Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The Cabinet Office has updated its National Risk Register, something they do each year and which is intended to show preparedness for the range of major risks the UK faces.
The report is 187 pages long, and includes threats like terrorism, cyber attack, chemical and nuclear attacks, collapse of banking systems, war, major disasters, power grid collapse, earthquake, pandemics and foot and mouth.
The Cabinet Office has updated its National Risk Register, something they do each year and which is intended to show preparedness for the range of major risks the UK faces.
The report is 187 pages long, and includes threats like terrorism, cyber attack, chemical and nuclear attacks, collapse of banking systems, war, major disasters, power grid collapse, earthquake, pandemics and foot and mouth.
But The Standard thinks that hot weather for a day or two is the biggest risk of all:
London could frazzle in temperatures of more than 40°C as the planet warms, the Government is warning.
The Tube, rail and buses could be disrupted, tens of thousands more workers may stay at home, and water supplies could be hit.
Ministers raised the alarm over the dangers of soaring temperatures and global warming in its updated National Risk Register for 2025.
The 187-page document assesses the scale of the dangers, and likelihood of them happening, ranging from a terrorist attack, nuclear incident, riots, cyber strikes, wars and weather events, including in space.
A high temperature emergency was rated as having a “significant” impact and a three out of five likelihood.
As President-elect Trump assembles his cabinet and senior staff, there are familiar names that Americans have come to know over the years. Names like Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. And then there is Chris Wright, perhaps the least recognizable name on the President’s team and the nominee for the Secretary of Energy.
As President-elect Trump assembles his cabinet and senior staff, there are familiar names that Americans have come to know over the years. Names like Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. And then there is Chris Wright, perhaps the least recognizable name on the President’s team and the nominee for the Secretary of Energy.
Chris is no show pony. Sitting in the Senate cafeteria with him recently, it struck me that in a city where people are paid copious amounts of money to know who the power brokers are, not a single person recognized the new nominee. And he’s okay with that.
For many years, Chris, an avid outdoorsman, has served on the board of the Property and Environment Research Center, our nonprofit conservation organization based out of Bozeman, Montana. We are dedicated to improving the condition of our public and private lands through incentives and market-based ideas. Part of that entails ensuring conservation works for both people and the environment. That’s Chris in a nutshell – he sees the condition of humanity and the environment are intertwined.
Having a diverse board of directors is important to me. And having a responsible leader in the oil and gas industry on our board alongside environmental leaders from nationally recognized conservation and sportsmen organizations has made for richer, more thoughtful dialogue about issues related to conservation.
Chris Wright is a thought leader in the energy industry known for his genuine, down-to-earth approachability coupled with an infectious enthusiasm to improve human lives.
Because he channels this passion by providing more affordable energy to ordinary Americans, many in the media have sought to label Chris as a climate change denier. That strikes me as not only lazy, but untrue.
In fact, he has written very publicly, in a company report last year: “Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address,” also noting that human activity has “driven up atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide by 50 percent.” Hardly the words of a denier. Rather, Chris is a thoughtful problem solver and somebody who understands that access to affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy enables both greater economic growth and environmental progress. And he understands the trade-offs associated with unrealistic policy solutions being offered. He’s not afraid to call that out.
In his service with our environmental organization, he has been one of the more vocal supporters for conservation innovation and conservation markets – how to make conservation make economic sense so that it can be more sustainable and durable. Out here in Montana, in recognition of the role that landowners play in the conservation of elk, Chris has personally helped us establish a private fund to help compensate ranchers for disease costs associated with providing elk habitat on their land. And he has encouraged us to work with oil and gas producers who operate in the big game migrations corridors of the West to find ways to direct drilling away from key pathways, even if that means compensating the producers for necessary modifications.
He would be the first to say that improving human lives means responsibly stewarding our land, water, and wildlife. Chris deeply believes a healthy environment is also part of the improved human condition.
