British Columbia classified as grassland, supporting more than 30 per cent of the province’s rare and endangered species.
The provincial government’s failure to enter into this debate, and to account for the presence of horses when issuing grazing tenures, is a failure to adequately manage and conserve the B.C. grasslands and the myriad species reliant upon them.
Roger Packham 100 Mile House, B.C.
Old as time
Re “U.S. campus antisemitism debate reinforces perception universities have become havens for radical thinking” (Dec. 11): “The university is the greatest invention of the West.” I wish to make a modest amendment.
While a number of the very first universities were certainly in the West, including Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Paris, there was also an early university in the Middle East founded in Baghdad, at the time the capital of the Abbasid Empire.
Al-Mustansiriya University was founded in 1227. At the time it taught medicine, philosophy, mathematics and Islamic studies. Like other universities, it had accommodations for students from more distant regions of the empire.
This wonderful, ancient brick building is still on the banks of the Tigris River, and now a museum.
Abbad Al Radi Toronto
Though I find the claim that universities are greater than any invention devised in the West to be questionable, I take particular issue with universities being described as a Western invention. UNESCO and Guinness World Records credit the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, as the world’s oldest.
Brooks Rapley Toronto
Our shelves, ourselves
Re “We asked you about your bookshelves. Here’s what you told us” (Arts & Books, Dec. 9): Books and the organization of everything are my passions. And I love stats. Here are ours.
- We have 1,000-plus books. My husband thinks we have 750 or so. He is wrong. I’ve counted.
- There is 12 feet of custom-made bookcases surrounding our fireplace, plus another 17 feet in another room. Newest books to read on my desk.
- Fiction in one room, non-fiction in another. Fiction organized by author last name, non-fiction by category.
- Our friends refer to us as the “Lewis Lending Library.” We loan them out and they come back easily. I can be rather terrifying.
- I keep journals with reviews of books I’ve read. I love to write.
- I audit literature courses at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus. Sometimes my husband and I go together. Last year we studied Moby-Dick, his and the professor’s favourite. Eek.
- I have my next book and journal ready to go.
Edie Lewis Brantford, Ont.
More than words
Re “This holiday season, it might be hard to feel festive” (Opinion, Dec. 9): Unable to find holiday cards with a suitable verse, I bought festive note paper instead. But then I faltered, floundered to find words for an annual greeting.
It’s too late to include copies of Marsha Lederman’s column in those envelopes, but she read my mind and I will include a link to it in the rest of my December correspondence.
Marg Heidebrecht Hamilton
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