Issues, ethics, memory
I have participated in numerous discussions about climate change and usually they veer off into talking about recycling, composting or church greening. But those efforts, while personally commendable, are completely inadequate. "The key is scale," according to the editors of the book, Living Ecological Justice. "The problems lie with how we have organized our economy... Continue Reading →
IPCC scientists say climate change is real, Polaris Institute image Early in April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its fourth - and most urgent - report on the dangers posed by climate change. The IPCC was created in 1988 by the United Nations, and its reports present the best thinking of hundreds... Continue Reading →
In November 2013, people in Switzerland voted in a referendum on something called the 1:12 Initiative for Fair Pay. Under that proposal no one in a Swiss company would earn more in a single month than someone else in that company earns in an entire year. Corporate spokespersons in Switzerland and some in government warned... Continue Reading →
When a male student at York University recently requested — for religious reasons — that he be excused from interacting with female classmates, it led to an intense debate over competing rights and religious accommodation. The school’s sociology professor, Paul Grayson, denied the request because he says it infringed upon the rights of his female students... Continue Reading →
In 2011, the Canadian Press reported that the RCMP security service spied on CCF-NDP icon Tommy Douglas from the 1930s until shortly before he died in 1986. But the file on Douglas represented just a tip of the proverbial iceberg, as the McDonald Commission into RCMP misbehaviour revealed that in the 1970s, the security service maintained files... Continue Reading →
There is an important public policy backdrop to the disaster that befell the good people in Lac Mégantic, Quebec in July, when a freight train — with five locomotives and 72 tanker cars — jumped the tracks. The crude oil leaked and then exploded, killing at least 47 people, destroying much of the town, and contaminating... Continue Reading →
I read in the New York Times recently about an increasing attention being paid by American academic researchers to the history of liberal Christianity. The article says that in the U.S. the dominant story for decades has been about the rise of evangelical Christians. The Times reports that decades ago evangelicals “began asserting their power... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 