When you visit with Chris in his office in Denver, it is hard not to notice a collection of mountaineering gear featured prominently. Chris is an accomplished mountaineer in his own right. But the gear doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to Montanan Alex Lowe, the best mountain climber of his generation, who was killed in an avalanche in the Tibetan Himalayas in 1999. For Chris, it is a daily reminder of the wonders of our planet and a climbing culture that seeks to connect with nature at the most extreme and intimate level. I know he will bring that same connection to energy policy in service to his country and the land that makes America so special.
According to the American Medical Association, in an article that is part of JAMA’s “What Doctors Wish Patients Knew™” series:
“Research has shown that diets high in ultraprocessed foods are linked to more than 30 health conditions, according to an umbrella review of meta-analyses that was published in The BMJ. Meanwhile, more exposure to ultraprocessed foods was associated with a higher risk of dying from any cause. There were also strong ties with higher consumption and cardiovascular disease-related deaths, mental health disorders and type 2 diabetes.”
“Research has shown that diets high in ultraprocessed foods are linked to more than 30 health conditions, according to an umbrella review of meta-analyses that was published in The BMJ. Meanwhile, more exposure to ultraprocessed foods was associated with a higher risk of dying from any cause. There were also strong ties with higher consumption and cardiovascular disease-related deaths, mental health disorders and type 2 diabetes.”
This statement is based on reviews of many published nutritional epidemiology studies (hundreds of them). There were 45 review studies or meta-analyses on UPFs published in 2024 alone.
Nutritional epidemiology is the application of epidemiological methods to the study of how diet is related to health and disease in humans at the population level. … Epidemiologists investigate how nutrition affects the occurrence of disease by collecting data on and comparing large groups of people. Statistical methods are employed to estimate the extent to which a factor influences risk of disease in a population. This estimate is often expressed as a measure of association.”
“In epidemiological research, diet can be studied at different levels comprising intake of nutrients, foods, food groups, and/or patterns. These exposures can be measured by directly ascertaining what people eat (e.g., through the administration of questionnaires), by measuring markers of intake in biological specimens, or by estimating body size and the relative size of body compartments.”
“The exposure measure of interest in nutritional epidemiology is usually long-term diet, since the effects of intake on most health outcomes, especially those related to noncommunicable diseases, are likely to occur over extended periods.”
“Nutritional epidemiology is the application of epidemiological methods to the study of how diet is related to health and disease in humans at the population level. This article reviews key issues in the field of nutritional epidemiology, including a description of methods to assess dietary intake, sources of variability in diet, the relevance of total energy intake to epidemiological analyses, and errors that may arise in measuring dietary exposures.”
The problems of nutritional epidemiology appear obvious at once:
1. “…the study of how diet is related to health and disease in humans at the population level.”
If these population-level relationships are attempted to be applied to individuals, we encounter the ecological fallacy: a logical error that occurs when you make assumptions about individuals based on group data.
2. “… This estimate — extent to which a factor influences risk of disease in a population — is often expressed as a measure of association.”
A measure of association, a correlation, is not a risk – it is a statistic. True risks come from exposure to a causal factor and its dose, and for that, researchers need to measure the dose received by an individual who has had an exposure to an hypothesized causal factor. Hypothesized causal factors need to be backed by biological plausibility.
For UPFs, ideas such as the purposes for certain processing steps or corporate ownership of the manufacturer of a food item cannot be, and are not, biologically plausible causal factors for the myriad of negative effects claimed for UPF consumption.
3. “…These exposures can be measured by directly ascertaining what people eat (e.g., through the administration of questionnaires)…”
Exposure can be directly measured, but Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs) and 24-hour dietary recalls (24HRs) do not directly measure exposure to or dosages of foods in a person’s diet. They are, at very best, vague estimates of dietary intake. Many nutritional epidemiological studies are based on a single “in the last year…”-type Food Frequency Questionnaire. Or even on a single, 24-hr Dietary recall. These FFQs are then treated as real-world exposures and dosages. Often participants are subsequently assumed to have the same diet over the following years or even, in some cases, decades.
