Wednesday 13 November 2013

Worth a listen or two

Recently I listened to two podcasts I thought worth sharing.

First, I listened to a recent episode of the Groks Science Show entitled "Kivalina Climate Change."  Typically, this podcast interviews scientists, but this time they interviewed filmmaker Elizabeth Gaylynn Baker about her recent documentary concerning climate change.  While she didn't express herself like a scientist but rather like an artist, Ms. Baker managed to express a genuinely optimistic view in the face of the depressing subject of climate change.  That was refreshing.
The second podcast wasn't as affirming, but it needs to be heard nonetheless.  The penultimate episode of Harry Shearer's le Show interviewed Yves Smith, a former financial insider, about the pending, little-known free trade agreements between southeast Asia, Europe, and the US (and presumably Canada).  While their conversation focused on the US, their first salient example was corporations' attempting to usurp Quebecois laws banning fracking.  The salient quote was:  "It's a race to the bottom on environmental and labor laws."  It's not good news, but you should know it.  Within the first three minutes, the nature of the bad news was pretty clear.  One galling aspect of these deals was that the terms of those agreements were kept secret--not just from the public--but members of Congress.  Well today, Wikileaks has published a chapter.

See you in two weeks at Bitters!

Update:  Here is a brief article about the trade deal from a Canadian perspective.  It confirms Canada's intention to sign it.

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