4. “The exposure measure of interest in nutritional epidemiology is usually long-term diet,…”
As in the previous point above, the exposure to the measure of interest, in the present case, UPFs, is almost never actually measured in any scientifically defensible way. And, except in one or two clinical trials, dose, in practice, was never measured.
5. “…sources of variability in diet”…. “and errors that may arise in measuring dietary exposures.”
People’s diets do not remain the same for years and decades. And diet is a very difficult thing to measure outside of an institutional setting. Changes in marital status, age, becoming a parent, moving from university to professional life, changes in economic status, changes in employment, moving from one region or country to another – all these and many more factors directly change the day-to-day diets of most people.
How does this all apply to the studies on Ultraprocessed Foods?
In Modern Scientific Controversies: The War on Food: Part 2, What are UPFs?, we saw that the titular question was very difficult to answer definitively. The definition is vague and based on nutritionally irrelevant factors, primarily relying on the “NOVA food groups: definition according to the extent and purpose of food processing”, such as the purposes of processing steps used in the food manufacturing: ensuring product longevity, taste, palatability, enjoyable textures, etc.
And, for that reason, exactly which diet items on diet questionnaires [FFQs/24HRs] were to be counted as UPFs in the various research efforts have varied over time and were often subjective [as in “influenced by or based on personal beliefs or feelings, rather than based on facts”] and thus different in each study.
None of the items in the lists of UPFs are distinct foods with distinct nutritional qualities – nutritional value is not considered in the definitions. The items on the UPFs lists do not share common ingredients. The items on the UPFs lists do not share common processes. Many anti-UPF claims contain heavy doses of anti-transnational corporatism.
In fact, the whole subject is scientifically unsuitable for investigation. To be scientifically sensible, the food item (or food group) to which study participants are to be, or have been, exposed at some dosage level must be measurable and, if a number of items are being considered to be a group, the items must be commensurable—it must be a homogeneous group—a group of like things.
It is impossible to measure the “purposes-ness” or the “ownership-by-transnational-corporation-ness” of varied items for sale in the grocery store. There is no acceptable metric for those concepts. It is impossible to measure the relative “UPF-ness” of items sold in grocery stores, such as these ubiquitous grocery-store breads for instance:
We can only scientifically be interested in the dosage received of the particular dietary item of interest and that dosage needs to be measured. Dosage is not a binary measure – not yes/no.
All the UPF prospective cohort and observational studies (cross-sectional, case-control, and cohort) and the review and meta-analyses and even the huge umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (Lane et al. 2024) suffer from the faults detailed above.
And what is the result of all that?
A pseudo-science fad — the anti-UPF movement — that has infected nearly
every level of the health and nutrition science world.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Let me speak as plainly as I dare: the anti-UPF movement is pure “Fad Science”. It is wasting untold research monies to bolster an ideological fight targeting the foods produced by transnational corporations on the trumped-up idea that they share something badhidden somehowin “the extent and purpose of food processing”.
There are some voices trying to stem the rush to condemn all UPFs.
Please, it is important to understand that UPFs does NOT MEAN JUNK FOOD. That is an entirely different concept and classification.
Nor are UPFs the same as foods containing “additives” or ”artificial colors” or ”preservatives” — foods can be and are classified as UPFs even when lacking those.
UPFs are such an all-encompassing classification that it basically includes “nearly everything sold in your grocery store in a package, plastic bag, or box”.
Back in February 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration announced its critical minerals strategy, which promised “expanding domestic production” (in a timely manner!), but only after “ensuring that “our actions are community engagement standards,” which include “responsible social, environmental, and labor standards.”
Back in February 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration announced its critical minerals strategy, which promised “expanding domestic production” (in a timely manner!), but only after “ensuring that “our actions are community engagement standards,” which include “responsible social, environmental, and labor standards.”
This purportedly pro-mining stance was the Democratic response to a report from the Commerce Department, prepared in response to President Trump’s 2017 executive order 13817. “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals.”
The report revealed just how dependent the U.S. was on hostile foreign governments for minerals designated as “critical” by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The U.S. was at least 50% import-reliant for 31 of the 35 critical minerals and 100% import-reliant for 14 of them, including minerals found in abundance in U.S. soil.
Commerce called for advancing transformational R&D and deployment across critical mineral supply chains, strengthening those supply chains, and enhancing international trade and cooperation regarding critical minerals.
The U.S., it said, should conduct critical mineral resource assessments to support exploration and development of conventional, secondary, and unconventional sources for critical minerals; improve access to mineral resources on federal lands; reduce federal permitting timeframes; and grow the U.S. critical minerals workforce.
In short – this was a proactive plan to expedite and expand domestic production of critical minerals. By contrast, the 2022 Biden-Harris plan focused on beefing up the mining regulatory structure by establishing strong, responsible mining standards, conducting comprehensive planning, and replacing the Mining Law of 1872 — supposedly to “provide permitting certainty.”
To Biden-Harris, “securing a sustainable domestic supply of critical minerals” meant “environmentally and socially responsible mining and processing projects and other sustainable sources recycling and recovery from unconventional sources,” with the highest priority (after special interest objections) being recycling and reuse – not actual mining.
Another goal was a royalties program to enrich the federal treasury, while yet another was to “establish a hardrock mine reclamation program that might allow for “responsibly” extracting minerals from legacy wastes to avoid “the need for additional greenfield mine development.”
But the kicker was the final recommendation.
Biden-Harris focused not on aiding miners, but rather on “building civil service expertise” to increase bureaucratic control over the industry.
What did Biden-Harris do next to “expand domestic production” of critical minerals? Here’s a small sample.
Almost immediately, Interior canceled two mineral leases held by Twin Metals Minnesota that contained about 88% of the nation’s cobalt reserves in addition to copper, nickel, and platinum-group elements – all vital for favored green energy technologies. Months later, Biden announced a 20-year withdrawal of 225,504 acres in northern Minnesota, the site of the Twin Metals project.
Four months later the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service announced a plan to prohibit new mining claims in 20,574 acres in the Black Hills Forest in South Dakota. In response, Rep. Pete Stauber (R, MN) said that “these sorts of land restrictions from the anti-mining Biden Administration hamstring domestic development of minerals we need for national defense, energy technology, and everyday life.”
Biden, like his Democratic forebears, used the Antiquities Act and other federal laws to create new national parks and monuments, notably one that bars uranium mining in Arizona and another intended to destroy Wyoming’s coal mining industry. Biden’s crippling of Alaska included shutting down oil drilling in ANWR and blocking oil, gas, and mining operations, including a copper mine others have deemed in the national interest.
And, as David Blackmon reported in Forbes in July 2023, Biden balked on helping to jumpstart a project to develop the world’s largest known rare-earth resource – the Tanbreez project on the coast of Greenland that Tanbreez Mining wanted to develop, possibly in cooperation with Chinese participation, rather than just let sit idle.
Just this week, Tanbreez CEO Greg Barnes related that the Biden State Department, while not offering any assistance, did lobby against any deal with the Chinese. New York-based Critical Metals, the new owner, hopes to mine a million metric tons per year of (rare-earths-containing) eudialyte beginning as early as 2026. No wonder President Trump is focused on Greenland.
The return of Donald Trump to the Resolute Chair will mark a 180-degree turn in U.S. mining policy, many believe. One of the first items for business is final consideration of the bipartisan Energy Permitting Reform Act (EPRA) that the Senate Natural Resources Committee approved last July.
The legislation, which streamlines permitting and restricts litigation timelines, would revamp the National Environmental Policy Act, a major impediment to “timely” permitting. Under the 1970 law, securing final NEPA permits takes an average of 4.5 years, but 6.5 years for electrical transmission projects. But for mining projects, those timelines are much longer.
“Right now, it takes anywhere from 10 to 30 years to build a mine, which is why we don’t have a mining industry in America,” Critical Minerals Institute director Melissa Sanderson told the Epoch Times. Lawmakers hope for a final bill under which all agencies with a dog in the hunt have 90 days to raise issues and the applicant another 90 days to respond.
Afterward, all parties would have two years to resolve all issues. The permit would be deemed approved unless it was denied within that time frame. The fast-permit process has the potential to jumpstart domestic mining and bring new revenues, jobs, and minerals availability to the United States.
Trump is also expected to fulfill his campaign pledge to quickly reanimate the Twin Metals mine permits for a $1.7 billion project to extract copper, nickel, cobalt, and other minerals from its open pit mine in Minnesota and bring 850 jobs to an economically depressed community.
Minerals consultant Gregory Wischer predicts that the Trump Administration will focus heavily on domestic onshoring of all parts of the mineral supply chain, especially mineral extraction.
“While the Biden Administration’s mineral policy ‘heavily features international cooperation’,” Wischer says Trump will likely “significantly prioritize” building more mines, processing facilities, and refineries in the U.S.
And that, we believe, is just what the doctor ordered.
Kathryn Porter has the latest on the near blackouts last week:
The National Energy System Operator (“NESO”) has been stung by my analysis of the blackouts near miss on 8 January, at one point apparently telling journalists, somewhat pompously that “WE are the National Energy System Operator, and SHE is “just” an independent consultant!” In this blog I will carry out further analysis of what happened on 8 January and what NESO has said about it at different times, and highlight the system operator’s disappointing lack of transparency.
As Kathryn explains. NESO, after trying to stonewall, produced a short note claiming that they really had 3.7 GW of “headroom”, without actually giving any detail or proof, a claim Kathryn goes on to demolish.
After doing a detailed bottom up analysis of every single generator, Kathryn proved that her initial top down analysis was essentially correct, that we really were down to 0.6 GW of spare capacity.
As Kathryn concludes:
Both my bottom up and top down analyses have yielded essentially the same result – about 500 MW of margin at the peak on 8 January. On top of this there was about 700 MW of reserve. This means that the single largest infeed loss of 1,400 MW could not have been covered. The 3.7 GW “headroom” appears to be a complete fiction, which could only be met by units that are not BMUs as these are the ones I considered (other than some STOR units). However, NESO could clear this up very easily by simply publishing the list of units providing margin and reserve at the 8 January peak, including volumes.
David Rose at UnHerd has also written an article about Kathryn’s findings. He makes this interesting observation:
The UK power market, she concludes, came “close to disaster” on Wednesday. Neso told me the following day it disputed her findings, claiming it had merely “used our standard operational tools to manage the electricity network and ensure that we maintained enough electricity,” and that its margin had at all times been greater than 580MW. However, in the course of a dialogue that lasted for the following 24 hours, I asked its spokesperson to tell me why he thought her analysis was wrong, and what would have been the source of the additional electricity. He simply refused to answer.
Such a refusal from a public body is unacceptable. If NESO’s figures are correct, they should be able to prove it very easily, by providing a list making up their 3.7 GW.
NESO are of course the government owned body tasked with ensuring that Britain has the essential energy it needs by ensuring supply meets demand every second of every day. However, as their own website makes clear, their real purpose is to deliver decarbonisation. As such, they are a hopelessly conflicted organisation, as the twin objectives may often be incompatible.
Clearly NESO cannot be trusted to provide reliable information, as we have already seen in their craven report on decarbonising the electricity system by 2030, sent to Miliband in November.
Under their watch, we are heading ever closer to catastrophic blackouts. They must now publish the data which supports their claim of 3.7 GW reserves if they are to retain any credibility.
Various educational and medical institutions, as well as policymakers, have expressed concerns regarding the use of metered-dose inhalers to prevent or treat shortness of breath associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as these inhalers use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are greenhouse gases, as propellants.
Various educational and medical institutions, as well as policymakers, have expressed concerns regarding the use of metered-dose inhalers to prevent or treat shortness of breath associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as these inhalers use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are greenhouse gases, as propellants. In response, “environmentally friendly” alternatives to metered-dose inhalers have been proposed for patients with asthma. To determine if prescribing these alternatives is necessary, we used the concentration and radiative forcing of the HFCs that are used as propellants (HFC-134a and HFC-227ea) in current inhalers to predict the temperature rise caused by the continued emissions of these HFCs into the atmosphere. Based on our estimates, the continued emissions of these HFCs would cause a combined temperature increase of about 0.0132 °C in 50 years and of about 0.0264 °C in 100 years. Such a rise in temperature is negligible and cannot be measured or felt. Therefore, curbing the emissions of HFCs from inhalers is unnecessary and would have minimal effect on the climate. Given this conclusion, the selection of inhalers to prescribe to patients with asthma or COPD should be based on the health, safety and needs of the patients, rather than on a purported environmental benefit.
Trump will soon fill a 4-year WH vacancy known as the “Biden/Harris Administration.” Meanwhile federal governance in Ottawa is shut down by Trudeau resigning without leaving but also suspending parliament. There being no one at the helm is eerily similar to the US adrift, and a fitting close to the Trudeau decade.
Mark Carney, United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance, during an interview for an episode of “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations” in New York, US, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023. Carney, the former Bank of England governor, said he expects the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates again before the end of the year to help curb inflation. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Trump will soon fill a 4-year WH vacancy known as the “Biden/Harris Administration.” Meanwhile, federal governance in Ottawa is shut down by Trudeau, resigning without leaving, but also suspending parliament. There being no one at the helm is eerily similar to the US adrift, and a fitting close to the Trudeau decade. Jamie Sarkonak goes to the core of the upcoming election in his National Post article It doesn’t matter to Mark Carney if Canada survives. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images
As a member of the global elite, he will always be free from the consequences of his political actions.
The problem Mark Carney, likely Liberal leader-to-be, will always run into is this: his fate doesn’t depend on a successful Canada.Carney announced his leadership run Thursday. Odds are good he’s going to win. He’s not as recognizableas his only real competition, potential candidate and former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, but he doesn’t share her bruised record of inflating the deficit to multi-billion dollar highs, and last week’s polling shows that more people are open to voting for him than for her.I hope he wins the party’s support. The Liberals aren’t likely to resonate with the population by running an out-of-touch cabinet minister in the next federal election — and they’re certainly less likely to do so by running an out-of-touch global elite who left small-time federal politics behind for a career at the pinnacle of international poshdom.
Yes, Carney is Canadian. But he’s also a citizen of Ireland,and through it the European Union,as well as a national of the United Kingdom.
He can leave this country any time he wants, and he already has after serving as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, he moved on to head the Bank of England. Now, he’s embedded in the international ecosystem as a climate finance adviser at the United Nations (among other things, he’s a strong advocate for mandatory climate disclosures by banks).
Oh, and according to his World Economic Forum bio — another mark of borderless eliteness — he is also the following: “an external member of the Board of Stripe, a member of the Global Advisory Board of PIMCO, Harvard University, Rideau Hall Foundation, Bilderberg, the boards of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Hoffman Institute for Global Business and Society at INSEAD, Cultivo, as well as Senior Counsellor of the MacroAdvisory Partners, Advisor of the Watershed, and Chair of Chatham House, the Group of Thirty and also Advisory Board Chair for Canada 2020.” Us rubes have no idea what most of that even means.
Carney might call himself an “outsider,” and it’ll be true — in the sense that he is not currently in the Trudeau government’s cabinet. But he’s still very much an elite, one who has advised the Liberal party, and one whose well-being doesn’t depend on local happiness and prosperity.
And everyone filling out a ballot next election will know it.
Different people have different terms for this. Freeland wrote a book on the new richesse mondiale, calling them plutocrats. Circa 2013, she waswarning the rest of us that the global plutocracy might one day end up turning into a system of crony capitalist “insiders”; perhaps an aristocracy. Carney’s not Bill-Gates rich, but he’s still part of the global upper class.
Chrystia Freeland is also a Trustee on the WEF Board.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper put it in more digestible terms in his 2018 book, “Right Here, Right Now”: there are people who live “anywhere,” and there are people who live “somewhere.” “Anywheres” are cosmopolitan types who usually have professional, internationally oriented careers. “Somewheres” live and work closer to where they grew up and share more of their values with people of a similar, localized background. The former tends to look down on nationalism; the latter depends on it.
Carney counts among the “anywheres” of Canadian society; yes, he’s got the passport, but he’s got more in common with a foreign banking executive who makes an annual Davos pilgrimage than he does with regular Superstore-shopping Canadians.
We “somewheres,” on the other hand, can’t just up and leave in the face of turmoil because our entire life is here.
Our friends and families are here. Our savings and investments (if we have them) are in CAD; our partly-paid mortgages are tied to Canadian land; our children’s education depends on the quality of Canadian schools; our safety depends on Canadian laws; our job prospects suffer when low-wage foreign labour is allowed to flood our local markets. We’re not being forced to leave, but the price of relocating is prohibitively high.
Carney’s Monday appearance on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show was revealing in that way: he targeted his pre-audition pitch to the world through an American late-night show that treated him with the same humorous fascination as it would a fuzzy exotic animal. It was a soft and unserious interview because the people our former central banker is campaigning toward aren’t Canadian and aren’t witnessing the country’s dire situation firsthand.
Poilievre’s appearances on Dr. Jordan Peterson’s American-produced podcast were of a whole different category; both men are Canadian and can talk about Canadian issues with the weight and care they deserve.
None of this is to say that the upper crust of society should stay out of politics — many great leaders come from the elite class, including on the conservative side of politics. But after years of regular Canadians being the low-priority afterthought of a trust-fund supported, second-generation prime minister who seemed happiest at G7 photoshoots and Gavin-Newsom meetups, the animal spirits are hungering for a leader who truly has skin in the game.
And yes, I’d count Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre among the “somewheres.” He’s had an entirely Canadian career, he isn’t gunning for CV-padding UN advisory roles, his ongoing career doesn’t depend on pleasing the moral sensibilities of the world’s politically active, post-national liberals, and he doesn’t seem to think that pre-election media courting should be performed for an international audience.
If the ship that is Canada starts sinking — and it’s been sitting alarmingly low in recent years — most of us are going down with it.Not Carney, who has and always will have a premium life raft, ready to isolate him from the consequences of his political actions. Which is exactly why I can’t wait to see him run.
The Biden administration cut a multi-billion dollar check for struggling electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian Thursday, just days before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The Biden administration cut a multi-billion dollar check for struggling electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian Thursday, just days before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“This loan will help us accelerate the launch of our Georgia plant for R2 [SUV] and R3 [crossover], providing thousands of jobs in the state,” Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said in a Thursday statement announcing the loan’s finalization. “People are incredibly excited to get behind the wheel of our new models, and this additional capacity for our mass market products is key to U.S. leadership in the electric vehicle industry.”
Rivian $RIVN just announced it has closed its loan agreement with the Department of Energy for up to $6.6 billion in financial support for the construction of its next manufacturing facility in Georgia pic.twitter.com/OhfOulaNms
The massive loan was allocated by the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which received calls from an internal federal watchdog in December to cease working on new deals due to a slew of potential conflicts of interest in its work. The LPO has drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans in the past for its director Jigar Shah’s continued association with a green energy trade group he established before joining the Biden DOE, with a July Daily Caller News Foundation investigation finding the green energy loan czar shelled out $1.2 billion to an EV battery manufacturer that supported a “sister nonprofit” to the trade organization.
Rivian lost nearly $40,000 per vehicle in the third quarter of 2024, and hasn’t turned a profit in a single quarter since it was founded in 2009.
Rivian and the DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Department of Energy for up to $6.6 billion in financial support for the construction of its next manufacturing facility in Georgia
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